About this blog in 2014

It’s a new year, which is a perfect time to reflect back on the previous year & look ahead to what the future might bring.  This year, we moved into our first house.  After years of living in a cramped apartment, it’s been amazing to have some space to stretch out.  Of course, having more space means that there’s more area to become cluttered & disorganized.  As I’ve said before, I was a hopelessly messy child.  Thankfully I’ve grown out of that & now it drives me crazy when things aren’t in their proper place.  Having a place for everything makes it so much easier to pick up around the house & to find things when they’re needed. 

I began this blog in March 2013, the month that we moved into our new home.  The goal was to document all of our projects & to update our friends/family on improvements to the house.  Now that we’ve been in the house for a while, 10 months to be exact, we’ve completed most of the big projects – painting, landscaping, etc.  This year, I see this blog becoming more about the little projects (crafts & organizing) & less about the big projects we still have planned (replace the counters & landscape the front yard).  My goal is to post consistently, at least once per week.  I hope that everyone will stick around to see where 2014 will take us!

Let the Mardi Gras season begin!

Well, not quite because the season doesn't officially begin until Twelfth Night, or Jan. 5.  Twelfth Night is the celebration of the end of the Christmas season (12 days of Christmas) & the eve of the Epiphany.  I'm getting a head start this year because I'm royalty this year & have lots to do before my Krewe's Grand Bal at the end of January.

I've started preparing the decorations for my Bal tables & am trying to do as much as possible ahead of time.  I want to enjoy getting ready on the day of the Bal, not spend the whole time preparing table decorations.  The first project was found on 100 Layer Cake (via Pinterest): Glittered Tea Light Holders!  I'm a sucker for anything that sparkles!

Photo via 100 Layer Cake

I ordered two dozen frosted tea light holders from Save On Crafts, a great site with inexpensive decorating supplies.  I decided to go with frosted because I'm using LED tea lights & they just aren't as pretty as the real thing.  I also enlisted the help of a friend, because all craft projects are better with friends!

We decided to do the top left design from Pinterest - glittering the rim of each holder.  We poured some Modge Podge into one bowl & some glitter into another.

Then we dunked each tea light holder into the bowl of glitter, pouring some more around the outside as needed to completely coat the modge podged rim with glitter.

And Voila!  Beautiful, sparkly tea light holders to scatter across my tables!  I'm sure that they'll be placed around the house after the Bal.  I can never have enough candles or sparkles!

Our second project was also via Pinterest, on Style Me Pretty: Metallic Animals!  Our Bal theme is Emerald City & you can't have that without some Animals!  I love the idea of some Animals to tuck into floral arrangements or leave on plates. Here's my inspiration:

Photo from Style Me Pretty

Keeping in tune with the gold & silver sparkly tea light holders, I decided to paint my animals gold & silver.  I bought a huge container of jungle animals on Amazon for super cheap ($30 for 60 animals) & got some spray paint in gold & silver metallic.  We started by laying all of the animals out on a trash bag.  Do this outside because of the fumes!

Then we sprayed half of them with the gold & half with the silver paint.  I did two coats, then flipped all of the animals over to get the other side.

And we ended up with some great looking Animals to tuck in wherever they look at home!  So much less expensive than finding & buying metal Animals!

2014 Resolutions

To  me, New Year's is a time to reflect back on the past year & determine what changes need to be made in the future.  My first project for 2014 is to set some realistic & achievable goals for myself & my home.  You can find my personal goals here.

My goal for the home is to get the house organized!  This sounds like a really huge goal, but it will be made easier by using the 52 Weeks to an Organized Home Challenge.  Dividing up the big goal into smaller, more manageable tasks makes it much less daunting.  Each week tackles a different area of the house, broken down into 15 minute daily tasks.  Plus you get an email reminder & task list each week.  I prefer to have things on paper so that I can make notes, highlight, etc, so I am printing each week & putting it all together in a binder.  By the end of the year, I will have collected all of my organizing tips into one place!