I've been making progress in what's quickly becoming one of my favorite spaces in our house, the mud room. It's not perfect yet, I'm still deciding on a fun color to paint the back door, and I've ordered a vinyl quote for above my bulletin boards, but it's coming together and i'm ready to share a few pictures.
A bit of orginization has appeared on the wall, So far it's functioning nicely.

The bulletin board on the right is for art & school work, the one on the left is for planing. It's my calendars for now but will soon have my meal plans etc. A colorful vinyl quote will go above and read, "By Small and Simple things are great things brought to pass." I'm keeping my fingers crossed it will look good:)
I thought long and hard about how to get papers off the counters, make them easily accessible to who needs them and how to organize everything so it wasn't all shoved into a cute basket and forgotten about or lost. (the system at our previous house) The solution I came up with was hanging baskets and I LOVE IT. Each child had a basket where all their paper items belong. Weekly homework, take home reading books, scout schedules, handwriting notebook etc. plus their clipboards.

On friday I check their clipboards to see that they marked of their chores and checklists each day then clip their allowance right on their baskets. Keep in mind we're only on week three, but it's been great so far. I finally wised up and requested that Kevin bring home a large envelope of one dollar bills so that I could actually be consistent. (In the past I've been notorious for not having cash when it's time to pay allowance) All I can say is there have been no piles on the counter and the kids really love having a specific place to keep their school papers organized.
What is now our mud room used to be a bathroom and was configured very differently. It is actually the only place in the house we moved walls, I'm so glad we did.(Thanks mom:) It's now a long skinny room that connects the kitchen and family room with a door also leading to the backyard.

All the cabinets are a nice soft yellow, and the floor is a black and white tile. I'm now in the process of throwing in bright colors everywhere I can.

Painting this door is my weekend project..

This is the little desk that I love, but I'm stalking Peir 1 and TJ Max for a colorful chair cushion, then I'll love it even more.

This is the actual purpose for the room...washing clothes..but the little shelf is what I love the most. The laundry soap will eventually be stored between the washer and dryer and I'm picturing a fun collection of random colorful jars with a Happy print hanging on the the wall above. It's fun to imagine what I might find in the near or distant future that will be perfect to finish off this little spot.

Lastly the utility sink with the really cool faucet. Funny story, there was a mix up with faucets and needless to say we ended up with a very fancy faucet above a $30 utility sink. It's a little silly, but almost every room has a mix up and they're all starting to grow on me. The one thing I do love is the rod that hangs above the sink to hang dress shirts when they come out of the dryer. Seriously cutting down on the ironing around here.
So that's the mud room. We're expecting snow this week so we'll see how much actual mud I can handle in a room designed for just that:)
Happy Day.
Darci