A Dresser Redo

A month or so ago I decided that it was time to spruce up my dresser a little bit.

If you remember correctly, I went out and bought silver knobs to replace the gaudy gold ones that had been on my dresser forever.

Since those have been replaced I've been itching to get my dresser painted. Well this week is the week that it will be happening and I'm taking you all for the ride along with me!

So I want to start off with a quick before tour of my dresser so you can get an idea of what I'm starting off with, then over the course of the week I will show you the progress made and the different things I'm doing to spruce it up and will share after pictures with you once this project is complete!

Sound good? Okay, deal...let's get started!

You can see above, an overview of my dresser. It has five drawers which has worked very well for me. I'm definitely not fighting for space right now because I keep a very minimal amount of clothing in this dresser. That may change in the future but for now it works just fine!

On the top of my dresser I keep a ton of items, and I would love to find new homes for the majority of them so it wouldn't look so crowded.

This tower houses a ton of products...
The white/clear cases hold my entire makeup collection. The top drawer holds bobby pins, hair elastics and other hair clips. The second drawer holds eyeshadows. The third drawer holds mascara, eyeliners, and other eye products. The fourth holds concealers and face products. The fifth drawer holds face moisturizer, eye cream and foundation. Finally, the last drawer holds lipgloss, lipstick, bronzer and blush.

The basket on top is full of contact solution, makeup remover and suncare items.

I also have my nail dryer, some eyeshadow palettes, lip scrub, and box of mementos housed here.

I have an old candle jar holding makeup brushes, another that is holding miscellaneous beauty supplies and an acrylic container holding q-tips.

My perfume collection also lives on the top of my dresser.

Along with a couple of mirrors and my deodorant.

Now moving onto the drawers....

I won't be showing you my top drawer since it is filled with underwear and bras, not something I want to share on the internet =)

The second drawer down holds all my socks. White socks lined up in the front, soft socks off to the left, Christmas socks in the back right, and my warmies directly in the back!

The next drawer holds all my jeans and work pants...

The next drawer down is a little empty, but it holds my sweatpants and yoga pants that I don't wear to work.

The last drawer down is my shorts drawer.

Now, yesterday I went to Home Depot with my dad who assisted in helping find me what I needed to work on this project.

Paint, paint brush, and drawer liner!

I took a few pictures while I browsed the paint colors in Home Depot (particularly in the Martha Stewart collection)...

I ended up choosing a color called Pure White because that is all I truly wanted, but how beautiful is the blue color I put next to it in the above picture! Future walls in my future home?!

Now, off to get started with this process! I'll be checking back in tomorrow.

Also, I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a Happy Veteran's Day, and thank all the veterans for everything you do for our country, I truly appreciate it as so many do.

Have a great day everybody!

Weekly Couponing Wrapup!

This weeks couponing haul, again comes from CVS, my favorite store!

1 Owl Candle Holder, regularly $4.99, on sale for $2.49
1 Leaf Candle, regularly $6.99, on sale for $3.49
1 Pepsi, regularly $1.99, on sale for $0.89
1 Paper Towels, regularly $1.19, on sale for $0.79, used 79 cents off coupon, = FREE
1 Gillette Shave Gel $2.27.  (thought I would be getting $3ECB back..but didn't....)
2 Burts Bees Chapstick $3.29 each

In addition to the paper towel coupon, I used $7 in ECBs, making my total $9.46!

Not bad at all!

and how could you say no to these decorative items at 50% off?!

I love them, and definitely need to beef up my fall decor for when I have my own home someday, and at 50% off prices, I definitely can't say no!

How did you do couponing this week? Planning any big Christmas couponing?

I hopefully will have some Christmas deals for you soon, I am getting excited for the holiday season and want to make sure it's an affordable one!

When my picture print orders come in....

I thought today I would show you the process I go through when I get an order of picture prints in.

Last week I shared with you a photo deal that gave you 101 free prints, and I also received two codes for 50 free prints each. That's 201 photos that came through the mail to me this week... 201!

Now, if you know me, and know how many pictures I take you know that 201 pictures barely makes a dent in the number I take in a single month. However, dealing with 201 pictures at one time is a process, and I know that many people struggle with what to do with their pictures once they arrive at their home. In fact, someone I know has years of their family photos all still in the envelopes they came back in from the photo developing place. I'm talking- two HUGE bins full of envelopes of pictures. When I saw that my heart stopped for a moment because I know there are so many better ways to save those memories!

So here's what I do...

First I start off by laying out all the pictures by event. This particular set of pictures was from my trip to France, so I started off sorting by event, and then after finishing that particular arrangement, I put them in piles by day.

For normal, every day pictures I just place them by event, since I generally don't have more than one thing to scrapbook during a single day.

Once I'm done laying out all the pictures by event/day I put them in individual makeshift folders. I had a pack of paper that had been bought for event programs back in my dance company days, and still have a ton of paper left over so I fold each page in half, staple both sides and tada! My very own folder for each event.

Now, once the pictures are inside each folder, it's time to put the "other" stuff in there as well. For France I had quite a few items that I wanted to include in my scrapbook: ticket stubs, programs, maps, etc... So I sorted all of those out by day as well. (It's helpful to have your events written down somewhere so you can sort more efficiently)

Once everything is in it's individual folder altogether, it is time to file it away until I'm ready to work on that particular scrapbook.

I use a basket that I found at Target a few years ago to hold all my "to-be-scrapbooked" folders.

Yeah... it's getting a little tight in there...might be time to get scrappin' again!

More Fall Colors

Just a few more New-England fall colors for you all before the leaves are all gone...

We call this area of the road near our house "the tunnel" because the leaves always form a tunnel over the road. It never looks as beautiful during the rest of the year as it does during fall though...

and in our backyard...

Now, I can't forget the most important view during fall....

The Patriots!

I got to see the end of the game on Sunday night with my friend and former roommate Megan. Such a fun time!

Have a great Wednesday everybody!

A Year-Long Clothes Donation Plan- Update

At the beginning of 2013, I stuck little post-it flags on the hangers in my closet to symbolize that I had not yet worn any of the items. As I wore each item, I took that little flag off and threw it away. I figured it would be a great way to keep track of what clothing I've been wearing, and anything that still had a tag on it at the end of the year would be donated, tossed or sold.

Throughout the year, if I come across an item that I know I won't wear again, I take it out and deal with it right then rather then leave it for the end of the year. Last week I did just that, went through the closet to see what still hadn't been worn...

My closet is organized as follows: coats, sweatshirts, sweaters, long-sleeves, short-sleeves, nicer shirts, work shirts, tank tops, dresses. Then on the far right side are special items such as my prom dresses that I don't necessarily wear but I am not ready to part with just yet.

In the above picture you can see I have a tag on only two jackets, a couple sweatshirts, a few sweaters, and some long sleeved shirts.

Just a closer look...

There are a few more flags on t-shirts and nicer shirts.

And quite a few tags on tanktops and dresses.

I'm not going to be super hard on myself if I haven't worn some of the dresses by the end of the year since I don't dress up very often. If I want to keep a few of those dresses I will let myself, because I may just not have had the opportunity to wear them. A girl has to have her dress up outfits =)

So after doing a little sorting here is what the flags looked like...

I ended up parting with eight flagged items, and a few items that weren't flagged as well.

They changed the dress code at my work and (thank god) I no longer have to wear purple, I now have to wear black instead. I don't want to keep the purple items if I'm not going to be wearing them anymore. I also found a few tanktops that I never wore and don't plan on wearing again. I also managed to part with a t-shirt and a sweatshirt.

You can see in the above picture that I have four categories I sorted these items into. The bottom text is cut off but it said "bring to work" which is what I will do with the purple work clothes, since the gymnastics coaches still wear that color. I have two items to donate because they won't be worth trying to sell on ebay. I have five tanktops that I will try to sell on ebay. I also have a t-shirt from work that I will toss since it is a personal t-shirt and no one else would really want it!

Not bad for a quick organization project! I will be revisiting this in December after Christmas to get rid of any other items I haven't worn yet....

How do you get rid of clothing? Do you have a system similar to this or do you just sort through your clothing on a regular basis?

Extra Pesky Bookshelves

I love to read, and before my Kindle was in existence, I bought a lot of books. Hardcover, paperback it didn't matter, but I was an own it kind of girl.

So, when my mom bought two small bookcase from the Christmas Tree Shop and wasn't using them I put them together and stuck them in my room to hold all of my books.

Someday I would love to be able to display all my books, photo albums and scrapbooks on bookshelves- however I currently don't have the space for that. I had these two bookshelves holding books and other items, but I didn't think they looked great and wanted to get them put away in the attic for storage. I just didn't know what to do with all the items on their shelves.

Here's what happened.

This is where we started off. The basket on top of the shelf holds all my hair tools, the small pink container holds first aid items. Then the bottom two shelves hold books and other miscellaneous items.

Here's what was inside that hair basket. Now, there is a lot of sample size hair products that I don't use on a daily basis. Those could live some place else I think. I also don't use my curling irons very often. My most used items are my two hair brushes, my hair straightener, and my blow dryer.

Love empty containers!

I moved my chi spray and my curling irons into my hair drawer (located inside my jewelry armoire. I don't use these items every day so it makes sense for them to be hidden away.

The travel size products went into my hair bin inside the closet.

Not shown, but my hair straightener, blow dryer, and two brushes went back inside the originally basket which is now on top of my jewelry armoire for the time being. That will be moved very soon hopefully.

Now as for the rest of the stuff...

I moved all the books and photo albums inside an extra bin. They will live in the attic until I move and hopefully have a new home for them.

Now, the other bookshelf was currently living in my closet, housing photo albums and scrapbooks.

It was blocking my boots along with the scrapbook cart and it was driving me crazy. As I went to grab any of my boots, I had to lean over the shelf to get them. It was annoying and I knew it would continue to bother me all winter long. After all that's what organizing is all about right? Making things simpler and orderly for every day life.

I pulled the shelf out of the corner so I could see it and got to work.

Since my scrapbooks are so big, and I wanted to keep them close by so I could take them down and look at them, I opted to put them on a closet shelf.

However, all the rest of the photo albums were boxed up and put in the attic.

and now, I can get to my boots....

Weekly Couponing Wrapup

Happy November!

Wow, I can't believe today is the first day of November- we're almost in that holiday season again! That means that it's time to really focus on saving money so I have some extra money for Christmas gifts!

I also have started ordering some Christmas presents online and plan to use coupons as often as possible in order to keep my Christmas gift costs low.

So this week here is what happened:

I placed three orders on Shutterfly. I had two user-specific codes for 50 free prints (received from mycokerewards.com). The third order was for 101 free prints with a user-wide promo code that I shared with you on Wednesday.

Shutterfly total saved: $30.15

I also used a promo code at Kohls.com.

Kohls total saved: $15

I also went to CVS to do a little couponing haul this week.

I purchased:

2 Charmin Ultra Soft 4 packs @ $3.79 each
2 Purex Laundry detergents @ $3.50 each
1 Listerene Mouthwash @ $3.99
2 Covergirl Mascaras @ $7.50 each
1 Always Infiniti Pads @ $5.49

I used:

$1/1 Always Infiniti- making it $4.49
$1.50/2 Purex, making them $5.50 total
$4.50/2 Covergirl, making them $10.50 total
(2) $1/1 Charmin, making them $5.58 total
$2/1 Listerene, making it $1.99

I also used a CVS coupon for $4 off a $12 cosmetics purchase, making the $10.50 mascara total come down to $6.50!

My total was $26.51, and I saved $26.76 total at CVS this week!

My total savings for the week is $71.91!

How did your couponing go this week?