Canning Jar Pincushion

I found this wonderful idea on Suzanne's Crazy For Collars and loved it! I loved the dual storage it provides. She has a wonderful tutorial on her blog that you can find here. It seriously took me 5 minutes to make this little guy.

Family Directory

Sorry, I originaly had pictures of the inside but realized you could read all my information so I had to remove them.

I made this binder a while ago, but was recently asked about it so I thought I'd share. I keep this binder in a drawer in the kitchen right near our telephone. The very first page is a list of emergency contacts- 911, hospital, poison control, doctor, parent's cell numbers, home address w/directions on how to get there, etc. This is a must have especially if you have a babysitter. The second page is a poison control help sheet. I'm sure you can print this off the internet, I got mine from our pediatrician. Next comes the frequently called numbers. I generated a spreadsheet in excel with all the numbers we call most...family, friends, doctors, dentist, insurance companies, take-out joints, etc. And last but not least, the good old ward lists that we all have a million of (both old &new).

Possibilities are endless what you could put in here. I'm just glad I have it so I can feel better about leaving a babysitter. In the event of an emergency it's always good to have things written down because you tend to not be thinking straight!

Flour Jars

I've been working on organizing my pantry lately. I found these jars at Target and loved them. They are perfect for my flour, they hold up to 10 lbs. I had my vinyl lady make the labels so I could distinguish which flour was which. By the way, I have a good vinyl lady if anyone needs one. All in all, I think they turned out cute. Organizing my pantry will be a slow process though. The cost of doing this, the way I want it, isn't going to be cheap.

Lazy Susan

This was a Pottery Barn Kids inspired project. If any of you get their catalog then I'm sure you've seen their $49.00 version of this. My version on the other hand only cost $6.50!

So I loved the idea of having all the kids art supplies all in one place. The buckets are screwed in place and stable so there's no chance for spilled buckets! Wouldn't this look so cute on the kids table in the playroom?!

I did however have a hard time finding a wooden lazy susan for this project because everything now a days is plastic or stainless steel. I ended up finding this one second hand for $4.00. I bought the buckets on clearance at Walmart but any of the buckets at Target's dollar spot would be cute too. I wanted mine to be non-gender specific since I have both a boy and a girl.

What you need:

wooden lazy susan

sand paper

spray paint

5 buckets

5 short screws

What you do:

1. Scuff up the lazy susan with sand paper just enough to break through the finish.

2. Spray paint the lazy susan, I did about 3 coats. Let dry over night or longer.

3. Measure or just eye ball the position you want the buckets in, and make a slight pencil mark on the lazy susan for each one.

4. Poke a small hole on the inside center of each bucket to start your screws.

5. Position each bucket and screw down tightly, making sure your screw does not go through the wood entirely or it will prevent the lazy susan from spinning.

*If worse came to worse and you couldn't find a wooden lazy susan, you could always buy a plastic one and glue the buckets down.

Ribbon Organization

Believe it or not, there is 68 spools of ribbon in here!
Finally! A way to organize ribbon that works for me! I was a little overly excited about this one. I've seen many ways to organize ribbon and I used to run wooden dowels through shadow boxes which works great, if you don't have a ton of ribbon. I gave up after my third shadow box. I found this new idea on a blog called Capture the Moment. I'm so excited to finally have my ribbon organized and takes up so little space!


What you need:
wooden clothespins/doll pins (I've heard these are at the Dollar Tree, but I picked mine up at JoAnn's for convenience)
glass headed pins
jar


What you do:
1. Insert the end of the ribbon in the slit of the clothespin. You only need the end to extend about half an inch or so.
2. Then fold the end over onto the base of the clothespin and hold it in place with your thumb. You will want to fold it so the good side of your ribbon is face up.
3. Next you want to pull the other end of the ribbon (the opposite end from the one you folded over in the last step) down over the short end. This will help keep it from pulling back through the slit without using any tape to hold it in place.
4. Start spooling the ribbon at an angle down the length of the clothespin. Try to keep even spacing because this will ensure that your spool will be evenly dispersed once it is completed.
Then spool back up the clothespin in an opposing angle. Keep everything fairly tight as you are working to help make sure that the ribbon doesn't come off the clothespin when in storage. You will continue spooling until you have completed your entire length of ribbon.
5. To keep the end of the ribbon in place, fasten it with your glass head pin.

* you can fit roughly 5 yards per clothespin