Kambri's Room- Phase 1

Kambri's room is now ready for Phase 2- decorating! However, I wanted SOMETHING different done with her room in the meantime, and this is what I came up with for now.

As you can see she had a very unorganized cupboard with books everywhere.

This picture is on the right side of her closet and was definitely wasting precious space that her already small room is in very much need of.

This is take 2 of that same side of her closet with a new bookshelf put in for her books and whatever I decide. Much better, in my opinion.

This picture shows the left side of her closet which I'm definitely liking better as well. And her cupboard all cleaned and organized to be used for her kitchen supplies. (LOVE this cupboard. My Grandpa Hansen made it for me one year for Christmas. It has gotten every ounce of use out of it possible, and then some. I still am working out the inner workings of it currently.

Her kitchen, where she spends many hours cooking over a hot stove. :)

I've now had 2 different people tell me to center her crib, although I was quite reluctant because of spacing issues...but I love it now!! :) What you see in this picture is white, bare walls that are screaming, "PLEASE PLEASE girlify me". Any suggestions? Her bedding is little flowers and ladybugs. I keep saying I'm going to do vinyl ladybugs on her wall, but not sure how to go about it so it doesn't look busy with them!

Toy Room In Progress

This toy room continually causes me heartburn. It's unfinished and hopefully sooner than later we'll get her all fixed up. For now it works...if I can just get the girls to play in there rather than taking all of the contents to every other room in the house.

Before:

After:

Bags/purses have always been a continual problem in our home. So for now, I decided to hang screws in the 2x4's that they can hang on. A little redneck I realize, but frankly...I'm glad to have somewhere to put them temporarily.

This view is from looking in from the door. It's sort of an odd-size room, just long and narrow. Ah well, it works for now. And I've TOTALLY been downsizing on toys. That got me motivated to do a yard sale here in a couple weeks. I told the kids that anything of theirs that sells, they get the $$. Hopefully that'll entice them to find more than then otherwise would.

Not a huge transformation, but it looks a lot better than it did. The before pictures were done after a little big of cleaning up. I always seem to forget to take the befores.

If you see any other suggestions, I'm all ears. :)

Sane Summer Happenings

Update: 9-6-09
There were some things I did great with this summer and others not so great. All I can say is I'm glad kids are back in school. I need some downtime and some structure back in our home!!! It was a fun summer and it flew by quickly!!
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Summer vacation is upon us. I am determined to be a 'fun' mom this summer and to try getting everyone in my family out and doing more! It is also my goal for all of us to enjoy a 'sane' summer together! :)

I've told both Taylor and Hollie that they need to make a list of things they want to do this summer. My focus is to do one 'fun' activity each week. That's not to say that we can't do more, but I have a few motives with this.

#1- I will have something to use as leverage in trying to keep the kiddos in line.
#2- It is summer after all and it's SUPPOSED to be fun!!!
#3- I am trying to become a funner Mom, remember?!

So I've got our initial list and I'll add to it as I go. And of course, due to being a Penny Pincher I'm all about finding the cheapest forms of entertainment. Therefore, as I continue getting my list put together I'll keep you posted on those types of things too!

• West Yellowstone Condo Trip

• Walker Cinema Matinees Tickets (Out of 6 sets of tickets, we used FOUR movies off of them. Shaun and Holl went one day and Holl went with my MIL to 2 others. Note to self: we won't be buying those next summer.)

• Swimming outings

• Bowling
  

• Miniature Golfing

• Treehouse Museum

• Swimming lessons

• Willow Park & picnic

• Camping w/friends (this is really going out on a limb for me as I'm not a camper by nature and this type of thing is really not me. BUT...I used to enjoy camping.)

• Lagoon

• Running through the Sprinklers (at home and w/Stephanie) :)

• Outings w/Emily, Katie and kids

• Extra trip to the condo w/kiddos

• Taylor & Shaun to a Bees Game

• Hollie & I to the monthly scrap night at Alpine (this is open to the public...you should join us- $5 a project)

• Kambri's Weekly 'Talking With Tots' Classes

• Hollie- Honey Bee Camp at Just Bee Scrap'n
  

• Chuck E Cheese

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I will continue to update this post with more...please post your ideas and what you have planned for the summer! Oh, and we are looking for friends to join us in our outings! The more the merrier, right?!

New Windows

We have been needing new windows for a very long time. I guess cosmetically from the outside looking in they don't look terrible...but they were! We had major drafts coming in from them and in the winter we had to hang plastic up to try helping with the drafts. Even still, you could watch the plastic move back and forth with the wind. It was terrible! Plus, I was afraid to open the windows because bugs came in. So, we finally caved!!!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Much prettier!! :) We replaced all 7 upstairs windows. A friend of mine from work, her husband is a general contractor and is the one who did our windows. As luck had it, the day he could come install them was Hollie's b-day and we had a friend party going on at the same time. So of course the girls had to flirt with the guys and kept teasing them calling them 'Handy Manny' and 'Man with no Shirt'. Haha!! They had their work cut out for them!!

We opted to only replace Taylor's window downstairs. As it was to replace his window they had to use a concrete saw to get the old window out, because they were cemented in. So of course this was a rather pricey project due to the extent of labor it took and having to special order such an odd size window. But we did want his window replaced for 2 reasons. One being so if there were ever an emergency and he needed to get out, he could to so easier and two being...when an excessive amount of water is outside his window, it seeps in through the frame and has caused damage in his room! So we're very grateful to have that window replaced as well!!

Before: (I slacked with doing a real before, so here's a picture of just the window.)

After:
Yay for new windows!!!! We love them!

Organization Help

I am in dire need of assistance. This is a view into Hollie's closet. Both of my girls have a ton of bags/purses and I don't have a clue how to organize them. I'll get them half organized and then they just throw the system to the curb. (That's how it goes, right?!)

So as you can see to the left in the 1st picture, there is a purple...we're going to call it a bag/purse organizer because that is what I have used it for and can't think of the proper name right now. Would this be more beneficial to put on the back of her door? Or on the wall where the door meets up with the wall when it's opened?

And, if your suggestion is to put it on the back of the door, then where do these lovely shoes go? I thrive with organization but struggle with getting from Point A to Point B.

Please help...my girls' rooms depend on you!! :)

Hollie's Updated Room

As advised by Sunshine, I did a little rearranging in Hollie's room and I really like how it turned out! I don't have before pictures but there was a lot of Princess decals all over her wall and I never liked how it looked from the beginning because it just looked cluttered. Hollie constantly is hanging up various pictures that she draws on our walls, so for now, those are down also. I did let her choose a few things that she still wanted on her walls though.

Hollie got a new Hannah Montana bedding set for her birthday. So we changed our her Disney Princesses to Hannah. And the guitar decal that she got from Aunt Sissy for her b-day was the perfect touch for above her bed. This room is not totally complete yet, but not sure what I'll do with the rest. And we need to finish some organizing in the closet and her tall set of drawers.

I have a habit of pushing furniture against the walls and because Hollie's room is rather large, the bed positioned this way really gives it an entirely different look.

I tried organizing and decluttering her desk a bit, although there is still a lot on there. But Hollie did help me go through her books and we got rid of a bunch of them that she doesn't care about. She loves helping me with these types of projects.
How many kids beg you to rearrange their room?! :)

Where has June gone?

So I confess, we've not done much so far this summer. (I'm blaming it on the continual rain storms, I've begun thinking we live in a rainforest.) Hopefully those have about passed us by now. We have been busy with a few things I guess. June is a busy month for our family with birthdays and this month Hollie and I both had birthdays. Hollie's consisted of a double decker party- friend party by morning, family party by night. And we did attend our annual Kunz Family Reunion. The kids always seem to really enjoy those and I had a good time catching up with my girly cousins.

One thing I've got to do better with from here on out is making certain that Hollie is getting some reading in. Taylor naturally loves to read, so I've never had to prompt him. But Hollie I have to beg and plead for her to pick up a book. The Family Fun Center here in Brigham is doing a summer reading program. If they read 20 minutes/20 days out of the month they can go bowl a game for free. That's like a 2 for 1 special for me!! :) Reading time and entertainment as the end result. What are your tips for getting in the reading time? I'm as much to blame because we don't have any sort of a schedule for summer and so before I know it, it's bedtime again and no reading has been done.

My cousin Sunshine came over to my house and Lindsay's house and gave us a ton of ideas for decorating and miscellaneous projects we could do. She has a natural knack for those sorts of things and I had a great time with her here! In an upcoming post I'm going to list some of the major things that stood out with each room that she suggested.

Little by little I'm getting some things accomplished in our home. I have a lot of things I want to do, but I get extremely overwhelmed because there are so many that I don't know where I want to start. :) Anyone who knows me well, knows this is an everyday occurrence.

Thanks so much to those of you who humor me and actually read my craziness. Bravo to you!!

Job Chart Dilemma

Why can't I decide on a job chart and USE IT?!! Seriously you have no idea how many hours I've spent looking for various job chart ideas and trying to implement my own. I keep telling my kids it's coming but being the perfectionist that I am, I can't come up with the perfect thing.

How do you setup your job charts? I'm debating on putting my house into zones and assigning them a specific zone for the week that they are responsible to help with or do I just assign different jobs each day? And what kinds of things do I assign, because I don't know if on that particular day the job is going to need to be done. I know I know, stop analyzing. But seriously, this has been something I've been working on for like a year now and still nothing concrete. Here's a picture of Taylor and Hollie's room charts that I came up with a while ago (of course we're not using it).

I thought these job charts were so ingenious of me. They have velcro on the backs of the pieces so they can move it from the 'Need to Do' to 'I did it'! But it's still this daily job thing that's holding up the whole job chart process. Please help me out!!!!

Updated- "My Bug List"

Ok. I'm tired of carrying these crazy 'to-do' lists in my head and things I want to buy or do in my house. I'll see something and think, "Oh, I need to add that to the list." It's DRAINING ME!!! So...I'm going to keep an ongoing bug list of things that need to be done and the approximate amount of time and/or $$ it will take to do it.

These are listed in no particular order, just making a record of projects and purchase so I can start tackling some of them.


Projects (if they're in red- they've been completed)

1. Finish sanding the molding around the door and paint it
2. Go through the totes of clothes in shed. Get rid of all of the smaller stuff that isn't for Kambri to grow into.
3. Tear down border in kitchen
4. Get kitchen drawers fixed
5. Take down outside Christmas lights (pathetic I know. Shaun wants to leave them up for next year!)
6. Decide what/how many old windows I need for craft projects
7. Nail down a job chart and USE IT!!
8.



Purchases

1. New windows- They're beautiful!! :)
2. New blinds for upstairs windows
3. Vinyl fence (I can dream for now...)


Stay tuned. There are plenty more to come.