Goodbye January!

Once again, I had grandiose plans of accomplishing a plethora of things off my to-do list in the sleepy month of January. The only problem is, January is never sleepy. NEVER! So I am considering this a note to self for 2012, don't expect January to be calm. It never is. :-) Anyways. On to how I did on my goals for 1/11.

Take down, sort through and put away Christmas decorations.  Yay!

Decorate for winter. Yay! I showed you the winter wonderland mantel, and I also put a few do-dads on the piano, and above the dresser. Here's the piano.



Finish purging the house for 111 Things in 1/11. Yay! Wasn't it so much fun purging the house? :-) Here's my big ole box of things ready to go to Goodwill. I am still finding things, so I may add to it a little before it leaves the house.



Read the Lost Symbol and Treasure Island. I finished both. Yay! The Lost Symbol was excellent until the last 50 pages. Then it was total crud. But I thoroughly enjoyed reading about the masons and Washington DC. Treasure Island was fun, although I kept picturing each character as their Muppet character. Which was only slightly distracting. :-)


Refinish the little Frenchy table. I started this project, but purposed not to rush it, so that I would do a really good job. Every time I start to refinish something, I get bored or annoyed half way through and it doesn't look as good as it could. So I am cutting myself some slack. Here's a progress shot.



Make it to the gym 2-3 times a week. Yay for me!

Sew something. FAIL! :-) But, I am getting together with a friend TOMORROW to sew. So I don't feel terrible about this. :-)

Do the appropriate paperwork for my business end of year documents. Not done yet. I've been hard at work on them, it's just taking longer than expected than I wanted it to.

Finish up the new design for my photography website.  FAIL. He he. Hopefully next month will be better.

Give my best time, energy and love to Lover. Yay! We had a great month.

So all in all, it was a pretty productive month. Let's see how I do in February!

111 Things in 1/11: Week Four

This is it! Our last post about our month long purge. It has been really neat to do this with our whole group, and get to see everyone's progress. How motivating is it to think of all of the junk we have gotten rid of out of our houses?

So here is my last pile. I had finished going through the main areas of the house, so this pile is a result of sorting and purging in book shelves, closets and attics.

Here's what I got rid of:

One pillow insert

Two old throw pillows

One bathing suit coverup

Two picture frames

One decorating book

Camera filters

Three used up candles

Four Wax melts that don't like to melt

Two candle plates

I also sold a bunch of stuff on eBay this week. I sold photo mailers, and i-pen, a router, batteries, an old digital camera, jewel cases, and two webcams.

So my total for this week? 24 items. So my total for the month is 125 items! How fun is that? I am excited to have all this purging done. There's room in my cabinets and closets, and I feel like I have made even more progress in having a home that is only filled with beautiful things that I love.

I can't wait to see the last of the things you have gotten rid of, so link up and show off your piles!

Decorating for Winter - A Winter Village

Well one of my goals for this month was to decorate for winter. I've been working on ideas here and there, but so far, only one area is completed, and that is the mantel. I actually had this idea in December and completed it just before Christmas. I wanted to do a winter wonderland theme, with snowflakes hanging down just above a little town, all covered in snow. I also wanted to NOT spend a lot of money. :-) So this is kind of my own take on a dept.56 village, but without the expense or having to store it all each year. :-)  It took some ingenuity, but I figured it out.



I created the little town out of posterboard. I just googled some images of "town silhouettes" and then freehanded a design on pieces of white posterboard. Cutting them out was the hardest part because my craft knife is dull, dull, dull. :-) I even cut out little windows and glued vellum onto them so that light would shine through the back. Of course, that was the plan, but I never could find a light that wasn't either too bright, or too small behind the town I created. Oh well. The light shining down from the mantel looks pretty too. I painted glitter faux snow onto the roofs and chimneys of the buildings, and I love how that looks.



The "snow" on the ground in front of the buildings is that faux snow cotton ball stuff. It has sparkly flecks in it that is really pretty. I originally wanted big white cone trees or something like that, but everything I saw in the stores was either too small or too expensive. So I took some picks of white berries that I had in my Christmas decorations and wired them together into trees. I think they look pretty cool.



The snowmen are foam and styrofoam balls hot glued together, and covered in more of that faux snow paint. They don't have eyes or anything because I wanted everything to be white.

The most important part of this whole get up was the snowflakes falling down from heaven. (Or in this case the ceiling above the mantel. What? Doesn't your mantel snow down on everything below? ;-)  The Dollar Store had some great sparkly snowflakes that are light as a feather. They were light enough to hang on invisible thread and attach to the ceiling with some scotch tape. The other little snowflakes are plastic scrapbooking decorations that I have had for ever. They were perfect to vary the size ans scale of the snowflakes. The best part of this little setup is that all the flakes are light enough that they move back and forth in the breezes created by our forced air. It's magical. :-)



So there you have it. My simple and cheap winter display for our mantel. Hopefully I will get around to putting up the other decorations before winter ends. Then again, if spring surprised me and came early - I'm thinking I wouldn't care so much. :-)

111 Things in 1/11: Week 3

It's week 3 of our month long purge, and boy did I get the ball rolling this week! :-) I got rid of a total of 45 things, and let me tell you, I am psyched. I have to admit, I had a few doubts at the beginning of this challenge that I would not be able to find 111 things to get rid of. However, it has NOT been a problem! I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that. :-) Anyways, here's the pile I had,



and here's the list of stuff that I got rid of.

1. Broken suitcase

2. Broken hanger

3 - 7. Shirts

8. Pair of boots

9 - 21. 13 pairs of socks

22 and 23. 2 bottles acnefree

24. Shirt

25. Sweatpants

26 and 27. Two pairs of pants

28. Sweater

29. Button Down Shirt

30. Linen jacket

31. Scarf

32. Bag of shirts for rags

33 and 34. Two travel books from AAA

35. How to Build Your Barn

36 - 38. Three other books

39. Muffin Tin

40 - 42. Three candle paraphenelia

43. BB Gun

44. Calendar

45. Random glass jar

That's a total of 101 things to date! (Which also means that I only have to get rid of 10 things next week. Hee hee) Now link up and show me what you are getting rid of!

Family and Maternity Session

Today I thought I'd share some fun pictures from a photo shoot I did a few months ago. I could not believe this girl was 8 months pregnant. We had fun with some family pictures, and then snuck away from the kids to catch a few shots of mom and dad together. These guys were so much fun! I think these are my favorite maternity photos to date. :-)









Gosh, I just love them all. Which is your favorite?

111 Things in 1/11: Week 2!

Hello friends! I'm back with my next set of 28 things that I'm getting rid of. This week was all about the Christmas decluttering (one of my goals for this month too. Yay for multitasking!). I got rid of a bunch of stuff, and turns out I now have some room in my Christmas bins for future stuff that I may find! Here's what my pile looked like,



and here's what I got rid of;

1.Two lily of the valley candles that were so pretty but smelled so awful. :-)

2. Small plastic container with snowflakes

3. Wreath One

4. Wreath Two

5. Stocking One

6. Stocking Two

7. Santa Hat

8. Christmas Candle Plate

9. Used up Yankee candle (Christmas Cookie - my favorite! But I have another :-)

10. Small loaf pan - super cute, but I won't use again

11. Ribbon ornament hangers in a terrible shade of gold

12. 13. and 14. Candles I decorated  last year - they melted in the attic and were unusable. Bummer!

15. 16. and 17. Three Christmas books I've never looked at.

18. and 19. A set of used up candles and their little candle plates.

20. and 21. Two broken stocking holders.

22. Glittery box that something came in years ago.

23 - 25. Small glittery tree candles that I've never burnt.

26. - 28. Glittered fruit.

So that's it! Those are my 28 things for this week, bringing my total list of purged items up to 56! I am psyched.  I can't wait to see what you got rid of this week. Link up and we'll all come visit!

January Goals

Yes, I am aware that it is January 10th, not January 1st. And I don't care. :-) Here are my goals for January 2011.

Take down, sort through and put away Christmas decorations. Yes, I still have my tree up. No, I do NOT want to put it away :-)

Decorate for winter. I figure because winter lasts for-EV-er here, I should at least attempt to have fun decorating my house this year. I'll let you know how that goes. :-)

Finish purging the house for 111 Things in 1/11. So excited about this!

Read the Lost Symbol and Treasure Island. Dan Brown  - need I say more? And Treasure Island is one of the classics that I recently purchased. 'Member my resolution to read 12 classics last year? Well, I read three. So I am setting that goal again this year, with the knowledge that I must actually READ one book a month in order to meet this goal. :-)

Refinish the little Frenchy table we purchased a while back. I've decided on a color. Now I just need to sand, stain, poly and paint it. Whew. :-)

Make it to the gym 2-3 times a week. Ideally three, but life does happen sometimes. :-)

Sew something. A curtain, an apron, a shirt... anything.

Do the appropriate paperwork for my business end of year documents. Blech. Double blech. But I'd rather have it done now. :-)

Finish up the new design for my photography website. It's stellar. I just need to make the time to finish it. :-)

Give my best time, energy and love to Lover. This is one of our 2011 goals, to give each other our best. I think it's a fabulous idea. :-)

Well, I have 21 days to accomplish all of this. Wish me luck! :-) I'll report in sometime in February to let you know how it's going. :-)

2011 Goals for Wendhurst Castle

Here's a list of the things we'd like to accomplish in 2011 here at Wendhurst Castle:



Finish the blasted awesome basement remodel that we started two years ago.

this is NOT our office. :)

Remodel the office/craft room/sunshine room.  I've talked here about the plans for the office (although I don't think we're going with those colors), which were derailed by the basement issues. We'll be painting some paneling, replacing some ceiling pieces that are literally falling out, drywalling, painting and decorating. Ok, I'll be painting and decorating. :-) It sounds like a lot to accomplish, but the room  is very small - just 11 feet long by 7 feet wide at its widest point. So it should be a fairly straightforward project. :-) We'll see.



Paint the left side of the back of the house so it looks like the now pretty right side of the back. :-)

Finish removing the concrete planters in the backyard. (thanks for that previous owners!)

Finish painting and decorating the back entryway. We've been working on this little space here and there over the last year, and had it almost finished, but then it got too cold to paint and caulk out there.

Replace the five upstairs windows that are old and broken and don't open. :-) I can't WAIT for this one. Hopefully we'll get an awesome deal on these.

Those are the main goals. If you ever feel like fainting though, you should see my master house list. It's awesome, and it's many, many pages long. :-) I'm hoping to get some other stuff crossed off of there too over the next twelve months. Time will tell!

111 Things In 1/11: Week One

I am so excited about this very first week of getting rid of stuff! :-) I hope you are too. I still had houseguests this week, so I kept my clutter busting insanity to a minimum. I simply pulled things out as I went through the house normally, and ended up with a little pile at the end of the week. Not typically how I purge the house, but it worked out fine. Here's my pile of stuff going to Goodwill. (A few items will just go straight to the garbage :)



I got rid of:

1. Old photography book


2. Outerwear vest


3. CD holder


4. Cabinet lighting that never worked


5. Old checks


6. Broken Battery Charger


7. Recipe Book


8. Silicone Trivet


9. Tea Ball that let out all the tea :-)


10. Chip Clip


11. Glass Vase

12-18 Old Set of Steak Knives

19-25 Miscellaneous Jewelry items

26-28 Christmas Ornaments I don't want anymore

Whew! It feels good to see that pile of stuff that won't be taking up room in my house anymore. I can't wait to see all of the stuff you'll be getting rid of! Link up and visit other blogs too so we can all encourage each other to continue this process of purging our junk!