Baby, it's cold-inside?

Living in Virginia, our winters can vary.  This year, winter is off to a pretty cold start.  There have been years when it was close to eighty degrees in early December.  Not this winter!  So I have decided to go around the house, looking for places where insulation could be better.  Starting with the front door.  This is one place where you can loose a great deal of heat that you want to keep in your house.  You pay good money for that heat!  It was as simple as putting my hand at the bottom and around the edges of the door.  Yikes!  It was like an Arctic blast!

Solution?  Off to Lowes to look for a good insulating fix.  It was not hard to find.  I found a door bottom with vinyl fins that attaches with screws to the bottom of the door.  It is also trim to fit, so the installation was fairly easy-not easy on my knees from kneeling on the floor, but worth it! I like to keep all of my screws in a small bowl so that they don't roll away from me-or my cat Jack doesn't steal them(he is quite the little thief!).  I did have to remove the kick plate from the front of the door as it was keeping the insulator from fitting properly.  Even something that thin(approximately 1/16 of an inch)can mess up the correct fit.  The door bottom was a bit snug, so I would recommend using a rubber mallet to make it a little bit easier to slide under the door.  It comes with screws, so with those attached, it is not going anywhere and it keeps my warm air exactly where it needs to be-inside!

Stay warm my friends!

Let's get it started!!

Day one-Welcome!  This is to new beginnings, and this certainly is one for me!  I hope you will come along for the ride-I hope it will be fun, informative, and you can laugh a little!  I have thought that with all the stuff going on in the world, home is where I like to be the most.  I plan on sharing home projects, decorating projects, and anything and everything in between.  So let's get it started!

With the end of the holiday season comes the inevitable clean up.  Yes, I feel your pain.  I am in the midst of it, but have decided to take the opportunity to pair down and put away only what we want to keep here in our household.  Anything that is broken, holds no real sentimental meaning, or is just tired and needs to go bye-bye is going, well, bye-bye.  I always say that there is someone who will love it more!

I have quite a few ornaments that my sweet husband and I collected when we started out our adventures together, but over the years, as we have added three children to our brood, we have added ornaments that are more sentimental.  Many of the ornaments have our children's names and the year on them, so when the kiddos have their own homes and Christmas trees, the ornaments will go with them.  So, maybe I should keep the original ornaments of ours?  Nah-we have not used them in several years, so they need to go.  Collectors will love them, which makes me happy.  The added bonus being more storage space!  They will find a good home to collectors on ebay. More on that at a later date-stay tuned!

Putting decorations away requires a lot of leg work-literally!  I usually do it when the kids are at school and the hubby is at work, so I am running up and down several flights of stairs several times during the day.  It most definitely counts as my workout for the day!  I like to keep the decor in plastic tubs, making sure they are clearly labeled with the contents inside or color coded for the season.  My Christmas tubs are green and red-very jolly!  This greatly helps me in my attic storage since just about everything is stored this way.  It helps to keep everything clean and moth-hole free.  And yes, it does keep out the odd squirrel that decides to chew its way through the wooden vents at the ends of the house.  But that is another story.

So up I went and down came the tubs.  The first trip, not so bad-I made it in one trip with the tubs stored inside of each other.  Next came the sorting through, boxing up, and putting away of it all.  All in all, it took about two hours, which includes taking all the decorations down and putting them in one central location, namely the dining room.  I did have to make a trip to purchase a tub big enough to house my poinsettias-the squirrels decided they were a good hiding place for acorns-yep that's right.  There were about a hundred stored in the eight fake pots-ugh.  I do not have photos of that drama-I was way too keen to get the acorns outside where they belonged.  Did you hear that squirrels? 

And voila!  It was clean!!  And now we can eat in our dining room once more...

Are you in the process of cleaning up and putting away after this holiday season?  Do you have any storage/organizing tips to share?  I'd love to hear your comments!