Closet Makeover

One of my goals is to go room-by-room in our house and update... paint baseboards, doors, door trim, repaint walls (if necessary), organize areas better, etc.  This is a lofty goal, I realize, and I'm giving myself till the end of the school year to get it all done.

I'm also trying to do all of this on a budget.  With me not working, there's no way I can run to the Container Store or Sherwin Williams all the time.  I'm trying to work with what we have, or what I can get for cheap!

So where did I start?  The smallest space, of course!  The coat closet. :)

I wish I had gotten a better before picture, because it was BAD.  And you couldn't really see how bad it was because we always had about 20 pairs of shoes (no lie) laying on the bottom of the closet.  We had about 20 jackets shoved in there, and I had bought cheap little containers that held overflowing hats, gloves, and scarves. When you removed everything, you could see marks on the wall (probably where our shoes hit when we threw them in there and where jackets rubbed against the wall) and the baseboards were DISGUSTING.  It looked like they were growing hair.  Bleh.

I cleaned and painted the baseboards, painted the walls with leftover paint, bought some cuter (and bigger) containers and utilized a shelf we weren't using as a shoe rack- it was a perfect fit!

All in all, this project cost me $18 (the containers were $6 each, with tax).

Before, minus the cluttered shoes and jackets:

Wish you could zoom in... it was terrible.  

After:

More of my exciting room re-dos later...  ;)

Pictures

Here are the kiddos' school and soccer pics from 2015:

Taylor:

Pre-K

Sydney:

1st Grade

Parker:

2-year-old class

Happy Halloween!

We had some fun this Halloween in the K-Bash household.

It started off Wednesday night when our church hosted their Trunk-or-Treat.  I have yet to volunteer our trunk (usually, Stephen is either out of town or just flying back in town) but we do enjoy going (even though I do feel slightly guilty for not volunteering said trunk).  Anyways, there were lots of fun trunks (some people go way out!) and about 1500 people visited.  We got there early and left right when a rain storm hit.

Wizard of Oz.  It was great- they had all the characters.

Cruella Deville and 2 of her dalmations

Captain Hook

Minions!  You may recognize these two later.

Fishing for candy.

Sydney and Mercer.

The sun was setting and you could see the rain moving in at the same time.  It was bizarre!

Friday, I went to Taylor's class to set up their Halloween party.  All the parents brought in goodies, and the kids got to walk around with their goodie bags and get the treats.  I didn't get pictures of all the kids, but here's the table with the treats on it.

Saturday was Halloween, and our friends invited us over to their house to eat some chili and go trick-or-treating.  It was weird, because it was the first year we hadn't trick-or-treated in our own neighborhood.  We left the obligatory bowl with "sorry we missed you, please take one" (yeah right!) note by the door and headed to our friends' house.  Our friends live nearby and they had a huge neighborhood, so we had plenty of houses to see and plenty of candy to get.  We trick-or-treated until about 8:30 and we were d-o-n-e!

Remember the minions?  We went to their house.

There were some crazy houses!

We all felt this way when we got home.

Fall break!

The girls had fall break last last week, and we tried to stay busy!  I think we succeeded. (and apparently we are still busy, because I forgot to finish and post this!)

The first Saturday was busy with soccer pictures for both girls, soccer games for both girls (at the same time), and then Stephen took the girls to the GT game with him.  Parker and I were going to go to the local town fall festival, but he was pretty cranky. (P has been waking up at 5 something in the AM just to watch tractor videos on my phone).  I let him play on the playground at CFA and then we headed home.  We played outside for a while, and our friend Kristin came over to hang out that night.  I cooked some yummy chili (it is getting COLD!) and we all hung out and watched football.

Sunday, we went to church and hung out that afternoon.  We went to dinner with our church group that evening (party of 25!), which was fun, but then it was so bad... the stomach bug hit me that night.  I hadn't been feeling great the couple days before, but it hit me hard.  Thankfully, Stephen was in town to take care of the kids... and me.  Bleh.

A stop at Home Depot before dinner.

Parker and Michaela, who I actually taught two years ago!

Monday, I wasn't feeling great, but did manage to go to workout group at church.  Then, we went to the dentist for Sydney's appointment for sealants.  They were pretty easy and it took about 20 minutes total.  We came home and played the rest of the day.  I painted my first piece of furniture
 and Stephen took the girls to soccer practice since I was covered with paint.

Our friend at soccer sent home a lollipop for Parker since he wasn't at practice. 

Tuesday, Parker and Sydney had their well check-ups in the morning.  They both got great reports, thank goodness.  Sydney is now less than 50th percentile in height and weight, which is so weird because that's never been true for any kid in our family!  We seem to strive for the 90th percentiles.  (such overachievers, we are!)  Parker is something like 70th percentile in both.  After flu shots for all three, they got their lollipops and stickers and we made our way to take Parker to school!  He got there about an hour late, and the girls were excited to see his class for once.  Then, we headed for a "girls' day out" at the Mall of GA.  We grabbed some lunch, rode the carousel, racked up at Old Navy, and had fun walking around.  It was soon time to get Parker, so we picked him up and then went to a nearby park for a couple of hours.  Stephen was gone today, so we got home and had some breakfast for dinner, and called it a night.

Look how sassy Taylor is!  (Significance of this pic- Ann is S's middle name, and Taylor... well, you know)

We made some new friends!

They all slept good that night!

Wednesday, we woke up early and headed up to my parents' house!  We met them at a local breakfast joint.  After our eggs and bacon, we went over to my mom's church.  Their church puts on a holiday bazaar every year before Christmas, and all the church ladies spend countless hours making some really awesome Christmas decorations to sell.  I got to be a part of making three wreathes!  It was like a craft person's wonderland... dozens of ribbon to choose from, lots of accent pieces, and more.  My dad took Taylor and Parker to the library, and Sydney stayed with us while we worked longer.  We headed back to my parents' house after a while, ate lunch, and I ran out to the nearby outlet stores for a kid-free shopping trip.  We made our way home, and Stephen came home not too long after we got home.  Yay!

This was a custom request.  They're going to put a black letter and a bow on this wreath.

Thursday, I took Parker to school and ran a couple of errands in the morning.  We picked up Parker early from school and headed to get our Christmas pictures done.  (I found an awesome Groupon that I couldn't pass up!)  We made it through the pictures, walked around the mall for a while so Stephen could talk on a conference call, then headed to Rooms to Go to pick out a new couch.  We grabbed dinner out on the way home, and called it a night!

Friday, we went on our day trip... we were gone from 8:30 AM to 11 PM.  Whew!

Saturday, we had to wake up early to get to Taylor's soccer game at 9 AM.  Afterwards, we went to our church to help out with their "beautification day" (aka- twice a year, church members will help out to deep clean the church).  We were able to help for almost 2 hours before having to head to Sydney's game at noon.  The kids were getting pretty tired and hungry- it really had been a tiring day on Friday, and they didn't get to eat lunch until after 1!  While they did that, I ran a few errands and did all the grocery shopping.  I got back, Stephen helped me take in the groceries, and then he was off to the GT/FSU game. The kiddos and I hung out the rest of the night!

Sunday, Stephen flew out early in the AM to Dallas, so it was all me for the next 4 days!  Today, we went to church, went to our small group, it rained all day so we somehow entertained ourselves and didn't go crazy!  

Notice the size of the spoon.  Is Parker shrinking?

It was a fun break!