Sick

I have been sick going on three weeks now.  I will feel better for may be 3 days and get super sick again.  Eriks has been sick on and off too.  Hopefully in the next couple of days I will be able to get into the doctor and see what is up with me.  But I just wanted to let you know that I am still here.  I have several posts in the works; Snoop Dogg Concert, Our trip to Vegas for our anniversary, my new church and Super Bowl.  So yeah.  I will try to get those up within the next week or so.

21 Day Challenge

I don't have anything else left to organize.  My apartment is so small and I have organized everything possible.  So... my 21 Day Challenge turned into a 16 Day Challenge.  But, that is okay because my house is SUPER organized!  I do have to say that I LOVE IT!  I am so happy that A Bowl Full of Lemons put a fire under my butt to finally get my house organized!  Thank you Toni.

Day 17 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 17 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was to organize our mail area.  Um... I really don't have a mail area or a place to have a mail area.  I go through and organize all of our mail as soon as it comes every day.  So instead of the mail, I decided to organize all of my paperwork.  I keep my paperwork with all of my craft stuff because that is sort of my area of the house.  Here is the messy before picture:

This project took about 2 hours.  I organized the two brown holders (craft papers), the clear and pink paper holder (official and professional paperwork) and the white binder (craft and sewing tutorials and ideas).  After I organized everything I put it all back on the shelf.  You cannot really tell all that much, but it is so much better!

Day 16 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 16 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was to organize the fridge.  Well in our house, it is only Eriks and I.  We have a small fridge to begin with, and in our fridge we don't have much to organize.  The top shelf is for drinks, the middle shelf is for left overs, the door is for condiments and the bottom shelf is for everything else.  Not too complicated with our tiny fridge.  So instead, I decided to finally organize the drawers in my desk.  They are practically crafting junk drawers.  I never know where anything is and I just stuff things in drawers where they can fit.  Well not anymore!  This is the last time you will see these drawers looking like this:

After a whole hour of sorting and organizing, my drawers now look like this:

After a little organizing, I found that I actually have so much more room than I thought I had!

Day 15 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 15's challenge for a Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge is Medicines.  Eriks and I have several prescription medications that we take everyday.  Most of the time the medicine is strung all over the house.  Not so great I know, but hay we don't have kids so it is not that big of a deal.  So... today I think I need to find a permanent spot for them all to go!

I grabbed this little blue container, gathered all of the pills, 

put them in the blue container and vuala!  

 All of our pills are now corralled!  What an easy Challenge!

Day 14 of the 21 Day Challenge

Today's Challenge from A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was to organize under the bathroom sink.  I organized under the bathroom sink in December and have done a fantastic job (if I do say so myself) to keep it clean and organized.  So I decided to take this time to do a project that I have been wanting to do for a while now.  It is not necessarily "organizing", but I think you all will forgive me.  I Modpoged my desk drawers.

I got this desk back in Idaho.  Eriks and I were on a walk one night and saw this sitting on the sidewalk with a FOR SALE sign on it.  It was only $20!  I needed a sewing desk very badly and we thought this would be perfect.  So, we put $20 in their mail box and took it home.  It then make the long journey from Idaho to California where I am still in love with it.

The only problem about my poor little desk is that it is actually a child's desk.  The little girl who owned this before me left a lot of love on it.  One of the problems is that it had all of this uck on the drawers that I couldn't get off.

So... I Modpoged them! Problem solved! I loved the way they turned out! So cute.  What do you think?



Now all I have to do is to repaint the rest of the table and put contact paper in all of the drawers. Ahhh another day maybe!

Day 13 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 13 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge is to organize your medicine cabinet.

Before Pictures:

I semi organized my medicine cabinet a while ago, but I now think that what would really help me out is LABELS!  While I was at work, I made labels for everything in our medicine cabinet.  Now everything has a place! I think the labels turned out so cute!  I love them!
My new labels will help so much, especially when it comes to the man in the house knowing where I want everything to go :)

After Pictures:

Day 12 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 12 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge is to organize your spice cabinet.  Well my spices barley fill half a shoebox sized container in my pantry and didn't need organized, so I decided to organize my fabric.
I used to keep all of my fabric this basket:

Before Pictures

But then last week when I was at Big Lots, I found an awesome plastic 5 drawer chest.  I knew it would be perfect for my fabric so I picked it up for only $20.

I started off by taking all of the fabric out and organized it by color.  I  then made 5 different piles (for the five drawers).  1st pile: Neutral Fabrics 2nd pile Blue and Green Fabric 3rd pile: Red Pink Orange and Yellow Fabric 4th pile: IKEA (how sad is it that I have to have a separate drawer for my IKEA scraps?) and then last 5th pile: Current Projects

I then folded each of the fabrics and put them into the drawers:

I then made these super cute labels.

All done!  I am so happy with how it turned out.  Too cute.

Day 11 of the 21 Day Challange

Today's challenge was to organize the freezer.  The only problem is that my freezer is ober tiny and there really isn't much to organize.  I tried but then reallized that all I did was move some samon.  So I decided to do something else.  I have been wanting to organize my books for a long time.  I still had books that I handn't even unpacked.

The Before Picture

Some Boxes of books

The first thing I did was move all of the CDs to the bottom level.  I then organized all of my book into the following categories: Anthropology, Classics, Theatre, History, Reference, Children and cooking.  After that, I put all of the books back onto the shelf according to those categories.

The After Picture

I then took all of the books that were too tall for these shelves ad put them downstairs.  Eriks and I just got this cool thing that we keep our litter box in.  Eriks installed a kitty door in the side of it so the cats can get in and out.  It is so nice!  Now we dont have to always step on kitty liter and we don't have to look at it anymore.  Well another plus is that the top has a bookshelf so it is perfect!

It was great to finally get all of this done!

New Years

This post is a little late but better late than never.  On New Years Eve Eriks, Aivars and I went to the city to celebrate.  We had so much fun.  We took the train into the city because not only is it a whole lot cheaper than having to pay for parking, but it is a lot easier too.  We were really lucky because we were standing next to this lady with a baby who was using a total of 3 seats.  Well we started talking to her and when she got off she let us have her seats which was awesome!  The train was so packed I was glade we were able to sit down.

Once we got to the city we all went to pizza.  Actually we went to the same pizza place that Eriks and I went to last year for our New Years Eve dinner.  I don't remember the last time I have laughed so hard.  We got pizza, bread sticks and soda.  We were probably there for an hour just hanging out and eating.
After dinner, the three of us just walked around and got some drinks at random bars.

Around 11pm we started to make our way down to where the fireworks were going to be.  There were so many people!  I didn't remember there being so many people last year.

We were able to get a really great spot to watch the fireworks.  They were beautiful!

Once the fireworks stopped it was almost as if the flood gates were opened because it started raining really hard.  The three of us practically ran back to the station.  Because we ran, we were able to get in the front of the line for the train.  It was great because once again we were able to get a seat.

It was so much fun ringing in the new year with my two favorite men.  What made it even better was that I was able to talk to all 3 of my brothers too.  I am so excited for what 2011 has in store for me!

Day 10 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 10 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was the Laundry Room.  Eriks and I live in an apartment with communal laundry facilities, but we have a cupboard for our stuff in the Laundry Room.  Also since Eriks' mom owns the complex, we have a little more liberty than what you would think with apartment living.

Here is the space

Here is our cubby

I have everything just kind of shoved in the cubby and on top of it.  In that green bag I have some parts for these really cool sweater dryer.  It allows the sweaters to lay flat but still get dry.  The second half of the dryer is on the top of the cubby.  I thought it would be a good idea to let my neighbors use them too if they want to. (we only have 3 other apartments besides Aivars and we are all really close so it is not that weird)  I decided to make some cloth bags from an old table cloth to hang from the wall to hold them.  Here is how they turned out:

After I put that up, everything fit into our little cubby

After that was finished, I took a good look at the washer and dryer.

Oh my gosh!  So GROSS!  I had never really looked at how clean they were before.  I broke out my handy dandy Clorox Wipes and went to scrubbing.  Woot Woot!

So much better.  I cannot wait until Eriks comes home and sees it!

Day 9 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 9 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge was your kids toys.  Well.... I don't have any kids or toys, so I decided to go through these containers that I keep in my coffee table.  They stack on top of one another.  One pair contains electronic stuff and the other pair contains some school stuff.  I have been wanting to go through these for a while now.  This is how I started out

I started out by dumping all of the writing utencils out onto the floor.  I tested every single pen and sharpened every pencil.  I through away all of the pens that didnt work and then cleaned the container out and put everything back in.  The second container wasn't too bad, I just kind of titied it up a bit. After that, it was onto the electronic boxes.  I took everything out and tested all the cords and donated the ones that didn't go to anything as well as my two old phones (I have no idea why I was holding onto these)  I then organized all the the stuff I had left.  It is a nice feeling to have finally done this.  Now every time I sit on the couch I will not think "ugh I still need to do that".

Day 8 of the 21 Day Challenge

Day 8 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to getting Organized Challenge was the Coat Closet.  I have already organized most of my coat closet except the floor.  For some reason I cannot get the before picture off of the camera, but I will try to give you a description. Imagine this: A case of water bottles with no more water bottles in it,a huge bag of cat food with only about a bowl of cat food left in it,a yoga mat, toilet paper, random duct and clear tape, a plastic kitty litter bin that I keep the cat food in, a hammer, a shoe horn, a football, a soccer ball, a kite and tones of wires.  The first thing I did was clear everything out.

I swept the floor but all of these cords look gross.  I asked Eriks if we need all of these, and he said we do and not to unplug anything.  Since there really wasn't anything I could do about them I just tried to contain them the best that I could.

It is defiantly not perfect or pretty but I didn't know what else to do.  So there you go, it is at least better than what it was before.
  I then combined the cat food all into the plastic container and took out everything that didn't belong in the closet.  The only thing I was left with was the cat food, the balls/kite, my yoga mat and the toilet paper.  I can't believe how much better it looks!  I was so happy with how it turned out.

Quilting Group

Since I moved to California, I found out about this website called Meetup.com. It is a site where people form groups that you can join. Then the different groups post events that anyone can go to. I started looking at this site as a way to meet new people but haven't really followed through with anything.  I still check Meetup.com every once in a while just for kicks, but this time I just so happened to find a brand new group that is all about quilting!  I was so excited.  I signed up for the next meeting which just so happened to be the very first meeting ever of this group.  I was really excited about going but I was also really nervous.  I don't know why but the last 5 years or so I have had difficulty meeting new people and get really anxious.  I am working really hard to overcome this because I do not want it to hold me back from doing what I want to do. This time especially I did not want to let my nerves get the best of me.  I was going to go.
The meeting was at 3pm on Sunday.  It was in Fremont at the organizers house.  I ended up getting there really early, so I drove around a little bit.  I turned a corner and saw this:

 Doesn't it look like the Boise Foothills?!  I think it does.  Well I pulled the car over and just looked at them for about 10 min.  It was a very nice reminder of home and made me feel happy inside.  On my way back to location, I saw this sign and laughed out loud.

I have never seen a sign that says "Speed Hump" before  only 'Speep Bump".  Now I know, my mind sometimes thinks like a fifth grader, but I don't care.  I still think this sign is funny.
 I ended up being the first one to show up.  The organizer was obviously there and so was her mother.  Over the next 30 minutes 2 other people showed up too.  We had so much fun.  I worked on cutting out my quilt (that I am blogging about on E Designs) and everyone else worked on other projects that they had brought.  We had appetizers and desserts.  Here are some pictures from the event:

Everyone at the table working on their projects

Where I was cutting

The table where everyone was working on their projects

I was actually the first person to leave, I stayed for 3 hours (I had to get home to my honey bunny).  I had so much fun though.  I am soooo glad that I went, and cannot wait until the next meetup!

Day 7 of the 21 Day Challenge

It's Pantry day.  Before I could tackle Day 7 of A Bowl Full of Lemons 21 Days to Getting Organized Challenge I needed to go to the Dollar Store.  I just discovered that we have a Dollar Store in our area.  I got up and headed directly to the Dollar Store, I haven't been to one since I lived in Boise.  I was so excited.  I got lots of great stuff and lots of containers.  Once I got home, I got to work on my pantry.

Before (whole pantry)

After (whole pantry)

Shelf 1 Before

Shelf 1 After

Shelf 2 Before

Shelf 2 After

Shelf 3 Before

Shelf 3 After

Shelf 4 Before

Shelf 4 After

It is so nice to finally have this thing organized and to actually be able to close the door.  There was so much stuff on the floor I couldn't close it.  After all of my organizing I had plenty of space to put everything on a shelf.  The only thing that I am still going to want to fix is to get another one of those round containers to put the chips in.  Besides that I feel very accomplished! We have tomorrow off from the challenge, so I get to relax tomorrow.  Yay!