Mess Management Monday: Craftroom Organization- Crocheted Caps and Headbands

My craft room is a HUGE MESS!  It is approximately 12' x 12' and has a small closet.  I know I am lucky, I appreciate that, but somehow this room stays messy.  I work, work, work, but never put anything away.  So here's my plan:
EVERY week I will attack one group of supplies in my room.  This week it is baby hats and headbands, next week ribbon, then fabric, etc.  Maybe one day I will even getting to my growing piles of misc papers!  Then on Monday I will post before and after pics- well, maybe not "before" because it is a bit embarrassing!  I will tell you which products I have used and the method of organization.

Today I got a new shipment of hats and headbands in, so I decided to tackle that first.

 

I use Snapware containers for EVERYTHING including Big Sister's Toys, so it was a simple decision to store all of this in several layers of one.

 

I always organize by the colors of the rainbow, it is easy to find, and it looks so pretty!  The top level contains all of my baby headbands.

 

And the next 3 levels are home to all of my crochet hats.  White, Pink, Hot Pink, Shocking Pink, and Black have their own level, and the rest of the colors are stored here.

 

The entire system stores easily on a shelf- although it is getting a bit tall, so I may store the headbands somewhere else!

Home: Downstairs "Before"

Take a tour of our house.   Over the next few months I will show you pictures of our house AFTER the remodel.  But these pictures our BEFORE we did anything.  Thankfully, someone came through and took out the garbage, and the fleas, although they did leave a rat that I got to meet a few times before we finally killed it.  That took a really BIG trap!

I fell in love the moment I peeked through the front door, and although it still needs A LOT of work, it is much better now than it was in these pics.  We bought the house in October of 2005, worked on the house for 10 LONG months before we moved in, and lived downstairs for 4 months while we worked on the upstairs.   It ain't perfect, but it is ours.  To keep this blog as brief as possible, I will just show you the downstairs today.

Foyer:

The first thing I noticed about the house was those stairs.  What a great entrance!  This house has great bones, but needed MAJOR work.

Living Room:

 I think this was one of the only rooms that didn't have major damage to the original plaster, but what you don't see in the pic is the vine growing on the front wall INSIDE the house.  

Den:  What were we thinking, this place was disgusting! The den was apparently the "smoking room"- the walls were covered in tar.  You can kinda see the white spot on the wall to the right.  It's not actually "white" just not as dirty as the rest! 

Dining Room:

This room needed MAJOR work- plaster, floor, everything.  You can see outside the window on the left there is a bit of wood in the top of the window.  That is actually the "porte cochere."  I kept calling it a carport, but was corrected enough times I decided to look it up, and found that, yes, i admit it, I WAS WRONG.  

So here it is: A porte-cochere (French porte-cochère, literally "coach gate", also called a carriage porch) is the architectural term for a porch or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building, through which it is possible for a horse and carriage or motor vehicle to pass, in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.

 Anyway,  the darn thing was falling down, and the previous owners we told to put it back up, or tear it down.  They PROPPED it up with a too short 4 x 4 cemented in a 5 gallon bucket!  The new roofline poured water into the house through the hole where the beam should have been attached, and really damaged the floors and walls.

Kitchen:  How do you say "ugly" in a way that doesn't sound rude?  It looks a lot bigger in the picture.  Behind the wall on the right (1st pic) was a butler's pantry, in addition to the food pantry you see in the second picture.  Tons or storage, but not much SPACE.  There was a wall oven taking up a good portion of the wall to the left, and they had, apparently, had a small fire at the stove.  Just in front of the door in the 1st pic there was a hole in the floor so that we could see the ground under the house.  We were told that was where they would pour the food out of the bag for the dogs to eat! 

Notice the interesting doorway arrangement in the second pic.  We were never really sure what to think about that.  That piece of molding butting into the middle of the doorway is actually a second doorway with a small cabinet behind it.  Seems like a HUGE waste to me, since there is NO WAY to put a door on either of these two openings!

Breakfast Room:

This room was the icing on the cake, the worst of the best, the part that made me need to go straight home and take a shower.  This was a sewer pipe- a BUSTED sewer pipe.  They had opened the entire wall to fix it, and just left it.  So all the gases and disgustingness could linger in the house.  YUK!  What were we thinking?  Do we really have this much time and energy.  Please note:  the staining on the ceiling is actually a different problem, it is rust from the metal lathe under the plaster caused by a leak in the drain pipe coming from the sink.  We found this one when our light fixture filled with water and we had an inch of water on the floor.  But that is a story for another day!

Life As A Mom: Our Houston Vacation and the City Pass

We recently took our first vacation as a family of four.  This usually isn't a big deal for most people, but it is only the second vacation Prince Charming and I have had in the NINE years we've been married- we didn't even go on a honeymoon!  But when you have your own small business it can be hard to get away.

We went to Houston for 3 days/2 nights and had a blast!  In researching the trip we decided to purchase the Houston City Pass (you can find out more by clicking the link).  It is good for 5 attractions over a 9 day period.  These attractions are amazing, so plan to visit only one a day- we were trying to see 2 each day, only saw 4, and needed a vacation when we got back from our vacation!





Saturday:
We left for Houston at 4 am so we could drive while Baby Brother slept.  Right on schedule we woke up as we were pulling into the Houston Zoo.  I nursed him while Prince Charming and Big Sister stretched their legs, prepared the stroller, and took a look around.  Even though we got there early it quickly became too hot to stick around.  It's a good thing everything else we planned was inside!  We checked into our hotel and hung out the rest of the day. 






Sunday:
Big Sister loved the gemstones and jewelry at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, and Baby Brother loved that it was air conditioned!  We slowly toured the entire museum, and had a very relaxed morning.  She also enjoyed seeing and learning about all the different animals they had there.








NASA was awesome and I wish we could have stayed there longer.  The tram tour was a bit disappointing thought.  Our tour visited the astronaut training facility.  This consisted of an hour and a half wait outside in the heat (somewhere around 100 degrees!), and then the tram ride to the main facility.  Next time we'll go on a weekday so we will see more than quiet buildings and empty parking lots.  Our tram CD tour guide got stuck so it only told us about Building 17- about 5 times!


Inside there was a lot for big sister to do.  We didn't get to do it all, but she had fun!  Next time we will plan to be there all day.

Monday:
Big Sister LOVED the Children's Museum.  We spent most of our time there in Kidtropolis.  Where Big Sister learned about working, earning a pay check, and spending the money she earned.  She had several different jobs there including, Vet Tech, Waitress, Bank Teller, Bicycle Repairman, and Ambulance Driver.  I think she enjoyed being a waitress the most.  We could have spent the whole day in there alone.  But, we had other things to see.

The three story indoor play thing (Power Tower) was incredible.  Here's how the museum describes it "The Power Tower is our 40 foot tall climbing structure, the equivalent of climbing almost 4 stories high! You need good upper and lower body strength, but you also need strategy; not all paths through the Tower are equal! How fast can you get through? It takes strength and endurance. Make sure to bring your climbing shoes."  I think Big Sister managed to go through every inch of it- up, down, and all around!  Again, we could have spent an entire day there.

Before we headed back home we made our way over to IKEA.  I LOVE IKEA!!!  Prince Charming had never been, and was skeptical, but now loves it as much as I do.  In fact, our tour of IKEA is what inspired "The Great Sale of 2011!"  Surprisingly, his favorite was the bathroom sinks!  He's planning another trip to the Dallas IKEA when he's ready to remodel Big Sister's Bathroom.  We didn't get to look at much because we were exhausted from the 3 packed days we spent in Houston, but we will be back!

Overall:
- The City Pass is a great bargain if you have the time/energy to go to all 5 attractions.
-  Even though we were short on time, I am glad we had the City Pass.  It was simple to buy online, and I didn't have to try to research to find the best attractions in the area.  I am sure there are excellent attractions that it doesn't include, but when you are short on time, it was easy to plan.
- The City Pass allowed us to skip the long lines at NASA, and got in the Members Only line at the Children's Museum.
- We are planning a trip to LA in Christmas 2012, we we will probably be buying the Hollywood City Pass then!