Getting Back to Blogging and a Photo Mishap

Due to an unforseen problem with Google+, it's going to take me awhile to get back to blogging. When I joined Google+ it automatically created a photo album with all the pictures I had ever posted on my blog. Well I didn't want that album, it was kind of random because it was a compilation of home improvement projects, baby pictures, and any other photo I might have put in a blog post.  So I deleted it.

Now that I've come back to my blog I've discovered that deleting that photo album has deleted all the source files for the pictures in all of my blog posts. Hence, the black boxes with exclamation points all over my old posts. I've done some research and there's no way for Google+ to restore the deleted photos. This same thing happened to a lot of other bloggers. So sad.

So it will take me some time to get all the photos re-uploaded and added to the old blog posts. I'd like to have the whole thing intact so that I can use it as a journal record at some point. I will try and get some regular posts done in the mean time.

I've got a good one about an office/guest room that should be coming shortly. I just need to get the pictures taken. That's it for now. Thanks for bearing with me.

Ready, Set, Go! with Carter and David

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The Fourth Room...

Okay, so here's the thing...I have a tiny house, I LOVE our house, but there's no bones about it, it's tiny.  So when people ask about our house and I tell them it's 1300 square feet, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms, I usually hear, "What?!? 4 bedrooms?  Where's the fourth bedroom?"

So here is the the story of The Fourth Room...

Once upon a time, there was a little family, a daddy, a mommy, and 1 super adorable baby boy.  They bought a little house for their little family and moved all their stuff in.  But where, oh where, to put all that extra stuff that never has a home.  "I know, we'll put it all in that other room down the hall.  You know, the one those crazy people who lived here before us painted dark blue and sponge painted?  We don't need to do anything in there for awhile, so we'll just put all our extra stuff in there for now."  I don't remember who said this exactly, but it was said nonetheless.

Time passed and the little family started fixing up their little house.  Painting here and there, new floors in the front room and hallway, but they only ever ventured into that fourth room to find a "temporary" spot for something they didn't really have a spot for.

The mommy and daddy were trying to share the same office for awhile, but with a fish tank and two computer desks it was starting to get crowded in there.  And the mommy didn't have a place she could do anything with all of her craft stuff.  So they decided it was time to change the fourth room into another office.  One office for each of them, because they each had a lot of stuff for their respective hobbies and nobody was able to work on anything.

That's the story of the fourth room, and here are the pictures of the story thus far...

 This is the view from the hallway.  Nice paint job, no?

And the wallpaper border?  Somebody really liked sports. (*gag*)



We took the doors off the closet and I moved all those boxes out.

This was taken after I had gone through this stuff for the hundredth time and had gotten rid of even more.

After Leland got the support framing in place.  Sorry there are no "in progress" pictures.  He textured and primed it on Saturday with Trent, and before I got home on Monday he was already almost finished with painting the yellow.  He's THAT good!

 

The "dry fit" of the countertop desk.  We got a piece of countertop for FREE leftover from somebody's work (I'm not telling who, hehe) and Leland cut it down to size.  The holes were already in there for cords/cables, etc which is nice because the iMac will be in here and all the cords can go through the holes!



And here is that cute baby boy I mentioned earlier.

This desk is so strong it can hold all 25 lbs. of this massive kid.  Love that smile!

So Leland and Trent are going to run an electrical outlet so I have power and also put in a light on the same switch as the light on the ceiling fan so I have can "frighten away the ghosts of so many years ago with a little ILLUMINATION!"  (Sorry, I couldn't resist the Phantom reference when talking about illumination.)

The reasoning behind the built-in closet desk is that these rooms are 10x10, which doesn't leave room for much else.  We have a daybed for guests (Thanks Melgozas!) and a bookcase and tv stand as well.  I couldn't figure out where to put a desk and I didn't want to get rid of any furniture.  I think I'm going to put a curtain in front of the desk opening so that it can be hidden away from guests who stay with us.

I'm still waffling on a paint color for the walls in the rest of the room.  I don't want it to be major league girly because we may have to combine offices in the future when another baby comes along and needs that other room.  On the other hand, it's just paint and it could be changed in the event of offices combining.

I've been thinking about either a light sage green OR a muted heather purple.  Thoughts?

Linen Closets are so...GRRR!

Doesn't it always seem like your linen closet always needs an overhaul?  Mine does.

And I've been on a bit of an organizing/decorating the house kick recently and reading blogs like this, and this that sometimes have pictures of projects that they've done in their homes.  I just like reading about what other people have done.  I don't usually get great ideas by myself.  I'm a copier.  I see what someone else has done and then twist it to fit what I need.

So when I saw the most recent Better Homes and Gardens special publication (it's all about storage, organization, and decorating in small spaces...like my house) and saw a photo of a beautiful linen closet all clean and organized with bins and dividers I thought, "THAT'S my next project!"

Here's the cover in case anyone wants to go buy it.  It was $5.99 and totally worth it in my opinion.

This is the first page I flipped to (and the inspiration for this project) while I was in line at Walmart to check out. I actually ran back into the Walmart to pick out some bins I had seen earlier while Leland unloaded our groceries. I knew I liked those bins for a reason.

Our hall linen closet is smallish; it fits in between Carter's room and the 2nd bathroom in the hallway.  I feel lucky to have a linen closet, since neither of our apartments had a big enough storage area for all the linens to have a home.  I like it when things have a "home" that way they don't float around my house from one flat surface to another.  You know what I'm talking about if you've ever been to my house.

So here's the {almost} finished product!  I still need to get labels made and slipped in to the slots of all the bins and I still need to find a basket that will fit on the floor inside the closet for towels, but it was a serious improvement to all the random stacks of stuff that had been unceremoniously shoved into this closet just so it wasn't out where people could see it (another of my less than favorable traits, when people come over I hide my clutter instead of actually doing something about it...eek!).  But hopefully now that won't happen anymore.  Because I won't want to mess up all the work I did in here.  It's SO much better!

2010 In Review

I put together a little slideshow of our 2010.  It actually includes the end of 2009, but that was some really important stuff, so I put it in.  I hope you enjoy it!  (P.S.  I love having a Mac, it made putting this together so easy!)

Click here to watch it on YouTube!