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Here’s a picture of my new wreath — all supplies are from my favorite store: Hobby Lobby

Another view of the wreath:

And a little fall centerpiece

Coming soon – pictures of the mantle and the front porch!

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I made the motto “make our house work for us” goal because I’m a habitual “throw it in the closet/cabinet” kind-a girl…. if company’s coming over you can bet the stuff laying around is probably going to be thrown into a closet. And I mean literally thrown into a closet.  So,  I’ve made small organizational projects to accomplish throughout the year to help me make our home more functional! In January my projects were the master bathroom cabinets and my side of the master closet.

Let me back up a bit… In December, I tackled the the kitchen by going through all of our cabinets and using my cool label machine and labeling where everything goes. It’s always fun to find measuring cups in the cabinet with the waffle maker. Tupperware? Forget about that – finding a lid was like finding a needle in a haystack. So a month ago I had gone through and purged all of the stuff in our cabinets and put like items together, then I went around and made labels for every single cabinet and drawer so that when you open it up it tells you exactly what goes there. So far it’s working for us… things still get misplaced but it’s a HUGE step in the right direction.

Back to January’s projects — I went through the bathroom cabinets last night and was amazed at some of the stuff I’ve held onto. I’m a sucker for buying hair products that I never use or use once and then hang on to it for years. I finally parted with most of it – if I haven’t used it in a year – it’s gone! A few dollar store buckets and our cabinets are totally organized and there’s so much room.  Organized into categories of hair stuff, medicines, travel supplies, cotton balls and q-tips, dental hygiene, bath and body works soaps, lotions, and deodrants. It’s perfect and so much more appealing. Back in November, I had an eletrical outlet installed inside our bathroom cabinets so that my hair dryer and roller can all stay plugged in and the cords out of sight… the best investment I’ve made in a long time because now the hair dryer and rollers go back in the drawer and it gets closed without ever having to plug or unplug anything! I should throw in a good laugh here because I rarely actually get the time to blow dry my hair and the rollers only get turneed on if it’s a hot date or we’re hanging out with friends. But, nevertheless, I’ve got a cool electrical outlet to keep things tidy without having to keep it all sitting on top of the counter. To finish off the bathroom organization projecft I bought an additional clothes hamper (which I lovingly called “clothes hampster” when I was younger) - so now we have 1 for darks and 1 for lights… when they fill up the laundry gets done. Hopefully that will help with laundry getting out of control (which happens in our house quite often).

Tonight while Lillian was napping I decided to tackle my side of the closet. I knew  I had about an hour to get whatever I could get finished completed. I was able to make a pile of clothes for donations (not worn a year = gone!), put up all of my maternity clothes (thank goodness!), organize my shoes, organize my shelves, and hung up all the clothes I’ve tried on. There’s still a lot of work to do but that was alot to get done in an hour.

I’m feeling really accomplished right now (and maybe a little tired) but it’s addicting when you start organizing… one project just leads to another.  I’ve got big plans.

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I’ve always been the type to let the dishes pile up in one side of the sink and load the dishwasher on an as-needed basis whenever I got around to it. And when I did load the dishwasher I have always been sure to rinse off every single dish before putting it in. I don’t know why, that’s just how I was taught? And, I’ve never really tested it to see if the dishwasher would really get the food off.  So, I always thought that you just rinsed dishes before they went in the dishwasher.

The other day at work I was talking with some co-workers and one of them was complaining about wanting to get a new dishwasher because it’s not cleaning as well (translation = she’s having to rinse her dishes before she puts them in). She also has an 18 month old and was explaining to me that she’s tired of hand washing his sippy cups everynight. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks…  I will have to hand wash sippy cups for another whole year and then some!?? I guess the thought of sippy cups never entered my mind and I thought for some magical reason that after bottles were over I wouldn’t have to do nightly handwashing of 8 bottles (like I do now).  She said she normally would just load everything in her dishwasher everynight, start it and unload it in the morning.  Makes total sense, right?

We have a perfectly fine dishwasher and I feel guilty that I’ve never really let it unleash it’s full potential…. it’s like I haven’t trusted it to get the dishes clean.  I feel like I need to make an apology to the mighty dishwasher. I’m sorry dishwasher that I haven’t been using you to your full capability, that I have spent many hours wasting water rinsing dishes before putting them in your baskets and that I have doubted your washing potential.

So, as I sat in the office with my co-workers my mind was flying (back to my house) thinking about how fast I could get home and try out my dishwasher with dirty dishes and how this extra 20 minutes in my day would make a world of difference without having to hand wash bottles every night.

I’ve been trying this now for about 5 days and it has made a total difference in my daily routine. No more dishes in the sink – I load them up as I go along and, get this, I don’t even rinse them off! Bottles? Yep, they go in there too (but I do rinse them out because the formula stinks after a while). At night I start it up, put on the sanitize function, and forget about it (if it’s full). In the morning, everything comes out sparkling clean no matter what food I left on it. I don’t know why I’m so amazed by this… it’s just that I’ve always doubted the dishwashers ability to clean. I should’ve started this YEARS ago but learning new housekeeping techniques has never really been at the top of my to-do list…

Every night my sink is clean… which inspires me to make sure the rest of everything is clean – counters are wiped off and the kitchen is clean! Wow, what a difference.

It’s the little things in life!

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Thanksgiving was great this year — lots of funand good food! And Ofcourse our little Lillian turkey was here so that was fun!

Lillian with her Grandmommy and Dah and all of her cousins on Gary’s side.

Our little family – Thanksgiving 2010

Our Lil’ Turkey!

We had a good old fashioned clay pigeon shoot on Thanksgiving as well.

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Here’s a blast from the past when we first started dating in March 2004:

Here are a couple of pictures from our engagement session taken 8 months later — wow how much we both changed in a few months! 

The picture above is one of my absolute favorite pictures from our engagement session.  Little tidbits of useless knowledge — our engagement pictures were taken with a film camera and I had to wait until the next day to get them developed and look at them (hard to even imagine this now that we have instant gratificaftion with our digital cameras). The day we took our engagement pictures it was 70 degress and we took them in downtown Dallas and the next day it SNOWED!

… my best friend asked me to marry him!! It was the most perfect moment! In a few weeks we will be celebrating 5 years of wedded bliss! Time must really fly when you’re having fun because it seems like yesterday when he proposed marriage.

On a blogging note… I’m going to post some updates tomorrow — I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve blogged (embarrassing) but the Rangers playoffs and World Series really just took all of the spare time that I had!

I am so excited for the Holidays to get here that I can barely stand it! Things are going great here and we’ll post some pictures and stories tomorrow!

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 This little girl is precious and she was so content the entire time – perfect photo session!

Her name is Poppy — isn’t that super cute!

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