Kickstart to Clutter Free - Day 6

Moving right along here on Kathi's Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse...next up: Kitchen Drawers!

I have four main drawers in my kitchen, and yes, they needed a bit of decluttering. My daughter is a big help to me when I am going through this process. We tackled one drawer at a time and took everything out of each drawer. With everything out, it was easier to look at everything and decide what could stay and what needed to go.

I was able to let go of quite a few things I never use, or that I had duplicates of.

Once we finished, the drawers looked like this:

Overall, I ended up removing 41 items from my kitchen drawers, and I sold some of the items to help raise funds for my next Compassion trip!

I have to say, I am really happy with how well this Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse has been going. Are you ready to join in?

Bake for Brazil

I love to bake. In middle school, I took a whole year of home ec and learned to bake so many things. And I am thankful to have a kitchen, many tools, and access to lots of ingredients that allow me the pleasure of baking pretty much any time I want to.

My love of baking allowed me to use that talent as one way to raise funds for both of my Compassion sponsor tours. I would bake cupcakes, pies, cream puffs, and people would buy them to help me realize a dream of meeting our sponsored children.

In Brazil, there is a little boy who has a dream of being a pilot. His name is Jesus Gabriel. He lives with his single mother and seven siblings in one small brick home in a community where a large percentage of the population lives on less than $35 per month.

$35 per month.

We spend more than that when all four of us go out for dinner.

I want to help Jesus Gabriel and other children like him be able to realize their dreams.

And I am asking 20 of my friends to partner with me.

Do you like to bake?

Yes?

Here is how you can help...host a bake sale and donate the earnings to my Bake for Brazil fundraising campaign.

I have a goal, and it is a big one.

20 bake sales at $50 each equals $1000 

20 bake sales by March 20th

20 bake sales that will help more children be encouraged to dream

"Children are likely to live up to what you believe of them." - Lady Bird Johnson

Can I count on you to Bake for Brazil?

My Week of Photos

This past week, I didn't have a chance to pick up my DSLR as much as I would have hoped to, but I did manage to play around with three prompts from the Capture Your 365 daily prompts:

f/7.1, ISO 100, 1/400 sec

Day 13 - Mostly White: Yes, we live in California, where everyone thinks are days are filled with blue skies at all times. But we have been receiving such much needed rain this month. So we have seen our fair share of cloud filled skies. These cloud filled skies usually produce some pretty spectacular sunsets, but I just haven't made the time to venture out of my warm house to capture those sunsets...yet.

f/5.6, ISO 1600, 1/13 sec

Day 14 - Black And White: this little spot was just screaming to be a black and white photo! This clock and stack of books sit on a little table next to our couch. By focusing on the clock, the stack of books is slightly out of focus, which was precisely the look I was going for. I tried moving things around a bit, but this composition looked the best to me.

f/5.6, ISO 1600, 1/8 sec

Day 16 - Sepia: a big storm blew through here the other morning, so I lit a few candles to brighten up the room a little. I tried shooting this one vertical, but I liked the horizontal better. And because all the book covers are different colors, I like the way this looks in sepia.

So, what have you captured this week using your camera?

Linking up this week with Black & White Wednesdays

Kickstart to Clutter Free - Day 5

You may have noticed that I am taking my time on this Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse.  The duration of the course is 14 days, but there are no rules saying you have to complete the course in fourteen consecutive days. 

So, what are we tackling on Day 5? The kitchen cupboards...

At first glance, I was thinking (and you might be thinking), "Hmm, the cupboards aren't too bad." But once I started getting into the one set of cupboards next to my oven, I knew I was in trouble.

I pulled everything out, shelf by shelf, and was so surprised when I found items with dates like this:

Yes, you are seeing that correctly. An unopened box of graham crackers with a best used date of August 2014!!

One thing I am remembering during this course, I am not the only one who lives in this house. But I have to take some responsibility for the things that come into my house. I do 99% of the grocery shopping.  Which means I should be checking the refrigerator and cupboards before I go shopping. Yes, I did throw away opened boxes of things. You know the ones with just a few crumbs at the bottom that nobody ever finishes (still can't figure out why this happens!)

But with better planning on my part, I can avoid dumping this much stuff from my cupboard:

And needless to say, I was able to clear out more than 25 items from my cupboards. After doing a bit of moving some things around, the cupboard next to my oven now looks like this:

There is actually empty space now!

Since going through this one set of cupboards took a bit of time, I may tackle the baking and spice cupboards on another day. But next up will be the kitchen drawers...

Be sure to check into Kathi's Kickstart to Clutter Free eCourse if you are wanting to tackle your clutter for good!

My Week of Photos

One of my goals this year is to pick up my DSLR and use it every single day. To help me along the way, I will mainly be using the daily photo prompts from Capture Your 365. But every now and then, I might use another photo challenge list or get a little creative on my own.

This week, I pretty much stuck with the list from Capture Your 365 except for one (and I will let you know which one that was). So here is my week of photos to share with you:

f/1.8, 1/80 sec, ISO 400 with 50mm lens

Day 6 - Pushing Myself: I fell out of my routine of walking at least three times a week during the holidays, but our January winter weather is not cooperating. Well, to be honest, we really do need the rain here in California. So I guess I will just keep a better eye on the weather and schedule my walks on days when I know it shouldn't rain.

f/2.5, 1/60 sec, ISO 400 with 50mm lens

Day 7 - Good For Me: I have been using the MapMyWalk app for some time now to record my weekly walking activity. I love being able to see the progress I have made.

f/2.0, 1/160 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 8 - Where I Stand: On these cold winter afternoons, I like to treat myself to a hot homemade drink, with whipped cream of course. After all, those calories that I burn on my walks have to be made up somewhere.

f/2.5, 1/125 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 9 - A Relationship: I am getting ready to work on two big quilting projects, so I needed to do some calculations and some test blocks. A quilting ruler and a rotary cutter are the perfect match for a quilting project.

f/2.0, 1/80 sec, ISO 800 with 50mm lens

Day 10 - Monochrome: a monochrome photo is one that can either be black and white or one in varying tones of one color. Since we had homemade waffles for breakfast on Sunday morning, I thought they would be the perfect subject for this prompt.

f/2.5, 1/1600 sec, ISO 100 with 50mm lens

Day 11 - Complimentary: since it wasn't raining on this day, I found a couple of complimentary colors in my home and took them in the backyard to use the natural daylight. Looks like I didn't quite focus on my subject very well. That is why we practice, right?

f/5.6, 1/50 sec, ISO 100 with a x2 macro lens

Day 12: the prompt for today was draw. Since I couldn't think of anything to capture using this prompt, I decided to try out one of my new macro lenses. These lenses screw into my existing 18-55mm lens. I am looking forward to experimenting with these more this year.

So that is my first full week of photos using the Capture Your 365 photo prompts!

Are you participating in the photo challenge? Be sure to share a link to where you are posting your photos. I would love to see how you capture these same daily prompts!