Smellin' Good

I mentioned a while back that I picked up a new pair of Tevas. I stand by my initial judge that they are the most comfortable shoes ever. I definitely wear them at some point every single day and would (and kinda sorta am) consider buying another pair.

I chose Tevas over a new pair of Toms because I thought they would be a better fit with all of the summer activities we have going on.  {no socks with toms + summer heat = bad combo.} Well imagine my surprise when we got home from youth camp, we're having a lazy night watching tv and then I realize something is letting off an awful stink. After some smelling and searching, there was no denying it was my feet. And more specifically, my beloved Tevas!

After googling it, turns out that stinky Tevas is quite the common problem, which is definitely a buzz kill on my perfect summer shoes! There are a few options listed for how to clean them, but I chose the easiest, though definitely a little strange.

Yep. I froze them. As strange as the idea seemed, Cody and I have both heard something before about freezing your jeans and killing the bacteria. All it took was a few hours of my time, so I had nothing to lose by trying it!

The verdict?

I would call it mostly successful :)  My left shoe doesn't smell anymore, but the right still has a tinge of a weird slightly stinky kinda rubbery smell.  I think I will probably try to freeze them every few weeks to keep the smell in check. Thought I would pass along this strange technique in case  you too have stinky Tevas to take care of!

Craft Room.

alternately titled: I can't believe I'm posting these pictures.

How's your Saturday been?

Ours has been surprisingly productive. Every weekend when I get back home I say to Cody - I know I have stuff to do but being gone during the week makes me want to be super lazy on the weekends. Luckily this weekend, I managed to have a good balance of laziness {can it really be a weekend without a nice nap?!} and productivity, which you're about to see.


When we were in the house hunt process, we were looking for an open floor plan and eventually found the perfect one. Our open floor plan came with a small side room which we found out was a converted patio. The small room fulfilled one of my long time dreams: a craft room!

Organization and cleanliness have never been my strong suits, despite my {sometimes} efforts. Recently it's gotten really out of hand and drastic measures needed to be taken so that I can actually use the room again. Here's where we're getting real close and personal on the blog and you're about to see my faults... be nice, ok? {my only excuse is that the room snowballed after the flea market we did and i've never taken the time to clean...sorry these are all camera pictures. it's just easier sometimes!}

Here's what my craft room looked like this afternoon when I started:



And if that wasn't bad enough, it even spilled out into the living room:



Yeah.


{my mom is probably dying right now. sorry mom!}


So I set to work, pulling out of of the junk and sorting through what I really need and finding a place for everything I'm keeping. One of my big problems is scrapbook paper. I have a large amount of it and didn't really have a good way to store it.



After a little pinterest searching, I found a couple of options and set out to make something happen. I looked at a couple options, but went with the cheapest option. I bought a large stackable tub from Walmart and a pack of hanging file folders. (about $10 for both)





I then set out sorting pieces, colors and put it into the tub. After a little bit of work, I had it consolidated to this:



MUCH more organized and easy to move around if needed! After getting my paper situated, I then moved on to paints. I purged anything that was old, then sorted into the plastic 3 drawers. One drawer for reds,pinks,yellows and oranges, one for blues, greens, purples, and one for blacks, browns, whites and neutrals, plus Modge Podge and such.



{hopefully tomorrow I'll finish labeling all of them!}


After a few hours today, I am very, very happy to say that my craft room now looks like this:



and here's what that little living room overflow now looks like!




I still need to work on my fabric, which is the box you see on the floor and stuck into that shelve. I do have an idea and hopefully I'll be able to finish it tomorrow!  As embarrassed as I am by the before, I'm so thankful I took the time to get everything in it's place. It's amazing how much more inspired you are to go craft when you have an organized room to go to!


How's your weekend been?

Dryer Sheets

After we got back from our vacation, we were thrown immediately into getting ready for the flea market and couldn't really think about anything else.

Including the ants in our kitchen.

{I know, gross.}

We're not really sure what happened, but somehow a few ants made our kitchen their home while we were gone. Luckily, they weren't really bad, so we could sporadically kill the ones we did see when we took a 3 minute crafting break. After the flea market was over though, I focused on finding the source of the problem, which oddly enough, I couldn't find. A few ants were on opposite sides of the kitchen, but neither group had a trail of ants to show me where they were coming from.

On a whim, I decided to try out a tip I saw on the internet. It was in an article of ways to reuse dryer sheets where people also included extra tricks in the comments. Several comments suggested that dryer sheets repelled mosquitos {which I've heard before} but one also said they repelled ants. I figured, what the heck! Certainly doesn't hurt anything to try it out. So I stuck a few in the pantry where I most frequently saw them and forgot about it.

Fast forward to a few days ago when I commented to Cody that we hadn't seen in ants in our kitchen in a while. Today, as I was cleaning, I found one of the dryer sheets hidden behind a frame near the sink and remembered my tip that I tried out. I quickly went over and checked our pantry and yep, it was empty of ants!

I'm plan on leaving them in there just as a safe guard, plus add some on our back porch. We've had several making a trail up to Kota's water and I hate having them so close to the house.

One more trick that I tried out was to use dryer sheets to wash your car. People, a few weeks ago I washed our car and spent a good 15 minutes trying to scrub the bugs off the front without great success. Last weekend I washed the car and used the dryer sheets on the bugs. Seriously, they came off without much work on my part at all!

You definitely want to check out the comments on how to reuse a dryer sheet. You never know what great tips you'll pick up on!

Recap.

I know you have all been anxiously awaiting hearing about how our night went with the photographer. {Here's the pictures in case you missed them!}

I have to start with the prep work first. When I committed to cooking on Thursday, I knew we were also signing up for a deep cleaning in our kitchen!

This included but was not limited too:

Cloroxing the sugar and flour containers



Removing the random clutter that has been sitting on this shelf for too long



and organizing the photos on the fridge! (sorry there's no picture!)

Funny how there's such pressure for a stranger to come take a few pictures!

The photographer got there right on the dot at 6:30. I already had everything laid out on the counter so it was ready to go when she got there. Have you ever cooked in front of a stranger? Let me tell ya... it's kinda awkward! First, I felt pressure to make conversation with her because she was going to be there a while. {she was really nice at least!} Second, I got super self-conscious of how I was cooking... I mean, normally when I drop something on the counter, I'll just pick it up and put it in the bowl. No big deal. But when someone else is standing there watching you, not so! It was like I felt like some how she could photograph it! Ha!

Once I moved past my fears of her seeing my real life cooking, it went really smoothly. The recipe was really simple {a vegetarian quesadilla} and I'll post it on here once the article has been published. It was my first time to cook with chilies in adobo sauce and I am definitely a fan! They had such great flavor. I was afraid Cody wasn't going to like the quesadillas because the recipe called for mayo {which he loathes! sometime I'll tell you about the only meal I've made that he wouldn't eat because of the mayo.} but he really liked it too.

The photographer took about 20ish pictures, but only 2 or 3 will show up in the paper. It should appear on Wednesday and if it's online, I'll definitely share it here!

This was a fun opportunity and definitely something I would love to do again! Let me know if you want an autographed cody of the paper :)

Cleanin' Spree

A few weeks ago I sent out a Twitter poll asking if people had a vacuum cleaner they loved and if so, what kind. I bought a vacuum cleaner on sale with Bed, Bath and Beyond gift cards when we first got married and it really hasn't ever worked all that great. It got the job done when we lived in our tiny duplex, but it was really struggling once we moved to our new house. {you know, 1500 sq feet as compared to 800!}

I've complained about it for a while and kept saying that we needed to bite the bullet and get a new one, but Cody wasn't too keen on the idea. It wasn't until after Christmas when Cody was trying to vacuum up leftover tree needles that he saw my side. {It was rather hilarious when he came stomping in, frustrated and yelling "this vacuum is horrible! it's not getting anything off the floor! *&#@$" "Oh really babe? I had no idea :) }

The general consensus from Twitter was that I needed to go big and look for a Dyson. Target had one clearanced out that was a good price, plus we had a $100 gift card and just happened to find a wedding gift card that we didn't fully use, and it had $91!! We were so excited that we were about to get a Dyson for cheap cheap cheap!

Sadly, we made it to Target and they were all out of the Dyson that was on clearance. Even more disappointing, it wasn't available online either! The next step up for vacuums was quite a big jump.. like $200 more! I have to admit, I mentally knew we needed to spend at least $300 to get a nice vacuum cleaner, yet you still choke up a little when you see $500! For something that sucks! {ok, that was bad- sorry! I really don't even like that word yet it seems to fit with vacuum humor!}

It took a lot of inner turmoil and debating if it was worth it but eventually we decided it was time to bit the bullet. We did end up getting 10% off by ordering a new one from Target online, {plus free shipping!} and we were able to use almost $200 in gift cards. It was a little hard to see that money disappear out of our account, but we both felt great about our decision once it came in.

Without further ado... our Dyson 25!



{forget WIWW people... this is me in real life!}

Now, I am almost ashamed to put this on our blog, but it is our blog, so I'll document it.

Cody took the Dyson on it's first spin around our living room, and this is what it got:


Disgusting, huh?!

Here's to our new vacuum and years of clean carpet!

Kitchen Clean Up Tip

I enjoy cooking, but sometimes the dread of doing dishes keeps me from getting creative in the kitchen. Anyone else feel this way?

The other day I read the simplest tip that has changed my cooking and cleaning up. I'm not sure if I saw it on a blog or in Real Simple, but it suggested to fill your sink with hot soapy water *before* you start cooking, so that as soon as you finish with a dish you can immediately wash it and avoid dried on food which will turn into a bigger pain!

I've been forcing myself to draw the water so that I can turn immediately cleaning dishes becomes a habit. Call me crazy, but I get a huge sense of satisfaction when I see my clean dishes sitting on the counter... And it's only magnified when I'm looking at the clean dishes while I'm enjoying my cooking!

Hope this simple tip helps you out!