Craftgasm!

I seriously wish our family camera had chosen a different night to die.

And I wish that the step-by-step pics I took with my cell phone (when the camera died mid-project) weren't corrupted.

And I wish that our replacement camera wasn't coming all the way from Canada.

All I can say is, whenever I enter my gift wrap area, I have a little craftgasm*. Because I finally got to use this for something ahhhhh-mazing:

...and it was 100% totally and completely my own brilliant, original idea!  Yes, that's a 50¢ wooden cassette tape rack from Goodwill.  And no, I'm not going to post an "after" or give any other hints until I can take a REAL "after" picture.  Wanna guess...?  Anyone who guesses correctly wins a prize!

*By the way, "craftgasm"© is a term I coined a few years ago to describe any craft product/project-related moment that reeeeally excites you.  Like, the instant you see it, you're...excited.  Like, makes your heart rate increase.  IfyouknowwhatImean.  Kind of like this or ooohh, this!

Yes, that's a Sharpie wall.  And yes, my husband knows what it does to me.

Avoiding the Frozen Waste

Since I've started actually cooking for my family, I've also started accumulating leftovers. I store them with the best of intentions (as I was raised not to waste food) and even deliberately cook extra just to freeze for later. The problem is, I lose track of things in the fridge and freezer; they get shoved to the back or stacked on top of until...well, they're unusable. Ugh. Who knew leftovers could look like that? [shudder]

When I was at Dollar Tree a few months ago, I saw these photo pockets and purchased a couple. I didn't have a particular use in mind, but there were several ideas floating around in my head — posting Scriptures to memorize, putting up my personal affirmations, menu planning, maybe even photos! LOL

Then I thought, why not use them to keep track of the stuff I put in the fridge and freezer so I can USE it before it spoils? I created a simple Word document, printed it onto blank 4x6 index cards and popped those into the photo pockets (which, I was pleased to note, completely contained the cards instead of leaving the edge poking out). Here's the PDF, if you want it!

Now whenever I put something "odd" in cold storage, I write on the outside of the pocket with some overhead transparency markers I found in my marker stash. (I intended to use dry erase but the tips were too fat and they wiped off too easily. The wet-erase transparency markers are very fine and won't come off if I brush up against the fridge.) In addition to the name of the item, I also put the amount being stored. That makes it easy to see if I have enough for a particular recipe or enough to make a meal.

The only problem now is that I need to buy a bunch more of those magnetic photo pockets! They're pretty darn useful.

the CSI project: dollar store challenge, entry #2

Here's my second entry for the CSI project, dollar store challenge: a magnetic memo board!

((crickets chirping))

Okay, so it's not exactly original, but I actually chose this project because I was inspired by an item I found (as opposed to copying a post directly). Side Note: Don't you hate that feeling, when you get all excited about a project and how innovative and inspiring it's going to be, and then realizing that there are 36 more just like it in blog posts already? Anyway...

I'm a sucker for anything 1. teal, 2, iridescent, 3. decorated with swirly vines, or 4. that costs $1. So when I went traipsing through Dollar Tree looking for inspiration and saw the bags of glass marbles, they had to be mine. Yeah, I know they don't have swirly vines yet — stick with me here. The first thing I thought of when I saw them was, of course, all the glass marble magnets I haven't made yet, despite their having intrigued me for years. Right across the aisle from the marbles were the metal pans and such, which reminded me of this item on my "Crafts to Do Someday" list. I decided to découpage and paint mine, so a couple bottles of acrylic from Hobby Lobby got added to the mix. After purchasing the items and getting home, I looked back at that inspiration post and realized that it had already been a CSI entry. D'oh. At least mine is my own — and it's hand-painted!

Feel free to comment with any questions, and I'll get the tutorial fleshed-out with words as needed. For now, enjoy this picture-only how-to! :)

I've had this Chacopaper (transfer paper) since my mom gave it to me five years ago. She'd had it since...ummm...the '80's? Fortunately, it's still around, for about $5-6 a package. It works on paper, fabric, leather, plastic, wood, glass china, and metal.

ETA: After posting these pics, I realized I'd forgotten to glue the black and teal sequins & beads around the outer pan edge. Oh well...minimalist, huh? :p

If I had more time (and my sewing machine wasn't at my mom's house), I'd totally make a skinny black ruffle — as a contrast to the teal-painted "wall"/side of the pan — to go around the outside, covering up the lip of the pan. Cool, right?

Check out my other dollar store challenge entry here.

"Works for Me Wednesday" - Organizing

Organizing: My Kitchen Pantry

I recently got fed up with my plastic food storage cabinet and my free-standing pantries. We couldn't see what we had, and there was never enough room for what we wanted to put in there. I took two days to take everything out of all three cabinets, lay it out on the kitchen table, re-organize it by category, and then put it back in and labeled the shelves with my Dymo.

The countertop-sized appliances (panini maker, George Foreman grill, Henrietta Hen, etc.) went on the shelves in the cabinet under the microwave, where the plastic food storage had been. The appliances are all large enough to be visible without having to move stuff around, and the cabinet isn't the easiest to look into at a glance — a perfect match.

The plastic food storage got weeded out (hallelujah). Identical stackable pieces got stacked together with all their nesting lids on top. Everything else got its lid put on top of it (to save matching time later) and stacked according to shape/size. Most-used medium-size containers got put on a lower shelf in the pantry, while large ones got stacked on top of the tall pantry (tiny ones got thrown into a basket on top of the pantry).

The categories that needed to be visible (canned goods, sweet snacks, savory snacks, crackers) because we keep forgetting what we have and buying more (or letting them go stale) got put on eye-level shelves. The categories that aren't used often or don't need to be visible because we always know they're there (breakfast, baking, chips, etc.) got put on high or low shelves.

All candy/tiny snacks got sorted into the plastic-storage-I-wanted-to-keep-but-never-used-for-leftovers, so it could be stacked for efficiency and ease of browsing...and so all our candy doesn't end up smelling like mint (which, if you've ever stored all your Christmas candy in one jar or bag before, you know will happen). Even new bags of M&Ms get dumped into their own container. Ahh, order.

Every shelf got labeled so my new order can be maintained by grocery-put-awayers.

It feels great to have all that stuff finally purged and organized, but heck, any day you get to use a label maker is a good day! LOL



This post originally appeared on my family blog and is reprinted with permission.