INSPIRATION CAFE - WHAT INSPIRES US...

Welcome to Inspiration Cafe! 

The day is finally here!  Welcome to our Grand Opening!!! 

We've got loads of fun and creativity planned for the weeks ahead.
We would love for you to join us.

For this round of Inspiration Cafe each of our Contributors will be sharing What Inspires Us personally.  On the sixth Monday we will be launching our very first link party!!!   You must come join in!  The theme for the link party will also be 'WHAT INSPIRES US'.   So stop back each Monday to see what inspires each of us, and then on Monday, November 26th, come back and link up a project, a post, a tip...anything that shares Your Inspiration with all of us.  It can be anything that inspires you.  We will be featuring our favorite links from the party on our individual blogs, sharing teasers on facebook, and of course the overall winners will be featured on Inspiration Cafe!  Won't you share your inspiration with all of us?

And now onto what inspires ME!

Hi!  If we haven't already met...I'm Sherry.  :)  

I blog over at Pondered Primed Perfected.  I hope you'll come by and check out what we've been up to there.  I have been doing DIY projects with my husband for many, many years.  We are inspired to create something out of nothing, so to speak.  It really is rewarding for us to take something discarded, outdated, or unwanted and transform it into something new and useful.  We've rescued quite a few Roadkill Pieces over the years.  We've scoured thrift stores, made over Craigs List freebies, and even pulled things from trash piles.  Sometimes we just want to upgrade something we already have instead of throwing it away.  You should check out our Project Gallery to see some examples of our work!

BUT...

One of my biggest challenges is keeping my busy family organized.   And when everything is all chaotic and unorganized I have much less motivation to work on my projects.  So here's what I came up with recently:

A while back we went to a garage sale and I bought some stuff for my classroom.  As we were leaving the lady threw this corkboard in for free.  You should all know that I LOVE free stuff! 

It wasn't fancy, or fabric covered, or anything.  Just pure utilitarian corkboard, and that was okay.  The perfect spot for all of the school, sports, friend and family photos, as well as various schedules, appointments, and events.  Did I mention it was free!?

I'm not going to act all cool ~ like I'm ultra organized.  I'm not.  There have been times when I've struggled keeping up with a family calendar.  One that will keep us organized and where we need to be on time.  We lead very busy lives, like most families do ~ with work, school activities, playing sports, coaching, college courses, volunteering and keeping up with friends and family.  We like being busy, don't get me wrong, but it can be challenging keeping it all straight.  (It does help to be informed of events before it's time to leave...eh hem...not naming any names!).

Now...

I wanted to maximize this corkboard's usefulness.  It still needed to be utilitarian, but I was envisioning it being more ORGANIZED at keeping track of our appointments, events, important papers and notes, as well as keeping our favorite photos out for everybody to see!

Here's what I did ......(click here to read the entire post)