Christmas Project!

Since I have two weeks off of work and grad school, that means I have time to continue organizing my house!I have been wanting pull out drawers for our lower kitchen cabinets for awhile but they are pretty expensive. So with Christmas coming up, what better to ask for! 

Before they could be installed, we had to rip out the shelf already in there. The other Sunday, I was sitting on the floor looking at the shelf and trying to figure out how to take it out. I grabbed the cabinet door to help me stand up....and I ripped the cabinet frame off. :( (By the way, that was the 3rd thing I broke that day. I ripped off the toilet paper holder at my friends house, snapped her plastic spatula, and later that night, I through at pillow at (to?) Blake, missed and wiped out everything on his nightstand. Apparently I don't know my own strength.) Luckily for me, my awesome husband was able to fix it for me since the only night we had free to fix it, I was down with a migrane.

Needless to say, our cabinets aren't super sturdy (and I have been VERY careful when standing up) but they did get those shelves in there. After 4 hours of sawing and hammering, I was finally able to get the shelf out! BTW, Blake would have done it but he has been working crazy hours and I was home all day.

After I took the shelf out.

 My parents got us one of the shelves for Christmas and I took it out that night because I wanted to install it before we left for our other Christmases. Of course, it came with no instructions and the wrong top shelf. I found instructions online and was able to put it together. I started to screw it into the cabinet when I discovered that I wasn't as strong as I thought I was and needed a power drill. The next morning, I went and bought one (along with 4 super cool head lamps, Blake is very hard to shop for..).

Once I had the drill charged, I was able to get it installed, no problem! Well, there was one thing. My arms aren't super long so I had trouble reaching the back of the cabinet. Luckily, I was able to stick my leg in the cabinet and then was able to reach the back.:) I decided to use this first set of shelves to organize our Tupperware.

Tupperware before

All in the drawers

Ta da!!! No more searching in the back!

It has been a couple days now and I LOVE it! As soon as we are able, I want to install them in some of our other cabinets. They are expensive but TOTALLY worth it. 
 

We are making progress!

So Blake and I moved into our house a little over a year ago. We closed on the house the first Friday of school last year so needless to say, the progress has been slow going. I anticipated working on it more in the summer but then I decided to take 9 hours of grad school so again, not much got done. Now that I am in my 4th year of teaching, I have been able to manage my time a BIT better and am finding more time get our house the way we want it.

Our two big projects are our study  and our lawn. When we moved in, the study became the "catch all" for all the stuff we did not know where to put. Over the last year, it also became the room we shoved everything into whenever anyone would come over. :)

When we first moved in.

This is what it turned into by the end of the summer :(

Today, Blake worked really hard and we can finally see the floor!!! A lot of the papers and stuff were put into boxes that were put into the closet, but I can go through those later (maybe next summer).

YAY!

Way to go Blake!

You do NOT want to see inside the closet ;)

Our yard has also been a big problem. We try to keep up with it but it is expensive to buy all the equipment and we have been slowly but surely acquiring them. I know we could hire a landscaper but we are really trying hard to avoid that and honestly, I don't mind working on the yard, I just wish I had more time.:)

One of the biggest problems is that Blake bought a "cheap" (not really that cheap though) edger and our yard is too big for it. Our HOA keeps sending us letters about our yard so Saturday (in an effort to avoid working) I went outside to work on the weeds. Our neighbor stopped by and offered to loan us his edger. We got talking and it turns out his daughter needs some help with school work so he offered to edge our lawn if I would work with his daughter. DONE! After 3 plus hours and 4 wasp stings, our front yard started looking decent. It still needs a LOT more work since I'm not really a fan of what the previous owners did with the landscaping, I'm working on taking out there stuff and figuring out what I want. 

Current status of the front yard. Blah!!

Well, I guess I should get back to my grad paper. I am taking Children's Literature and Literacy this semesters from one of my favorite undergrad profs. Our first assignment is to write a reading autobiography which is actually somewhat fun. It was interesting hearing from my parents about my early reading experiences. Apparently, when I started reading in Kindergarten, I expected my brother (who was 3 at the time) to be able to read also. I used to get mad at him for not reading and accused him of lying when he said he couldn't read. Anyone who knows me shouldn't be shocked by this revelation. :)