A new, (hopefully) organized year

Let's see, last time we spoke, I was drooling over the Mexican food we were finally going to be allowed to eat after the weight loss challenge.  Ohhhh, it was GOOD!!!  We had Mexican food, Indian food, more Mexican food, not to mention the gluttonous Christmas and New Year's dinner and drinks.  It was like heaven.  But now, it's back to reality!  I've tracked my food for the day in my Livestrong MyPlate account and I'm back on the wagon.  I, of course, didn't keep the full 10 pounds off over the holidays, so I've got more work to do.  My goal now is to lose 15 pounds before the month of April.  Five pounds per month should be easy after losing 10 pounds in 3.5 weeks, right?  We shall see.

In other news, after my 11 glorious days off from work, we have a semi-organized house!  I'm kicking myself that I didn't take any "before" pictures just to show what a true PIT it was, but I'll take some "after" pics tonight.  It will at least Wow my parents and my brother - they know what it looked like before.  Yikes!

We managed to reclaim our bookshelves in our living room and bought some storage ottomans from Target in which to keep the kids' toys and things and act as a coffee table for the living room.  We also moved all the writing and drawing stuff over to a bookshelf that now sits beside a newly-fixed kid's table (it had been broken for something like three years after being used as a launching pad for some sort of Gymnastic/Tae Kwon Do aerial display) and created a drawing/project area for the kids.  Last night before heading to bed, we wandered around our living room and soaked in the peace that came from the cleanness.  It was amazing.

The organizer comes again on Friday this week.  She's going to be surprised, although I'm not sure she'll really be all that happy.  She had told us not to run out and buy the first thing we found to store our crap - and really, we didn't - so I'm curious to see how she'll react to our super-organizing effort over the holiday break.  I think we did a good job and since I'm the one who has to live there, that's really what matters.  :)

The next major project I think we'll attempt is re-doing our closet with an Elfa closet system.  We've decided we're sick of having dressers in our bedroom (I don't even use mine) and what we really need is a bookshelf and a desk-type thing for the husband to use in the middle of the night when he has to get up and take phone calls from the drilling rig.  I didn't necessarily want a desk in our room, however, so we ended up investing in one of these West Elm Console Desks over the weekend, too.  The hope is that with another one of those storage ottomans under the center part, it won't look toooo much like a desk.  We can't put it together yet, however, because my dresser is in the way...

Oh!  I almost forgot about Fatty's weight loss contest prize - the husband won one of the prizes.  We don't know which one yet, but something is supposed to show up in the mail in the next couple of weeks.  I'm excited to see what it turns out to be!