Pictures, Pictures on the Wall

One project I had been wanting to tackle for a while is the art in our living room. Originally, we had a flower picture you can see in this post here. It was really too small to fill the space. For a Mother's Day and Father's Day gift, my parents gave us our framed family bluebonnet picture. I decided it would be the perfect centerpiece for a gallery wall.

 

I spent some time on Pinterest coming up with ideas of how to arrange a gallery wall that doesn't look too random. I decided using all black frames would help tie things together enough that I could use color pictures. I love the look of black and white photos in all white frames on a colored wall, but wanted to work with what I have. 

To plan my layout, I gathered the frames I wanted to use and then roughly traced them on tissue paper. Then I took my tissue paper patterns and taped them on the wall with masking tape. Painter's tape would probably work even better, but the masking tape didn't damage the walls since it was so temporary. I moved things around until I came up with this arrangement. I love it because it is balanced but not too symmetrical.

Since my patterns weren't exact, I used a piece of printer paper to make precise guides for determining where to put the nails in the wall. I put the paper on the back of each frame and lined it up with a top corner. Then I marked a hole where the hanger on the back was. This part was super easy, no measuring required!

Then I lined the corner of my paper up with the corner of the tissue paper pattern and taped it to the wall in its place. I used a ruler to double check the space between frames to keep that consistent on both sides. After that all I had to do was add a nail where I had marked the hole.

 

I repeated those steps until all the pictures I had were hung! I still need to find the white mattes I have somewhere to replace the maroon ones. I also need to buy three more 5" x 7" frames since I only have one. I am waiting to hang the one I do have in case I can't find the same one and need to buy all four to have them match.

I am really happy with the progress I made on our gallery wall! There are no more pictures leaning on the book shelf and the awkward empty space above the couch is now filled with memories.

Have you ever hung a gallery wall? Do you have any advice for making it a quick and easy process?

Bathroom Bliss Part 2

After our son was born, we had our mom's helping with laundry/putting things away, and we were too tired to put things back where they belong our selves, so our linen closet became organized by the "stuff things where they fit" method. I basically took everything out so I could put it back in with a plan. I also edited out what we put back in. We got rid of some things like our rusty old shower caddy that we haven't used since we moved in 3 years ago and expired medicines. By the time I was done, I had a brown paper grocery bag overflowing with trash.

The top shelf has less frequently used items like beach towels, extra crib sheets, nail polish, and a basket of hair accessories.

Below that, we have burp cloths, my "second bathroom drawer", a small basket with extra razor blades, a basket of medicine, and a basket of travel sized toiletries. The basket I refer to as my "second bathroom drawer" is a basket with a handle that I pull out while I am getting ready and then put back in the closet. It prevents a lot of items from cluttering up the counter. It holds things like my hairbrush, contact solution, and glasses case.

The third shelf down has some drawers that used to be below the sink where you couldn't even open the bottom one. They hold nail clippers, first aid items, and make up. The basket to the right of them holds extra items from packages that come with more than one. 

Then on the lower shelves we have towels, sheets, and cleaning supplies. I plan on putting a child proof door knob cover on this door once our son is opening doors on his own.

The sheets I have sorted in stacks by which bed they fit on. Towels are also sorted by size. I relocated the old towels we don't really use under the sink so that the ones we use fit in here. I still like to keep old towels around because they come in handy for cleaning up big messes.

The back of our bathroom door also needed a little help. We have these handy hooks from my college days, but too much stuff had accumulated there, including my Mary Kay travel bag I hadn't used since December. Now it holds just my winter and summer robes. I think the winter one was in the wash when I took this picture.

It was difficult to photograph under the sink, but it mainly holds less used items. I also tried to put baby safe items under there since it will be tricky to install child safety locks on all 4 cabinets due to the material they are made of and the fact that we are renters. So we have old towels and extra toilet paper under there, as well as our travel toiletry bags. There are no crazy chemicals or medicines for our son or cats to get into.

We have been doing a pretty good job of keeping our bathroom organized. Having things in places that make sense makes all the difference!

Do you have any tips for getting and/or keeping a bathroom organized? We would love to hear them!

Bathroom Bliss Part 1

Back in May, we completely reorganized our bathroom!

May
Master bathroom
Guest bathroom
Storage unit

Yes, I realize it is September now... I guess it took me a while to recover, ha ha. Deciding to stay in our current apartment for another year also slowed down or momentum for getting rid of junk before moving. Now that the "it's too hot to move" heat of summer will be leaving soon, we are hoping to create a new de-cluttering/organizing schedule and get it done!

First, I'm going to share a couple of ways we re-purposed items from our bathroom set we got for our wedding. We have a beachy/ palm tree theme going on in there.  This cute little umbrella toothbrush holder is great... only I have an electric toothbrush that doesn't fit in it and my husband doesn't like to leave his toothbrush sitting out. So, it's new job is makeup brush holder! I love how it keeps them handy and prevents excess makeup from building up in the drawer.

Our bathroom set also includes this cute little hammock soap dish... but we use liquid soap! Since my husband likes to remove his rings when he washes his hands, it became a ring hammock!

Making our bathroom more functional involved clearing off some of the items we had been storing on the counter, reorganizing our bathroom drawers, re-organizing all of the items under the sink and in the closet, getting rid of expired medicines and products, and putting away some of the stuff hanging on the back of the bathroom door. In other words, we did it all!

I had been wanting some kind of dividers to help our drawers stay in order, so I was excited when I found these plastic ones in the Dollar Spot at Target! My husband and I now each have one skinny one and one larger rectangle one. They are a huge help when it comes to keeping things in place, and I love the $2 price for all four. For my drawer, I mainly have makeup. I also store my toothpaste, floss, contact case, eye drops, and current favorite nail polishes in there.

The rest of my nail polishes and makeup were under the sink in boxes and not very easy to get to. I dug them all out and got rid of everything that was too old, dried up, or no longer my style. Then they were relocated to the linen closet for easier access!

Stay tuned for a post about what we did to get our closet and under the sink space organized coming soon.

Do you have any re-purposed items in your bathroom? Do you like things out where they are quick to grab or put away for a clutter-free space? Does your makeup collection still have old things like body glitter?!

Update and ideas

Since we decided to renew our lease one more year and our little one is becoming more mobile, our organizing/blogging pace has definitely slowed. We did tackle our master bathroom (post coming soon-ish) and make a little progress in the kitchen and guest bedroom during June.

Since our decision to renew our lease means we will have a 2-year old while still in this apartment (how is he almost one?!), we now have plans to do a major switch around to give our little dude his own room!

In the mean time, here are some of my favorite organization ideas I have come across recently.

 1) A DIY shower caddy using a second shower curtain rod. I love that you can customize with how ever many baskets you need. You could also use a second rod like this for hanging pool towels or clothes to drip dry over the tub.

If you know where this photo came from, please share! I found it on Pinterest with a dead link. :(

2) A Thousand Words blog,  has a great system for organizing photos.

3) 2 Little Hooligans has this clever idea for corralling gift wrapping supplies using a stool.

Do you have any great organization ideas you have discovered recently?

Guest Bath...Check!

Another room is completed!

May
Master bathroom
Guest bathroom
Storage unit

I decided to put our guest bedroom/closet on hold for now. It's crazy how much stuff we have to go through in that one room and I was losing momentum and becoming overwhelmed.

One of the main things I tackled in the guest bathroom was organizing the cabinet. Since I give our son baths in this room now, one of my goals was to make room for his towels, washcloths, and bath toys in here. It started off looking like this.

By getting rid of some things and relocating some things, I was able to clear off the top shelf completely! Then I gathered all of the baby wash cloths and towels from our overflowing linen closet and moved them in here.

I also gathered up all of the bath toys and put them in the bucket which just fit on the top shelf. The bottom shelf holds baby toiletries, lint rollers, and a few extra supplies for guests. This kid has enough shampoo/body wash to last until he's 10!

Mr. Babycito only uses a couple of bath toys at a time right now since we put his little tub inside the big tub. In between baths, his current bath toys hang out on the soap dish to dry.

And his tub hangs over the big tub to dry like this.

I re-purposed the basket that held bubbles at our wedding as an extra toilet paper holder. This helped free up some of the space in the cabinet. I love that the blue bow already matched the shower curtain and clock!

The drawer to the left of the sink is mostly empty. The one to the right holds some extra travel bags and a few things my mom leaves here so there is less to pack when she visits her grand baby. Once you have kids, your parents no longer visit you. It's all about the grand kids, ha ha.

I also organized under the sink. I threw away a very leaky silver polish and cleaned up its mess. Then I mainly just arranged things better. On the left we have the litter box lids that we don't use currently. On the right there's an extra scale, watering cans. And a trash can. I actually switched the too big round trash can under this sink with the too small square trash can in our master bathroom.

I am loving the results! Now it's time to tackle the master bathroom! Do you store a lot in your guest bathroom or is it more for guests? How do you store your extra toilet paper?

Sweeter dreams!

As an early 5 year anniversary present to each other, my husband and I decided we couldn't wait any longer to get a new mattress! Isn't she pretty?

We bought our old mattress at The Dump. Yes, that's the name of the store, but it is actually quite fitting. They advertise highly discounted prices because they buy from businesses that are closing. In reality, they sell cheap, defective junk. I have a friend who had a similar experience. The mattress was okay at first. But when it came time to flip it top to bottom like the instructions said, we discovered the bottom wasn't even a finished surface. It was definitely not the same bed we tried in the store. Unfortunately, at that point there was nothing we could do.

After sleeping on it for 5 years, it looked like this...

We put a yardstick across it to really show how bad it was. It was sunk in 3-5 inches on each side, and the middle had a hump higher than the edges. The sinking had started before it was even a year old. And we were both having trouble sleeping through the night and/or waking up sore.

We decided to start our shopping off by learning our sleep numbers so we would know what we were looking for. They actually were closer together than we expected. With 100 being hard and 5 being soft, I am a 30, and my husband is a 40. But we aren't fans of how comfy (or pricy) Sleep Number beds are.

So, off to Sleep Experts we went! My full sized bed I bought in college that is now our guest bed is a Simmons from there. And it's a great bed! I call it "the cloud bed" because it is THAT comfy.

Our new king sized mattress we picked out is also a Simmons Beautyrest. It's sooooooo much better! And flat! The sheets stay on better too. Plus, it comes with a one year love your mattress guarantee! We even saved some money buy getting a mis-matched box spring.

We went back the next day and got new pillows too. Our old ones were too flat for our new bed. I guess our old one kind of had built in pillows after becoming so lumpy and deformed. Of course, everything got brand new allergy covers to protect it and keep us healthy. After sleeping on it for two weeks, we are definitely having sweeter dreams now!

Any amazing mattress recommendations? Do you prefer soft or hard? Memory foam or pillow top? Spill the beans in the comments.

Regift(bag)ing

I love saving gift bags to reuse them. Those guys are expensive for being nothing but a little paper and ribbon! The only problem was that my gift bag collection was taking over our guest closet and it was getting hard to quickly find what I needed. Plus, some of them were getting scrunched. So, as I grabbed a bag to wrap a baby gift, I decided to organize them all!

First, I sorted all my gift bags and threw away all of the crunched up old ones. The next step was deciding what to store them in. I didn't want to spend any money on it right now, so I went into my laundry room to grab a couple of paper grocery bags. Instead, I discovered a couple of white bags from Loft! I got really excited because they are much prettier looking! Everything fit perfectly in the bags, but I was one short. Luckily, I found a Bed Bath and Beyond gift bag that was similar. Here are the sorted and filled up bags.

I used a sharpie to label what was in each one. One holds tissue paper, gift boxes, ribbon, bows, and gift tags. The next one holds gift bags for holidays, weddings, and baby showers. The last one holds my non-specific gift bags. I labeled it miscellaneous.

The final step was putting them up on the shelf and hoping they fit... I had just enough space for them! I love it when things work out so easily like this! I hope the rest of the closet is this easy to organize (yeah right)!

As for how I store rolls of wrapping paper, I don't have very many so they are in the flimsy clear plastic box that a 4 pack I bought at Target one year came in. It stands up vertically on the floor of the closet.


How do you store your gift wrapping supplies? Do you like to reuse gift bags and tissue paper or buy new?