Around the home: Cleaning up the dining room

Until recently, the dining room has been a storage room for things that didn't have a place yet. Or for coats, scarves and other things that really shouldn't be just thrown down. It looked a little something like this:

But no more! I've spent a bit of time every day working to remove the clutter so that one day, we may actually be able to use our dining room table. A shocking concept, I know. I've just recently alighted up an idea for what to with the unused portion. See it's sort of empty and calling for something to live there. Something that is piles of clutter, but more organized. A cube storage system, perhaps?
Yeah. That was my thought, too. Especially after a visit to a friend's house showed how nice they can be, displaying books, photos or hiding other things in those neat canvas cubes. Like this one:

And above the lovely unit, I'd like to frame and hang my Hokusai prints that I've rescued from a wall calendar (Calendars are the easiest and cheapest way to get art. Add a frame and they look like you spent a bunch of money on them). I have four favorites that are about 11x14. I'd love the hang them above the unit in a neat row like so:

With these frames, from Bed, Bath and Beyond, perhaps.

Around the house: Kitchen organization

So we've been in our house since October and I've only recently gotten motivation to really make it ours. Our plan is to keep renting this house for as long as we can. Luckily, our landlord is also all about keeping the same renters as long as possible. So this gives me the ability to really make this place our home, especially after moving twice in the last year.
Unfortunately, getting the house the way I want it will take a lot of time. I made a huge list of tasks. Seriously, it's several pages long and a bit overwhelming. But Travis, in all his wisdom, just said to take it one step at a time.
First step? Fix this mess:

The top of the microwave has essentially been another area to throw stuff that we don't have a place for, namely our pizza stones (one for pizza and bread and one for cookies), cutting boards and some silpats. But it's also continually annoyed me.
So I purchased a $5 black letter organizer from Target and filled it with all the extraneous things.


I want to get a canister for the coffee filters, but for 5 bucks and a couple minutes, I am quite happy that this little eye-sore has been repaired.