Project: Pantry

Our first monthly house project to complete was an overhaul of our kitchen pantry.

The wire shelves that were in the pantry when we moved in were in BAD shape. They were dangerously close to falling down if too many items were on the shelf and in danger of collapse if anything was in the middle of the shelf. Things were a hot mess and the lack of any organization was killing me.

We decided to break this project down into baby steps so we could just spend an hour or two each day working on it so we wouldn't get burnt out.

I had previously pinned an image from The Container Store, their ELFA shelving looked like it would do the trick to get us organized.

 **NOT MY PANTRY, JUST MY INSPIRATION**
**Run don't walk to The Container Store for their Elfa shelving!**

Thursday night we emptied the shelves and popped them out of the brackets holding them in. We had to get them out to the curb before Friday trash pick up.

Friday's job was remove the brackets and patch all of the holes. This was Hubs' job. He did an excellent job of hiding the dozens of holes that were in the walls.

Saturday came and it was time to paint!!!! I picked out a coral color for an accent and would really make the white shelving pop. After two quick coats of paint, I was enamored with the project so far. We bought a whole gallon and used about 10% of it. Now I'm itching to paint a bathroom or other small space coral too.

We woke up this morning to unpack all the hardware we had purchased. We took advantage of The Container Store's Elfa Sale. The weekend before we had visited our closest Container Store and sat down with one of their designers to create the ideal plan for our space. It wasn't a tough space to plan for, but it was great to talk to someone who designs closets for a living. They had excellent advice and guided us in the right direction to have the most efficient space.

The installation was super easy. Just hang the horizontal bar with anchors and the two vertical pieces just hang down and support all of the shelves.

We just started putting in shelves from the bottom and messing around with the vertical spacing of the shelves as we went. With the Elfa shelves you can move everything around as much as you need, so it was super easy to get it just right to accommodate everything we would load onto each shelf.

We ended up with an extra shelf and the hardware for that piece and some storage containers we decided wouldn't work. We ran back to The Container Store to return the items and pick up a couple of extra containers to get everything organized and pretty!

I was so giddy getting everything put away and in the right spots. I was so excited as everything was coming together exactly as I had imagined. The final product was better than I could have hoped for!!! I can't wait to tackle some more closets and organizing projects around the house!

Have you tackled any home projects yet this year? Any big projects in the works?

**The Container Store has no idea who I am, just a fan of their Elfa shelving and the whole process. Their design consultants were SUPER helpful in getting this project going.

Rewind: Christmas and Flu Shots

Merry Christmas (two weeks later)!!!!!

This year we celebrated three times. It's always more fun to stretch it out as long as possible and open presents for three days, but kinda takes away from the big day excitement.

The first celebration was breakfast on the 22nd with my sister and her family at my mom's house. They were taking off to drive to my sister's in laws house that day, so we'd have to open presents with her kiddos early.

This year I stuck with the "brown paper packages tied up with string" wrapping. I was almost sad to see everyone tear open the presents, they looked so nice!!!!

The three boys were adorable opening presents. The three year old exclaimed "This is exactly what I wanted" with each present he opened. The seven year old was very helpful to his one year old brother in opening presents. He even stopped opening gifts when a book was unwrapped for his brother. He wanted to sit down and read to him. Adorable.

Sunday evening we hosted dinner at our house for hubs' parents. I made sausage cups as an appetizer and Pioneer Woman's Drip Beef for dinner. YUM. I made the sausage cups several times this holiday season and they were a hit everywhere I took them. I came away from the evening with a shiny new immersion blender. Can't wait to make some soups with that bad boy.

Christmas Eve didn't have a big meal or any more presents, but hubs and I went to see This is 40. Highly recommend if you like Judd Apatow movies. I'm a huge fan of Leslie Mann, so a movie with her as the main character was right up my alley. After the movie we grabbed some apps and a glass of wine before hitting the grocery store to pick up everything for Christmas Day.

Unbeknownst to us, every grocery store in our area closed at 7. We pulled up to the first one at 6:50 and the manager was standing at the door turning everyone away. We got to the next store at 6:55, same story. Next store by 7, no entry. We passed a fourth store a couple minutes down the road, they were open, but didn't have some of the main ingredients we needed. Store number 5, no dice. Finally we were thinking we could just buy milk and eggs at a gas station and at least be able to make breakfast. No milk and eggs at the gas station. I'm starting to panic at this point that Christmas would be ruined. One store in the area opened at 8am the next morning, but that wouldn't help much with the Christmas casserole I make every year. Finally I called one more store across town, open until 8! It was 7:30 by the time we got there and the place was pretty crowded. Everyone in our zip code apparently had waited to grocery shop and was there. Safeway save Christmas!!!!!

I went home, happy as can be and put together the casserole to just drop in the oven the next morning. I was in such a good mood that I also decided to make cookies for Santa. I got tired of the cookie cutters, so I just made a giant cookie and dropped it in the oven.  Off to bed I went with visions of sugar plums dancing in my head.

Christmas morning the casserole went in the oven and we sat down to watch Moonrise Kingdom. We sent out this video to friends. Wilbur was not happy about having to sit still for the video.

We then unwrapped presents. Santa brought me a new Michael Kors watch and Kendra Scott earrings. He must have been paying attention when I took Hubs to Nordstrom and said "Buy me these"

 

When it was time to head over to my mom's house, hubs wasn't feeling so hot. His whole body was achey and he was pretty congested. He had started feeling crappy the day before, but it hit him all of a sudden Christmas Day. I headed over to my mom's house where the two of us enjoyed a spread big enough to feed 8-10 people. After a couple hours and my throat started feeling icky, I headed back home with my mountains of leftovers.

I also went downhill fast. I was in bed by 7 with the same whole body aches, feeling feverish, and coughing hubs had been feeling all day. Turns out Santa had dropped the flu off at our house this year. (Maybe next year I'll put a little more effort into the cookies we leave out)

We headed to the doctor the next day and got our Tamaflu. It took about 5 or 6 days for everything to run it's course. We were going to bed between 5-7 o'clock each evening (afternoon) and would both sleep horribly through the night. Coughing hurt so much that just the thought of a coughing fit coming on could bring me to tears. It was a miserable week for both of us. Now that we're back to normal we can reflect back on it and promise each other we will never skip the flu shot again. We're actually still going to get it this year now that we're both back to almost 100%.

How was your Christmas? Have you been hit by the flu epidemic yet? If not, GET YOUR FLU SHOTS!!!!!!!

Happy New Year!!!

I hope you all had a fabulous Christmas and great New Year!!!

We kept it low key this year with a dinner out then home to the couch to watch some Dexter and watch the ball drop.

Last year I made three simple resolutions, lose weight, save money, buy a house.

I ended the year at about 2 lbs up, so that one didn't happen. We managed to save enough cash to put a down payment on our new house!!! So 2 out of 3, not too shabby.

This year, hubs and I made a list of more concrete goals to work towards.

1. Eat out fewer than 20% of our meals. This is an effort to save some cash along with eating a little bit better. We came up with 220 meals, this counts lunches purchased and happy hours that turn to dinners. Since we plan to take a couple vacations, that will be 25-30 meals off the list right away.

2. Lose a combined 80 lbs. This makes it a team effort and will keep us accountable to each other.

3. Complete one house project each month. We have a couple of closets to redo, a few rooms to paint, and window treatments for several rooms to pick out and hang.

4. No credit card debt. We finished this year at zero dollar balances, which I was astounded by after all the home shopping we did. The goal this year is to maintain living within our means and keep those balances at $0.00.

5. Go to London. Hubs has never been to Europe and why not start where we know the language? Flights aren't too obscene that there happens to be an event occurring in September that hubs would like to catch at Wembley Stadium.

6. Buy Penn State Season tickets. We've started the ball rolling for season tickets, now to save the cash and get them in my hot little hands! We may not be able to make it to all the games, but tickets are easy enough to sell to fellow alumni in the area.

7. Golf. I would like to take lessons and learn a thing or two about swinging a club this spring. It'd be fun to be able to make a passable attempt at golf and maybe go out a couple times this summer or on vacation.

8. Get professional pictures taken. Once we've lost the lbs and are svelte, might as well get dressed up and get some good pictures. I absolutely adore our engagement and wedding pictures. I'd like some more recent ones of us to replace the older ones.

9. Volunteer. We both would love to volunteer for an animal shelter or rescue groups. I'm really looking forward to finding an opportunity to help out some needy pups.

10. And finally, it'd be nice to get rid of one monthly bill, so we're going to try and pay off one of the cars this year. We still have 2 years left on the first loan, so an early payoff would save a lot in interest. This would also allow us to parlay that extra cash into paying off the other car and then rebuilding our emergency fund.


Some of my personal goals this year are:

1. booze free for January and February. Last year I went booze free for January and felt great the entire month. I'll stretch it to two months this year to reap even more benefits!!!

2. Run 500 miles. I'd like to complete a couple 10 Mile races this year along with a half marathon maybe? Training for these should knock out the miles with no problems.

3. Track my food for 200 days with Lose It. When I track my food, I lose weight. Easy peasy. 200 days will ensure I don't wander off track for weeks/months at a time. I'm one day in so far. 199 to go.

4. At least 100 blog posts. Along with the tracking, 100 posts gets me posting about twice a week. Not overly ambitions, but much better than my past history.

5. Organize all of my magazine tear sheets and try at least one new recipe a month.

I'm looking forward to keeping up with everyone else who has ambitious goals for 2013, cheering each other on! What will you be working on this year? Are your resolutions all yours or are they joint with spouses or friends?

#photoaday November Part Duex

Two posts in one month?! What WHAT?!? Yes this is happening.

So, let's pick up where the last post left off...

Day 11: night

Where I spend my time at night. This is where we're at with the bedroom so far. I still want to paint. I need to redo the headboard from the condo to fit a king sized bed and with a new fabric. Oh, an curtains or drapes. My brain has totally blocked out picking out window treatments since we have pretty decent blinds.

Day 12: drink

Since I already did Diet Coke, let's feature my other current favorite drink, Tanqueray and Tonic. I've just recently started drinking gin and am hooked. I tried gin about 7 years ago an HATED it. After reading a book set on Nantucket with everyone drinking G&Ts all day long, I decided I'd give gin another try. Loving it and I feel so fancy ordering a Gin and Tonic at happy hour these days.

Day 13: where you slept

This one comes from my Instagram. This is what I wake up to every morning. The pups love sleeping in the bed and take up more space than the people do. they really spread out and get comfortable. At least they're cute while they do it, otherwise they would have gotten kicked out by now.

Day 14: man-made

Practically everything man made started at Home Depot, right? I was totally a Lowe's girl before we moved, but with a Home Depot twice a close to our house, I made the switch. We go to Home Depot at least once a week, there is always a project in the works or something we forgot on the last trip. We have to change light bulbs so much in this house, and each one that goes out is a different type than what we've already stocked up on, so always go back for light bulbs at a minimum.

Day 15: in your bag

I was going to give you a pic of my messy bag, but that was too chaotic. Lately my Kindle Fire has been going EVERYWHERE with me. I've been reading The Maze Runner, I don't have tons of time to read, but it's gotten really good in the past couple of days, so I've been taking any few minutes I can to read a few more pages.

Day 16: the view from your window

Here is Sidney hunting through the back yard. The pups seem to enjoy their new backyard. When we first moved in there were rabbits that snuck in through gaps in the fence. The pups loved chasing them through the small yard, they would team up, but never quite figured out how to catch one. THANK GOODNESS.

Day 17: the last thing you bought

We went up to Philly to visit friends this weekend. We stopped by Reading Terminal for lunch. DiNic's was featured on Man vs. Food and our friends from Philly vouched for it's amazingness. The Philly Marathon was this weekend and the Race Expo was going on across the street. The line for DiNics was wrapped around the building. Luckily it moved pretty quick, we were getting hungry! I didn't get a picture of my Brisket sandwich because I scarfed it down so quick. It was amazing though.

Day 18: happened this weekend

Here's another shot from Reading Terminal. The produce looked AMAZING. I would love to have something like this close to our house!!! The farmer's market down the street just doesn't compare.

Day 19: something awesome

Ok, so maybe this isn't awesome to everyone, but this is my favorite place in the house right now. We got a deep freezer for the 1/4 cow we bought from a local farmer. Local, grass fed, organic beef for less than $3 per pound? Sign me up. We pick up our cow tomorrow, so excited to get this baby filled up. We're getting almost 200 lbs of beef. All individually packed and vacuum sealed. I'm excited to start menu planning and trying out new recipes with all of the different cuts of meat we'll have.

This picture is also awesome because of the shelf above the freezer. Hubs and I hung that bad boy up without drilling a single errant hole. This is huge for us, we usually have at least 2 or 3 mess ups before we get everything completed.

Day 20: work/play

I am fortunate to be able to work from home sometimes. Today it's working with Bravo on in the background. I can work all day and keep guilty pleasure/trashy shows on all day in the background. LOVE IT.


So that's what I've been up to the past 10 days. What have you been up to? Anything exciting aside from Turkey Day preparation?

#Photoaday November

Oh hi there little blog.

If this blog was a Bud Light, it'd be 7 days from being out of date. No posts in almost 3 months. Not good.

Maybe a Photo A Day for November will help spice things up a bit.

I got a fancy new camera for my birthday, so I wanted to do something to get me more comfortable with it and get to using it more than for just vacations.

So lets get started. I found the Photo A Day from @fatmumslim

Day 1: something beginning with "C"

I went with cauliflower. I hate cauliflower, but we were working on cleaning out the freezer, so cauliflower it was for dinner on the 1st of the month. I roasted with some olive oil and threw some mozzarella cheese on at the end. Guess what, turns out I LOVE cauliflower cooked like that. I've been thinking about it since that day, but haven't gotten around to making it again. Maybe this week...

Day 2: Colour

It was a Friday and I wanted to wear my new scarf I had bought in France. So green was the color of the day.

Day 3: Breakfast

I was gonna be healthy on a Saturday morning, but I was hungover, so Chick-Fil-A Chicken Mini's it was for breakfast. #cantwinemall

Day 4: TV

I love my TV in the kitchen. We have nice little nook set up to watch shows, but the whole thing comes out from the wall when I'm cooking or baking. On this particular Sunday, I was baking snickerdoodle cupcakes, so I used the pivot feature to watch P.S. I Love You (for at least the 30th time) while I baked. Look at what Renee from (http://sassywifeclassylife.com/) made.

We tweeted our pictures to @marthastewart, she didn't reply. How rude.

Day 5: 5 o'clock

Leaving work. Our move about doubled my commute. Luckily I'm ok with the extra 20 minutes in the car.

Day 6: a favorite thing

I'm obsessed with this dog. She is definitely a favorite thing.

Day 7: reflection

I actually got days 7 and 6 mixed up and took the pictures backwards. This was my election night outfit. As somewhat of a poli sci geek, I love elections and the responsibility of choosing our leaders.

Day 8: something you do everyday

My green monster smoothie. I have this for breakfast most days. I got my particular version from SkinnyTaste. Love it and feel so nutritious having spinach for breakfast.

Day 9: Small

 An assortment of the samples I've gotten in my last three Birchboxes. I'm not much a beauty expert, but this has really gotten me excited about make-up, hair, skin care, and nails. Who would have ever known? It's $10 a month and I've found some products I really like. I was in the market for a new weekly face scrub, my October box had a great one. Had no idea what the fuss about BB Creams was, now I'm hooked. You can order the full size product once you run out of your sample. Interested in trying it out? Use my referral link.

Day 10: can't (won't) live without.

No matter what diet plan I try, Diet Coke will never get the boot. I don't drink coffee or tea, this is my caffeine. I know all about the artificial sweeteners and how bad they are, but I choose to ignore that information. I start my work day with one every day. It's just become a ritual that I won't give up. I went for a week last year without any soda. While it wasn't the worst thing I've ever done, I wouldn't ever want to give it up for good.

We'll just start with days 1-10 at this point. I'll be back soon with the next bunch of photos!

How's your month going so far?

That's So Pinteresting - Volume 1

So like most people these days, I could spend days on Pinterest looking for decorating, clothing, food, workout, basically life ideas. I want to document some of the inspiration pins that I've tried out and brought to life.

I pinned the below picture from the Crate & Barrel website. I first saw the picture in the catalog and thought "that's exactly what I want our entry way to look like".

Source: crateandbarrel.com via Kim on Pinterest

I couldn't afford to replicate the Crate and Barrel image with all C&B products, so I began gathering what I thought might pull together my own version.

I started with a white cabinet from Home Goods. I then went scrounging through my stock of baskets at the house and only had to buy one additional one to finish the look. I found a chair at the Restoration Hardware Outlet marked WAY down to being slightly affordable. I found accessories at World Market to give it a world traveling vibe. Finally, I finished by going through my mom's house to get books to complete the decor. I don't have the wall space above for a mirror and don't need a lamp in this spot, so I'm missing those two elements of the original picture.

This is what I ended up with:

Pretty good, huh? I am super proud of this space and feel like I've actually "styled" a spot in the house. I'm happy this is the first impression that people get of the house when they come in. Now I just have to get the rest of the house up to the same standard.

I'll be back next week with another Pinterest inspired project!!!!!!

What have you been creating from Pinterest recently? Are you as addicted as I am to the site and could spend days browsing for ideas?

House Guests

We have our first house guests coming this weekend. We had kind of slacked off unpacking and getting things together after the first couple weeks wore us out. This week it has been kicking it into high gear to finish up the guest room and fix up some things around the house.

We painted the guest room a couple weeks ago and bought a lamp for the corner. The room is tiny, so the queen bed takes up basically all the space. We had room for a lamp in the corner and maybe a small table or chair against another wall. We've been searching high and low on our weekly Home Goods trips looking for something that will fit in the corner for phone chargers, an alarm clock, and maybe a book or two.

We finally found what we were looking for at World Market last night, just in the nick of time! We bought a small table that would be perfect and not take up too much space. We also finally found a frame for a print I had bought on Etsy.

 

 

In the basket I put washcloths and some hotel toiletries that I've snagged over the years. I have a whole bucket of them just waiting for guests to come visit us!!!

 

I also included a book on the table of 1,001 places to visit. The bonus entry being "Kim and Tony's House"

We also made a small update in the bathroom. The towel bar in there had almost immediately fallen down once we moved in. We could tell another one had fallen down recently because there were holes about 6 inches higher on the wall filled in but not painted. I wanted to try something different from just a towel bar, so we found these wall hooks at World Market. They are bigger than you would usually find in a bathroom, but I liked them, so onto the wall they went.

We will paint this bathroom eventually, but we needed somewhere for guests to hang towels this weekend. What do you think???

I love prepping for guests because our place always get so spotlessly clean. It's such good motivation to clean and finish up projects.

Does having guests over help motivate you to get last minute house projects done?

 

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