Spring clean up!

My great siblings all came over last weekend to help us do a little yardwork. We always have a ton of stuff that needs to go out on the curb for our city's annual spring cleanup (it's April 7th, if anyone local is wondering) and now that I am 8 months pregnant, I'm really not much help at all. This year I decided two of the trees in our backyard needed to come down. They were partially (mostly) dead and so messy and since they were both relatively small, I figured we could handle it. I mentioned to my awesome friend/neighbor that we were looking to borrow a chainsaw (ours is electric and we didn't think it would be powerful enough) and her husband offered to come cut them down for us. He cut down trees in college and loves using his chainsaw so it was perfect! With his help, it only took about 10 minutes to get both trees down and cut into reasonable lengths so we could stack it all up. So nice to have great neighbors

All the guys thought it was really fun to pull on the rope and help topple the tree :) Along with the trees, we also raked all the leaves/sticks out of the swingset area in the back yard, dug up the grass by the mailbox so we can put down rocks instead, and mulched all the gardens in front. It was so fun to work together and get our yard in order. Then we went out to lunch and to the park, where we played and enjoyed the sunshine for 2 hours!

Now I need help. This is what our garage looks like all the time now. We have two bikes and two scooters that can't stand upright, so they all just end up in a big pile. What to do, what to do? I don't want to hang them on hooks on the wall because I want the kids to be able to get what they want without my help. Any suggestions?

Easy garage mud room

Do you have little things in your house that just make you smile every single time you see them?

I have a few. The first is my gray and white striped hallway. I can see it from my bed and I love waking up and seeing it every morning! It's been quite a while since I did it, but it still makes me so happy.

With kids going to and from school in my near future, I have been wanting a mud room in the worst way. In Utah, kids walk to elementary school in all kinds of weather--rain, snow, slush, mud. I don't want all that coming in my house!

We don't have a back entryway in our house--the garage opens right into our nice family room--so I decided to create a little mud room in the garage itself.

I started by turning a tall, narrow shelving unit on it's side to create a bench with cubbies. Half of the cubbies are for storing our outdoor toys. I hung a wire shelving unit on the wall for even more storage. The other three cubbies are for my girls to keep their shoes and hats, mittens, scarves, blah blah blah, in. The yellow fabric bins are from Wal-Mart.

Now, I could have just thrown some hooks up on the wall behind the bench, but you know me. I always go overboard. Plus the wall was dented, scratched, covered in holes, and just in all-around bad shape. I still had a couple feet of fence left from when my neighbor's fence blew over last December, so I decided to use that instead. I propped it up behind the bench and then the girls and I went knob shopping at Hobby Lobby.

We bought six knobs to use as hooks. My personal favorite is the light blue one at the far left, although I really love the one right next to it, too. 
So to recap, when the girls come home from school all winter, they can sit on their bench and put their snow boots and snow clothes in their yellow bins and hang their coats and umbrellas on the hooks. And my house can stay clean.

Now going back to things in your house that make you smile every time you see them. While I was rearranging the garage, I found a can of light blue paint that I used when I painted my kids' little playroom--I thought it would be perfect for the garage door. I know it's something that no one will ever really see but me, but it was worth it. I love it so much!