Contain Yourself.

The Container store, while making me feel simultaneously inefficent, overwhelmed and more un-organized than I thought prior to entrance, is still one of my favorite places on the planet. Despite its condescending undertones, it still offers the promise of a better me and I leave filled with hope that one day, when I have money for things like 30 plastic shoe boxes, all of my shoes will be neatly stacked in identical boxes with little polaroids and there will no longer be 2 year-old boxes of Wheat Thins hiding in the depths of my impractically deep pantry cabinets.

While in the midst of one of my sporadic, frenzied nesting bouts, I made a trip there a few weeks back and left with a few items that I've been quite pleased with.

First up is the Horizon Round Pop-Up Crunch bag by Umbra. This thing holds about 800 stuffed animals and despite being totally collapsible, holds-up really well and has thus far been relatively resistant to toy-scavenging wiener dogs attempting to knock it over. I bought it in blue for Max and Hud's new shared room, and at $19, it was a steal compared to similarly sized canvas containers you would buy at PBKids. And because more stuffed animals seem to appear out of the abyss everyday, we will likely be adding one of the Rectangular Crunch Cans in green to our collection.

My second purchase was this little round, lacquered orange canister that I bought to hold small odds and ends, like diaper cream, on New Guy's changing table:

I loooove California Baby products, by the way.

They have these cute lacquer canisters in a variety of shapes, sizes and colors, and they would be so great scattered around to spice up a shelving display, no?:

Round and Rectangular Lacquered boxes

Now on to a few items I left without, but that may yet fall prey to my Visa.... I think I need about ten of these Rugby Striped  bins to stash behind my couch in the family room. They will hold things like Batman action figures, foam Nerf pellets, marbles, little green army guys and other items that the baby will soon be putting in his mouth and/or up his nose:

Rugby Striped Bins, $9.99

And finally, I had a roll of this in my basket, but just couldn't seal the deal because it looked like it would wrap about one large gift and was almost $8, and we just don't get that fancy with our gift wrap up in here- but I mean.....

Did you just die a little bit- or is it just me that finds this wrapping paper potentially worth dying for (or at least worth $8)? Humor me.

OH- and guess what, it's pretty much Friday, and pretty much my last day of work for 3 months!!!Get ready for some serious blogging, people.