Who Knew?

Who knew there were a wa-gillion uses for washi tape!?!?  We all know my obsession with washi tape has gotten a little out of control...and I LOVE IT!!!  I found yet ANOTHER use for this wonderful-wamazing-wantastic-washi tape!!!  I was attempting to get supper cooked the other night (nothing note worthy or blog worthy) and the kids were going CRAY-ZAY - so I thought "what could I give them to play with that would keep them outta my hair for just a little while so I can cook and get something done???".  Here's what I came up with:

This is my kitchen floor, right below my 'Command Center'.  Don't you just love how it looks so clean and the paint on the walls looks crisp...thank goodness the zoom wasn't on and you can't see what may or may not be ketchup on the wall (hey, at least I'm being realistic about what my house REALLY looks like).  Here's my blank canvas!!!

With a wee bit-o-washi love, I came up with this...

Peanutty and Sweet Pickle thought this was the cat's meow.  They loved it!!! So, to add a little more excitement to the whole "city", we came up with these:

I just whipped up the wood police station, gas station, school and fire station...yes, I'm that good.  Actually, we purchased those from a learning catalog that we happened to get in the mail.  They looked cool and were worth the money (about $24 for all 4 stations) - well made and very cute!!!  We also whipped up some Lego Duplo "stations" - those I actually did whip up.  We also have wood blocks and regular sized Legos that could have made this city even more of a city, and fun to play with.  BUT, as I said before, this is located right in front of the 'Command Center' and it's also the walk way to the back of the house.  This stayed up for about a week, and then started to peel up (and get on my nerves - ahem, them OCD kicked into high gear!).  Best part?  It was easy to put on and easy to remove and was a total of $3 worth of washi loving.  I'll do it again, and may even make it EVEN cooler!!!

The Equation:

$3 worth of washi tape + imagination + cars + legos/blocks = 1 week of fun for the kids!

I hope you all get your washi on!!!  Until next time!!!

T.G.P.

Here I was thinking I could handle blogging every single week...alas, I cannot.  I'm deeming myself a teacher of organization/DIY'ing/cooking/budgeting...therefore, I'll be blogging as much as I can this summer, but will kick it back into "twice/week" gear come fall.  Allow me to show you what is causing my major lack of time.  I'd like to introduce you to:  The Garage Project (T.G.P.)!!!

Here are a series of photos from start to where we are now.  In 9 full days of work (weekends have been solely dedicated to this project - in turn making my weekdays very hectic and busy just trying to catch up), we - with an AMAZING crew of helpers that have volunteered their time to helping us - have gotten quite far.  Thanks to a very knowledgeable and handy Hubby - this has been possible:

This is a photo from back in April (and through my kitchen window - like the screen?)...I wish I would have taken a better picture of before but this is all I've got.  This is us trenching the yard to bury lines to get gas and electric out to the soon to be garage...aaaah, do you see all that lovely green grass...only to be replaced by...

A whole lotta concrete.  We are very fortunate that we still have about a 2x2 foot square patch of grass left for the kids to roll around on.  I kid, we actually are fortunate to have a large back yard.  As you can see...there's a lot of concrete here with a touch of grass (trampled grass - I'll need to get a teasing comb out to fluff it up a bit). 

It's going to be Ah-MAZE-ing when it's all finished...there so much to do BUT, it's functional to home our vehicles - especially during the tornado-monsoon-hail-typhoon-hurricaines we have here.  I'm beyond antsy to get my hands on all the kids outdoor toys (bikes, wagons, bubbles, balls, trucks, shovels, etc.) to organize and PURGE!!!!  Until the garage - named 'Hulk' by Peanutty and Sweet Pickle - gets finished, I will have to put my patience pants on and wait it out.  There will also be some painting involved - ew.  Me no likey painting, but I'll do it.

If any of you have ever done a large home improvement project, you'll understand how much life gets scattered into disarray.  And that is my life right now.  I have a lot of things bouncing around in my head, but actually following through is proving to be a bit on the difficult side.  I'm hoping once this large project gets finished, I can tackle some of the smaller, more exciting (for this organizing maven-I'm ready) projects that involve fun containers and getting it together.

Now, for the organization part that I was responsible for:  budgeting.  I've come to find that when it comes to a large project like this - everything you price is just an estimate.  JUST and estimate.  We spent the last 2 years saving up for this project, and it's paid off.  While getting a loan, or putting it on a home improvement card works just great (especially when they have 0% interest for 18 months kind of thing so you can pay it off before you accrue any interest) - but for us, we didn't want to have to pay anybody back but ourselves.  So, every paycheck we stashed away a little here and there until we could pay for everything we needed outright.  We even added a little more for those "odds and ends" that seem to come up - great idea - in theory.  Things come up, supplies runs out, materials don't work - sometimes the budget doesn't stay in place.  That's when we decided to hold off on a few things, like electric, until we save up enough money again.  We'll still have a happily functional garage, just won't have the handy dandy button to push for the door to go up and down.  My parents STILL have a garage door that requires manual movement - we will be channeling my parents while we do just that, with our door.  Yes, I'd love for it to just be done - but I'm not willing to have any debt because of it.  I'm a huge fan of saving for something big, it's possible with will power.

Until next week...I hope!!!