Tackle It on Tuesday: The Craft Room

I have a love/hate relationship with my craft room. What a blessing it is to have the space in our home to have a room dedicated to be filled with many craft supplies, tools, and books to complete the many craft projects that I love to work on.

But unfortunately, I am a Queen of Unfinished Projects! Which leads to piles of projects all over this room, well, because there is room in there to pile them up! Since our trip to Mexico in January, I have really been thinking about how much unused stuff we have in our home.

I love to cook and bake, but when I have two shelves of cookbooks in my home that I haven't used in years, should I keep them?

And as much as I love to sew, do I really need to buy all those patterns just because they were a dollar each? I mean really, how many jumper patterns for little girls does one mom need?

In all of my decluttering tasks, I found these treasures that were printed at least two years ago. Rather than enjoying these photos of my children up on my wall, these have been hiding in one of many piles in my craft room. Really sad, isn't it...

Now don't get me wrong, I do really love my craft room. Knowing that I can go in there and find craft paint, felt, scrap fabric, and many other craft supplies keeps me out of the store spending money that I shouldn't be spending. But when I look at the piles of projects that have not been finished, or some even started, it makes me uncomfortable. As my daughter would say, that money could have been spent on a Compassion child. 

Thankfully, most of the items I have been clearing out of my craft room are still in really good condition, and I am hoping to sell a lot of stuff at an upcoming yard sale with the money to be used toward my upcoming trip with Compassion to Colombia. 

So what am I going to tackle this upcoming week? Getting those precious photos matted, framed, and hung up on the wall, so I can enjoy the blessings that God has given me here.

What will you be tackling this week?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Bathroom Project

We have been doing our best to enjoy summer here, but I have to share with you one project that we worked on over the past couple of weeks. I was inspired to finally tackle this long overdue project after reading The Nesting Place.  For years, I couldn't decide what color to repaint my bathroom. We have lived in this house for about 9 years now, and it is the only room in the house that has not been painted since we moved in.

Pale green, brass knobs, stencil around the window...yuck, yuck, yuck. And why did I wait so long? I don't know. But after reading that book, I realized, you know what? If I hate the color, I can always repaint it!

So, a friend sent me home with a paint sample, I loved it and went out to get started on this bathroom makeover. 

Before the painting could begin, a new outlet was installed on the other wall.

Goodbye ugly, pale green paint!! Hello pretty, pale yellow paint!

Ahh, it already looks better! Now onto adding a bit of rustic, charm.

We had an existing shelf under a set of cabinets, so my husband just covered them with pieces of pallet wood. The tp holder idea is one I found on Pinterest.

And here is what the rest of the rustic additions look like! New knobs on the cabinets, a pallet window box over the window, pallet pieces around the mirror, new hooks for towels, and for the light fixture, spray painted the existing metal, new globes, and a pallet cover. Added a fake flowers in an existing tin, and ta-da!! New bathroom for less than $150!!

So what will I be tackling next?

Oh, I have quite the to-do list!! I had so much running around in my brain of things I knew needed my attention, so I got out a sheet of paper and wrote down a bunch of things. As you can see, I have already been able to check a few things off my list. Since I have quite a bit on my list still, my next few Tackle It on Tuesday posts might be an update of all of my tasks.

Do you like to make a to-do list? Are you a paper to-do list person or a techy to-do list person?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Too many socks

So last week, I was almost embarressed to show you my overflowing sock drawer

The drawer was so full, I couldn't even close it all the way! Yikes! 

This is a project that doesn't really take too much time, it is just a matter of making time to do it.

First, I pulled everything out of the drawer and made one pile of socks to discard. My husband likes to use socks in the garage for rags, so rather than throw these away, I was able to give him a full bag of 'new' rags.

When I looked at my 'keep' pile of socks, I knew there were more socks there than I really needed to keep. My daughter took all of the colored short socks. Then I looked at the colored socks and realized I only needed one of each color. I added those to the growing garage sale box out in our garage.

Ah! I believe I can actually close my sock drawer now, and this didn't take much time at all.

What I am planning on tackling next?

Taking a bit of time off!! Yes, there won't be many posts here on the blog over the next three weeks. We have some travel plans, then family coming to visit from out of state, and a week of VBS (Vacation Bible School) at our church.

I will still be posting on Instagram if you want to follow me there.

In the meantime though, you can see what some of my blogging friends are up to:

Jill at Compassion Family always has some wonderful Compassion tips to share. But did you know she also has a blog where she shares some of her amazing photography?

Hannah at Because of Shamim has been sharing about missionaries in letters to her Compassion kids.

Aly at One Day Lighter is a new blogging friend of mine, I love how simple her blog is and the Truth she is sharing.

Have a great couple of weeks, and be sure to get out and enjoy summer!

Tackle It on Tuesday: Change of Plans

Just so you know, I am a blog-on-the-fly kind of a blogger. I don't have weeks worth of drafts prepped and ready to publish, I am lucky if I can put together 2-3 posts a week. So on some weeks, when I think I have the perfect post put together in my brain, life happens and my perfect post takes a different turn.

You see, last week, after I wrote my last Tackle It on Tuesday post, I was all ready to share with you how I would be tackling a pile of Food Network magazines I have been wanting to go through.

The magazine subscription was a birthday gift from my sister a couple of years ago. I have been wanting to go through them and 'pin' some of the recipes onto one of my Pinterest boards. But then yesterday, I listened to this podcast with the title, Freedom From Stuff.

The podcast really made me think about how I handle some of the 'stuff' in my home. Which brought me back to this pile of magazines. While I enjoy looking for new recipes to try with my family, there are other things I could be doing with my time. And if you look close enough, you can see that those magazines have been taking up space in my home for a while. Time for them to find a new home!

So speaking of stuff, there are things that need out attention every now and then. During the podcast, Joshua and Tsh had mentioned that as much as we try to simplify things in our home, there is always 'stuff' coming into our homes.

And right now, I have a sock drawer overflowing with socks. In a perfect and completely organized world, as soon as I purchase new socks, I would take the time to go through my sock drawer and give the 'old' socks to my husband for the garage. But, because I don't take the time to do this, I end up with a drawer full of socks that I can barely close because it is overflowing with socks! Yikes!

Rather than beat myself up for this happening (which is what a lot of us do), I plan to take a bit of time one day this week and clean up this sock drawer (and probably the underwear drawer too, but I probably won't be showing you pictures of that drawer!)

Do you have an area of your home or a task you have been meaning to tackle for some time? Plan a bit of time this week to tackle it. Let's encourage each other to tackle these tasks, so we have more time to enjoy our family and friends. Ready? Let's go!

Tackle It on Tuesday: Homemade Pizza Sauce

This past week I tackled - Homemade Pizza Sauce

One thing my family loves to eat is pizza, especially homemade pizza! We keep our pizza pretty basic: homemade pizza dough, homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, little bit of cheddar cheese, and Parmesan cheese.

On the day that I have made up a batch of sauce, of course we will have pizza that night for dinner.

Homemade pizza and pizza sauce

I bet you are wondering how I freeze up the rest of that pizza sauce. So glad you asked! I take individual snack size bags and put in about 1/4-1/2 cup of sauce. I just kind of eyeball it, no magic here. Then all of those individual bags, I place them in one big freezer bag.

Homemade pizza sauce, ready for the  freezer

Then that one big freezer bag hangs out in my freezer with all of that wonderful pizza sauce, ready for the next time we have homemade pizza. One nice thing about storing the pizza sauce in those individual snack size bags? Makes thawing quick and easy. 

Yes, we do like to get pizza from our favorite pizza place in town. But having the ingredients on hand for homemade pizza makes it do-able to have a homemade dinner in about an hour. 

To tackle this week - Letters from Scrap Fabric

One project I have pinned is to make Letters from Scrap Fabric. Since I have quite a bit of scrap fabric, I thought this would be a good way for me to use up some of my scrap fabric and make a fun project to sell to earn money for my next Compassion trip.

Letters from Fabric Scraps project

Think this is something you would like to purchase? Be sure to like my Facebook page, Gifts from Our Little Corner, where I am selling homemade items to earn money for my Compassion travels. Then check back next week to see how I tackled this project!

What project are you working on this week?