Random Thoughts.

*Thought Number 1*

Pinterest is like crack.  I can't stop pinning.  The only recipes that I've made for months have come from there.  Its almost an unspoken rule in our home... making a grocery list entails a mandatory login to Pinterest to create a menu.

Yum.

Guacamole from For the Love of Food

Yum.

Bourbon Chicken from Fake Ginger

And Yum.

Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Masala from Meal Planning 101

*Thought Number 2*

I love chore charts.  I've been getting organized as you may have noticed.  Caleb and I recently created a chore chart.  Maybe it says we are lazy and need a nightly reminder of what our household duties require.  Maybe it says we're six.  I think it just says we're awesome.

*Thought Number 3*

I have a really handsome husband.

And cat.

*Random Thought 4*

I love getting mail.  Especially when if come in the form of a Pleated Poppy wristlet clutch.  If I'm having a bad day and I come home, check the mail, and find something addressed to me?  It's an instant pick me up!

Love.

Thats all.  Happy Monday!

Sometimes the simple things are the best things.

Instaweek.

Better late than never... 

P.S. The picture in the bottom right corner is homemade Chicken Tikka Masala... made in the slow cooker!!!!  It was absolutely A.M.A.Z.I.N.G!  Recipe can be found here.  

A Little Organization: The Junk Drawer

Its been a stressful past couple of weeks.  A REALLY stressful past couple of weeks.  Work has been ridiculous, but you know what makes me feel better?  Order.  A clean house.  Organization.  Recently I have been realizing how much less stressful and chaotic my life seems when I have a nicely organized home.  Getting organized is definitely still a work in progress, but I think I have been making some real progress.  After organizing my cleaning supplies and DVDs the next obvious project was the junk drawer.

Do any of you have a drawer like this?  You know... the one where you stuff all the crap that has no other place?  The one that you haven't seen the bottom off for a year and a half?  The one that never closes all the way and you are embarrassed to open when you have company over?

I knew something had to give so the first step was to pull out the entire drawer.  The next step was to dump everything out, but I'll spare you the horror.

I decided that it would be a good idea to use some type of organizer since I seem to be incapable of keeping things neat on my own.  I picked this one up at Target.

Ta-daaaa!  Look how nice!  AND it feels to good!  To tell you the truth, most of the crap in that drawer was junk or just plain 'ol trash anyway.

It's amazing how accomplished completing a simple project can make you feel.  Now I smile every time I open the drawer!  

Sometimes the simple things are the best things.  What do you do when you've had a stressful workweek?  

Instaweek.

Just a few of my faves.

A Little Organization: DVD Collection

Does anyone else ever feel like they have a lot of crap?  I recently realized that I own 80+ DVDs.  DVDs that I haven't seen in years, that I've never watched, that I didn't even know I had.  As I've mentioned before we have very limited space in our apartment and I was taking up three valuable drawers with movies!

They weren't organized and I wasn't even able to tell what all I had... definitely not ideal on the occasion that I wanted to pick out a DVD to watch.  I decided that they needed to at least be organized by alphabet and that the best way to consolidate would be to take the DVDs out of their case and put them in a binder of sorts.

There were some movies that I definitely knew I wanted to keep in the case.  I kept all the series', my favorites, Harry Potter, Twilight, etc.

But look how many cases I was able to eliminate!  Don't worry, all of these were recycled.

All the movies fit into this one little black binder-ish thing except for these few.  I plan on picking up one more.  I found this one at Target for about 10 bucks, but you could probably find one elsewhere for cheaper.

Look!  So much neater.  And now I have so much more drawer space!  It's amazing!  When you compare it with the three drawers that my movies previously took up its incredible!

Splinter thought it was a good idea too!

Craft Quicky: Valentine Heart Paper Chain Garland

I LOVE Valentines Day.  Okay, I love any excuse to decorate.    Keep in mind that I live in the teeny tiniest little loft apartment and don't have a mantel so the top of my bookshelf serves this purpose.  Since the decorations are supposed to be for Valentine's Day I had to add some pictures of my Love Caleb.  I especially love the one of us from Freshman year of college.  Caleb's hair makes me smile.  :)  The other is one of our engagement photos.

I picked up the little angel and the paper doilies from Dollar Tree.  I strung the doilies through ribbon to hang them up and then added my Mason Jars with some carnations.  Carnations just happen to be my favorite flower... I'm a cheap date.  I dug out an old scrap of fabric to put underneath.  It's almost like a game to scrounge around through all my junk to try and see what I can put together!  

I knew that I wanted to add a homemade touch and once again, I saw this idea on Pinterest and knew that it was something that I was going to try.  It was really easy and only took about a half an hour to make a chain that was long enough to drape over the bookshelf.  

All you need is some scrapbook paper, a ruler, a pencil or pen, and a stapler.  I put the ruler down on the paper and made the strips the width of the ruler so that they would all be uniform.  I cut the strips, then folded them in half to make them the right length.  The pictures below do a better job at explaining how to put the chain together than I think I could do trying to put it into words.

And there you go!  Totally Valentine worthy!

Quick and Easy: Superbowl Candied Popcorn.

Isn't the Super Bowl exciting?!  This year is even better for myself and all my fellow Hoosiers.  Downtown Indianapolis has been buzzing all week!  I made my way downtown with a friend last night to check out all the festivities... It was such an amazing atmosphere!

Since I'm not one of the lucky few who gets to enjoy the game in person I have been preparing some tasty snacks to take with us to the Super Bowl party we will be attending tonight.  I had seen a recipe on Pinterest for candied popcorn and followed the link back to the Eagle Brand Condensed Milk website.  You only need a few ingredients and it was super easy to make!

Candied Popcorn

Ingredients

Microwave Popcorn

14 oz. can sweetened condensed milk 

1 box Jello

Butter

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and pop popcorn according to package directions.  Put in bowl and separate out all unpopped kernals.  Thinly coat shallow roasting pan with butter and spread popcorn in single layer.  Set aside.

2. On the stove, mix condensed milk and Jello.  Cook on medium heat until hot and begins to bubble.  Pour mixture over the popcorn.  Gently mix hot mixture into popcorn.

3. Bake popcorn for 20 minutes, stirring every 5 minutes.  Remove from oven and spread out on a piece of lightly buttered foil.  Allow to cool and then break into clusters.

Take a look at the finished product!  I was happy with out bright the color turned out!  This would be also be great for a kids birthday party and think of all the color combinations.  I made two batches so I could have blue and red to match the two teams.

Happy Super Bowl everyone!!!

A Little Organization... Or A Lot.

Time for a confession.  I'm disorganized.  Lets face it... my closet is a breeding ground for calamity and chaos.  My silverware drawer looks like an explosion of forks and dish towels.  My junk drawer... well, we won't go there right now.  I've had enough!  When you live in a loft apartment that only has two closets, one of which is taken up by the water heater you. have. got. to. be. ORGANIZED!  

See, this is what I'm working with in the closet arena.  This is the only one aside from our clothes closet.  No coat closet.  No linen closet.  Nothing.  And it isn't pretty...

I forgot to take a before picture, but trust me, you wouldn't want to see the before. 

Anyway, I've decided to turn over a new leaf.  De-clutter.  Simplify.  Put everything in its place.  The first thing I decided to organize was the cleaning supplies (naturally) and the water heater closet.  I saw this idea on Pinterest.  It was a quick and easy solution to a complete mess.

I bought a cheap hanging shoe rack, but it on the inside of the door and ta-da!  Extra storage space.  I put all our cleaning products, rags, dusters, vacuum bags, and anything else associated with keeping the home clean in there.  The picture below is before I added everything into the pockets, but it seriously freed up so much space in the closet.  It also made much needed room under the kitchen and bathroom sinks.  

Baby steps people, baby steps.  But, see?  Quick AND Easy!