Birthday and Anniversary Calendar

Last week I received a member’s $10 birthday voucher to spend at Kikki K – a truly divine stationery store with some amazing organising products.  So today I popped in, excited with the prospect of finding a little project to do. I know….. I am crazy.

I ended up buying a birthday and anniversary calendar.  Absolutely perfect.

There are always dates that I struggle to remember or fail to transfer into my new diary or calendar.  There is a constant stream of new additions to the family and friend’s families that I don’t want to forget. This will hopefully be my saviour.

I love that I now will never ‘lose’ an important date, it will just remain on the calendar for future years.  I also plan to include anniversaries of special, yet different, events I don’t want to forget.  I love recalling and putting favourite events in context like,  ”It was 6 years ago we took off to Italy” or “It was 7 years ago today we bought our house”.

After a little session of filling in dates I did know and writing a list of dates I needed to find out,  I hung the calendar in the office on my noticeboard.

I know I will see it everyday here and hopefully I will always be on top of special events.

Taming Loyalty Cards in Your Wallet

It seems like just about every store these days has a loyalty card.  You know what I am talking about….those credit card like annoyances that take up every slot in your wallet.  My wallet was so chock-a-block full of them that I rarely found the one I wanted, which meant I missed out on the points, offers or discounts they provided.

A little while back I showed you how I tamed my coffee loyalty cards in a plastic sleeve.  You can read about that here.

This has served me well with the mostly cardboard cards,  but I had not thought it suitable to apply to plastic cards.  I wanted something  that was robust, easy to flip through and access whilst I completed my transaction at the checkout but had yet to come up with a solution.

It was an amused sales clerk, watching me go through dozens of card slots looking for a particular card, that suggested I put the cards on a key ring .  What a simple, yet brilliant idea!

This morning I gave my wallet a good clean out and gathered up all my loyalty cards.  There was a lot, and that was after a massive cull!

I grabbed the electric drill and a small drill bit and began drilling holes through all the cards.  I leant on a piece of wood to ensure a cleanly drilled hole.  The whole process took only a few minutes. If you have a quality hole punch, it would probably do the trick too.

I threaded the cards onto a key ring that was lying around unused.  It is probably a little small, but it will do until I find a larger one.

I know this will work a treat.  No more hissy fits for me at the checkout! Nothing will slow down this little shopping buff!

Happy 2013 – New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year! I am back on the blogging scene after a holiday break.  I hope you all rang in the new year in style.  Me, I did it in my pjs, fast asleep. A bit pathetic really.

I love this time of the year.  I love the fresh start and hope that each new year brings.  I don’t normally jump on the New Year’s resolutions bandwagon, however  this year I have decided to set in place a few goals which I thought I would share with you.

Use my Organiser  

Over the last few years my use of an organiser has been pathetic.  Somehow I muddled through, but I am keen for a clearer mind this year.

In the past I have created my own organiser, however,  I didn’t love my format. I wasn’t really prepared to spend the time to perfect,  print and compile an organiser for this year.  Instead, after reading some great reviews on the Inner B Mum Organiser, I purchased one.

I love the colour.  That in itself should inspire me to use it.

Prepare for the day ahead

Do you ever go to start your day only to realise the outfit you wanted to wear is unwashed and the kids have no ironed clothes to wear?  There is no fresh bread to make school lunches, or clean lunch boxes to put them in for that matter?  The kitchen looks like a bomb has hit it and there is no way you will have time to rectify it before you must step out for the day?  I have.  A little too often for my liking in 2012.  This year I am going to implement a concrete morning and before bed routine to ensure a smooth running day.  I’ve been mulling over what and when for a few days now and have tried out a few ideas.  I am ready to launch a ‘full attack’ so I will share this with you soon.

Exercise – ‘Me Time’

Just about everyone has a lose weight or exercise resolution and I am no different.  I like the way I feel when I have started off the day with an early morning walk.  I love that the streets are quiet and I can think, reflect and dream for 30 minutes or so.  The alarm is set for 5.30 am each morning and I am making myself go, even if I have had next to no sleep.

Eat Cleanly

Last year I really made an effort to strip as many preservatives and colours out of the family’s diet as I could.  With the amazing Thermomix on my side, the task has been quite easy.  This year I want to also cut back on some other nasties, caffeine, alcohol and SUGAR.

I have been stripping as much sugar as possible from our diets after reading these books,

Before the holiday season and the sugar-laiden sweets tempting us back to the dark side, I think we were all feeling better for kicking our sugar habits.  I really want to give this a real go in 2013.

So there you have it – my resolutions.  I’d love to hear yours.

Study / Craft Room Reveal

Yesterday, I wrote about my decision to convert our playroom back to a study / craft room and the steps I took to complete the room at a fraction of the cost of the cabinetmaker’s quote.  You can read about that here.  Well, today I thought I would show you the completed room and some of the storage solutions I have put in place.

There were two essential things this room needed – lots of compartmentalized storage, and lots of bench space.

I love the Ikea Expedit units, so I used these as a basis for the design.  I purchased 4 of the 4 cube units to sit under the benchtop on one wall, and cut one down to suit the width of the room.  I chose not to have these attached to the each other, the wall or the benchtop so that I have the flexibility in the future to remove these if I wish.  I got the builder to put timber moulding in the gap between the units and the benchtop though, to give the impression they were built in.

I wanted the room to look neat and to maximise the storage capability, so I purchased Lekman boxes to fill the units.  To help keep track of where everything is stowed, I created little tags which I have attached to the fronts with string.

The benchtops I purchased from our local hardware store were meant for a kitchen or laundry, but are perfect for this set up.  I got the builder to cut them to the size and attach them to the wall.

The empty benchtop above the Expedit units has given me a new space to craft.  For the moment, most of my supplies are comfortably stored in the boxes below.  Should I decide on some benchtop or wall storage of my most  used items, there is heaps room to do this.

At one end of this bench I have set up a paperwork and mail station.  I attached two lots of Kvissle newspaper racks from Ikea to the wall to help corral the family’s paperwork.

At the other end of the bench, I have used a large vase to store my wrapping paper.  I was forever throwing out wrapping paper as it would get squished in the cupboard.

The benchtop on the other wall is for ‘office’ work.  There is heap of room for my computer and printer with lots of bench left spare to do paper work.

I have neatened up my cables and stationery bits and pieces with other items from Ikea’s Kvissle range.  You can see what nifty pieces they sell here.

Above this bench, I have attached two huge floating shelves to store books, everyday files and some nick nacks.

On the other side of the room, I have decided to keep it all pretty simple.  We have some lovely big windows that let in the light, so I didn’t want to obstruct that.

I purchased the red chair from Freedom, so we still had a place to sit and read in the room.

On the day I found the chair, my husband fell in love with the big lighthouse print, so it came home with us too.

I am loving the new study / craft room.  I feel I can get more done in this calmer, less cluttered environment. I did wonder whether the boys would miss having a room almost all devoted to their play, but the shake up has been  great in more ways than one.  I will share that with you soon.

 

Study and Craft Room Creation

For a small and relatively new house, ours seems to undergo an awful lot of change and renovation.  It feels like there is always a project on the go, or is that because it takes us forever to complete something?

Last year we decided to convert our very under-used study into a playroom/office to help clear some of the toys from the living areas.   You can get more details about that here and here, but these are a few pics of what it used to look like.

 

It was a great idea and it worked quite well until maternity leave meant I had more time for blogging and crafting.   I needed more desk space and we all needed more storage space.

Taking the bull by the horns, the kid’s rooms were rearranged to include the toy storage that once lived in the playroom.  I then spent a long time looking at pictures for inspiration and eventually came up with a plan for the room.  It was going to be clean and quite simple with oodles of bench space.

I had a few cabinet makers come out to quote the job and what I wanted was going to cost between $6000-$10,000.  That pricing was ridiculous.  I think the job was too small for them and they were quoting to make it worth their while.

Not one to give up or pay too much for anything, I started to work out a solution.  I sourced all my own materials, bought flat pack storage and got a builder to install what I couldn’t do myself.

I ended up with almost exactly what I wanted for a fraction of the cost.

Tomorrow, I will show you what we did.  But for the moment take a look at this pic from after the builder left.

Children’s Weekly Planner

I think Master O is a planner.  He always wants to know what everyone’s plans are.  Not a day goes by when he does not ask, “What are we going to do when we wake up in the morning?”

I thought it would be good to create a simple visual planner for his room so that he always knows the answer to his favourite question.

I created a simple weekly calendar in Word and framed it in a Nyttja frame from Ikea.  I also printed pictures of  the activities we do most often, laminated them and cut them into discs.

Using velcro dots I created a way for the activities to be moved around and for discs to pop out nicely from the calendar.

I have attached this frame to the backside of his door and hung the excess activity discs in a little bag attached to his door handle.

At the start of each week we have fun discussing the days of the week and putting up our regular activities like music lessons and daycare on the board.  We then schedule important activities like grocery shopping and appointments for the week.  I then have been negotiating the placement of activities of Master O’s choice, like visiting family or playing in the park.

The whole process has been really positive and I wish I had put together a planner for him sooner.

Christmas Planner

3 months until Christmas!!!!!!

I love the Christmas season.  What I love just as much, is planing  for our Christmas. 

School returning in September marked the start of my Christmas planning.  Each year I would fill dozens of pages with doodles of craft projects, shopping lists, food ideas and promptly lose them, re-draft them, lose them, etcetera, etcetera.   While I had fun daydreaming  and bouncing around with ideas, it mostly ended up being a waste of time.

I contemplated using a planner last year as I followed various bloggers who swore by them,  but pregnancy and a newborn put a stop to that. 

Flash forward to this year and I read Cassadiva’s post on her Christmas planner.  Immediately, organisation and stationery envy was awakened.  Then I saw  Lovely Living’s  free Christmas Planner Printable with the cute owl motif and I was sunk. 

The pages were printed and the planner compiled before I even had time to think about what I was doing.

I love that the whole thing is only A5  size.  It is far from overwhelming and I can easily slip it into my bag when I am out and about over the holiday season.

It has templates for card and gift giving, crafting, baking, menus, traditions and calendars,  just to name a few. Everything to keep me organised!

My hope is that this makes my Christmas  planning more streamlined but keeps the process fun and un-chore like.  I would love to hear  about your experiences of using a Christmas Planner.  Do you find them helpful?

Ticking Off the To- Do List…..& Additives to Avoid Guide

This weekend gone I was really itching to make some progress around the Crooked Household. 

I  made a huge dint in my spring cleaning of the house and garden and I put in place a few organisation strategies to keep me sane as the holiday season approaches.  I’ll be sharing these with you over the next week.

One little, but important, task I completed was creating a ’Additives to Avoid’ guide for me to take shopping.

I have been on a bit of a mission in the last little while to strip back our diet and eat more fresh and unprocessed food.  A big step in that plan was the addition of the Thermomix to the household.  I am now making from scratch a lot of the foods I used to buy or avoid buying because of all their preservatives, colours and other nasty additives.

While the process has been relatively easy so far, there are certain foods and various times where store-bought will be the only option.  In these cases, I want to avoid those additive that are known to be harmful, especially for children.

My plan on the weekend was to pool what information I had on undesirable additives into a card to take shopping.  As it turns out, there was no need for a long session at the computer to generate such a document.  I found this fantastic compact shopping guide on  Hopper’s website. 

Not only did I find that, but I now know that Hopper’s sell a huge range of natural food colours and cake decorations.  These are sometimes hard to find.

I fired up my trusty laminating machine and made a few sturdy guides for myself and my family.

I love it when  items on your to-do list virtually tick themselves off!

Storing Children’s Books

I had set up a little reading station for Master O’s in our front room.  You can read about it here.

Our Reading Station

It was well-loved and used – probably too much.  You see, very rarely were the books neatly packed in the bookcase like you see in the picture.  As my son is only 3, he lacks the dexterity to put the books as they are meant to go.  Some go back as they are meant to, others are shoved back every which way, waiting for the opportunity to come toppling out.  So when we decided to do a shuffle of furniture this weekend, I took the opportunity to address this situation.

We decided to remove this small bookcase and replace it with some Ikea Expedit units to give us some more storage.  Initially I was just going to use some of  the shelves in these units  just like a bookcase but as I started to put the books in place I cringed, thinking of the mess they would be in by day’s end.

Taking a break and brainstorming ideas over a coffee, I recalled how my library stores kids’ books.  They have them in partitioned wooden boxes on legs, similar to this one I found on the net.

Super cute, right?  Practical too.  A kid could easily flip through the books and replace them when they were finished.

While I loved this idea and wanted it, I instead had an Ikea Expedit unit.  Adapting the idea, I took some of the Lekman boxes we had purchased to go in the Expedit unit.  I sorted through our books and broke them into categories and stood them up in the boxes.  I made sure that I didn’t overfill the boxes so there was plenty of room to flip through the books.

Easy Flipping

Seasonal Books

All done!

I also used this idea in Master O’s room.

Toy Storage

Reading seat to go here

I had moved these Trofast units filled with his toys into his bedroom a little while ago.  His little brother had been raiding, sucking on and trying to swallow his toys when these units sat in the playroom.  I had been wanting to make the middle section into a seat with a chair pad and cushions.  I had pictured him reading here and had used the sections below it as bookcases for his favourite bedtime books.  They too got messy.  Pulling out the Trofast boxes I had in storage, I packed the books away neatly with the hope that my kids’ bookcase cleaning days were over.

Master O’s favourite books in easy reach

I’m giving this system a few weeks trial to see if it works.  I will let you know how it goes.  In the mean time, I  would love to hear how you store your kid’s books.

Linking up with some of these fun parties
Monday: Singing Three Little Birdies, I should be Mopping the Floor, Polly Want a Crafter?, Cherished Bliss, The Gunny Sack, Skip to my Lou, Craftomaniac, It’s so Very Cheri, Keeping it Simple, Creating Really Awesome Free Things, Alderberry Hill, Its A Blog Party, A Pinch of Joy, Making the World Cuter, Mad in Crafts,  Sew Can Do, Sugar Bee Crafts, Tip Junkie, New Nostalgia, Ladybug Blessings,  How to Nest for Less, Watch Out Martha, Clairjustinexoxo,

Tuesday: Coastal Charm, Today’s Creative Blog, Not Just a Housewife, A Bowl Full of Lemons , DIY by Design, Funky Polkadot Giraffe, Home Stories A to Z, Hope Studios, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Organising Homelife,  Carolyn’s Homework, The Blackberry Vine, The Kurtz Corner,  A Little Tipsy, Gingersnap crafts, Time Warp Wife, These Creative Juices, The Thrifty Home, Its a Very Cherry World,  Cornerstone Confessions,   Rae Gun Ramblings, Northern Cottage, Clean and Scentsible, Creatively Living , Kathe with an E, Ivy and Elephants, Romance on a Dime,   The Real Housewives of Riverton, DIY Dreamer,  Primp, JAQS Studio, 

Wednesday: Oopsey Daisy, My Girlish Whims, Uncommonly Yours, Creations by Kara, Raising Homemakers, The Thrifty Home, Twin Dragonfly Designs, A Creative Princess, Sugar and Dots, Seven Thirty Three, Fabric Bows and More, Someday Crafts, Handy Man, Crafty Woman, Trendy Treehouse, Women Living Well, We are that Family, The Mommy Club , Raising Homemakers, Sew Much Ado,t Simple,  Fireflies and Jellybeans, Beyond the Picket Fence, Free Pretty Things for You, DIY by Design, Bloom Designs, Mom on Timeout, We Like to learn as we Go,  Family Home and Life, Savvy Southern Style, Fine Craft Guild, Embracing Change, HandyMan, Crafty Woman, Polkadots on Parade, No Minimalist Here

Thursday: House of Hepworths Delightful Order, Its a Keeper,  The Frugal Girls, The 36th Avenue,  Thrifty 101, A Glimpse Inside, Brambleberry Cottage, Bear Rabbit Bear, Michelle’s Tasty Creations and Crafty Ideas, Shabby Creek Cottage, Goings on in Texas, Happy Go Lucky,  Raising Oranges,  The Answer is Chocolate, The Taylor House, Crafty Scrappy Happy, Imparting Grace, Made in a Day, 52 Mantels, Loving This Crazy Life, Days of Chalk and Chocolate, Confessions of an ADD Housewife

Friday: The Shabby Nest, Chic on a Shoestring Decorating, At the Picket Fence, Whipperberry, French Country Cottage, Thirty Handmade Days, Creation Corner, Finding Fabulous, Stuff and Nonsense, Fingerprints on the Fridge Naptime Crafters, While He Was Napping, My Romantic Home, Bacon Time With the Hungry, Hungry Hippo, Kitchen Fun With My Three Sons, Remodelaholic, Happy Hour Projects, Simply Designing, Simply Sweet Home, Tidy Mom,  Young and Crafty, Serenity Now , Life as Mom, At the Picket Fence, Tatertots and Jello, Craft Junkie Too, A Little Knick Knack, Blissful and Domestic, Maiden D’Shade, Petites Passions, Bubbly Nature Creations, Here Comes the Sun, Liz Marie Blog, THe Grant Life, Craftionary, Redoux Interior, Common Ground, Just Us Four, Delicate Construction, AKA Designs, Family Ever After,

Saturday:  Be Different Act Normal, The Girl Creative , Funky Junk Interiors , A Vision to Remember, Positively Splendid , Its Overflowing, Natasha in Oz, Shaken Together, Homemaker in Heels, Addicted to Decorating

Sunday: A Rosie Sweet Home, I Heart Naptime, Under the Table Dreaming, DIY Showoff, Nifty Thrift Things, Sumo’s Sweet Stuff, Homemaker on a Dime, DIY Home Sweet Home,  Cherished Treasures, My 1929 Charmer

Organising Recipes

Some time ago I told you about the clean up and reorganisation of my hall cupboard.  One of the things I found frustrating about this clean up was organising my recipes that were stored in there.  Not having the time or the know-how, I had to leave the project of organising them to another day.  After taking on board some of my reader’s ideas and many a long night, I have finally sorted through the hundreds of magazine clippings and have my recipes under control.  Before I share with you my new organisation,  lets see what it once looked like….

The magazine holders were holding LOTS of magazine recipe clippings.  At the end of last year, heavily pregnant I trolled through about 3 years worth of recipe magazine subscriptions and cut out recipes of interest with the intention of organising things but that job was so mountainous, I gave up once all the magazines were picked through.

So reinvigorated, I went through all of the recipes again, culling heaps.  If they had hard to source ingredients, or too many steps, they were gone.  As I went, I sorted them into categories like chicken, seafood and desserts.

Grabbing a whole wad of paper and a glue stick I was just about to stick them all together like jigsaw pieces when I had a realisation.  Most of the magazines I had collected recipes from, compile their recipes on the website, taste.com.au.

I have written before about my love of this site.  Most of the recipes are reviewed and the comments left by others are often helpful in gauging difficulties with the recipe or provide suggestions for changes.   This was helpful in the culling process too, as some of the recipes I intended to pin did have poor reviews.  However, more often than not, Taste had links to similar recipes with fantastic reviews.

The other ‘rouge’ recipe cutouts were mostly out there on the net too – with the original pictures I had found so appealing but had not cut out of the magazines or newspapers.  So given these were so readily available on the net, I was not going to spend hours gluing together pictureless recipes to probably not use because they were hard to find or index.  I was going to use my latest love - Pinterest!

For those of you unaware of the wonderful world of Pinterest, it is virtual pinboard.  It allows you to store, sort and share things you love on the net.  To use this medium to sort my recipes made so much sense.  I take my Ipad so many places so most of my recipes would always be at my fingertips.

Jumping on the net I looked for each of the recipes I had found in magazines and pinned them to category boards.

I love that I have these stored here as I am always stumbling on pin-worthy recipes on my favourite blogs.

After doing this I was still left with a number of cutouts.  I decided that I would glue these onto paper, divided into the categories I had used for my Pinterest boards.   I then put these in a ring binder and separated them into their categories with dividers.

I re-evaluated the recipe books I owned and any that I was unlikely to use, I gave to charity.  While I flipped through the books I took the time to tag recipes I have used or really love with sticky tabs.  This way they will be easy to find.

With everything back in the cupboard, you can see how much of an improvement this organisation project has made.

Not only is its heaps neater, I think it will be much more user-friendly.