Thought of the day...

I feel 1000lbs lighter!!

The house is trashed.  Who am I kidding, it's always trashed.  It seems like the to-do list is a never ending game of domino's where one task has to be completed before another and so on and so on.  Recently, though, I've been hoping to get kiddo2 into the bedroom upstairs.  It's not going well...why??  Because of the domino's. 

This week, I've decided that enough is enough...I need to get her in that bedroom.  To do that - I must address the mess.  One of the main offenders in this house is "craft crap".  The huge down side to being a creative soul is the amount of junk you hang on to because you could do something cool with it later.  As a result, I have a TON of yarn, fabric, cross stitch stuff, card making stuff, cake decorating stuff...the list goes on and on and on.  Well - no more! 

Yesterday I tackled a project that wasn't technically on my to-do list.  I hit the closet at the end of the hall.  It's where my sewing stuff (some of it anyway) has been stored for ages, along with a few random toy items and my cross stitch stuff.  Well...I asked kiddo2 to empty a couple shelves in her bedroom under the stairs (she doesn't really use it anyway) and that's where I will move my sewing stuff for now.  As a result - the closet was emptied.  I painted the inside (Heaven help me if anyone ever inspects the quality of the crack filling in this closet - it's horrible!!)  But - I painted it anyway.  Then - I put the shelves back in - put pretty trim on the front of each shelf, painted the trim and used silicone to keep the shelves in place.  Then - I caulked all around them to make them pretty. :)  This morning, I went through my yarn stash - I cut it in half - easily!  The half I'm no keeping is going to a friend of mine (a fellow yarn hoarder), but I'm happy to enable such a fine addiction. :)  The other half is sorted neatly into the closet - AND - I even left some free space for "growth" or other projects that I might start...or simply a space to toss the rest of my crochet junk that I haven't found yet! lol 

*note* Before any fellow "Fiber Freaks" gasp that there is a litter box in the bottom of my yarn closet - I know what you are thinking.  Let me point out, though, that all my yarn is in ziplock bags...AND...said litter box is kept ruthlessly tidy (cuz frankly - nobody can stand the Ninja-Cat when his box aint tidy). lol  Plus - it's temporary.  Once the rest of the domino's fall into place - it will be moved to a different part of the house. :)

This is where the domino's start to work in my favor.  By putting all my yarn in the closet (and getting rid of half) I've freed up the space that it was taking up in the pantry.  (Hubby tossed it there out of desperation since he didn't know where else to put it).  It also frees up a good chunk of space in the downstairs closet!  Yay!!  So - now - the rest of the craft crap that has to come out of the upstairs room has a place to go - I can organize the other closet, finish the pantry etc.  No more waiting on domino's!  I also know that the key to this working is that I have to continue to down size to at least half of everything.  I've been working away at that over time - but I'm finally able to move forward, somewhat synchronized with my dominos! 

Twin cake for twins

Recently I had the opportunity to make a cake/s for the sweetest twin girls ever!  Birthday mom gave me creative freedom to do whatever I liked - she'd give me the theme and the rest was up to me.  Things got a little nutty, though, when the girls chose their theme.  One wanted Hello Kitty...but the other wanted "Hello Kitty Princess"!  HAHA  how do you do one without doing the other?  In the interest of finding a design, I asked Birthday Mom to ask the girls to draw what they wanted for a cake.  I thought they might work together on a single picture (which would make things very easy) but they might also each do their own thing (which could make things a little more interesting) haha.  Either way - one of my favorite things is creating a cake that a kiddo has designed themselves and knew it was going to be fun.  :) 

Well - Birthday Mom came through with flying colors and sent...two separate drawings of two separate cakes!  HAHA  Ok - let the fun begin!

Not only was it 2 separate cakes, but there wasn't a single thing about either that was the same, except for Hello Kitty wearing  tiara....I thought about doing the top tier from 1 cake and the bottom of the other but only Erin's cake had 2 identical tiers. HAHA  So...I did the only thing I could do...

 

I had alot of fun with these and was really happy that I managed to duplicate their pictures with frosting. :)  But that's still not the very best part!! 

Oh - don't get me wrong - they're pretty great, but I was the most pleased with the sneaky side of these cakes. :)  And the sneaky part is...IT'S ONLY ONE CAKE!!!!! :D

 



The birthday girls got what they drew and I got to have a TON of fun with frosting!!  Happy 5th Birthday kiddo's! :)



Building my Pantry #3 (Shelving...or something close to it.)

I muddled my way through the installation of 3 shelves on Sunday and ran into a few snags. First is that the back wall is the absolute opposite of level…like – we’re talkin – Alice the Camel’s back is more level than my wall! Snag #2 is that the left wall of the pantry is full of wiring, the stack for the bathroom, and not a single stud to anchor into for support! Now that I’m typing this it occurs to me that the pantry wall used to be the opening into the kitchen…so why isn't it hollow??  I can’t imagine why there would be wiring in there?? Oh well – who knows…my friends used to call this house “Lego Land” for years! Lol The strapping for the first shelf took the longest, and the next 2 shelves went in pretty quickly. Even though I had a chop saw readily available, I opted to use the hand saw to cut it all (cuz it was quieter and less scary).

When I finally had the 3 shelves installed it became very obvious that the walls are beyond crooked. There was an obvious hump in the wall that was keeping the shelf pushed out and off of the strapping. 

I had to cut into the drywall and create a space to push the shelves into (more mess). Once that was done, hubby silicone all the shelves down and caulked all around the top to finish the seams and make it look "pretty".  (Trus that it looked WAY prettier once it was sealed...I'll post more pics later)



…and 2 hours later I stood staring into my pantry, even more perplexed than I was before my last post… A Pantry, by definition, is supposed to be for food storage and I get that – but – in my case, my Patry is turning into a “Kitchen storage closet”…

Time for a cake break

I really do Love to bake (which is unfortunate for my middle).  Life has been pretty nutty lately, though, so I haven't had the chance to bake as often as I would like.  Today, though, a co-worker had a birthday and since I was out sick yesterday...he didn't get his cake today. :(  (Bad cake lady!!)  Anyhoo - I decided that I'd bake a cake tonight.  The only problem is which cake to bake??  I know I want chocolate with boiled icing...but which recipe to use?  I've been using my "old faithful" recipe for a dogs age, but really want something different so tonight I picked this recipe that I found on relativetaste.com.  I've made it before and I recall that it was delicious...but I'm nearly out of sour cream. :(  When I made it tonight, I had to use half sour cream and half mayonnaise...then I added a little extra vanilla (not by choice).  It's in the oven now and has been for about 30 minutes...I reeeely hope it works out cuz I'd LOVE some alternatives to my old faithful chocolate cake. :)

Building my Pantry; #2

Yesterday the impatience kicked in and forced me to Home Hardware.  I had a brief chat with hubby before I left and was pretty much forbidden to bring anything home.  His reasoning was sound - I just didn't care. ;)  He's still not back on his feet from surgery and the table saw is buried in the shed - so - he wasn't able to rip the pine needed for the shelf brackets.  Ok - I understand - and the other pine is too expensive - bla bla bla...But...since hubby used to work at this particular Home Hardware - the guys are super helpful.  They pulled out some very clear 1x2 pine for me and cut my 8' shelving down to 6' so that it would fit in the civic.  I only picked up 3 shelves...then didn't get to do a darn thing with it last night.  this morning, though, I'm up and attem and reeeeely wanna put some shelves in there.  The trouble is...I found THIS article...and now I'm second guessing everything.  *sigh*  What to do??  I bought 3 shelves that are 12" deep...time to think some more I think...

Building my pantry

when I was a kid, I Loved my great grandmothers pantry.  Her home was older than old.  It was plain and simple with lots of character.  Her pantry was in the back corner of her kitchen and was built entirely of dark wood.  There were 2 steps to get into it and given my size at the time, couldn't have been very big at all (likely the size of a phone booth).  For as long as I can remember, I've always wanted a pantry. 

This is a very old picture of my Dining room.  The walls are now a nice vanilla cream color and we replaced the icky light fixture... but you can see where the floor is different on the left hand side.  That's' where there used to be stairs to the basement (there will be a post some day about fixing the discontinued hardwood flooring...but it has still not been fixed so that post will not happen today). 

 We decided to build the pantry in the back left side of the dining room.  We wanted it half the width of the room so that it will leave the window centered on the right.  The main entrance to the house used to be there so the wall and ceiling is pretty wonky and un-fixable.  The light is still there too - from when it was the entry ( you can see it on the ceiling )  Putting the pantry there will let me hide some of the crooked "sins"  of my home and will give me a light inside.  The final measurements of the pantry are about 5' wide and 29" on the outside (25" on the inside)

 

I've finished the rest of this post with lots and lots of pics. 

As a fun side note...Hubby decided that this stage made for a better "Smoochin Booth" than a Pantry. :) 

 

 My pantry is still in progress so check back for updates as I get closer to done. :)