I am beyond excited to share with you the first completely designed and renovated room in our house…my closet!

I’m really fortunate to not have to share a closet with my husband. I love the guy, but I need all the space I can get. This is the first time in years that I have every single piece of clothing and all my accessories in one place and I have only one word to describe it, heaven.

This week I’ll be posting lots of great tips and tutorials to show you ways to make your own closet (big or small!) just as fabulous. There’s even a surprise project (not shown in the picture) that is so easy and cheap, you’ll call your husband to stop at Home Depot on his way home from work.

Here’s the transformation!

Check back this week for tips on how to paint stripes, loads of organizational ideas and the reveal for that “table” on the left side of the picture.

I’ll tell you this, getting dressing in the morning has never been so much fun.

 I’m going to go out on a limb and say that kale has been the new “it” vegetable from this past year. Everywhere I look I see recipes using kale. In almost every recipe, the kale is steamed/sauteed/baked…basically cooked. When I came across a recipe using raw kale, I was interested. How could you turn such a sturdy green into something that tasted great raw?

The trick, I learned, was to use an avocado and a bit of oil. By massaging it into the kale, it helps to soften the greens, all while infusing flavor. I was sold. 

It’s creamy from the avocado, tangy from the lime juice and has a nice fresh crunch from the green onions. Definitely a different combination of flavors. This would be great served with grilled chicken or fish for a delicious light meal!

Kale and Avocado Salad

{ Serves 2-3 }

1 bunch of curly kale, de-stemmed and torn into pieces

1 avocado, scooped and diced

1 TBS olive oil

3 tablespoons chopped green onions

2 Roma tomatoes

1/2 tsp. salt

1 lime (start with juice from 1/2 then add more to taste)

Add pieces of kale to a large bowl. Add in the diced avocado and olive oil. Using your hands, massage the avocado and oil into the kale until each leaf is well coated.

Add remaining ingredients, except for the lime juice, to the bowl and toss to combine. Start by adding juice from 1/2 of the lime then add more to taste. Toss well and serve.

This will keep in an air-tight container in the fridge for 2 days.

Right before we moved into the house, I went estate sale shopping with two of my best friends. Meghan and Megan. (Yes, it gets confusing telling stories that involve both of them.)

Megan is an expert at estate sales. That girl gets THE most incredible deals all of the time. I was excited to go shopping with her for exactly that reason. Enter the armoire above. It was priced at $300 but I got it for $100!

It’s such a great piece of furniture. Well made, lots of storage and loads of potential for a makeover. I’m still trying to decide what color I want to paint it and new knobs are definitely in the near future.

When we finally moved in, I wasn’t 100% sure where I wanted to use this piece. There wasn’t a great spot to put it in the bedroom, so we took a chance and tried it out in the bathroom. It fits perfectly and I LOVE having such quick access to all of my clothes. Luckily the bathroom is big enough that it can take such a big piece of furniture without making the room feel cluttered.

I also took the time to line the shelves with a really girly black and white floral liner and I love the way it turned out. I can’t wait until it’s all painted!

Ironically, my other friend Meghan bought the matching dresser to use as a changing table for her daughter. You can see the transformation of that dresser { here }. So what’s your vote? Should the armoire get a glossy coat of black, a creamy coat of white or any color in between?

Today I’m obsessed with rugs. They’re an affordable way to really transform a space. Here are a few I’m loving today…

They can all be found on WestElm.com. Conveniently, I just got a 10% off coupon in the mail. Me + Rug + Coupon = Sold. Now that’s the kind of math I like!

Remember in { this post } when I hinted that the bathroom wasn’t green anymore? Well, this is what it looks like now…

SO much better! Now it’s light, bright and worlds away from that dark green cave. The color is a very soft gray-blue. It’s hard to show the exact color in a picture, but it’s a bit lighter than it appears online.

All that’s left now is curtains, a rug, artwork and finally replacing that 22 year old clam shell toilet. Yep, clam shell. Welcome to the 1980′s.

There’s still a lot to do, but it’s all about doing what you can, when you can. I know I say it a millions times but I truly believe it. Taking it slow and putting in a little hard work will help to really transform a space. All this bathroom has cost us is a gallon of paint and some elbow grease. Well worth it if you ask me.

P.S. We used the Behr paint that has the primer and paint in one and LOVED it! It only took two coats to cover that dark green and saved us the hassle of priming separately. At around $32 it’s incredibly reasonable versus having to buy a gallon of paint and a gallon of primer. It actually saved us a couple bucks!

Today I’m sharing one of my favorite new salads. The best part of this recipe is that there is no recipe! It’s a throw-together-what-you-have kinda dish that I’ve been craving over and over again. Have a favorite vegetable? Add it to the bowl. Don’t like tomatoes, keep them out. I love “recipes” that I can easily adapt to my taste.

The other great thing about this salad is that everything can be chopped ahead of time and stored in the fridge. When you want to eat, pull everything out and everyone can make their own salad with exactly what they like. When I first made this salad a couple weeks ago, I ate the leftovers nearly every day for lunch for a week. It made a quick, easy meal that I felt good about eating.

To make this salad a lot healthier than traditional taco salads, I skipped the high calorie taco shell bowl it normally comes in and instead added cooked brown rice. I also left all the veggies raw for maximum nutritional value and left out any salad dressing. It tasted great without any dressing, but if you’d like some, try my { creamy cilantro dressing }. It would be delicious with that!

Here’s what I had in my salad…

- Romaine lettuce

- Ground Beef (I used one pound of 90/10 which is leaner and cooked it with 1 tsp. cumin, 1 tsp. chili powder, 1 tsp. garlic powder, salt and pepper.)

- Brown Rice

- Orange pepper, diced

- Roma Tomato, diced

- Avocado, diced (Which I accidentally left out of the picture above.)

- Cilantro, chopped

- Shredded cheese

This salad would also be delicious with…

- Corn kernels

- Red peppers

- Jicama

- Black beans

- Salsa

Justin and I really enjoyed this salad. I love finding new ways to make salad a main course meal. With this dinner, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything from a great Mexican meal other than extra calories and fat!

Tell me, what would your perfect taco salad have in it?

Today’s post doesn’t have much to do with design or food, but it will save you a good deal of money! I’m all about saving a buck where I can so I can turn around and use it for something fun. Like new curtains. Or a new dishwasher. (Not that either of those things are on my wish list right now.)

I make several batches of this detergent and it lasts us for several months. I’ve tried making homemade liquid detergent, but I found it didn’t work as well and having to deal with a 5-gallon bucket was more than a hassle.

I love that with this recipe, you buy three ingredients, blend and you’re done. Easy! You can find all three ingredients at Publix, Amazon.com and Ingles. What you’ll need is…

Fels-Naptha Soap Bar. { $0.99-$1.25 depending on where you buy }

Borax { $2.00-$4.00 depending on where you by }

Washing Soda { $2.50-$3.50 depending on where you buy }

For one batch, you’ll use the entire bar of soap, but the boxes of Washing Soda and Borax should last you for multiple batches. To make, cut the bar of soap into large chunks and add to a blender. Next, add 1/2 cup of Washing Soda and 1/2 cup of Borax. Blend until well mixed.

Here’s a close-up. The bright yellow is the bar of soap. You can see how blending it gives you nice little flecks throughout the mix. To use, simply add one spoonful to your wash. If the laundry is heavily soiled, add two spoonfuls.

To make the large jar above, I used three bars of soap and 1 1/2 cups each of Borax and Washing Soda. For under $6 I made enough soap to last us for at least 4 months, maybe longer. It works great, I don’t have to coupon for laundry detergent deals and I can save my money for more important things. Like a dishwasher. (*Cough, cough* Justin Smith.)

 { Homemade Laundry Detergent }

1 bar of Fels-Naptha soap

1/2 cup Borax

1/2 cup Washing Soda

Cut soap into chunks and add to blender. Add remaining ingredients and blend until

well combined. To use, add one spoonful to each load of laundry.

When we first moved into this house, we knew one of the first rooms we wanted to tackle was the master bathroom. Here’s a reminder of what it looked like…

Here’s a close up shot of the offending window…

That faux stained glass insert just had to go. Along with the Kermit the Frog green. A friend who recently saw the bathroom for the first time actually said, “Oh it really is Kermit green. I thought you were exaggerating”. Nope. Friends, it really is that horrible in person.

Now the great thing about this bathroom is that is had great bones. It’s large, has great storage and lighting in all the right places. The only thing we need to do is give it a few updates. I do have a master plan for way, way down the road, but I believe you do what you can, when you can afford it. We can swing a few easy updates like a new coat of paint and a few accessories, but future plans for tiling, a new shower and more built-in cabinets will have to wait.

We decided to start with the most obvious feature, the faux stained glass window. I thought it would pop out pretty easily, but true to DIY fashion, it was a bit more intensive than that. The insert was actually being held in place by part of the window trim. I started by running a razor blade on either side of the trim to loosen it from any paint or caulk holding it in place.

Next, I used a screwdriver to try and pry up the trim. You can see where I made several nicks in the surrounding trim trying to get it off. Those holes didn’t concern me too much since I knew I would have to paint and caulk everything once the trim was replaced.

After prying up all the trim, this is what I was left with. Not too pretty, but allowed easy access to remove the insert.

And here’s the most beautiful shot in the post…the hideous window finally starting to come down. There may or may not have been a couple high fives at this point. Luckily Justin was there to help me actually remove this beast. It started to crack as we were taking it down and how it didn’t completely shatter on the bathroom floor I’ll never know. It’s currently sitting in our garage waiting to be taken to the trash heap. We’re completely fine with the fact that if we hear a loud crashing noise from the garage, it’ll be this this thing finally breaking into a million pieces. You know why? Because it’s finally out of our bathroom. Out of sight, out of mind is my current motto.

And will you look at that? There was a beautiful window hiding back there the whole time. I wish we could leave it like this but I’m not entirely comfortable with the whole exhibitionist idea. It was pretty for the 10 minutes it stayed like that, but alas I pressed on. (And evidently pressed on the picture. Please ignore my finger.)

I ordered { this } window film online and it took me about 45 minutes to add it to the window. I can’t say I would recommend doing this to a large window that you are planning to leave uncovered. You could see every seam since they don’t sell it in a wide width (see picture at bottom of post) and it was nearly impossible to get out all the air bubbles. I will say it does a great job of letting in light, while adding a good bit of privacy. It worked fine for us since we plan on adding blinds, but I’d try another route if you’re leaving it bare.

Putting the trim back up was also pretty easy. I used some wood glue and trim nails to ensure a cozy fit. For some reason, the previous owners had a flat piece of trim at the bottom of the window but an angled piece at the top. We learned from hanging blinds in the bedroom that angled trim pieces don’t allow for easy installation of blinds. We plan on adding blinds to this window down the road so I simply switched the trim pieces and put the top piece on the bottom and vice versa.

This is what we were left with after switching the trim pieces. Not a perfect fit, but nothing some caulk and paint couldn’t fix.

Finally, the finished picture! I know it’s dark, but I’ll have a better picture to share soon. (Hint: The walls aren’t green anymore!)

I still have some painting and caulking to finish up, but we’re really happy with the outcome. All we need now is 2″ blinds and a roman shade for the top! What about you guys? Did you tackle any fun weekend projects?

Image borrowed from { here }. (Not our actual closet.)

Does this closet remind you of anything? Maybe your own coat closet? This is similar to how our coat closet looked before I got my hands on it. It had one measly shelf hung up high, and lots of wasted space above and below. I’m sure back in the day when everyone wore long trench coats it was handy to have so much hanging space. But today? Well, I think it’s time to re-think coat closets. Here’s our newly re-done coat closet…

Lovely! Originally, that top shelf was the only shelf in the closet. It was hung so high up, it was impossible to have space to organize anything else. We lowered it a good bit and put in an extra shelf for added storage. The box on the left acts as a handy place to store gloves and winter hats and there is plenty of space for all our games. Can you tell we love games?

I think I mentioned how long it took us to clean this house when we moved in, but if not, it took forever. That’s what prompted us to start with the closets. Every bit of shelving had to come out, be cleaned and put back in correctly. They used tiny nails to put everything in. Not correct in the least. While we were re-doing everything, I suggested we paint as well. I picked a nice dark gray that I thought would be an unexpected surprise for a closet. We love it! Oh and ignore the beige walls…they’ll be re-painted to fit the new color scheme down the road.

Even though we lowered the bottom shelf, there is still tons of space to comfortable hang all of our coats. There’s even room for a trench coat or two in the future. You could easily add a rack for shoes on the bottom, but we didn’t need it so I left it empty. It’s all about seeing what you need in your space and customizing it to fit your lifestyle. For us, it was games and jackets. Done and done.

So to recap, here’s the easy way to make-over your coat closet.

1- Lower your shelf! Grab your longest coat and use that to determine just how low you can go.

2- Add more shelves. Home Depot and Lowe’s sell wire shelving for closets. They’ll even cut it in store! We got four shelves to fit in our closet (the extra went into the linen closet) for under $20. Cheap and easy!

3- Organize. Grab a couple inexpensive boxes and get to sorting. Figure out what you want to store and what you need the easiest access to. Items you don’t need all the time go to the top shelf, other items get out within easy reach.

4- Don’t be afraid of color! Closets are the perfect place to inject a bit of color that you wouldn’t normally put into a room.

There you have it, a quick and easy closet make-over you could do in a day and for under $50! The coat closet was just the beginning in our closet make-overs. This week I’ll share the rest of our closet make-overs along with a couple easy recipes that I know you’ll love!

Now it’s your turn…any closet organizing tips you’d like to share?

Today’s post is all about learning what you can do to personalize your space and make life easier in the process. Like I said yesterday, I really do believe that before you can have a beautiful home, you need to have an organized home. Since we’re all different, that will mean different things for each of us. I’ll share what works for me, and hopefully that will inspire you to think of something great that will work with your lifestyle!

Ok, so to set up the first project we tackled, I have to tell you that I wash my hands. A lot. In the course of making dinner I usually wash my hands around 10 times. Crazy, I know. With that said, I needed to find the perfect place to put a towel to dry my hands. It needed to be close to the sink and I didn’t want it hanging off a cabinet knob or directly in front of the sink. (I find I usually bump the towel off constantly when it’s in those locations.) After a quick glimpse around the kitchen, I saw the perfect spot…

It’s unused space, easily reachable from the sink and won’t immediately draw your eyes when you come in the kitchen. Perfect! I initially thought about putting a single hook for a single towel, but then decided to go out of the box. Why not put a whole towel bar? It would fit the space perfectly and give me room for a couple more towels. Justin and I headed to Home Depot and picked up a towel bar and brackets for under $10.

My handyman. Best part is that labor is free.

Tada! A great solution that fits our needs and looks pretty great in the process. I’ve already used the towel bar for a week or so now and love it. It’s really handy having quick access to a few towels. In fact, when I accidental exploded a can of tomatoes all over the kitchen the other night, I was thankful I could snatch up one of the towels to quickly clean up the mess. (Don’t ask.)

The other quick made-our-lives-easier project we tackled was to install a recycling bin. We are serious recyclers around here and can accumulate a lot of recycling throughout the week. In an effort to keep the kitchen clutter-free, I decided to install a recycling bin in one of the cabinets. I made sure to pick a cabinet near the sink (so we could easily rinse items and toss them in the bin) and would ensure a sung fit for the bin. We bought { this } model from The Container Store (on sale of course!) and it was a snap to install. (FYI that is Justin’s leg in the picture. The boy can’t seem to get out of a picture frame to save his life!)

There you have it, two simple projects that have made our lives a bit more organized. I hope this inspires you to look around your own space and see what could use a little organizing!