Reinventing Dog Food Storage

Last week, we were finally reunited with our Golden Retriever, Duke! We haven't seen Duke since December. Nothing made me feel more like we were moving to a whole 'nother world more than the fact that it was too cold in Alaska to fly our dog. That's right. Too cold. There is an embargo that doesn't allow dogs to fly in the cargo compartments until well into April! APRIL? Yes, it has to be above 45 degrees for a certain amount of time before they will lift it. So, what did we do with him from December until June? We decided to fly him home to Colorado where our amazing families took turns caring for him. We were so sad to leave him. We just couldn't wait to get him up here. We just knew he would LOVE Alaska. We were without our sweet puppy for 7 months!!! The wait is finally over and my sister brought him with her when she came for her first visit to Alaska!

In the last couple weeks we have been preparing the house for the return of our dog. Buying food, toys, a new bed, getting a yard scooper service, etc. As we prepared, I came across the problem of where to put his dog bowls and food storage. Our new house here in Alaska is quite small and floor space is at a premium. I didn't want to put it in the garage because of the winters, so the only place left is my dining room. So far it is working out fine- it is a place to dine after all, ha- but I quickly realized I needed his bowls and food storage to be discreet and "pretty" since this is a room we live in and entertain in.

Read on for a look at some neat, unique, and even economical dog food storage solutions...

Happy Spring...cleaning! 9 fun tips & ideas

Happy Spring everyone! Are you ready for it? I took these photos last year in the tulip fields of Mount Vernon, Washington. Oh how I love flowers! So beautiful and happy! That said, you would probably be surprised to know Spring is actually my least favorite season. Don't get me wrong, I love fresh blooms and budding trees but I DETEST the soggy, muddy, mucky messes that also come with the season. I just wish we could completely skip the season and go straight into Summer, and that's saying alot since both my birthday and my wedding anniversary are in the Spring! It's especially soggy here in Alaska. People here call it "break-up" and they are referring to the snow melt and the ice breaking up. All those muddy footprints have spurred the beginning of spring cleaning at my house. While ramping up for my seasonal cleaning frenzy I thought I'd share some of my very best cleaning and organizational tips...

Diapering Wine

As you might have already gathered, I am entertaining out-of-town family this week. My brother-in-law is still here but my father-in-law left on Wednesday. Remember our trip to Leavenworth? We all bought alot of wine on that trip and now they are faced with the problem of getting it all back to Colorado on the plane. I have been faced with the same problem while travelling with my husband for his training. While in Albuquerque last year I was looking at my suitcase, wine and various barbeque sauces, and a pile of all our stuff, including extra diapers I didnt want to leave behind (you can call me a cheap skate, but I was determined to bring those diapers home one way or another!). This is my light bulb moment...wine: breakable, leakable...diapers: extra, extremely absorbant, padded......

It's really funny when you think about wine and diapers in the same sentence but in this context I swear it works! Laugh all you want, I have never had a bottle break or leak! This works for just about anything, it doesnt have to be wine. Like I said, I used it to bring home BBQ sauce too!


Reminder: Be sure to enter my April Cornell giveaway while you are here! Ends July 28th.

DIY classy cookbook

Lately, I have really focused on trying to make cooking more fun. I have never been one to love cooking. I love food and I love to eat, I just dont enjoy the process and mostly its because I dont want to clean up the mess it makes. I would so rather be sewing, shopping, blogging, etc. But, alas a person has to eat, so out of necessity I have to make myself cook and in these leaner times its one of the best ways to save money too.

I needed a way to organize my recipes and have them easily accessible and visible which exponentially increases the chances of me actually using them. I came up with the idea to store and display my recipes in a flip album and whats even better is it also serves as a cookbook stand too. No more sticky fingers prints on the cookbooks! I searched high and low for the perfect flip photo album to showcase my recipes. Here is one similiar to mine.

I have been posting my favorite recipes and you can download the entire recipe with pictures if you click on them and then right click to save. I did this with all my recipes and then I opened them in a photo editor and resized them to 4x6". I printed them all off and then cut them to fit in the protective slots of the flip album.

Next, I cut out a 4x6" square of some scrapbook paper and added some foam lettering I bought at the dollar store. For the lucky readers out there with a Cricut or Silhouette, you could design something really cool!

Here is the finished result...

Linked up at Trendy Treehouse, Blue Cricket Design, Someday Crafts, Somewhat Simple, Fireflies & Jelly Beans, Fingerprints on the Fridge, My Romatntic Home, Finding Fabulous, The Shabby Nest, Funky Junk Interiors, Tatertots and Jello, Under the Table and Dreaming, Fine Craft Guild

Reminder: Be sure to enter my April Cornell giveaway while you are here! Ends July 28th.

Laundry Room Reveal!

My laundry room was the saddest room in the house. There are no windows, it's pretty small, and and it's an entry from the garage. It was lacking any proper storage, so the top of my washer and dryer became a clutter magnet. Let's be real here, laundry isn't exactly an exotic chore and having a lack luster laundry room sure isn't a motiving factor either.

First thing I did was start scouring Craigslist for cabinets. When a listing popped up for $5 cabinets from a gutted farmhouse, my heart fluttered and I rushed to bring those babies home! Next, I just had to paint and glaze them to look like my inspiration cabinet finish...

I cleaned the cabinets and removed all the hardware. I applied three coats of Glidden's Cold Coast White and to create the glaze effect in the grooves I slathered on some brown acrylic paint and then gently wiped the excess off with a wet sponge. I finished off the cabinets with a coat of polycrylic.

After installing the cabinets and cutting, painting, and installing the shelves. I started work on my laundry riser. A year ago I bought my front loader laundry set but I told Joe Shmoe "NO!" when he tried to get me to drop a down payment on a Ford Focus to buy the riser drawers with the set! I just couldn't justify paying that much when I knew we could build something even better. I knew what I wanted to do once I saw the riser Sausha at Show and Tell built for her front loaders. I used materials I had on hand and with a few modifications, a coat of Gold Coast White, and an acrylic glaze, I had my riser.

I created the vinyl wording using my Poor Man's Cricut.

I painted the room, including the ceiling, a soft green (Glidden's Beach Sand) and then worked on installing the beadboard. I hadn't worked with wainscoting before so I was intimidated, but I had Home Depot make all the cuts for me. Luckily, I only had to cut out two holes for outlets by hand. Once the cuts were made, all I had to do is apply adhesive and press to the wall. All the rest is just icing. I created some pretty containers for my detergents and installed some farmhouse coat hooks.

Here's another Before and After shot...

Well, that's all folks! Did you notice I took these pictures with FULL laundry baskets? Hey, whats a girl to do while her laundry room is a war zone? ;) I guess I better go start some laundry now...

Pack-a-snack

Isnt this great? What a neat and fun way to pack snacks and on-the-go meals! I picked up my silicone baking cups today at World Market for $2.99. I borrowed the idea from Holly at Tutus and Turtles- a now dormant favorite of mine...tear :(

Linked up to Keeping It Simple, Delicious Ambiguity

A Poor Man's Cricut

Am I the only person that must have been living under a rock and didn't know about the glories of Cricut's or Silhouette's? Until about a month ago, I was completely unaware of their existence. After my son was born, I didn't have the time, patience, or money for scrapbooking anymore. I left preserving our family memories to Blog2Print, and just had them make photo books of my personal photo blog. Anyway, I have been seeing the fruits of these amazing inventions on all of your blogs and I am green with envy!

I am working on a BIG project that calls for alot of custom vinyl lettering. I considered buying a Cricut and then my husband saw the price and went white in the face. To preserve my marriage, I moved on to Plan B and started looking at making a custom order from an etsy shop, but I became too impatient. Now I am onto Plan C and so far (though tedious) its coming along nicely. Here's how I did it...

STEP 1: I found a font and printed off the letters in the size I needed on regular printer paper. I then carefully cut out the letters.

STEP 2: Next, I taped a strip of vinyl adhesive to an old cutting board. I did this so it would stay put as I traced the letters using a pencil. Then I meticulously sliced the letters into existence, alternating between using an exacto knife and scissors.

Here's the finished product! I think it looks great! It probably seems too tedious, especially to those lucky owners of fancy crafting machines, but I pumped them out while watching a favorite flick with my hubby and so far I am pretty happy with my poor man's Cricut.

This project is just a piece of a MUCH larger project I am still working on. We are remodeling our laundry room! It's going to be soooooo beautiful. Just like every other project we tackle, half way through we start to think that we bit off more than we could chew. We stuck with it and now I just have to add the final touches. I hope to post about it next week with tips and tutorials. I hope to keep posting regularly this upcoming weekend/week but my mother-in-law is visiting right now and my father and brother-in-law arrive next week. For now here's a sneak peek teaser of what's to come:

Boring, clutter trap of a laundry room BEFORE:

$5 Craigslist cabinets we got from a gutted farmhouse:

Linked up to Tatertots & Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, The Girl Creative

4-step wine glass charms

I have been looking for wine glass charms for awhile now. I almost landed on these from World Market, but then I had an idea! What if I could make chalkboard medallion charms? How fun would that be? You can just monogram your charm with some chalk and now there's no need to remember which charm you picked at the beginning of the evening, which, yes, I have found challenging at times ;) 

Ok, now here is how I did it...

Supplies: 

• 1” wooden circles 
• Jewelry kidney wire, 
• 9mm jewelry split rings
• chalkboard paint

I found all of these in the jewelry making aisles of Joann's and also Ben Franklin, minus the paint which was on the next aisle over. It all totaled about $10 with the paint hogging the majority of the budget.

STEP 1:

Make a small hole in each circle using a nail.

STEP 2:

Paint the circles using the chalkboard paint. Let dry.

STEP 3:

Once dry, twist the jewelry split rings through the whole in the circles (like threading a key chain)

STEP 4:

Slip the split ring with the circle onto the kidney wire.

Linked up to Somewhat Simple, Shabby Chic Cottage, Fireflies and Jellybeans, A Few of My Favorite Things, Fingerprints on the Fridge, Finding Fabulous, The Shabby Nest, Tidy Mom

Neat Recycling Sorters

I have needed a way to sort my recycling from the trash. The nicer looking options are at laughable prices spilling over $100!! When I saw these jute bags at World Market, I fell in love with them. "Fell in love with recycling bags?" you ask...yes, yes I did. What I loved even more was their price of $6.99!

Who ever came up with this needs a raise.

Why did I not think of this?

Photo credit

Brilliant!

Organizing the towel bar

You might be thinking, "Does a towel bar really need to be organized?" Well, if you are finding towels thrown on the floor or draped around the bathroom or worse, still wet because they were crowded on the bar, I have a great solution. For about a year now I have been hanging our towels on hooks on the towel bar. I love this because a lot more towels can be hanging at the same time.  We found that we liked it not only for its organizational attributes but also found it faster and easier to grab and hang the towels. Yesterday, I took it a step further and added some flare...

I found a package of mini chalkboards for $1.49 at Joann's. The hooks I use are $0.99 for a 10 pack from IKEA (similiar to this). I all I did was hot glue the boards to the hooks and TA-DA! I think they turned out super cute!