5 Closet Organization Solutions

Lately I've been stalking someone. Have you heard of Jen from I Heart Organizing? Her blog is amazing! Chalk full of home organization solutions. I am so jealous by her creativity for organization. I use to really pride myself on organization when I was younger. I was actually pretty anal with my organization. Several years and a husband later that is NOT the case anymore.

So the other day I was on Jen's blog and it struck a nerve. I needed to get my lazy butt up & get organized! I looked around my bedroom and immediately found a couple areas I could improve. The first on the list was our master closet!

Our master closet isn't very big. It's a decent size for a starter home, but nothing to brag about. That being said, with two adults it gets pretty full of stuff and isn't super organized. That's about to change! At a recent trip to Garden Ridge and Lowe's, I picked up a few things to help me get started. For less than $20 I was able to get something organized and easier to access.


1. Purse storage: I've always heard that when you  have storage problems you need to "go up" and use wall space. I've also heard to make sure to use every space possible, including doors! So with that, I bought a couple decorative hooks from Lowe's and attached them to the back of the door to hold my purses. Easy to do and so nice when I want to quickly change my purse for the day! Total cost for this solution was $6.

2. Hat storage: In our office I bought a hat rack for Ryan so all of his baseball hats had a home {not that he puts them there that often}; but for my hats, I like them upstairs when I'm getting dressed. Mostly I use them when I exercise and I'm getting dressed upstairs for that. With that, I bought some Command Strips and placed them on the wall for each hat to be hung. I think I spent a total of $5 for this solution.

 3. Belt Storage:

4. Scarf storage:

 5. Sweater storage:



Pallet Wall FAIL

The other day I saw a picture onFacebook from Brittany at Pretty Handy Girl. She posted a blog, and photo, of her AMAZING pallet wall. Here's the pix:

As you can see, totally cute and something that would absolutely appeal to me-right? We have a wooden wall in our house, remember our home was built in the 70s, so this seemed like an easy thing I could put inside my home. I already had green paint from our kitchen, the blue color from our fireplace wall, and white paint for the guest bedroom, so I thought I'd take a stab at recreating this for our home {Ryan was even okay with it, which meant I needed to HOP on it QUICK!}

So I went to labeling some of the wood pieces for the colors I wanted. I thought it would be easier to start painting once I had a game plan of where the colors would go.

Once I did that, I started with the green paint from the kitchen. I got about half way done with the green paint when I stepped back and looked at the whole space.

And that's when I decided the pallet wall was a major FAIL! See, while I LOVE the idea of a pallet wall and the colors, asthetics work perfectly with the home and my style, it just didn't work well with the other patterns inside the space. Given that we have open concept with our living room and dining room next to one another, that means the dining room needs to play nice with the living room.

These are our curtains, slight pattern.

The entertainment stand I painted a while ago.

Rug on top of our carpet.

You might think I'm crazy {and if you do, and strongly believe I made the wrong decision please let me know! I could be airing on the side of caution when I made the choice, but can easily be talked out of it!} but I just didn't think the pallet wall would complement the other pattens in the space. The curtains aren't too crazy, but they do have stripes at the bottom. The entertainment stand has a pattern as well with the green and white on select locations and finally, the rug; which I actually think would complement the pallet wall if it didn't have the other elements.

I don't know....I struggle with mixing patterns and fabrics together in home decor. In apperal I'm all over it but in home decor I doubt myself and decide to opt out. Maybe I'll attempt it again when I'm feeling more confident. Today I'm going to consider it a FAIL! LOL.

Mini Pumpkin Treats

Pinterest is a dangerous place...I always have the urge to make something after just 5 minutes on the site!

This is another Pinterest creation, like my pin wheels; I saw this one morning and just had to make them the same day! So I saw this pin for mini croissants filled with pumpkin {have I declared my love of pumpkin yet? Another blog...} so my interest was peaked. After looking at the super easy recipe on Shaken Together, I decided to get the necessary ingredients while at the store.

So you start off with all the ingredients: 2 rolls of Pillsbury Crescent Rolls (I used the reduced fat kind), Pumpkin Spice, Sugar, 1 can of Canned Pumpkin and 4 oz. cream cheese (I used Weight Watchers to reduce some calories).

I first started by mixing the filling first; I've noticed with the Pillsbury Crescent rolls lately that if they sit at room temp for too long they are incredibly hard to pull apart. So I mixed half of the can I bought (there are smaller cans at the store), 4 oz of cream cheese, 5-6 tablespoons of sugar (the original recipe called for 3-4 but I tasted it and it needed a little more sugar. Add as you see fit.) and 2-3 tablespoons of pumpkin spice.

Mix until you get a fluffy mixture with this kind of consistency....

Now here's the tricky part. You'll need to cut the crescent rolls in half, so there will be a total of 36 mini crescent rolls. Then you will need to put some of the pumpkin mixture on each crescent roll and roll them up. Be prepared to get messy, as the pumpkin mix will squish out!! The recipe called for you to roll the mini crescent rolls in the left over sugar and pumpkin spice, but I just took a spoon and poured it over the crescent rolls. {After cooking, I now see why the recipe recommended rolling in the extra ingredients. I will be doing this step next time, adds a great crunch!}

You then bake them at 375 degrees for about 17 minutes. And them come out nice and warm! Even Ryan, who's not a big pumpkin fan, enjoyed these guys!

Bloggy Conference

As you can tell I've been a little MIA on the blog these last couple weeks. I'm going to blame it on one thing....the Bloggy Conference. If you're not familiar with this conference, it's another blogger conference like the Haven Conference I attended earlier in the year. The Bloggy Conference, however, was located in Cincinnati, OH. It was hosted by Tiffany Noth from Bloggy Moms. After several months talking to her via email, it was really nice meeting her in person. She is such a sweet & talented person!

Anywho, so two weeks ago I traveled there for work as Homes.com was sponsoring. Several weeks of preparation getting the brand ready to be represented to this network and it was finally here! As soon as I landed at the airport, I was a busy bee getting everything set-up with my co-workers. When I wasn't doing things for the conference, I was working remotely so things kept moving in my absence.

Don't get me wrong though, I was able to play while working! One night the three of us went to this steakhouse Jimmy G's and it was AMAZING. Had some delicious wine, a fantastic steak and we all split the side items family style.

The following days were whirlwind of meeting new people, sitting in on education sessions and having fun! Our booth was busy with people eager to meet with us and stop by our super fun photo booth. Check out some fun photos from the event!

There are more on Facebook also.

It went by so fast and even though I tried keeping up with work while there, I had some catching up to do with budget season. So this past week was extremely busy and I was mentally done by Wednesday! LOL. Since my week didn't end then, I pushed through till Friday.

So there you have it.....my reason for being out of touch, but now I'm baaaccckkkk! ;)