If It's March...It Must Be The Living Room...

Just by chance in January my friend Kathy received two Better Homes magazines.  She shared one with me and I really enjoyed it.  Of course, as always in January, much of it was devoted to resolutions.  They included a month by month organization calendar as a part of the resolutions.

http://www.bhg.com/home-improvement/home-improvement-slide-shows/storage/month-by-month-storage-plan/?ordersrc=rdbhg100591

This is my home:

As you might guess, organization is important here.

January was organize the office.  I carved out an office using my dining table and one of the dining chairs even using the space on top of the cornice boards for storage of office supplies. My hubby is working from home this week and is making good use of the new space.

My hubby and I find that we don't really use the table preferring instead to eat on the sectional while parked in front of the TV or outside on the picnic table when weather permits--or as with last evening--at our friend's house chowing down on steaks, garlic mashed potatoes and corn on the cob finished off with brownies and a hilarious Wii tournament for the guys!!!!

February brought up the Kitchen.  I began with an update of the kitchen.  The old look:

The new look:

This was in the camper when we purchased it.  They used it to hold coasters and a little jar that looked like it was perhaps used to hold honey.

I don't particularly go for the Colonial look.  As you could see from the new wallpaper border, I like something more distressed.  So, I grabbed my outdoor acrylic paints and a brush and started with red...

I have seen many shows that start with red when painting something black.  This is supposed to make the black deeper.  I added a little black to my engine red so that the red matched the border behind it.  Then, I grabbed the black and painted over the red:

If you look closely, you can see that I didn't paint the cutouts at the top, leaving them red.  I was going to sand the sides for the distressing, but it was so wet outside that I decided to try my scrubby sponge.

And it worked!  I added an old freezer jar with a zinc lid filled with my dishwasher packs (they had red ones at Christmas!!!) and voila!

I also went through the cabinets and got some stacking storage containers for organization...

And labeled everything with the labeler that I can now find thanks to January's work!  I even carved out some more storage space in the closet above the washer/dryer...

Now to March on to the Living Room...I look forward to seeing how it turns out!  Do you think it is time to put the stack of Christmas decorations away?

I think I will go and open my cabinets to gaze at my neat storage!  Small things excite me!  ;-D