Wee Pots of Gold!

Good afternoon everyone! Hope you are having a super fantastic day! I had so much fun last night crafting up a storm, and today I’m going to share some of the fun with you!

March is a fun month for us! We have a two-week spring break from school, made even longer by Easter long weekend at the end of the month. We also have the most fun holiday of the year – St Patrick’s Day!! Miss A is an Irish dancer, and although she’s not quite at that stage yet, the day will come when she’ll spend the entire week leading up to St Patrick’s Day dancing at local pubs and community events. It’s how I spent my Paddy’s days when I was a younger, and I know she’ll love it!

Miss A came home from school yesterday saying she had to be careful not to get caught in a leprechaun trap! I thought it would be fun to make some little treats for my little leprechauns to open on Sunday morning. Nothing fancy or expensive, just something fun! All in, I put together 8 wee pots of gold for a total cost of sixteen bucks!

8 Mini terra cotta pots 2/$1 = $4

1 each of gold paint and gold glitter paint $2

1 package of Easter basket filling $1

6 packages of gold coins = $6

2 packages chocolate candies $2

Shamrock stickers $1

Total = $16!! Or only $2 per pot of gold!!

I started out painting the outside of the terra cotta pots with the gold paint. I put on two coats (it dried super quick!!) and then applied a layer of the glitter paint. I really could have skipped this step, as I didn’t notice enough of a glitteriness (I know it’s not a word… but it’s what I was going for…) to make a difference. I added stickers to a couple of the pots and left the rest plain gold. The stickers didn’t stick perfectly but they did like cute!

The next step was to fill the pots with gold! I put a piece of paper towel in the bottom, but I guess I could have just used more of the basket filler stuff. I was worried about the gold coins falling to the bottom of the pot and not being seen at the top. I filled the pots with chocolate gold coins and gold foil-wrapped candies.

I’m sure the girls will love their little leprechaun treats! I hope you like them too!

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the internet today! I really appreciate it! I’ll be linking my project up to Joyful Homemaking, and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Finding a Way to Organize Chaos

Hello friends! Thanks for stopping by today! Today I thought it would be fun to share a little corner of chaos in our house and how Miss E and I tackled the chaos to bring some order to a very busy space.

The main level in our home is where we do most of our living. It’s our kitchen, living room, dining room, kids’ toy room and one teeny tiny bathroom. The vanity in this little half bath stores our crazy-morning-get-the-kids-hair-done-in-a-hurry supplies, first aid supplies, cleaning products, toilet paper, gym towels, the enormous supply of nail polishes for mani-pedi days, and a bunch of various other junk.

It was organized once upon a time, but now it was complete insanity. All of the nicely organized bins from the past now had no lids and every bin was stacked inside another. The hair-doing supplies were all over the place and there was no cohesion to the space at all.

My accomplice and I took all of the mess into the kitchen and laid it out on the table. We used old adage of “purge til it fits” and sorted all like items together. We threw out anything that was old, broken or expired and tried to contain the rest of the stuff to the space we had.

Clearly the lidded bin system was not working for us, so we needed to find another way. I also needed a way to contain a pile of gym towels and the toilet paper, neither of which stack nicely (when you have kiddos rummaging around).

When I cleared out my master bedroom closet a couple of weeks ago, I unearthed a huge drawer organizing thing that was not being used to its full potential. I took it apart and used the top four drawers to contain our first aid supplies, nail supplies, hair do-hickeys and “etc” which encompasses feminine supplies and q-tips and the like.

In the bottom of the drawer holding my ridiculous supply of nail polish, I cut a piece of anti-skid liner and put it right into the drawer. 

This will keep the polishes standing upright when the drawers open and closet and keep it pretty a little longer hopefully!

After adding some scrapbooking letters for labels, and ensuring that each small child could easily remove the drawers on their own when needed, I slid the drawer unit right into the vanity! I took one of the deeper drawers out of the unit and slid it into the vanity on its own to hold gym towels and extra rolls of TP. Cleaning supplies and extra hand soap fit right in the middle in a plastic bin.

All together this little project took the bean and I about half an hour to finish. Even though it totally distracted me from cleaning the bathroom (which was my intended project!!), I think it was totally worth it, don’t you?

Thanks for stopping by my little corner of the internet today! I really appreciate it! I’ll be linking my project up to IHeartOrganizing, Joyful Homemaking, and A Bowl Full of Lemons.

Simple Living Lesson #10 – Routine

Hey all! Thanks for coming by to take a read through my attempt at living life a little more simply. To take a look at the lessons I have worked through previously check out lessons 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,  and 9. This week’s lesson is focussing on routine, which makes me really happy!

Although I’ll be the first one to pass up on an afternoon of housework to have tea with the neighbours, I do try to keep a pretty tight ship at our house and routine totally plays into the plan. I work out every day during the week, and since I don’t get home from the gym until the kids are supposed to be ready for school, part of our morning routine is to be prepared for the day.

I try to lay out the kids’ school clothes the night before. The girls like to lay them out so they look like a kid in an outfit, socks, undies and hoodies all splayed out on the floor. Whatever works, as long as they are getting ready!!

When I get home from the gym, I make the lunches while the hubs is busy wrangling the girls into the outfits they splayed out onto their floors the night before. 

While I put together the lunches, my rock star teammate gets breakfast, toothbrushes, vitamins and backpacks sorted. Our morning routine, though chaotic works for us and usually gets everyone to school and work on time.

Housework is becoming more of a routine for us too. We used to have a cleaning service come in every two weeks to do the nitty-gritty cleaning (bathrooms, vacuuming, all the hard-core housework) but now it’s all on the hubs and I to get it done. Since I only work part time, I do the majority of the cleaning on my day off and the hubs in charge of the two things I hate the most: vacuuming and all of the laundry.

I find that I feel happiest in my home when the kitchen is clean. Clean counters, an empty sink and the smell of cookies baking gives me a euphoric feeling! I always try to spend 15 minutes once the kids go to bed walking from room to room, straightening pillows and towels and picking up the little bits and pieces of toys that the kids don’t see when they put their toys away.

My evening routine of quick pick up and running the dishwasher makes our morning routines run just that much more smoothly. I guess I can say that this week’s simple living lesson is to streamline your life to make things easier. It certainly helps that we don’t have as many pieces of clothing or furniture or toys (though we still have a TON of toys) as we did before we began to purge, and purge and purge again!

Do you have any routines that help you keep the ship afloat in your house?

I am linking to some of these fun linking parties:

I'm An Organizing Junkie, A Bowl Full of Lemons , Delightful Order , and Joyful Homemaking

Menu Plan Monday - March 11, 2013

What an amazing, sunny, productive weekend! I headed down to the cabin to put myself to work! I’m not a house builder, but I busied myself hauling lumber and supplies and cleaning the work site and helping to cook for the menfolk. It was super productive down there – look what we accomplished!!

We had a definite recipe success last week! Our Fish Tacos  turned out super delicious! I used the recipe for the batter/cooking from allrecipes.com and just cooked up some peppers and onions and salsa, served with avocado and sour cream and it was fantastic! A definite recipe to try again.

After the time change over the weekend and the hard work at the cabin this weekend, I am super thankful that I took some time last week to create a menu plan for the entire month of March. Even though we may not stick to the menu every day, at least some semblance of a plan makes my life that much easier

On the menu this week:

Monday: Lasagne Monday!
Tuesday: Cashew Chicken with rice and veggies
Wednesday: Turkey Ham with mashed potatoes, peas and corn
Thursday: Curry Chicken and rice
Friday: Leftover Buffet!
Saturday: Brinner – Green Pancakes for dinner!
Sunday: Happy St Patrick’s Day! Dinner out at the pub!

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

31 Day Organizing Challenge – My Crazy Kitchen

 

One year ago I started this little blog because I wanted to enter OrgJunkie’s contest for her Organizational Challenge. 

 Last year I tackled our scrapbook room. The project was a huge undertaking, but it’s done! And for the most part, the room has stayed neat and organized. 

                     

    

The room that I chose to tackle this year is my kitchen. Since today is the first link up party, I thought I could show my before pics (AAHHH!!!) and my first bit of progress. 

We have a couple of trigger spots in our kitchen – the command centre, the homework area and oh yeah, ridiculously over filled cabinets. It’s a bit insane. I have posted in the past about my organized command centre, and when it’s organized it’s a thing of beauty. However, with the amount of paper that comes into my house, it doesn’t take long for it to become chaos once again.

 

 

My plan is to go through my cupboards one at a time and see what I have too many of, or what I have not used in the past year. All of these items will promptly be placed in my donation station and transported to our local thrift store so someone else can make use of them.

First stop on the kitchen project – our ridiculous collection of glassware. I have THREE full cupboards of glasses. There are four of us. That’s a bit insane. I started by taking everything out of the cupboard and wiping down the shelves. I always wonder how it’s possible that crumbs end up in a cupboard where CLEAN dishes reside.

 

After paring down my ridiculous number of glasses, and filling a box with some plastic wine glasses and beer glasses to bring down to the cabin I got to work organizing. I had some pretty shelf paper from another project, so I cut myself a couple of pieces to line the bottom shelf of the cupboard. I could have gone crazy and lined them all, but since I’m only 5”5” on a good day, I just lined the one shelf I could actually see.

 

Since this cupboard is also the home to our kiddie dishes and cups I pared these down also. I got rid of the little little kid sippy cups and just kept these straw cups with lids. They cost about $3 for a four pack and they are the BEST cups!!

 

Ta-Da!! Well? What do you think? Here is my nicely organized glassware cupboard! A box and a BIG bag of excess dishes later and this is where we are at today! I have a full shelf and a half of EMPTY space and all of my glasses are neatly organized.

 

You may wonder about my mug collection - how they are all random and un-matching? It’s on purpose. A long time ago when I started on my decluttering journey I got rid of the matched set of mugs I had because they just weren’t big enough. I need a CUPPA tea, not a teeny tiny mug worth. I have my favourite HUGE mugs (from Disneyland) and a couple of other big mugs. I do maintain two small ones for my neighbour Kelly who is anti-huge-cuppa-tea.

Progress! Thanks so much for coming over to see my little bit of progress in the kitchen. Hopefully by the next linky party I will be able to tackle some of the rest of my kitchen projects – the baking cupboardS (yes, plural), the platters and bowls, and the food – oh my, the food.

I’m linking my progress post up to Org Junkie’s Challenge page. I wonder what the other posters are organizing!!





Menu Plan Monday - March 4, 2013

Can you feel it? Spring is in the air!! After a horrendous downpour on Saturday, the sun shone all day yesterday! We played outside, the hubs took the kiddos on a bike ride to the park, I played outside before dinner. We took full advantage of those sun-shiny hours!!

This weekend we stuck to our menu plan! That never happens on the weekend – we are usually exhausted/lazy and just go out or order in for one of the nights. This weekend we were all home together and we feasted on home cooked meals. We even tried out a new Pinterest recipe and it was a success! It was a perfect weekend.

This weekend and for the next three weekends we are going to be an all-girl household! The amazing team of my husband, dad, brother and brother-in-law will be heading down to our cabin in the states to do some serious work! Since both my sister and my sister-in-law are expecting babies in the next few months, the men are heading out to get a summer’s worth of work done in four weekends! I’ve got some yummy, homemade meals planned for the next few Sundays for when the men arrive home!


Recipe!!

On the menu this week:

Monday: Lasagne Monday!
Tuesday: Homemade pizzas
Wednesday: Fish tacos
Thursday: Perogies and sausage
Friday: Brinner! Breakfast for dinner
Saturday: Shake and bake chicken strips and French fries
Sunday: Tortellini with prawns in Boursin cream sauce

I’ll be linking my menu plan up to OrgJunkie’s Menu Plan Monday – check it out!!

LalaLoopsy Birthday Party!

Can you believe it? My little baby bean turned four this week! When asked what theme she would like for her party, she picked her favourite toy of the minute – Lalaloopsy dolls! Over the past year my girls have amassed a fairly large collection of these adorable dollies.

For those of you outside the little girl loop, these super cute dolls is created with a fictional theme, reflecting the day she is born, the fabric she is sewn from, and her pet. 

Google was my friend when designing Miss E's birthday party invitations.  I found a Lalaloopsy image and put the party details into a text box.  I printed out the invite, used double sided tape to attach the invite to cardstock and then glued on some buttons to liven them up a little.

After scouring Pinterest for some ideas, I got straight to work! I used dessert plates, black cardstock and a circle punch and created buttons. I tied them together into a row and used them as the backdrop for the party. 

I created Happy Birthday Eila labels for the water bottles and juice containers, to add a little cute factor to the food and drink table.  We went simple with the food, just fruits, veggies and the kids favorites - cheetos and popcorn twists!

The first day we started planning the party, Miss E picked out her cake. It was super easy to put together. We made this chocolate cake and made marshmallow fondant. I ordered a button candy mold to make the decorative buttons on the sides, and popped a few Mini Lalaloopsies on top of the cake.

I used a button lollipop mold to make these yummy bites for the kids to take home after the party.

A quick and easy Happy Birthday bunting came together with Valentine hearts and printed letters, and printed out pictures of the Lalaloopsy dolls taped to some craft twine became our party decorations.

Check out this cutie playing a fun game of pin the crown on Jewel Sparkles.

 Since the Lalaloopsy dolls slogan is “Sew Magical” I created a gift tag to put on the outside of the goody bags thanking Miss E’s friends “SEW” much for coming to her party. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture of the goody bags.  They were pretty easy to put together.  Candy, candy and more candy filled the bags!!

The kids played games, and did crafts, and had a LOT of sugar and a great time! It looks like this sweet little girl had a really great party!! 

Thanks so much for stopping by to read today. 

I am linking to some of these fun linking parties:

I'm An Organizing Junkie, A Bowl Full of Lemons , Delightful Order , and Joyful Homemaking