Ribbon Organizing

I've been a little obsessed with trying to clean out and organize my house. We live in a small townhouse and with 3 little ones needless to say we are running out of room to live. We are not in a position to move (darn it) so I've just decided instead of living in the crowded-ness (is that a real word) I'd try to make it better. When I took my Christmas tree down that just created this need in me to clean and organize out my house.Slowly I am getting things in order and so far I've taken quite a few trips to the good will.

All my crafting stuff was in the garage cause there was no where else to put it. It was driving me crazy having to go out and sort through the garage to find all the stuff I needed to sew or craft so I decided to clean out my downstairs hall closet and turn that into my craft closet. It's a pretty big closet under our stairs so it's not only my craft closet but also the coat closet, the diaper closet, the library closet, & occasionally serves as a hideout for my 2 older kids when they are playing spies.

My craft stuff was pretty disorgainzed. I mean just look at this ribbon box

What a mess!!!!

I had seen different ways to organize your ribbons on PINTEREST  like THIS

 I really liked this idea but I didn't want to spend money on a container like that so 

I looked around and found some cardboard that we has stored in the garage and decided to do this 

 

Look at that all nice and neat!!!

Now there is more room in the box to add more ribbon...haha

What I did was just measured my box and then cut pieces of cardboard to match the size.

I then sat while watching Season 1 of "Downton Abbey" on Netflix 

(great show....you should watch it if you haven't)

and wound all my ribbon on the cardboard and used little pins to secure the ribbon in place.

Super Simple and Super Cheap.......my kind of project 

How have you organized your crafts? 

Thanks for stopping by

Birthday Book

Hello there!!
Today I want to share a gift I made for Mother Hen last month for her birthday.  As some of you know, Mother Hen travels a lot.  And when I say a lot, I mean A LOT!  She travels all over the country selling Texas Twisters at fairs, normally every weekend from June to October. So when it comes to kids and grandkids birthdays, she has to send cards for most of them.  More than once I've gotten a call from Mother Hen, asking what birthdays were coming up for the next couple weeks.  I really don't mind telling her, but I decided I could come up with something cute to help her keep track of the birthdays.
So I made her a birthday book!  What is a birthday book, you ask?  Well, here ya go!  Prepare for picture overload!

I'm sorry I don't have any before pictures, but I basically took an old photo album that I had, recovered it, and re bound it.  I was initially going to keep the same binding that the photo album had, but after decorating each of the pages, the book was too big.  So I punched holes in each page, attached eyelets, and bound it with fishing wire.  Not my first choice for binding, but it worked!

For the pages, I cut a piece of cardstock to the size of the cover. Then I used another piece of cardstock, cut it an inch shorter, and folded the edges over the back, making a pocket in the front on the right side.  For the left side, I just printed out a calendar for each month, wrote on the birthdays, and glued it on, which covered the folded edges from the pocket side (did that make sense??).

I wanted to have a pocket for each month so she could keep birthday cards in it.  I made a few of the birthday cards, and then bought the rest.  So not only does she have a calendar that she can take with her, but she has birthday cards ready for an entire year!  All she has to do is fill them out and mail them!  I also did the calendar this way so she can write in birthdays when needed.  Our last birthday calendars were missing quite a few grandkids that hadn't been around when the calendar was made. 

So here's how I decorated the pages for each month.  I owe a huge thanks to my awesome sister Jacki for helping me do some of the pages.  I'm pretty sure this would have ended up as a Christmas present for Mother Hen if Jacki hadn't helped me! :)  On the right side of each page, you can see I attached ribbon.  I was trying to figure out how to print on ribbon so I could type the month on each ribbon, but it just didn't happen.  So I just picked ribbon that coordinated with each page.

I finished off the book by adding some ribbon to tie it closed.  It was bound with fishing wire, but the ribbon helped keep it together.

I love how it turned out, and I know Mother Hen really appreciates it!  So what do you think? 
Thanks for reading!!
-Juli-

Linking to these great parties!

HOME IMPROVEMENT WEEK

EMBARRASSMENT TIME!!

I wanted to just sew something cute
for my home improvement blog...
but...
every time I tried to think of what
I wanted to do, my bathroom cupboard
kept haunting me.
YOU CAN SEE WHY!!

Every time I opened the cupboard door,
I'd have to catch what fell out!
Especially the medicine cupboard on top.
I could block the mess out as long
as no one asked for anything!

YOU SAY YOU NEED A BANDAID?
OR
A THERMOMETER?
GOOD LUCK!!

Can you even make out what any of the stuff is
in the bottom?
I'm sure there must be some good things about
being a saver, but I'm having trouble
thinking of them!
I'm sure I have it...I just don't know where it is!

This is from 'just' the top cupboard!!!
How in the world did it all fit in there?

Another view!

How in the world could you
'NOT' find a Bandaid with this
many boxes up there!

I hate to say it, but, we always made fun of Grandmas
Buchanan, ,Uhlman, and Memmott
because everything in their house
was always 'OUTDATED'!
Have you ever heard the phrase 'what goes around,
comes around'?
That is the story of my life!

(Beware, children, what you say about me,

as it will come back to haunt you, too!!)

Outdated meds, etc.

NOW FOR THE BIG TRANSFORMATION!!

Anybody need a bandaid?

Can't find a cough drop when you need it?
Now I can!

What ever will I do being able to find
all these ace bandages, and
gauze wraps?

These things were just too tall to fit in the drawers but
fit nicely in this organizing bin.
I know just where to put it.

No questions where things are now.
Each drawer is labeled for easy searching.

More tall bottles! Easy to see what's in here.

No more guess work here!

When my mother-in-law passed away, we got a lot
of her things. I'm not sure what she was going
to use 4 bags of cotton balls for, but they fit
nicely behind the bins with tall bottles.

Whoa!! What a difference!

Every thing is easily found and thus used!

As much as I would rather sew...this was very
rewarding.
We'd love to hear some of your ideas for
Home Improvement!
I just need to be able to twitch my nose and
have it ALL organized.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
We love it.
Have a great weekend!
Mother Hen - Barbara

Cleaning the Cupboards.

Yeah for Home Improvement Week.
Hope you have enjoyed coming into our homes this week.

When Jess suggested this week that we should do home improvement,
I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted to do.
Not because my house isn't in need of home improvement,
but because there are so many things that need to be improved!
I decided to start small ( a.k.a doesn't cost a lot of money) by cleaning out my spice cabinet.
Here is a before:

As I was cleaning it out, I figured I had probably not cleaned it for...
at the least 6 years.
Yuck I know!
If you don't want to be my friend anymore, I'll understand!

I started by taking everything out. I threw away expired medicine, spices and
empty containers taking up space.
(Anyone else have this problem?)
I wiped down the cupboard and shelves, which were disgusting!

Earlier that day I had gone to Lowe's looking for organization items.
Wow, I could spend a lot of money and time on organizing if I had the means.
I don't so I ended up buying a two tiered spice rack for $5-7.

I was going to alphabetize all my spices, but they fit better on top of each other.
All the spices we use a lot, I stuck in front or on the sides.
I have holiday S&P shakers that fit perfectly under the tiers and
will be easy to pull out when needed.
I also had various surplus spices in baggies that fit perfectly under the tier as well.

Did you know it's cheaper to buy your spices in the bulk section at Winco? I just fill up my old container when needed!

The second shelf is where my large spice containers are as well as our vitamins. There wasn't much I could do with this shelf, but I did transfer some random jello to the pantry.

The third shelf stores all of our sprinkles, candles and children medicine.
This shelf was just crazy. I had 5 million different containers of sprinkles, candles and expired medicine. I consolidated all the sprinkles and candles into two margarine containers. I am planning on covering the containers with scrapbook paper and labeling them hopefully tomorrow.



The reason there were so many expired medicines was because I could never see what I had without getting a stool. I found this granola bar box that fits perfect and will hold all the medicine, so we just have to pull down the box for what we need.
It will also get prettyfied tomorrow.
(I know that's not a word!)



So here is the after picture:

Pretty good, huh?! Now on to the next cupboard!
Ha Ha. Maybe next week!
Hope you enjoyed my dirty -turned slightly better - spice cabinet.
Enjoy your Easter holiday this weekend.


-Jacki :)

Coupons, Bills, & Magazines.....OH MY

HOME IMPROVEMENT WEEK....WHAT????

That's what I first thought cause I don't do major home improvements.
Actually the truth is that I'm not aloud to.
When I do I make things 10 X's worse.....seriously just ask my hubby

If it involves a hammer or screwdriver I just walk away and wait for the hubs to do it

My form of home improvements are cleaning and organizing

*************************************************

SOOOO do any of you have a place where you just throw your mail, school work, coupons, magazines, random papers, etc.?

I DO

and does it ever end up looking like this?


why do I let it get this way???? It really doesn't take much to keep it nice and organized

After cleaning it out it looks like this

looks so much better...all nice and organized
To help me keep it organized I've assigned each tray

TOP: Coupons & Bills
MIDDLE: School Work
BOTTOM: Magazines & Important Papers

**I love this paper tray organizer and you can find it at Ikea and it's inexpensive which is a bonus

HOME IMPROVEMENT WEEK!!!!!!

I have proclaimed this week Home Improvement Week. Everyone is going to do a post about how they improved their homes this week. What I have learned is that it doesn't have to be a huge yard makeover or painting a room. It can be the smallest of things that can improve your home the most. So I hope you enjoy our different views of Home Improvement, and it gets you thinking of what you can do that will help you improve your own homes.

Well as you can see in my description on the "About us" page. I hate to clean my house, so when we were having a themed week I thought of this first. So I made my self a list of things I should do each morning, afternoon, and evening. To be perfectly honest I have yet to do all of the things on the list. But I am working on it.

But like I said, it is the little things that can really improve things. So I cleaned my fridge and my lid drawer (you know how terrible the lid drawer can get when you can't find anything). I open them up now and just smile. It seriously makes my day.
PS: sorry there is no before picture, because I was too embarrassed to show you how bad they were before, just how good they look now.

I also changed the little bulbs in my kitchen and bathroom. What a difference good lighting can do for your house. I changed 9 light bulbs in my kitchen and two in my bathrooms. Talk about a home improvement, we went from 4 working light bulbs in the kitchen to13. It is so much better.

I hope you enjoy our Home Improvement week and hope the others do something a little more amazing for you all.