Hello! Long time no type. I’ve been busy over here – both on and off blog-worthy projects – but am back to share some updates I did in our family room that is off our open concept galley kitchen.

It feels like Spring cleaning has officially started! What are you up to?

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We had a bit of a shoe storage problem on our hands. When we head out or come in, we enter through the garage. And although our main entry is rather spacious, this one is not. Heading out the door has become an interesting game of twister – minus the large colourful circles.

Since it is a high traffic – yet small space – storage is key. Everyone needs a place to drop their jackets and shoes, and here is Chace’s spot. You can also see a shelf where we all dump our keys, loose change, lego men etc.

The view as you come into the house from the garage…

And the same space if you look at it from the rec room. That door heads into the garage, stairs to the main floor are on the left, and a bathroom is to the right.

Chef Kev stores his shoes on some large storage shelving inside the garage (right by the door), and I store my shoes in the yellow dresser that I made over, which is in the bathroom right off the small entry.

But back to this. Apparently children grow, and with that, so do their feet. Which means bigger shoes. And that translates into the system I had no longer cutting it. See the overflowing shoe basket?

And the gloves, hats and sun glasses? Oh yeah. Those too. Sigh.

But the best part? This shelf. Not only was it overflowing, BUT it was chipped in multiple places (take a look at the corner). Not quite the look I was going for.

So it all came out. And I was left with a blank slate.

But what to do on a wall that was only 28.5″ wide? Traditional solutions like this and this where much too long for this space. So, enter RETUR – a recycling bin that functions in much the same way as the pricier shoe storage options.

Now, the RETUR doesn’t look as pretty as some of the other options, but as I mentioned, this is not our main entrance  – just our basement one. Here, function really was the most important thing needed and these bins fit that bill. Plus, I love the recessed top that doubles as a shelf for us to drop our keys, change, lego men etc.

The first thing I did was find my centre point of the wall. Since the length of the wall is 28.5″, I made a mark at 14.25″. Then I lined up the corner of one of the bins, made sure it was level, and penciled in where I was going to need to place my screws by drawing in the little circle cut outs.

Luckily one screw for each bin hit a stud, but for those that did not, I hammered in some plugs. I pre-drilled the holes for these of course.

Once I had my first bin hung, I double checked that it was level.

Then I attached the one beside it in the same way and connected the two with a small screw that came supplied.

Then I attached the bottom bins using the row above them as my level.

You may have noticed in one of the earlier photos, there is a electrical outlet on this wall. I simply put the bin in front of it. Since we put furniture in front of plugs all the time I did not see any reason why this would not work. We don’t use this plug and so far it’s working out okay. Since you can plug plastic directly into a plug (childproofing plugs) I could not see a problem placing a plastic bin on the wall in front of one.

Then I loaded up the bins! I loved this part! A whole bin for hats and gloves!? Bliss.

A tad more efficient than this ‘before’ don’t you agree?

Here is a head-on shot.

And now this is how it looks when you come in to the house.

And here is how it looks from the rec. room.

And here is a close up of the top of the bins which now take the place of the cracked, shallow shelf.

While I was revamping this little entry, I took a moment to raise Chace’s jacket hooks. As we determined earlier, children have a habit of growing. Larger jackets = jackets now hitting the floor when hung.

Here is how they looked before.

I moved them up a few inches to just under the canvas that Chace painted at a friend’s birthday party (so cute!). I used the bottom of the canvas as a guide.

And here they are raised and reloaded!

It feels good making this small space a bit more functional! We still play twister, but at least we aren’t tripping on shoes anymore!

What sort of systems do you have in place to wrangle in shoes and hats? Are you using anything designed for another use? As long as we don’t throw our shoes out with recycling then we are all good 😉

It was time to plant our herb garden for the season and this year I decided to shake things up a bit. I usually plant them in three hanging planters that my dad built (and I refinished), however they didn’t always thrive quite as well as I’d hoped. The herbs always grew, but didn’t always regenerate as fast as we’d like, which had us purchasing fresh herbs at the grocery store again from time-to-time (kind of defeats the purpose right)!?

Anyway, last year there was one sage plant still alive come Spring so I took it out and put it in our large garden bed ‘just because’. Well, it went crazy and grew, and grew, and grew! So, a seed was planted (pun intended). This year I thought I’d put the herb garden into my existing large garden bed and see what happened.

Here is how the garden looked in it’s current state a few days ago (not the nicest weather lately as you can see).

(taken from my office window which overlooks the back area)

    

To ensure that Chef Kev keeps making me fancy mouth-watering meals, I keep him happy by ensuring his wooden chopping block is in fine form. Nothing says ‘chop me baby’ more than a freshly oiled hunk of wood. Pinocchio’s got nothing on this bad boy.

For those of you who don’t use a wooden chopping block, do yourself a favour and go and get one! Not only do they look nice, but they protect your knives by not dulling them as quickly as a plastic board would. As well (contrary to what you might think) they kill surface bacteria by wicking the moisture to the surface since wood is porous. That being said, we still cut our meats on a plastic board which we clean in the dishwasher to be extra safe and avoid any cross-contamination.

 

 

So, here is how I keep the board in fine chopping form. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I generally do this when the board starts to look a bit parched (every month or so) but I’ll admit that this was a bit overdue. Here is how it looked ‘before’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see – especially up close – the dry patches. The middle of the board gets the driest as it sees the most action. Therefore it also sees the most water and juices. Water + juices + air + hunk of wood = dry, dehydrated wood.

 

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Not those kind of drawers. And you’re welcome for that.

I love organizing. I’m an “everything has it’s place” kinda girl. Chef Kev rolls his eyes at me as he’s a “this sock belongs right here on the floor…  In the kitchen” kinda guy. But alas, he’s married to me so he has to put up with it (or rather, I do I guess) and as I demonstrate the ‘ol “bend and snap” while retrieving yet another wayward sock, he opens up another drawer to discover that I’ve taken it over and organized it.

And he doesn’t even get excited in a stationery store. How is that possible? Anways…

Enter exhibit A.

These kitchen drawers weren’t crazy unorganized, but the ‘stystem’ (term used lightly) was not working that well.

top drawer:

middle drawer:

third drawer:

And don’t even get me started on the grungy drawer liner that was there when we moved in. GROSS! It looks like we never wiped it but really it was just the texture of the stick on vinyl in it’s bad, bad state. It was horribly beat up.

I take full credit for the crumbs on the drawer lip though.

Nothing annoys me more than something that still looks dirty no matter how many times you wipe it.

And even better? This is what it looked like in each drawer once I peeled what was left of it out!

I should have just left it like this and played dumb.

But no. To remedy this, I made a quick trip to the dollar store and picked up a roll of fresh new drawer liner and a few cheap bins as well as a cutlery tray (which I didn’t plan on using for cutlery – I will explain that later). I think I spent about $7 total!

So after a very thorough cleaning of each drawer I began. Well, by this point I’d really already started but I’m sure you follow me here…

I used a tape measure to measure the inside of my drawers and then cut the liner down to size using the handy guide lines on the back. The cut I had to make didn’t fall on one of the guides, but they helped me to verify that my ruler was straight. Luckily one of my dimensions was the same width as the roll. Handy that! Not all too surprising since it was drawer liner after all but it doesn’t take much to get me excited.

To place the liner in the drawer, start at one edge of the backer and peel back an inch or two. Don’t pull the whole adhesive backer off at once or you’ll have more trouble than trying to put a piece of cellophane around a watermelon after you’ve been drinking sangria all day. Just. don’t. do. it.

Next, place the sticky edge at the front of your drawer and rub out from the centre, first to one side, then from the centre again to the other. This will help your liner stay straight as well as work out any bubbles.

Slowly peel the backer off while repeating this motion until your liner installation  is complete!

After I had all my drawers lined, I set about finding a system with my new bins and cutlery tray. I wanted the tray as I loved the skinny nature of each section and thought that could be really good for organizing some of Chef Kev’s go-to utensils. That way he wouldn’t have to hunt to find them while cooking dinner masterpieces.

I only needed to do this for two drawers as the top (cutlery) and bottom (tea towels, plastic bags, plastic wrap, tinfoil etc.) had existing layouts that were working okay.

Once I had those established, I simply reloaded the drawers!

Top drawer:

Oh, and here’s a fun tip you may want to try? As a space saver, tuck your ‘special’ or extra set of cutlery in another tray under your regular-use set. Lucky for us, the drawer is just deep enough to accommodate our extra, nicer set that we use for guests and special occasions. Since the trays have similar footprints, I rotated the bottom one to make them stack better.

Second drawer:

Third drawer:

Bottom drawer:

Organized City Batman. Me happy.

It’s not wrong that I love organizing like it were a pet is it? Feel free to lie to me to make me feel better. Thanks 😉

    

I did a little bit of refreshing on the ‘ol mantel. It was time to (literally) lighten up. As in, all things WHITE!

I like the simple, clean and understated approach that using only white elements offers.

My Spring mantel was still relevant (since it is still Spring), but had a lot of Easter influence so it was time to shake it up a bit.

Since my last few mantels have been quite full, I wanted something a little less dense this time – and with an airier feeling about it. Plus I think I was inspired by my new curtains :). It’s the first mantel I’ve done since I installed them and I think the graphic nature of them (and the colour palette) led me in this direction.

I used what I already had on hand, and the elements themselves are quite simple. First I took a white frame and framed some shells photos that I got from ‘google images’. To tone them down a bit (keeping with the light, white feeling) I actually put a white box over them (in my design program – Adobe Indesign) and set the opacity to 25%. Basically what that did was make the shells a softer colour. Then I just printed it out on my colour laser printer.

The decorative scroll plaque is actually one that I got from a consignment store and spray painted white to use in my outdoor garden wall awhile back. It was sitting unused in my outside storage bin since I haven’t put all my outdoor decor up yet.

This candle holder is one I’ve had for years I lovingly call it my ‘swiss cheese holder’. As you can imagine, it makes a funky circle pattern when the candle inside is lit.

And lastly are these tree bark vases that I got back in the fall. I have used them on every mantel since I purchased them. (Seriously, check it out: Fall, Christmas, Valentine’s Day, Spring)  I love the shape and finish – and even love them without flowers in them. I often use them just by themselves ‘as is’.

So that’s it. Clean. Simple. Nothing fancy.

I think it compliments the new curtains, panelled wall and art above the couch. What do you think?

What about you guys? Get up to any refreshing around your house lately? And new mantels? If so, I bet you can safely say you didn’t use any swiss cheese or bark on yours… which is a lot more than I can say ;).