A paint spot makeover

My little painting spot has moved several times over the years. It started at the kitchen table, moved to our very expensive dinning table, then was moved to the downstairs in various places. Eventually I landed in the dungeon. The unfinished area of our house, which is also the home of our water heater, furnace and electricity central. I did this in an effort to keep my clutter out of sight from my husband, who HATES clutter. But all artists know that painting in dark spaces is very inhibiting. Even after investing in 2 true light lamps I still had a difficult time. Within the last 6 months I moved my stuff behind our sofa in the family room, which is directly in between 2 french double doors with LOTS of natural lighting. I quickly discovered how much I LOVED painting here. I could see the kids, I could see the television, I could see my ART!

Except it was getting pretty cluttered and messy. Mostly because I was doing this all on an old poker table covered in cardboard. This week I worked on cleaning up the clutter and created a nook I can now retreat to and feel relaxed!

Here is the outcome:

My dad helped me to make this really awesome ribbon holder. I HATE dowels going through my ribbon because if I want to organize by color and I add new ribbon then I have to take ALL of the other ribbon spools off and start from scratch. This holder has a lip on the edge of each shelf to prevent my ribbon from rolling off. I spray painted it black, and then stapled black poster board to the back. Lovin' it, right?? Dad's are awesome.

I moved my peg board from the dungeon to below the ribbon holder. So much more efficient.

This set of canvases I made out of scrap paper I had on hand, mod podge and paint. I love it!

I bought the black desk and book shelf and lined the back side of the desk with fabric and paint so that the unfinished edges wouldn't show. The storage furniture in the back I got on clearance, and is actually closet organization furniture. The shelves actually slide out. I like that a lot.

Of course, most of my stuff is still in the dungeon but that's okay. It's stored away neatly in the area that has no light. But I will now have all of the light I need, and it looks good enough not to have to hide.

I do try my best to label everything. Although I mostly paint I have everything from foam crafts to embossing guns stored here.

This is where I keep most of my shipping supplies and canvases.

I used to put up images of my artwork on this back wall for inspiration, but I've been so busy that I stopped doing that a couple of years ago.

Yardsale Success Part II...

Having a yard sale is much like giving birth to an infant. It's time consuming to prepare for, awful to go through yet when it is over the bad memories eventually fade and you are ready to do it again. I am not yet at that phase. In fact, I've been so traumatized by my most recent yard sale that I am convinced I will hang it up forever.

With that said I will first warn you that there will be no Yard Sale Success Part III. This is it. Once I write about this I will move on to more things that don't cause me to have post traumatic nightmares.

Once I was finished with tagging everything and organizing items into accessible boxes I packed up my stuff (2 FULL van loads) and hauled it all out to my dads. This took 2 full days, as I was also helping out my step mom with her own yard sale stuff. The following picture is the before and after of just the clothing items. I still had a lot of other *stuff* that my mom and my mother in law contributed.

I decided the day before the start of the weekend that I would be super crafty and I made a couple of aprons for holding money. One for myself and one for my step mom. Mostly my motive for this is because in the past I've always just kept my money in a zipper bag that I was notorious for leaving around. This way I could not lose my stash of cash.

A couple of extra helpful pointers for a successful tag sale is to collect your wal-mart/grocery bags for a couple of months before. People love to have bags to hold their items and the more they can hold the more they can buy. Another important pointer is to get about $40 in lower bills and about $5 in quarters so that you can give out change. And be certain to keep count of how much you started with and subtract it from what you made in the end. This way you don't get too excited if you think you made $50.00 when you started out with $40 only to forget to separate your money.

My own yard sale was overall successful. In the many years this event has occurred we've been fortunate not to have experienced weather interferences. However, this year, it rained the entire day Friday. This was not a good start because in the past Friday's have always been my money making day. I generally make about 75% of my total on Friday, partially because many Amish come into town on this day and another adjoining neighborhood has their big yard sale on Saturday.

Nevertheless, we sucked it up and went on with the show. We used my dad's car-port as well as his canopy to help keep our stuff dry, but it was an ongoing drizzle that just made everything damp, including our stuff. I was lucky I pulled a $200 day with all of the circumstances.

Thankfully, Saturday turned out to be beautiful. The weather was perfect for a yard sale. We were able to move the show to the actual *yard*.

In the end my total collection of money (I can't call it a profit because of course I spent much, much more on the actual products) was about $520. I say about because the kids bummed at least $20 off of me for food, ice cream and yard sale shopping for themselves. So I didn't include that amount. This was a bit low, but considering the rain on Friday I was pleased. Also, I left my dad's with just 1/8 of what I came with.

Just 3 days later I am still a bit traumatized by the event, mostly because of little old women who want a $40 Ralph Lauren sweater that still has price tags on it for 50 cents. At this point I am convinced I will just start to sell most of my stuff on eBay, but in a year I will likely change my mind.

Yardsale Success Part I...

Every year, since my twins were colicky infants, I have gone along with my entire family to Gatlinburg Tennessee for a fall getaway. Initially, my dad would fork out the cash to cover most of my expenses. But several years ago, after 911 and the stock market crashes, that halted. Sadly for me, an at home mom with minimal income I had to come up with some clever solutions to raise the money for a trip I wasn't willing to give up.

My dad's neighborhood has traditionally held an annual yard sale gala every second weekend in September since I was a small child. This is no typical yard sale event. People come from all over the state of Kentucky and the neighborhood folks take full advantage. Some people cook hot dogs and brats, other's provide doughnuts and coffee, my own children have set up tremendous bake sales with much success.

And I use the proceeds of my yard sale earnings to partially fund our annual Gatlinburg trip. Last year I set a record and earned $600. I'm going to share with you just how I do this.

Again, I'm not type A, so I don't care if my house is a disaster for a day or two. So let me show you just what I have to endure for at least a couple of days.

This is a small section of my downstairs. I start with collecting everything I've packed away over the last year and spread it out onto the floor and spray it with Febreze. This gets the *boxed away* odors out without causing me another weeks worth of laundry to do. Then I situate myself in the middle along with my handy dandy yard sale kit.

Here are the keys to my success. I'll explain more in a bit.

• Tag Gun
• Retractable Sharpie
• Print out tags that are super cute (see images below)
• Hangers, lots of 'em
• Vibrant signage
• Extra large paper clips

My tag gun is my best friend this time of year. Anyone wanting to achieve a successful yard sale MUST label all of their items. People will just walk away if they are not labeled or try to negotiate a price that is unlikely unfair. I got my idea for tag gunning my children's clothes several years ago when my Mother of Twins Club made it mandatory for everyone selling in their bi-annual yard sale event to have things tagged with a tag gun. Although I've only shopped at this event I found this extremely helpful and professional. So I have stolen this idea and made a few enhancements. Tag guns are extremely cheap. I think I got mine on eBay for about $5.00.

A RETRACTABLE sharpie is best for labeling the prices and sizes on each tag. The bold lettering looks professional and I suggest retractable because putting a lid back on a marker every single time you mark an item is exhausting.

Ultra cute tags. This is new this year for myself. In the past I've simply just cut a piece of index card into half and just wrote on it the price and size. This year I've gone a bit further and created some adorable tags.

Here are a few examples of my tags for my clothing. In truth I can't tell you if people will be excited about the tags or simply think I'm a psychopath idiot who definitely has no life. So I will update that in Part III (yes, it's gonna take 3 parts for my yard sale tips!) Nevertheless, my tags are definitely appealing to at least myself!

Hangers. I never toss out a hanger. I love all hangers. Every hanger that I get with my kids stuff I save. And I use hundreds for my clothes. Clothes on hangers sell much better than those tossed onto a table or into boxes. Last year, for example, after the first day of the yard sale I organized my items. Since I had available hangers (I always take my hangers back) I went through some of my boxes of stuff and began hanging up stuff. The funny thing is that in the box I priced the items for 50 cents. When I hung them up I priced them for $1.00. And they sold.

Signs. People need direction. When you go shopping in a store there are signs for everything. This rack is Hannah Montana, this rack is on sale, this rack... I separate all of the stuff I can not put onto hangers into individual boxes. Everything in the boxes are tagged but I also place a sign above the box with 2 paper clips letting people know what is in there before they start to dig around. Stay tuned for part II, I will show some of my signs.

Pre-Written Notes...

What would be really misfortunate about this blog is if it were to somehow come off as displaying me as a type A, Brea Vandecamp like personality. This couldn't be further from the truth. I'm more like a type C-. My house is generally a mess, I'm at least 3 days behind on laundry and sometimes we eat cereal for dinner. However, I find that every little bit helps, so I don't mind offering up some tips that help me, the loser mom on the block who doesn't participate in all of the PTO events.

My daughters are generally bus riders, except for once a week when they are picked up by their wonderful step-mother (no, it's not an oxymoron, she is really great to my kids.) After more than a year of this I still have the obligation of sending in a letter for each child stating that they will be a car rider. Thanks to the days of home printers I can plan ahead and print out a month's batch of letters at a time and have them ready to send in Wednesday with just the date lacking.

This also allows me to get an extra 5 minutes of sleep PLUS an additional 5 minutes of shoe finding time.

Organizing Toys...

I vaguelly recall a time when I had no toys scattered about my home. At one point I actually went to the store and bought some tinker things for my babies to play with. And once they were finished I would place them into a basket and neatly tuck it away beside my living room couch. Then Christmas came, and birthdays and a couple more kids. Toys quickly invaded my home like zombies invade shopping malls.

There is no true solution to the toy problem. In the beginning I would include "The only gift we request is your presence" on every birthday invitation, but it was always ignored. In my situation we generally get duplicates of everything. I have 3 daughters so of course they need 3 of the same exact barbie doll. My son, he gets the Incredible Hulk, who gets to marry Barbie. So our house can be overcome with toys, unless I take control first.

A couple of years ago I saw a Super Nanny episode (I'm not a fan) in which the Nanny helped to organize a family's living room's toy problem by investing in about 20 big blue tupperware tubs and tossing the toys in each. Maybe she even seperated them according to color, but I was astounded. This very idea is exactly why our homes turn into a tornado invaded toy store within a matter of minutes. When a kid is looking for something to do, something to play with, they are overwhelmed with sooo many things. And when everything is tossed into bins they have to start digging and tossing and dumping just to find what they want, only to realize that they don't want any of what's in *that* bin. So they carry on to the next.

I would be lying if I said that I had the solution years ago. In fact, only about a year ago did I finally figure out what is the best way to handle the toy factor.

First thing to do is to watch an episode of Clean Sweep. This is always motivational for getting rid of that half chewed up stuffed animal (from the dog, not the teething infant). Get a couple of bags, one for trash and one for Goodwill, and go to town.

I have a large toy room, with 2 closets. I probably have more toys in the closets than in the actual toy room. The closets are secured like Fort Knox, with the idea that if the toy room is clean then they may check out a favorite toy. Things like Lincoln Logs and Lego's are locked away.

I'm not terribly cruel. We have many other toys that they have access to as well. Now is a good time to let me introduce you to my BFF: The Cubbie!

The majority of our toy collection is now located within the safety of these colorful little boxes. We have labels for each, including Kitchen Toys, Boy Toys, Girl Toys, Tools & Building Supplies, Doctor Equipment, Notebooks & Workbooks & Coloring Books, Arts & Crafts, Playhouse Toys, etc. This is also helpful for teaching sitewords. My 4 year old son can read several of these and those he can not he knows the color.

Another benefit of this is clean up time. When the kids go into destructive mode and choose to dump everything out, which is infrequent now that they know the consequences, I simply designate specific cubbies they are responsible for refilling.

Now we can take it a little further for those who are feeling a bit sassy. My other bestfriend is the quart sized zip lock bag.

For those collections that you just can't figure out why you have, such as Mr. Potatoe Head's playdough thingamagigits, put it in a bag before you put it in a cubbie. The note I have to this particular cubbie says "Toys In Bags Warning, if it is not in a bag do not put it in here, go find the bag it belongs in and then return." This works well as long as one particular child is not completely alone in the toy room, at which time they will just blame the mess on someone else.

As for those big blue tupperware tubs, keep one. For everything big, and for those days that you just can't stand looking at the mess anymore. Toss everything into it and give the kids a couple of days to find a place for their toys before you create an eBay auction. Sit on the couch, kick your feet up and laugh.