For the Love

. . . of HOOKS!

I started this post this morning when I was killing time waiting to hear if Isaiah's approval made it into the right hands. I have since heard - and seen a copy with my own eyes - that the approval made it and Isaiah is coming home in two days with the girls!!

PRAISE. THE. LORD. I need to say it again, PRAISE THE LORD!!

Meanwhile I am trying not bawl my way through the afternoon, thinking about this being my last day home with (only) Abram. I never imagined I would have two and a half years alone with my boy (we were in the domestic adoption process back before the C---- adoption got started, hoping to get another baby right away). I am so thankful for all of this time God gave me with Abram - it has been wonderful! But thinking about our lives all being altered forever by three new gifts from God makes me feel like I am going to miss Abram terribly in about a week or two. God is good. He will get us through and He has many blessings waiting for us on the other side!

Onto my obsession with hooks. Really, it is more my obsession with organization and things functioning efficiently in my home that make me love hooks so much. I worked on these projects the last couple weeks.

First, I wanted some hooks in our bedroom so I could hang my sweatshirts on them instead of hanging them on a hanger in my closet every time. I found a wooden sign (it said something about "Teachers . . .") at Goodwill for 99 cents. I painted it and then put three hooks that I already had on it. It didn't have anything on the back to hang it on the wall, so I walked to my mom's house and got two pop can tabs, screwed them into the back and WA-LAA!

A set of hooks for 99 cents!
And I am loving how this thing helps the function of my sweatshirts in my room.
Second up was the boys' room. Their dresser is too small to hold their sweatshirts now that the weather is colder and there was a perfect spot on their wall for some hooks. I found a set of (ugly) hooks at Goodwill that I was going to doctor up, but it was going to take a lot of work. I was at Hobby Lobby and happened to look at their "sports" section and found this set of hooks for $10 (because it was 50% off, of course!).
It is just perfect for their room.

This last hook idea I came up with is a little crazy, but I LOVE it! I was tired of all of my reusable sacks (I primarily shop at Aldi and need them for my groceries) lying all over the floor of the back of my van. There are little hooks back there, but none would fit even one bag. I had another extra hook (all of my extra hooks came from our old house) and I thought about hot gluing it onto the hard plastic in the back of the van. My mom came over when I was in the middle of this project and she suggested screwing the hook into the hard plastic. Although Jason was a little leery of this idea at first, he finally agreed since we plan to have this van for the duration of it's life.

I love looking at the back of my van . . .

in its organized beauty!And yes, I know I am weird!

Recipe Organization

I'm taking a diversion from my usual adoption and/or Abram posts to talk about my favorite hobby: organizing.

Over a year ago, I organized my recipes into this handy, categorized book of recipes. At least that is what I thought at the time.It was a 3-ring binder with clear plastic photo pages that I put my recipes into.

At the time, it seemed like a fabulous way to organize my recipes. I stored it in one of my kitchen drawers and thought I was on my way to cooking more because I had my recipes organized. :)

Well, that didn't happen. In fact, most of my well-used recipes ended up in a pile in my drawer, OUTSIDE of the not-so-handy-after-all recipe book. To get a recipe, I had to get the book out of the drawer, look for the recipe, put the book back and then dig out the book again to put the recipe back. It took awhile, but I finally realized that I hated dragging that big book out of the drawer. And it really hindered me from using my recipes. It was just not efficient. And when something is not working efficiently or well at my house, that means it is time to organize . . . or in most cases, RE-organize!

Enter the recipe box:

It is actually not a recipe box, it is a photo box (from Walmart). It is bigger than what I need, but that gives me room to grow and I currently use the back part of the box to store napkins, straws and my can opener (random, I know). I bought a package of 3-ring binder tabs and cut them to fit the box as dividers.

I store my new recipe box on my counter. And that is the secret to success for me! I LOVE having my recipes on the counter without a lid! Because I am not intrinsically motivated to cook (I'd rather be organizing something!), having my recipes super accessible really does help me.
As a side note, the container of green towels next to my recipe box are my "non-paper"towels. Knowing that we were going to adopt and that our monthly budget will have to grow in some areas, I have looked for ways to cut down our monthly budget in other areas.

I found the idea to use cloth towels instead of paper towels at groceryshrink.com. They are called surgical huck towels. The one tip she told me was to put the towels in a container on my counter. She made a great point that paper towel makers started making a killing when they introduced paper towel holders that put paper towels conveniently at arms-reach in our kitchens! I'm not motivated to use cloth to save the earth . . . I'm just trying to save us some bucks. And I must say that I love using the cloth towels. They are very absorbent and great for cleaning up spills, drying dishes, etc. I don't really miss paper towels at all. I do keep a few napkins around for the few times I really need them.

And lastly, I'm going to leave you with my favorite smoothie recipe (I don't remember where I got it from, but I'm sure I've modified it to some degree):

1 cup PureAlmond Vanilla milk

1-2 handfuls of spinach

2 bananas (the original recipe called for one, but I use two to make it more sweet)

1 cup blueberries

1 cup strawberries (I don't really measure the berries . . . mixed berries work, too)

Ground flax seed (about 1/4- 1/2 cup)

It makes about four glasses. I usually feed one to Abram and put the rest in individual cups in the freezer. Then, I defrost them in the microwave when we are ready to eat them. I love this smoothie because every single ingredient is super healthy and it is a great way to get my picky-eating toddler to eat his fruits and vegetables!

While We Were In

I didn't do a "While You Were Out" (I have no idea if that show is even still on) make-over to our guest area in the basement, but I did redo it last weekend.

Jason and I have had a handful of renters live in our basement for a good portion of our married life (coming up on five years!). While our house is pretty small, it has three bedrooms and a bathroom upstairs and a bedroom and a bathroom downstairs, so it works well for renting out the basement. We have known almost all of our renters very well so that has made it a smooth process.

But, we are done with renters (at least for a good while). While we could technically still have arenter even with four kids living in our house in the near future (!), we are not going to. Our three kids from Africa will have enough new things to adjust to (us being the biggest ones) that we don't want them to have to figure out who the "extra person in the basement" is.

A note to all of our former renters: Sorry for having to endure the nasty burnt orange paint color in the bathroom while you lived with us!

I have hated the color ever since I put it on the walls nearly six years ago (the picture below doesn't do justice to how bad it was). I was trying to go for more of a corally-red color that the Wallaces' have in their bathroom but I ended up way off. I had a very limited budget back then (I was single) and in the past six years I have rarely spent time in the bathroom. So, it remained burnt orange for a long time.But, the orange is gone! Replaced by a very calming grey (surpise, surprise!). It is the same grey (Vessel Grey from Lowes) that I used in Abram's room.

Yikes! Look at all that orange.

Much better!The shower curtain is from Walmart. I was able to use the purple rugs and towels from the previous "burnt orange and purple" theme.

Here is our guest room sometime before or in between renters.
And now. I haven't decorated much in here yet, but I still like it a lot better. It is painted High Speed Steel (Lowes), the same color as our kitchen. I bought this bedspread at a garage sale probably eight years ago. I have tried to sell it at about four garage sales of my own! I am absolutely not a pack-rat, but when I really like something and think there is a possibility of using it down the road, I hang onto it. I'm sure glad I did that with this light teal bedspread!

I don't have a good picture of the closet in this room, but you can barely see the closet on the right side of the picture below. It had two bi-fold doors that were hard to open with the carpet.

So long hard-to-open bi-fold doors! There are fun, dark grey, shimmery curtains now in their place. I love them! I found these curtains on clearance at Target for $10 each. I wasn't sure what I was going to paint the guest room at the time, but I knew I loved the curtains. I thought I would use them on the window in the room. But, I love using them with the closet.

I wasn't planning to paint the closet, but when Jason saw the three different colors of off-white in the closet, he encouraged me to paint it (and he helped me paint it). I'm glad we did.I had decided to make the closet of the guest room my project area. My project area (for lack of a better term) was formerly in our office and I was planning to keep it in that room (the baby room) when we were going to adopt a baby. Now that that room will have two African girls in it, my project area had to go. I don't scrap-book or make cards or crafts, but for some reason I really need a place where I can store wrapping paper, ribbon, bows, gifts I've found super cheap, extra picture frames, etc.

Here it is (I should have zoomed in a little).

The bulletin board in the middle is where I keep the pictures/stickers/necklaces/etc. my neices and nephews give me.

Left side of the closet. I found the two sets of organzing trays/wire baskets at Goodwill and a garage sale. When I find good organizing items super cheap, I get them!

Right side.

The right side has my extra gifts (some are even for Christmas gifts!), extra frames I've found at garage sales, etc., wrapping paper.

I'm such a nerd that I think this little project closet might be my favorite part of my entire house (well, maybe second to my closet-turned-locker). Everything fit so perfectly in it . . . and there is still organizing space to spare.

My last little repurpose project was this shelf below. It had glass doors on it, which were great for the first few years of its life (see last picture).

But, now the doors are gone and this once-cabinet is now a more useful shelf. It is much deeper than a normal book shelf. I love it!

Here it is in its cabinet glory days.In just one weekend I was able to completely change the look of a whole area of my house. So fun! And besides paint, I used almost everything (except towels and two decorations found on clearance) that I already had.

Lastly, in case you haven't figured it out already, we are trying to do everything we need/want to do to our house before our three kids arrive. Tomorrow we are installing a new toilet in our upstairs bathroom. That will definitely not be as fun as redoing the guest room.

A Little Closet Renovation

We have this little closet right behind our front door in our living room. In order to get into the closet most days of the year, you first have to shut the front door in order to open the closet door (see the two doors?). Not very convienent. I've had a pipe dream of tearing out the closet and making a locker system in this area but knew that probably wouldn't happen. A few weeks ago Teresa Dodge stopped by and she mentioned taking the hanging rod out of the closet and making the closet into a locker. What a fabulous idea!

Here is the closet "before:"

And here is our new and much improved locker space:

I am in love with this space! For one, I love the way it looks. For two, hooks are just a much better way of hanging stuff (especially when you have kids and bags).

The first thing we did was take the door off. Since we keep our front door open most days out of the year (unless it is blistery cold out!), it covers up the closet anyway. And when the front door is shut, I don't mind at all being able to see into the closet/locker because it looks great now.

After taking the hanging rod and hardware down, I painted the closet the same dark grey color as our kitchen. We then added a second shelf above the existing shelf to make use of the height in the closet.

I got the galvanized steel buckets at Lowe's for $8 each. Below is a close up of the five big hooks I used on the back wall. They are pretty basic, but I love the way they look.I like to keep gum, water bottles and other things we need when we are running out the door in the closet, so therefore I went looking for containers to hang on the wall. I found the small rectangular galvanized steel flower planters at JoAnn's Fabric for $3 each.

I also wanted more hooks lower for easy kid-access and to hang Jason's raquetball racquet, umbrellas, bags, etc.

I wasn't excited about using the boring white shoe rack until I got the big galvanized steel bucket ($10 at Lowes). It fits perfect, jazzes up the white shoe rack and is great to throw Abram's shoes in.

And here it is in its fully-functioning capacity. Since it is summer, it is filled with the swimming bag, hats, bubbles, a picnic mat, etc. I don't have much in the buckets right now, but I'm sure that will change when it is time for hats and gloves.

All-in-all, this was a pretty easy project. It was a bit time consuming since I put all the hooks in separately (instead of buying a set of hooks on a board) and I put anchors in before all the screws for the hooks (38 screws and anchors total!). It was worth it!

What We've Been Up To

Last week I lived at my sister's house for a few days while Jason was in Washington DC for a business trip. I love to stay out there when he goes away. With only one kid right now, it is still doable! :)

Kate and I spent over 8 hours last Tuesday sorting, organizing and rearranging her storage room. She hated it. I was in heaven! I forgot to take "before" pictures. But, just picture this area very crammed with plastic totes. Her storage room is also her exercise room and her card-making room. So, we made it look like this:Though Kate hated the process, she is LOVING the end result. Here is her new, much expanded crafting/card-making area.

The most fun part was utilizing this shelf Mark bought from Craigslist. It is such a fun shelf and perfect for Kate's crafty stuff.Our next favorite area is the new gift wrapping center. Mark hung a wire for us to use for ribbon (I can't wait to do this somewhere in my house, too).Moving on . . . .

This past Saturday was Jessie Wheeler's graduation party. Kate and I got to help decorate the day before and then serve food at her party. It was a ton of fun. I can't believe she is graduating. I started babysitting her when she was just a little girl!And here is a shot of the whole Wheeler fam. I could do an entire blog post on this family - how amazing they are, how indebited my life is to them and how much I love them . . . but not now!To end the weekend, my mom gave Abram his first official hair cut. I trimmed his hair a little over his ears a couple months ago, but he was needing the full hair cut this time. He hated every minute of it. Mom kept wanting to quit because she couldn't stand him crying, but I made her finish so we could get it over with!A little time on Grammy's lap and he was a happy camper with a cute new hair cut!