Just Make Stuff

Thursday...

Wednesday I arrive at the state college campus around 7:45am and I do not get home from the community college until 9:45pm. I teach four classes...two of which are over three hours long.

On Thursday morning, I am tired. 

I stay in bed a little (lot) too long.

This morning, when I finally got slightly productive, I decided to grab my camera to capture a few details around the house...

Sean picked up egg bagels this past weekend, which he shouldn't have because they are huge and have no nutritional value, but half a bagel with whipped cream cheese is soooo good. And I figured if you're going to have a deliciously terrible breakfast, might as well add a couple slices of bacon.

I checked my chicken board on Pinterest to brainstorm tonight's dinner. 

Sean apparently doesn't put his clothes away anymore, so there is a bright colored pile at the foot of the bed. 

I had to unpack the bags (and the papers...oh the papers) from yesterday's teaching marathon.

I also needed to clean up some stuff left out from last weekend's cheer showcase bake sale. This is the "cheer cabinet" in the garage...amazing to think this time next year it will be just a couple months away from being empty, as it moves along to a new booster president. 

Then late this morning, I went out in the backyard to do some much needed flower trimming. I will try to resist the urge to buy more flowers as spring gets started in the next few weeks...and I can pretty much guarantee you I will fail.

Leftovers...

This planner project at the beginning of the year included patterned paper scraps that I didn't want to toss...so they quickly got stuck to a card.

Five favorite fonts...

I have collected too many fonts for too long, so I thought I'd start to share some of my favorites every once in awhile.

one.two.three.four.five

An update on the kitchen update...

It has been about six months since our kitchen project. I gambled big on the organizational front by insisting we get rid of half of cabinet storage in exchange for a more open feeling. 

And, after spending yet another weekend in the kitchen cooking for weekend parties and getting ahead on weeknight dinners, I thought I'd tell you how it's been in the "new" kitchen with less stuff.

It's been perfect.

Thank goodness, because I pretty much just got lucky with yet another crazy idea.

I use the pie-safe as our pantry food storage and the former pantry cabinet holds all of our dishware...which works better in there than food ever did. 

I don't think I ever explained my kitchen clean-out technique. Years, ago Mac was a pack-rat (and still is, although not quite as bad), so cleaning out his room was painful for both of us. I devised a plan that worked. A big trash bag would be filled with everything I did not think he should keep that he still wanted regardless. The trash bag went into the attic and Mac was assured whatever item/s he could remember in sixth months that he really wanted would be his again no questions asked. Six months went by, we asked Mac what he needed from the bag, he couldn't remember, it was all donated and we lived happily ever after.

I have done the same thing with the kitchen. A big storage box has held everything I suspected we didn't need in the attic. Over the last few months there has only been one item that we both decided would be good to get back out and keep. Other than that, I cannot remember anything in the box and I am going to try to resist looking before it's donated.

Turns out, even though we cook a heck of a lot of stuff, we don't need six measuring cups or a dozen mixing bowls.

Happy weekend...

Sean has been getting me the best flowers lately, these were last week's tulips.

This will be one of those packed weekends that will fly by, but at least it is still the weekend. 

10.

On February 19, 2005 I started a blog...

I was twenty-eight years old.
A part-time high school instructional aide, who was taking one class at a time at the local community college.
I had an eight-year old.
I had been married for five years.
We wanted more children, but had found out five months before that it was practically impossible.
I loved scrapbooking and cranked out pages.
I dreamed of being a teacher.

On February 19, 2015

I am thirty-eight, with an eighteen year old and have been married for fifteen years.
I have an associate's degree, two bachelor's degrees and a master's degree.
We went with Plan B and it worked.
I still love scrapbooking and barely do it.
I am a teacher.

In ten years I have shared a few hundred crafts and told 1,000 stories...literally. There have been 2,712 posts. Over 2.5 million pageviews...and my mom probably only accounts for half or so of them. 

Cannot thank you enough for visiting for one day or ten years and everything in between. 

Rainbow order...

I spent the day organizing school and life back together after the last week. 

This project was actually completed a couple weeks ago, but I hadn't shared. After years of being stuffed together as a jumbled pile, my stamp pads have relocated to the card catalog organized by color.

There are few things better than rainbow order.

The face of the earth...

I fell off of it a little.

I caught a cold last week (like I have for the past two years this exact same week on the calendar) 

I started teaching two more classes.

I went camping...and I lived to tell. The panoramic photo was from a walk Sean and I took to check out the ocean view. 

I am still playing catch-up from all three of those events, but will hopefully get my you-know-what back together tomorrow.

A year later...

In February 2013 I shared the before photo of our laundry room...and I never shared the after. When we first purchased the new washer and dryer we planned to leave them side by side. A week later we went back and purchased the hardware to stack them and it turned out to be a great decision. Our laundry room is small to begin with, and most of the space in it has is taken-up by the endlessly used walkway between the garage and the house. With the changes, the tiny room feels much more open and the shelves are much easier to reach. 

In addition to desperately needing the new washer and dryer, the entire idea of a new laundry room was inspired by one yellow storage box. The box now stores a Costco sized portion of laundry soap. We have Borax in the mint green cookie jar. I splurged on a couple big laundry baskets that sit on the floor for sorting. The gray box bin is for dirty dish towels, rags and cloth napkins that get used throughout the week. The polka dot box holds clean rags. The striped plastic boxes at the bottom hold take-out containers, the one at the very top is a first aid kit. Other than that, it's pretty much cleaning supplies.

Sean painted the garage door over and over with magnetic paint and then a couple coats of gray chalkboard paint. In the fall when we were a little extra busy, I made big calendars to write on and hang on the door.

So a year later everything is working great. We have a little extra plan for the laundry room in the next couple weeks, and hopefully it won't take quite as long to share.

Something I've never done...

A couple of years ago, I barely went on a hike and shared my unreasonable fear of nature. 

This upcoming weekend I am heading out into the great outdoors to camp or something.

It's actually a group of friends and each family is renting a small RV to park at a state park campground by the ocean. 

So, it's not really camping, but it's the closest I've come to it..therefore if you have any RV-so-not-really camping advice I would love to hear it. 

Lots of love...

Last Thursday I took one hour before picking up Mac from school to stop grading, listen to a podcast and craft. 

Man, was that a good idea. 

With Valentine's Day this week I couldn't resist all the pink and lovey-dovey-ness.

This might be my favorite part...

This weekend is going to be stuffed full of school work as I finish the prep on the two more classes I start teaching next week...and tackle the first real week of heavy duty grading for the two classes I already have going. I will be spending a lot of time looking at these images as I click from class website to class website. 

I realized last fall how much the little details of blogging prepared me for teaching...and one of those details is banners. It has always been one of my favorite things to switch up around here (I just did again today) and it really might be my favorite part of getting ready for a new class. 

Scrapbooking 2015...

I am not quite sure what made me think to start using the Project Life app for documenting 2015, but six weeks into the year I am really happy I did. I have it on my phone and iPad and love that I can work on it while waiting in the car, while stirring stuff around for dinner, while I am watching television, or while I am tucked into bed. I also have found the Rhonna Designs app to be super useful to add text to my photos before inserting them into the page layouts.

I have never actually done Project Life, but I really like the idea of something like A Week in the Life for 52 weeks. I had 8x8 photos of my pages printed at Costco and was less than thrilled, but I am going to try Persnickety Prints or maybe the printing service within the app.

I started scrapbooking almost nineteen years ago...officially half my life. It's amazing to think of how much it's changed, and it makes me super sad to think of the past few years that have been majorly lacking in the crafty documentation department. That's why I am really grateful to have a new way to gather memories together.

Although I cannot begin to imagine giving up good old printed photos, patterned papers and lots of stamps.

Valentine Kit...

I sent my eight-year old niece and my nine-year-old sister little kits this week to craft up some valentines. I saw this super cute jar of conversation heart stamps at Michael's and grabbed a few other supplies to go with it...stickers, mini washi tape, ink pads, glitter glue and a stack of cards and envelopes.

Now my inner-eight-or-nine-year old really wants to craft up Valentine's too.

A month later...

Yesterday I was all about being on time for something...and now today I am totally late. I walked into my office at almost the end of January and realized I did not have a calendar for the bulletin board over my desk. So I made quickly made one with this kit and some of the digital patterned papers I have amassed over the years. 

In case anyone is a month late with me and still needs a little calendar here it is... Download 2015 Patterns Desk Calendar

A holiday decorating world record...

Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only two holidays that I am guaranteed to decorate for way in advance. Every other holiday decoration throughout the year is at great risk for not being up until the night before or something.

This is why it is kind of momentous that there are Valentine's decorations on the mantle on February 1st. Free prints from here and here helped (as did some patterned paper and a heart punch) along with a quick trip to Ikea for white frames. The heart lights also came from Ikea, but I have had them for a couple years now.  Some candlesticks help it be a glow-y and romantic. 

This was so simple to do and I am so happy to see the mantle all lovey-dovey...maybe I should decorate for holidays in a timely manner more often.