Organization Ideas & An Update

Living with so few hiding places has encouraged Justin and I to find creative ways to store things he uses on a daily basis.

My grandparents gave Justin and I all of these lovely pots as a house-warming gift. Rather than stuffing them into a cupboard, Justin decided to hang them over our breakfast bar. I thought it was a great idea. It saves us some of our precious cupboard space which can be used for other things (food, appliances, etc...).

Another, humorously in my opinion, good idea for storing knives... We will never fear sticking our hands in drawers again. Plus, we don't have to worry about a knife block taking up space on our counter. Plus... it even holds a scraper! (And scissors. You don't want to know how many kitchen utensils we've placed on those magnetic racks!) 

Can you believe they make these?!? Originally it was magnetic spice holders that went on a magnetic rack similar to our knife rack. Well... they work just fine as magnets on the fridge! :) Only problem is that, while Justin can tell what it is by smelling it, I cannot. Label maker here we come!

Justin and I only have one extra closet other than our bedroom closet. We decided to make it 1/3 pantry. We went to Ikea and bought this cute little shelving unit. Things aren't very well organized in our pantry yet, but we are off to a start.

Justin and I also had to buy an extra bookcase to hold all of our books and "stuff". (What you see is only half of it.) Obviously we will be finding a different place for the printers, sewing machine, and tool boxes. I think the goal was to get things off the floor. Walking around is important. I will be scouring pinterest for ideas on how to decorate the bookshelf in such a way that we can put out normal things like batteries, light bulbs, etc...  on shelves so that they can be put up, easy to get to, and yet not look like we don't have a place to store them (even though we don't).

Wish us luck. We have many, many miles to go before we finish the task of moving in. (5 more boxes, cleaning Justin's apartment, and the majority of my stuff!)

Fingerprint Trees

I wanted to share some pictures that the kids I babysit did today. I showed them my fingerprint guestbook from the wedding, and they "had to" create their own.

Mary Katherine

Ellie

Ginger Vogt Dresses

Back in October, I won a wedding dress painting from Ginger Vogt through Vanessa Robert's Wedding blog. I was absolutely thrilled. I had been tweeting every day trying desperately to win it. You can imagine my surprise when I did. Although Ginger and I had been emailing back and forth since the win, I didn't have a picture of my wedding dress. :( (It's very difficult to paint a picture of a dress when you can't see it.) Within 2 weeks of sending pictures of my dress to her, she e-mailed me saying my dress painting would be shipped this week. I just got it yesterday as I was running out the door. I was SOOOO excited!

Ginger Vogt watercolor

The dress painting was wrapped prettily in a box with a nice note from the artist. It made me feel so special to receive the painting of my dress! Not only did she wrap it so gorgeously, but the painting was matted as well and ready for a gorgeous picture frame! I cannot wait to hang it up in my house! The painting has the slightest bit of shimmer which made me super giddy! What girl doesn't like shimmer? :)

I am so excited about seeing the picture hanging in our spare bedroom ("the wedding room" as Justin affectionately refers to it). It might be fun to get the bridesmaid dresses done smaller and positioned with it! :) We shall see.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle

Since moving, Justin and I have had to rethink our methods of waste removal. The area we now live in encourages recycling by ... discouraging trash. Go figure. In other places it has been so much easier to simply chuck whatever we had into the garbage and not think twice. It's been nice (and feels so much better) to begin to seriously reduce, reuse, and recycle what we already have as Justin and I begin to combine our things.

When we first started moving, I informed Justin that I wanted to reduce what we owned to the very "basics". I have other friends that have reduced what they own to what they can take with them if they were to just get up and leave one day. Even the little girl I watch only has what she needs; she continuously goes through her stuff to find things to donate to others that she has grown out of. What an awesome idea! A child donating to another in need! :)

Some things we have done in order to reduce what we use include:

1. Using kitchen towels instead of paper towels. I have to admit this is more difficult for me than Justin since I can't stand touching food (specifically eaten food). The minute the towel gets a speck of dirt on it, I want to throw it in the wash.

2. We are in the process of selling some of our books online using Bookscouter.com. It's a good way to make a few extra bucks. It's also nice knowing you have more room for books you actually want to read rather than allowing the books you were given or dislike to take up room on a shelf collecting dust.

3. Justin has begun taking his lunches to work in glass tupperware we bought over the weekend rather than using the cheap plastic grocery-store kind.

4. FOOD! I looked at the expiration date for every can of food Justin owned when we moved. I informed Justin that I did not want to take one speck of old food with us. We are trying to buy only what we know we will eat, and we are constantly going through the fridge to get rid of older food.

5. Justin and I are both going through our clothing. Obviously I do not wear 3 closets full of clothing. With only one small closet between the two of us, something had to be done. We are looking forward to taking some of our older clothing to a store like Plato's Closet to sell what is buy-worthy. The things that aren't will be donated.

We still have a lot that needs to be moved and gone through, but we are excited about reducing our "carbon footprint" in the world. It has been so surprising and eye-opening to see how many things can be recycled. I told Justin that I may need to print the list of things that can be recycled, so that I don't end up throwing away something that we could save money on by recycling. Luckily, the city will provide all of the recycling containers we could possibly ever need! Over the course of two weeks we have managed to fill the recycling container twice! Go us!

We are looking to build a compost pile to get rid of food. Hopefully once we get finished moving and build the compost pile we can reduce the amount of garbage we have even more! I'd love to get down to one bag a week of garbage!

Betsey Johnson Bridesmaid Dresses

Just wanted to take a quick second and explain that my bridesmaid dresses (!!) were inspired by a Betsey Johnson dress that you can see here on Caterina Scorsone:

My bridesmaids looked fabulous, so I was absolutely thrilled to see that the Betsey Johnson dress just does not compare to how beautiful the dresses were that my amazing husband crafted for my beautiful bridesmaids. (Although I am partial to the Betsey Johnson color. *shrugs*)

A New Beginning

Over the weekend, Justin and I "upgraded" our way of living by moving into a house built in the 1970's across the street from my alma mater. It is just a rental house that costs approximately $100 more to live in per month, but it was an exciting upgrade for us none-the-less.

In order to make the move, Justin and I have had to find new and exciting ways to consolidate what we have to fit into smaller storage spaces. (i.e. We have larger rooms, but only 2 closets.) We won't even begin to go into the fact that we have my stuff now mixed in with Justin's. (Up until the move, I had kept most of my "stuff" at my parent's home, but now that we are living together in the new home a lot of it will be coming to join us at the new house.)

Over the weekend, Justin and I were able to get rid of over 9 large garbage bags full of trash. Justin also had a number of items we will either be donating to Goodwill or selling online. We may even have a garage sale, but that is yet to be determined. I am just sooo proud of the fact that we are condensing our junk, so that we have more legitimate, nice things rather than filling our lives with stuff we just don't need.

We have found many ways of incorporating leftover wedding supplies into everyday use including the couch, silverware, flowers, and guestbook. :) All of a sudden, the huge cost of paying for a wedding seems like less of a burden. We are also excited to use newfound skills when decorating our home (re-making lights, sewing skills to make ... anything!) Other plans include growing some vegetables and getting photos enlarged to be used as decorative art! Yay!

Keep on the lookout, because I will probably be posting photos of the new house soon! :)

WHCC review

Ever since Justin and I got engaged over a year and a few months ago, I have been desperately seeking an awesome photo printing site. I am sooo picky that it has been really hard for me to find exactly what I want. I discovered White House Custom Color when searching via google. I was pretty surprised and excited by the results of my first order with them.

I ordered 3 shots that were taken during Justin's and my engagement shoot by Kelly L. Photography, 1 shot that was taken at the wedding by Darwin Young and my fifth image was a shot taken by Justin using black and white film photography in 2007.

The first shot I saw when I opened the package, which arrived three days after ordering, was the one shot by Darwin Young. It was brilliant... BEAUTIFUL! My only complaint is in the actual photography, which I (and they) had no control over. I can't stand the glare on Justin's glasses. Ahh... well. It is what it is. :)

Next up were the 3 shots taken by Kelly L. Photography. They also were printed beautifully... perhaps a bit too yellow which I can correct in Photoshop and get my color right on my monitor. It's okay. It happens. I'm just shocked at the difference between photographers. Darwin's picture is crisp, clean, and everyone in the shot is in focus. This is not the case with Kelly L.'s photography. :( I thought, as did Justin, that my huge crop is what caused the picture to be blurry when printed, but upon closer inspection none of the engagement shots I had printed are nearly as crisp and clean as the single shot by Darwin. *shrugs* I'm not an amazing photographer either, but I also don't really get paid for my work. I can correct the yellow, but the only way to change the sharpness of the photo is to go back and retake it. :/

I'm not even sure what to think about the film image that Justin had taken. It could be anything that makes this image not "pristine". I don't know about Justin, but I knew far less about cameras in 2007 than I do now. The image is not cleanly in focus, but it could be because Justin did not focus correctly, CVS did a terrible job putting it on CD or the printer screwed up at WHCC. I will not blame WHCC though since the black and white image is truly a black and white image. It has no crazy tinting to it and no weird colors. Yay!!!

I think the thing that most excited me about ordering images from WHCC was the packet of image samples that came with my images. There were samples of every type of paper that WHCC had for you to get your images printed on. I can't even begin to explain how in love I became with the textured papers, the thick, the thin, the shiny, the matte... *le sigh* I am in loveeeee with the metallic and the lustre! simply. AMAZING.

After seeing a comparison between MPix, Bay Photo, and WHCC, I will probably shoot Bay Photo an image or two for comparison. Let me just say, though, that I am in love with the options available to me from WHCC. I would definitely consider ordering from them again!