Weekend Garage Organization

We recently bought and moved into our home. I love the house but it is not yet our home.  It's cluttered, unorganized, and has to many white walls. But  I love the layout, love the concept, love the location and LOVE the potential it has. So, on a budget I have been slowly transforming it. Let's just say my husband has a love/hate relationship with Pinterest!!

This weekend was the garage. It was a standard 2-car garage. When we bought it there were a total of 3 shelves, with one being so high i needed a ladder to reach anything on it. As any home buyer knows, it had also became our storage area. Just stack that here was a common thing. So this past weekend I decided that we were going to concur it...

I decided that we needed a simple work bench. My husband does not have a lot of tools but just enough that we would like a place that it could be organized. I also opted to install a peg board for more organization opportunities.

Organizing & Cleaning
(Holy cow where did all of this stuff come from?!?!)

First step was pulling everything out & establishing the "honey do's" 

I sorted into piles:

• Outdoor Fun - Lawn games, balls, etc.
• Fishing (my husband is convinced he should be a professional so we have a lot of stuff)
• Golf/Skiing - We have a lot but it is a bulky item that has to be stored
• Hunting
• Tools
• Maintenance - Bug spray, round up, trash bags, etc
• Paint- This is another bulky item that you have to store
• Car Maintenance

Pull EVERYTHING out. It you leave it in there all you are going to move it around, store stuff on top of it and be right back where you were when you started. The key, is to have your trash can front and center during this process. If your family hasn't used it in the last year... Toss it!!

During this process, I sent my husband out to start working on the tool bench. We work well together but always have a different idea of how something should be. My goal with these projects are to get it down and still love each other afterwards :)

Second step is to clean...

• Sweep! Use a smaller broom to get into the small tight areas.
• Sweep the walls. Seems crazy but getting the spider webs down is a must!
• Spray every crease with bug spray. The bottom of the wall where it meets the floor, the corners, and the ceiling creases. 

Third step is to take a step back and look

For me it was looking at my biggest items I had to store and determine where would be the best place for things. When doing this always think of hanging things on the walls, either with screws or hooks. This will be a life saver for you.

• Bikes, hung on the wall with hooks. I had to remove the front tire so the garage would close

• Extra golf bags, hung on wall with hooks. This is one of my favorites, they are out of the way and are great decoration!
• Waders, hung on hooks
• Cornhole tables, using plywood cut a 50"x 4" piece.  Double screwed in to the studs. Measured 12" in from one side and screwed 2 2 1/2 screws right next to each other (maybe an inch apart). Repeated on the other side. 

• Plastic Tubs!! These are amazing. I put all of our golf shoes and accessories in one, put our miscellaneous outdoor fun stuff in one, camping accessories in another. 
• Wall hooks to hang shovels, brooms, snow shovel, rakes!

Fourth step for me was the work bench

I wish I had measurements for you and exact of how we laid it out to finalize, but as I said before there are times when I just have to let my husband do it, without me telling him what to do.

What I did tell him was that I wanted it to fit in one of our corners, I wanted it a little over nine feet long to match the space, I wanted to hang a peg board above it and it needed a shelf. We used the 3 randomly placed shelves in the garage to give the area more storage space!

He did great! I painted the S on the peg board with acrylic paint just to give it a little touch!!

When all said and done, I am so happy we took the time to do it. Every time I go to open my garage now to park, it feels like home!!

Poor Poor Me... Jonah

We have all been there, feeling bad for ourselves.
~You had a bad day at school/work
~Your parents yelled at you
~Your boyfriend/girlfriend was a jerk
~Your friends seem to just not care
~Everything in the universe seems to be aligning against you
~Nothing in your closet fits/looks good

Then it happens. You walk to the mirror see yourself, look long and hard and every bad moment or thing that could pop up does. Now you have a river streaming down your face and all it does is get worse. You can't stop at all. That one person who could possibly make it better seems to call at just the right time and you try to answer hiding the fact that you are watering your room with your own tears. They try to make it better and you act better when you hang up but then there is that stupid mirror again, and the river starts streaming again. You ball up on your bed or couch with a pillow, watch the mascara stream down your face and stain your pillow (and if you are a guy I know you are reading this completely agreeing with me) and find the best comfort food you can find and indulge because of course that tub of ice cream is going to solve all!

My biggest question at the table with Christ is why in HECK do I ever have to feel like this? You are in my life, I am facing you right now and yet here I am with a freaking river running down my face! Aren’t you supposed to be making my life all happy and cheery once I turned my chair and decided to live with you at the center of my life? I feel like we as Christians are sometimes afraid to say this disappointment out loud and ask this question. But when we talk to non-believers they aren’t shy at all to say a statement like this. So we tuck it inside so we can live the “Christian” life and just throw away the pillow case so no one knows that we too have moments like this. But what if we didn’t throw away the pillow case and were ok with the fact that we are going to have moments like this? What if our moments like these our pillow was God? And what if that person we saw in the mirror was the one who Jesus fell in love with the moment he created you?

Jonah is more than our fun loving Veggie tale movie but a great source for us living in relationship with Christ when we are feeling bad for ourselves. Here is bullet points leading to the story we want to look at…
• Jonah was given a task to go and preach
• Jonah decided he didn’t want to go so he jumped on a boat
• A bad storm came that threatened the life of everyone because of Jonah
• They threw Jonah in the ocean
• Jonah was eaten by a big yellow fish

Ok timeout… Eaten by a huge fish and able to survive in the fish? First off how do you get the fish smell off of you and that is probably the best timeout I have ever heard for somebody. You thought having to sit on the chair in the corner for hours was bad. Jonah was in a Fish! I guarantee if you gave my mom the option of timeout in a fish where she knew I would be fine and alive, she would have been the first one to sign up!

Anyways, after 3 long days, inside a fish may I add again, God made the fish cough him up (there is a lot more to this then just a simple cough) and sent him back to the city of Nineveh where Jonah preached about God and that the city was going to be overthrown in 40 days if wickedness did not change. The king demanded that they all call on God and ask for forgiveness. Because they had changed their evil ways God spared the city. Jonah thought that God was wrong and he was angry that he had come all this way, preached what he was told and now everything he said was just gone. He was so disappointed that he did not want to live any longer. And Gods response “Is it right for you to be angry?”

Jonah moved to the outskirts of town where he could watch the city and God placed a plant there giving him a little shade. But the next night God sent a worm that ate the plant. So again Jonah told the lord that he no longer wanted to live. And Gods response was “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” Jonah’s reply simply was “It is!”

But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?” (Jonah 4:1-10)

In our “poor me, my life is horrible!” moments, we blame everyone and everything. We think that there is nothing that could make any of it better. But actually he is giving us a plant that we will have to put some work into. In any relationship that you encounter in life when there is only one of you working on it is setup for failure. He knows that we are human and that there are going to be times that we are going to curl up and exit the world but we shouldn’t doubt him. And when we do he doesn’t pack up and leave, in fact he is still there with us. It is hard to look at the bright side of things during these times and when someone (like your mother who always seems to do this) listing them all it almost seems to make it worse. But what if in these moments just turned to God and said “I am going to have a poor me moment, would you just be with me?”, “You know I just don’t want to be ok right now, so I am going to eat this amazing tub of ice cream God made just for me!”, or simply “you know I love you God but right now I am a little lost…” Guess what YOU ARE OK FOR SAYING THIS TO HIM!!! In fact he already knows it when we say this we are telling ourselves and reminding ourselves of the God we choose to have in our lives. Not your parents, friends or grandparents… You.

I my girls a challenge, an easy challenge. Write Jonah’s name somewhere you would see it during these poor me moments. Use your lipstick and write it on your mirror, put it in your journal, collage it out of magazines, put it on your fridge, etc. You will notice it at first but as the days go by you will forget that it is even there but the moment that river starts flowing down your face it is going to stand out like a sore thumb. It isn’t going to make you stop but it will remind you that God is there and has not forgotten about you.

Reality is Better than your Dreams

Life is unpredictable and most of the time just plain hard, but there is a God who has promised to be there with us through all of it. God sent his only son to this world just to experience our reality and make it so we could have a relationship with him. I have to point out the word relationship because that is the only thing that I have with God. I have a church I like, I have Young Life that I lead but the only thing I really care full heartily about is my relationship with Jesus Christ. I am far from perfect when it comes to the Bible or Church but what I do know and want to share is my personal, one-on-one relationship with Jesus. I am a Young Life Leader in Colorado and in our Anchor Point (Campaigners for those of you fellow YL out there) and I want this to be a place for our area to come and learn about the wonderful and hard journey in my relationship with Christ.

One of the best pictures I have ever been given of what your relationship with Christ starts with a dinner table. We have all been there; to busy to sit at the table, can't find time to have dinner with family or friends but it is something we want to do. Sometimes our relationship with personal relationship with Christ is the same; we want to be spending time with him but we are just so busy and don't know if he will fit in our schedules. But when are running around and putting our relationship on the side burner, he is still sitting at the table just patiently waiting for us. We are off running around or our chair is simiply turned away from the table. But our God is waiting for us to turn our chairs and join him on our own journey. And the nice thing is no matter how many times we mess up and turn our chairs he is still there with on your journey. The moment that we decide to turn our chairs is the moment our Reality becomes better than any Dream.

Baby Shower Cake

Ok my first attempt at fondant = SUCCESS!

Pretty Proud I must say. And really it was really easy...

1st. Make a cake (yes out of a box). I just did a 2 layer white cake.
2nd. Let it cool for about an hour or maybe even more (I was super busy!)
3rd. Level both layers. Simply just cut the top off until it looked flat.
4th. Ice the cake with the frosting of your choice. Since it was a girl baby shower I used pink cherry frosting. Do this part on a cutting board or a plate. NOT your presentation ware.
5th. Transfer the cake to your presentation ware. I have a cake stand so that is what I used. A big plate would also be super cute!
6th. Prepare your counter for rolling fondant. Clean it (anti-bacterial would be nice) and make sure that it is SUPER dry. Use powder sugar and just spread it on your counter. The same you would do for bread! Also put the sugar on the roller.
7th. Open the package of fondant (purchased at Hobby Lobby) and knead it. It will be kinda stiff at first.
8th. Once it is easy to knead add a flavor of your choice to it (I didn't like the mellow flavor it has). Use anything that is clear! Vanilla or they sale flavoring for fondant. I used a clear liqueur :) I only used a table spoon of it! Knead in the flavoring. You don't want to have any sticky parts in it!
9th. Add more powder sugar to you counter. Trust me more is better, otherwise if it sticks to you counter you have to re-roll it :(
10th. Roll out the fondant. Do this until it will easily fit over your cake. (eyeball it!)
11th. Pick up the fondant and place it over your cake.
12th. Form the fondant to your cake. Make sure the bottom of it is nice and tight!
13th. Cut the access fondant off. You can use this to make designs to put on your cake if you are feeling artsy.
14th. Decorate it. I kept it simple and just used fake flowers and a wooded "K" for the babies name Kinley.

Good Luck!

Baby Shower Invitations!

Jody is having another baby girl! I am honored once again to be throwing her a baby shower! Which actually I didn't even give her a choice I called her and said "So when can I throw you a baby shower?" So here I am with the shower being this Sunday!

I wanted to share what I have done already... so here you go! I will update all of my projects, decorating and recipes Sunday evening :)

Here are the invitations... Hand made of course!

I used Brown, Light Purple & Light Pink Scrapbook Paper (purchased from Hobby Lobby. Then I used a clear paper (vellum paper) with small white Flowers on it. I then used Microsoft Word to create the invitation wording and printed it out on the vellum paper with brown ink.

I brown, purple & pink paper came 12" x 12" so I cut the brown paper to be 6" x 6". I then cut the purple and pink paper to 4" x 5.5". From there I glued one purple paper to the brown vertically and then glued the pink paper on top of the purple horizontally. Then I took the cut printed invitation laid it on top and then safety pinned it on the top left corner!

With the wooden "K" I used a hot glue gun to attach the safety pin to it. I cut ribbon to go around the invitation but I left room because I used a safety pin to attach the ribbon in the back! Then I just attached the "K" to the ribbon!

On the invitation I asked everyone to take the "K" and decorate it. Then I included a little pre-stamped envelope for them to mail back to me. I thought this was a way for the out of towners to still feel included! I will post pictures once I get them all back!

Then all that was left was to address the envelopes (thank you my lovely boyfriend) and mail them out! I did use a $.61 stamp just in case.

So after I made the invitations I came up with a theme for the shower... the letter "K" and safety pins!

If you have any questions or need ideas for you invitations please don't hesitate to ask! Heck if you want me to do invitations for you just let me know! I would more than happy too!

Pineapple Basil

I have a friend at work (Johnny B.) who has an amazing green thumb! We have been doing some trading lately and he introduced me to my new favorite herb...

Pineapple Basil

This stuff is amazing! It smells just like Pineapple. Here is my favorite thing to do with it:

Flavored Water
5 leafs of Pineapple Basil
2 Big Strawberries Sliced
2 Thin slices of lemon
Water
Ice

Add all the ingredients into your water bottle. Shake a little bit just to mix things around. Drink and once the water is gone just put more water in it! You can use the mixture for almost a full day if you keep it cold!
I think my next one is going to be Pineapple Basil and Orange Slices in my water. I also want to try adding it to a fruit cobbler. I will let you know what else I come up with!

My idea...

I love to make people smile. I love putting the extra work to make a day, a day to remember. This is with everything; A family BBQ, a Baby Shower, a Celebration, a Birthday, a Bridal Shower, or even a Tuesday night dinner.
I want this to be a place that I can come a share my ideas. I believe that no matter the occasion or the budget it can be memerable! I also want to offer my help to anyone. If you have a question please just ask or if you want to meet and discuss your ideas please just let me know.



What you can expect to see here:
Recipes
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Decorations
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Really this is all going to be random. So please check in often!