Flower Power

Remember the $3.99 Trader Joe's flowers I picked up a month ago?  Well take a look at how they're looking today:

Seriously!  Is that amazing or what?!  I switched up the vase because the other one was looking a bit grimey.  And granted they're starting to look a tad rough around the edges...but 4 weeks after buying the flowers and they still look this awesome?!  Best $3.99 I have ever spent.  If you had asked me on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday night in college I would have said the Big Mac extra value meal after the bars was the best $3.99 I had ever spent...but now, well...those Big Mac's were pretty tasty...  :)

~S~

McSpring Cleaning

Quote of the week:

S: "I think I'm going to purge a ton this week"
M: "Ummm...what?"
S: "Not like puke my guts out, but cleaning stuff."
M: "Oh, I was gonna say..."

I lovelovelovelovelove Spring cleaning.  My house may not always have the cat tumbleweeds vacuumed, or table tops dusted (or any laundry ever put away), but when it comes to Spring cleaning I go nuts.  I love going through a space and pulling everything out, then starting the organization from scratch. 

My first conquest this Spring.....underneath the kitchen sink.  This has been a pit for every kitchen cleaner I think we need (even though we have 13 others that are half full) or any random kitchen esque item that I don't know where to put.  Here's the mess I was dealing with:

Yeah...somebody call Hoarders, because I definitely have a bit of a problem.  See that blue tote/caddy...on the right side...in the back...sort of being smothered my cleaning products?  Yeah, that was supposed to be my cleaning supply organizer.  And there is an empty box and an old bottle of soap in it.

First step was to pull everything out....and then I was left with this almost usable space:

And you probably noticed this...unless you aren't wearing your bi-focals:

Ughh, purge me.  So once that was wiped down, I was onto step 2, which was organizing all the crap I had put aside.  I divided it into three piles.

1) Keep and put back under the sink
2) Keep, but put where it belongs (aka not under the sink)
3) Toss that crap out

The top right is Keep and put back under the sink.  The left is keep, but put where it belongs, and the bottom is for el trasho.  Almost all of the trash pile is empty bottles...I am lucky enough to have a man in my life who can never put food back into the fridge, but will always put empty containers back into cabinets.

And yes, in the put somewhere else pile, that is lighter fluid and a small gas tank for a grill.  So safe.  At least I had a fire extinguisher under too, right?  Oh and dog poop bags...one always needs those in the kitchen.

I brought the put somewhere else pile out to the garage, the trash pile to an unguessable place, and then organized the keep pile.  I found a cute white tote at Target for about $6, which I put it all into.

Much better, huh?  And if you're wondering about the upside down mason jar...well It's holding our loose kitchen sink pipe in place.  Yeah, I'll get to that at some point.

I'm hoping to work on the two bathroom sinks this weekend...and hopefully drop off a bunch of Goodwill donations we've had sitting around for months. 

Start any Spring cleaning yet?

~S~

Seriously Spring...hurry your GD butt up

I am ready to be done with Winter.  Like now.  Like yesterday.  So while Madison can't quite decide if it's going to get nice for 6 days, then snow, or be cold/rainy/windy/nasty for a week straight....I decided I needed a little inside Spring cheer.  Enter Trader Joe's $3.99 flower bouquets.

And please enter Sour Patch Kids jelly beans.  Yesss!

The amazing table runner you see above is from Target and I fell in love with it when I stopped in to buy only paper towels last weekend, but like that ever works out at Target.  The yellow napkin I already had, the white bowl is from Goodwill, and the two little owls are salt n' peppa shakers I found at Marshall's.  I'm currently obsessed with owls.

And what's a nice photo shoot with out my trusty assistant?

And by trusty I mean photo hogging scene stealer.  Show me love. Work it. Own it.  Meeeeowza.

Ok.....too much creepy alien arms and not enough cute....




Ahh yes,  there's my cute moosie cat  :)

So, not only is the table runner new, but the actual table is too.  Matt and I found it at Slumberland in the clearance section for $100 last fall.  Seriously, isn't that an amazing deal?  We've seen others exactly like it there since, and they have been starting at around $400 (on clearance for that much too!).  The bar stools actually go with our pub table and are way too high for the new table, but it looked quite sad all alone in the dining room.  We've been scouting around for some new, shorter chairs, but haven't found anything yet.  And since we use the table for eating like twice a year, it hasn't been too high on the priority list.  I have white wood chairs in mind something like this from overstock.com.

We'll see.  Since the table is such a dominatrix of the dining space, I don't want to get anything too tall or bulky. And I figure with backless stool, we can tuck them underneath for more room when they're not in use...which will be 99% of the time.  The little door underneath open up for a storage cabinet and there is a hidden, built-in leaf inside the table too, which is awesome.

How about you guys...have you had to force some spring into your late winter?

***Update*** After writing the post early this week, we received 4-5 inches of snow overnight on Thursday.  GD Winter.

~S~