Projects, projects...

Once again my blog has been neglected.  Life is good but very busy right now as we wind down from the summer (hoping to get a post up about our summer) and gear up for the new school year which begins next week. 

One of my goals for this fall is to get our home organized.  Our house was built in 1923 and while I absolutely love the character of older homes some things are just lacking...namely storage.  We are fortunate to have a walk up attic and a full basement but there is very little storage space in the actual living area.  I have started to plan, measure and make a shopping list for this task.  In the mean time I decided to tackle some smaller places first.

In the dining room we have a built in hutch (which again, I love!)  I use one drawer as an "art drawer" for the kids.  It provides easy access to crayons, playdoh, etc.  The other day I opened the drawer to see this:

Oh my!  Things were everywhere and what you can't see in this picture is all of the bits of dried playdoh, crayons, paper, etc at the bottom of the drawer.  Thankfully we have a dollar store just around the corner so off we went.  One quick trip and an hour or so later and now the drawer looks like this:

Much better!  Yes, it's a small space but it felt good to accomplish.  The kids had a great time today using the items now that they can get to them.  The bins seemed to work really well for them only taking one thing out at a time.   The bins are divided by activity: paints in the red basket, playdoh toys in one bin, pencils (regular & colored) scissors, glue sticks and hole punch in another bin and crayons in their own container.  The pink bag at the back contains small note pads and stickers, underneath the pink bag are their coloring books and construction paper.

Another fun project that I accomplished was a sewing project with my girls.  The other day Hailey asked if they could have some paper to make purses.  I suggested we use fabric and sew them new bags since they would last longer.  I let both Hailey & Keira go thru my fabric stash and design their own purse.  They helped some with cutting and pinning and then I sewed them up on my machine.  It felt good to use my sewing machine since I haven't had a chance to use it in several months.  I'm certainly not an accomplished seamstress but these were fun, easy projects and the girls love them.

Keira with her new "Peter Rabbit" themed bag:

Hailey with her fleece bag: