My new website

Please visit my fabulous new website: www.birdsnestinteriors.com

Thanks for your interest!

That's all for now!

Thank you so much for following along on my blog! I've really enjoyed posting new updates and giving friends a place to find recipes I've tested, organizing tips I live by and general ideas about making a house a home. I think I'm going to focus on other things now, but will keep this site up for people to go back and review. Thanks again for the support!

Taking a Little Break

Hi Friends! I wanted to let you know I've decided to take a little break from blogging. I'm getting the kids geared up for school and am searching for a job. I figure it's a nice time to take a week or two off and recollect. Thank you for supporting me and I'll see you soon!

The Second Home/ The Weekend Home

A couple of years ago, one of my dear friends gave me a specialty magazine called "Weekend Homes" that has turned into my favorite publication. It's filled with over-the-top beach houses (mostly at the Cape and the Islands). It's the sort of magazine that I pick up and flip through to wake up my *muse*. As I'm looking through it, I daydream and ask myself, "how can our house have this sort of feel? (note, my house is a lovely small cape, no massive 6,000 square foot Martha's Vineyard mansion, no worries!) One day I was in the car talking to my husband and I went off on a very long tangent about wanting our house to have a "second house" feel. Let me explain what I mean by this.

When I think "second house" I think a house that has the following characteristics: uncluttered, comfortable, a place for reading, piles of magazines, puzzles, easy meals, nothing in it you don't like, a radio playing (rather than flat screen tvs), a small manageable garden, the home you go to get away-from-it-all.....I could go on and on. You know the feeling - you go on vacation and you sit in the beach house thinking "ahhhhh". THIS is what I'm going for in my own home. THIS is why I love paring things down, keeping everything in the house simple and streamlined. Not because I'm some drill seargent organizer who must have everything in it's perfect place (whatever that is?), but wanting to have our house feel like we're on vacation, while in it.

Does that make sense to anyone? My husband thinks I should write a book called "first house as second house", or something along those lines.

Where oh where do YOU live?

Good morning, dear readers. I was just sitting here thinking "I wonder who reads this blog, anyway??" and thought it would be fun to ask you to leave a comment letting me know where you live. Just click on "comment" and leave your first name and your town. I've heard rumors of people as far as Germany and as close as Boston. Some of you are Penn State alumn, right? Go ahead, reveal yourself!

Ziplock BIG BAGS!

I love using Ziplock big bags to store seasonal things around the house: beach toys, winter bedding, guest room pillows...endless uses. Have you seen them? Used them? Let us know how you use yours! What's particularly great is how inexpensive they are. You can find them at Target or most grocery stores.

If you go to their website, http://www.ziploc.com/, you can sign up to receive a coupon to buy one, get one free. That way, you can try one of their 3 large sizes.

Happy storage! Go clean out those closets!

THOUGHTS OF THE DAY

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry." E. B. White

"Teach us delight in simple things..." R. Kipling

This is what this blog is ALL about!!

Time to Try on Fall Clothes

Yesterday I did one of my favorite things: pulling out the bins of fall/winter clothes and trying things on again. It's a really good idea to do this seasonally because 1. things sometimes have lost their appeal since last season (purge!!) and 2. it lets you know what the gaps are in your wardrobe. I pulled out my sweater bin and realized I didn't need 3 gray turtleneck wool sweaters, for instance. My kids thought it was hysterical that they were trying on foot pajamas and snow pants in August, but it's a great thing to do on a rainy summer afternoon. If you're really ambitious, you can buy up summer items for next season at a big discount this month. I was in Target yesterday and saw kids low-top Converse for $4.99. I bought 2 pair for my kids, in the next size up!

Attention Fellow Book Lovers!

I recently read about a cool website, www.whatshouldireadnext.com, which recommends books, based on what you just read.

"Enter a book you like and the site will analyse our database of real readers'
favorite books (over 47,000 and growing) to suggest what you could read next".

Isn't that a great idea? I tried it and am going to take their advice!

An amazing new snack food

Okay, so when we were on vacation I tried a snack food that drove me absolutely crazy. It's called Glad Corn: http://www.gladcorn.com. I usually only go for the sweets (not the crunchy/salty thing) but this stuff is simply incredible. You know when you eat popcorn and get to eat the best half-popped stuff at the bottom? This is exactly what this tastes like. I tried the original flavor and the jalapeno and liked them both. The problem is finding it. If you're lucky enough to live near Whole Foods, that's where I found it on vacation. Has anyone tried it??

Happy Sister's Day!

About 2 years ago, we started a little tradition in our family that every August 1st would be a new holiday called "Sister's Day" and September 1st would be "Brother's Day". It works well in our family since we have one boy and one girl. Usually what we do is give a tiny gift (I gave my daughter a small jewelry box) at breakfast and then we do a really fun family activity including taking the special kid out to lunch. This year we're going to Horseneck Beach and having lunch at a funky little restaurant overlooking the bay. It's a great excuse to celebrate each child with something other than a birthday.

I thought of Sister's and Brother's Day and timed them as I did because there were no real holidays in Aug. or Sept. that involved celebration...and we love celebrations in this house!

Organizing on my vacation

My mother was so excited to have me at their house for a week because she knew I'd be dying to help out around the house! I must say, if all the houses I worked on in MA were already as organized as my mom's, I'd have nothing to do! But there were a couple of small areas that we worked on.

The first was her kitchen cabinets. It's just her and my dad living there now, so when I asked her about sets of dishes she had upstairs in the kitchen and got answers like "oh those...I use them once a year when I have book club at my house", we moved those things out of the MAIN zone and into the STORAGE zone (i.e. shelves in the basement!) Then we thinned out the existing dishes, glasses, etc. This is one of the things I picked up at Target to give her more space in her primary dish cabinet:


It's what most of us probably need, right? For just $5 (or so) you can easily create more space. My mom had cereal bowls stacked on top of small salad plates and was having to move them each time we wanted to unload the dishwasher. No longer!

Her favorite thing we did was thin out the pantry a little (my relocating hardly-ever-used kitchen appliances to the basement) and then stacking up the canned goods on risers like these:

Fabulous, right? And just $8 at Target. We were able to get 3 and outfit the whole pantry!

Home Sweet Home!

It feels so good to be home after 16 days on the road, 5 states visited (!!) and seeing lots of loved ones. This was, by far, our best family vacation to date. And in this culture of flying, it feels good to have a good "old fashioned" road trip filled with fun surprises along the way. My kids were amazing.

After about a week of being away from New England I start to get a little home sick for 1. donut shops 2. water 3. Red Sox 4. our wonderful accent. It seemed fitting when we passed an IKEA in CT with a massive (wicked massive!!) billboard reading "HOME IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PLACE IN THE WORLD". I couldn't agree more!

So I got to check out some fun stores while we were away and picked up a reuseable shopping bag I'm crazy about, www.envirosax.com. It's one of those that rolls into a little ball (about the size of a wallet) and opens into a full sized shopping bag. It's perfect if you're going into the city for the day and want to consolidate bags, or if you're simply running into the pharmacy and don't want to waste a bag. I got a really cute green one and plan to use it every day! Remember, it's the small changes that tend to get us into new fabulous habits!

It's your turn!

I'm going to be out of town with sporatic access to my site, so I thought it would be a great opportunity to ask you wise readers to take over! Email me YOUR favorite organizing trick and I'll post it on the site. What cool ideas do you have? It doesn't have to be anything fancy, because the folks who read this blog read it because it's NOT fancy advice! partridgeathome@yahoo.com.

Chore Cards, too cute!

I just received some "chore cards" I ordered for my kids from another mom on Etsy, which is that terrific website I recommended (home made things). They were a fantastic deal and are just too cute. I hung hooks on the fridge and the kids are totally on board with doing this. Example cards are "brush teeth", "homework", "reading", "clean your room". They were just $5 per pack (one for my daughter, one for my son). If you go to Etsy and type in "chore cards", she's the one called "Soap Star Mom".

Ask the Organizer/Decorator Time!

Okay faithful readers, it's your turn! I'm ready for some more questions...
What's bugging you around your house? Do you have a room/part of a room that you're not using because it's not functional? Not beautiful? What's happening in your house? Your apartment? Your office? Your car? Your kitchen cabinets? Let's get talking!

I'm going to Boston for an overnight, and when I return I'd love some good questions to go through. If you want it private, email me at partridgeathome@yahoo.com. Or, just simply leave your question in the comment section.

Take care!

What I found in my grandmother's closet

We just returned from a 3 day visit to my grandmother's house in Maine. There really is nothing like the 4th of July parade in a small New England town!

One of the perks of my visit is that I help my grandmother organize her really large really OLD (and not necessarily in the good way...) house. It's a multi-family with an apartment in the middle where we sleep (but otherwise serves as a storage area for old things from the family). For years I'd had my eye on emptying out the old walk-in closet. This closet is really narrow and very long. Probably about 12 feet long. So I grabbed a box of 20 lawn and leaf bags and went to it!

Almost everything I found was dusty and 100% polyester (those were the times!), so I tossed 8 bags of clothing to the local clothing collection place. I imagine some college-aged kid loving the stuff around Halloween :)

The most "classic" thing I found? On many levels? A 16 Magazine from July of 1971 featuring none other than THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY. I almost screamed. My last name? Partridge!!

C2 LOVO Paint

Are you familiar with C2 paint? It's called "one of the most innovative, high quality paints in the marketplace". I haven't used it, but I've been in houses that have and the colors are simply stunning.

This year (on Earth Day!) they launched a new line of paint called "LOVO" which is "non-toxic, Low-VOC (volatile organic compound) and available in 496 handcrafted, luxurious colors". They offer "smarter sampling" too, with 16 ounce LoVo samplers you can try before you commit.

You can check it out at www.c2color.com

And to you faithful readers, I'll be off line for a few days. We're heading up to Maine for the holiday. Happy 4th to you all!

Organizing the Fridge/Freezer

I've told you how much I love Organize Magazine, right? The most recent issue has a short but very informative article about keeping the fridge/freezer organized. I struggle with this a little with my freezer because we don't use a lot of frozen food (we're vegetarian, so it's mostly just veggie burgers, frozen fruit and ice cream!), so I forget what I have. In addition, we are lucky enough to have a nice new freezer, but a downside is that the drawer on the bottom is so large that you lose track of what's in the big drawer.

Organize Magazine had a great and cost effective idea for large areas like this - use a metal (or plastic) shower caddy (that is essentially a small basket). I'm going to do this, after measuring the drawer to see how many I can fit side by side (NOT stacked on top of each other, which defeats the point!). I'm thinking one for frozen berries, one for vegetables and one for random stuff (i.e. panko breadcrumbs...where do those go!)

Just when I thought I've read it all, something like this comes along and I think "ah ha!!"

Doing with less

One of the things I strive towards is living a life with less. Less clutter, less complication, less waste and more calm. It's something that matters to me more as I get older and especially as my children grow and have more things.

Something I'm working on now is truly having nothing in my home that I don't believe to be beautiful or believe to be useful (my favorite quote from W. Morris). Now for someone like me, who is constantly organizing (I would only admit that to you!!), I take this very literally and seriously. Why? Because I'm really prioritizing this! I want to have the calmest environment I can reasonably have (while still having a husband and 2 children to share a house with!!) A calm home nurtures my mood, my mind and my soul.

My project today is the basement. I'm going to pull out some old decorations and things and ask the tough questions, "does this define who I am? who I'm hoping to be? is it still functional?" and then I'll pass some things on (neighbors, Salvation Army, friends) I'm not taking on my whole house, just a room. Just today.

Where can YOU start? Maybe really small like your sock drawer or the area under your bathroom sink? Let me know what your struggles are and I'll gladly pass on some tips!