Guest Post {Rambling Renovators}

I first fell in love with the Rambling Renovators family long before I ever thought of starting my own blog, when I caught a glimpse of the nursery they created for their adorable baby girl, Chloe.  Jennifer and her hubby are the King and Queen of DIY renovation and decor in Canada and completely cool, but it seems that all the Canadian bloggers are genuinely good people, ya know?!

 Then I was blown away when I saw how they remodeled their master bedroom, down to the DIY wood paneling behind the bed.  This project was even featured on The Nate Show, and I was so happy to see how lovely and personable Jennifer was in person.

And what about this cool office?  So fun with the colorful walls and fun drapes.

One of their latest projects is their new living room.  Just gorgeous and perfectly comfortable for a real family.  I dig the yellow Dwell Studio fabric on those chairs and the colorful furniture in the background.

The fireplace? Swoon!

But look at the peek into the dining room- they really know how to use color and pattern to liven up their space.

And how about this little retro kitchen they made for Chloe?  I LOVE it!

I am sharing my favorite old and new things at Rambling Renovators today. Go here to check it out!

Great News, Good News, Bad News

Are you the type of person that likes to hear your good or bad news first?  I’d always choose the good news, that way, the bad news might not sound so bad.  But today, we’re going Great, Bad, Good to finish on a high note:)

Great News

The winner of the La Posh giveaway is

 

I was thinking that y’all are like me and would love to win one of those dresses- would sure put a spring in my step and get me looking forward to some warmer weather!  It’s also encouraging me to continue working out!  Thank you so much for entering and leaving your comments!  Elizabeth, please email me to hear how to claim your prize!

Bad News

We had an unfortunate incident with one of our living room lamps the other day.  James’ little friend tripped over the lamp cord and the lamp fell off the table, shattering the glass lampshade.  Thank God no one was hurt.

The lamp is from Pottery Barn but I don’t think they sell it anymore.  I’m not sure I can find a replacement shade.

Good News

Of course, the lamp incident required a trip to Home Goods to look for some new lamps (gotta see the silver lining!)  In fact, I’d been wanting some blue lamps for the living room anyway.  I spotted these right away for $49 and was sold. 

I like it so much better!  Now, I’m off to the fabric store (round 2) to pull some sample fabric for drapes!

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Do you know Brittany {Pretty Handy Girl}? I got to meet her at Blissdom and I’m so glad I did.  She is so talented and a really genuine person.  I previously posted about the closet-turned-reading nook she created for her son- AMAZING!!

She invited me to participate in her series

and my post will be up on Friday, February 11, 2011. 

Have a Great Weekend friends!

 

Series Goodbye & Office Sneak Peek

As the HWH Getting Organized 2011 series closes, I wanted to say a special thank you to all the ladies who participated and to those who read along!  I love that we can all inspire each other and I hope you got motivated to clean out a kitchen or desk drawer, closet, or even more spaces in your own home!  Maybe you even cleaned out the CAR:)  You can go here to see a round up of all the guest posts in case you missed any.

I’ll be sure to bring you more posts on organizing as my Organizational Design business gets going, and as I continue to tweak things around my own house.   I’ll be sharing in Brooklyn Limestone’s JUNK DRAWER overhaul series on Monday, January 24, so you can see the ‘before’ and ‘after’ of my own previously messy kitchen drawers!

And I just photographed my OFFICE today (gotta love nap time!), so I will share the pictures with you tomorrow with the details on how I created the space.  I really enjoy being in there each day (usually at night, okay, very late night when the house is all quiet!) blogging from my little corner of the world.  Here’s a little sneak peak . . .

 

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So friends, THANK YOU for sharing how you organized your kids’ rooms, toys, kitchens, pantry, laundry room, photographs, magazines, coat closet, jewelry, and office supplies!! And thank you for adding my homemade button on your blogs- made me say, “awwww . . “ every time I saw it! :)

 

Organized KITCHEN CABINET & DRAWERS {Chic Coastal Living}

I’m so thankful that Desiree of Chic Coastal Living wanted to participate in our Getting Organized series!  Even with a busy weekend at her place, she managed to clean out and organize her kitchen cabinets and drawers with beautiful results!  And congrats to her on her recent 100th blog post!  If you haven’t met Desiree, don’t hate her cause she’s beautiful!  Ha!  She is a sweetheart with a relaxed “coastal” design style that I think you’ll find very charming.

I'm so excited to be here doing a guest post for Megan's, Honey We're Home, blog! Don't we just love her! We'll I was thinking about what I can do to contribute to her, Getting Organized 2011 Series.  Where should I start?  There's so much in my home that I need to get straightened out!  I decided to share with you a cabinet that I keep my the food storage containers in and a set of small drawers in my kitchen.

My husband, God bless his heart, is an unbelievably organized person.  He has never been off one penny in the checkbook his whole life....but, when it comes to the food storage containers that's a different story! He laughed when he saw me taking everything out of the cabinet and taking pictures!

Here are the photos before:

The first thing I did was wipe down all the shelves and shelf liners with a damp cloth.  I purchased these liners over 5 years ago. They are the Martha Stewart plastic shelf liners and what I love about them is, they haven't discolored and still look brand new! These liners have kept my shelves clean and stratch free. All I did was cut them to size and lay them in.  (They are not the sticky kind, in case you were wondering)

This is how my hubby puts the Rubbermaid containers away. :(

This is what the cabinet looks like when I put them away. :)

I still have plenty of room to store other kitchen items on the top shelf. 

I put all the miss-matched containers into bags and will donate them to Goodwill.

Looking good!

Now, off I go to tackle the small set of drawers that I had to have in my kitchen. I keep all kinds of little knick-knacks and textiles in them.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before: In this drawer I keep all the birthday banners, decorations and extra napkins from parties that we have had.  You never know when they will come in handy.  Every time it is someone's birthday in my home, I whip out the decorations! I've saved so much money reusing them. Check out the pictures at the end of this post!

After:  I store each birthday banner or set of decorations in their own zip-lock bag.  I like to keep the decorations in this small drawer so that I can get to them in a snap.

All of these baseball decorations came out of one small drawer!

And, there you have it......a little organization from me to you. 

Desiree

Organized LAUNDRY ROOM {Just a Girl}

Hi all!  I hope you had a fantastic weekend!  I just returned from working with one of my first clients organizing her clothes closet.  It feels so good to see the excitement on her face as we pretty things up and make the space more user-friendly for her.  We worked for about two hours, and are almost done!  I’ll be sure to post the before and after pictures soon (she already gave me permission. :)

This week wraps up our series of wonderful guest posts regarding getting ORGANIZED in 2011.   I love today’s post from the talented Chris of Just a Girl.  I found her blog this year and was hooked after I read about her, of all things, laundry room!  It’s so clean and well-organized and she is so open and funny with the way she writes about her life.  So endearing to read. Without further ado . . .

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Hi there! I'm Chris from Just a Girl, and I couldn't be more excited to be a part of Megan's organization series! I adore everything Megan does, and I jumped at the opportunity to share some "secrets to organizing". I chose to share a post about my laundry room and how I keep it organized. I will admit that the driving force behind keeping my laundry room in order is the fact that I HATE doing it! I keep fooling myself into thinking that if I make the laundry room tidy and cute, perhaps I'll actually like doing laundry. So far...not so good. But it is pretty!

I’m warning you.  There’s a lot of pictures in this post.  It was a beautiful day, I had the window open in the laundry room (don’t tell my husband—the air was on too), and I was appreciating my newly organized cabinets.

To be honest, they kind of already looked like this. However, all the turquoise bins used to be yellow.  I was over the yellow. Thank the heavens for spray paint!

I’m pretty sure I’ve declared my love for bins and labels before, before, and before. Oh, and before.  And before.  Gees.

I typed up all my categories on some thick cardstock, punched a hole, and threaded some coordinating ribbon through.  Oh, how I love some cute ribbon.

You may see a couple of bins with no label on them.  Everyone stay calm. There is no need for alarm.  I have since labeled them all and everything is right with the world again.

I mean, had I not labeled this basket “cleaners”, no one would ever know that there are, in fact, cleaners in there.  Right?

All of the bins came from the dollar store—including the yellow change basket below.  He must have been hiding from my spray paint.  I’ll get him.  Don’t you worry.

When your complexion is so fair that your skin starts to boil within 10 minutes of exposure, and when your backyard is an apartment complex for mosquitoes, you too will have a bin dedicated to summer.  And you still won’t have enough supplies.

Just when I was thinking no one was around to enjoy the fruits of my labor, a friend of mine called and asked if she could do a load of laundry at my house (no joke!—she’s here from out of town). I {gleefully} said yes.  As she was opening the cabinets for the detergent, I was standing there feeling pretty darn cool about myself.

As I walked into the other room, my husband looked at me and said, “You’re feeling pretty darn cool about yourself right now, aren’t you?”  Husbands.