Black and White Thinking

I love the look of black furniture. So sleek and goes with everything! Needless to say I have a lot of black furniture. There's just one problem with black. Dust. In the southwest we accumulate a lot of dust and black furniture shows up every speck!

Dusting happens to be one of my least favorite chores because of this. So I decided that my black end tables in the front room had to go. Only one problem. They are relatively new and in perfect condition and I couldn't convince my hubby to let me get new ones. So...

I painted them white! I left the doors a blackish brown but then they looked too modern and didn't really fit in with the rest of my decor. A stencil was the answer. I learned that painting black furniture white takes like a million coats of paint and stenciling is hard. I had to repaint the door once because the stencil was crooked. :( This was not one of my favorite projects BUT I love how they turned out!

So. Much. Better!

I love my "new" end tables.

Playing it by Ear

At our house we have three girls. As you imagine with that many girls we have collected a lot of accessories over the years. 

When my two older girls got their ears pierced I purchased an earring holder to keep their earrings on. Most of the earrings are community property at our house because it's just easier that way. However, even with the earring holder the earrings were getting lost because the girls weren't always willing to put them away on the holder and would leave them on the table in front of the holder instead. Or on the bathroom counter. Or on their nightstands. Or on the dining room table. Kids.

I was getting rather tired of hearing the complaints from the girls when they couldn't find the earrings they were looking for and so I started formulating a plan to make our earring storage simpler. Something that would be faster to find a particular pair and faster to put them away.

Read on to see what I came up with!

First I purchased a long thin sheet of Styrofoam from the craft store. I cut it into squares with an exacto knife.

I put the squares in the bottom of mini plastic drawers.

With the help of my two younger daughters I categorized the the earrings by color and punched them, back and all, into the Styrofoam. This way the earrings won't get all jumbled up and the backs won't get lost.

Finally, I labeled all the drawers and put them back on the table. I am hopeful we will have a lot less lost earrings now. In the meantime the girls are enjoying rediscovering earrings they couldn't see on the holder but can easily find in the drawers.

I'm counting this mini project a success!

Cookie of the Month

I love being a stay-at-home mom/ homemaker. I love the managerial skills it requires of me and of course the organization. I also love how it pushes me to improve myself. Sometimes, however, it can be a tad bit monotonous and that's where my "projects" come in. I like to make crafts and bake in the time I carve out for myself. 

Last year I challenged myself to make a different kind of cake bread each month.

 

Okay, so I cheated a little and made fudge in November. It still counts, right?

This past year I decided to do cookies! Oh and FYI none of the recipes are my own. I'm great at following other people's creations though. ;)

I tried to make different genres of cookies and cookies I'd never made before. January was snowball cookies which were a big pain to make due to their crumbliness but my daughter Aftyn declared they were her favorite. I guess that makes them worth it! In February I tried red velvet cookies. These became my favorite! SO yummy!

I had a hard time thinking of a St. Patrick's cookie that I thought my kids would all like so I kept it simple and made inside out chocolate chip cookies with mint M&M's. My daughter Breah was particularl fond of them because she loves chocolate/mint combinations. Me too! In April for Easter I made thumbprint cookies that had chocolate fudge centers and a mini Cadbury egg in the center. Pretty good!

May and June cookies both turned out great! May's cookies were a sugar cookie and I chose lemon sugar cookies. They were really, really good! In June I did an oatmeal cookie and added white chocolate, butterscotch, and milk chocolate chips. You can never go wrong with oatmeal cookies!

July was a busy month for us with vacations and such so I kept it simple and made my great-grandma Ambrose's old-fashioned butter cookies. They are a favorite in our house! In August I made cake mix cookies with funfetti cake mix and vanilla frosting. The kids loved them!

September's cookies were chocolate crinkle cookies. The process was interesting for them. They were basically made with refrigerated brownie batter, which was messy. They tasted good though! The kids requested I bring back pumpkin snickerdoodles from Six Sister's Stuff for October. I didn't mind because they are delicious. ;)

In November I chose a candy cookie and made homemade Twix cookies. They were really good but took forever. In the end they yielded 2 dozen cookies which didn't seem like enough for the amount of effort they required. And because December is already crazy I found a simple recipe for vanilla pudding cookies. They weren't my favorite but they were very festive looking and worked very well for Santa's cookies. :)

I'm so proud of myself for sticking with my goal! I got to try so many different cookies that I'd never made before and discovered some new favorites in the process. Goal setting and improving one's self is never a bad thing. Now it's time for the next goal. 

I'm thinking brownies. :)