No Pictures!

I was planning on posting my week 3 organizing project today however I am unable to access the pictures on my camera. Since I have no clue where my mini usb cord is since we moved I've been putting my memory card into the printer to get photos.

Except this time it isn't loading the pictures properly and when I attempt to import into iPhoto it shows the same picture 120 times. Alright!!!

An organizing post is rather boring without the pictures in my opinion so it will be on hold until I figure out a solution.

In other extremely happy news my husband and our friend have spent the weekend in the garage working on a custom entertainment unit for our living room. Having it will mean so much more storage and that I'll actually be able to unpack a lot of boxes. I'm so excited for them to get it finished!

I just went out and saw the first part of the shelving and it looks fantastic!

My iPhone will have to suffice for taking pictures for now.

The wall in the living room where the entertainment unit is going. 

Messy gong show!

We are hoping to get the first part into the house tonight so I'll update when we do. 

A Few Slow Days...

I haven't been feeling so great the last couple of days beyond my normal morning sickness and tiredness. Which means it was time for lots of:

Playing "Plants v. Zombies" on Xbox

I've become addicted to this game! 

It is possible I have played it so much in the last few days that I've begun to dream about it.

Reading

I started "The Hunger Games" a few days ago but really got into it last night and stayed up until 1am to finish it. Can't wait to read the next two books!

[Its only $5.00 for the Kindle right now, not sure how long that will last]

And quite a bit of TV watching, blog reading and corner rounding of photos. 

It was really nice to relax for a couple days and not worry about getting anything done. 

I'm feeling a lot better today and am ready to take on a couple projects mainly the overflowing laundry baskets and piles of dishes in the kitchen. I'm also going to do my organizing project #3 for the 52 weeks of organization. 

Have a great Thursday!

  

In about 6 months....

(photo from our engagement session)

In about 6 months we will be welcoming our first little cupcake! 

Back in November we found out we were pregnant and in this past week we've been sharing the good news with our friends and family. 

Nausea and extreme tiredness aside everything has been going great. 

I still don't quite feel pregnant.

We get to hear the heartbeat for the first time on Feb 1 and go for our 20 week ultrasound on March 2 and I'm sure those two things will make it feel more real. 

That and the fact that my pants don't fit anymore!

Only 6 more months!

52 Weeks of Organization Week 2

Before starting this project I thought it would take me a lot longer than it actually did.
I thought I had more stickers than I actually do which is a good thing. It was still hard to find them all when they are just thrown in a drawer.

At "Crafts and Crap" Michelle shared how she organized her stickers. I really liked the idea but went with a much more scaled down version. I didn't create individual sections but did have three categories of alphabets, words and everything else. The amount of stickers I have just didn't warrant separate sections. 

The drawer full of stickers aka "the before". 

When I reorganized my craft room on New Year's Eve I ended up just dumping all my stickers and embellishment type items into this drawer. I knew at the time it was probably not the most reasonable solution but at least they weren't in the popsicle box anymore. 

Sorting into piles

After sorting there were some stickers I realize I've had since my Jr High scrapbooking days. I kept thinking they looked like stickers a 13 year old would use which makes sense because I was 13 when I bought them!!! There is no way I'm going to use them now so they went into my "giveaway/donate" box. 

In the binder and ready to go!

I used scotch tape to keep the stickers on pieces of printer paper and then put the papers back to back into page protectors. I bought a pack of a hundred page protectors from Costco for student teaching and recipes. I love page protectors and use them whenever I can. I used to put my study notes into them, it somehow made them feel more important and like they really deserved my attention. 

It is going to be so much easier to actually use my stickers now which will help me achieve my goal of scrapbooking all the pictures I have printed out as well as using up a good percentage of my supplies. 

And there is plenty of room left inside the binder for more stickers in the future!

It only took me two episodes of "Drop Dead Diva" on Netflix (did you know we get streaming Netflix in Canada now??? Of course we have a crappy selection of shows compared to the States but its getting increasingly better all the time! Of course this may only be exciting to me...Oh oh oh and it was announced that Target is coming to Canada in 2012/2013! Excitement! ) from start to finish. A nice, quick organizing project for a Thursday night! 

Now to decide on my project for week 3...

Furnace Troubles

When I woke up to use the bathroom this morning our house was ridiculously cold. I thought it was more like 3 am when our house is usually freezing but when I saw it was 5 am I knew something was wrong. Our heat usually kicks on at 4:30am. I grabbed my phone to look at the temperature on the thermostat and it was 13 C/ 55 F degrees. Normally our house drops down to 16 C/ 60 F overnight which is chilly but when we are under the blankets not an issue. However 13 was just too damn cold.

I told hubs the furnace wasn't working and he told me I was sleep talking or dreaming. Soon enough he realized I was serious and went to take a look. So happy that hubs is a plumber which means he learned about furnaces and gas in school and had some idea of what to do.

After a lot of clanging around and trips to the garage he got it working again. Shortly after he had to leave for work but he was lucky because at least he was going where it was warm. It took close to 3 hours for our house to get remotely warm. I stayed under 5 blankets on the couch watching bad reality tv from the PVR...16 and Pregnant/ Teen Mom if you must know, I've just discovered it and am slightly obsessed!

For now our furnace is working and I really hope it stays that way since outside isn't warm at all!

Reusable Containers- After

I'm so sick of snow and cold. This morning with the windchill it was -29 C/ - 20 F. Friday is supposed to be -39 C/-38 F with the windchill. I was planning on going to the school I volunteer at but since I have to bus it across the city with like 4 transfers that is SO NOT happening! I am completely happy to just stay in my warm cozy house under a lot of blankets!

I finished sorting and organizing the reusable containers today. I found some great colourful baskets at the dollar store and four of them fit great on the shelf. Each basket contains a different brand of containers with one of the back ones also containing a couple Bento boxes and cereal containers. Now I just have to pull the basket out and take it to the counter when packing up food.

Reminder of the before:

Containers everywhere!

And the after:

You can see in the first two pictures that the rest of the cupboard is still a disaster but just avert your eyes and pretend you didn't see that... One step at a time! 

My week one of the 52 Week Organizing Challenge is officially done and it is only halfway through week 2! Alright! 

For my week two project I'm going to organize all my stickers. I have a container full and never use them because I can never find what I'm looking for! More on that later... 

Hope your week one of the challenge has gone well :) 

Purple Converse Shoes and Buttons!

Purple Converse shoes and buttons were my two favourite things about our wedding! I had a friend over today and we were looking at my wedding pictures and they reminded me how much fun I had with the looks I would get when I told people I was wearing purple sneakers under my dress. It also reminded me of the very sore fingers my hubs and I had after making the three bouquets.

I had so much fun ordering buttons off of Etsy. Just thinking about it makes me want to buy more. I love buttons (that's the reason for the name "Ten Tiny Buttons"). I want to open a fabric store one day that has a wall of buttons. You know how you walk into a candy store and there are all the jars of bright colours and delicious looking sweet things? Well that's what I want, but with buttons, lots of buttons! 

52 Weeks of Organizing

Laura at "I'm an Organizing Junkie" has started a 52 Weeks of Organizing challenge. Since getting organized is part of my 101 list and something I feel I am ALWAYS working on I decided to join in. 

The idea is to have 52 small projects you can do each week of 2011 to help get organized. Goal setting is more successful if you break your goals down into smaller and manageable steps. Organize the cutlery drawer is a small step to having an organized kitchen and feels a whole lot more obtainable than "organize entire kitchen by Saturday"!

For the first week Laura has some questions to answer so here we go!

1.  Do you have your list written? (if you missed it, you can find the pdf here)

I'm working on the list as I want to try and align it with my 101 list it's going to take me a while to figure out!

2.  What is the first thing on it that you hope to accomplish this week?

I am going to organize my reusable containers.

3.  How are you going to make it happen?

I plan to sort the containers into all the different brands/types I have, get rid of extra lids/containers, get larger containers to group them into and for easier access from the cupboard. Most of all I'm going to KEEP them organized afterwards!


This photo is extremely embarrassing but it is the current state of the back cupboard in my kitchen. I got a little ambitious and decided to reorganize it entirely yet clearly did not finish! So at the moment there are reusable containers all over the cupboard and probably other places in the kitchen as well. 

After pictures are coming once I can get to the Dollar Store to get some containers! I'm really hoping the roads are better tonight.

*Edit* you can see the completed project here!

Snow Day

Okay so we didn't literally have a snow day. I'm not sure what it would take for this city to actually have a snow day. In the ten years I've lived here I've never seen an amount of snow that causes the city to shut down. 
We are a crazy bunch up here in northern Canada. Driving in snow like this is insane, people either decide that going faster is the way to handle it or slowing down to 25 km/hr is the solution. I prefer to just stay inside. So that's what we did this weekend. 
We happened to be at a friend's house on Friday and had planned to stay the night anyways but once we looked at the snow on Saturday morning we decided to extend our stay another night. I'm pretty sure it was mostly just because we wanted to avoid the massive amount of shovelling we would need to do to even get into our house, because the friends live about 15 blocks from us! 
It was great to feel "snowed in" for the weekend. We made French Toast and pizza and cake and Rice Krispie Squares. We played Apples to Apples and watched most of season 2 of How I Met Your Mother. And of course we stayed in our pajamas all weekend. The guys also put up the crown moulding in their living room so at least they were productive. It was the perfect weekend! 

Shoveling to get into our backdoor

Crazy amount of snow

In front of our house

Icicles by our back door

Hubs trying to get us into the house!

Hope your weekend was warmer and less snowy than mine! 

Tiny Spaces

My husband just laughed at me as I went to put my memory card into the printer to upload some pictures. In order to do so I have to stand by the front door in the 3 foot space between it and the printer. Then once I sat down in my chair I rolled right into the middle of the living room. We both laughed that time. Have I mentioned yet that our house is small? Don't get us wrong, we feel so lucky that we were able to buy a house and most days we love living here but some days we just want to scream.


Our house is 63 years old and 660 sq ft. Our garage is 661 sq ft. Yes, our garage is bigger than our house which of course was a huge selling feature for my hubs, Being old the house definitely has its quirks. We are pretty sure that the floors are starting to slope as well. One or more of the previous residents fancied themselves as the next Mike Holmes. They were not. At all. The longer we live here the more we discover the remains of their less than superb handyman/women skills. By far the most annoying is the dishwasher that was installed slopping forward resulting in the top rack constantly sliding out EVERY SINGLE TIME WE CLOSE IT!


Regardless, I still love this house and am loving the challenge of trying to make such a small space functional. I get to try new solutions all the time and constantly day dream about how to make it all work. Once the weather warms up (I laugh at myself saying this as we won't get "warmer" weather til probably March...maybe) I plan to reorganize the garage to provide extra storage space. Our basement currently looks like this

But once its redone we want to use it as a family room and craft room for me! One day, one day. 

I plan to post before during and after pictures of spaces as they come together. For now I will keep rearranging, reorganizing and reminding myself that I really do love this house!

I cussing love this movie!

amazon

We watched Fantastic Mr. Fox on Netflix the other night and it was cussing fantastic to say the least. It was witty, amusing and just thinking about how they made all the creatures is mind blowing.
Just hearing George Clooney's voice coming out a fox made me giggle every time. I realize this movie is probably old news to most of you but if you are like me and take a while to getting around to watch movies definitely check this one out!

I now have the desire to replace all swear words with "cuss". Watch the film and you'll figure it out ;)

Productive Day!

Even though I'm still very much in lazy vacation mode I feel like I accomplished a lot today.
I'm nearly finished organizing my craft room. I still have some boxes to bring in from the garage but everything that is currently in the house in that room is organized. I will post some (embarrassing) before and after pictures soon.


My iPhone is now organized, I went down from three pages of barely used folders of apps to a single page and only 6 folders! (#86 on the list)

My Google Reader is minus a few blogs that I either never read or are never updated. I also either read or "marked as read" all the unread posts. I was at nearly 300 unread items. Yikes! (#69 on the list)

We've decided that January will be our 30 days of no eating out, #80 on the list. Of course I'm hoping that we will cut down on eating out even after these 30 days but for now I'm just focusing on 30 days of home cooking. Tonight was day number 1. Our cupboards are a little bare so our meal was nothing spectacular but tomorrow we are going grocery shopping and I have some great meals planned! 

I also made chocolate chip cookie dough to be baked tomorrow, of course we had to eat some tonight! 

The lovely mixer I used wedding gift cards to purchase. I feel like I have a grown up kitchen now :)

So today was a day of lots of ACTION! Woohoo! Hope yours was productive as well. If you are heading back to work tomorrow, I will think of you as I sleep in til 11 am. 

PS. Now that I am done student teaching I've decided to blog with my real first name. Em is just the first letters of my two last names. Just thought I would let my 3 readers know that so they aren't too confused! 

101 in 1001

Since it's that time of year where resolutions and goals are shared I thought I would share mine. I did not make any "new" goals for 2011 instead I am continuing to work on my 101 goals in 1001 days a.k.a. Day Zero Project. I attempted one once before when I first graduate high school but didn't stick with it.
I officially started this list on August 25th, 2010 and have until May 22, 2013 to complete it. Which means I have 870 days left.


Here's my list (crossed out means I've already done it, italics means it's in progress)


1. Try Geocaching
2. Sew a dress
3. Month by month scrapbook (0/33)
4. Get a tattoo
5. Take a yoga class
6. Take more photos
7. Take a sewing class
8. Organize craft room
9. Grow a herb garden
10. Decorate bedroom
11. Decorate bathroom
12. Decorate living room
13. Buy a DSLR
14. Finish writing another 101 list by the end of this one
15. Go for a massage
16. Pay off our debt
17. Graduate Universtiy
18. Make my own soap
19. Decorate kitchen
20. Learn to embroider
21. Floss everyday
22. Cook 1 new recipe every month (3/33)
23. Have date night once a month (4/33)
24. Use up all existing yarn before buying more
25. Complete wedding scrapbook/digital book
26. Complete a Project 365
27. Lose 15 pounds (0/15)
28. Lose 30 pounds (0/30)
29. Open an Etsy shop
30. Read 10 biographies (0/10)
31. Make a budget and stick to it
32. Go a day without electricity
33. Scrapbook all printed out pictures
34. Finish engagement minibook
35. Plan for a baby
36. Finish 30 sewing projects (1/30)
37. Send Christmas and Birthday cards to family
38. Declutter everything!
39. Start a blog and maintain it
40. Design and order fabric from Spoonflower
41. Donate books and replace some on Kindle
42. Purchase a working record player
43. Make my own lollipops
44. Stop using plastic grocery bags
45. Replace all ugly reusable bags with handmade ones
46. Stop using sandwich bags
47. Make own reusable sandwich bags
48. Take three trips (0/3)
49. Own a Blythe doll
50. Design and sew my own perfect hoodie/jacket
51. Start and maintain a recycling system
52. Update progress on list once a month (4/33)
53. Use an agenda every day for a year (0/365)
54. Create a 101 in 1001 minibook
55. Read 30 books (9/30)
56. Learn how to make Bento boxes
57. Make as many homemade versions of food as possible
58. Complete fridge makeover and maintain
59. Eat fruits and veggies every day
60. Finish this list before August 25th, 2010
61. Drink more water. Work to 8 glasses a day
62. Decorate for the seasons
63. Figure out how to use my Serger
64. Have a real fondue dinner
65. Try one new veg(an) recipe per month (0/33)
66. Use 50% of my scrapbook paper before buying more
67. Organize every room/ space
68. Make curtains for our bedroom
69. Edit my Google Reader once every 3 months (1/11)
70. Get a teaching position
71. Go paperless on as many bills as possible
72. Use homemade bread 75% of the time
73. Do one creative thing a day
74. Use only homemade cleaners
75. Make a sock monster
76. Go through PVR once a month (4/33)
77. For every item bought get rid of one
78. Start a cupcake project
79. Revamp wardrobe
80. Cook at home every night for a month (0/30)
81. Join curling league
82. Go camping three times (0/3)
83. Discover the best cinnamon bun recipe
84. Take a multivitamin every day
85. Create teaching portfolio
86. Organize iPhone(music/apps) every 3 months (0/11)
87. Vacuum regularly
88. Make bed every day
89. Make new blanket for bed
90. Decorate entire fridge in one day
91. Create key/mail area
92. Create and maintain filing system for papers
93. Go through iPhoto, delete, edit and sort
94. Go through files, delete, edit and sort
95. Make reusable napkins
96. No candy for a week (0/7)
97. Learn to make pasta
98. Save for a downpayment
99. Create recipe binder
100. Buy and learn to use Photoshop
101. Make a new ice cream flavour every 3 months (1/11)


Items completed: 10/101 (10% complete)
Items in progress: 19/101