Home is what you make it

WOAH! I slept like a baby last night, it might of been my combo of Lavender, Valor II, and Frankincense last night, but I definitely think it was all the work I did yesterday! I had no intentions of getting anything done yesterday, except for the fact that I go out of town for a week and am going to leave a husband here alone so if I didn't get anything done it could of looked worse. (My disclaimer to that last statement is that I am like the tazmanian devil when I come through the house, so typically Chris is like FEMA and cleans up after me, definite roll reversal). So I came home and looked at my poor out of comish husband curled up on his hard air mattress in the living room watching golf and thought to myself THIS IS NOT GOING TO BE MY DAY! So I got to work!

First things first, cleaner! I cleaned out underneath our kitchen sink and I had cleaner under there that I bought 3 years ago!! YUCK!! It stayed good for 3 years so what kind of crap is in there, nothing that I want to clean my house with thats for sure. So I whipped up a simple but effective cleaner:

1 capful of vinegar

10 oz of hot water

10 drops of lemon oil

The oil can be changed depending on what you plan to accomplish, but lemon is a great disinfectant and smells wonderful! So I have my cleaner and I'm ready, right? Wrong my ADD brain skipped to the next thing I wanted to do. I wanted to build a shelf for our spare bathroom. The story behind this shelf is both of our bathrooms are moderately small, and neither have room for 2 people at one time. So getting ready together is an absolute nightmare. I decided to take over the spare bathroom, so when school gets back in session I can get ready and not bother my sleeping beauty. Well before you build a shelf you should clean the floors its sitting on. So I cleaned up that spare bathroom nice, I mean cinderella style with sparkles on the floor! Then I built this:

This was my inspiration from Pinterest : )

Don't you hate when you find something on Pinterest and there are no directions on how to make it? Me too! Luckily my personal Handy Manny, Bob the Builder is only a text/phone call away (that would be my dad, best contractor EVER) and he always has an idea on how to make it pretty easy. So I went on the hunt for crates. Target, to expensive. Michaels, changed their coupon policy and only takes 1 coupon per transaction. SO it was Joann's, they let you have a coupon for each item! So the crates were already painted white (which saves time) at $15.99 a piece and I had enough 40% off coupons for all four (1 from michaels, 1 from hobby lobby, and 2 from joanns) which made each crate $9.60. The wood glue was $3.49 so total cost was $41.89! Pretty AWESOME! Here's how you make it (CAN WE MAKE IT?? YES WE CAN):

1. Put glue on top of bottom crate and bottom of the crate to be attached

2. Attach the two crates and line them up (this will not be a perfect line on the middle rows, but can be perfect on the front and sides)

3. Clamp the area together (I did not have clamps so I used painters tape wrapped tight and heavy books)

4. Repeat for the other crates

5. Allow to dry for hours, best for 24 hours

**Watch for dripping, if glue drips just wipe with a damp cloth**

Finished product

(I repurposed an old basket to hold my hair dryer, curling iron, and flat iron)

So back to cleaning! I did the baseboards and doors and frames and found a neat trick to wipe them with dryer sheets to help keep from dust collecting. I did this in every room! Wow that was a lot of baseboards. The cleaner I made I used to mop the floors and they look great, even the laminate wood floors!

Then I was looking at our collage wall I put up about TWO MONTHS AGO. We have been staring at picture frames for TWO WHOLE MONTHS! It didn't even bother us, is that a bad thing? We had friends over a few weeks ago and they asked us about our invisible family, well there they are! HA! I finally sent all my pictures off to Walgreens and found an awesome 50% off coupon code so had them all done for $8. I decided it was time to put them up! We did! Here's the end result! LOVE LOVE  LOVE IT!

By the time I was done with that it was time for dinner. Tonight was something new for us, Sausage and Peppers. Being from an Italian family this was a pretty big staple for parties in our house, except my pork allergy always held me back from eating it, so I never learned how to make it. I watched it enough that I decided to wing it!

1. In a large skillet heat a tablespoon of Olive Oil

2. Cut up your Peppers (1 red, 1 yellow, 1 green) and your Onion (I used a sweet onion)

3. When the oil is heated and skillet is hot add peppers and onion 

4. Keep them on medium heat constantly stirring so they do not burn

5. In another skillet cook your sausage over medium heat

(we use turkey sausage and I cut them into thirds)

6. When the onions and peppers seem soft, add 4-8 oz of tomato sauce ( depends on how saucey you want it)

7. Cook until the amount of sauce reduces to half

8. Add sausage and serve!

We had ours with garlic bread, another great idea is over pasta or rice, or even on a hoagie roll.

Now it's time to relax! NOPE! I was still going, why did I have so much energy?? So I knew I needed a tray to hold my oils and though to myself, well I have this old box, and some scrapbook paper why not repurpose the box for a tray. So I did. It took about 15 minutes. I cut the top off the box, wrapped in in scrapbook paper and used modpodge to adhere the paper. It came out looking great!!

Start

finish

In action!

Now for real it is time to relax! I had a very crafty day, a clean house, a happy and fed belly, and a new space that I get to call my own to get ready in! I think that was a very productive day. So I think I slept well because I was so productive, however I would never write off my diffuser combo : )