64 ideas to get organized!

Getting organized is one of the most popular New Year's Resolutions. I'm NOT organized, and sometimes I lose hope of ever getting that way.

Pinterest to the rescue, right? I've found dozens of ideas—and I'm implementing several of these right now. What are you doing to get organized in 2013?



Living Rooms & Family Rooms

1. Cubes & baskets



2. Coffee table with drawers









5. Bins below a side table



Craft areas

6. Hidden table storage



7. Fabric storage


8. Kids' craft area


9. Fun crafty area


10. Craft room (By our own Brooke!)


11. Shoe organizers



12. Creative ideas


13. Getting rid of clutter


Play rooms & toys

14. Book storage & more


15. Display cars


16. Chalkboard wall!



17. Bins & boxes

18. Entertainment center 


19.


20. Fireplace & shelves


Bedrooms

21. Cube & bin window seat



Entertainment

22. Remote rack
Source: bhg.com via Mary on Pinterest


23. DVD files


24. DVD binders


25. DVDs, game systems & games


Clothing & closets

26. Baby clothes dividers (By our own Brooke!)

27. Vertical drawer organization


28. Hanging organizer + clothes planner



29. Organized coat closet


30. Store linen sets in their pillowcases


31. 


32. Child closet organizer



Dining room

33. Sideboard organizer


 34. Organized plate display


Kitchen, fridge & pantry

35. Vinyl labeled canisters (By our own Brooke!)

36. Baking dish organization


37. More baking dish organization


38.
 


39.

40. Kitchen counter organization


41. Organized pantry goods

42. Organized pantry

43. Fridge organization



44. Fridge organization

 45. Peg-board pots & pans



Bath & beauty

46. Bathroom apothecary jars (By our own Jaime!)

47. Dozens of small bathroom organization ideas

48. Above-the-door shelf

49. Under the sink organization

50. Bathroom drawers

51.

52. Personalized hooks


53. Jewelry pin board (By our own Jaime!)

54. Rake jewelry organizer & other creative ideas
Office

55. Small office organization
Source: houzz.com via Grazia on Pinterest

56. Kitchen office space
Source: bhg.com via Annmaria on Pinterest

57. Office supplies organized
Source: flickr.com via Amanda on Pinterest


Home, paper & mail

58. Command center (By me!)

59. 


60. 


Cleaning supplies & routines

61. Under the sink storage
Source: bhg.com via Esther on Pinterest

62. 


64.
Posted by at 1 comment :
Labels: , , , , , , ,

Good clean fun (literally!)

Hey y'all! It has been weeks and weeks since I have blogged. Between the wedding, holidays, and illness, I am barely keeping my head above water. Things are looking up and here I am blogging on Friday.
I decided to do something totally kid (and mom) friendly. Shaped soap. You can look up directions on how to actually make soap, but this is the wayward way to do it quickly and with the children
You need some Ivory soap and some cookie cutters. Optional supplies include glitter, scented wax or essential oil, and wax.

Here's what to do:
Finely chop or grate 1 or 2 bars of Ivory soap. Here it is finely chopped, but it would have melted better grated. The soap is very soft, so your little ones could cut it with butter knives.



Put your soap in a double broiler and let it melt. (I tried some the microwave, too. It was another fun experiment. It bubbles up really big! The kids would love it.) I added a little water. This is when you would add a few drops of oil or scented wax.

Let it melt.  I only waited until it looked like mashed potatoes. It may have melted further. You know us wayward folks!
Next  I patted out the 'dough' into a circle and cut out stars and snowflakes. (Spray the cutters with Pam or oil.) For a few of the shapes, I  pressed the soap into the shapes rather than cutting them out. Carefully press them out of the cutters.

I sprinkled a tiny bit of glitter on them soap. You can dip the glitter side in melted wax if you want to keep it off your hands.

Clean up is easy. Let water take the soap out of the pans you used. Throw the scraps and the kids into the tub and tell them to bubble up!
Posted by at 1 comment :
Labels: , , , ,

Craft Room

I think the only room I have things anywhere close to done is the half of our sunroom that I turned into my craft room. There is not a ton of wall space to work with because all the walls are windows. I had a bunch of pieces my husband had gotten for me at our last house and they never really fit. Well we put them together here and it worked out better than expected. I went to Ikea and found a perfect tabletop that fit in the space like a glove and it was $6!!

Here is what it looks like:

The quilt in the background is pieces made by my great great grandmother that my mom pieced together. It is my legacy of creativity.

Shelves and brackets: Home Depot
Ribbon holder
Rotating cube organizer: Michael's
White half shelf: Target
Table top: Ikea
Scrapbooking cube top: Michael's
Scrapbooking cub bottom: Michael's


Everything has a label that I made in Word and taped onto the side. 
We put a shelf between the two cubes to create storage behind for my Cricut and  sewing machine. It works perfect!

The other side of the room. These parts are from Target. 

I put all of my fabric on foam board rectangles shaped 6" x 10"

Here is the whole room.
  

So relaxing crafting here on a sunny morning.
So now that I have a space for crafting it is so much easier to so projects whether big or small, whether I have a lot of time or a little. I could also put up a table in the center of the room for craft nights with my friends. I hope this gave you some inspiration for your space!

What helps you craft? Do you get together with your friends to craft?
Posted by at 5 comments :
Labels: , , ,

What I Made for Christmas, Silhouette Edition!

Amongst the Wayward Girl Sisters, we exchange families names for gift giving. I still like to do a little something for all my sisters. I made these two cards with my Silhouette:

Brooke's

2012-12-01215702
I ended up changing this one to say "Blue eyed boy meets a brown eyed girl."

Did you know Jordan's a writer? Here's her writing blog

2012-12-01203945

I had Jasmine's name this year so I made this beauty with my Silhouette and by hand. The "Love you" is cut with the Silhouette. I cut out the letters for "heaps" and hand stippled around them, and then removed the letters and voila. The phrase is one Jasmine and her husband, who went on an LDS mission to Australia, use. I framed this for them and I think it looks quite nice, but as Jasmine and her husband just got to their brand new apartment on Saturday night, I'm not going to request her to take a picture of it, so this crappy cell phone picture will have to do.

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App
Stippling In process

Uploaded from the Photobucket Android App 
Finished


Because of the stupid glue I used showing up on the background of each of these, I had to Mod Podge over the top. It's not that noticeable in real life.
Posted by at 1 comment :
Labels: , , , , ,

New Year's Resolutions: Meal Planning

Happy New Year! We Wayward Girls are mostly on the mend (I'm not sure who my immune system is trying to kill, but the virus is DEAD, so really, where is the off switch for this congestion?!), so we're about ready to throw ourselves into 2013.

Last year, one of my goals was to work on planning out our meals better, because who doesn't hate the 5 o'clock what's-for-dinner-oh-crap-that's-up-to-me-AGAIN scramble? For the most part, I did pretty well at the planning, and decently at the actual execution.

Basics of meal planning

In January, I blogged about my meal planning method. A quick recap:
  • Use a calendar
  • Plan for a month at a time
  • Write down where you're getting the recipes from, and consider focusing on 1-3 cookbooks at a time
  • Use themed nights: meatless Mondays, pizza Fridays, etc.
  • Incorporate leftovers

(There are more detailed tips in the post!)

Getting more creative

By the end of the year, however, actually planning the menus became something I dreaded, even if it was only a once-a-month chore. I tried two different tactics to help with this:

In September, I began tackling my Pinned dinner recipes:
Let's be honest: most of the recipes I pin only get that far. It was time to change that. I turned to my Savory Recipe board . . . which didn't have quite as many recipes as I thought. But I did have a couple collections of recipes pinned, so I managed to find enough to fill up my calendar.
This netted me some freezer meals--but also showcased a danger of trying out new meals that make twice as much: What if you don't like it?

Black bean & corn salsa

In October, I turned to Pinterest again. But this time, I wouldn't settle for any old "12 freezer meals" pins. I wanted stuff to blow me away. Huge lists. Soups and hearty winter foods. Healthy, low-calorie meals.

Shrimp Veracruzana,
which even my VERY picky 4-year-old
loved--and SUPER easy to make
And as usual, Pinterest delivered. In fact, it delivered me to EatingWell.com, and their lists of 500-calorie meals. I went through several lists, including the 500-calorie, 30-minute dinners, 500-calorie vegetarian meals and 500-calorie soups. I found so many delicious recipes that I couldn't stop with just October--I planned out November and half of December, too, with a note to myself on where to pick up in January.

Can I just say how AWESOME it felt to be DONE with menu planning for the year? I pinned the recipes I put on the calendar and just had to pull up Pinterest to make my grocery list and get the week's recipes.

Menu planning made even easier

I can always go back to those recipes--and I'm sure I will--but right now I want to try something different. For years, I've subscribed to a service called Deals to Meals, where they look at the weekly grocery ads and plan really tasty menus around what's on sale. Oh, and did I mention no coupons?

Um, yes?

The service is only $5 a month. I eventually stopped using it because I just wanted to do my own thing (WAYWARD!), but I liked it so much that I continued to pay for the service. Yeah, seriously--and now they've expanded to all 50 states. For the next little bit, I've decided to pick up Deals to Meals again for a while, and give myself a break from menu planning--and maybe save a little more money at the grocery store.

How do you menu plan? What are your resolutions for 2013?
Posted by at 1 comment :
Labels: , , , , , ,

Jasmine's Wedding!

Happy New Year from the Wayward Girls! We were SO happy to be all together for Christmas and for Jasmine's wedding. She was a GORGEOUS bride and they made a beautiful, happy couple.

Her wedding was so perfect. Jasmine was married in the Raleigh, North Carolina Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. According to our beliefs, the marriage ceremony sealed Jasmine and her husband and their future children together forever. This means that if they are faithful to our covenants to God and each other, their family relationships will continue beyond this life. Our family was so happy that Jasmine and her husband made this choice. The ceremony was beautiful, and although pictures are not permitted inside the temple, I will always remember it. It was also special that all four girls have been married in the Raleigh temple.

Here are some pictures I captured from that day (and a few that other people captured from that day):

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Photobucket

Since the wedding all the Wayward Girls have gotten sick in one way or another or are on their honeymoon =) We will be taking the rest of the week off to recover from illness, vacation and the wedding. Thank you for your support of Wayward Girls' Crafts in 2012! We look forward to more crafting in 2013!
Posted by at 5 comments :
Labels: , , , , ,
Subscribe to: Posts ( Atom )
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...