Command Center (or our solution to the spot in our house that collects everything that doesn't have a home)

When we were purchasing our home and looking at floor plans, our builder was very proud of the fact that their floor plans were family-friendly and had areas labeled "Tech Zone" or "Prep Zone" where you could charge your devices or prep food or what-have-you.

The problem with our "Tech Zone," which is just a ledge nailed into a small recess in the wall, is that it was too small to hold our laptops and in a very random place. In our open-floor-plan, it's between the basement door and the stairs. We store Rufus's food and water under the little ledge and anything that was in our way on our kitchen island was deposited in our "Tech Zone." So, in all reality, it became a "Random Clutter Zone" with coupons, cookbooks, wallets, glasses, cameras, chargers, spare change, keys, Kleenex. Ugh! It was a mess. (I do consider us blessed to have the shelf already built - some people have to DIY those shelves and ours matches the rest of the trim in the house. So I won't complain about it.)

So I pinned a ton of command centers and we went to work.

To start off, we had to clear off everything. Except my iPad. And the chargers.

Next step? Raid Target. We had an idea of what we wanted to with our laptops. We wanted to store them upright so we could charge them and they wouldn't take up all the room on the ledge. We scoured Amazon.com and office supply store websites. But everyone knows that Target is pretty much awesome, so that's where we ended up. I think we spent around $35 total.

We really lucked out with these file holders. They have holes, presumably to look stylish and sophisticated, that happen to also be the perfect size for screws!

We planned where we wanted everything to go and Andy started drilling and hanging.

I don't think there was a single Pinterest command center that I wanted to duplicate. Every home has different clutter and I think it helps to plan your command center around your clutter. Ours was laptops, papers and coupons.

I'm going to expand on this later by getting a corkboard to hang above the keys and I want to put a dry-erase board on the other side of the stairs so I can write messages and Andy can write "Poop."

Eventually we'll get around to the closet by the front door and our mudroom/laundry room. :)

DIY Canvas Quotes

I love the quotes on canvas that you see on etsy and pinterest all the time. The problem is I'm too much of a DIY-er to buy them (I know, I know, it supports small businesses).

It was about as time-consuming as I expected (probably about 2 hours per sign).

1) Use a nifty font website to create your template. I used Dafont.com and downloaded a bunch of fonts and made my templates in Word.

2) Once you get them juuuuust right, print them off. On the back side (the side that doesn't have the font), shade behind all of the words with pencil. You'll be making a transfer. Looking back, I should have tried using white colored pencil for the transfers I was planning on doing on the green canvases. I could barely make out the pencil.

3) Paint your canvases.

4) I put a book under my canvases during the transfer so that my pencil wouldn't stretch the canvases or leave dents (Game of Thrones is both a good read and a good crafting tool) and traced the letters, pressing down hard, to transfer the lead from the back side of the paper onto the canvas.

5) I used Sharpies to fill in the letters I traced. It was much easier than paint and I had more control. I used silver and gold markers on the green and red canvases. It was pretty easy to tackle a canvas or two while Bubby was napping.

6) Voila!