Ruffled Throw Pillows

Last week I bought two of these great ruffled throw pillows at Costco for only $13 each! They're super soft and the fronts are covered in ruffles. They also had them in a gorgeous plum color, olive green, and one or two other colors. They were available in the square shape that I purchased as well as an oversized lumbar (rectangular) shape. I wanted the lumbar pillow, but they only had one left in the cream and the ruffles weren't looking too great on that one.

The one downside to these pillows is that they are spot-clean only...but for only $13, I bought two of them anyhow.

Sorry for the picture quality, we've been having some overcast and gloomy days around here but I couldn't wait any longer to share these pillows. They are gorgeous!

Great Idea Day

Join in on Great Idea Day at Infarrantly Creative by clicking the button above. Lots of good ideas to be found!

I'm sure some of you do this already, but I'm sharing it anyhow. I keep one of these bags on top of the hamper in each child's room and put socks in them. I've been doing this since they were itty bitty babies (well, they were each well over ten pounds at birth...but that is as itty bitty as my babies get!) and it has worked so well to keep their socks together. I especially recommend it for those teeny tiny baby socks. Now that my babies are four and six, it probably isn't quite as necessary as it once was. No more socks getting stuck inside shirts and getting "lost"!
This idea is leftover from my student teaching days. I label every puzzle piece in this house. This way if/when they get dumped out, it is easy for the children (not me!) to put them back in the right boxes. In this puzzle every piece has a "CG" on the back and then the inside of the lid AND the inside of the bottom also are labeled with a "CG". I try to give every puzzle a different letter or symbol.
I love this stuff. My daughter takes a cut apple with her every day to school and sprinkling this on the apple slices keeps them from browning. I've used this little bottle every school day since September and it still is going strong! I found it with the canning supplies in my local grocery store. It is by Bell and is called Fruit Fresh. Two enthusiastic thumbs up from me!

Do you have great ideas to share? I'd love to hear them!

A Touch of Spring

I'm trying to bring a touch of spring into my house right now. My inspiration is a beautiful little bowl I found at Goodwill in an apple green or lemongrass color. Very pretty and very springy! I'm trying to take myself out of my comfort zone (aka, same old, same old!) and try some new things with my decor. Lemongrass definitely is a new color for me, but I'm really liking it a lot.

My inspiration for one of my recent projects is a faux flowerbox that Samster Mommy posted. I made the project my own, but she definitely planted the idea in my head.
I started with this empty tin pot I had out in the garage--it is leftover from some beautiful potted tulip bulbs I bought myself at the beginning of February.
I bought these ranunculus at JoAnn's where they were, of course, 40% off. They're a spring item and not part of the regular floral stock.
I bought floral foam at JoAnn's too and used a regular table knife to cut it into pieces that would fit into the bottom of my bucket. Then I used the wire snipping part on my husband's brand-new pliers to cut my flowers apart. I used only the blooms and skipped all the spiky and beaded things.
Voila! My new bucket of flowers! This vignette is sitting in my $5 Target tray from last year and the flower bucket is on the cake plate I made last March. My favorite things in this little display, however, are the books sitting under the glass hurricane.
Those books were my aunt's books when she was a girl--I love books with inscriptions! My grandma gave out all the old books years and years ago and eventually ended up giving out books only to the offspring of the original owners of the books, but she apparently slipped a few extra into my pile of vintage Nancy Drew and Dana Girls books. I love them and can't believe they were a gift 50 years ago!
This is another table in the same room. This arrangement still needs some tweaking--but that little bowl there is my inspiration for the room.
It is an ironstone bowl in the Emerald Isle color that I found at Goodwill--the only ironstone I have ever found there. Also on this table are some spring themed books that I pulled from around the house. I love pulling books for my children and putting them out on display--it seems to pique their curiosity a bit and entice them to revisit old favorites.
Speaking of inscriptions, this book was a gift to me on my 5th birthday by my preschool teachers. Love it!
And here is the whole room, ready for spring. On the right side of the armoire you can see the table with the chalkboard that I talked about yesterday. And yes, this room usually is quite clean as it is the first room you see when you open the front door. Our playroom (formally a dining room) is on the other side of the blue couch...which serves nicely to hide most of the mess on the floor back there!

Glimpses of Home

Emily at Chatting at the Sky is having a "Glimpses of Home" link. I think this goes along so well with the latest blog fascination with "keeping it real." So often we share pictures like the one above--staged to look pretty and cropping out those pesky details of real life. (The picture above is of my not-so-formal living room decorated for Valentine's Day.)
If I had shifted over just a bit, you would have been able to see this--our playroom tucked behind that not-so-formal living room.
And if I had walked over behind that blue couch and into the playroom, this is what you would have seen. This is what my home really is like--Big Elmo headfirst in a shopping cart with finger puppet gloves on the floor and an abandoned Thomas the Tank Engine Oil Depot waiting for a little boy to come back and play some more.

This is real. This is home.

Remember to enter my 200th post giveaway--I'm giving away a Marshall's giftcard!

spring cleaning time!

I am so ready for spring and warm weather! However, since I can't control the weather, I decided at least I could get started on spring cleaning. This way when spring finally does arrive, I'll be ready to enjoy the weather (or, more likely, devote my time to cleaning up the yard...ugh!)--plus I like having things neat and organized.
Ugh, what a mess! This is the upper cupboard to the right of my stove. It is one of those really awkward cupboards where the shelf extends about a foot past the door...and I had it crammed full of stuff! There was a method to my cramming, but it was pretty messy and definitely needed to be organized!
Every single thing on my stovetop came out of that one cupboard. Pretend not to notice how much stuff is piled up...because it is a LOT. Candy molds, decorative strawberry dishes (I collect strawberry kitchen stuff), spare spices, lots and lots of cupcake sprinkles, molasses (multiple types!), the list goes on and on!
Ahhh, a clean and empty cupboard! Ignore the oak cabinetry that I really don't like at all...that's on the "will be changed a future date" list.
So much better! And look, I found more space! Woohoo! That space isn't empty any more...I bought a basket at the Dollar Tree and moved my children's extra prescription medicine up there so now it isn't tucked all in amongst my dishes in a different cupboard. My little ones take a lot of medicine and we order most things from the mail order pharmacy that ships three months of meds at a time...so the medicine situation was getting out of hand.

I'll spare you the pictures of the rest of my cupboards (especially since I'm not done yet!) but I must say, I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I open up the cupboards that are freshly purged and organized. At least I can have control over one area in my life!

Have you started your spring cleaning? Are you (like me!) someone who likes to purge and organize or are you (like my husband!) someone who wants to keep everything forever and ever?