Martha Stewart Madness!

Ever since I was a little kid, my parents have made fun of me because I get excited about the weirdest thing: office supplies. I LOVE OFFICE SUPPLIES. And let me tell you, I love Martha Stewart. So as you can assume, I have been so impatiently waiting for Martha Stewart's line of office supplies to come out! I literally went to Staples every week to see if it was out yet! 


I got a few things....and it's perfect because her office supplies are light blue, and my office is green:

Vertical file folders...genius! I have a magazine filer that is really pretty (it's wire and it has flowers on it!), so I thought some vertical file folders would be perfect, especially for all of my school documents (such as my transcript).

Small binders with small page protectors. I got these because I figure it's PERFECT for a recipe binder (you know, all of those note cards with your recipes on them....put them in these!) and also because I am a Mary Kay Consultant, so I put my receipts from orders in them. 


So far, that's all I have gotten...but I will be getting more once the fall semester starts up! Now that school is out, I am going to show you my disastrous office and how I'm going to reorganize. I still have all of the cards from my wedding almost a year ago...yikes! They're just in a pile in there! Check back next week!

Finals Week and Our Vacation

I said almost two weeks ago that I would update everybody on my vacation, and I failed to do so....woops! Spring semester at the University of Montana is almost done, so I have been working on final projects and studying, and things at the resort that I work at have picked up quite a bit. There is never a dull moment needless to say! 


So, to keep my promise, here is what we did in Seattle for spring break:

We visited the famous Pike's Place Fish Market on the first day. There was a ton of shops (the market is 3 levels!), and of course the real fish market (the guys that throw the fish), and also the Gum Wall in Post Alley:

Then we shopped around downtown quite a bit, and went to a really good restaurant for Casey's birthday called the Scotch & Vine. It was a small place, but it had a ton of wine and scotch! The food was great, too. 

Just above Pike's Place, there is a restaurant/brew pub called Pike's Place Brewery. They have a really popular beer called Kilt Lifter, and it's actually pretty good! We had a blast there, and they had excellent food (probably the best we had during our entire trip).

Then we visited the Columbia Center Skyview....it's twice as tall as the Space Needle, and half the price! It's gorgeous up there, with an amazing view of the water and the city. 


We did Bill Speidel's Underground Seattle Tour:

 Then went to the butterfly atrium at the Pacific Science Center next to the Space Needle. 

It was a blast, and we definitely wore ourselves out! It's been good to be back and in the swing of things...now I just need to finish this semester up and get to cleaning! Later this week, I will share with you what I got from Martha Stewart (I love that woman)!

How to: Make Your Own Fabric Box

Right now, I should be busting my butt on some accounting homework. So here I am, blogging! 


A huge part of being organized is bins....we have gone over this. You take everything out of the cluttered space, throw out what you don't want/need, and you put it in a bin, then label it. Fabric bins are a great way to organize in a place that people can see (living room, kitchen, bedroom, etc.). And you know what? I'm not going to lie to you....fabric bins can be expensive, especially the nice heavy-duty ones! So I kinda was racking my brain on how to make one, then I found this lovely little box:

I thought it would be great to try and make a fabric bin out of, because the cardboard is pretty thick and sturdy, and it also has handle holes! I bought some fabric that I thought was versatile in all of the rooms of my house, and I measured it and cut it so that it would fit one side of the box. To adhere it, I used Elmer's spray adhesive that I found on sale at JoAnn Fabrics.

Then I finished all four sides of the box, careful to wrap the fabric around the bottom and inside edges slightly to that it looked uniform on the outside:

That's as far as I have gotten for now! But I must say...not bad for a homemade fabric bin. I'm going to fabric the inside as well, so we will se how that goes! Then I'm going to cut out the holes in the sides for the handles, and hopefully it holds up! It's been over a week since I got this far, and it has held up beautifully! Updates to come soon....  :)

A Lovely Little Spring Break

In case you didn't notice...I've been gone all week! I was lucky enough to have a whole week off from college, and April 1st was Casey's birthday, so we decided to visit Seattle. It was so fun! We went to Pike's Place Market, the Gum Wall in Post Alley, the Columbia Center Skyview, Space Needle, EMP, Pacific Science Center, and many many other places. I absolutely love it there! It was sunny and warm almost the entire time, so we totally scored in the weather department.

Later this week, catch up with me and I will tell you all about our adventures there!

Our Home - Part 1

As promised, I am giving you a look into our home! There are two levels to our house; on the upper lever is the laundry room, kitchen, dining room, bathroom, living room, bedroom, and office. On the lower level is two spare bedrooms (one has our pool table), the tool room, and extra storage. 

Many of you have already seen our kitchen from the recent update we did to it, but just to recap, here is our kitchen:

We repainted the cabinets white, painted the walls red, and put the brushed nickel handles on the cabinets. We love it! 

We also put in laminate floors a couple of months ago (and I took no before & after photos!). We used to have linoleum floors that was white and a teal color....it was bad. We just laid the laminate right on top, and it totally warmed up the house!

The living room is one of my favorite rooms. We bought a brand new couch and chair in February, so I just love it! I feel like the room is very open to guests.

We have an old family piano in the far corner, a large coffee table in the center of the room, then the sectional couch and my round chair that I super duper love! It's a cozy room to say the least.

Then you enter the hallway (which is to the right in the picture above), which takes you to the bathroom:

We chose to do our bathroom in blue and brown. It flows well from the living room (which is tan, brown, and black, with blue as an accent color).

We got the bath mats and towels from Target, and we got the shower curtain, curtain rod, and the curtain rings from Walmart. Everything was on sale, so we got a super bargain! Over all, the bathroom makeover costed us about $25.

If you enter the door on the left in the hallway, you enter our bedroom...aka, Jenna's sanctuary. I LOVE my bedroom. It's another favorite room in my house. You can't really tell, but the walls are a very light light grey color, which really opens up the room (it's a little small) and reflects natural light wonderfully.

This room is so calming to us. We got a brand new platform bed for our wedding, which was awesome because before that we were using a double-size bed that was my dad's bed when he was younger. Needless to say, we REALLY needed a new bed!

Once again, there is no overhead lighting in our bedroom, as is in the rest of the house, so we got a shelf lamp (on the right) from Target for our wedding and put it in the corner. We use short night stands that are level with our bed. The comforter and duvet set we got from Target as well, and that was one investment that lasts! When the duvet gets dirty, I just take it off of the comforter, wash it, dry it, and put it back on. 

I bought this shelving unit from Walmart, and the baskets are from Target. I had a major problem with scarves filling up random space in my closet, so I got a closet organizer from Lowe's. 

I. Love. These. Shelves. They are on my side of the bed (The window is on the wall on Casey's side). I got them from, can you guess? Yes, Target! They were on sale, so I snatched them right up! The ceramic elephant I got from Michael's.

If there is one thing in life that I love, it's Marilyn Monroe. This poster of her & James Dean caught my eye, so I bought it for $2, bought a cheap frame (probably around $10) and hung it above my dresser. It definitely adds a soft touch to the room!

So there you have it. These are just a few rooms in our home, and I can't wait to show you more! 

A Fast Organization

When Casey and I moved in together, we had a ton of movies. There is probably close to 200 DVD's in our house! We used to have them stored in a cube shelf under our TV:

But today I thought, "Man, I'd really like to have nice little things in those cubes rather than all of our DVD's." So I decided to move them into our storage-friendly coffee table:

And now we have cubes to put pictures in! It took me all of 10 minutes, and I love it.

Coming This Week...

After the kitchen project, I had to take a break from improvements. Mostly I have been extremely tired and my husband is sick, AND my parents went out of town so we are taking care of the family business this week! Oh, and school, of course. 

But, after a much-needed week off, I'm going to show you my home! I will take you inside the entire house...and yes, even the scary parts...and let you take a peek into our lives. We have done a ton of updates before I started blogging, so I will explain all of that as I go along through the photos. See you in a few days!