Little Paint Project

We have had this bench for years. In our previous home we also had a covered front porch and I always pictured a cute little bench there.  I saw this bench at a local home improvment store and knew it would be perfect and I loved it's design. 
When it came home with us it was a medium wood color.  After we moved to our current home I stained it much darker with a Minwax stain to a mahogany-type color.

Last summer I actually saw an almost identical bench in a movie painted white and LOVED it.  As I've said in the past I'm a huge fan of white and it's clean simple look. So with my boys help I primed and painted it.

Now I ADORE it and think it will stay white for the remainder of it's days.

It looks so fresh and inviting and has inspired me to spruce up my front porch even further.  I think I'll add a little coffee table and maybe a little white chair to match and enjoy cups of coffee or glasses of lemonade out here all summer long.

Tax Time Organizing

We filed our taxes several weeks ago but just this weekend packed up all of our 2010 stuff. We hadn't done this yet because we didn't want to make the mistake again this year of packing everything up only to receive documents in the mail weeks after packing up and having to go to our garage and dig out our box.  
This year we got REALLY serious and I made photo copies of all of our important documents that we need occasionally for things like insurance and sports sign-ups such as birth certificates, marriage license and social security cards to keep in our regular files and kept the originals in our fireproof safe.

 
And then I tackled the owners manuals of which, it seems, we have an endless supply.  You know, everything from the washer and dryer and KitchenAid mixer to my boys' electronic toys and husband's tools.  This is what I came up with:

I wanted to use the Martha Steward idea I saw on a show years ago of putting them all in plastic sleeves in labeled binders but didn't do this because it irritated my husband having to pull them out of the sleeves. I then thought of just hole-punching each one and putting it in a binder but doing that cut off information. So above is what I put together with what I had on hand.  I just recycled old file folders and labeled the categories on both the side of the file and the top for ease of finding what we needed. I put all the manuals behind each divider and stuck them in a bin I already had.
Now, I realize this isn't the loveliest thing to look at, but it stays in the office closet and I have to say it really is functional.   Since I've done this we've had to refer to several manuals and it gave me quite the thrill to go right to it AND my ultra-organized hubby even got a bit excited.  Yes, we're a little lame. But we do love us some organization!