WFMW: Organizing and storing ribbon

Ribbon is an inexpensive way to dress things up.  I've made hair bows with it, decorated towels, embellished dresses and even used it to hang things up on the wall.  I have a decent size collection of ribbon and was running into issues storing it.  The spools that it comes on are bulky and they were taking up a lot of space. It was also difficult to see what I had when I was looking.  So I did what most crafters these days do. I googled!  I found special ribbon storage boxes (too expensive for the amount that I had, still bulky and most of them would lend to tangling unless you're really careful because the ends of the ribbon hang out).  I found people using paper towel holders or dowel rods through the center of the rolls.  That would work great if I worked where I stored my ribbon, but I usually work in my living room and I store my ribbon in the basement. So that would mean that I'd either need to pull off lengths and cut it down there, or take half the spools off the dowel to get to the one in the middle so I could take it upstairs, not ideal.  Then I saw this idea for wrapping it around the springless clothes pins. That was more like what I was looking for!  Compact, portable, and inexpensive.  Then I tried it.  It was ok, but most of my ribbons didn't lend themselves to wrapping around the clothes pin and those that did, were difficult to keep put once it was on there (they had a tendency to unroll even when pinned). In my Googling, I ran across someone (I think in a comment on one of the other storage methods) who wrapped their ribbon around cardboard they'd cut to the size of their drawer.  So, that's what I did.  I've wrapped them around cardboard and pinned the end so it doesn't unravel and I keep all the pieces of cardboard in a drawer in one of those three drawer rubber maid storage carts.

I can now carry the ribbon I want to where I'm working on it. I can easily see what I've got.  Before the drawer was pretty much full of ribbon and hard to open and close.  Now the ribbon only takes up about a quarter of the space, so I've got room for more!

This is definitely working for me!  For more great tips head over to We Are That Family and Today's Works for Me Wednesday Post!

Advent Calendar

I was hoping to do this last year, but never got around to it. I saw this muffin tin idea on a number of other websites and the first time I saw it, I knew it was a great idea for us since most premade advent calendars have chocolate in them and my oldest doesn't like chocolate.

You take a muffin pan (or several) and create covers for the cups (I used sheets of magnets and then glued scrap book paper and embelishments on them). This way I can choose what goes in AND the holes are big enough that I can put two (or more) things in each one so that both kids get something (since I used a regular size muffin tin, you could use a mini one though if you want). And that's what I was originally planning on doing, adding trinkets for each day (I'd rather not encourage my kids to eat candy every day). But then, I got a better idea, a Puzzle!

First, I put the puzzle together:

Then I carefully took it apart, starting with the edge

and putting connecting pieces into each cup of the muffin pan (most cups had 4 pieces, some had more since there are 100 pieces in the puzzle and only 24 cups).

Once all of the cups were filled I placed the magnets over the holes and hung them up on the wall.  Since the muffin cups were strategically filled, the pieces will always fit in somewhere, the kids just need to figure out where.

The only problem I ran into was that the magnets (which were ones I was recycling, not actual magnet sheets I'd bought) weren't quite strong enough in some cases so the pieces fell out while I was trying to hang it.  Now that it's up and we're not fiddling with it, there isn't a problem.

The nice things about this is that it was cheap (the puzzle was $1 at the dollar store), we don't have a lot of cheap trinkets floating around, the girls are working together on it and we can re-use the puzzle.

This is definitely working for us! Even my youngest is working on the puzzle.  For more great ideas head over to the WFMW post at We Are That Family.

Halloween Swap Box

It's arrived!  Well, it actually arrived last week and I'm just now getting time to blog about it.  Sorry!

We got a great box full of Halloween stuff from The Monkey House.  Check it out:

There is a house purse that opens up with two peg ghosts to go inside, some lollipops, two felt pumpkins with candy corn in them, a bag of foam stickers two wooden masks, a box of dots, a bag of cookie cutters, some cool playdough and two necklace kits.  The girls immedaitely dove into the playdough with the cookie cutters as soon as they saw it, have been sampling the candy corn and have since made their necklaces.

This swap was a lot of fun.  I hope to do it again sometime!

WFMW - Taming Flashcards

I'm not sure where I got this idea from, it might've been someone else's WFMW post, but it's working so well for us that I thought I'd share it. If you think you know where I got the idea from, feel free to comment with the site.

Flash cards are a great tool for kids to learn with, but they're essentially a deck of cards and have a tendency to get separated and you end up finding them everywhere.  So, I've been taking them, punching two holes in the top of all the cards and then I put binder rings through the holes.  You can get a pack of binder rings at Office Max.


This way, my girls can carry the flash cards around with them, they don't loose any cards and there's no clean up.  They have a tendency to pick them up when they're playing and just start flipping through them. They can also take them in the car on long trips to quiz each other a lot easier.

For more great ideas, head over to the WFMW post at We are THAT Family!

Pumpkin Yogurt Parfait

Ingredients:
1/4 c vanilla yogurt
1/4 c pumpkin puree (not pie filling)
1 T maple syrup
1/4 c Pumpkin Spice Granola Snacks
whipped topping (optional)


Combine yogurt, pumpkin and syrup in a bowl.  Layer yogurt mixture in a glass alternating with granola.  Garnish with whipped topping. 




Variations:
Coffee flavored yogurt with Kalua Luau Granola snacks

Halloween Swap

I love swaps and exchanges.  My friend over at Mind Games is doing a Halloween swap for kids.  Head on over and check it out!
I'm excited to do this, the girls are going to love it and I'm already starting to think about things that I can put in our box.  I can't wait to find out more about who we're going to swap with.  It'll be a great way for the girls to "meet" someone new!

Back to School bargins for the non-school aged and Box tops

The theme over at We Are that Family for this weeks' Works for Me Wednesday is Back to School tips.  I'm late posting and actually it's been a while since I've even posted here to my blog let alone a WFMW post!  So, I was struggling with what to post that wasn't already covered, routines, task lists, etc.

Then I remembered that even before I had kids, I'd hit the back to school sales!  Why?  Because thats when stores put things like underwear and socks on sale too.  So I can get multipacks of socks for cheaper and as an added bonus, you can often get a pair or two "free" in that pack!  Just watch though because the packs without the bonus free pair are occasionally intermixed with the bonus ones.

Oh and one more tip, if you shop at certain grocery stores and you clip box tops, check out http://www.rewardyourschool.com/. You can link your frequent shopper card with your school and get bonus box tops!