A Finished Command Center Chalkboard!

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! I know I'm days late, but I hope you all had a good one! Ours was low key this year, just us and one of my husband's cousins (and two of her friends). It was quiet, but fun!  We got all old school and played a bit of N64. Because we're awesome like that. And a little bit nerdy to boot.

Anyways, cooking is something my husband and I really enjoy doing together, so we just hung out together in the kitchen part of Wednesday and most of Thursday putting all the food together. It was amazingly relaxing.  Hope you all had equally awesome (& hopefully relaxing) Thanksgivings as well!

But anyways, on to the really awesome news! Today, I am excited to tell you, that we finally got around to finishing our command center chalkboard!!! And it is beautiful. Seriously....so gorgeous!

Do you guys remember this wood from way back when?

Oh yah. This was totally the project I had in mind for it. And it came out better than I had even dared to hope. With some help from my hubby of course (he is so awesome =]). I'm still a bit hopeless when it comes to doing this sort of thing on my own.  But someday...;].

We started by removing the old, nasty nails. We did this by nailing the sharp end of the nail back into the wood. This lifted up the heads of the nails on the other side high enough so we could pry them out.

Once we got the nails out, we measured the sides of our chalkboard. I had spray painted it a long time before this, so there wasn't much to do there in that respects. Once we had our measurements, we cut our boards accordingly, making sure to cut 45 degree angles on the ends of each for a more finished look.

We don't exactly have the fanciest of tools so we simply used a round edged ruler and a hand saw to accomplish this. It was... probably more work than it was worth (not that that was an entirely difficult feat to manage...it being free and all...).

We then mounted the chalkboard directly to the wall. Once that was done we attached the frame by screwing each individual piece into the studs, to give it extra support. The wood was pretty heavy.

We then primed the chalkboard by rubbing it down with chalk (necessary, unless you want everything you write on there to be permanent) and then spent the next half hour vacuuming up all the mess and putting the tools away.

When we were finished we were left with this:

 Eeeee!!!!! Love!!!!! The color of that weathered wood is seriously just so gorgeous. Adds a bit of shabby chic to our home. So fun!

Now, all that is left to do is to get two more bins for the command center to fill the top middle slots, add some bling to the walls, and finish turning the 'Fresh Bulb's' box into a charging station. For realz!

In the meantime I'll do a happy dance with the progress we've made. It is SO much better already than when we started.... need I remind you! 

Yeeeeesh! Those were not exactly the days.  

Anyways, wishing you the happiest of DIY projects and many wonderful holiday memories ahead! It is now time for me to catch some shut eye. Double for realz.

 I'm linking this up with Thrifty Decor Chic's Before and After Party!

A Hall Closet "Make-Over"

Well, the weather around here has hit south of 50 recently and I'm pretty convinced the world will not see me out of my sweat pants until Spring.

It is too cold and it's only going to get colder. I just want to be useless all day and drink lots of hot apple cider. A totally worthwhile use of my time. I'm serious.

Meanwhile, my husband looks forward to April when his wife will finally decide to be a human being again. Although... I might make him wait until May.  Sweat pants are comfy, people.

Anyways, while I enjoy being under-dressed and lazy, I figured I'd share with you a project I actually finished back around the time I reorganized our media center.

The coat closet:

Ahh, this is the before.  A fairly crowded storage area with a bit of an identity crises at hand.  Do I hold coats, or cleaning supplies, or maybe board games? How about a camera? Frisbee golf discs anyone?

And wet suits. Don't forget the wet suits! Even though we live no where near a beach. Gotta keep them in the coat closet...you know...just in case.

It needed some help. My OCD shivered every time it was opened. So help it I did...

...and here is the after:

Okay, so while it is not the most beautiful of transformations anyone has ever seen, it sure is functional. And as much as I love things to look pretty, I like things even more when they serve a purpose (and serve it well for that matter).

So, what did I do?

Well, first, I took all of our coats and put them up in our bedrooms. We had ample closet space in our rooms, but so little in the hallway that it really just made sense.

I did, however, leave us each a single coat to be hung on the coat racks next to the command center.

The board games, as you know, went into the media center. The vacuum, however, was allowed to stay (granted that it behaved properly and minded its manners).

Following the example of this amazing blogger, and adjusting for my own family's personal needs, I tried to transform our hall closet from a place to hang coats into a place to catch all of our random, but necessary, loose ends.

The diagrams below explain how I reorganized everything.

The yoga mat and the frisbee golf discs, alas, were allowed to stay as well. They were items used too often in our house to have anywhere else better to put them. I used an old diaper box, covered in fabric, to corral them in between their visits to the outside world.

They look happy and comfy in there, don't they? ;]

Well, that is basically the gist of the redo. Coat closet turned utility closet. It is seriously one of my favorite things I've done recently. It is nice to have somewhere definitive to put things, rather than an all encompassing junk drawer... or as was my case: a junk catching top of the fridge ( I don't even know why, but that is where everything always seemed to end up.).

What part of your home are you desperately itching to fix? Next on my list is the master bedroom closet. It's like someone let off an atomic craft bomb in there. I'd like to be able to close the door, you know... eventually, someday.

So that's like goal number 35,548 on my to do list.  Clean the closet so that I can finally shut the door. Good. Right. I'll talk to you all again soon. If my closet doesn't eat me.

Work In Progress: An Entry Way Command Center/Mudroom

Back in July my mom and a few of my nieces came to visit me from out-of-state! My husband and the kiddos were off visiting his parents for a few weeks, which gave us girls the perfect opportunity to work on a major project that I had been scheming about for a while.

Our main entry way:

I don't think I need to comment much on the hot, bubbly mess that just so happened to be the first thing everybody saw when they walked into our home. Ejdfkjghdkjgh. It was an OCD organization aficionado's nightmare.

Plus a few cherries on top.

Thankfully, after I agreed to decrapify her spider infested barn and garage ((this would make round two, blech!)), my sweet mommy offered to sponsor a complete overhaul of this section of our home!

Best. Mother. Ever.

So I got to planning! I had already had a few ideas in mind, but it took me a while to really hash out how I wanted to set up our new entry way.

I wanted this project to be something that not only looked nice, but that also took care of some major functional problems we were having in our household as well.

Namely, a better way of organizing our family schedules, paperwork, projects, cleaning, maintenance, budgets, bills, etc.  Not to mention putting together a more aesthetically pleasing drop zone for our bags, shoes, and coats as well.

In essence, I needed to create for ourselves a command center and a mudroom, all in one!

  So I planned it all out on paper, priced out all of the items I would need (via the internet), and then took a trip with my mom and my nieces to our local handy dandy Target.

And I honestly can't think of a single time ((when shopping that is)) that I've been giddier. Like, I swear there were butterflies floating down the isles kind of giddy, people!  ((You mean I can buy anything from Target that I want?! *Starry eyes* Okay!!!))

I found a lot of great items that matched the look I was going for. The "Fresh Bulbs" chest, pictured below,  is one of my favorite finds (I'll share with you my  plans for that piece later on in the post)!

But, the mail sorter definitely comes in close second. The grey stain and the chalkboard paint? Ahh, I die!

As soon as we got home, my nieces and I began the decluttering process and started putting all of our shopping loot into place.

This is what it looked like after night one:

 Seriously? It already looked sooo much better!

It has seen a few transformations since then (we moved the file boxes to a nearby closet & added a catch spot for our library books).  After a bit more tweaking, and a DIY Chalkboard project (that still isn't finished) it currently looks like this: 

I don't know about you, but I am loving how it has turned out so far! There is definitely still more to be done, but having what I do have set up has done wonders for keeping our home clean and organized.

As far as projects left to finish, I still need to give the chalkboard another coat of spray paint and then frame and mount it to the wall. I also am going to be turning the "Fresh Bulbs" box I mentioned earlier into a charging station for all of our electronics.

Besides that, I'll probably be adding a few more decorative items. I'll update you as I go. =]

 Below are some diagrams of how we are using this new set up to organize all of our "stuff."

Something I have been leaning to, more now lately than ever before, is creating a home where our children can be capable contributors to the family. This relieves stress on the mommy and daddy and instills accomplishment in the kiddos.

Part of our effort in accomplishing this goal in our entry way was to give them a place where they could hang up their own bags and coats by themselves.

And I seriously have been loving it!

It is so cute to watch my two year old come in the door, sit down and put her shoes in her own shoe box and walk over to the coat rack to hang up her own coat.

It is amazing how able our kids can be if we make an effort to allow them to be!

So, as I mentioned just a second ago our daughter, and in fact all of us, have our own shoe 'boxes'.   Really they end up holding more than shoes, but that was their primary purpose. A place to put shoes so they don't end up strewn all over our house. 

These boxes also act, however, as catch-alls for our personal items. Aside from his shoes, my husband tends to keep his sunglasses, bike helmet, gloves, and hats in his box as well.

The dog also got one. We keep his leashes, bones, collars, etc in there.  

As far as organizing all of our schedules, budgets, etc. that I mentioned earlier, I scoured Pinterest for some of the best Family Planner printables I could find and printed them off into our binder.  I'll do a more specific post later sharing the specific links I used, the different sections I created, as well as some of the printables I created for it on my own!

The Magazine holders you see pictured above (but maybe more clearly below) was the solution I came up with for catching all of our paper clutter. Most of the time, before this, our manuals, books, coloring pages, church calendars, newsletters, etc would end up on our kitchen counter. 

And it would create one big UGLY pile. And the worst part of the pile was that at least half of the papers I didn't know what to do with, because they didn't belong to me. I didn't know where to put them, if they were important, or if I could go ahead and throw them away.

My solution was to give each person their own box. Any papers they got from school, or work, or church would go straight into their personal magazine holder and they would be responsible to clean it out, as needed.  

It may still be "clutter", but at least it is more managable clutter...and it is hidden. 

The 'hidden' part of that sentence being my favorite. ;]

As for the mail holder and sorter, it is somewhat self explantory, but just in case, I'll delve!

The mail holder is where we put our mail until which time we are able to sort it. Once we do have time,  it is divided into 4 different piles, "Trash," "Needs Action," "File Away," and "Shred."  

'Trash' is where all of our junk mail goes. 'Needs action' is where you will find the bills we need to pay or forms we need to sign. 'File Away' is where we put important notices or personal items we want to keep for the future. 'Shred' is where we put things we don't want to keep long term, but that happen to have sensitive information inside.

So anywhooo, there you have it! Our updated entry way!

It took some work... and is currently promising me more work in the future. But woo-hoo!!! Getting all of this in order has done wonders for adding more peace to my and my family's life. =] A huge blessing, for sure.

So, what have you all been up to? Any fun updates in your homes? I'd love to hear about them! Nothing better than having a project in your mind and finally having the chance to put your plans into action!