Organizing the Pantry (again)

It seems like just yesterday I was posting about organizing the pantry. HERE is the old post about just such a thing. Actually it was a little over a year ago. I have organized it since but nothing too crazy.

This time I pulled out all the stops shelves. The house was originally designed to have the laundry area where the pantry is. Strange enough, with an open floor plan that means in my dining room. The lovely people who first built my house (not me) changed the idea and had the laundry area moved into the 4th bedroom and the bedroom redesigned into a laundry/huge extra random closet. The old laundry area then became the pantry.

This isn't horrible except the shelves are so far apart you can't seem to utilize the space well. Honestly, it totally stinks!

Three huge shelves just doesn't cut it. Look at all that extra room between shelves! Time for a change!

Step 1: Clutter your entire house kitchen with all the things from your pantry while you demo. Do it during something fun like on a Wednesday night after church and two days before something major (like report cards due at school). :o)

Step 2: Grab your hammer! This is the really fun part, DEMO! Take out all your pent up aggression issues out on the shelves.

Step 3: Stand back and realize you didn't think about patching holes or painting and don't really have time for it. Ooppssyyy!

Step 4: Tell yourself you will paint behind there later but right now this has to be put back before your family strings you up.

Step 5: Begin shelf reassignment. We had some old shelves we had purchased from Lowes to use in that extra closet that we also ripped out (more on that later) and had placed these shelves and the track system in the garage. They were quickly re-purposed.

Step 6: Cut down the 2nd shelf so that you can have one seamless shelf the entire pantry wide.

Step 7: Quickly put everything back and call it a day.

It still isn't 100% perfect because I just can't find a solution for bagged items that are large. What do you do when you snag a great coupon deal and get 6 bags of Chex Mix or Chips?

I was able to put many small items into these great containers I bought at Wal-Mart. They were about $12-$14 each but I saved so much room by unboxing items I purchased from Amazon and placing them into the drawers. Each drawer then got a label from my label maker so my husband kids knew where everything was. I was even able to make room for my extra candles (they are in the left container, bottom two drawers), my plastic silverware and extra napkins (bottom drawer on the right organizer) and all those annoying drink packages and tea bags.

With the extra shelves and the items more compact, I was able to bring my cookbooks into the pantry where they freed up an entire 12 inch cabinet in my kitchen to put dish towels and extra ziploc baggies.

I will be posting more on these cute glass jars tomorrow! So what do you think of the pantry now? Is it horrible that I didn't patch and paint first?

The Kitchen Island Make Over Part 1

The kitchen Island has long been an eye sore right along with my totally hideous racing stripe beautiful kitchen floor. We have thrown around some ideas and pinned pictures on Pinterest of great things one can do as a kitchen island.

I scoured Craigslist for an awesome dresser and just haven't found it. I also took a look at my remodeling budget and with a total lack of funds, sighed loudly and went to Lowes for paint. I picked up the paint that was the last color on the paint sample for my kitchen. Our cabinets were done with Rustoleum's Cabinet transformations color matched to Valspar's Comet Dust.


Valspar 5006-1A Comet Dust at MyPerfectColor

The walls and back splash in the entire area are Valspar's Notre Dame.


Valspar 5006-1B Notre Dame at MyPerfectColor

I wanted the island to be darker than both and still coordinate so I went with the last color which is Valspar's Granite Dust.

Valspar 5006-1C Granite Dust at MyPerfectColor   

The Granite Dust color is slightly darker in real life. Since we aren't keeping this island forever, I purchased Olympic 15 year semi-gloss interior paint and had the Valspar color matched to it. Honestly, it was just price. The Olympic was only $18 and the Valspar $33. If it was a forever piece it would have been the Valspar hands down.

This means I can finally get rid of the evidence that I sprayed my cabinets on the kitchen island! It is a war wound I'd like gone.

 

Step 1 is to remove the hardware, doors, and drawers.

Step 2 is to degloss. I'm using the same deglosser left over from the cabinet transformation. 

Step 3 is scheduled for next Friday night! Whoo hoo! What adventure!

Holiday Craziness and Adorable Holiday Milk Bottles

So in the event of saving tears time, I will explain what happened in the kitchen. I will just direct you to the post HERE about the dishwasher. Lucky for us, I was able to fix it quickly and it is now working very well and beautiful to boot!

Pardon the fingerprints. The 4 year old likes to help "load" the dishwasher now.

We have a Christmas gathering for my husband's side of the family each year at Christmas Eve. For the last five years it has been at our house. We got off at 12 on Friday from work and hurried like crazy busy bees to finish everything. Saturday we had two other places to go before our party that night so we were totally wiped excited by the time ours came.

In the middle of it all, I also decided to make all of our Christmas gifts for adults. I made cake balls, coconut/dark chocolate cookies, peppermint bark, peanut butter cups, and peppermint patties. Here is what my peppermint bark looked like but I didn't think like a blogger a head because I didn't take pictures of anything else.

We also didn't put up a large tree this year because well, we didn't have one! Our fake one died last year and we never found one after Christmas shopping. I found this adorable 4 foot one and we were going to put it on the porch until we realized we didn't have one this year and it became our tree inside. We gagged  refused when we saw that Michael's wanted $229 for a 6 1/2 foot fake one.

I showed them though. I bought it at 80% off after Christmas for next year. It has colored lights which seems so retro to me but the girls thought it was awesome. We left it up for a few days just so we could saw we had a tree up.

I made some adorable milk bottles from Starbucks frappuccino glass bottles using some great printables from HERE . It is from Shindig Parties on Etsy! I love Etsy!

Step 1: Drink Frappuccino :o)

Step 2: Wash out bottle

Step 3: Soak bottle in soapy water for about 20 minutes to loosen up the labels.

Step 4: Peel off the labels (there are 2) and use Goof Off or Goo Be Gone on any residue that remains.

Step 5: Wash again in hot, soapy water or your dishwasher.

Step 6: Cut out adorable labels from Etsy and tape around bottle

Step 7: Put coordinating straw in and enjoy!

They were also good Christmas morning with apple juice while Daddy made pancakes!

Valentine's Day Mantle

I took all the Christmas decorations down (left up some snow ones), and decided I needed to LOVE my mantle. Out came all the holiday floral and reindeer and in went some pinks, hearts, a candlestick and more hearts!

The two glass jars are from Michael's last year and all the other hearts: Michael's as well. The hearts are pretty easy to imitate. Just take a heart cut out of cardboard or wood (also found at your local hobby store) and cover in glue and drizzle with sequins or beads. It won't be as 3-D looking as these but it will do in a pinch. You can also find Christmas ornaments and rip things off of them to create hearts. Trust me. It's wrong but it works.

I have some snowflakes that were christmas ornaments tucked in here and there. The candle stick was purchased at Marshall's a few years ago. A little ribbon and some off-white Partylite candles and shazzam! It is now Valetine's ified. :o)

The "Wish" was a Kohl's after Christmas sale about 2 years ago. I use this for my Christmas/Winter mantle and it stays up for Valentine's day. It sometimes comes back out for the girls' birthday parties depending on the themes.

Linking up to:
Stories of A to Z
herecomesthesun
www.homestoriesatoz.com

Our Christmas Card

Pretty Pattern Christmas Card

Visit Shutterfly.com for classic photo Christmas cards.

View the entire collection of cards.

 

We just love this picture I took of the girls at my friend's wedding reception back in August. The girls haven't changed any at all and it is SO hard to get them both to look great in one picture that we decided to just turn this one black and white, crop a little closer, and slap a Merry Christmas to it. After all, my husband and I both believe they are our greatest accomplishments period so we take every opportunity to show them off. 

When DIY Goes Horribly Wrong!

Let me begin by explaining the saga that is my life. I over analyze EVERYTHING! It is a fault that I am working on daily. However, because of this issue it takes me forever to make decisions regarding important purchases. For example, we were given a dishwasher about 2 1/2 years ago by one of my mother's neighbors when she purchased all stainless appliances. There was nothing wrong with the dishwasher it was just younger than our own hideous one that came with our house when we purchased it. Our house is 16 years old so the original dishwasher was 13 1/2 when it was replaced.

The dishwasher from our friend lasted the 2 1/2 years before it finally gave up working. During that time, we had repairmen out once to fix a worn out part but that this point it had broken pieces and rarely washed a load of dishes where they all came out clean.

You can see part of the dishwasher here. This was taken in October before our youngest daughter's birthday party.

We had been debating whether to replace our stove (which is acting funny and not in a ha ha sort of way) or the dishwasher when the dishwasher made the decision for us. We shopped around a lot. By WE I mean I scoured reviews from Lowes, Home Depot, Amazon, Best Buy, HH Gregg, etc. All the dishwashers with the hidden controls had horrible reviews where the control panel motors had all been replaced 2-3 times and people warned potential buyers away like a proverbial lions' den.

After looking at all the sites over and over again, I decided to check out the Black Friday sales which may or may not have something I want. I found a Maytag dishwasher from Lowes with great reviews and an even greater price point. The only thing it had that I didn't want was controls you could see. Oh well, it was still stainless, it had an all stainless tub and I could actually fit pots into it? I was sold! I purchased it online with a few coupon codes on Thanksgiving Day and VOILA! for a reasonable price it was going to be delivered to my home on Black Friday!

The delivery men were amazing and came exactly when they said they would. I unboxed my beautiful new appliance and set off installing it. Problem number one. I had never heard of a strain relief for electrical wires and thought it isn't necessary according to the directions so I just won't use it. Then the new dishwasher did not come with wire connectors but I just used the ones from the old dishwasher. They worked so we were great! After about an hour and a half I had a beautiful dishwasher in my kitchen!

Then, we ran it. It worked very well the first time Friday night. Saturday we were a flurry of working on organizing the garage and finishing up the laminate floors in the girls' rooms (more on that later).  On one of the trips back in to the house from the garage we smelled a noxious odor that made you want to throw up/cry/scream all at once! I thought it could possibly we the battery we were charging for the drill as our drill is old and trying to die. We immediately unplugged it and also turned off the dishwasher just in case. We spent an hour trying to figure out what was making the smell. We decided to turn off the breaker for the plugs in the kitchen and the dishwasher just in case. We took the kids out of the house and to the store for 2 hours just to make sure the smell was gone. When we came home I smelled the odor coming from the little vent in the dishwasher (see photo top left).  I was immediately horrified and decided not to mess with it before I hurt myself or the dishwasher. I have been working on Christmas candy, laundry, lesson plans, wrapping presents and just life for the last 2 weeks and have ignored the lovely dishwasher. In the meantime, our kitchen has become a cesspool or disgusting dishes as since I am making the Christmas Candy my husband is in charge of dishes. He is slacking BIG time!

Pardon the horrible lighting, this is an early morning picture. My floor is still also nasty as we haven't decided whether we are doing tile or hardwood, so there is still a nasty stripe of sub-floor in front of our beautiful cabinets. Of course we also have Christmas candy carnage presents everywhere!

Finally, last night I decided to tackle the problem head on. I pulled the dishwasher out and left all connections in place (remember the breaker is off at this point).  Everything looked fine until I pulled out my connections. Don't ask how but one (only one of two) wire connectors decided to melt. This had nothing to do with the strain relief but apparently with the wire connectors. So, it is off to Lowes to buy both a strain relief (just in case) and a new set of wire connectors. UGGGHHH! At least it wasn't worse and I can salvage the wires and fix it. I am not sure exactly what happened but it will be fixed so I can reclaim my kitchen and my beautiful new dishwasher.

On a side note, both girls' floors are finished and so is a new shelf and all decorated for our Christmas Eve party.

Working on Christmas

I'm in the process of finishing up some great things around the house but I stopped to decorate a little for Christmas. Of course, as a teacher, this is my favorite time of year as winter brings snow and can possibly brig unexpected days off with my family. Here is a new shelf we hung in the kitchen last night. I just love looking at this while making my cookies!