New Beginnings

In April of this year, I got my hair cut. It was a dramatic and beautiful change for me which involved going back to my natural color. Something that I had lost and had been told by many hairdressers I could never find again. Ha! Showed them!

As if right on cue, my life got sent for a little flip the next day. My husband was suddenly no longer employed. Instead of working 70 hour work weeks with two days off a month, he was family-focused and much less stressed. In another change, my life took a little flip with changes at my work that kept me busy, busy, busy. I started working on a long planned and much dreamed of project that would occupy my creative efforts for much of the summer. My husband signed up for a comedy class in Toronto. I signed up for an awesome photography class online.

With all the changes in our life, we decided to add one more and move.  Not just a little move mind you, but a move that involved heart and soul.

We uprooted out of our beloved apartment of four years. The home we lived in when Maddie was born. The home we loved.

And we took a leap, moving into the home that my grandmother and grandfather lived in. The home where my father grew up. The home that I remember from childhood visits and family gatherings.




It is a lovely home and despite the tons and tons of work needed to pack, unpack, clean (a home that hasn't been lived in for 20 years!), reorganize, redefine spaces (and electrical usage!) we are proud to say that we are now the 8th generation in my family to live in this beautiful space.

This fall, I hope to update you more as we settle in. I'll be sharing more tales of the move and amazingly enough even more tales of the myriad changes in our life. Some people have a major life change once in a while -- once a year, once a decade. We like to get them all done at one time.

Dirty Drawers

(yes, I line my drawers with foil... Keeps them clean and I didn't have any shelf liner.)

I have always had more than one junk drawer in my kitchen. In this apartment, we have very shallow drawers, so buying organizing boxes/trays was going to be tough. (Plus, I'm too cheap to spend lots of money on organization!)

We've lived her for three years and the mess was getting out of control. When things get jammed and stuff flies out of drawers, you know it's time for a change.

My cheap soul loved the idea of using cereal boxes to create dividers. I saw this idea on Pinterest, but I'm sorry to say I didn't actually pin it, so I can't link it.



My drawers are only half a cereal box high, so I cut boxes in half. Then I categorized all my utensils and, well, junk. I traced out the size on the box and superglued on strips of boxes to make the perfect sized compartments. And I wrote the name of the junk category so my husband can't use the whole "I don't know where this goes so I shouldn't be unloading the dishwasher" trick (I'm on to you, Fussy.)




I'm really amazed at how easy this project was. And I did not spend one penny. It's been two weeks and nothing has slipped out of place.

***a note to those of you who are concerned about what your drawers look like: you could totally paint or cover your cereal boxes in contact paper. I think people looking in drawers will just be shocked that there's something orderly in my kitchen.


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