Organized Hall Closet

One of the last things you tackle when moving into a new house is the closets! People usually don't randomly look into them, so why bother. Well I finally tackled my upstairs hall closet. My before..... 

This is a fairly nice sized hall closet, well at least compared to the last two hall closets we have had! I showed the hall closet from our last house here. While it was much longer, it was SO shallow. You could barely put a bin in it because of it being shallow and with the supports.

Look at all of the stuff I took out of there!! This is a massive pile of stuff we don't need. For some reason I had 25 pillow cases and about 10 unneeded and crappy bath towels! I also moved all of the kids towels into their bathroom in an empty cabinet.

And the after!!!! AHHH so much prettier and so much more organized!!! AND I have so much more space for additional organized bins and what nots!! 

 It's amazing how much prettier a space looks when its not over crowded and with pretty bins!!!

Industrial Restoration Hardware Playroom

One of the things that made us fall in love with our house was the large open basement!! We loved that it was a huge open space for the kids to play and run around. When we moved in, I went to work to make it a fun playroom for our son, with lots of bright primary colors. See the before!!!!  While it was a great design for kids, trying to sell your house, maybe not so much??

So I give you my industrial playroom, inspired by everything Restoration Hardware!

I repainted our table and chairs white and black! The table top is technically chalk board paint, but I have not let the kids in on this secret! More on the toy storage in a bit! I painted my book ledges gray! And added some large initials of the kids with an awesome star I found at Pottery Barn Kids. Also I added my "when you wish upon a star" artwork!

One of the first things I did, and you might notice in the before is paint some walls!!! The wall to the left in the below picture used to be a red chalk board wall. Once coat of primer and one coat of the wall color, I had a nice and boring (white) wall! The wall to the right, used to be an adorable house wall I painted, but now its a nice and solid black chalk wall (so we still have some fun here!!!)

 Do you not love the red firetruck in the above picture? It completes the room!

I attempted to make some DIY Industrial shelves using pipes! While they are not exactly what I wanted them to look like, they did the trick and I am very proud I tackled this project!!! I broke my ankle (un-related to this project) mid-project, so I never really got any pictures of the during, even though the during was a big process!

These shelves are the perfect perfect size for a car garage for my sons many many big trucks!!!

 Some industrial accessories! The boat was a win at a White Elephant party one year and my son loves this boat.... so it might be here to stay!!!

 I made a matching taller industrial pipe shelf for the non-playroom portion of the room. This side is supposed to be the adult side with the TV and seating area.... though toys ALWAYS find their way over to this side!

 I made all of the below artwork! I love making state nail air! So easy but such a fabulous look!!

 More of the massive firetruck and chalk wall as seen from the "adult" side!

 I would have redo this shelf if I had not broken my ankle. The top and bottom shelf have too much space between the shelves. These were a real learning process and they were so SO expensive to make!!!!

And a wide shot from the back of the room! This room sure is a huge improvement over the mess it was before!!! 

Thanks again to First Moments Photography for these pictures!

Child's Closet Organizer

I think it's 100% accurate to say I am in the nesting phase of my pregnancy! I have been cleaning and organizing like crazy!!! And driving my husband nuts at the same time for all of the organization I have him help me with! (I cleaned our refrigerator on New Years Day, that's normal right???) 

One of my many recent organizational projects was Little Man's new Big Boy closet. If you remember I turned my craft room into Little Man's Big Boy room.

This is what his closet used to look like:

While it worked well for a craft room I didn't love it for a child's room. Our bedrooms aren't the largest so I also didn't want to take up valuable playing space for a dresser, so I wanted drawers in his closet. I also wanted a lot of shelf space! And I got it all!!!

I am SO in love with his new closet! I love that we can reconfigure it when he gets a little older and his clothes get longer. He can reach the two bottom hanging racks which is fun for him to pick out his shirts! The bottom two drawers are good for him, but the top two are a bit tall for him. 

The best part is that a lot of the bins are still empty!! I love these bins from Land of Nod!

I also created some storage boxes myself. These are old wipe boxes from Costo that I pained in gray chalkboard paint and sewed liners out of curtains. They were a lot of work but I am very happy with how these bins turned out!

In case anyone is interested the organizer itself is Martha Stewart's from Home Depot.

Linked up at: DOG DAYS OF WINTER “ORGANIZE IT” LINKY PARTY

Kitchen Junk Drawer Organization

My brownie boxes to washi tape inbox mail sorter started with my procrastinating about my wedding duties and the fact that organizing when you have more important things to do is so much fun!

I love my house and I love my kitchen. But the one problem my kitchen has is the lack of drawer storage, so that means no junk drawer! I don't have a picture, but often my counter would be over flowing with junk that had no place to go. I had a small basket on my counter full of junk and the bottom shelf of a cabinet. I did a bit of rearranging and was able to free up another shelf in my cabinet.

I found these great plastic containers from the Target dollar aisle that were black and blue. Once I spray painted them with a nice coat of chalkboard spray paint I had pretty organization.

Six of these little containers fit perfect on my shelf, but I needed to create a second shelf to hold up the top layer. Since they are not that heavy I used a piece of foam board.

I added chalk vinyl to two drawers I also found at Target for more organized storage.

I am so happy with how organized my "junk" space now is! Combine this with my DIY inbox, this upgrade only cost me $26 plus the cost of spray paint which I already had :)

Brownie Box to Washi Tape Mail Sorter

In my procrastination for my wedding duties, I decided I needed to organize my kitchen (there will be more on this later!!!) I decided I needed an inbox for bills and things that needed attention. Yes I could have gone to Target and bought one, BUT this was SUPER easy to make and really took me less than 30 minutes!

I started with 2 brownie boxes and NO plan, just a vision!

I started by cutting the top 1/3 of my box off and then cutting down the front of both sides of the box.

I then drew a diagonal line on the side of the box from the top to the bottom (see the picture on the right) to allow for the angled shape I wanted.

Fold on the line and cut off the extra little flap (Don't cut off the extra from your fold line, this is how you attach the two sides!)

Repeat this for the other side of the box.

Then, repeat the above few steps for the other box! I used the first box as a template for the second (see the image below on the left) Then to assemble, a little hot glue on the flap side, press and hold.

Glue both sides, and assemble the second box. SO easy! Then hot glue the two boxes together.

A finished, yet ugly In Box!

To decorate I used my Target Washi tape. As long as you don't look at the back.... I just applied layers of the tape until I had the design I wanted! (I changed my color from this picture to my final pictures!!) 

I used my Silhouette Cameo to cut out two fun shapes with Chalkboard vinyl! A couple Command Adhesive strips on the back and I have a new organized in-box!

It feels so much better to be organized!

No more stencils on the floor...

This may not be a brilliant discovery, but my large stencils were driving me INSANE! I did not know where to store them, my smaller stencils I store in a magazine rack, but I have a few that are WAY too large... last night I had the brilliant idea to hang 3 command adhesive hooks behind more door and hang my stencils...
They fit perfect!!


YEAH! No more large stencils taking up valuable floor space in my INSANELY messy craft room... Just open the door all the way and they disappear! Like I said... brilliant or not brilliant I am not sure, but anything to organize a bit is always an awesome thing! And it again goes to remind you to use those random places you sometimes forget about!

Cheap toy storage

Like so many people with children, our house is overrun with toys - and we only have one little man... Last week while at Target I ran across these great canvas totes on wheels and knew these would be a great addition to our playroom. They are great because they are large and hold a decent amount of toys and I like that they are on wheels! I am sure Little Man will love that too, and will push them around... Target has two sizes of these canvases. The smaller was $15 and the larger were only $5 more, so I went for the larger size - more toy storage!!

I like any DIYer had to personalize these nice canvas totes! I used my Silhouette to make a stencil and some fabric paint and a short dry time we have a happy momma with a slightly cleaner playroom -- for now....

My 10 Dollar Book Ledges

I loosely made these red book ledges based on Ana Whites Ten Dollar Ledges. I intended on following these instructions but forgot to take along the sizes to Home Depot when I went so I guessed. I had the friendly Home Depot employees cut the pieces for me and my dad did the hard work of putting them together. I painted them with left over bright red paint I had!
Since they are covered with books I just screwed them directly into the wall making sure to hit a stud since they look a lot like a ladder to my curious toddler!
The finished product!! Since I got a Silhouette for Christmas (well I gave myself a Silhouette for Christmas) I might add some words to them to complete the look! We love the finished look and anything this easy and cheap to store the hundreds of books little man has is awesome!!

DIY Jewelery Storage

When I saw these great jewelery frames, I knew I needed to make one! I love the idea on being able to see my necklaces when getting ready!

One day on a Goodwill trip, I found a nice sized frame (stained a natural color) and these 2 cork boards that fit perfectly in the frame! I spray painted the frame white! And stapled the cork boards together and was ready to upholster!

I found this great gray fabric that I loved, and combined it with some batting. This was my first time upholstering something, and was it easy!


It's not the best finish on the back, but it's the back!

I tried to find cute pins to use to hang my necklaces, but I could not. I ended up using small nails and hot gluing little pearls I bought in the Scrapbook isle.

Here is my finished piece! I have these great little glass scones I hung up in our bathroom that I was not sure what I would put in them, but my really long necklaces look great in them!! You can also see in this picture my storage for my nail polish, an apocrathy jar.

Linked to these parties.