Apartment Therapy Cure Week 2

This week I bought some fresh flowers, I was supposed to do it last week as well but procrastinated over cost etc.  Anyway I got a cheap bunch of white freesias and split them into 2 vases - one on the fireplace shown above and the other on my bedside table. 

So for this week the Apartment Therapy programme wants you to focus on the kitchen.  One of my big issues in the kitchen is the constant battle with paperwork.

We have (or should I say had!) the above filing tray that permanently looked overloaded like this.  I could never find stuff, and important stuff would be lost in amongst junk mail as the temptation was to dump 'everything' in the tray. 

So my solution to this endless pile was to chuck/shred/file my way through it and then make a memo board for the important stuff remaining.  I had this idea to get some cork tiles and glue them to the inside of the cupboards - I got this idea from another blog some months ago and hands up I can't remember where.  Anyhow......the long and short of it is I visited 3 DIY stores that informed me nobody wants cork tiles anymore and you can't get them.  They kind of looked at me funny implying that I was behind with the times.

So I ended up with 2 cork memoboards which the Queen of Clean attached to the inside of our cupboard with a screw.

I threw the rickety filing tray away (not very eco friendly sorry) so I wouldn't be tempted to fill it up with random stuff again.

Here's the other memo board full with it's useful paperwork..............the school dates are my real issue so I made sure I included these somewhere I can easily see them.  I'm the Mum who always forgets the cake sale/non-uniform day/harvest festival.

And then I gave the cupboards a really good clean out and organising.....ahh just look at that, nothing falls out at me when I open it now.

Also on the apartment therapy front this weekend we have:-

• bought a mat for the kitchen that the kittens can be fed on to contain the mess a bit more
  
• put *loads* of shelves up in the garage on some industrial racking that the Queen of Clean got free from work - this is still work in progress but will post some pictures once finished.
• bought some more skirting board to finish off our flooring project that has been ongoing for months
• I also visited some home shops to try and get inspiration for our playroom..........but made the crucial mistake of taking a 6 and a 3 year old with me.  It was a damage limitation exercise and I ended up very uninspired.  

And just on a final note here is this weekend's crafting activity.  Very economic involving the drawing pins from the new memo boards.  Simply take assorted fruit and veg, white and red drawing pins and a black marker pen.

And hey presto.........

What can I say?  This activity was a result of wet weather and kids bored with their Mum cleaning out kitchen cupboards.  The lemon and mushroom did also get transformed but were quickly removed upstairs to my youngest's bedroom as ornaments.

Thanks for staying with what has become an extraordinarly long post.