Welcome Fall 2016

I can't believe it's September! I don't know if I'm weird, but I'm a little excited. September brings with it for me the same fresh start as January. I'm a huge list maker and I have found that the start of Fall has really been a motivating push to keep going with projects, do things I'm excited about, and start Christmas shopping!

I think this drive came out of both September starting, and we're almost done the Whole 30 Challenge which I have always found "good habits beget good habits" a true statement. Also the word beget should be used more frequently. Since we're making good food habits, it makes me want to make other good routine decisions.

The first week of September I made a list of 24 things I wanted to do in September. It was on the 7th so it equalled to one thing per day for the month of September. Some of the tasks are more ambitious than others, it includes things like bake a loaf of bread (planning to do that this weekend since we're done Whole 30 on Monday and can enjoy fresh bread), purchase 3 Christmas gifts (done!), and finish painting interior doors. I started off so strong, did 4 things in the first 2 days...and now I haven't accomplished much in a few days but today I hope to get back on track!

A few things that I'm excited for this Fall:

- Being back to blogging! It's so good to have something outside of work that gives a creative outlet, fulfillment, etc. Also we did so many home renovations since the blog break - so we can all look forward to seeing the transformation to our bathroom, kitchen, and basically the whole main floor. We're about to start our basement as well so that will be exciting!

- Pumpkin Spice Lattes - even though it's cliche. So delish. Even more than that, Salted Caramel Mocha Frappuccino...

- Scarves. I basically always have a scarf on. I have an obsession. I try to follow a one item in one item out rule where if I get a new scarf I get rid of one I don't wear as frequently...but I do cheat on that rule occasionally. I got a new scarf my mom got me in Munich and it is my new favourite accessory for sure.

- Christmas Shopping. I know this is weirdly early! However, our list of people we buy gifts for is more than 20 and it gets insane and expensive. I have trouble thinking about more than one gift at a time when I'm at the store so if we start early we get a few done, spread out the costs a bit, and don't feel rushed. Every year I aim to be done by end of November and every year I fail - but I'm  hoping this year I'll do it. I've already bought gifts for 6 little kiddos that we have the privilege of hanging out with frequently, and have started some of the fall birthday's that are quickly approaching. We've also been working on a gift for Philip's dad that we started in March...still not done. He will be happy at Christmas to get his Birthday/Father's Day/Christmas gift all in one hopefully.

A few things I'm not excited about:

- Leaves falling on my lawn and in my eavestroughs #adulting. Although I am excited for my garden to be covered in the white stuff we all hate so that I don't have to be embarrassed about the lack of gardening I did this year.

- Wearing a jacket - one Winter as a teenager I didn't wear a coat for the whole year just to be stubborn. Dumb jackets covering my cute scarves.

- No Bachelor/Bachelorette/Bachelor in Paradise until 2017...So excited about Nick as the new Bachelor. I crushed Philip in our competition this past season and look forward to doing much of the same next year.

Are you loving or dreading Fall?

Enabling my Obsession

Well...as some of you may have realized, I have a scarf problem. Just to help to understand I had one overflowing office paper box full of scarves. Some of which I wore, a lot of which I didn't. For Christmas, my mom bought me a new basket for them (2 of them in fact, one of which was holding plastic bags from the grocery store to be used as garbage bags). This was working, except the basket was pretty big and hard to get down from the shelf, and I found myself mostly wearing the scarves on the top of the bin while the ones on the bottom were left to live a life free of sunshine, being smothered by the scarves lucky enough to grace the top of the basket.

This past week I went shopping with my mom to Ikea, Home Sense, and Costco and came home with some great organizational products that I'll share over the next while, and I'll share some photos from the shopping trip on Window Shopping Wednesday (although this was more of actual shopping and spending money Wednesday), for now, I'll share my recently obtained scarf solution.

I finally purchased the Komplement Mult-use hanger, which can hold 28 scarves! I'm clearly enabling a problem, why would I need 28 scarves?? But anyway....let's ignore that for now and focus on the fact that I can see all of my scarves clearly, wear any one that I want without having to dig, and I love that it lies with its very slim profile on the side of our front closet.

Love seeing all my scarves on display.

So that's one area of my home improved in a $10 fix. There are certainly other options out there, like shower rings on a hanger, or other specialty designed scarf hangers...but this worked for me.

As opposed to other Ikea products, this required zero assembly. Just took off the plastic and unrolled, ready for scarves! However, it is a "multi-use" hanger, any suggestions as to what else could be hung? Ties, belts, etc.?

Has anyone else done a quick organizational improvement that was low cost and low work? Leave a message in the comments letting me know what you would use the multi-use hanger for.

Day 5: First Impressions/Dirty Floors/Heard a Snap

I started writing this post yesterday, with the following beginning:

Our entryways aren't really ready for decor yet, but they did need a good cleaning.

One of the problems we addressed was buying a second entry mat. We had one, but we have 2 doors now (unlike at a condo) and people were coming in both so the back door ended up being really wet and muddy and gross. We bought a second mat identical to the other one we had so that so much dirt wouldn't be getting tracked onto the floor in the back landing.

Things have changed:

We need to find a shoe solution for our back hall. There isn't anywhere to put shoes, and since it's winter and they're wet and drippy we don't want to carry them across the house.

Yesterday I went to travel downstairs to our bathroom and tripped on a shoe, fell, heard a snap...and one very swollen ankle later I was in the emergency room. It's soft tissue damage but they're still reviewing the x-rays to make sure it's all good. For now I have to stay off of it for at least 3 days and keep icing it. Really fun when our bathroom is a very treacherous journey away! 

Boy Meets World marathon for the win.

Anyway...

The other big thing that we did was reorganize our front hall closet. I have a winter jacket problem. I didn't realize I had so many until we moved actually...I think somehow I buy them when they're on a good deal but they take a long time to wear out so I still have 8 year old jackets that are perfectly good but I don't really wear. I organized all of our items in some baskets at the top. The big basket on the left is all scarves...ah I also have a scarf problem. The right hand big basket is plastic grocery bags, and the 3 in the middle are my mitts/hats, Philip's mitts/hats, and the "!" is some lightbulbs, bug spray, random things like that. I don't have a picture and I'm unable to get to my house right now to take one, so you'll just have to envision it!

On the side we also have a hanging organizer where we put some of our extra shoes, with the rest of the shoes below on the shoe rack. Next to that are the games, which will hopefully at some point find a new home but this works for now.

I'm not sure if I'll be blogging the next couple of days, I'm pretty much stuck on the couch and actually staying at my parents right now because they have a main floor bathroom, so I won't be able to get pictures more or less clean/organize anything properly. Hopefully I'll be back on my feet soon!