When you live with a budding artist, you live with piles and piles of artwork. And ALL of it is special. And NONE of it can be thrown away. At least, that’s what my 5 year old tells me constantly. And as gung-ho as she is about recycling, I still can’t manage to convince her that we can recycle some of her artwork, too.
So, instead of living with the masses of piles everywhere, I started looking for ideas of what to do with it all to help contain it and keep it from taking over my entire house. I came across several great suggestions like these:
Continue reading…
I’ve been following lurking around the RocksInMyDryer blog for a little while now and have been thoroughly enjoying her “Works for Me Wednesday” posts. She usually has it open to everyone to post their own links for whatever topic she’s designated and I wind up spending a few minutes hours following all the links to great posts.
So, this week’s topic was 5-ingredient recipes. My kind of cooking! Needless to say, I’ve spent lots of times perusing everyone’s creative ideas and have bookmarked several to try out.
The first recipe I tried was for Egg & Sausage Muffins at ISpeakBeanish. They turned out great!! I added some cheese (hello - I AM a cheese-aholic!) and then I blended up some fresh yellow squash and zucchini to “hide” inside the egg mixture that you pour over the sausage. You couldn’t even taste the veggies (thank goodness, otherwise my family wouldn’t have eaten them) and the two oldest kiddos LOVED them. We had plenty leftover for breakfast the next day and I’m about to freeze the rest to have on hand for whenever Shawn needs a quick breakfast to go with his morning coffee.
So, slide on over to ISpeakBeanish for her great recipe (she’s a Houston local, y’all!!) or to RocksInMyDryer for more ideas for dinner tonight and enjoy. Oh, and then you have to tell me which one YOU did and how it turned out so I can be sure to add it to my list! :)
You know, if you read any of this blog, that we planted fresh herbs for Earth Day here with the kiddos. (Which reminds me, I still need to show you all my pics of our fun day!) While we did give some of them away as gifts for Mother’s Day, I still have some fresh parsley, rosemary, and oregano on my windowsill. And since I’m not exactly the world’s best cook, I wasn’t really sure what to do with them all. I mean, I know you can use all three of those in spaghetti sauce if I ever made my own from scratch, but other than that?
And this is where we all thank God for Google and the internet and other bloggers out there that write about the things that they do! I ran across this article on using fresh herbs and how to pair them with foods. Great resource to keep bookmarked and refer back to when you’re cooking and want to try something new, but don’t know which herbs taste best with which foods.
Just thought I’d share! :)
Just found this GREAT article about freezing. Almost makes me wanna thaw everything out and start over… Okay, maybe I’ll just wait and do this the next time I buy ground beef…
Check out Lunch in a Box.
Let me know what you think and what creative ideas YOU have, too!
What a great site I just stumbled upon! If you do ANY online shopping at all, this is a GREAT resource.
It’s a shopping site that gives you up to 25% Cash Back every time you shop online. You can shop at over 900 stores including Barnes & Noble.com, Gap, Target, Buy.com and Expedia. Plus you get additional savings with exclusive coupons, free shipping offers, and limited-time sales!
They have a whole section of Coupons and Promotionals that would be a great resource to check anytime you’re about to purchase something online. And the extra benefit is that some of the coupons not only get you a discount at the store you’re shopping at, but also gives you a cash back percentage with Ebates, too.
Plus, sign up FREE with Ebates today and we’ll each get a $5 bonus when you make your first purchase!
Click here to sign up:
Ebates.com
Happy shopping!
So, I finally finished and am writing the promised follow-up post! I told you that I was participating in Org Junkie’s Monthly Organizing Round-Up and cleaning up my dining area of the kitchen. (click here to see my previous post on the subject) Since my 5-year-old, Kate, is a budding artist like her daddy all of her art supplies and drawings wind up on our kitchen table and floor, as well as the window seat behind it. After a while, it all starts to mushroom and take over the room as you can see in this before pic… The piles of crayons, and pictures and more pictures, and cards, and table cloth for when we paint, and flipflops (the windowseat is by the back door), and everything else just seemed to always collect here. And even when it’s organized, it’s still just not very pretty to look at. In fact, my husband complains about it frequently.
I decided that not only did all the mess need to be contained better, but it also needed to move out of my kitchen completely. The ‘formal dining room’ in our house is right off of the kitchen and we’ve turned it into a playroom - perfect spot for all of Kate’s art supplies. But before I could move everything, I had to clean out a space on the tall table (away from siblings’ hands) to move everything. (Don’t you love when one project requires a second and third project to happen first to be able to make the first one happen??? Blah.)
Finally, I got the table ready and then moved all the ’stuff’ to the table. Then, I cleaned up the rest of the ‘outdoor stuff’ that sits on the windowseat and found a big bin to hide it all in. So, all the flipflops, sunscreen, bug spray, water guns, and sidewalk chalk are now out of sight! 
And look how clean my windowseat looks now!!
Of course, by the time I got all of that done, I was exhausted and the kiddos were screaming for my attention (quite literally, I’m afraid. Yes, I tend to be a tad “focused” when it comes to organizing projects! ) So, I stopped for the day and decided to come back to the art supply/artwork mess another day. I think that’s actually a key - knowing when it’s okay to stop and come back to a project another day and not feeling like it all HAS to be finished immediately. Especially when you have three little ones under foot. :)
So, a few days later, I decided to tackle all her art stuff. Luckily, I had already put some amount of organizing mojo into this area of our lives and had containers already in use. So, all it took was a little re-thinking of how everything was working and what would make it even better.
She now has 3 magazine holders that are specifically designated for 3 different kinds of things. One for workbooks, one for sketchbooks and CURRENT artwork (I’ll have to write another post about what I do with all her artwork that accumulates at such a FAST pace), and one for stationary (my daughter LOVES to write cards to people). She has an art kit box (thank you, Tiffany, for that birthday present!) that houses all of her stamps, markers, map pencils, glue sticks, and scissors in neat little organized trays. Then she has a stack of art projects like beading, mosaics, and stamping that require adult supervision. And the last box next to the bookcase is full of all her painting supplies, including smock and table cloth. All of the crayons and coloring books moved to another section of the playroom in a three-drawer rolling cart where the youngest two could also access them.
When I was done, I called her over to the table and explained the system to her. (Lucky for me, she takes after her parents and actually enjoys systems!) She got it almost immediately and then called her daddy in to show him and explain each section to him. Best way to learn is to teach it to someone else, right?
So, now, I just owe a huge debt of gratitude to Laura over at OrgJunkie for encouraging all of us to tackle this project. And I’m SO in for the rest of the year, so keep your eyes tuned for my next project! What’s YOUR next project?
I was browsing some of my favorite blogs the other day and ran across OrgJunkie’s latest fun. While I love that there are others out there that are as ‘freakish’ as I am about organizing, Laura’s posts seem to be some of the best. She’s now doing a monthly challenge to all her readers called Org Junkie’s Monthly Organizing Round-Up. The month of February was a challenge to organize some portion or all of your kitchen. Unfortunately I missed the deadline on that one, even though I did just recently reorganize some of my kitchen cabinets. (I had to do something to house my new beautiful plates!)
But, I’m SO in on March. This month’s challenge has been the dining room. While we don’t have a formal dining room anymore (it’s now a playroom), the area in the kitchen where we eat was starting to get over-run by my daughter’s craft supplies. Since she’s a budding artist (she takes after her daddy), we have a little bit of everything and somehow it’s always on the kitchen table and the windowseat behind it. Here’s a ‘before’ pic for your amusement.
So, my goal this month has been to clean up the windowseat and therefore all the craft supplies and move them somewhere higher (where the 18 month old can’t get ahold of crayons to write on the floors and walls with) and more organized in ONE space.
Check back in with me in about a week and I’ll show you the finished project. Or, at least the ‘finished-for-now’ project. Because, seriously, is any project truly and thoroughly completed? Isn’t there always just ONE more thing we want to do to make it perfect? Or maybe that’s just the German perfectionism in me coming out…
Oh, and don’t you want to join me and all the other ‘freaks’ that are organizing their dining rooms this month? Add a comment below about what your next project is going to be!
After my sister read my post about sending Ethan to get a pair of pants, she emailed me and asked me if I’d thought about using MeckMom’s solution to the problem of him emptying his drawers.
I’m here to say that I L-O-V-E my sister for reminding me of this idea. And I L-O-V-E MeckMom for having this idea in the first place. And I’m going to the store tomorrow to buy under-bed boxes for all 3 of my kids so I can try this out.
I’ll let you know how it works. In the mean time, check out this link to MeckMom’s ingenious idea to keep my kids from emptying their drawers after I send them to get dressed!
grocerylists.org has just released their FREE downloadable grocery list called, The Ultimatest Grocery List.
There are a lot of downloadable grocery lists out there, but none are as good as The Ultimatest. Why is this one better? Comprehensiveness. Categorization. Cleverness. Helpful clues and cues. Creativity. And… it’s portable, unlike a lot of shopping list software that requires you to be in front of a computer.
The Ultimatest is a free downloadable PDF you simply print out, hang on the refrigerator door and mark up before you go to the grocery store. Just check off the things you need—no more writing out lists by hand!
Leo Babauta, author of the organizational blog: zen habits, compiled a list of 15 fabulous tips for decluttering. Among them is the “one in, two out” rule…
The rule: whenever you bring in an item, you have to throw away two other items. First you cheat, by throwing out two pieces of paper, but soon you will have to move to big stuff.
This should really come in handy as I attempt to keep the floor of my kiddos’ play room at least somewhat visible! Enjoy:
15 Great Decluttering Tips
When you live with a budding artist, you live with piles and piles of artwork. And ALL of it is special. And NONE of it can be thrown away. At least, that’s what my 5 year old tells me constantly. And as gung-ho as she is about recycling, I still can’t manage to convince her that we can recycle some of her artwork, too.
By Kay on Fri, Aug 29, 2008
3 Comments