Organizing My Girls' Hair Bows ~ PINspiration Blog Hop

I am so excited the PINspiration Blog Hop hosted by Disney Living is back up and running!  Pinterest is a place I have really found so much inspiration from crafts to exercise to holiday decorations and so much more.  I love having a place to share some of the things I have found and created!  You can find all my boards from Disney to crafts to recipes and more at Pinterest/BethDoda

I have recently been on an organization kick.  I am not sure why all of sudden I feel the urge to get all this done, but for whatever reason, I have!  My number one place to find organization ideas that do not necessarily cost a lot has been Pinterest.  I have created a board of all the organization ideas I have found, many of which I react with, "Why didn't I think of that?"  I especially love when I find an idea that uses things I already have around the house.

That's right, they even wear bows when we are all dressed
to watch a Patriots game!

Getting Organized ~ Using Your Cricut to Label Your Totes

Joey's Totes Labelled for His Toys
Cricut Cartridge Used ~ Mickey Font

This year, I discovered how to cut vinyl with my Cricut machine.  I since have become a labeling machine, especially when it comes to my children's toy totes.  In order to cut vinyl, you do need to purchase the Deep Cut Blade Housing (this comes with the needed blade).  You also need to purchase the sheets of vinyl, which, for the Cricut brand,comes in several colors:

• Billiard (green)
• Burnt Umber
• Chocolate
• Cotton
• Dark Blue
• Gray
• Ice Blue
• Latte
• Light Brown
• Lime Green
• Peacock Blue
• Raven
• Rose Pink
• Ruby Red
• Yellow

A Tote Tip for Getting Organized in 2012

This is about 1/10 of the number of totes we have!

As we start to put away all the new things that Santa and family members have given to our kids, I am always looking for ways to keep their toys organized, yet have them easily accessible when they want to play with them.  I actually purchase totes for each type of toy for the kids' rooms.  This has become a great way to keep things organized, but yet have all the pieces they need to play something all in one place.  Totes can become a very expensive investment, but I was given some advice by one of the associates at our local Wal-Mart.

I had been looking for totes to organize my scrapbooking paper.  There was only one left of the particular type I was looking for. When I asked an associate when they would be restocking the totes, she gave me the best advice.  She said that if you go to Wal-Mart.com, you can order totes by the case.  Not only can you get multiples of the same size, but they have never been opened.  This means that they won't be dusty and scraped up from sitting on the store shelves.  She also added that by purchasing them by the case, they are much cheaper than buying them in the store.

I raced home to see just what they had online.  I was quite excited that the online selection was of course much more diverse than in store.  On the particular item I was purchasing, I saved $1.50 per tote purchasing it online instead of in the store.  Even better, I used the "Site to Store" option, meaning as soon as they were in, Wal-Mart e-mailed me my pick up slip.  I drove to Wal-Mart and picked up my totes, which meant no shipping costs.  I used this method for the kids' toy totes too, which I bought by the case.  The particular type I purchased had six to a case.

In the end, I probably won't need to buy any more cases that include six of a particular size, but it is definitely a cost effective way to get started with your organization if you are looking to purchase totes.

How do you keep your kids' toys organized?

Make sure you check in tomorrow to see how I use my Cricut machine for come quick and easy labels for our totes!

Dressing Up is Now Easy to Do

Both my girls love to dress up in their princess dresses, jewelry, hats and shoes.  Unfortunately, we had collected so many things over the years, that our dress up bucket was overflowing.  The girls could never find what they were looking for, or if they did find something, half the contents of the tote fell out onto the floor as they were trying to pull it out to wear it.  Finally after about 3 days of having our computer room floor covered with fairy wings, dresses and countless plastic necklaces, I had enough.  The girls and I made out way to WalMart yesterday and made some purchases to better organize our dress up area. 

Getting Organized ~ I Finally Have a Craft Area!

As I started to organize all my scrapbooking materials, I realized that the number one thing I need to do before getting started is create a working craft area.  Before now, basically, my materials were piled on a table in our computer room.  Though the table is designated for my crafts, it is normally covered in mail, laundry, toys and whatever else isn't in its normal spot.  So last night I cleaned it off and got organized!

The best thing I found in this house to use was an item I have been cursing since I bought it.  When my daughter Hayley was just a toddler, we decided that the perfect addition to her Disney Princess themed room would be the Disney Princess toy organizer.  It has three shelves and nine showbox sized buckets you place on the shelves.  What a perfect way to organize toys, right?  Not quite.  Whoever invented these, obviously, had no children.  The concept is wonderful, but the reality is these should be called "How Fast After Mommy Organizes the Toys Can I Dump Them Out."  Ok, not a practical name, but really the only thing this was used for was dumping the toys out and me explaining yet again how to put the toys in.  Let's just say, this "organizer" lasted about a week in my daughter's room before I gave up and purchased totes with lids that only I could open!   But everything happens for a reason, and it is now the perfect addition to my craft area.  The nine buckets with no lids make it very easy for me to get to my materials quickly.  Plus, I can see exactly what I have all at once.  There is even space underneath for my paper trimmers that lay flat.  Even better, as you know, I am a Disney fanatic and having the Disney Princesses decorating my craft area is quite nice.

I also wanted to share my tip about the paper trays I have (the white totes with three drawers).  I purchased these months ago, because I made a classic rookie scrapbooking mistake - I have purchased more paper than I probably could use in a lifetime.  I swear that aisle at the craft store just sucks me in.  There are so many great papers out there I can't resist!  These trays have come in quite handy.  I have organized my paper by color, with other drawers dedicated solely to Disney paper, holiday paper, and patterned paper.  But when I was looking for something like this, I went to all the craft stores and they were just too expensive, even with coupons.  So I checked out our local WalMart.  The totes were pretty dusty and beaten up and there was only one.  I was looking for at least three.  I asked the WalMart employee about when they would get more and she gave some of the best advice.  She said to go online and order the totes from there and have them shipped Site to Store so I'd get free shipping.  Plus, she said that they come in their original packing, so there is no dust or dings in them.  I raced home and to my surprise, not only did they have them online, but they were cheaper than they were in the store! 

So now I have no excuse to not get some crafts done around here!  As you may have read in my post Disney Scrapbooks ~ Here I Come!, my first project will be finishing my 2006 Disney Trip scrapbook, which is nearly complete.  I look forward to testing out my newly organized space!

How do you organize your materials?  Feel free to share a link or comment below with your best tips for oragnizing your craft space!

Organizing My Recipes

My Recipe Collection

Over the last year, I have been working on one major project.  Now when I say a year, I don't mean I've worked on it everyday, but something I have worked on at night when the kids go to bed or when I have a moment here and there to do something.  As you may have read in my previous post, A New Recipe ~ Blueberry Almond Buckle, I am a self taught cook.  I am always trying new recipes and actually taught myself some cooking skills by watching the Food Network and using Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meal cookbooks.  But what I found was that I would try a new recipe, love it and then could never figure out which cookbook it was in.  Since I make a menu every Sunday night, along with a grocery list, this made it very time consuming to look through all my cookbooks and attempt to find the recipes we liked.  I needed a way to save myself some time.

As a result, I decided I would start typing in every recipe we tried and print them out.  Of course, it had been years of trying recipes, and no joke, over a hundred cookbooks, but I started searching for the recipes I knew we had tried and loved.  I used small post-its to mark each of the recipes I wanted to type in.  Once I had gone through every single cookbook, I started typing.  A year later, I think I have every single recipe I have tried typed up and organized into binders - I had so many I needed two binders!  I sorted them by type of recipe and then alphabetized them.  The best part is I used the plastic sleeves for each recipe, so I do not have to worry about ruining them when I cook.  They are easy to wipe off.  Some of the recipes, especially ones I found in magazines, I could just print from the website, such as from Hannaford, Kraft, and Food Network.  The great part about some of these is that they sometimes include photos of the recipes.  Maybe one day I'll add photos of my own to the recipes I typed, but for now I'll stick with just the recipes - that is a project for another day!

Now when I make my menu on Sunday nights, I can quickly search my binder and have them at my fingertips.  Besides, now when someone asks for one of my recipes, I can easily e-mail it or print it out since I have them all on my computer.  Even better, since I am caught up, when we try another new recipe, it is much easier to type up one at a time, than trying to sit and type 10 to 20 at a time!