I'm here.

I'm back at work. My winter break is over. It was very hard waking up this morning and getting back in the routine. It felt like break was forever long.

We got a lot accomplished at our house the past couple days. We deep cleaned, decluttered and reorganized every. single. room. While we were very busy, I feel like the new year is off to a great start. I love that everything has a place and everything is so clean. We wrote out a list of things we wanted to do in each room and taped it on the door. It looked very overwhelming from the start, but it was a great feeling when you were able to cross things off and see your to-do list dwindling down.

It took almost three years, but every room in our house is officially done being renovated. I will post new pictures soon to our house tour tab above. We can now sit back and enjoy 'home'.

Does anyone else have plans to clean and declutter for the new year? Any major renovation plans?

xo, Erin

Cheers to 2013

What a whirlwind the past 12 days have been! We traveled over 1,000 miles and spent lots of quality time with family and friends. I am so very glad to be back home even if it means lots of laundry and cleaning. I don't go back to work until Monday, so I am going to spend the next couple days de-cluttering and deep cleaning the house. I want to start 2013 fresh and clean!

Now, for a mini explosion of pictures from the holidays.

Christmas was spent with my family in Naperville. It was a fun day full of food and games. My big gift this year was my new camera which I have already mentioned a few times. I also got some winter boots, a new purse, pj's, Pandora charm, and more!

Christmas Eve before church

my family xoxo

infamous spritz cookies -- made 12 dozen

my job was to sprinkle

 Christmas morning my sister and her fiance came over for gift opening and family time.

Meg & Mike got a new laptop

super pretty box

 

my parents and Meg have puppies who are brother & sister

concentrating on scratch-off lottery tickets

We traveled to Michigan next for time with my in-laws and family. We celebrated a second Christmas and a New Years Eve Wedding (Greg's brother).

the kids got hats...

..and lots of books!

We do an exchange with the adults in Greg's family. Everyone buys a $50 gift and we pick cards to determine the order. Greg and I randomly ended up with the gifts we bought this year.

Eli enjoyed opening everyone's gift

Abi enjoyed reading her new books

Murphy enjoyed sitting next to the baby

by the end of the night, he was exhausted from all the excitement

A few nights later... it was time for Todd and Jen's rehearsal dinner.

delicious cake pops!

the girls all lined up

bride and groom to-be

flower girls and ring bearer

so appropriate for a New Years Eve wedding

my hubby

There you have it, a quick recap of what I have been up to. Looking forward to all the fun and adventure that 2013 brings!

xo, Erin

5 Cheers for Holiday Break

I am officially on Christmas break...  for 17 days. 12 of those 17 days will be spent with my family in Naperville, Greg's family in Michigan and a family wedding on New Years Eve. Being so busy is going to make break go by super fast! Oh well, cheers to time with family and friends! During break I probably won't be blogging much. See you in 2013!

Here are some favorite things that happened this week, link up with FMGD to share yours.

1. December Birchbox arrived in the prettiest box. I love the perfume sample and the shampoo. I have not been disappointed yet by one of my boxes!

2. Greg and I celebrated Christmas over the weekend. Murphy always steals our blanket, so we got him his own plus a super soft bed. Can you tell he likes it?

3. The awesome family I nanny over the summer got me this adorable Kate Spade makeup case. I love the creativity and thought behind it. Will definitely be using it a lot for all our travels.

4. Annual Christmas cookie baking.. Losey Sugar Cookies the first batch, and the second batch of dough we decided on gingerbread. We frosted and sprinkled them of course :)

5. More festive holiday nails. Sally Hansen Cha-Ching

How will you be spending your holidays? Be safe to everyone who is traveling!

xo, Erin

Weekly Menu

Every Sunday, I head to the grocery store with a shopping list in hand. This is normally the only time I am in the grocery store, so I need to plan accordingly. For a few years, I have been using a menu planner notepad that looks something like this:

The sheet of paper seems to get either shoved at the bottom of my purse or lost in a grocery bag. Then I forget what I planned for each night. Greg goes out to lunch a lot at work and likes to have an idea of what is planned for dinner. This way, he tries not to eat the same type of food two meals in a row. 

I wanted to create a menu planner and have seen some on Pinterest involving a chalkboard. I can't stand to use chalk and normally don't like the look of it. Greg and I brainstormed a bit and had an idea when renovating our laundry room. This was the wall we were working with:

We started with an orange magnetic board from IKEA (that must be discontinued because I can't find it). This board was covered in fabric and used in our laundry room to hold coupons. On the way out the door, we were able to glance at it and see if we needed to use any. It didn't make the cut when re-organizing our laundry room. The size was perfect for the skinny wall in the kitchen, but how could we use it for a weekly menu?? We ripped the fabric off and were left with the orange board. It definitely didn't fit our color scheme and I didn't want it to stand out so much. So Greg painted it white using a small foam roller.

In the meantime, I played around with my Cricut to figure out what size and font I wanted to use for the letters. We decided we wanted to put the word 'menu' on top and then just the first letter of each day.

Gather your supplies that you will need for the project. I planned on using scrapbook dots to put the letters down on to the board. This would allow them to stay put, but not be super permanent. I used super glue to make the 'menu' word with two different colors. Greg gathered what he needed: driver, screws, level, measuring tape, mirror clips and a stud finder.

We played around with spacing. We measured the board then divided it by the number of spaces we needed. We used a yard level and piece of paper to help us keep the letters straight all the way across.

Once you have the letters where you want them and the spaces marked, start securing them down. Run some scrapbook dots along the back of each letter and put it back in its original spot.

Almost done, now you just need to make it reusable. We had a piece of glass cut at Lowe's to the exact size of our board. The glass cost about $6 and they cut it for free. I will now be able to write on the glass with dry erase markers. This will remind me if something has to be prepped or thawed and Greg can know what not to eat for lunch.

We used these mirror clips we had from an IKEA wall mirror. We didn't use them and they worked perfect for what we needed.

The lighting isn't so great, but here it is finished and hanging in place. It is so useful, I can't believe it took me this long to make something!

What do you use for a weekly menu? Do you plan ahead or have to stop by the grocery store on the way home from work?

xo, Erin