Pinteresting Idea

Are you on Pinterest?


Do you love it or hate it?


Most people I know love it, but hate that they can get lost in there for hours. My hand is raised.


(You can look over my pinboards here if you are interested.)


Sometimes I look for long periods of time and do nothing but sit and munch on cookies while I pin, but once in a while, I see a pin which makes me spring into action. hooray!


Unfortunately, the pin I am referring to today had no link attached, so I will not repost it. (I know most of us get pretty upset by that.) Instead, I will show you what I did after I saw the pin.


Let's start at the beginning for those who are just joining us. 


I have 4 kids. 3 of them are boys. Messy boys. They all share one bathroom...and one "dental care" drawer (for lack of a better descriptor). The drawer was always chaos...and there was probably some germ-swapping going on when those toothbrushes were intermingling in that mess. yuck! They subscribed to the "dump and run" method of organization for lack of a better solution.


So I offered them a better solution:

This is simply a Dollar Store silverware organizer that I wrote on with Sharpie markers. Not fancy, but oh, so neat and tidy. And believe it or not, I did not have to straighten the drawer (much) before I took this shot, months after doing this project.  Now I can actually see that ancient contact paper we inherited (I recovered the drawers, with a lesser product (apparently) and it didn't stick.) 


This bathroom is scheduled for some DIY love this summer and I can't wait!


Since I'm all out of parenthetical comments, (yeah right!) I'm signing off for today.




What tricks do you use for keeping your family organized?

Three Out of Four

As promised, I am posting number 3 out of 4 of the portraits...actually kid 2 out of 4, but whatever...

I always get the best "eyes" out of this one.

And although, he looks rather angelic in that first one, here is the one I am tempted to hang on the wall. 

THIS is his personality.

What do you like to hang? Personality or Portrait? Maybe both?

More Valentine Ideas

The Princess and I made several versions of her Valentine until we found just the right one (s). 

I thought I'd share them with you even though I didn't think to save them as "printables". 

If you are familiar with picnik, you should be able to recreate these pretty easily 

using a picture of your own sweetie.

We came up with the idea of putting a piece of candy right on the Valentine, 

so we looked all over the blogs and in Pinterest for inspiration. 

 We chose to glue a chocolate heart right over the "heart" on the card...so we made a little play on words. We're funny, no?

Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph that for you, but you get the idea.

The chocolate thing was a little trickier than we anticipated...

TIP: if you decide to glue heavy candy onto paper, make sure you use some pretty thick cardstock. 

We played around with design shapes and styles until we found one that worked best for her. 

In the end, we decided to personalize each valentine with each child's name.

I just made them 4x6" and printed them at WalMart (I'm a big fan of "easy".), though you could print your own or use a paper cutter to create an odd shape, such as a square.

I even let her pick most of the colors as we made them. I tried not to steer too hard...gosh that's hard for me!

She was really excited about handing these out at the party on Friday. Of course, we parents stress over centering and color and all the details, but in the end, if you kid is happy, that's what matters. 

Happy Valentine's Day.

And remember, on Valentine's Day and every other day: Tell those you love that you do.

Valentine

New Pics

I don't really have the time to blog these days (a good thing!) but I need a place to post some pictures. I find I am less inclined to keep snapping now that I am not posting them. Facebook destroys my pictures (I have tried the actions...I guess I am not good at them, because they only help a little.)

Anyway, I'm going to put up some pictures and maybe a thing or two. I doubt I will have time to do any blog-hopping, so please know that if you comment, I may not be commenting back. But I do see a lot of your posts on Pinterest! :)



January 2012


Kids Portraits:
(only 2 so far)