It's Real Life: STORE IT: KITCHEN

  

     I told myself next time Jessica had a It's Real Life I would play.  Much to my chagrin it was the kitchen.  My kitchen is a bit of a mess, so here it is!  The photos are of course not staged and are not photoshopped, except for a little bit of cropping and exposure correction in a few.

 

I don't use "tupperware" I use gladware.  It's so much cheaper and stacks so nicely.  Why is it that the containers always disappear (or is it the lids reproduce?)  The lower shelf has my recipe binder for recipes that I've printed.  There's also the cookbook "Deceptively Delicious"  I use to try and sneak veggies into everything.  Most times Trevor isn't fooled.

Stainless steal container that holds all my cooking utensils, I love bamboo spoons.

2 baby bottle drying racks that hold sippy's and other misc. plastic things while they drip dry, they never get dry in the dishwasher.

This is pretty much the extent of cleaning supplies I use.  I guess I do use dishwasher detergent.  Very vinegar spray with a little tea tree oil.  A bottle of foaming dish soap.  I just keep refilling it with very diluted dishsoap.  Perfect for a little squirt when cleaning pots and pans, everything else goes in the dishwasher.  I don't imagine it would work as good for washing a sink of dishes

A very poorly used space, this is where appliances such as my food processor, blender, and who knows what else gets piled up, there's an identical cabinet below crammed to the brim.  In this cabinet is also my magic bullet which I love and use all the time.

The green and white thing my vidalia chop wizard which I think is one of the best inventions ever.  I gave it to everyone for Christmas last year.

This is where we "wee-cycle".  It's a really grimy landing on our basement stairs.  Muddy dogs stained the brick and it never comes clean.  Oh and that nice hole in the wall is where Cheyenne (our former Great Dane) decided to snack on drywall.  Repeatedly!

This is my compost bin, I just started composting in the fall so we'll see how it goes.

 

My favorite part of the kitchen and probably the only thing that will remain when when we remodel in a few years.  I love my pantry, it's one of the things that I fell in love with when we looked at this house.

My laptop is my cookbook!  I use Mastercook software after trying about 5 different  programs, I think this one is the best.  I have a stepstool I put my laptop on though so if there is a spill it doesn't land on my keyboard.

And that about does it.

I think I need to get a life

I just bought this vacuum and tried it out just a tiny bit since the kiddos are in bed.  How sad is it that I'm actually looking forward to vacuuming tomorrow?   It's pretty cool that it has a static type duster that you stick in the holder and it sucks the crap off of it.  In just the tiny spot I vacuumed it sucked up a ton of stuff and I vacuumed on Sunday.

I'm Dreaming of a new kitchen

Of course it's just dreaming at this stage because we don't even have the money to replace our dishwasher that's about to die and our appliances that were bought second hand that are probably 20 years old. I'm not even exaggerating!

I saw this show, Carter Can, on HGTV and this is so what I want the inspiration for my kitchen to be. Maybe minus the upper shelving and cabinets instead. It's eco friendly too with bamboo floors and Squak Mountain stone counter tops. This is what the Squak Mountain stone says on their website, "Squak Mountain Stone, Noun 1. A Fibrous-cement material comprised of recycled paper, recycled glass, coal fly-ash and Portland cement. Material is hand-cast into “slabs” as an alternative to natural or quarried stone. Resembles soapstone or limestones." It sure is purdy!

It's real life

So this is a little fun blog fest hosted by Jessica. She's a most awesome chick who I went to school with. Hi Jessica! ~Waves~

Ok so here's my real life, and I did no prepping either. Obviously! Oh and don't mind the typos, spelling and gramar errors. It's late, I have a migrane, and I'm really really tired. Being that it's "real life" and all, I didn't figure you all would mind!

Here's our fridge. Yup it's as dingy as it looks in the pictures. A new fridge is on my "need" list. As I ~need~ to not have to look at it's uglinessness any longer. It served us well. I think we paid like $50 for it when we bought our house 4 years ago. Among many things are: misc. pictures, at Trevor magnet with no picture of Trevor in it, daycare "care" sheets for the day, my "I can be reached at _____ " from when I went to Arizona for work in April. What's on top, who knows, I really don't care to find out.

Though chaos may reign in most of our house, my closets are fairly well organized. Except for the entry closet by my front door. That one is REALLY bad. I have an extreme lack of closet space. The one in our bedroom is barely big enough for Travis, my closet is in Jayden's room. Plus my "craft" closet is in her bedroom. Here clothes currently are in what used to be my fabric and craft cabinets in her room. I'm in trouble when she needs a real closet. I think at that time we'll probably have to move. This is my craft closet in Jayden's room. It's just a tiny little closet, too small really to be a clothes closet. My kitchen sink at the current moment is kinda nasty. Keep in mind with the flooding last week I worked every day and a ton of hours. Combined with the fact that we were to limit water usage. Ok so I'm making excuses. But darnit I'm tired! Of course next to the sink is my favoritest cleaning product, very vinegar spray.

The back of the toilet being a flat surface is a handy little catch all for all sorts of things. At the current moment it is home to my flat iron, hair dryer, the bathroom night light with burnt out bulb, and The Toddler's Busy Book. Oh yeah, don't forget the roll of toilet paper because we're both too lazy to put it on the holder, plus you'd throw out your shoulder trying to reach it if it were mounted on the wall. Last but not least is another bottle of vinegar spray. If you happen to use my toilet, please remember to hold the handle down while you flush because it doesn't flush properly if you don't. Oh, and you might even have to do this 2 or 3 times to actually empty the bowl. A new toilet is also on my ~need~ list.

Here's my "Kitty-toes" Me-ow! My favorite work shoes were at one point uber comfy. I don't know why comfy-ness in shoes wears out so quickly. I wish I could somehow insert the soles of my crocs in my work shoes. Alas, I can't wear crocs to work. It's specifically forbidden in our dress code. These shoes are on my ~need~ list. They have a Pillow Top™ Comfort footbed, sounds comfy right? My favorite everywhere-but-work shoes are fantastic, I'm a barefoot kinda gal and these things the closest to being barefoot without violating the "no shirt, no shoes, no service" rule most establishments seem to have. They were $1 at the Dollar Tree last summer. If I would have know how much I'd love them I would have bought 10 pairs! Don't mind the chipped toenail polish. I don't know what happened to them, I painted them last night! Damn cheap toenail polish (3/$1 at target dollar section what a bargain! ~sheesh~

I suppose currently my favorite room in my house is our office. Well it's where I spend alot of time these days trying to scrapbook (ok organize scrapbook stuff.) Peaceful retreat? Not really, it's too cluttered. I need to work on that. My peaceful retreat used to be the laudry room in the basement, but now our basement is dank and damp and not a fun place to be because I have to wear shoes.

Right now my kids are sleeping, but when I snapped their pictures Trevor was loading up his mega blocks dump truck with stuff a driving it around. Jayden is walking around, yup, she's finally WALKING. That's a new development in the last few days. She also does this funny little trick where she sticks her butt up in the air as she's trying to stand up on her own. She can't quite do it yet but it's only a matter of time.

Laundry???? Which pile are you talking about? This one over here or that one over there? That pile in the corner? Or the damp pile of towels in the bathroom? We have laundry piles strategically placed all over the house it seems. It's gotten better now that I was actually able to finally use water to wash clothes. My basement depresses me lately so it's hard to keep up on laundry.

And here's my self portrait. Any idea how hard it is to take a self portrait with little ones trying to climb over you? Of course you do! Why yes I just got my hair cut! And of course these are new glasses! I own more glasses than shoes. When I get bored at work I just buy new glasses! Shhhh! Don't tell Travis!

Someday...

Jessica's post at Farm Fresh made me yearn for a solution to my own cluttered "entryway" I would love to have a mudroom or a porch. Something other than just walking into my kitchen. So here is my own problem area. The door you see is the door we use almost exclusively to come and go. Notice the coat hooks and shoe cubbies I tried to solve our issue. The cubbies are too small and make putting shoes away more a hassle than anything. The beautiful white pantry houses sippies, bibs, ton's of plastic bags, bottles no longer used and haven't been put/given away, and a bunch-o-crap.

Someday when I eliminate the cabinet I would like to do something like this in it's place. But as you can see at the moment there is no room for anything even close to it. Hmmmm... Maybe I should work on that. But if I loose my purdy white cabinet where would I let all my dishes drip dry? I don't use the dry cycle on the dishwasher because when I do it smells like it's going to catch fire. And even when I do all the plastic containers and sippys are still wet.

Maybe there's hope, I just showed the picture to Trav and he's receptive anyway.

Up before the sun

Today I was up at 6am. I couldn't go back to sleep. I'm starting to get a little nervous about starting my new job. I'm pretty excited about it. I'm really glad I took these 2 weeks off work part of me is really sad to go back to work, the other part of me is ready. The kiddos have actually been really good for the most part. It started out a little rocky with the normal weekend happenings... both kiddos mostly climbing all over me and freaking out if I left the room; especially Jayden. This week though has been great, I'm able for the most part to get some stuff done. Jayden's sleeping through the night and going down with only a little bit of fight. Nap times on the other hand are a disaster! She'll sleep for maybe 30-40 minutes tops! Sometimes we get 2 short naps out of her, other it's catnaps in our arms and freak-outs if we lay her down. But hey, I'm getting longer stretches of sleep at night so I can't complain too loudly!



As far as what I've accomplished off of my agenda... Not a whole heck of a lot.

~Declutter whole house - kitchen, living room, bathroom, closets, Trevor's room - yes Jayden's room, our bedroom, basement, office - not so much
~ Ebay/Freecycle/donate a ton of stuff - I've freecycled some stuff still more to get rid of. Bunch of stuff to list on freecycle today. Instead of ebay I think we are going to have a yard sale sometime this spring/summer.
~ Balance check book - Man, I hate doing this and I do it like every three months and even with quicken it takes forever b/c I don't keep up with entering my receipts. Maybe tonight?
~ Organize my scrapbook computer files - well, I had them pretty much caught up but then I went on my 4 day freebie binge and I have ummm...errrrr 22 gig worth of stuff to organize. Oops!!!
~ Deep clean house top to bottom - Well I've kinda partially cleaned in most every room but flitted about so no room so far is totally clean. ~sigh~
~ Scrapbook some pages - Well I've got one done. :o) I'll do 2 more then that will qualify as some!
~ Get caught up on blogging - Well if you scroll back through the history I've posted a ton-o-stuff! This post finds me completely up to date!
~ Relax! Relax! Relax! - check, check, and CHECK! Seems I've done nothing but! I suppose this should have been number one... after all isn't that the point of vacation?

We have grass!!!

:o) :o) :o)

It's taken Travis a lot of work to get grass to grow in our side yard. But finally we have nice thick grass. Now Trevor can play in it. It's the only part of our yard that is fenced for the time being. This area used to be the dog run, but it's really big! Eventually we will fence the rest of the yard and it will once again be a dog run. But in the meantime, it's the perfect size for a toddler to stretch his legs!

Trevor loves to spend time outdoors. Too bad he throughs a bloody fit when it's time to come inside. No matter how long we've been playing.

The sandbox and car were courtesy of Grandpa G. He bought Trevor the sandbox and got the car for free I think. The trike thing is courtesy of Grandma H. She got it during city wide cleanup. I love free things. :o)

Mission organization

Not that any of you reading probably care about what I'm posting now. This is mainly for my family journal I'm making.

I had a ton of things I planned to do while on maternity leave. In addition to spending time with my babes of course. I'm happy to say I completed most of it. Or at the very least parts of most of it.

~ Office cleaned and organized top to bottom - Check! That was a big project because as I posted earlier it was a MESS.
~ Attic organized - Check! I got everything into rubbermaids, labeled and sorted. Now I can actually find stuff up there. It's not clean but very organized.
~ Jayden's room put together - Almost done. I have a few things there that don't belong. I also need to get her teddy bears put out. Someday I'll have to make her curtains. It was my craft room and it was packed full of stuff. I have done a serious purge of my fabric, crafting and scrapbook stuff. What is remaining is located in various containers of the house. A closet in Jayden's room houses the majority of stuff that will be regularly used as well as old photos and albums. My scrapbook paper and some other scrapbook stuff in the front hall closet. The stairwell to the attic has a bunch of stuff. And 2 totes of fabric in the attic.
~ Kitchen cleaned/organized from top to bottom - Not quite. I need to organize a few cabinets and clean the fridge. But I did scrub the floor on my hands and knees with a scrubby and even got the baseboards and under the cabinets. AND I scrubbed all of our cabinets.
~ Trevors room cleaned/organized - Check! Well... just a few things out of place
~ Front foyer cleaned - Check!
~ All laundry done/put away - Almost done. 2 loads left of stuff that has to soak. All of the non fitting clothes have been stored in their proper totes in the attic by size. I had too big/too small clothes EVERYWHERE and no real system to store them. Now they are super organized. :o)
~ Recipe collection in Mastercook organized - work in progress... I have them about halfway categorized
~ Baby announcements sent - Envelopes are addressed, I just need to make the announcements and actually send them.
~ Decluttering in general -Check! We dumped a vanload of stuff at freecycle event, I took a van FULL of cardboard to recycle, and our garbage cans/recycle container have been FULL everyweek.

I have learned a few things about myself the last 6 weeks. The biggest is that I'm good at putting things away if and only if the have a permanent home to go to. Baskets, storage drawers and boxes, and my label maker are my friends. :o)

Joys of homeownership

We had a crew come out to put gutters on our house, thinking it was a simple procedure and an estimate was what we would be paying. Well when they started looking at the faschia (sp) they discovered the wood was rotten and the metal was bent up and would need replaced. Grrrrrr

The metal was 4.5o a foot and ALL needed to be replaced to prevent water from seeping under the gutters as it was pretty bent up from our crappy roofers that reroofed the house before we owned it. The wood was 2.50 a foot and luckily only about 20 feet needed to be replaced.

Sooooo... our $800 bid turned into $1400. Ouch! Well at least we have purdy new gutters and I can plant in the beds around our house. Well once I get some good soil in there. :o)

Getting my hands dirty

Today after all the running I had done I checked email to find someone on freecycle offering some flowers. Heck yeah! So I called Brian to see if he wanted to help me plant some flowers. So he went along and did the hard work for me. :o)

This nice lady shared with me:

Hostas - planted around a tree in the back yard
Blue Bells - planted on the sunny corner of the garage. One of the few places we have decent amount of sun.
Day lillies - not sure what variety but she said they are yellow. I got a bunch of them. They were planted on the backside of the garage. I'll have to move them later to a better spot once gutters are up.
Lillies of the Valley - By the stairs to the deck on the East side
Unknown plant (flowering?) - Planted next to the Lillies of the Valley

These were all big plants. We had a laundry basket and a box FULL. Have I ever said how much I love freecycle?

My house...

... will very soon be breathing a big HUGE sigh of relief! This weekend our local freecycle group is having what is called a "free for all." Imagine community wide garagesale. Then imagine everything is FREE. That is a free for all. :o) Fun times.

So being that we have WAY WAY WAY too much stuff in this house, and adding more to it everyday with the birth of our daughter, I am going on a massive decluttering fest. My goal is to fill our van with stuff by Saturday. And I plan to be VERY selective in the stuff that I bring home. The only things I'm searching for is a few kitchen items. Clothes that will fit my kiddos at sometime in the fairly near future. And maybe some books and girly type toys for Jayden. That's IT!!!!

Oh, and sigh of relief #2 is that Brian is moving into his own place in the next few weeks. So even more stuff will be out of our house. He's hoping to find some stuff to outfit his new place.

I guess #3 would be that we are finally getting gutters put on our house after being gutterless since we moved in. Long story... when they did the roof they had to take off the gutters because they were lead and we have been way to broke to do anything about it. Man, gutters are expensive! I had no idea it was going to be this much. We're looking at probably $800 - $1000!!! On the bright side hopefully it will limit the flooding in our basement and now I'll be able to finally plant flowers in the beds around out house. I planted some last spring and I think they all drowned. :o(

Zippity do dah

Oh what a happy day. Travis updated my computer. Our stuff came from tigerdirect yesterday and I was ohhhh so happy! He put a new motherboard and other various things in my computer so now it is pretty darn fast! And an added bonus of being able to log onto blogger and post from my own computer. It's so much better than emailing it to myself and hopping on one of our other computers to post.

We have 3 computers in our office, which is tiny. My computer, Trav's computer, and the "middle computer" which would be best described as our AV computer. It's our jukebox, tv (has a tv tuner) and once our DVD burner for it comes it will be home for our home videos. We just got a 250gig hard drive for it and I plan to upload our home videos off of our camcorder and make them into dvd. ahhhh that will be a daunting project. If anyone has any ideas on what to do with video of Trevors birth/time in the hospital that has absolutely NO sound I would love to hear them. I'm thinking of putting it to music but have no clue what music to use so ideas on that would be good too. As far as why we have no audio on them... Trav copied them to vhs and we started reusing the cassetes (8mm I think?) We gave a copy to Trav's mom and a week or 2 later she asked us do you realize there is no sound? We looked at our copy and sure enough, no sound on it either. I have no idea how it happened, but by the time we realized it we had taped completely over everything from birth to maybe into the first week home. I cried so hard! We don't have so much luck when it comes to videotaping I guess. Because of a miscommunication we don't have any video of our wedding either. :o(

So since this post is pretty much about computer stuff I'll share a picture of our office. It is a big HUGE mess at the moment since everything that doesn't have a home ~somehow~ lands on my half of the desk. One thing on my list of "projects to complete while on maternity leave" is to declutter the office and come up with a better system of organization. Right now there really is no system of organization and that is the problem. I think I'm going to have to take everything out of the room and put things away one thing at a time.

~Honest~ the rest of my house does not look like this!

Picture 1 is my desk, picture 2 is the "middle computer" and picture 3 is Trav's desk

Bats in the attic

Today Travis was cleaning up the attic, we have a ton of old nasty insulation that needs to come up. We've been woken many mornings over the last few months by nasty grating sound of something chewing in the attic. Of course it would have to be directly above our bed! I figured a squirrel had found it's way into our attic somehow.

I went up to see how much progress he was making. He told me that he has found no evidence of a squirrel in the attic. But, he informed me of another inhabitant of our house that I didn't know existed. Yikes, a furry little winged mouse... aka bat. He was asleep hanging creepily upside down in the dormers. Trav assured me that he's harmless and actually they are good. Anyone know of a way to get rid of them without killing them? I'm sure if we just took it outside it would find it's way back in. But I don't want to hurt him. :o(

I just know that it's going to make me nervous if I have to go into the attic for anything I've got stored. I just have this image of him flying into my hair.

Unfortunately we have found out that the squirrel likes to hang out on the ledge below the dormer above our bedroom window. I'm not sure how we are going to convince him that he needs to find another place to chew on his dinner. :o(