Five on Friday - Favorites

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Well, I would say that we completely rocked going back to school this week!  We’re all back on our early bedtime, early rising schedules, and after five days of waking up at 6 AM, I’m officially ready to sleep in a little tomorrow.  :o)  I’m also ready for a three day weekend!  How lucky are these kids to go back to school for a week and they already have another short week around the corner?! 

We don’t have any major plans for the weekend, but Olivia has requested to go “ow-town” (downtown), so I’m thinking we may head that way this evening for some good food, a little downtown stroll, and maybe even some ice cream. ;o)

Here are some favorites for you on this Friday!

O N E – Simplify 2018

One of my main missions for 2018 is to simplify everything in our lives – our home, our cars, our schedules, everything.  Since the kids went back to school I hit the ground running Monday morning and I haven’t stopped since.  I figured since my office is the most cluttered (can you say keepsakes?!) that I would start there first, and y’all, it is proving to be a huge undertaking.  I have more stuff packed into this little 10x10 room than in all the other rooms combined, it seems. 

This week I’ve been cleaning off and reorganizing my bookshelves.  So far I’ve cleaned out all of my old photo albums and I’m tossing nearly 6,000 old pictures and 20 albums.  I also cleaned out my two CD storage boxes of all of my old backup CDs.  I used to back up all of my old pictures and videos on CDs, but now that the external hard drive and Amazon Drive has been invented, I no longer need those.   

So far I’ve freed up four shelves and I plan to make more room for books as well as shift some of my decorative items around to make the shelves look less cluttered. 

Next week I’m going to start cleaning out my old music CDs… I still have somewhere around 450 old CDs and I’m going to rip my favorites and get rid of most of the rest.  It will be a big job, but it will feel so good to rid myself of all of the clutter!  Those are currently taking up six shelves on my bookcases, so cleaning those out will free up tons of space!

I will also be tackling my old scrapbooks and combining all of the pages into just one or two albums instead of the 4-5 that I have.  Did anybody else used to scrapbook?  I loved it so much, but it was just too time consuming!  Speaking of which, does anybody still scrapbook??  I have a bunch of old scrapbooking supplies that I’m going to try to sell so let me know if you’re interested!

Anyhoo, I could go on and on about my efforts to purge, but I’ll stop here for now.  If you want to follow along, I have been posting about my decluttering journey in real-time on Instagram Stories!  You can follow along here.

T W O – This Photo Storage Box

As I just said, I have been documenting some of my decluttering journey on Instagram Stories, and the other day when I posted about my photo storage box, my direct messages started overflowing with questions about where to get one. 

This is the exact box that I have, and y’all, I LOVE IT.  I have had mine since 2012 and I still love it just as much today as I did six years ago when I bought it.  My plan right now is to trash all of the old printed photos that have digital copies except for my very favorites, and I am going to store my favorites in this box separated by year with little index cards.  The box holds over 2,000 4x6 photos on one side, and when you flip it over, the other side holds enlargements so I should be able to fit every physical photograph that I have in this one little box. 

Also, since I’ve been receiving loads of questions about how I store and organize photos, I plan to do an in-depth post about my method in the next week or so, so stay tuned if you’re interested!

T H R E E – Georgia Lost, but…

I don’t know if you watched the National Championship game Monday night, but man oh man was it a nail-biter.  We were ahead the entire game until Alabama decided to tie it up just near the end.  We ended up going into double overtime only to lose when Alabama’s second-string QB threw an amazing pass resulting in a touchdown for them to win the game.  It was completely heartbreaking, BUT, it is one of my favorites for this week for many reasons.  A) I’m SO proud of our boys for making it this far.  We haven’t played for a National Championship in my entire lifetime (literally) so it was long overdue.  B) Our boys played their hearts out and hung in there with arguably the best team in the country for the last decade.  C) We still have the SEC Championship for this year even though we lost the Natty.  D) Our QB is just a freshman this year, and he is a BEAST, y’all.  His passing game is always on point, he’s not afraid to run the ball and get a first down himself, and y’all, he was TACKLING DUDES in this past game. 

Even though we lost, I don’t think I have ever been so proud to be a Georgia Bulldog.  I think amazing things are to come for our team… dare I say this might be the start of a new era?

F O U R – JT New Tour

In addition to my man dropping a new song and album this past week, he also announced a new tour for this summer!!  Have you guys ever seen Justin Timberlake in concert?  I’ve seen him twice and, y’all, he is phenomenal!  He is coming to Atlanta in May and you can bet I’ll be there!  Brian even convinced me to join his fan club so I can get tickets in the presale.  I cannot freaking WAIT, you guys. 

2017 was such a great year for live music for us, and it’s looking like 2018 is going to be pretty great as well.  We already have tickets to see Ed Sheeran again this year, we will be going to see Dave Matthews Band (like always), and I’m still working on getting Taylor Swift tickets, so if we can add JT to our list, I will be one happy camper.

Live music just feeds my soul and I’m really excited to see a lot of it once again this year!

F I V E – New Link-Ups

Fellow bloggers, I have announced two link-ups in the last two weeks, and I have one more to announce today!  For those of you who remember our Girl Chat link-up last year, we are going to be extending it in 2018!  This year they will fall on the THIRD Thursday of each month (instead of the second like last year), and we have a whole new list of fun topics to write about!  The first one will be next Thursday and we hope you’ll join us!  You can see the entire list of prompts for the year below.

Also, here is a reminder of my other two new link-ups for the year.  Be sure to add them to your schedule!

Hello Monday every Monday!

And Welcome Wednesday every Wednesday!

Happy Friday, all!  I hope you all have wonderful long weekends!

*Linking up with A Liz Adventures and Carolina Charm for Five on Friday, A Little Bit of Everything for Friday Favorites,  September Farm and The Farmer's Wife for Oh Hey, Friday, Meet @ the Barre for Friday Favorites, and Cup of Tea for High Five for Friday.