My Organizational Nightmare

Well I'm back from my tech free week!  I must say it was very liberating.  It was nice not to be a slave to certain television shows (not that I watch that many!), or feeling like I had to constantly update my FB status and check in on various people.  I did very  much miss blogging though!  I did sneak a peek at a few blogs once or twice and it all got me to thinking more about my blog. 

I was reading an article about making things easier for new parents.  One point was to aim low and knock down your standards.  This really resonated with me.  I constantly want to do this project or that project (esp. some really neat ones I've seen on some other blogs lately!), or deep clean the house, or organize every nook and cranny, or take better photos and have a nicer blog.  But I must be realistic and as a new mom who works full time outside of the home I just don't have the ability to do these things right now.  Plus I want to spend the time with my daughter and not cleaning!  I applaud all the moms who seem to have their acts together and have multiple kids.  I'm not whining by any means.  I am very blessed.  But I know what I can and can't do and I need to let go of some things right now.

So I'm going to be more realistic about my blog.  I'm giving myself a personal goal of updating at least once a week and if I can do more I will or if I do less, so be it.  I hope I'll still have some followers!  This blog doesn't have the beautiful photography and mad Photoshop/Picasa/Picnik enhanced photos and I have accepted that it will not for the forseeable future.  I did get Photoshop Elements for Christams and I do hope to have a chance to actually play around with it soon.

In the spirit of aiming low, one of the things I do want to tackle is better organization around our home.  All of the closets can stand to be cleaned and there are definitely better ways to utilize spaces in our home.  I'm going to tackle this little by little.  One of the first things I hope to tackle is the cookbook mess pictured above.  When we first moved into this house, all the cookbooks fit neatly in this upper cabinet.  But hubby and I both like to cook and quickly aquired many more cookbooks (hubby just got two more for his birthday today) and the clippings of recipes began to grow (see the dilapidated folder at the top?  Yep, that would be the clippings).  Now we have this nightmare going on (and this isn't even all of them - there are more on my nightstand and in a basket in our living room!).  Hubby and I are hoping to clean out a shelf in our coat closet and use that area for cookbooks.  If we ever get to this task, I will post some after photos. 

For all you home cooks - How do you organize your cookbooks?

P.S. Where the heck did Blogger put spell check?  Please excuse my typos.

Week Free of Recreational Technology

Hello Friends!
Just popping in to say that hubby and I are in the midst of our self proclaimed Week Free of Recreational Technology challenge.  This means no TV, computer (other than for work), Facebook, iphone, Droid, etc. use.  Of course I am cheating by posting this but I wanted to let you know I will be offline the rest of the week!  I have also had to turn on comment moderation for now.  Way too many spam comments and I just can't keep up with them.  Have a great week.  I'll report back on our ability to be tech free!
Hugs,
Karla

Some Really Bad Photos of a Recent Makeover

Whew! Finally feeling a bit back to normal and the old routine after the holiday rush. I hope everyone had fabulous holidays.

I must apologize for the very, very bad photos in this post. I'm certainly no photographer to begin with and any kind of fancy SLR camera seems to be way off on the distant horizon. On the day I took these photos the lighting wasn't good and I was holding a squirming baby. But I wanted to share them anyway because by the time I get around to taking better photos - who knows what month it will be!

I know many people have this IKEA frame. As you probably know it is sold in black. I used to have it hanging on the back of our front door and I had wanted to rotate the images inside the frame with the seasons. That wasn't really working for me and we had a bare wall so it moved. I didn't like the black so I spray painted it this lovely creamy color. Can't remember the name. Instead of constantly framing and unframing the image, I decided to glue some cork board onto the back. Now I can rotate the images whenever I feel like it. I was inspired by this blogger and pinned up the few prize ribbons I own. I also noticed this month's Country Living has a similar idea featured.

A much more pleasant visual and I love how it now has more of a "3D" effect to bring more interest to the wall.

One other thing on my mind - has anyone else been getting lots of comment spam recently? I have the word verification on but they are still getting through. I recently had a whole slew on many various past posts. I'm trying to delete them as they come in but these spammers are getting the better of me. Anyone have any way to control them short of turning on comment moderation?