And my ideas lived happily ever after...

Lord willing, my husband and I will be closing on our newly built home on Feb 23rd. Yippy! It's difficult to contain the excitement.  My daydreams and nightdreams are overflowing with ideas.  Where should we positon the couch?  Here....or here?  What style of bookshelf would look best in this room?  That gorgeous color I saw on Design To Sell would be perfect in the guest bath!!!  Ahhh....too much design brainstorming.  Got to take it one inspiration at a time.

Luckily, I have my fantastical, faithful friend who keep me sane when there is a decor overload. 

#1 by my side: The Ultimate Home Journal and Organizer

This book alone has the power to keep my budget-blowing, overly-eclectic mumbo-jumbo of ideas at bay.  Best design investment of my life.  

There is a worksheet for every room in the house including "other" worksheets. Each worksheet has a detailed chart for the project and a budget and comment page.  There is also a section for pictures. I inserted my own photo pages to hold any pictures or magazine cutouts I found inspirational for that room. I also inserted page protectors for any documentation or receipts.

A pad of graph paper for room dimension and furniture placement.

Small furniture punchouts with dimensions to place on your graph paper. Does it get better than this?!

Project calendar

Catagorical Folders

All in all, a great organizationl tool for the haphazard thoughts that flood my brain from day to day.  I think it will only get worse once we move but then I can actually execute ideas.

Pandora Adore....because I don't own an ipod

Alright, laugh if you may, but I admit to the fact that not only do I not own an ipod, but I also don't own an MP3 player.  No portable music playing device whatsoever.  A couple years ago my husband bought me a Walkman MP3 player but I absent-mindedly left it on the airplane on our way to visit my family in WA.  GRRRRR!  Well, I honestly didn't use it all that much on a daily basis but it was nice to have when I didn't want to turn the radio on or blast our TV speakers so I could hear Music On Demand throughout our house. Having small pieces of plastic shoved into my ears just isn't comfortable to me.

The answer to this problem is my mini-obsession for Pandora Radio.  With the use of a laptop and wireless interent, I can have beautiful music playing in any room at any time of anyday.  As if that weren't reason enough to be in love, Pandora let's you choose a genre of music and creates a "station" playing only that style of music. If you don't like a particular song, click on the thumbs down and you'll never hear it again! I've discovered so many new titles and artist that I had never heard of before.  There is endless variety and it's free up to 40 hours of listening per month.  They play a 30 second commercial every 5 or 6 (can't remember exactly) songs, but it's so much better than regular radio. 

If you've never tried Pandora, DO!  If you love music, you'll be hooked. 

http://www.pandora.com/

SO many books, SO little time.....or just SO unorganized.

While searching through Barnes and Noble's gift/stationary/journal/etc,etc section for a 2010 Gallery Leather Desk Planner (which they DO NOT carry in February!!), I stumbled accross an interesting journal amid the innumerable, ridiculously stocked journal shelves. My mind goes bonkers when I have to choose ONE journal that I "?like?" when I'm looking at 200 different designs at once.  Okay, rabbit trail.  This journal, whose cover title has slipped my mind, was designed for you to be able to record all of the books that you want to read.  What a great idea!   I didn't buy the $10.75ish journal but it did start me thinking about a way to get organized with my reading .  How many times have I said to myself, "Someday, I've got to read that book!"
There aren't enough hours in the day to read everything on my wishlist, and my husband certainly wouldn't appreciate me spending all of my free time trying to knock out one book after another, but I could definitely use some organization.  I get sidetracked from books sometimes, jumping from one to another depending on what mood I'm in and as a result, books are forgotten until months...or years...later when I have a flashback and think, "Hey, didn't I start reading that one time? Did I finish it?"  Not good! 
Although it would be a bit more romantic, you don't need a fancy journal to catalog your readings.  Just a steno pad would do.  I would definitely like to start writing down books to read in the future.  Why haven't I thought of this before? 
I walked out of Barnes and Noble without a desk planner but certianly with a plan.

PS: As I was writing this, I became more and more curious about the actual title of this journal.  I found it on Amazon.  There are several other interesting looking journals that have the same concept.  I'm not huge into journals but this is just for making lists, right? Different.