Oh How Long It Has Been: Small Projects=Big Differences

So I realize it's been...well a while. Quite a while but it's time for some updates. We have been plugging away at the house, mostly working on small projects but they add up big time! I still need to take pictures of some of them but here's what we have been up to aside from yard work:






Re-purposed shelf brought up from basement




-installing the wood stove (MB only)

-sealing off the fan boxes in the 2 spare bedroom up in the attic (MB only)
-finishing the patio (again, MB)
-Taking out the AC's
-cleaning the basement
-organizing my shoes
-moving some stuff around
and finally hanging some art work

I was looking around our house a few weekends ago while we were on a 'small projects' bender and decided I was discontent with following MB around mopily. I'm a go getter kinda girl I can't just stand by and watch everyone else do everything. So I picked up a broom and started cleaning. Now, at LEAST once a week I clean the house, but this was the basement. Because our basement floor is not 'finished' it collects dirt and just plain 'ol dirtiness like a magnet (hence the dirty kitty paw prints on my white comforter. grr). I took to the push broom like white on rice and by the time I was done, there was a heavy cloud of god only knows what in the air and a sizable pile.

Next, I decided it was time to tackle what MB refers to as my 'pile of shoe vomit', or something along those lines, all over the basement floor. You see when we finally moved our clothes upstairs (a glorious day let me tell you), my poor shoes remained down in the basement, strewn across the floor as I toss them out of their bin looking for the shoe I'm holding's mate. MB helped me move some summer clothes that were hanging up in the basement and I started assembling a hanging shoe organizer my mother had given me years ago that I had never gotten a chance to use. I filled that quickly, then set up two more larger racks for boots and less used shoes. By the time I was done, everything was neat and organized (much more my style) and we had the basement floor back.

I also took to reorganizing some bins of my childhood stuff I had taken from my parents (almost entirely books) and doing some labeling.

The last and very important task was persuading MB to help me move a, well what shall we call it, rack maybe (?) from the basement, upstairs and in the back room. This thing was made cheaply by MB to organize and provide shelving in the closet of our very first apartment (which we hated and only remained in for about 2 months). This then was moved to the back room in our last apartment and used as a counter for my indoor herb garden and a shoe rack on the bottom. It had since been moved into the basement and was housing all of our serving dishes. Problem was, being in the dirty basement, stuff was getting dirty so I decided to move it elsewhere.

We removed all items from it, wrestled it upstairs and then I set about cleaning it. I wasn't ENTIRELY sure what I was going to do with it other than use it for what it had already been used for, but I happened upon some spongy red cabinet liner left over from, well lining our cabinets (we really like red accents in our kitchen for some reason). I set about lining all of the shelves and then re arranging everything I put back inside of it. I put our wine rack on top so we could get the wine out of boxes in the basement and to where they belong, and used some decorations I had put together for our Oktoberfest party and VIO-LA! You have a nicely re-purposed and oh-so useful new accent piece in the back room. It looks a whole heck of a lot better and it's incredibly functional.