Heading to Arizona!!

And we're off on our 3rd annual spring visit to Arizona to see my little brother. This time we are hoping to see the Grand Canyon and Montezuma's Castle and a lot of sunshine!! I brought 2 pairs of sunglasses, if that tells you how excited I am to have the sun shining on my face. I'm going to try to make daily blog updates, so if you're interested, stay tuned!!

#96 Organize/Put away winter wear

Last night we picked up a long storage box, that fits perfectly in the top of our long coat closet. Today I organized all our winter scarves, hats, mittens, gloves, earmuffs and ski goggles. For just two of us we have tons of this type of stuff, so I was happy everything fit into the box! I even had room for the hubby's snow pants. We did keep a pair of gloves and a hat out each...just in case...but at this point in the year I'm pretty much gonna refuse to wear such things!

Done and done.

#32 Organize cubby hole in stair way, and clean up back door area

Our stairwell has a nice little cubby hole in it that is a great place for extra storage. Today I cleaned it out organized it into two crates and two bins. The bins now hold shoes since the back door area is ideal for shoes, since this is where they like to congregate anyways. One of the crates holds extra or specialized cleaning products, and the other holds paper plates, cups and napkins. And the best part, there is still room!!!

At the same time, I cleaned up and re-organized our back door area.

We have four hooks (great for jackets, purses and hats), three Ikea shoe organizers (stacked one on top of the other and mounted to the wall), white board for messages, and cutie bull heads for key holders.

The bull heads were actually part of our Lenten projects last year, and they've worked great every since! On top of the shoe organizers we are able to keep sunglasses, a catch all, and at least for a few more weeks a box with gloves and hats.

#12, #5 and #11...More work in the bathroom

#12 New cabinet pulls for the vanity in bathroom

We found these pulls at Ace Hardware. They match the facets in the shower and sink perfectly and they were about $2 each. Easy to install and they look great!

#5 Put up shelf, towel rack, toothbrush holder, and robe hook

So for this project, the hubby and I had to do something neither of us had ever done before...drill into tile. Now it may not sound hard, and it wasn't really, but it was a little intimidating since there is no good way to patch tile if any mistakes were made. Luckily, there weren't! Another challenge, was marking where to drill once we'd measured out were the holes went. We accomplished this by marking on painters tape since we didn't have anything that would write on the tile. Hubby says the key to drilling into tile is going slow and applying very firm pressure to the drill bit. 

We bought the glass shelf, double towel bar and toothbrush holder from Lowes, along with the two robe hooks, the cost was about $50. We love the way they look, take a look for yourself...

Unfortunately, the toothbrushes we have don't quite fit right, but hey, it's nearly time for new brushes anyways! On the shelf, I'm displaying some of my "finds"; a blue glass hand that I got at a flea market and I put my jewelry on and my round Asian guy I found at a thrift store, I'm not sure what he is supposed to be used for, but I'll use when I burn incense cones. 

#11 Wash, and switch shower curtains. 

Pretty self explanatory. I just thought the solid color shower curtain would look a little better in the bathroom now...so the striped one is now in the downstairs bathroom. Here's a look from the hallway...

#95 Drop off Old Sneakers for "Reuse-A-Shoe"

"Every year, across the globe, millions of pairs of athletic shoes end up in landfills or disposed of in some other way creating a lot of waste.  Much of what we dispose of contains valuable materials that, with a little bit of imagination and ingenuity, could be reused.  With the pursuit of sustainability in mind, Nike created a program to recycle worn out athletic shoes and turn them into something new.  Old athletic shoes of any brand, are collected, processed and recycled into a material called “Nike Grind”.  Once SWALCO collects the athletic shoes (sometime after Earth Day each year) from our school, community and business partners, we transport them to Nike's facility to become "grind".  This material will then be used to create sports surfaces like basketball courts, tennis courts, athletic fields, running tracks and playgrounds that will be enjoyed by children of all ages, for many years to come. Now that's creative recycling!" 
-SWALCO 
www.lakecountyil.gov/swalco/Programs/Reuse-A-Shoe


Yesterday we dropped off some old and/or half-chewed (thank you, Nola Belle!) shoes to this program at our local drop-off point the Zion-Benton Library. If you have old athletic shoes, think about rounding them up and dropping off for a similar cause. Cleans your house, good for the environment, good for sport surfaces.  

This Year for Lent...Another 40 Days, 40 Projects!

So once again, my hubby and I are going to give up procrastinating for lent. We've made up a very long list of projects and tasks we've put off for too long, as well as some activities we've been looking forward to over the winter. Basically, it's a collective list of all those "You know what we should do..." conversations that we've been having for months. 


Lent this year runs from March 9th through Easter, which is technically 46 days, but the 6 Sundays during this time don't count and are, as I understand it, supposed to be like mini-Easters. But we aren't doing this for religious reasons, and truthfully, Sundays are really good days for us to get things done, so we will still be checking off projects on Sundays. Also, I'd like to accomplish 40 projects, that's the goal, but really I'll be pretty happy that we are just making progress and getting things taken care of. 


I hope you follow along during this time to watch our progress! If you look at the tag "40 days 40 projects" you can see what we were able to get done last year; it will also tag all of our "projects" for this year. 


So with that, I am very excited to get started...tomorrow. 

The Hudsucker Proxy

 

So hubby and I watched the Coen Brothers "The Hudsucker Proxy" on Friday night. It was such a fun movie!  The movie came out in 1994, so I can't believe that I hadn't seen the movie yet. The dialog and setting is highly stylized to fit the late 1950's era, which I loved because of all of the vintage clothes and decor. The dialog is also very fast pace. I wouldn't say there are many laugh out loud one liners, but the movie over all is very funny. Since it is now an instant watch on Netflix, I don't see any reason to not give it a watch. 

Also, there are a few connections to "Mr. Deeds" that are kinda fun to watch for: 

1) Source material. According to Wikipedia, the Coen bothers got there idea for the plot from such movies as "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town" which is the same movie the ulta-stupid 2002 Adam Sandler movie. 

2) The Plot. Once you've seen both, the similarities in plot are very apparent....really too many to enumerate here. 

3) Cast. Both movies share Peter Gallagher and Steve Buscemi. Both have much smaller roles in the "Hudsucker Proxy" but both are there for sure! (And let me tell you, Peter Gallagher is looking quite young and sexy!) Also, I can't find out for sure but there is a Texas shareholder in both movies, and I think it may be the same guy. But I luckily haven't seen "Mr. Deeds" lately, so I can't tell for sure.