Happy Birthday, old man!

Adam is 30!

Happy New Year!

One of my New Year resolutions is to update this blog once a week.  So, here goes!

2011 is gonna be a great year!  I'm determined to live a more content, happy life in every aspect; family, home, finances, all of it!  How?

"Contentment doesn't mean life is on hold."

I can be happy and still want changes in my life.  I doesn't have to be black and white...life is gonna be a little gray from now on!

The Elves are HERE!!

The kids discovered Tinsel and Crumbs on the porch, 

all tangled up in a blow up decoration!  

I think they were trying to put it together themselves! 

Adam set it up for them...very cute! 

Broken Bird

“Red bird came all winter

firing up the landscape

as nothing else could..."

-Mary Oliver

...then my husband knocked it down with a pillow

and broke it's tail.  Thanks.  Thanks a lot.

Do Not Enter!

This morning was cool, breezy, and felt like the perfect time to do some yard work.  I headed to the shed to retrieve my arsenal of tools and do-dads, but stopped short for fear I'd be killed.  'nuff said.  I went inside.

Pallet Deck

Here's my latest recycling adventure!  I hated walking through the mud when it rained, the rocks when it didn't, and the dirt all the time so I recycled some old pallets into a "deck" of sorts for my recycling cans.  Those two are for plastic and aluminum, respectively, and I'll move a box from the laundry room for the other things.  Cardboard will stay in the laundry room, but what a difference this has made in my life already!

The best part of the whole project was that the pallets were free!  I was at our local recycling/garbage dump and met a man who had a huge trailer he was filling with just a few pieces of junk metal to recycle.  I offered him a large amount I've been collecting if he'd bring me some of the pallets that were sitting out there.  The deal was a good one!  He got more materials to sell and I got my beloved pallets.  Life is good.

Scrapbooking on the cheap

I love love love scrapbooking and any other paper craft I can think of, but I have to stay organized.  I refuse to pay a lot for storage for anything in my home, the least of which being brads and ribbons and paper, oh my!  So, I'm gonna share with y'all my favorite cheapy storage solutions:

Here is a shoe organizer with cubbies the perfect size for pint-size canning jars.  The organizer was on clearance at Lowes and the jars can be found for next to nothing at thrift stores and yard sales.

I like this storage idea for my rubber stamps 'cause I'm a "digger" when I'm looking for something so shelves wouldn't work for me!  The drawers are from Wal-Mart and fit perfectly in Closetmaid stackable cubbies.  My ribbons collection sits on top of these cubbies and it's very compact and efficient.  The labels make it simple to see which drawer I need to dig in to find precisely what I'm looking for.