Kids Room Ideas

Last week I shared how we were working on finishing up some projects in Silas' room and how much I was loving it.  This little room has so many fun little touches.  With his pallet shelf all completed it was time to officially recover his "couch" as he calls it.

His "couch" was originally a project we did for the Pinterest challenge a couple of years ago.  It was actually an ottoman we made for our living room but Silas came to love and use it so much it eventually migrated to his room.  Its the perfect size for him to play on, read books, watch a show, etc.  He loves that its just his size.  

So when I set to recover it I looked for a fabric that would work well with everything else we were putting in his room.  I love to look at the clearance section at big stores for "fabrics" - for example, curtains, shower curtains (which is what I originally used for this), sheets, table cloths -anything!  I came across a set of sheets at Target in the clearance section and was sold.  So yes, I used a flat sheet to recover.  I think the set was $7.78.  If you buy fabric ever you know that trying to find a fabric you love for a price like that is amazing.  Plus, since it was a set I got a fitted sheet to use on his bed as a bonus.  I love this kind of stuff.

I love the mix of patterns from the fabric to the rug.  So fun.  

Each little project just brings a feeling of completion to his room and is driving me to get it all done.  I'm determined to get my list completed in his space before I move on to other things.  One thing at a time!

A Valentine's Banquet for our Senior Adults

Justin and I are so blessed to be a part of a loving, vibrant and caring church family.  Over the weekend we had the opportunity to help host a Valentine's Banquet alongside of our College and Young Adult classes for the Senior Adults in our church.  It was such a great event.  We enjoyed the time and laughter we spent with them.  Here are a few details from our day...

Of course you know we had to make it pretty.  We had several challenges though - we did not have much of a budget and we had a huge room to decorate - which included seventeen tables.  We had to get thrifty and creative.   I found the cute little mailboxes in the Target Dollar Spot and the glass candle holders at the Dollar Tree.  Add a little hot glue and we had a cute and inexpensive centerpiece.  We paired it with some roses in a jar with a little raffia ribbon - simple but pretty.  If you are looking to use fresh flowers but don't have much of a budget, make sure to check your local wholesale club stores.  I found two dozen roses for $12.99 at BJ's.

I found the heart shaped doilies at the Dollar Tree along with the other glittery heart decor.  They came in large packs for a dollar so that was awesome.  The paper in the center is wrapping paper that we cut into squares - I found it at the Dollar Tree as well.

We set up a little photo booth with just paper and a paper heart garland for taking pics.  We served them a meal, they had time to chat and fellowship and then we had a little entertainment.  I big shout-out to Taryn for putting that together and hosting,  the Next Steppers (our Young Adult class) and Chris (our lone College student for the day) who helped put it all together, set-up, who served humbly and willingly and who washed dishes for two hours - we are so thankful for you.

It was a sweet, sweet time of fellowship and sharing God's love.  We love our senior adults!  They have so much wisdom and joy to share.

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. John 13:34-35

Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend!  Thanks for stopping by!

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Organizing Your Small Home Office

If you are like us, there really just isn't a lot of extra space in your house - especially for things like a home office.  Because of limited space we have to be creative about how we use every inch - especially for things like paperwork, mail, office supplies, etc.  Those things can take over your home quickly if you let it - and I'm speaking from experience here.  I have absolutely loved taking a little time during each week to start getting our whole house organized.  For us, we decided to take it a little bit at a time - so we wouldn't get overwhelmed and just give up.  This has been the best way for us - we are actually getting organized and so far have really stuck with it.  Its been easy - way easier than expected.  So today I wanted to show you our completed "home office" - which is really a little desk area in our kitchen.  Its now organized and ready to actually be of use instead of being avoided.

So lets go back for a minute and remember the original state of this deak - it was a disaster.  The mail and paperwork runneth over.  I got to work by emptying everything out and sorting through all of the paperwork and little items that were shoved in.  You can find my post on sorting through the piles of clutter here.

Now all of the shoved in paper work has order and has been filed away in a pretty file box - which gave tons of space for actual office type supplies like envelopes, notebooks, clips, etc.

I'm so excited about this desk now - I like to just walk by and open it every now and again just to look at all the organized goodness.  Oh, I also lined the bottom with some scrap book paper and ended up painting a few places inside the desk, just to pretty it up a bit.

Another part of this task was also to clear out and organize the little drawer.  It was filled with junk - just like most drawers in our house (but we are working on it!)  Here's the before and after:

Just like the top, everything was cleared out and sorted through.  Some things were thrown away because it was just junk, some things were returned to its proper place and some things went back in.  I found some pretty wrapping paper (Target) to line the drawer with and some interlocking trays (from Homegoods) to organize everything when it went back in.

Another addition was this mail sorter for the top of the desk.  One section is for incoming mail and one is for outgoing.  I found the little notebook and mail sorter at Homegoods as well.  The notebook was $2 and the mail sorter was $5.99 - not much of an investment for something that will be a huge game changer for us.

I love that you can find pretty office and organization supplies these days.

Well, I think we can call this project complete for now.  For under $20 and a few hours time we now have a functional, organized and pretty home office space.  I.love.this.

I'm linking up with Jen at I Heart Organizing and her Home Office Challenge.  Jen is like the queen of organization, I love her blog and have gotten a ton of inspiration and ideas from her.  If you have been on the organization wave like me, you should definitely go check her out!!

Thanks for stopping by today!   I hope everyone has been safe as the strong storms have come through.  Have a great day!  

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Inspiration Gallery

Pretty Organized Drawers: Inspiration

I think its time for some inspiration and motivation.  Yesterday I shared with you our tucked away clutter abounding chaos thats hidden away in our drawers and cabinets. Now its time to get our behinds in gear and conquer that clutter.  Organized spaces can not only be functional but also pretty too.  I love looking at pretty organized office spaces or a fun, pretty and functional cabinet or pantry. So here are a few pretty, functional and organized drawers to help propel us into action and give us some ideas.

Up first is an organized drawer from Pretty Planning.  I love her post about office organizing and her office space is super pretty! She shares all of her sources too, which I love.

Next is a colorful pretty drawer found on BHG.  I love the simple labels and pretty paper. You can a find the printable's for both labels from the link.

You can't talk about organizing without mentioning I Heart Organizing.  I.love.her.blog.  Really, if you haven't checked it out - go do it now!  She is the queen of making things not only organized and functional but beautiful too!  I love her entryway drawer below.  So many great tips and ideas here!

This last one if from Apartment Therapy.  Its so simple and pretty to me.  How wonderful would it be to open up this drawer and find exactly what you need?  I can't even imagine.

So I don't know about you guys, but I'm feeling really inspired now.  I'm off to go purge and organize some more!  Hope you guys have a great weekend!

PS- I know these blogs would love for you to pin their great photos, just make sure you pin from their site and not mine!  

Giving Thanks - Making a Thankful Jar

I wanted to share our little November Thankful Jar with you.  Thanksgiving is usually a time when we reflect in thankfulness for our blessings and this year I wanted us as a family to take some time to step back each day and reflect on how truly thankful we are for what God is doing in our lives.  It's easy to get caught up in life, take things for granted and forget to view all circumstances in the eyes of our Savior.  God has said to us in His word to rejoice always and to give thanks in all circumstances - wow, those can really be difficult things to do and truthfully the only way to live life in this way is by the leading and help of the Holy Spirit (something I'm thankful for).  So this jar was born as a simple way to help to remind us of our thankfulness during this time.

This is super easy to do and all it took were things that I already had in my craft stash.  Somehow I even found stickers that had the perfect words for our jar.

 How it works for us - we have made a little station stocked with paper and pens and each day we take some time to write some things we are thankful for and drop them in our jar.  At the end of November, we will come together as a family and read aloud each one as an act of worship to God - since all blessings flow from Him and sets a great reminder to us of how much we truly have to be thankful for.

Sometimes its just the simple things like making a little thankful jar that lead us to a daily meeting with God.  

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Girls Ministry - Our First Event

Last week I shared with you how I'm currently on this new journey of beginning a more focused and purposeful girls ministry within our youth group at church and recently we had the pleasure of hosting our first big event for all of the girls.

In the beginning stages of planning for this event I knew a few things - 1. I wanted the focus to be about Jesus.  2. I wanted it to be something totally different and new.  3. I wanted to have as many people involved in the process as possible and 4. I knew that I wanted a theme for the night to keep us focused and centered.

Erin (my partner in all of this) and I quickly knew that we wanted to theme to be a look a True Beauty - this is one of the biggest issues our girls deal with.  We wanted to talk about insecurities but also talk about strengths.  We wanted to talk about lies the world gives us about beauty but also the amazing truth that God provides for us about beauty.  We wanted the girls be able to be creative, we wanted it to be intimate and we wanted it to be a a night of worship.

So how do you reconcile all of these ideas into one night?  We sat down with our group of girls and began brainstorming different ideas and came up with something that we felt could encompass everything we wanted to accomplish.

Ok, so one of the first things you start thinking about - after you have your initial event idea is budget.  These types of events can get costly fast - so you have to be creative. Since this was our first event we decided we needed to dedicate some time for just good ole fashion fellowship - so our cafe area was turned into a little coffee shop with various coffee's, hot chocolate's and hot tea's.  To help save on costs here I asked our lovely adults and girls to bring in desserts while we provided the drinks.  We also had the girls "bring their own mug" - which ended up really fun as the girls got excited about showing off their unique and different mugs - which in turn helped save a little cash since we didn't have to buy all of those cups.

I hit up the dollar store and one of my favorite spots -the target dollar section and picked up some great little items to help set the mood.  One of my most favorite purchases were flameless candles - found at the dollar store.  They had all different sizes and even had packs of 3 tea light flameless candles.  I love these bc I didn't have to worry about anything catching on fire - and I can reuse them!  I also picked up a few packs of glow bracelets at the dollar store - can you have a youth event with glow bracelets?  Ok, maybe I just can't.  They are just so fun.  I also found some packs of heart foam shapes to place on our little tables and then we just used candy to sprinkle around.  So to recap - each table had a foam heart, flameless candle, glow bracelets and candy.  Inexpensive yet really cute.

The majority of the night though happened in our gym/worship center/multi purpose whatever you want to call it room.  We wanted to create a worshipful atmosphere where the girls could spend some time learning about God, uplifting and encouraging one another and provide times of prayer.  So inside our large space we set up stations - everything from encouragement cards, to sharing verses, to what God says about beauty.  Each station had a large poster board with instructions and some sort of activity that they needed to do.  We let it be a free for all - we wanted God to lead them in this time and instructed them that this was a time for them and God and not a time of loud talking or silliness.  Since this was something new, I really wasn't sure how they were going to respond but I was so pleasantly surprised.  This turned out to be such a sweet and special time.  They took their time, stayed focussed and followed God's lead.  We had girls writing letters to every girl in the room, writing letters to their moms and sisters, praying together, moving past their insecurities, illustrating true beauty - it was awesome.

I just can't wait for our next time together.

Some things I learned:

1. I will never again try to take pictures while trying to lead an event - I maybe had time for 8 pictures - I will totally ask someone next time.

2.  I should learn how to brew coffee the next time we do something like this - turns out none of our adults knew how to brew large amounts of coffee...but we learned and it was funny.

3.  Highschool girls have great ideas - I want to make sure I'm always hearing them.

4.  When God takes control, just sit back and praise Him.

PS - if you are a youth leader, pastor, girls ministry leader and you want more details about what we did, please shoot me an email.  I would love to help in anyway I can!

Thanks for joining us today!