New Bathroom Closet

So, you know about all of those movies and TV shows that talk about people snooping through other people's bathroom cabinets, searching through pill bottles and feminine products, trying for find dirt on whoever lives there? If you ever come to my house, I invite you to do so.  Not particularly because I would like to share morning moisturizing routine with you, simply, because my house demands it.  My husband and I moved into our house, a cozy ranch rental, in July of last summer.  Luckily for us, we have fantastic natural shading that kept our house fairly cool all summer long, rarely having to turn on the air conditioning.  However when winter came and it was time to pop wood into the woodburner (yes, we use a woodburner to heat our house--it is more time consuming, but I have become a regular Paul Bunyon when it comes to using the circular saw to cut my own wood down to size), we finally found our central vent.  The majority of the heat come out of a dual sided vent located in both our dining room and bathroom closet. A closet with a folding door that we had to keep open at all times, showcasing my feminine products and my husbands shaving/trimming apparatuses in an ungodly mess.  There was nothing we could do, the closet door had to stay open, making it difficult to fit between the closet door and the half wall that hides our toilet, in order for heat to properly disperse through the house.  Whenever we had guests, my husband and I would find the closet door shut, stifling the heat as though our guest merely thought that we kept forgetting to close the door and they were saving us the embarrassment of having our toiletries on display, not understanding that we intentionally left it that way. Something had to be done.

 This is what our awful, cluttered bathroom closet looked like.  No Wonder people were coming into our home and shutting it each time they were in our bathroom.










I decided it was time to banish the closet door all together and organize the closet in a functional yet, pretty way.  Hubs and I ran to our local Marshalls and picked up a pretty grey patterned shelf liner, to hide the ugly white-washed plywood shelves.  I love what we found.

I took everything off the shelves, so I could clean and purge.  I couldn't believe the amount of half used shampoos/conditioners that I had stashed away in the corners.

After I sorted and purged, and decided which items would be returning to shelves, I lined and moved the shelves to a more pleasing arrangement. I am pretty happy with the final product.

I will of course be happier when I purchase some pretty containers to better organize our shelves, but it already makes a huge difference in my morning routine.  I love walking into my bathroom and know exactly where everything is. And I have to say, it looks much better without that bulky folding door in the way. I will share what I did with the door later--I'm pretty excited about that also!!

Before

After

 
Maybe it's just me, but I think it is a vast improvement.


That's one project completed start to finish...now to resume all of my half started to-do's...

I am going to try this again.

I say again because this is probably the sixth time or so that I have attempted to start writing again.  Now that the wedding is long over, (it went fabulously) I no longer have the added stress of having something to be doing.  My husband told me yesterday that I need a hobby.  He is right.  It's not like I don't have anything to do.  I teach from five thirty am to one thirty, then bartend randomly throughout the week. I always have an insane amount of laundry staring me in the face when I get home.  I am constantly finding new ideas for projects to do around the house. There is plenty to keep me occupied. My problem is that I don't have anything that I NEED to be doing.  Thus, I typically have approximately seven to twelve half completed projects around the house (seriously: wine rack/bar stand that never got polyurethane after painting, dresser that is missing 1/8 of it's laminate because I wanted to refinish it and got frustrated with removing the laminate, countless frames that simply need hung, spare bedroom full of wedding decor that needs sorted).  There just isn't anything or one to hold me accountable for my project A.D.D./half ass-ness.Just about the only thing I do that I am completely committed to at this point is spending a long period of time on Pinterest to find ideas for all of the wonderful projects I have envisioned that will most likely never get completed.

So, as of today, I will be using this blog as a way to hold myself accountable for all of the awesome/ridiculous projects I have in my head.  First up would be my spare bedroom.

Our spare bedroom is seriously just the store all for when we have people coming over.  We wait until the very last minute then the mad dash begins to collect all of the clutter from the rest of the house and throw it into the dark abyss of the spare, to simply accumulate.  It's embarrassing.   I mean, seriously, there are fall decorations, clothes, crafting supplies, a roaster, wedding decorations, all thrown into one room. I wish I could say that it is because we never go into that room.  My husbands closet is in the spare bedroom. Yikes, right? Here are a couple shots of shame:

It's pretty ridiculous, right?!? It looks like the beginning stages of hoarding.


Wish me luck.

124 Days

124 days.  That's it.  In 124 days I will be marrying my best friend in the entire world.  Which once I type it, it seems like great news.  In 124 days my last name will go from eleven letters to six. In 124 days I am going to dance the night away with the people that I love most in the world.  In 124 days we will be throwing a gigantic celebration in honor of the love we share.  In 124 days I am going to be his wife...HIS WIFE...that is awesome.  Until you convert the 124 days that are left into what it really is...four months.  Four months to officially book the church that we have been having trouble nailing down.  Four months to get the menu exactly right.  Four months to plan every little detail of the reception from the centerpieces to pace settings to table skirts.  We ONLY have four months to pull together all the loose ends of our DIY wedding.  Let's just say...

I'm starting to freak.

Here is a little secret about me: I don't do very well asking for help or handing over control.  It's not that I don't necessarily trust my family/friends/bridal party--I absolutely do.  I am very blessed to be surrounding by a great group of crafty and talented women.  I just don't want to hand over that responsibility.  I mean seriously, why would I want to put someone I obviously like out by asking them to take the time out of their equally busy lives so I can dump some of my own stress onto them.  That doesn't seem very nice.  These are people that I am trying not to run off. 

Now all of this isn't to say that I only have four months to put together an entire wedding start to finish.  We have most of the big important things planned and in place, I just wish we had more than four months to do all the rest of it!

Now that I have done a sufficient amount of whining I can share some pictures of some of the fun things I have ready!  But first, here is a little background on the wedding colors, theme, etc.  Due to the before mentioned control issues, much of the wedding is DIY, centerpieces, favors, table numbers, food, pretty much as much as I can possibly do for as inexpensive as I can possibly do it.  Our wedding colors are navy and nude (or I guess champagne for all those people who keep giving me funny looks when I say nude--they just don't get it) with a lot of burlap and twine incorporated throughout the whole decor to create a feminine country chic theme.  I am 100 percent in love with the whole idea of dainty feminine neutrals of nude/champagne with the natural textures of burlap and twine with sharp pops of navy.  In order to follow through with our color scheme and concept we created the prettiest little centerpieces.

::Centerpieces::

Our tables will be covered with a very plain white cloth with a burlap runner going down the middle of each round. And when I say burlap, I don't mean that close knit craft burlap, I mean that natural loose knit burlap that you lay in your flower beds to kep weeds out or wrap your bushes in when it starts getting cold. 

In order to create the centerpieces we found these great 4 packs of glass milk bottles on clearance at Pat Catan's, wrapped the necks of the bottles with natural jute twine, tied a bow and filled them with three different fillers: natural dried brush, cream dried brush, and dried wheat.  Then to finish the very simple look we are just collecting old jars--spaghetti sauce, salsa, jelly jars, you name it--filling them with the left over wheat that was too long for the bottles, and a flameless candle.  My fiance even helped me wrap the bottles.  I think they turned our pretty darn good.  Let me know what you think!  Any advice or feedback would be world of helpful.

--Stina

The bottles my fiance and I wrapped, bowed, and glued

Natural broom brush

Cream brush

Goldenrod wheat

Here goes..

Now I have to admit, the whole idea of writing a blog and putting myself out on the internet is both terrifying and liberating.  On the one hand, the fact that my thoughts and ideas will be posted for the world to see scare the crap out of the paranoid Jersey girl inside me. When you grow up in Jersey, you know that you can't trust people. Heck, the 12, 6, and 9 o'clock news are all filled with stories of DIFFERENT crimes that happened throughout the day. Unlike here in Ohio where the news is more about weather and what is happening in the local school district.  On the other hand, the thought of getting all of my thoughts and ideas off my chest is already relieving the stress that I seem to always give in to.  I haven't really sold myself to either side however, so I guess this will just have to see how it goes.