Good Saturday!

I normally don't give you a run down of every little thing that goes on, but today I really scored so I wanted to share. First, I woke up and my motivation for running was zero. Thankfully I was running with someone so I couldn't bail. We did 6 miles and almost matched our race pace. Then Hubs and I went to breakfast with our usual crew and tried some new pancake flavors! (we order the same thing pretty much every time so this was branching out for us : ) Raisin walnut (which was surprisingly good) and raspberry white chocolate (which is basically like a dessert pancake...I may have a new favorite).

Don't worry, I'm getting to the really good part. Hubs had a softball scrimmage so I went looking for a new shoe holder. Trust me, it was a necessary purchase. Here was my sorry excuse for a shoe holder (that didn't even warrant a picture with my camera, hence the poor phone quality pic):

That thing was fairly functional at one point, but clearly it was not made to last. That picture makes it look like I have way too many shoes, but really they all just kept falling out so I had a pile of shoes building on the floor. I wasn't terribly optimistic about finding a good shoe holder because, lets face it, they're kind of hard to find. This is probably my second or third.

But thanks to the good people at Real Simple, I found a winner (and no, Real Simple did not sponsor this post I just reeeally like this product). Seriously, I love the new shoe holder.

It has 18 shoe pockets (I easily fit any pair I had in a pocket), 2 boot pockets and 8 elastic-y pockets on the side for flats or flip flops! I stuck a Real Simple magazine (kind of fitting since the organizer is from Real Simple, but really that's the only magazine I subscribe to...did you hear that Real Simple? Yeah, I'll be waiting for a call about your sponsorship) in each of my boots and now they're standing up nicely instead of being crushed under the shoe pile.

Doesn't the whole area look way better? (Don't focus on anything but the shoe organizer, I know the closet could use some work.) You might have noticed there's a pair of shoes still out. Let me assure you, they could've fit. They're my "need to do something dirty/outside" shoes, and were found too dirty unworthy for my brand spankin' new awesome shoe holder.

Sorry, enough with the shoe holder, I know. But really, if you need one head to Bed Bath and Beyond and pick one up, it was only $20, even less with the 20% off coupon. Onto the real deal of the day! On my way to BBB I saw a sign for a yard sale, but didn't stop. The sign was still up on the way back and now had a 1/2 price piece of paper taped to it. So I couldn't pass that up, and it turned out to be literally around the corner from our house.

I pulled up and what did I spot right away? A whole table full of fabric! Since everything was half price now it was $1 per yard. Can't beat that! It's a good thing I had no cash on me : ) I did have $2.50 in change, and I used it!

Over 2 1/2 yards of fabric for $2.50. Yay! And it doesn't smell funny or look old (that can be a serious problem at yard sales). It seems like pretty good quality and I could tell from her selection of books she quilts a lot.

I briefly thought about going with one color scheme (there were lots of reds and pinks that would've gone together), but since I never have anything planned ahead of time I just took what appealed to me the most. Hopefully I can think of something fun and summery to do with the green seersucker fabric! So that's my Saturday (or at least the first 2/3 of it)! Off to a pretty good start for the weekend : ) What's happening with you this weekend?

Pocket Dumpster

Do you have any idea how many pockets are on a pair of ABUs? If you do laundry for someone who wears them (and are therefore responsible for checking all of the pockets for pens, watches, knives, money, etc.) you would probably say way more than necessary. The actual answer is 14 in case you were wondering, although that's not including the occasional pocket within a pocket.

Anyway, Hubs has lots of pockets so he has lots of stuff to dump out of said pockets when he gets home. Alas, after being here for over a year we hadn't really established a good place for all of that stuff. That occassionally led to panic at 7:30 the next morning when some random doodad had walked off and was nowhere to be found. The desk was an ok dumping ground, but who really wants 14 pockets worth of stuff on their desk everyday?

Enter crafty wife who doesn't like to panic and search for a reflective belt at 7:30am. I had an old hanging jewelry organizer that wasn't being used (and was recently moved out of the Goodwill pile to the infamous "almost Goodwill but I decided to save it for a project" pile).

It took me a minute to figure out what fabric to use. Obviously anything floral or polka dotty was completely out of the question. It would've been cool to use the same fabric as his ABUs, but none of his uniforms are worn out to the point that I would cut them up and those things are expensive! So I found a pair of pants in THE pile (you know the one I'm talking about).

They're a dark brownish black herringbone, sorry for the terrible picture. After some seam ripping I had all of my pieces ready to go. Except the trim on the jewelry organizer was plastic-y white and generally just looked terrible on the pants. So I cut some little pieces to sew over the edges.

If you happen to try something similar and you haven't used vinyl before just keep in mind that if you poke a hole in it, the hole will be there forever. I didn't like sewing the vinyl very much since minimal pinning = stuff shifting around a lot. I used the hem of one of the pant legs to make the loops for hanging.

Certainly not the prettiest thing I've ever created, but I'm hoping it's usefulness will make it awesome despite it's homely appearance.

And I know I could've made fabric baskets faster, but that would defeat the whole get-things-off-the-desk purpose. And I could've used fabric instead of vinyl for the pockets, but Hubs wanted to be able to see what he was grabbing. I know this post probably won't help a ton of people out there, but if you've ever washed a uniform you can at least sympathize with the ridiculous number of pockets. Seriously...14?