Finished Projects

I've been busy getting organized and doing a little crafting before baby #2 comes in 3 months. Here are a few things I've recently completed. The first is a photo collage in my entryway. It felt chaotic with all the random color photos so I updated it with sepia prints and various scrapbook paper in my house colors. When baby #2 comes I'll add a picture or two of him, too.

I was tired of not using my jewelry because I never know what I have and can't get to it easily when it's buried in a drawer. I saw this on a blog and knew it would help. It's just an old cork board!
I pretty much dread sitting down with my recipe books and planning the coming weeks' menu. It seems like it always took longer than it should to plan the menu and make the grocery list. So I decided to make 10 weeks worth of menus (6 meals each week) that were already chosen for me so that I could have a grocery list done in 10 minutes or less. It took a while to type and organize them, but I think it's going to be great. Some of my friends even got involved and we traded favorite recipes. I laminated them to avoid grease spots and it hangs on a hook in my pantry so that I don't have recipe books laying around. Hopefully this is a great time saver when I have two kiddos at my feet.

We don't have a magnetic fridge so we haven't been able to get those fun Leap Frog fridge toys that helps kids learn the letter sounds. He loves those things so I thought I'd make a magnet board to match his upcoming "big boy" bedroom colors. He won't be moving rooms for a month or two, but at least he has somewhere to play with his new toy from Grandma. I bought the board at Roberts, used scrapbook paper and mod podged it to protect the paper. Thanks Terrah, for getting me started on this project!

I can't take credit for the next one. Justin and Nolan did all the work. They vacuumed out the front half of the basement and Justin rigged up a way to block off that back half so that Nolan can take his big birthday toys (truck, bike, lawnmower, etc.) down to play. It has been wonderful having his toys downstairs and not cluttering up the family room. He wakes up and says "basement" and then heads downstairs. I say, "Have fun!" and he says, "See ya!" It's so great!!! Thank you, honey, for giving me some extra square footage. When I go down to check on him he's often hiding in his cardboard "house."

And finally, the biggest, most expensive project of all: the fence! It's now complete and it turned out wonderful. It's everything I dreamed it would be. Soon Nolan will be playing outside and might not even need the basement.
Just a side note: We had a good time at our stake Preparedness Fair. We learned how to prune our peach tree and I extinguished a fire. Good to know. Nolan was SO excited to drive the fire engine... he couldn't stop talking about it all day and wouldn't take a nap. "Woweee! Truck!"