Feeling disorganized? {A whole month of tips}

Happy February! 

Holy crap, it's February. Moving on...

My bloggy pal Tiffany over at Living Savvy is doing everyone a huge favour this month by hosting a whole MONTH of organizing tips!

If you've been feeling the spring-cleaning-bug, or just need a kick in the butt to get organized, THIS is where you will find all the tips! Mine will be up on February 14th, but Tiffany has people posting tips every day of the month. 

Head over and check it out....and get organized!

DIY baking ingredient jars

Last week I embarked on a project that was well overdue...for a while I've had my baking goods (flour, sugar, etc.) in un-labled glass containers in the pantry. I knew which was which from the size of the container, and from looking at the contents. One night I realized maybe that's not the best system for others in my house (aka the Mr.) - he was making a delicious dinner for me, and used some flour to thicken the sauce he was cooking...except instead of flour, it was non-descript icing sugar he grabbed. Woops. Fortunately it didn't change the sauce too much because it was a very small amount, but from there on in he started asking for labels!

My friend Lindsey at Recreated did a great DIY Spice Jar post a while back and these served as my inspiration:






















Aren't those fantastic? So cute, and so easy! So, the Mr. and I embarked on a similar project for our baking jars.

We started by emptying out all of the jars:



(and yes, all the contents did stay in bowls on our island for about a week, thanks for asking)

We thought we could make templates out of newsprint, so I got to cutting and the Mr. got to spraying:



We obviously were not following Lindsey's directions because this is what happened:





woops. a few drips and leaks here and there. Back to the drawing board - i.e. actually looking up how to do this and breaking out the frog tape:

Then paint away!



After a little bit of clean-up with paint thinner (especially on the first round of newsprint templates), and a good soapy water wash, the baking ingredient jars were done:



*That round one is my favourite! It's from the newspaper templates but the Mr. cleaned it up for me. I now use it for baking soda so it's easily identifiable from baking powder!













Shelf styling with holiday finds

I have realized often that shelves need a lot of STUFF on them to look like they do in magazines. Over the holidays I found a few extras to put on my shelves in the guest room and I think it's starting to get where I want it to be.

One of my new favourite items has to be this bookend from HomeSense:

I just love how masculine it is. I couldn't find a good combination of book spines so I just turned the books around to have the neutral pages showing.

To balance the Ox, I picked up a more feminine bookend from Winner's:

Also from Homesense, I found this treasure box (they had 3 or 4 in various sizes, and I loved them). I added the "object" that I found at Chapters on boxing day:

Here is the bookshelf as it stands now...I'm sure it will get switched up many times in the coming months, but I'm happy "enough" with it right now.

Before there was Pinterest...

So, we all agree that Pinterest is awesome (and a potential black hole that is very easy to fall into - follow me here)...who doesn't love it? Who hasn't spent hours on it? Who doesn't have the iphone app? An online pinboard for all things that inspire. But what did we do before Pinterest?

Well, it's something that I *ahem* still do. Even with Pinterest.
This weekend I tried to tackle some "tidying" of magazines, which for me means going through all the magazines stashed under my coffee table, looking at all the pages I've earmarked and adding them to this:

Yes friends, that's a BINDER. note: Pre-Pinterest, I also had a Word Doc with online design photos copied and pasted into it. I don't do THAT anymore (phew).

Remember binders? I go through my magazines and litterally tear out the earmarked magzine pages I love, 3-hole punch them and add them to the binder.



Just like Pinterest, I have the binder categorized by room (and an extra section for fashion)...however unlike Pinterest I am running out of room and may need to upsize the 3-ring (this is the real amount of pages I am adding to the binder):



I look at it from time to time, and whenever I do, I see something that I saved and that has turned into reality in my house. Like this bench from Style at Home:

That was my first inspiration for the bench we made for our bedroom:

Or this cabinet that I loved from the get go:

And I found this cabinet with a similar mix of glass and solid doors:

I still have some magazines on display, but it's moreso a "holding area" until I get a chance to go through them.

What do you do with your old magazines?

PS - When I embarked on my tidying mission Sunday night, the Mr. looked at me in fear and said, what are you doing (read: why are there 20 magazines surrounding you)? When I responded that I was going through all my magazines so I could keep what I want and recycle the rest, the look of reflief and joy in his eyes was more than words can say. Ha!