Classin' up la casa de los Cleinmarks!

 Dan and I have lived in this house for a little over two years.  When we moved in, I had these wonderful visions / ideas.  I thought for sure that our house would look like it was out of a magazine.  I don't know what I was thinking.  We are messy.  We have WAY too much junk.  We have animals.  We have very little time to keep it in tip-top shape.  I feel like our living room / kitchen / dining room area always has stuff in it that just doesn't belong, and I hate that!  So recently, I have been working on keeping it clean - and making Dan do the same!  Oh, that screwdriver you had to use?  Well, I threw it into the garage, not sure where it landed.  Why, you ask?  BECAUSE IT DOESN'T BELONG ON MY KITCHEN ISLAND!  It is a work in progress.  So - along with trying to find a home for our abundance of stuff, I have been doing small things to try and make the house look more like the perfect home that I envision ;)

trying to add more cute decor!
this is technically for fall / halloween, but I was too excited to not put it up
I will be buying another vase to keep out the rest of the year :)

This used to be a stack of adds/phonebooks/junk - Dan's fire-starting pile
It took some convincing while in Michaels, but he finally agreed that putting the
papers in this storage bin would look 100xs better.

For 2 years, I dealt with this UGLY old alarm system panel on this "wall" -
It took Dan 5 minutes to get it off the wall - uh...men!
But then I could hang up a picture!  Looks SO much better!

We got these shelves for Christmas, and they have just been sitting in their box
....in my living room...
But we finally got them hung up!  Now I need some cute decor pieces to cover them with :)

Dan had these shelves lined with liquor bottles
....like we lived in a freaking frat house.
I replaced them with our "guestbook" wine bottles from the wedding!
Upgrade 

dish soap in an olive oil dispenser - via pinterest
it's a small thing, but it does look a lot better sitting on the counter!

Nothing too fancy.  I still have a lot that I want to do, but slowly I am falling in love with our home again :)