Kitchen and Food Organization

I LOVE when things are organized... it makes life so much easier!

Above our fridge, I have a basket filled with our extra hand towels. That way, I don't have to use draw space to store our towels. Next to the towels, there are two jars filled with coffee and tea. They are easy to reach (even for me) and they are right next to the coffee maker.

John and I are trying to eat healthy. I find the best way to do that is to have food and drinks ready ahead of time. That way when you're hungry, you can go to the fridge and grab a healthy snack.

Here are some of our water bottles already filled up with water.

I pre-bagged celery and carrots and put them in a basket. Next to the baggies are some veggie dip in small on-the-go containers.

On another shelf, I have boiled eggs, cheese, cottage cheese, and yogurt in containers.

It makes me so happy to open an organized fridge!

Soap Dispenser

For Teacher Appreciation Week, one of my students gave me Bath and Body Works hand soap and a decorative cover to go on top of it. I love the scent and I thought the cover was cute. I decided to give it a makeover with a little spraypaint.

I covered the top with painter's tape.

Then, I spraypainted the bottom part with leftover brown spraypaint.Here's the finished project. It looks super cute in my kitchen!

You've gotta love a free project!

Kitchen - Happy One Year Anniversary!

We are celebrating our one year anniversary with our wonderful home! I can't believe it has been a year! I am going to do a series of blog posts to document our updates and changes. Here's my first post...

John's favorite room in the house is the kitchen! I love our kitchen, because of all of the spacious cupboards, the bright and cheery colors, and the size. Eventually, we would like to do some other updates, but we still love our current kitchen!

Before: Yikes! The old kitchen had flat painted cupboards, yucky goldish walls, gross grout, and no personality or style.

After: Now, our cheery kitchen has a green, brown, and white color scheme. It has soft green textured walls, crisp white cupboards, clean white grout, a beautiful floral valance, a cozy eating area, a soft brown rug, and just enough accessories. Take a look!

I love our kitchen!

Possibilities for the (far off) Future: a new faucet, new countertops, recovered chairs, painted back door, a new white dishwasher

CCA, Garage Sales, and Home Goods = JOY!

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to CCA and I spent $10.00 on a few random things for the house. I purchased... a tea cup shelf for Kelly ($4.00), a basket ($2.00), an ice bucket ($0.50), small wood crafty things ($1.50) and an A ($0.50).

I used the basket to hold all of my dish towels above my fridge.

Eventually I will decorate this A for April's closet. More to come on that later.
At Home Goods, my favorite store, I spent my birthday gift card from Hessy on this cute silver and white lamp for her room. All I have left to do is paint the side table.

On this same weekend, Marcelo, Kelly, and I piled into the front seat of my truck and went to some garage sales. I bought a stool that I am going to redo for a gift ($7.00), a nice craft storage container ($3.00), a hanging pole for a closet ($2.00), and two picture frames ($1.50 and $0.50).

I spray-painted the black frame white.
Also, I spray-painted a cream picture frame I already had.

The picture frames look cute in my bedroom's bedside bookshelf. I framed this first picture of myself to remind me of the goal I am working towards: being healthy and happy.

This little cluster of pictures looks cute too!

It is almost our one year anniversary with our home. I plan on celebrating by giving the house a good cleaning and taking some "after" shots of our beautiful home!

The Gross Grout... Looks Like New!

When John and I moved into our house, one of the first things we tried to do was clean our grout. We tried a little elbow grease and professional cleaning, but nothing seemed to work.

My dad recommended that we stain our grout, because he did that to our bathroom at home and it looked awesome after he did it.

On one of our snow days, John and I spent the ENTIRE day staining the grout. The project shouldn't have taken that long, but we didn't really think before we stained.

It looks great now and our tiles look brand new! Hooray!

Here are the before pictures...


Here are the during pictures...





Here are the after pictures...