From bed to couch

I have six year old twins and they have always slept together in the same room but when they were 5 we decided it was time to split them up. They each got a room for all their toys and their bed was pulled out to be a "big" bed.  The boy stayed in their old room. He got some new curtains and some more storage. Our daughter moved in the next room - purple walls, new closet and tons of storage.

The first month went so well. Our daughter loved her new room all girly with all her things in their proper place. But then she began to wake up each night and sleep in our room. In the beginning she was in our bed. After a short while she moved on a mattress next to me.

Then one weekend the kids decided to have a sleepover with each other. Our son slept on a mattress on the floor next to our daughter and for the first time in months she didn't wake up. Thinking it might be just a one night thing we tried again and again. She missed her brother! So he moved in again - this time in her room - we bought one new bed and fitted it to hers so they now have bunk beds. But that left his old bed with his old mattress in kiddy size. At some point I had invested in a bunch of pillows for a couch, they at that point served a new purpose; play pillows. But they always ended up on the floor never to picked up.

I bought some heavy blue fabric and sat down at the sewing machine and converted the old bed into a nice reading couch instead:

I simply measured the mattress and made a cover for it. For the pillows I measured what size I wanted the covers and made them quite smaller than the actual pillow - that way the cushion became quite firm and feels more like a couch cushion. I closed the pillows with Velcro. It took me five hours but I am quite pleased with the result.

He uses it when he wants some quiet time or just to relax in his room. But I think he will use it even more when he gets older. It is also a great place to store the old mattress that we use when the kids have sleepovers. 

Gift wrapping station

I actually had an OK system for storing wrapping paper and ribbons but somehow it always tangled or ended up on the floor and there was no room for boxes and bags. A few years back I came up with the idea to have a rod for the ribbons and it worked very well until I moved all the wrapping stuff into the office instead. Instead of horizontal it was now vertical - made a mess:

While cleaning my son's room I found an old thing he used to store books in and it was perfect for what I wanted to do and more important - it fit PERFECTLY in the little space behind the door.

I mounted a magnetic knife holder from IKEA for scissors and small containers also from IKEA. 

The wrapping paper was sorted and actually stayed as it was - I used another thing from IKEA which originally is for storing plastic bags. 

For the ribbons I had a small challenge - I wanted to be able to remove the ribbons easily for replacement or for big wrapping projects where I don't want to run back and forth for ribbons (like wrapping 72 small presents for the advent calender at Christmas). But I found two small hooks and I cut the rod I used earlier to size:

Since I didn't want to fix the hole from the previous ribbon holder I found a bathroom hook that was left over  for silk ribbons or bags etc.

On the shelf all the tape is and the extra ribbons. The black and white containers - also from IKEA - fit perfectly on the bars across and they contain extra tape, small to and from cards and other misc. stuff. 

I love the finished result and as our exchange student said: I envy the next person who comes and live here who get to use it (I guess with Christmas over she doesn't expect to do much wrapping :) ).

Organizing the shelves in the corner cabinet

The pins I look at the most right now are pins about organizing - could be that I am dreaming but is does feel great when every thing is all neat and in it's place.

My first project was to organize my corner cabinet in the kitchen. The whole shelf can come out but it rarely does so stuff tend to pile up in the part closest to the door.

The top shelf was supposed have onionchopper, strains, measuring items, shredders etc. and the bottom shelf is my tupperware shelf. Notice all the space in the back??

First I emtied all each shelf and purged ... found several items that do not belong to us and a few things for the garbage - the kitchen is only a few years old so I already purged a few years ago.

I bought two things for this project: Curtain wire and four Samla containers from IKEA.

I needed some dividers to seperate the items on the shelf - hence the curtain wire:

 

I cut them to size and screwed the little hooks in - I used a pliers to open the hooks to fit.

Then I sorted: The items we use the most in the front and other items in the back.The Samla boxes I used for  the smaller items.

The shelves ended up looking like this:

The last thing I need to do was to figure out how to store my Tupperware bakesheet - it always fell of the shelf or was in the way. I ended up making two small loops of the curtain wire and attaching them to the holes in the cabinet that was already there. From the bits and screws that was leftover from the kitchen remodeling I found these two little things:

Then I added the loops:

Love it!