10 months.

This little face melts my heart every morning:

Each month, I like to take pics of Liv in her rocking chair. It's getting more difficult as she's more of a squirrel girl these days :) so I occupied her with a book--"I Am a Bunny," which is one of her favorites. She likes to point out Nicholas the bunny on the pages, and she will turn a page for you if you ask her to, or if you take too long to turn it yourself!

After dress-up time, I bundled her in her snow suit and took her outside to experience the snow. Dex, of course, showed his approval of her warm getup...

...And made sure she was doing okay sitting in the snow. {Actually, I think he thought she was going to feed some to him, one of his favorite treats. Sorry, D.}

Little bean is growing quick, and we are loving every second of it.

Project #1: The Linen Closet

At the end of our hallway lies our linen closet, which has been a mess for awhile. I finally tackled it this afternoon while plying Liv with some puffs:

So I started by taking everything out and cluttering up our bedroom {as you can see behind Liv there}. I loved seeing these shelves bare! I had a limited time to work with this space as Liv only lasts so long in her bouncer--a good challenge. Otherwise I'm sure I could spend hours on something simple like this!

I removed a lot of things that I normally keep in here, like medicine and lots of baby stuff. Time to pack away the baby stuff with the clothes that are too small--I didn't realize how much I was cramming in there that I could've packed in the basement months ago.

The things I left in this closet were towels, paper towels {upper left on top}, our sheets, Liv's sheets, a box of medicine after all, and a few odds and ends: a basket with my iron, an extra night light, a lint roller, and a scented sachet envelope to keep the closet fresh.

Before:

After:

Look! Extra space! Can you believe it? I may move some stuff from Liv's room onto that shelf {towels and what not} but for now, I'll take the space. Horray! Project #1 accomplished!

i can see clearly now.

I love my dog. I really do. But one thing he does that drive me ab.so.lutely bonkers is that when he wants inside from the yard, he goes crazy: dancing at the door, wiping his nasty paws all over the glass. Sometimes he'll sit at the door and wait patiently, but this is a rarity... luckily, I have my very own squeegee to erase the mess.

Did you know how excited I was when I saw this at Walmart months ago?? It was only a few bucks, and I was beyond ecstatic. I don't even think I put it in the cart; I just hung onto it until we checked out. R didn't share my enthusiasm, but I know he appreciates clean windows.

Anyway, so I broke that out today, with Dex by my side watching every swipe. I know it won't stay like this for long, but for today I can feel good about it. ;)

Don't mind the tattered deck, also compliments of Dex.... sigh...

Okay, now I'm off to clean the linen closet like I said I was going to do this week. More soon!

the zero-waste home: really...?!



Sunset Magazine, sunset.com


So I want to clean and be organized... but these peeps are REALLY neat & tidy. Yowza. A must-read article; would be interested in your thoughts. Can you even imagine going to these lengths? I really can't... you certainly wouldn't have to worry about tidying up when company came over, though, which would be nice...

the organized year.

I constantly wish that I inherited my mom's cleaning gene, because she is an organization guru... You ask her where something is and she can tell you to a T, and miraculously, it's always there. I don't know why this didn't fascinate me before, but now that I'm a mom it's amazing I can find anything on a day-to-day basis. It just happens that way! If you're not intentional, everything falls. So. I've decided I need to finally get a grasp on organization and just do it.

So with that, I'm going to commit to organizing our home this year, bit by bit. And I'm going to post about it. {Eeek! Good ole accountability!} I was debating about posting all of this on my sidecar site, HealthyBecause, because I think being orderly is healthy, but as I don't really have any projects going right now here, VP is where it's at. So here we go.

Step 1: Identify problems. I've noticed that it's my tendency to not finish home or craft projects. Let's be honest. As soon as I get bored or tired, I justify walking away and leaving it as it is for who knows how long. Sometimes the justification is, "I can't figure this out, I need to think about it and come back" {and then won't} or "How long have I been doing this? Time to start something new..." {and I will}. Why is this? Am I too ambitious in the beginning? Most likely. Am I not patient enough to wade through learning a new skill? Often. Whatever it is, I'd really like to get over it. We were going to "redo" our bedroom, and we got as far as painting it a new color, but nothing else really changed. More on that later. So I'd like to take unfinished to finished this year.

Step 2: A new perspective. I grabbed my camera yesterday and snapped pics of all the areas I want to organize. I feel like I see them everyday, but looking at a picture on the computer makes it different somehow. I'll share these with you as I go, as embarassing as they will be.

Step 3: Inspiration photos. For the last couple of weeks, I've been mostly googling around for inspiration pictures. Imitation will be the route I take to begin with, and I've found some really fun photos... Let's start there to whet the organizing appetite:

I love an organized bookcase. I have two that aren't really doing much except taking up space; hopefully I can make them functional and appealing to boot.

I looove the gray and white kitchen... But we have honey-colored wood in our kitchen, along with cream-colored cabinets. Not sure gray would be the best choice...

How cute is this? Maybe for Liv's drawer someday?

I also love this bookshelf. Would be easy to make... and could be a great place for baby's library books. {Seeing is remembering to return them :)}

Step 4: Pick a place and start. This week, my goal is a small one {as much as I want to start with the kitchen! See?? Over ambitious!}. I want go through and organize the upstairs linen closet. Here's a before picture.

Dum dum dummmm...