Rock 'Em Sock 'Em

How is everybody? I'm tuckered out. I was going to try and post some of my Halloween creations but have been doing three loads of laundry this weekend. Here is a nifty organizational aid for doing laundry instead. I'll just have to do a cram session of Halloween decor before the big day gets here which is only a week away! 

Oh I detest laundry! I don't really like any part of it and I am one of those who will turn the dryer back on a couple of times to "fluff" what is in the dryer just so I don't have to fold it. Oops did I actually just admit this?? Folding laundry and matching up socks are just miserable to me. Ha. Matching socks seems to be worse though. Sooooooo - I bought ALL new socks for the kiddos. I got completely different socks for each child to help tell them apart. For sanity's sake and as a time saver, I found these garment bags BELOW at Wally World AKA Wal-Mart in the laundry gadgets section for about $0.87 a piece. I think they were meant for other kinds of undergarments but hey, they work.  

"You gotta'keep'em separated" (Remember that song by The Offspring?!)! In all seriousness it cuts time to separate the socks into separate bags before washing. It makes the end of the process smoother. Less time, less fuss = thumbs up! I will never LOVE doing laundry but this at least helps. Have a great week and I can't wait to see what spooky things people are coming up with!

Bad Dye Job- Don't Quit Your Day Job!

Hello fellow decor friends! How are yous guys (and yes, I meant to say "yous") Things have been busy around here trying to keep up with every day things and trying to fit in some decoration projects. If we could afford to hire a maid for regular house dusting and bathroom scrub downs to help with some of the chores around here, that would be awesome but I think I'll have to keep on dreaming! I've been busy working on Halloween decorations but have been meaning to post this failed attempt at dyeing a night light lamp shade. I totally ruined a perfect little night light lamp shade. Leave it to me. So here it is!

I love the way mod-styled lamp shades have trim work in a solid color. I tried to use ribbon but struggled getting the ribbon just right. I thought it would be cool to dye just the top and bottom border of the lamp shade. I thought this would solve my problem of not being able to get ribbon where I wanted it. NOT!

I picked up some fabric dye and the color, so I thought, was supposed to be more of an olive green so that was one of the first fails! I made up a bowl of dye and dipped the lamp shade into it so that the shade was very level to get a nice even border of green. You can see for yourself that the dye ran and it just wasn't as crisp and fresh looking as I had hoped. 

Oh well! What kinds of projects have you tried that were total flops?

Mommy To Do List

Oh my gosh my heart is racing. I'm typing while watching the first episode of  this season's The Walking Dead. The host of Talking Dead, the after show, just took the words right out of my mouth. Holy SHITE!!!

So how was your weekend?!?! HeeeHeeee. I've been waiting for this show to start back and boy did it! As my fellow mom friends know, we are always doing more than one thing at a time. I wanted to see this show so badly that I actually ate my dinner standing up in the kitchen, doing dishes while watching the first part of it. I usually can't eat during anything gory!

My weekend was pretty B-U-S-Y. Full of sick boys from the husband all the way down to the little pooty tat. Last weekend was an awesome kid-less weekend at the beach with two girlfriends so this weekend was mostly catching up on things and I don't think I'll ever really be caught up on anything! Is anybody else with me on that? So here is the latest and greatest To Do list to try and help myself keep it together. I have a different one at work but this is the daily one for the week at home. My new little obsession is self-sealing laminating pouches and I found them pretty useful here.

I typed up a Morning and Evening list of items to hang on the fridge as a friendly reminder to self. I used Self-Sealing Laminating Pouches to laminate the page and I did it on an 8 1/2" X 11"  page. I used a cute font and used boxes so I could easily mark them off with a dry erase marker. With a child in school now, I cannot forget lunches. As you can see, I still have a lot to do before I go to bed so I need to bolt.
 

On a side note I made these bubble magnets and did a tutorial a couple of years ago. The magnet to the top right is quite fitting, dontcha think? It's pretty special to me because it's one I made for my grandfather and his late wife who is near and dear to my heart. This is a saying they used to say and it caught me off guard the first time I heard my grandfather's wife say it. I about fell out of my chair in laughter! Like everyone in the family, she had an awesome sense of humor.

Since I still have quite a bit left to do tonight,  I am signing off. Nighty night!

Decorating With Candy Corn

BOO! Did I scare you? So how was your weekend? Hopefully good! I did my yard sale on Saturday and I said this once and I'm going to say it again - NEVER AGAIN! ha ha. I'll probably eat my words again but it was a total bust and so much work for not much payoff! I made three signs to advertise, and after the whole thing was said and done, someone had removed my most important sign that pointed in the direction to our street. Boo Hoo! Don't make me cry!

So here's a quick Halloween decoration that is super cheap!

I bought a bag of candy corn at CVS for 88 or 81 cents, well under a dollar. I had some baby food jars leftover from months ago that I spray painted the lids with a "pewter" spray paint.I decided to pull out the CRICUT and cut out the word B-O-O. So I did. I used black self adhesive vinyl and used the BIRTHDAY BASH cartridge and cut out the letters in about a 1" font.

I stuck those puppies on and here you have it. You can line up your cute little jars or stack 'em up! Have fun with it! My son had a ball filling the jars! 

I'll be sharing my Halloween mantel as soon as I get the chance. Can't wait to show you how it turned out! Have a great Monday!

How The Bag Lady Organizes Paper

How was your weekend? Hopefully good and hopefully you got to do something fun! I spent time Saturday cleaning our kitchen table. For all you moms out there I know you get this or at least I hope I'm not alone, but I had to take the razor to the kitchen table and chairs and do some SCRAPING. So totally disgusting but so necessary. It's just one more thing that makes mom's job a dirty one!

No matter how much I clean up after the kids, the table and chairs get so grimy! EEWWWWWW period! (exclamation point) You get it. I know you do. Oh and my child went to two birthday parties and the one today, I think, went to his head a little. It was a "Jedi training" party and afterwards he kept telling me that he was using the "force" on his brother when his brother would fuss or fall down or something. Brotherly love!

Anyhow here is a small project that has made a difference in some of my paper clutter. Every little bit helps, am I right? It was so simple but has made a tremendous difference and that makes me especially happy. :)

I am an avid couponer and try and swap with friends and I save all receipts until they go through at the bank. Instead of letting things pile up all over the place, I keep these two bags hung on a wall rack. They stay there collecting coupons to be swapped and papers to be shredded. When it's time to take them to work or an office store to shred, then I'll carry the paper in grocery bags. These have really helped me stay more organized. 

For this little project you can pick up bags at a craft store. I got mine at Hobby Lobby. You also need to get iron on letters. You simply use an iron on the dry setting and follow the directions on the packaging. It'll tell you how long to hold the iron over the letters.

It's funny how the simplest things can make such an impact on organization and routines. What way works best for you in organizing? What kinds of things do you do?

 

Candy Corn Time

I like CANDY and I like CORN but I'm not a big fan of candy corn. It's almost October though and I thought this would be fun to try. Here's how I saved this "fail" project! ;)

My "save" below which I think turned out nicely. 

My sad attempt of candy corns below.
I used Styrofoam cones and plaster of Paris. I used small cones and cut them down with a knife to give them a flatter shape. I mixed up the plaster and from the get go I had trouble with the consistency. I followed the directions but it was too soupy. I still spread the cones with the plaster and let it set for 24 hours. I wet sanded them and it was hard, REALLY HARD so I quit and one cone looks like that one character on Yo Gabba Gabba with all its lumps. The poor thing.

I had the most success with this one below. I used acrylic paints and probably should have made the orange stripes a little wider. Oops.

I wasn't completely thrilled with the result and I found this adorable idea of using yarn by Thrifty Decor Chick and thought I'd give it a whirl! I picked up yarn that was on sale and got more muted shades of the orange and yellow but I think it works. It gives it a more rustic look. All I did was wrap the Styrofoam cones until they were covered. If you want a workout for your arms, try this craft. 


What are you doing to get in the Fall spirit?

One Organized Attic

Giddy is me! I'm very sore but excited to reveal our clean and organized attic. I have spent the past two days cleaning and reorganizing our attic and man was it a workout! Guess it was all the kneeling, squatting, crawling and lifting that did it to me. It was a project that was a looooooong time coming and now that it's done and I am so pleased with it! There is actually floor space and room to move around in there! High five to all! Booyah! Hah if you saw the BEFORE pictures you might be a tad impressed because it was, eh um - atrocious!  I was too embarrassed to share the filth and chaos before I started. 

To give you an idea; you could step into the attic but you couldn't move anywhere. These rubbbermaid boxes were unlabeled, tossed and stacked and there was junk everywhere. There was just no rhyme or reason to the organization whatsoever. We moved into this house when I was nine months pregnant with the first child (several years ago) and ever since we've lived here it feels like we have been trying to just get by. Little by little we're getting there.

Don't you just love the neat and organized Rubbermaid tubs?!?! I do. These are the types of things that give me great feelings of accomplishment! This room was a total disaster and I slowly and very carefully found a place for each item we decided to keep. I started prepping for this overwhelming undertaking a week ago by going through kid's closets to sort and weed through their clothes to update their closets by size and season. Thank heavens for my mother who helped me do that. It's hard to get much done with munchkins who want to "help" Mommy do everything. The dining room table is currently covered with clothes and misc items to sell in a garage sale. 

Night before last I went to town organizing. I pulled all cardboard boxes out of the attic that we didn't need and made a pile to take to the recycling center. I can mark that off my list because I visited recycling today!

I really tried to work with the space, feel the space and move things around to make better sense of how it's used for storage. I thought it might work to pull all the Rubbermaid tubs out and line them up one by one that way there would be no lifting and moving them around. I labeled each storage container on the lid and on the side exposed so you can make out what the contents is in each box.  

Pretty sweet! I grouped all objects and items and put them in the best possible locations as far as size and room. I flipped up my large scale paintings so they took less room. The luggage is near the door for easy access. I tried to organize things in the attic where they made the most sense.

As for the countless bins I used my label maker and put two labels on each bin, one on top and one on the side so they're easy to find. Half the bins hold children's clothing so I grouped the bins by size and put the nearest closest to the door so I can locate better.

It feels like a weight has been lifted now that the attic is organized and clean. I even took the broom to it this time! A big YAY! What does your attic look like? How do you organize yours? It's the one room you don't see in most people's homes but man does it drive me crazy in our house, well not anymore. ;)

Piling Up

Oh the piles! Tis the season for decking the house out and I'm already cluttering before getting started! It never fails that there are ALWAYS piles of things taking over rooms in our house! GRRRRR! These are bins from the attic and they are all children's clothes. I spent one day last weekend sorting and organizing hand me downs from one child to the next. They keep outgrowing everything so it feels like a constant cycle of changing out their clothes.

 

Next it's cleaning out the attic and fixing it up in an organized fashion. This means another yard sale even though I just did one in the Spring! We have way too much stuff and for sanity's sake I have to weed and get rid of things. Between sorting and organizing to put things back in the attic I'm making piles of things that we don't use to sell. The neighborhood isn't doing a Fall sale so I've got to get a permit and advertise on my own. Wish me luck! I have bags of toys and things scattered through the house to sell which will make this pile grow for the next couple of weeks. For sanity's sake I am on a mission to declutter yet again! Yee haw!

What are you doing to organize and declutter? 

Scraptastic! Scrap Fabric!

Hooray now that Monday is under our belts! What have you been up to? We just survived a chaotic yet fun child's birthday party over the weekend! I've gotten a head start on some holiday decor but it's all still in progress so I wanted to share a small project I completed.

Last week I made this cute fabric bubble wreath made out of a microfiber type of cloth left over from my bench pad. The wreath is kinda cute! I like how it turned out. 

All you need is a straw wreath, a few yards of fabric, scissors and straight pins.

Picture Tutorial

Cut fabric in 3 or 4 inch squares. I didn't cut mine all the same size and did make some rectangles instead of squares.  

I've used different fabric for the tutorial because I gave the wreath to my mom and didn't take pictures as I went along.

Fold the fabric square in half to make a triangle.

Fold one corner of the triangle over the middle corner.

Next you fold the left corner down to the bottom point where the fabric meets on either side to make a "bubble". This is a bird's eye view.

Flip the fabric upside down and push a pin through the point where all the corners meet so it goes through all pieces of the fabric.

Pin it into the wreath and it forms a puffy "bubble" type shape. Continue this all over the wreath covering the pins and you'll have yourself a really cute handmade wreath!

It's super simple and you can do this while watching tv or something!

Skulls And Bones, Well Sorta!

WHAZZUP?!?! How's everybody doing? Is anybody else getting excited about Halloween this year? I can't wait. I'm working on the kid's costumes and yikes, I have to find the pieces I purchased after Halloween last year. They are prolly buried in a bin somewhere in the attic. That is one room that I don't want to step foot in but really need to clean out. I plan to clean out the attic once it starts cooling off. You should see our attic. Well, no. You shouldn't! Talk about SCARY! Ok no more tangents I promise. On to the scary Halloween Decor!

Sooooo - Say Bye Bye to Cool Blue Sea Shells and HELLO Ugly, Gruesome Ones!

On our vacation at the beach we saw a lot of gross looking shells. I was very excited to find part of a sand dollar but these things below were scattered all along the shore. As I walked studying them I thought they resembled bones. They looked like creepy skeletal parts. I did some research to try and figure out what they are called and couldn't find them. They may be crustaceans for all I know. If you do happen to know, please do tell!

Usually my son and I are on the hunt for the prettiest shells at the beach but this time we thought it would be fun to look for the ugliest, creepiest looking ones to use for Halloween decorations. 

We cleaned all the shells and placed them in this jar and gently placed a Styrofoam glitter skull ($1.00 at Dollar Tree) on top. It's always great to use what you have to decorate and this project was budget friendly and fun! How appropriate for Halloween! EWWW! Can't wait to see what other people are doing for Halloween this year!