Button, Button, Who's got the Button?

My 21 month old granddaughter Arileise playing with my craft buttons.

Meet Our Grandson

Richard Edward Stein IV
Born February 3, 2014
7:59am
8lbs. 3oz. 19in.

Clutter Busting Challenge January 2014

I am working on downsizing our things so my husband and I can get a smaller home in a few years. Our kids are almost grown at 24, 22, 21, and 17. I don't want to wait to purge and organize things I know we can live without. I've been working on purging, reorganizing, and redecorating my home on a small budget for over 3 year now. It takes time but I'm enjoying the journey. I have been purging 100-200 items a month since May. My home has always been clean and organized but we have still found a ton of stuff to purge. I not sure I have much else left to donate. LOL


I found a few things to get rid of in the basement such as crackers, a Christmas tree, cloths, plastic containers, drawer handles, pancake mix, gift bag, and a wine rack. I organized my holiday totes while I was working in the basement and I may look through each one to see what I can purge next month.

I'm purging picture frames, a toy, and oatmeal. I put together a wall photo collage for my dad. He had many frames on his dressers in his room and now he is down to 3. He has Alzheimer's and I want him to see his memories without taking up all his flat space.

I went thru all the kids writing utensils and found a good amount of things almost dried up. I'm also donating the books and magazine that I finished reading this month.

I clean my basement again and found food, shoes my husband no long wanted, and Halloween decoration.

I found undergarments, we updated our phone and therefore donating the old one, gloves, I updated my a memory stick drive, shower rings, instant coffee packets. We bought a bag of bird toys at the Thrift Store and I'm keeping the ones we wanted and donating the extras.

I found a basket worth of old craft paint. I bought 3 packages of cards for $1.50 at the Thrift Store because I needed the envelopes for a Valentine project and now I am donating the cards.

The books that I finished reading this month.

I found oatmeal, lotion, mini marshmallows, calcium tablets, pasta, coffee packets, and comic books.

Coffee, a drawer pull, a fragrance bag, and some confectioners sugar.

Musical instruments.

Metal, cross-stitch hoops, pillow cases, and a chalk board.

January 2014 Reading List

I am continuing my challenge to read the books that I own and donating them when I finish. That is 5 books off my bookshelves for this month.















Frontier by Colleen L. Reece

Miriam's Journal Series by Carrie Bender
A Fruitful Vine
A Winding Path
A Joyous Heart
A Treasured Friendship

 Submitted to: 2014 Booking It @ Life As Mom

My Valentine's Cards

This past week I worked on making my Valentine cards. I bought 12 cards for $2.00 at a Thrift Store the weekend before. I bought the paint at Wal-Mart for $10 but it will last for a lot of projects.

I laid them out on my desk and worked on them for two days.  I did one color at a time so they could slightly dry between each color. It takes 24 hours to completely dry because it is a fabric paint.

My finished stack of card. I decided to paint the practice pages that came with them and to use in another project.

My Coupons

I bought a small accordion folder to store my coupons in for $2.00 on clearance at Wal-Mart. I have used a larger file box to store my coupons for several years but I have gotten out of the habit of using coupons. My file box didn't close very well and it was bulky. I don't need. I'm storing a mini calculator, notepad, and pen in the back. I don't buy many convenience foods so most coupons available. I mostly watch the sales and buy several of each item that I want until the next sale for that item.

My Quilting Fabrics

I learned a couple things about my sewing and fabrics and then organized them based on what I wanted to spend my time and effort making. I don't care to sew clothing since I can buy them cheap at the thrift stores. I want to make Quilts. I donated any fabrics that I would not use for a Quilt. I mostly like monochromatic Quilts so I grouped my fabrics in color families. If I had fabrics that had multiple colors, I added it to the color stack that I would use it with.  I divided my fabrics between two totes and labeled the outside of each. Tote 1: blue, red and black fabrics. Tote 2: pink, purple, yellow, green, white, and brown fabrics. I made a guess of how big each color stack would need to be to make a King size Quilt and when each stack is big enough I don’t collect that color. When I go to buy fabrics I only pick fabrics that would complement the fabric I already have and pass on the others.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can visit my blog post to see how I set up My Sewing Space.

http://www.awelcomingheart.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-sewing-space.html

 You can also read about My Quilting Plans.

http://www.awelcomingheart.blogspot.com/2013/03/my-quilting-plans.html