April Challenge: More Spring Colors

So, it's a week into April and we have not introduced out new challenge. #fail

Shannon and I both noticed that we have not been supporting the fact that spring has sprung. We have challenged each other to wear more spring colors. We have tons of saturated, deep jewel tones. They work on both our skin tones. However, it is spring. Time to lighten up.

Oh yeah, those pants are size 6. Be jealous. :) Disregard the dirty mirror.

I have started integrating more spring into my outfits. You can follow our #ootd (outfit of the day) posts on instagram, if you want.

This was my Easter shirt. I LOVE it.

Have you brought spring into your wardrobe yet? Bust out the pink, purple, yellow and green! It's time for our outfits to reflect the new spring weather.

Share your spring outfits with us. We would love some more inspiration!

April Plans

Niki shared her goals for April last week, so I feel like I need to share my plans as well. A little accountability never hurt anybody, right?  I don't have anything gigantic planned for april, but I do have a list of things I would like to get accomplished.

Here's what I've got so far:

Time management and obligations:
*survive prom (fingers crossed!)
* get bridesmaid dress altered (hopefully Tuesday??)
* register for summer classes somewhere!

Home and Organizing
* get ALL labels printed, laminated, and put in their proper locations (you have already seen a sneak peak of a few of them)
*finish up spring cleaning
* purge, declutter, and organize coat closet
* store seasonal winter clothes
* evaluate and organize new desk location/layout

Blog and Etsy
* update a few items in the etsy shop
* get my posts written before the day they go live! plan!
* get some craft and organizing projects going! I'm spending a little time tonight flipping through some of my favorite magazines--taking notes and marking pages!

What are you planning to get done this month? A few small things or some major undertakings??

Update:

We are happy to announce the winners of our giveaway!!

Congratulations Angelina and Teri!! Winners have been contacted via email.

High five for Friday

We are linking up with the lovely Lauren again this week.

1. Niki's class is going to the movie today! We are going to see The Croods. We couldn't be more excited.

2. I added these black bins to the linen closet and I am loving them. They are waiting for some awesome labels from Shannon. Also, my formerly empty shelf is now full of empty bins and baskets that Shannon got when we re-organized Faith's room last week.

3. We re-organized Faith's room last week. Shannon had the day off, and I had the week off. Faith's room was a disaster. We decluttered, pared down and rearranged. It is looking so much better and she is maintaining it pretty well. Look for a post on that later this month. :)

4. I got these wonderful new pouches from thirty-one that are helping me to keep my purse neat and organized. I love that they are so bright and cheery! No more digging to the bottom of my purse to find something!

5. I have become a freak....look at all that I require to prepare breakfast and lunch. Plus the coffee pot is running too! and those labels....expect a post on my labeling frenzy soon too!

have a great weekend everyone. don't forget there is still a few days to sign up for our giveaway! just click here to go to the entry. 

Goals for April

I am posting some of my goals for April. Sort of a way to be accountable. I have some home organizing goals and some lifestyle goals. At the end of April I will do a recap and let you know how I did.
Here goes:

Home & Organizing Goals:

• Print, laminate & hang laundry labels
• Clean & organize kitchen junk drawer
• Declutter and organize coat closet
• Clean/Dirty labels for dishwasher
• Bind blog planner and blog about it

Lifestyle Goals:

• Complete the Bikini Body challenge
• Print Planner
• Be more present with my family

Do you have any goals for April? What do you want to make sure gets done before the craziness of May starts? (What your May isn't crazy? Whatever.)

Since no post is complete without some a picture, I thought I would share this. In case you missed it on twitter, instagram or facebook. This shows my journey from the day I graduated college in 2011, to 2 weeks after my first chemo session, to my last chemo session to last week. It has been an awesome journey that you all got to join.

Share your goals for some accountability. We will meet here, same time, same place on May 2 to see how we did. Hopefully these will all be crossed off.

fifteen minutes of {washi} crafting

 Anyone that follows my on pinterest can verify, that I am fully embracing my new love for washi tape. I considered giving washi tape is own pinboard, but decided that was a bit much and put it in with crafts. for now.

I had to stop at WalMart to get more {hazelnut} coffee after work, so clearly I had to swing through the stationary isle. While I was there I snagged some binder clips and a clipboard. Spent a whopping like $3.50.

I grabbed my supply of washi tape (stashed in a flower pot from the Target dollar spot), scissors and my purchases and curled up with my favorite fuzzy blanket and some DVR'd Law & Order SVU. It was snowing like crazy, so it really seemed like the best idea for the evening.

so pretty!

The width of my washi tape just happened to perfectly on the smaller clips so I just stuck it on one side, rolled it over and trimmed it off. super simple. The ability to stick, unstick, and restick the tape as many times as I needed to, to get it straight was awesome. You know I was sticking and resticking until I got it perfectly straight on each one :)

love that nasty chipped nail polish don't ya??

The bigger clips didn't fit quite as nice. I tried a few different ways and never really found a way that I liked. But I ended up just overlapping the two pieces of tape and calling it good enough. I thought about cutting it so it fit evenly, but I really wasn't interested in getting that OCD. They are just binder clips that I will probably loose or someone will "steal" off my desk at school.

 Here are the completed smaller ones. adorable!

 And then I just added a few strips to the clipboard, just to brighten it up. I didn't want to crazy and cover the whole thing. And my OCD brain wouldn't let me mix colors. So it's staying a pink clipboard until I can get brave enough to add another color.

 Even though it monochromatic, its still much more fun than a plain old masonite clipboard.
It will be great to keep on my desk at school!

What washi crafts have you done?? Any other brilliant ways of using this oh-so-functional-and-fun tape?

What wonderful ways are you using washi?? share your crafts with us!

Getting April in order

The beginning of a new month means getting all of our lives in order. Shannon showed you how she gets a new month started in March, so now I am showing you our craziness. She has 3 jobs, I have 3 kids, so our planning looks a bit different.
I have my AMAZING life planner that Shannon designed for me. We took a ton of inspiration from the web and she made it fit my life! I love it and use it daily. I always say, steal my purse, leave my planner.

I start every day checking out my planner. I double triple check it on Sunday nights so I know what is going on for the week.

My planner has our meal planner built in. It is the boxes at the bottom of each of the days. I just could not maintain two different planner for meal planning, and I do ours by the week. So on Sunday night when we are planning for the week, Tim and I meal plan. Easy meals for days he works late, the kids have practice, that kind of thing, bigger meals on weekends so we can have leftovers for lunches. We also get input from the kids. What have they been craving? If they help create the meal plan and the meal, they are more likely to eat it!

I also make a monthly calendar for Tim. He has no need for daily plans. He does want to know what all we have planned, dance, ball practice, concerts, fun stuff like that. So I started making him a beautiful monthly calendar. He doesn't care that it is beautiful, but I sure do. :)

I also have a work-out calendar. This has not been working well. I am "training" for a 5K but I haven't ran in weeks. Boo. This month Shannon created a Bikini Body Challenge for us. So I printed that bad boy out. I am going to do my best, but I make no promises. I need to focus on my running, but I'm going to try to fit this guy in too! The best thing is it can all be done at home, with no equipment. She also snuck in a shower challenge, which I already forgot to do. So, I will get it in before bed.

Finally I have a blog planner. It really deserves a whole post, but for now you get a snap shot. I usually post Tuesday and Thursday, Shannon usually posts Monday and Wednesday and Friday is always High Five for Friday! I also have tons of fun planning pages. I use them to plan out things I want to blog about, then I decide when I can get them done, photographed and blogged about. Right now, I have little idea about when things are going, but lots of ideas.

Just for fun, I thought I would throw out the Bikini Body Challenge and an Awesome April Arms challenge as freebies. There is still plenty of time for you to catch up!

What does your beginning of the month or week planning look like? Are you more like Shannon balancing work schedules, or like me balancing kids schedules?

Linens and Loo Challenge Recap

We have been following along with Jen's linens and loo challenge this month. And we are happy to report that our bathrooms have benefited greatly from this! We love our pretty new drawers and organized spaces!

Here's the last quick organizing project that I snuck in. The medicine cabinet. It was getting a little scary and just needed a few minutes to purge outdated and unneeded things and get everything back in order.
Here's where I started:

eeek! Not sure how I can even find my toothbrush in there??

So everything came out and got sorted into a few piles.
stays here-back in cabinet.
stays-but goes somewhere else
trash
Nothing too complicated. Nothing from my medicine cabinet is going to be sold or donated. Who wants half used shaving cream??

Everything got a good wipe down. I even toyed with the idea of adjusting the shelves... since we rent, I didn't want to risk breaking a shelf or not being able to get it back in or something silly like that.

before                                  after

 after                                before

after                                before

Want to check out what else we have accomplished this month?? (We thought so!)

Niki's 15 minute bathroom clean up

Niki's Bathroom Drawers

Shannon's Bathroom Drawer

Niki's Bathroom Drawers part two

Niki's Linen Inspiration

Niki's Linen Closet

Don't forget to pop over and enter our spring giveaway!! Just click here to go to the post.

ps. We're linking up here: