Everyday Moments: May 28th - June 3rd

Welcome to our summer in photos. If you're wondering what this page is about please feel free to read more about it here.

The week of May 28th through June 3rd: in photos!

May 28, 2012
An afternoon spent in town and checking our email at Qdoba after our crazy Memorial Day weekend
which you can read more about here.

May 29, 2012
A productive day getting some deep cleaning done in the kitchen and putting together our 'mail station' bag.
Check out the tutorial post here on how to put one together for yourself!

May 30, 2012
Janessa playing with all her toys, and the best 'toy' of all is the bucket!

May 31, 2012
We met Daddy for a lunch date at the park.  I think there will be many more of these this summer!

June 1, 2012
Bath time for Janessa, this time in the kitchen sink.  She loves the water!  More than my other two babies.

June 2, 2012
Family Shopping trip to Menards, this has happened many, many times in the past year and a half, more than we would like to remember.  But we'd rather do it together, as a family, and spend time with Dad even if it makes the trip a little longer, its worth it!

June 3, 2012
We headed to the Bismarck Zoo for a wonderful, fun filled family day!

Mail Station Bag

This summer I have a few organization projects that I hope to complete.  Actually my list seems like a mile long!  We'll see how it all turns out and how many of them I can actually cross off the list. 

But I did get a start with our 'Mail Station Bag'.  I had heard about having a mail station, which I knew would be a great idea to implement in our home since we have a large island in our kitchen and usually that means a great 'dumping site' for all the junk, mail and papers.  So this seemed like a must to put together to help organize all our incoming papers. 

Thanks to pinterest and the many great tips and ideas that I've found from there I ended up coming up with the idea of a nice looking file 'bag' for our mail station instead of a regular file box.  I really love the final look and can't wait to start using it and feel like I'm just one step closer to being more organized!

I have it set up in our laundry/mud room where we'll eventually have a 'comand center' set up over the chest of drawers.  This will eventually be our family's main entrance into the house once we get our garage doors on and can actually use the garage for what it's meant for, parking our cars! 

Here's my first step in the process of creating the 'comand center' with our Mail Station Bag. 

The file 'bag' I purchased from Target.

And the filing kit that was on clearance from Target.  Score!

For this project I just used the hanging folders.

Then I made my list of 'files' that I wanted for our incoming mail.

And I broke out the trusty label maker, but a pen works just as well.

Then I printed out my labels.

And cut them out.

 I grabbed the tabs and inserts that came in my file kit,

removed the backs from my printed labels

and centered them on the file tab insert.

I put each labeled insert into a file tab

and put them on the 'back' side of each hanging file folder (so when I reach for a specific file and I find it I can open it by just putting my hand in and pulling it open), and spaced them out to my liking.

And there you have it, our new Mail Station Bag! 

We have a mail 'drop' station in the top drawer of the chest because I don't always have time to go through the mail right away.

The mail is set in this tray and then when I have time to go through the mail it can be sorted into the specific file in the mail station and then each week I'll go through the bag and take care of each item.

Where the file bag sits in our laundry/mud room.

And yes, it is very dusty on top of the chest, lol, just keeping it real!  Actually it had a bunch of stuff piled on it and when I took all of it off for the picture I didn't realize just how dusty it was until I looked at these pictures on the computer.  I will have you know that I promptly dusted after I saw it! 

So there you have it!  I hope you like it and that you're encouraged and inspired. 

Do you have any organizing projects that you would like to do or that you're working on?

Progress with our Siding

There's been a lot of talk about the progress being made on the inside of our house with our Mid-Way House Tour , which you can check out here, and mainly that has been the case as of late because it's been winter and work shifts from outside to inside.  But now that Spring has sprung and summer is right around the corner the focus has once again moved back outside to continue where we left off.

Where exactly did we leave off with siding our house, you might ask?  What has our house actually looked like for that past eight months?  Well it was last September to be exact, when Dwight came to help side out house.  The work began in the back and they got about half way up and then the cold weather came shortly after and that is how it's sat since then.  Check out where we left off on the siding work here.

This is how our house looked all winter, and for that matter, how it still looks today.  At least from the front.

When anyone asked which house we lived in we just told them it was the half sided yellow house.  This is what the back of our house looked like all winter.

Well thankfully siding has once again continued, and I'm sure our neighbors are most excited about it!  Our siding is LP Smartsiding, engineered OSB, and it's heavy so you need two people to put it up.  Someone to hold each end up and at least one of you to nail it on.  And thanks to the help of Brian, who works with Nate, and Dwight who came back for a full days work, two whole sides of our house are now completed!  And when I say done, I mean done, with trim caulked and painted and finishing touches done!  My Babe is totally amazing, he's been working so hard and until all hours of the night pushing to get the siding finished.  It's looking great!

Here's our progress:

Brian helping with our siding.

One last peak on the back!

Zeke just hangin out!  While mom doesn't watch... gives me a mini heart attack!  (just so you know, Dad is watching to make sure he's safe!)

Back of the house: finished!

Dwight out for the day helping continue the siding.

Side of the house: finished!  Oh, and apparently Zeke was swinging around all that scaffolding like a monkey (just like his dad)... or so Nate told me....