Curb Appeal.... or getting there atleast.

As you can see here our house was a lovely, peeling shade of dull grey that was in desperate need of a pressure wash and some TLC… let’s face it the house is from the 70s and from the front yard you could tell…

Oh don't mind the MAROON!!!! front doors, oddly placed basket ball hoop & flag for a random school, we've never even heard of.

So we cleaned her up a fair bit and pitched in for a paint job… Enter Banana yellow!!!!. I swear the color swatch was a lovely khaki color the kind you see on HGTV… But low and behold when they slapped it up on the house… we had yellow!!!... luckily it has faded some and if the light doesn’t hit it head on we get lucky and get that much sought after sand color…

Also we noticeably have tried to tame the jungle of a front yard we had by trimming bushes and chopping down weeds we honestly thought were trees. She has come a long long way I will say that but shes still far from winning any lawn of the month awards….


This is also after the front yard has been trenched up more than once compliments of plumbing issues and a $1500+ plumbing bill one month…(please lift jaw, I cried enough for us both)…. But on the plus side there are no more plumbing issues to be had… there better not be or else I think someone is going to go missing in the lift station out front…

Still left to do…

1. Paint the Rocking Chairs… (not sure if I’m going to go with Traditional White or Black again)…
2. Add some foliage to the porch.
3. Spray paint the other light fixture to match the one by the door
4. Fix planting bed to the right of the garage again… (weed & pine straw)
5. Build planter box around mail box with extra bricks from retaining wall.
6. Build frame for Trellis to cover Trash bins under Deck.
7. Clean out under the deck. (you would be amazed at the amount of random stuff that ends up down here)..

March Madness.... No not That one!

    Ok so one way to kick start the dreaded list of projects is a good old fashioned purge… To release the inner closet monsters that are hiding in the ever amassing amount of stuff I have shoved in there… It’s sad … so sad that one person has accumulated this amount of crap stuff (not to mention the waste of precious cash that went with it!)…

    That being said I give you this beauty… Here is a picture of the second purge I did in March (the first I of course didn’t take pictures of or count but it was mainly clothing).

This is what it looked like when I psuedo organized it.

The tally for what I got rid of this go around is:

20 pairs of shoes (ya….I know …I know, I have a problem)

6 cosmetics bags (one thing I can never seem to find the right one of and end up with a small army of)

9 Outerwear items (Coats, Blazers, Sweaters)

5 hats (my nephews were in heaven)

8 Bottoms (skirts, pants, shorts etc…)

6 Purses

5 Wallets

6 Swim (bathing suits if you’re wondering)

6 Sets of sheets (Yup there were the was enough material here to make the mother of all forts shoved into my microscopic linen closet)

1 Duvet & Sham Set

2 Pillow cases (set)

1 Throw blanket that had just seen better days…

1 Curling Wand

Not to mention a lot of hair products and a ridiculous amount of toiletries.

   I now have room to breathe and actually find and use the things I am left with… It was such a weight off my shoulders to get rid of this stuff you have no idea.. the overwhelming sensation every time I looked in my closet or my bathroom cabinets was suddenly gone…. And with it the accompanying stress and anxiety that came with. I don’t freak out now every time I have to get dressed (yes this is a common activity I know) for work or to go out. I just take a look around and grab what I know I still wear (and is clean, that’s always a plus). I am also not reminded of that odd phase when I bought a certain item of clothing or the waste of money I spent on an expensive product I did not like but didn’t have the heart to toss. And my favorite… staring at countless pairs of shoes that left me wondering what on EARTH possessed me to buy those, did I seriously think I could walk around in those… I am balance challenged as it is I did not need a ridiculous pair of heels in a wide array of colors to remind me… So after a manic clothes tossing spree one weekend (which had my husband questioning if my sanity was still in check) a generous amount of coffee and some elbow grease; I was able to simplify my life with the help of some creative organizing and shedding of some serious poundage in material things.. 

    If you’re wondering where all of this stuff actually ended up. It made the rounds with my family and my sister in laws and what was left over in the sad redheaded stepchild pile I donated to my local Goodwill in hopes that it will find a home somewhere with someone that will find the use in it that I couldn’t. Glad to say that this should not be happening again any time soon!!!

And she's back

    Well I’m not going to lie… I set up this blog with all the best intentions to post regularly and have it really be something…. Then life happened. Things came up, got in the way, I forgot to take pictures of things I was doing and working on, stopped projects midway and all out fell apart as a blogger. Not to mention the HUGE rut I’ve been in…. I just can’t seem to get motivated to tackle projects or even start them for that matter, and as the days go on the list keeps getting longer and longer… I find that when you have a long list of projects you want to do and accomplish, it gets that much more daunting to get a move on. However, once I get started there is no stopping me until I am finished. And usually by the time I’m finished I’m ready to start over…. (Much to my husband’s dismay and serious eye rolling)…. 

    I think a large part of the problem besides the ever growing list of “To-Do’s” is that there are admittedly some trouble spots in my house. We have an older home and well I’m not going to lie we bought a money pit… which was totally my fault!!! See I can admit it…. Sorta. I knew our first home was going to need work (A LOT of work) but I never foresaw the problems we would encounter along the way. Most of which were unbeknownst to us/me because we had to live in the space and grow in it to realize the problems. And honestly I’m not afraid to admit that me being my neurotic OCD self will try to redo things over and over to try and make it work and make me content about something when really I’m not. To be honest the only way to appease my irritated inner neat freak is to either move…(which is just not possible at the moment) or gut the thing and start over… which is not an option either as we have already spent our remodeling budget for this lifetime and the next….Don’t get me wrong…. The house is leaps and bounds from where we started…. (I’ll get to that soon) but there are just some things that a new coat of paint or a whole pile of organizing supplies just can’t fix. 

    Referring back to my inner neat freak the things that bother me would not probably bother most people… (like my husband).. Granted there are some things that bother us both but there is nothing we can really do about it.. And trust me we/I’ve tried!! So my plans for this blog are many from taking you guys along with me on my many harebrained schemes to make it work to my new obsessions (which come and go OFTEN!) to anything I think might be worth sharing. Mostly I want to share my trials and tribulations on how I have tackled the enormous amount of stuff that we have, the never ending list of things I want to do with it and the Organization tips and tricks I have learned along the way.

Sneak Peek @ a project I am working in this weekend.

Video setup to come!!!

Review of Personal Raspberry Finsbury

Ok as you can see shes a little hefty at the moment. Which i must say is my main drawback on this is (mind you this is my very first /& currently only Filofax) that here is not much give in the leather. But I will give a list of my personal Pro's & Con's.

Pro's

1. Beautiful Color 

2. Love the Texture of the leather

3. Fits perfectly in my purse

4. Good quality inner lining. 

Cons's

1. Doesn't lay flat on its own.

2. No give in the strap so i have to squeeze it to get it to snap closed

3. Pen loop is very small and does not fit any of the pens/pencil I use. 

4. Do not use the back zip pocket.

5. Don't use the card pockets. 

I know that these are trivial but thats my assessment. I can't wait for my Aqua Malden to arrive. I hear/ have seen via YouTube that you can fit quite a bit in it and think that i will like the pocket set up much more. Granted I will toggle between the 2 based on my mood/ outings for the day. 

I still love it though and still consider her a Win purchase. 

Review of Bazic products I ordered online.

Ok so after taking a look around the blogs I  saw that there were a number of people who were using mini highlighters in conjunction with the Cosmos Travel Wallet... So naturally I jumped on the band wagon... I ordered these from Amazon for not too much $ and well they came in were suuper cute but were dry... so i had to toss them all... was not happy about that.

Then I also ordered these retractible style eraser pens from the same brand on Amazon  because they were cute and cheaper than most I had seen around... well they don't work all that great at least not on the Cotton Cream paper from Filofax and/or with my Staedler drafting pencil that I use.. (my fav... especially since it was my fathers). So I ended up giving the blue one to the Mr for school thinking it may work better with No.2 pencils... I kept the pink for later testing when i go back to school in the Spring. But for my  Filofax i would say they were a Bust. 

First Things First: What I'm working with

This is my Personal Sized Finsbury in Raspberry. Her name is Fin. Yes i know that is a rather masculine name for a female... but I'd rather that than call it a he being pink/purple and full of stickers (though some would argue that that is funner!). She is my First Filofax and I must say it was love at first sight. I have always had a thing against planners with interchangeable pages. I think it stems from my mom always carrying a beast of one for work while I was growing up and well making me carry it when i went with her... It was like medical textbook sized and heft no joke! Plus I always thought they had ugly pages... I know I know... Blasphemy!!! the Horror!!!... well I still feel that way and was always on the search for the perfect adgenda.. With cute designs & colors, enough space to write in all my daily to-do's, assignments, chores, etc... Which in turn ended up in me changing/buying new adgendas 4-5 times a year.. plus i have this crazy thing that since i don't keep a journal I always keep my adgendas... well since highschool. Odd habit that. Which brings me to my next point... i ended up carrying like 3 different notebooks and my current adgenda as there was no way to keep all of my information in one place... I tried DIY'ing my own.. that worked great until i set it up and never used it... Then I saw the Filofax trend and was amazed at the creativity people have with it and knew that it was meant for me... So here we are...