Silhouettes

Lately it seems that all I have shared are ideas for cleaning and/or organizing. I clean our house, and I do enjoy organizing, but this. This is my thing. Random little cheap crafts are my thing. At least, this is what I enjoy doing.

My mom found this silhouette paper somewhere and got it for me because she knows I like this sort of thing. Plus she's sweet!

It looks blue, but that's just the cover sheet. The pages are black on one side and white on the other. I'm sure you can get something like this at any craft store. Here it is on Amazon.

Really, though, black card stock paper would work just fine.

Step One:

Take profile photos of whatever you want. I chose my three little ones. And I took these pictures with my iPhone.

Step Two:

I loaded the photos to my shutterfly account through the app on my phone.

Step Three:

Then I logged onto shutterfly from our laptop. I rotated the photos sideways so they would be larger and zoomed in as much as I could and still see everything I wanted included.

Step Four:

I put a sheet of computer paper up onto the screen and traced the borders of the photo with a pencil. I did this on three separate papers, one for each child.

Step Five:

I carefully cut out each one where I had traced around the faces. 

Step Six:

I taped the white paper to the silhouette paper.

At first, I taped it to the black side {wrong!}, so don't do that! I took off the white paper profile I had cut out and then taped it to the back side of the silhouette paper. I made sure to pay attention to which way I wanted the faces to be pointing.

Step Seven:

Cut out the profile again, this time including the black paper that you taped it to.

A little bit of the white paper showed over the edges, so I just trimmed those off so they weren't visible from the front.

Step Eight:

I already had these three frames, so I just taped them down on a white sheet of paper. You could add these to any frame of your choice, but there are all sorts of fun things to do with a silhouette picture. I included links to some ideas at the bottom.

Here are some other great ideas for what to do with your silhouettes:

Baby Center Blog: Make your relatives cry

Project Nursery: DIY Simple Silhouettes

Encyclopedia Page Silhouettes

Christmas Ornament Silhouettes

 

I also have a silhouette picture of our two puppies in their "Dog Area" so I do really love silhouettes!

Plastic Bags

Plastic bags (also usually referred to here as "Wal Mart bags", haha) are something I used to struggle with. I would love to be good and take reusable bags to the grocery store, and maybe one day I'll get me act together and start doing that, but I don't right now. I get 417 plastic bags every time I go to the store and then I want to keep them, but I don't want plastic bags all over my house! I finally figured out something that has been working for us for a while.
I like for our spaces to be pretty, yet functional. The picture below is in our laundry room. The nice basket was a gift from my mother-in-law when I graduated high school {almost 14 years ago! My husband and I had just started dating..}. That's where I keep our plastic bags now. They are easy for adults to reach, but not children. They are in plain sight, but, at the same time, you can't actually see them. It makes me happy.

This is what the bags look like all shoved down in the basket.

My mom used to always fold her bags like this, so I guess that's why I do it now. They take up less room than just shoving them down, and I believe they are not nearly as dangerous for little ones when folded like this. It would take a special child to undo a bag and put it over his head if it was tied this way.

You basically just make a slip knot.

I still have the issue of having far too many bags to fit into my nice basket, but I don't want to just throw them out. I have tried to put them in our recycling bin and they don't accept these bags - seriously!? So, here is what I do with extra bags that I don't want all over our house:

• I keep several bags in the trunk of my car. Wet clothes, dirty diapers, just gathering trash on a road trip...it seems like I am in need of a plastic bag fairly often while in my car. I do shop at Aldi occasionally and since they do not have free bags, I carry some in with me then as well.
• I drop some bags off at the recycling area in my grocery store. There are usually specified areas to recycle these plastic bags.
• I put these bags in our small garbage cans in the bathrooms and the kids' rooms.
• On a daily basis, I usually have a bag hanging from a doorknob both upstairs and downstairs. I use it as a trash bag and between diapers, junk mail, and dryer lint, I usually fill two of these up each day. I take them outside to the trash can when they get full and hang another up. This keeps stinky stuff out of our house and it also keeps me from buying big trash bags nearly as often. It also seems like these smaller bags fit better in the large outside can, so it doesn't fill up before trash day as often. It's my personal form of recycling and it works quite well for us!

(Like you don't know what a plastic bag hanging from a doorknob looks like! I took a picture anyway... :)

 

Here are some other neat ideas for storing those plastic bags:

Soho Sonnet: DIY plastic bag storage box

Embroidery Hoop and Pillow

Plastic Grocery Bag Folding

 





More smart storage

Yesterday I wrote about my desk area (I forgot to mention that it is in our bedroom), and I am sharing today about where some other things are stored in our bedroom. We got this big 5 drawer bookshelf from Target several years ago. I think it was way too expensive for how cheap it actually is made, but we are still using it anyway and it stores lots of our books and other things.

The box on the left came from Target a few years ago. It stores our important papers, and I will share all about that next time. My tiny little weights that I lift occasionally are also on that shelf.

Most importantly, we have a specific shelf to store our Bibles and Bible class materials. With little ones, it is sometimes hard to keep up with binders and Bibles and make sure we aren't going to class unprepared. Since we were having a hard time keeping up with everyone's books,  I decided to make a specific shelf just for that. We pull out the kids' class work often and make sure to go over their Bible verses frequently, and we all talk about what the other is studying in class. I am amazed at the effort our Bible class teachers put into teaching these children. They learn so much, and the studies are not shallow, which I love. I appreciate so much how our children are getting from their weekly Bible classes, but it is our job to really teach them about God and the Bible at home. Having God's word in a spot that is easily accessible will encourage us to open it more often and learn more and more!

This shelf also holds most of our old lessons from Bible classes and some spiritual books. I am also going to post a copy of the kids' Bible verses on the back of that shelf so we can all learn them together. I keep a copy on the fridge, but that will be a great spot, too.

Our Bibles, learning about God and having a great relationship with Him are the most important things in our home. Any way we can be better at those things is worth the effort!

Mama's Workspace

I am a full-time stay at home mom/wife. My priorities and needs on a daily basis obviously will not be the same as every other woman out there, but this space is working for me in this stage of my life, so I thought I'd share.

Part of my role in our family is to keep up with the bills, appointments, groceries, etc. Something helpful and downright important to keeping schedules straight for me is keeping my "mama workspace" organized. My husband will read this and chuckle because sometimes it gets very, very Unorganized, but I try. I definitely dusted and cleaned up my area before taking all these pictures, so it does not always look quite this nice!

First off, I love a physical planner to write things down.

The past two years, my mother in law has gotten me an Erin Condren planner and they are soooo nice!

It comes with this tiny little ruler -- fun! -- and I move it each week as a new one begins. It sticks up just enough out of the top to be able to find the current week easily.

I also find a particular pen that writes well on the paper, doesn't bleed through to the back side of the page, and fits into the spiral part. It makes me happy to have a specific planner pen and it goes right back to its spot each time I update.

That being said, sometimes I'm at the receptionist's desk at the ENT and two little boys are putting their freshly sticky fingers from a sucker they just received on the windows, so I need to move fast! That's when I pull out my iPhone and use the calendar there. On a regular basis, I link the two (my paper planner and my iPhone calendar) by just looking at them at the same time and making sure I have them both updated and have the same things in each. I typically leave my paper calendar at home on my desk, although I do take it in my purse occasionally. I know it may seem repetitious to have two calendars, but I love physically writing down things and I do not love setting reminders on my phone.

Second of all, I keep a couple of boards hanging up to look at pictures of my family (because you can never have enough of those) and also to tack up papers or receipts I don't want in the reach of little hands.

Each year for the past several years I have printed a wall calendar with photos of our family from month to month from Shutterfly. I have enjoyed looking back at pictures from the previous year, and it's easy for my husband to glance up at each morning when he's getting ready to see what all we have going on. He keeps up his work calendar, which is plenty for one person to maintain!
This year I didn't get around to printing one, and since we now have our beautiful large chalkboard in the kitchen, I thought it would be a great place to keep a big calendar for everyone in our family to see. We're just the first week in, but it's been fun so far!

 Let me talk about our desk. My husband and I both use this laptop, but I definitely use the whole desk more than he does, so I have it set up for my needs since he does most of his work at his actual office. I keep a little pillow in the chair because it keeps my back from hurting.

I think I got the pencil cup from Target and the wire basket came from WalMart. Obviously, I keep pens in the pencil cup, and the other basket holds papers I intend to deal with in the near future. The other is a candle from my sweet man.



The three drawers on the sides hold mah stuffs. The top drawer holds my planner, coupon book, and little notebooks.

The middle drawer is my note-sending drawer, full of notecards, address book, envelopes, stamps and also my label maker because there was room for it.

The bottom drawer holds computer paper and lined paper, extra ink, as well as staplers and a three hole punch.

Occasionally, little people get into these drawers and wreak havoc, but not often. I have several other areas in our house that are kind of "my spaces", too, but this one is where the important stuff happens. Keeping it organized helps me be more productive, pay bills on time, write notes more often to those who would appreciate them, and just Be Better ;).

If you have a similar role in your family, finding a space to keep the things you need and making them easy to find may be helpful. Here are some other ideas for organizing your desk area. Have a wonderful day!

Polished Habitat Desk Organization Reveal!

Dwelling by Devore - DIY naildoor desk

Joyful Thrifty Home - free desk organization

 

Hello, 2016!

Hello, everyone! I hope you've all had a great start to the new year. I hope to be more frequent with my posts now that the holidays (SO MUCH FUN!) are over. For anyone who happens to be new around here, the purpose of this space is to encourage one another and hopefully learn some new ways to better care for ourselves and our families.

For the first time in a long time, I didn't feel compelled to come up with a list of New Year's Resolutions. I am a super big fan of lists, so this was a little surprising I guess. Instead, I decided that rather than trying to stop biting my fingernails...again...I would just make daily efforts to

DO BETTER and BE BETTER.

 

 

This is my formal encouragement for you to do the same! Don't make unrealistic goals, but goals are great. We can't do everything that everyone else is doing all at the same time and be great at everything. Your husbands, your children, your coworkers and boss don't expect perfection from you. God certainly doesn't either. But remember the parable of the talents? {Matthew 25:14-30} God does have expectations for you, and so do all of the other people in your life. Use your talents, your abilities, branch out and find out some of your new talents, and just get better! That is my goal, my resolution, for the coming year and it's gonna be great!