When the girls go shoe shopping....

More Organizing!!!

This time I got to the shelves going down to the basement...really should clean this out and paint it something other than this ugly blue!

New Curtains!

A little snow...

When I drove to work this morning in the wee hours there were a few flurries - this was between 6 and 7 in the morning.  At my normal time to turn around and check out the sun rise over the Detroit River, I was greeted by...nothingness.  It was snowing so hard!!  Everything was already covered and you could barely see out into the river let alone all the way over to Canada like usual.

Jefferson Ave was snow covered already too...that odd shaped building in the background is the BCBSM garage to the main building just to the left with those dots of light.  I was lucky enough to get to work before the snow hit and by the time I left at 3:00, it was all plowed up and the roads were just wet.  I smiled.

It Sucked Me In Again....

One minute I'm "happily" slaving away at my desk in the office and the next minute I catch a glimpse of what promises to be an unbelievable sunrise and there I am, running back and forth to the window every few minutes to see if it's gotten any prettier....

Organization run amok!

I think I'm turning into one of those crazy people that have to organize everything.  A couple of weeks ago it was my pots and pans now it's wrapping paper.

I saw a similar back of the door on Pinterest of course and improvised slightly.  I had this scrap piece of pegboard leftover from making our tack sale display and mounted it on the back of the basement door.  I ordered the white Rubbermaid baskets on eBay and wired them onto the peg board.  This would have been easier to do BEFORE I mounted the pegboard but luckily since the door isn't flat, it worked out okay.  There's also a piece of wire holding all those rolls of wrapping paper from falling all over but you can't see it!  A few peg board hooks for my scissors and wire cutters and we have organization!!!

But this wasn't all...oh no it wasn't!  I also organized my supply of crystals and crafting stuff.  Scrapbooking supplies also went in a bigger plastic tub but it didn't match these so I didn't include it in the picture. I still have a few more to do - these were on sale at Meijer for $0.97 so I bought 7 of them.  Originally I had this idea to organize pantry items by recipe for each day of the week but the reality is, I don't actually use all that many pantry items each day because I use so many fresh or frozen ingredients...so they are getting repurposed.

My other big organizing thing of the weekend was inventorying my freezers and then figuring out what to make with everything so ALL of it gets used up.  If all goes as planned, we should use up just about everything in the freezers in 30 days.  If I can get by with just buying staples like milk and fruit, my grocery bills should be next to nothing!!  That will make me smile. Then maybe I can defrost the big freezer and possibly not use it any more to save a little electricity.

Next weekend I'm thinking about tackling the basement stairway and even the basement to get that area cleaned up and ORGANIZED.  Uh oh.

Spring?

I was looking out the window the other day and noticed several robins. The more I looked, the more of them I spotted.  It was a huge flock of robins around our house!  A bit later I ran over to the neighbors and spotted them sitting along our gutter and tried to sneak a picture before the flew aways.  It was fun seeing them basking in the bright sun all puffed out to keep warm.  I don't think I've ever seen so many robins at one time!

IEA Meet #2, Sullivan OH

We arrived at the arena the night before the meet to help set up and were amazed to find this really beautiful observation room.  The picture is kind of dark but it was all leather and wood and beautiful!

This is the view of the arena from the observation room.  REALLY nice place!

The stalls in the barn section were HUGE!  16'x12'.  Auto-waters too.

The one end of the arena was fenced off to use as a holding area.  That's Equestrian Girl #284 with her back to the picture going in for her first horsemanship class.

This was her second horsemanship class - she's in all black in the center of the picture.

Here she is a little closer up behind the judge and ring steward.

There were bleachers on 3 sides of the arena with little heat strips above them but at 19 degrees it was just too cold out for the little bit of heat to do much good.

Women's Heart Health Day

No, it wasn't Valentine's Day...it was National Women's Heart Health Day and the BCBSM building had a huge heart in lights on the side of the building facing my building at the RenCen.  Another perk of coming in so early - the late arrivers didn't get to see this after it got light out.