I instantly began hanging my clothes on the rack and getting things organized. It was so exciting! I couldn’t believe I was so excited. And then I started thinking – I have not had my own closet since I lived at my parents’ house. In college I shared closets (a tiny dorm one doesn’t count). Neal and I shared a closet in the house we lived in on the west end, and we have shared a room in this house since we moved in. That’s a long time of sharing closets!

So anyway, I ran to Bed, Bath and Beyond and used their cool 20% off coupons to get a shoe rack for my closet. I’ve never had a shoe rack! Ever! I’m so exited about this! Hey, it’s the simple things.

Anyway, I had to be careful, as my shoes are… well… tiny. Fortunately I managed to get a shoe rack with bars close enough bars to fit my shoes, albeit barely, haha.

YAY!

I know, I’m so ridiculous.

I got some adorable shots of Simone this weekend. She’s so stinkin’ cute.

I love her little pink nose.

Ferris was in his “defensive posture,” as we call it.

HA! That’s obviously said with sarcasm.

So, I have a closet and cute kitties, haha. I’m so lucky.

I was going through some things in our office (working on organizing stuff) and picked up a large Christmas gift bag that had some leftover tissue paper in it. What did I find?

Yeah, I know. I’m sure you saw that coming. I have no idea how it got in there, because the gift bag is taller than the cats. HAHA, they crack me up. I’ll try to update the Stopper Watch regularly.

This weekend, I decided to organize my recipes. I have an odd assortment of recipe cards, print-outs from the internet and magazines, etc. So I decided to buy some clear plastic sleeves and organize them in a 3-ring binder. I separated the categories with dividers.

And then I bought some other plastic sleeves that has slots for photos, which holds recipe cards well.

I feel like I can find things easier now. I got rid of all of my Kraft food magazines, too, and just ripped out all the recipes I think I might use.

OK, so I’ve been blogging to keep my mind off of the Eagles game, and now the Cards are up again. I’m signing off to watch the rest of the game. Eeeeeek! I’m not feeling so good about it….

Neal is watching the Eagles game. It will probably be over by the time anyone reads this. My stomach is in knots over the game and I’m having trouble watching, so you get a blog post! Also, Neal and I are convinced that when I watch, bad things happen to the Eagles, so I try not to watch, HAHA.

Before I talk about our office project, I have some fun pictures from last night. Tad and I agreed not to exchange Christmas gifts this year, in lieu of a fun night out to dinner. We’d rather hang out then buy a $25 gift for each other. We invited Tara and her boyfriend along as well and made reservations at Vincenzo’s Italian Restaurant last night. The weather held off and we enjoyed a fabulous dinner. Neal and I really love this place. We had our wedding rehearsal dinner at Vincenzo’s and we also spent our first wedding anniversary there. The food is amazing and it’s BYOB, which saves money.

Because I want to gain 20 pounds (NOT!) I ordered fettucine alfredo. This was sooo rich and amazing.

Yes, I took my camera and took pictures of my food in the restaurant, HAHA. I hope the waitress didn’t think I was a food critic.

For some reason, Tad wanted to do a picture of “see no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil” or whatever order that’s supposed to be in. I’m not sure why he did this, but most people that know Tad know it’s best to humor him and just do what he asks. Neal already knows this and Josh is a fast learner.

The girls decided to smile for a picture and be normal.

I got tiramisu for dessert, my FAVORITE. Well, actually creme brulee is my favorite. Tiramisu is second, HAHA.

Yum!

We then decided to head back to Tara’s place and play a card game. It was called “In a Pickle” or something like that, and it was pretty fun! I like games where you have to be creative, because things always end up getting a little out of hand, HAHA.

Tad stole my camera for a little bit. It was scary.

I know, my attractiveness is blinding you. Please try to focus.

I took my camera back.

We had a really, really fun night. I love hanging out with Tad and Amanda, and am so happy that I’ve had the chance to see Tara and Josh a lot lately. Oh, and I know her and Josh are biting their nails watching the Eagles game right now, too, HAHA. E-A-G-L-E-S EAGLES!

OK, sorry for that outburst.

Before the game today, Neal hung the shelves in our top office cabinet.

Ferris admired the handiwork.

I am seriously totally in love with my cabinets. They just look so neat and clean.

I started to organize a little today.

Looks great, don’t you think? Definitely an improvement!

And I took some photos of incredibly sleepy Simone.

So anyway, let’s cross our fingers the Eagles hold onto their lead. My stomach is still in knots….

Since a crapload of snow was forecast for Saturday, Neal and I went to Home Depot Friday to get the supplies we needed to build and hang shelves in the cabinet. Of course, we woke up this morning and there was NOTHING on the ground, HAHA, but it was nice to have that errand out of the way.

What we now call our office, the previous owners used as sort of a guest bedroom, which I thought was incredibly odd because it is very small and directly off of the kitchen. We turned it into an office, but it really isn’t quite useful yet, due to it being completely unorganized.

Also, there were two built-ins that they used to hold a TV, phone, etc. They were ugly. Yeah, I’m not mincing words. Neal recently built cabinet doors, which I love, to hide the ugliness, and we ended up throwing random crap in there.

See, pretty doors, right? That is the top cabinet, and you can see a little of the bottom cabinet. My goal is to get these organized! I think one reason I throw useless crap in there is because the shelving doesn’t work for me, and there are a lot of random, ugly colors. It just looks messy to me.

See what I mean? The previous owners liked to do things on the cheap, and it looks like it. So I decided to paint the inside of the cabinets. That dark maroon in the top cabinet gives me a headache. My goal was to make these NOT UGLY. Yeah, I don’t have high standards, HAHA.

Ferris helped didn’t help.

And here they are finished!

Whoo hoo! I primed and then used two coats of paint in the top cabinet to cover the maroon. Ugh. But I’m so happy with how it looks!

I don’t have pictures, but Neal built four shelves out of 3/4 inch MDF to hang on either side of the top cabinet. We bought a track that brackets fit into, so I can change the height of the shelves. Right now, the shelves are primed and painted and drying in the basement. Tomorrow, we plan to hang them and then I’ll start loading our stuff back in! I feel very accomplished!

After building the shelves, Neal relaxed and played some Grand Theft Auto. I took a picture of him and Simone.

And then he curled up with Simone to watch the beginning of the Ravens vs. Titans game.

You can see the paint on his hand. He primed the shelves for me. Isn’t that nice?

Simone’s getting bunny ears, HAHA.

Tonight, we are going out to dinner with Tad, Amanda, Tara and Josh. We are all happy the weather held off so we could go out, since we made these plans weeks ago. I’ll post pics tomorrow once we get the shelves hung. Have a good night!

Well, I’m going to tell you anyway. My goal has been to do at least one thing each night. See, I usually come home, make dinner, and then watch TV and surf the Internet. It’s pathetic. Neal gets home late a lot, so I lose track of time and all of a sudden it’s 10 p.m. and it’s time to watch Nip/Tuck and go to bed (season premiere tonight! Whoo hoo!).

OK, so last night I took all the ornaments, lights, etc off of the Christmas tree, and then Neal took it out to the curb when he got home (sad!). So tonight, I vacuumed up all the needles, and then went through our magazines/catalogs and threw most of them out. I feel really good about this “a little each night” thing. My mom recommended visiting Fly Lady’s web site, so I’m going to peruse it and see if there are any good tips.

OK, so you know I told you I was going to work on some photos in Photoshop? Well, I have some to show you. I started with…. who else…. ME! Here’s the SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) shot.

And here’s what I came up with:

Do you like? Not a huge difference, but an improvement, I would say.

Here are some more:

SOOC

And then one of Ferris:

SOOC

I know the changes are small, but that’s the goal, right? To make little tweaks to just boost the photos? My next plan, to play around with some of my wedding photos. If you’ve been on the edge of your seat to see more pictures from the day that Neal and Megan became the dysfunctional married couple they are today, stay tuned!

And hey, if any of you have organizing tips you’d care to lend me, feel free to comment! Thanks!

But I know I’ve commented on this site before about how disorganized Neal and I are. We can never find anything, and our house IS NOT BIG. It’s ridiculous, and I’m tired of it. I hate being unorganized, but yet I’ve let this house got to hell. It’s mostly due to laziness.

So my New Year’s resolution? GET ORGANIZED. I visit this blog, The Hyper Homemaker, and she’s going to be starting a series on how to organize your house, room by room. I’m looking forward to reading what she has to say. But I decided to get a head start. New Year’s Day, I ran to Bed, Bath and Beyond to get some organization stuff. The cashier said that’s what was selling most, HAHA, so my resolution is not unique.

I started on the kitchen, since that’s where I spend a lot of my time and I’m tired of not being able to find stuff when I’m cooking. Plus, our pantry is A MESS. I’m sick of thinking I have something and then not being able to find it.

LOL, yes, Simone was trying to help. Beside her is the roll-out wire basket that I had Neal install for me (and no swearing was involved! Amazing!). I bought a plastic thing to hold soda cans beside that. And below you can see my little wire rack that doubles up the room I have for cans. I’m not sure if this looks organized to you, but trust me, it is. I LOVE IT. I cleaned up all the crap we had on the floor, and Neal commented on how nice it is to be able to actually walk into the pantry.

So amazing. I have shelves behind me when I was taking this picture, too. I organized those better as well.

I bought a wire rack to hold my cutting boards/sheet pans and set that up in my cabinets for easy access. I also bought small wire baskets that were on sale to organize some of my drawers. We have a kitchen cart with two drawers that ended up being junk drawers. Do I really need two large junk drawers?

Yes, Simone is also in these pictures. She’s always in my business. The first drawer pictured has pens/pencils, scissors, tape and my coupon organizer. Second drawer is batters and other odds and ends.

Whew. It took me over two hours to do all of this, and it really wore me out. I feel so much better now. I can actually find stuff in my kitchen, and it feels great. Once we take our tree down, my next project will be organizing our office and downstairs bathroom. Both have a lot of storage space, but it’s underutilized because it’s not really organized.

OK, sorry if I’m boring you, but I’m pretty excited about this resolution. My second resolution? Finish our attic. Neal’s parents bought us drywall and supplies to finish our attic last Christmas (it was already wired and insulated). We have been slack on actually completing it. Neal and I would like to make that our bedroom. So come hell or high water, we are finishing it this year, HAHA. I can’t wait!

To celebrate our clean kitchen, I broke out my new food processor Neal’s parents got us to make dinner. I wanted to make au gratin potatoes. Last time I made these, I sliced the potatoes using my box grater, and almost lost 2.5 fingers. My processor has a slicer attachment, so I decided to give it a try. And wow. My first though is that I’m sad I didn’t have this sooner.

I love it! I love, love, love it! I also used the shredder blade to shred up cheese. What took my 5 minutes on the box grater now takes 2 seconds (seriously) with the food processor.

Funny thing. It came with a video to watch on how to use the food processor. It was a VHS. I don’t think I’ve held a VHS tape in my hand for like 2 years.

LOL! Seriously? I had to take a picture. I was shocked Cuisinart would have a VHS rather than a DVD. Doesn’t matter, because I don’t watch these instructional videos anyway, and we do have a VHS player, it just made me giggle. Am I the only one that thinks that’s weird?

The au gratin potatoes came out perfectly.

I served them with garlic and basil broccoli and some Italian panko-crusted chicken. Very good dinner!

So anyway, get on my case about organizing, because I really need it! I added an Organizing category to the blog as well. Happy ‘09 and I hope you stick to any resolutions you have made!