Kids' Dish Drawer Organization

Now this is organization on a serious budget. I picked up these three wire baskets at the thrift store for just $1.99 and it has completely transformed my kids' dish drawer. (yes, this really is how it has looked for the past two years...)

Hooray! Super simple. Super cheap. LOVE! All those bits and pieces in the back of the drawer are just that...bits and pieces: lids without rubber pieces, random little accessories, bigger water bottles. Who knows, I may keep my eye out for another small basket to house the rest of that little stuff.

Felt Fun!! {felt board and figures}

My kids love their felt board, so I just had to share.

Felt boards are incredibly easy and inexpensive to create. This particular one is a cork board that I rescued from my church dumpster when they were doing some spring cleaning. The frame is metal, so I removed it and spray painted it. Then I sprayed the cork board with spray adhesive, laid the felt down, stapled down the back and replaced the frame. This usually stays in their play room, but we're doing a little work  in there right now, so I brought it downstairs for them to play with.

Now that my daughter is old enough to tell familiar stories (5 Little Monkeys, 3 Little Pigs, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, etc...) and make stories up this has become especially fun for her. We also plan to use this as a teaching tool for homeschooling this fall. We use it for our Family Home Evening lessons as well.

First, here are the sites that I frequent to print out more stories and pieces:

Preschool Printables -- they have 5 very familiar stories
DLTK -- LOVE these...they have several stories, plus family pieces, farm pieces and others that can be adapted to more open-ended play
Childcare Land- No printables here, but some great ideas of activities that you can cut straight from felt.
Chocolate on My Cranium -- This is where I get all of my scriptural figures. Shes got the figures and the stories that go with them.

How do I make the figures?? For the scripture stories I print them directly onto transfer paper and then iron them to felt. This works wonders because most of the scripture stories print out on just one sheet of paper. But the other stories usually take several piece of paper to print them out and transfer paper can get expensive. So, I print them out on card stock and laminate them. Then I put a little piece of the hook side of Velcro on the back and voila! Super easy and super durable.

It took me a long time to figure out a good way to store them and I am finally pleased with our system. First, all the different sets are filed in regular manila file folders that I have taped along the sides to create pockets. Then I have them all on our office counter in a canvas file box (from W*Mart, about $13??. I also store all of their file folder games in there as well.

This is actually a counter on one random end of our eat-in kitchen where we do lots of art projects and where we will be doing homeschool this fall, so it has turned into a bit of an office space for us.

Anyway, I hope you find some useful links or tips in here. Flannel board stories and activities can keep my children occupied for a while and they can also be such a great learning tool. And when its so easy and inexpensive to put together, its a breeze to incorporate into their playthings. Have fun with it!!

Do you use a flannel board for your children?? Do you have any other sites that have great printable stories and activities?? I'd love to hear about them!!

Menu Plans

Do you do a plan your meals a week or a month out?? This is a new thing for us, to have a week's worth of meals planned out before I go to the grocery store, and let me tell you, I am loving it. The only downfall for my family is that my husband's work schedule is fairly irregular. As an Air Force pilot, he has to fly a lot of nights. That may not be a big deal to many families, but when I'm only cooking for myself and my two very young children, I tend to not want to make a big meal, and since we don't know his schedule until the Friday before, it makes it difficult...BUT here's how I've conquered it. While I can't plan a whole month out (because I don't know his schedule--in fact, every week you can see the nights that he flies...) I do keep a month's menu plan in my Home Management binder (more on that later maybe?) so that I can constantly change things around. here's a picture of my current menu plan to give you an idea:

I know that's hard to read, but if you click on the picture you can read it better. 

I currently have a lot of freezer meals planned to prepare for this baby's arrival. I basically just double the recipe and put half in the freezer. I do at least one freezer meal each week for the last 8 weeks of pregnancy, giving me at least 8 full meals for postpartum. These meals are always lifesavers.

Anyway, I don't have a fancy way of doing our menu plan. Basically, I go shopping every Tuesday. Therefore, I plan our next week's worth of meals sometime between Saturday and Monday. I typically only plan about 4-5 meals in a 7-day period because I have to be flexible. And also because we have to have a leftovers night, and sometimes we like to eat out.

So why do I love keeping a menu plan??

• We tend to get a much better variety in our meals
• I'm finally trying my gigantic mound of "Recipes to Try"
• We're eating less pizza
• We're saving money by eating out a lot less
• We're saving money by planning our meals around sales at our grocery store
• Helps me avoid that last minute dinner rush that I find very stressful
• Dinner tends to be ON TIME every night
• I have all the ingredients on hand
• Our meals tend to be healthier
• I quite simply like to be organized:)

The monthly menu plan sheet that I use is from Organized Home, and can be found here.

Menu plans have always intimidated me, making me feel like I was tied down to this ONE plan with no other options and I've been very surprised at how liberating it has been. It frees up my time in the afternoons, not having to worry about what to make and it frees up a lot of brainpower throughout my weeks because I know it is already taken care of.

Anyway, I just thought I would share that with y'all in case any of you were looking for the motivation to just sit down and give it a shot. Let me know if you have any tips or tricks! I'm always open to ideas that make my life a little easier:)

Closet Organization {Before and After}

       This closet was a mess. Unless a closet is built for little ones, it is so hard NOT to waste a whole bunch of space. And with the prospect of the little guy moving into that room in the next couple of months, that space became prime real estate. I KNEW I could use it better.

So, with my design, and my husband's know-how, we created a perfectly use-able, organized space, with places for shoes, clothes, blankets, out-of-season clothes, the whole bit. Let me show you around.

My favorite thing is these bins. They are canvas and have a sturdy wire frame AND a handy little vinyl pocket to put a label so my kids (and my husband) know where everything goes. (Found them at The Container Store)

I simply took a picture of a few of the items that belong in that particular basket, re-sized them to the pocket size in Photoshop, added text with picnik.com and printed them on card stock.

The main goal here was to manage BOTH kids clothes in ONE closet. That was simply not happening with the way it was before. but this way, Kai has his own bar and a shelf (or two) for his shoes and maybe some clothes or toys. This arrangement added so much space that we actually can't even fill it all up yet! But I'm sure that will change.

See those baskets on the top shelf? This was a system I started years ago when Emmie was only a wee little thing. she kept getting hand-me-downs from friends and family, which was GREAT, but most of them were a size bigger or a season later, so I needed to figure out a way to manage the influx of clothes. Not to mention, I needed an easy place to put all of the clothes that she was so quickly growing out of as well. So I bought her two baskets: one for clothes that she had grown out of and one for clothes that were the next size or season up. When the first basket gets full, I take it up to the attic and put it in it's appropriate Rubbermaid tub (we're...uh...obviously not done having kids yet, so I save ALL of their clothes...). When I find a great deal on end of season clothes, I buy a size bigger for the next year and stick it in the second basket. This is a fool-proof way to keep the clutter off the clothes racks and dresser.

One more look:

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Feeling inspired?? Motivated?? Go conquer a closet!! It feels marvelous! :)

Sharing the love at some of the following:
Monday:
Making the World Cuter Mondays
Keeping it Simple-- Motivate Me Mondays
Skip to my Lou-- Made by You Mondays
Sew Can Do-- Craftastic Monday 
C.R.A.F.T-- Making Monday Marvelous
Tuesday:
Sugar Bee-- Take a Look Tuesday
Today's Creative Blog-- Get Your Craft On!
Creative Itch-- Sew Cute Tuesday
Tip Junkie-- Tip Me Tuesday
Wednesday:
Sew Much Ado-- We Did It Wednesday!
Blue Cricket Designs-- Show and Tell
Someday Crafts -- Whatever Goes Wednesday
Show off Your Stuff -- Fireflies and Jellybeans
Friday: 
Simply Designing
Kojo Friday Fun Finds 
Fingerprints on the Fridge-- Feature Yourself Friday 
Tatertots and Jello-- Weekend Wrap-up
Weekend:
The Girl Creative-- Just Something I Whipped Up
Under the Table and Dreaming-- Sunday Showcase