Project Life

As promised, here is my version of my Project Life. I'm not really doing it in the fashion that it's meant to be done (week by week)....heck, when I first started it, I wasn't even sure if I would take a picture everyday, but now that I'm doing it, I find myself sometimes taking a bunch of pictures a day! Other days, I may forget to take a picture, but then I find something around the house to photograph & will end up backdating it.....IMO, there are NO rules to Project Life. And for me, I'm glad there aren't any rules because this is the first time I've scrapbooked in over 2 years, and it's made me realize just how much I've missed this hobby! As you look at these pages, you may notice a few spots where it's not completely done yet.....oops! Just try to ignore those if you can :) You'll also noticed that I'm using all different sizes of the PL page protectors.....I like variety.

Now, onto my layouts....
Layout 1: picture of the pudding shots I made for NYE, our neighbors dog that was sick & later, passed away :( , my gallery wall & a shot of my sisters picture on my cellphone. As you can tell, I got a slow start to doing this & it's kinda plain:

Layout 2: Warm temps in January, my baby is covered, the Lions made it to the play-offs & pictures of a hot air balloon going over our house....in JANUARY:

Layout 3: Cleaning off my desk (a never ending task, it seems), my purple half bath, pictures in my home, my favorite morning drink, happy mail day, stamp organization, books I'm reading on my Kindle Fire & more organization:

Layout 4: Our new central vacuum system, cool looking clouds, a Peterboro basket that I found at a thrift store & one of our few snow storms where the snow plow tore up our yard again:

Layout 5: Jim's 47th Birthday:

Layout 6: Jim's birthday present....seeing Bill Engvall, Larry The Cable Guy & Jeff Foxworthy at the Palace, a gorgeous sunset:

Layout 7: Our new ride, getting a replacement cellphone, going for a walk, Super Bowl Sunday, new recipe & my newest love....Zone Perfect Protein Bars:

Layout 8: A view of our neighborhood street, my Slanket, self-portrait, another new recipe, snow, trying a new restaurant (this is one of the ones that's not finished), another new recipe & then the start to Valentine's Day:

Layout 9: Valentine's Day :) This one is actually 2 full pages plus a 6X12 insert page:

Valentine's Day continued:

Layout 10: Lots more organization as I'm determined to get organized this year, bowling in a tournament & collecting coupon flyers:

Layout 11: Going shopping, finally taking down the Christmas Village, another happy mail day, Fat Tuesday & snow....here today, gone tomorrow:

Layout 12: Calm before the storm, the storm that wasn't as bad as they said it would be, Chicken & Dumplings recipe, a grape jar that I found at a thrift store, Girl Scout cookie time, going to Scrappy Chic, pretty clouds & the Daytona 500:

Layout 13: Flowers from Jim, ice storm on Leap Day, bowling, awesome dessert, shopping & a wind storm that knocked over our mailbox:

Layout 14: My new cabinets in my scraproom, organization of the drawers, a sunset, another beautiful day, a fire in Auburn Hills, installing the rest of my shelves in my scraproom & a visit to Archivers:

Layout 15: Forecast for the next week, Jim grilling out for the first time this season, putting out our Tiger flag, flowers starting to come up, finally finding a typewriter at a thrift store for $6.00, taking a walk with the mutts, jello shots made for West Branch weekend, corned beef & cabbage for Jim a day early:

Layout 16: Bowling in the Best Frame tournament in West Branch with great friends, my FitBit arrived, Jim's new grill, a foggy morning, the sunroof is open & the flowers are blooming:

Layout 17: going for a walk when the temps reached 85 today, my Magnolia is blooming, our new ceiling fan in our bedroom, Martha Stewart books I bought at Dixieland Flea Market, my Magnolia flowers didn't survive the cold temps we had :( , my addiction to Washi Tapes, new stamps & playing the lottery:

That's all I have photographed right now, but I'm still pretty much up to date on my Project Life. I have been having so much fun doing it & my only regret is that I didn't start doing it YEARS ago!

Hope you've enjoyed my layouts.....be sure to check back for more in the upcoming weeks & throughout the year.

Benita

Storage & Organization

Here are the pictures I promised of my storage & organization of my new cabinets (note: I took these pictures before I installed the knobs & drawer pulls).

This is the very bottom drawer in the corner filled with tools (embossing gun, Crop-A-Dile, etc.):

Above that drawer is my extra Xyron adhesives....I stocked up when they were on sale once:

In the top drawer, I store my label makers & tapes:

In the next cabinet, I store all of my Project Life page protectors along with chipboard & felt pieces & my Martha Stewart scoreboard:

In the drawer above is where I store some of my punches & my long reach stapler:

Next 3 drawer cabinet....in the bottom drawer is my Thickers obsession/hoarding :) These used to be on my homemade Clip-It-Up, but I ended up having to take that down as it was too close to the top of the countertop:

The second drawer stores all of my bling embellishments.....another obsession I have:

Top drawer in this cabinet stores my loose glitter, flocking & beads:

Onto the next cabinet.....bottom drawer is Heidi Swapp & miscellaneous chipboard:

Middle drawer is my Tim Holtz Grungeboard, Deluxe Designs Plain Jane chipboard (I wish that company was still in business!) & my large jars of embossing powder:

Top drawer holds all of my sanding/distressing supplies:

In the next 12" cabinet, I store all of my Cricut cartridges, mats, tools & the plastic Cropper Hopper embellishment boxes hold all of my tiny brads, eyelets & American Crafts & Bobbin ribbons:

The drawer above holds my embossing powders, distress paints & Perfect Pearls:

Last cabinet, bottom drawer is where I keep all of my packaged embellishments (except for some from specific lines that I store in the Target cubes)....see the Paperkins? Yep, I still have a few of those ;)

This is another miscellaneous drawer....I have my epoxy stickers in here along with mesh pieces, etc.....I need to organize this drawer better someday:

Last drawer holds my stamping supplies, foil, bead trays, etc.:

And there you have it.....I may change some things around once I find out what works best for me. Organization.....it seems to be a never-ending job! But I am absolutely lovin' my new cabinets....there were just what I needed!

Now, to catch up on my Project Life & start posting my pages....stay tuned :)
Benita

Newest Addition...

...to my scraproom.....cabinets :) When I saw Cindy's room on Two Peas, I immediately fell in LOVE with her cabinets & knew that was the answer to my storage problems! I was so tired of my plastic storage & my 2 brown desks, especially since I was trying to keep a white & black theme in my room. I had been stalking Craigslist hoping to find some black or white desks on there with no luck, Then I even thought about moving our kitchen island into my scraproom, but Jim talked me out of that....for now. That is, until he gets his new kitchen cabinets that he fell in love with at Home Depot (sorry, babe, but the deck comes first!) :) So anyway, like I said, as soon as I saw the cabinets Cindy had, I decided to take the plunge (getting an income tax refund helped with that, lol). Here are the first cabinets we bought:

I say first because after I got them set up, I realized 1: how much of a pain it was to access the cabinet doors near the corner of the wall & 2: I NEEDED MORE DRAWERS!!! The storage in the door cabinets just wasn't cutting it, especially since the shelves weren't as deep as the cabinets. I even tried doing the pull-out shelves, but nope, that didn't really help either. So back to Home Depot we went to exchange the 2 big cabinets for these:

2 more of the 18" drawer cabinets & 2 12" base cabinets. Yep, that was exactly what I needed...more drawers...especially since I was replacing 7 Iris drawer plastic units. Then came the countertop.....I originally wanted to get granite & found an awesome price on a slab at Menards ($299) & it would have fit perfectly, but since I ended up spending more going this way on the cabinets, I decided that the granite was out.....for now, anyway. My sweet hubs told me that when we replace the kitchen cabinets & countertops, I can get my granite then :) I went with a $44.00 formica pre-made countertop at Menards in a color called "Gold Flake Granite"....hey, it has Granite in the name at least, lol. Once we set it in place on top of the cabinets, we realized we were about 1/2" too long & it was hitting the doorway, so a friend of ours came up with the idea to add a 1X4X8 to the back wall, push the countertop up against that & then add a piece of quarter round molding to the top to take away the gap in between the wall & the countertop. Also, if you look closely, I removed all of my hanging embellishments from my 'home-made' Clip-It-Up & will be taking it down since they would have been hanging too close to the top of the countertop, therefore, I wouldn't be able to put anything on top of the countertop.

Then the finishing step....adding the drawer pulls & knobs (I also copied this from Cindy :) ). At first, I was thinking about doing black ones, but when I saw how good these ones looked on Cindy's cabinets, I knew I had to get the same ones.....it took 3 trips to 3 different Home Depot stores to finally find them (next time, I need to remind myself to look for them online first to see which stores carry them before driving all over the place!). The cabinets aren't completely finished yet....tonight, we have to cut a hole into the top of the countertop & the back of the one cabinet to access an electrical plug & run a surge protector so I can plug in my Cricut & get some lighting hooked up....we thought about adding outlets above the countertop, but then I changed my mind because I really don't want to have cords all over the top of the countertop. Then it's just a matter of attaching the countertop to the cabinets & attaching the toe kick. I already have all the drawers filled. I will post pics of how I organized them all in my next blog post.

Until then, have a great weekend,
Benita

Finally.....the long awaited reveal....

....of my new craft room. When we first purchased this home, I couldn't decide exactly where I wanted my craft room to be....at first, it was in the 4th bedroom upstairs, but I realized I would hardly ever use it, being that far away from everything that goes on downstairs....and I didn't use it once! Soooo.....I decided that if I was ever going to scrapbook again, it needed to be moved downstairs & that's exactly what I did. I moved it into the room that we never really figured out what it's supposed to be.....a formal dining room? A formal living room? I guess it could be either, but since we're not 'formal' people, it became my craft room :) And I just love the fact that it has 2 doors in which to enter it through....one near the front entryway of the home (seen below with the glass door) and one off of the kitchen. It's so nice to be able to close the doors so you can't see the mess & the dogs can't go in there & get dog hair all over the place!

The entrance.

My antique window that I altered to look like a scrapbook page....I have this hanging on the wall in between the entrance to my craft room & the front door.

Welcome to my craft room :) This is what you see when you first enter the room.

Right as you enter the room, I have an Expedit bookcase laying on it's side underneath the one window which holds my stereo, my antique typewriter & lots of other decorations. I purchased the draperies from Target about a year ago.

In the corner, between the 2 windows (one thing I LOVE about this room....it gets LOTS of natural light!) I have a black storage cabinet that I picked up at a thrift store really cheap ($15.00) that was handmade along with some Michaels storage cubes & some boxes that I got at Hobby Lobby a while back. The pictures on the walls are mostly of my sister, Karen. The Spider Plant is no longer in this room....it was just there temporarily until I could figure out where to put it.

In front of the second window is a desk that belongs to Jim.....it was a gift from his Mom back in high school. Originally, it was unfinished pine, but this past summer, I finally got around to painting it. I really like how it turned out & it's actually getting used now (instead of sitting in the garage collecting dust!). I'm still debating whether or not I want to change out the handles on it.

These are the shelves above my main work desk area which hold all my jars of Prima flowers, some baskets with stamps, etc., some antiques & my homemade clip-it-up hangs underneath the bottom shelf. Eventually, I will be adding shelves to the side wall as well as a tv somewhere.

This is the wall in between the 2 doorways where I have 2 Expedit bookcases....a 8 cube one (like in the other picture) standing vertically as well as a 16 cube one.

The 16 cube Expedit holds all of my albums along with some magazine holders, jars & nick-nacks. The baskets in the bottom row hold lace, loose ribbons, etc.

The 8 cube Expedit stores all of my 12X12 papers, both pattern & cardstock, in Cropper Hopper paper holders that I have turned on their backs. I didn't want to cut the tops off of them & actually like it this way better because I can access the paper easily....you don't have to pull the paper holders out since the paper faces outwards.

Above my Expedits is my Mom's memorial board that I made for her funeral & framed into 3 frames. I had the hardest time trying to decide exactly where I wanted to hang this when we bought this house, but then when I put my craft room together, I knew it had to go in here & it fits perfectly above the bookcases! My Mom has always been my inspiration to scrapbook & although I did take about a 2 year break from it when she passed away, I am finally getting back into it & enjoying it, once again.

Well, there you have it....my new space. If you have any questions, I'll gladly answer them. Thanks for taking a tour of my new room & have a great day :)

Benita

Happy Love Day

Today is Valentine's Day....a day for lovers, aka another reason to go broke buying overpriced flowers that die within a few days; another reason to gain weight getting chocolates from your sweetie.....I think you get the idea. I told my hubby a month ago that I didn't want chocolates or flowers for those very reasons & this time, he actually listened :) He got me the most romantic card (sorry, but I'm not sharing what he wrote inside ;) ), along with a 'blooming' paper flower and these:

(He went to Jared, lol)
2 new charms for my Pandora bracelet....the newest Breast Cancer one & a heart cut-out one. Can I just say that....I LOVE THEM BOTH!!! He really hit the nail on the head this time :) Although I think our sales lady at Jared probably helped him out in picking them, lol. Either way, it doesn't matter.....I'm so blessed & lucky to have the best Valentine in the world.....my husband of 22+ years, whom I love with all my heart & soul! Today, we are going to see a matinee movie & then go out to dinner afterwards & then.....who knows ;)

Happy Valentine's Day!
Benita

P.S. I honestly do have plans to start updating my blog more often.....I just started working on my version of Project Life about 2 weeks ago, so I need to take pictures & post them. Hope my faithful blog readers haven't given up on me :)