A Sort-Of Organized Kids' Closet

I am weird for lots of reasons, but one of them is my obsession for the way my laundry is folded. I don’t like to have anyone help me with laundry because they don’t fold things exactly the way I like them. Yeah, I’m the mom that should be giving my kids responsibilities like putting their own laundry away but instead I’m too worried they’ll do it wrong.

Time to lighten.up.

I have come to the conclusion that raising children that grow up to be contributing members of society really should be IS more important to me than how their clothing looks folded up on the shelf. But since I’m still…me…I couldn’t just leave it the way it was and give the kids a “good luck!” I had to tweak it a little with the (possibly unrealistic) hope that it will make things easier and neater for them.

I have loved the free printables that Ashley and Jamin offer on their site from time to time (I used one on my washi tape wall a while ago), and when I saw this post in January about how to organize kids’ clothing I knew I’d hit the jackpot! Cute drawings, cute colors, AND they’re from The Handmade Home?! Umm…yes, please!

So I picked out the ones I needed and got to work. I used my trusty old washi tape to hang them in the appropriate cubbies and within about 30 minutes I was done! Confession: I used up the last of my heavier cardstock paper printing out signs for Judah’sBeatles party, so these are printed on regular ol’ printer paper with no problems yet. Knock on wood ; )

 

Since I have separate cubbies for the clothes I lay out for each munster the night before, I used yet another Handmade Home printable, their lovely gift tags. I just opened those up in PicMonkey and added my kiddos’ names in fun colors and called it a day. Victory is mine!

The girls are actually pretty excited to put their clothes away, and Judah is in charge of the socks and undies baskets. I’ll be honest, I do still go in and tidy up those cubbies every couple of days (they’re in plain sight as soon as you walk in!) but all in all, I’d say we have a winner on our hands.

Party On! Judah's Beatles Birthday Party: Food

I'm back today to share the rest of the details with you about Judah's Beatles birthday party. Last time I told you all about the decorations and activities, and today I'll share my favorite part: the food!

You saw this little sneak peak of our dessert table last time, and I can't wait to show you the specifics. I've got all the inspiration on my Beatles Birthday Party Pinterest board, and I'll post a few links throughout, too.

Here is our menu. We totally went for it on the theme for this party, and it was a blast!

 The cupcakes were just basic white cupcakes (thank you, Betty Crocker!) with white frosting. I wanted a little calm in the midst of all the color we were doing on the table, so white on white made sense there. For the toppers I used these Beatles and Yellow Submarine freebies that I came across on Pinterest. I just did toothpicks with one set of Beatles and six submarines and did the rest with a little bit of washi tape. For display I used the same cupcake stand Mr. Bug made me for Adaleine's Fancy Nancy birthday party and re-covered it in yellow wrapping paper I already had on hand. My cupcake liners are from this Etsy shop.

We served more candy at this party than I usually do, but I went with cost effective and Beatles-related. We had Strawberry Fields Forever, Starr Bursts, Rich Man Gold Coins, and an Octopus's Garden. The garden was made up of carrots, celery and red, green, yellow and orange peppers. For dip I just put some ranch dressing in a bowl and called it good. Simple and easy!

My favorite part of the dessert table (hands down!) were the yellow submarines. It was this little morsel of awesomeness that made me decide to have a Beatles party in the first place! I saw these at my inspiration party and knew it would be a hit. They were really simple to make; just use a little frosting to stick on the Mini M&Ms. Then trim a bendy straw for your periscope and you're all set. I used a record glued onto a candleholder for a stand, and then set the lower levels of submarines on records right on the table. Don't worry, I washed them all first : )

Drinks were a little bit of a splurge in the cost department, but I loved the look of the little cans all lined up together. Once I got that picture in my head, using regular cans just seemed too boring. (I know. I'm ridiculous.) More song lyrics over here! For the Benefit of Mr. Sprite, Here Comes the Sunkist and Love, Love Me Dew. I couldn't think of a Beatles lyric for the water, so I just tossed out the Good Day, Sunshine line and committed. Paper straws (from the Target Dollar Spot) made the area just a bit more festive.

So there you have it! Our very own Beatles Birthday Party! If you want details on party decor and activities, check out the first post here. See you soon!

Washi Tape Printable Gallery Wall

We’ve been living in the new house for just about six months now, and I have done very little ‘settling in.’ Nothing’s really decorated, and for the most part I’m pretty much okay with that. I hung posters on the wall in the kids’ room, we have kiddo drawings all over the walls in the office, and we hung curtains in the living room, but that’s really it so far.

The floor plan of the main floor has the living room, dining area and kitchen all really open as soon as you walk in the front door. There is one wall in the dining area that was just begging for some love. Since funds were limited (aren’t they always?) I wanted to get creative and come up with something simple and pretty but inexpensive. 

Enter the giant frame. I found a 30x40” frame on a Facebook exchange group for $5! I love the look of gallery walls, but picking up a bunch of frames can get pricey, so I decided it was time to jump on the washi tape bandwagon. I didn’t see any I loved at Hobby Lobby, but Walmart actually came through for me!

I hopped on my Printables board on Pinterest and selected a few of my {free} favorites. From there it was just a matter of printing them out and figuring out the best layout. Well, that and convincing Mr. Bug to hang the frame for me that night after work.  : ) He was a really great sport to do it for me on only four hours of sleep. Husband for the win‼

 

You can find all of these on my Pinterest board (and some other really cute ones) but I’ll link them all up at the end of the post, too. The whole project cost me less than $10 for the frame and the washi tape, and that’s even adding in a couple bucks for cardstock and printer ink. Not bad, huh?
Now I sit there in the morning to drink my coffee/try to get the girls to eat their breakfast and look at my lovely wall and smile. 

Find Joy in the Journey
C.S. Lewis Quote
Feathers
Love the Lord your God - from The Handmade Home
Bowls
Oh, Hello Hexagons
Pray More, Worry Less
Julia Child Quote - This one is Eden's favorite : ) She thinks it's hilarious!
Be Kind - this is our family motto. If the kids are struggling in their playtime together I just ask them what our sign says and they know just what I mean.  

*The 'Be Brave, Little One' and the Bible verse are just ones that I put together in PicMonkey. I'm putting them in the post so you can use them if you'd like. Let me know if you do! And I can't remember where I found the sideways one in the middle. Sorry!*

   

Yearning for a Pretty Soap Pump

This post is not going to be relatable for some people. Sometimes even I can’t get my head around my weirdness, but here goes nothing. 

I’m a total cheapskate. Like, seriously. It’s ridiculous. I will buy the cheapest option of most things and not even think twice. There are some exceptions to this, but for the most part it’s true. 

I have been crushing on this soap dispenser for about two years. You think I’m kidding, don’t you? I’m so not. Believe me, I wish I were. But I couldn’t bring myself to spend $9.99 on a soap dispenser. Not when I could get a throw-away pump of soap for $.97 that came with soap in it. I would literally walk by the soap pump almost every time I went to Target thinking ‘This is silly! I’m just going to buy the dang soap pump!’ But I could never bring myself to do it. It just felt too frivolous.

I thought I could settle for something a little cheaper but still pretty like this, so I went for it. It was pretty, the soap that came with it smelled yummy, and it was less than $4. Can’t beat it, right? Well the problem is this: a tall plastic soap dispenser tips over reeeeeally easily. Especially when you have three kiddos 'washing' their hands multiple times a day. So this poor thing spent the majority of its little life flat on its back on the bathroom counter. 

But I was willing to work with it! I even refilled it with some equally yummy-smelling Method soap a few times. All the while, my beautifully simple glass soap pump beckoned to me from the shelf.

That all ended yesterday. Passing through Target while picking up a baby gift for a friend I saw this little beauty. She was on clearance for $5.58, she was pretty glass, and she was already filled with soap! After a quick check to make sure I’d be able to remove the label, that baby was in my cart and I was sprinting for the checkout. I may or may not have embarrassed my children by shaking my behind in a little victory dance. 

Now she’s sitting in my bathroom and she’s so happy to be there. I even discovered when I was removing the label that she even has a little rubber ring on the bottom to keep her from sliding around! It’s like we were made for each other. 

The moral of the story? Honestly, I don’t know. I’m not certain it’s healthy to long for a $10 soap pump for two years, but I’m so excited to finally have a simple and pretty soap pump in my bathroom. And I like to think that I’ll appreciate her all the more because of the wait. : )

Quick Craft: Gold Herringbone Mirror

I’ve mentioned it before, but Young House Love is one of my favorite blogs out there. I’ve been quite inspired by a lot of their projects, and today’s post is no exception.

A few weeks ago, they posted about hanging a little mirror low on the wall so that their daughter could see herself in it. I thought my girls would enjoy that so much, but since we have little kiddos at our house just about every week I knew any mirror we hung needed to be super light. 

On a miracle solo trip to Target last weekend, I found just what I was looking for. I picked up a little plastic white mirror for about $5 measuring just under 16” across. The plain white plastic frame wasn’t doing it for me, but that’s where YHL came in again.

Taking a cue from their herringbone doll cradle, I bought a set of gold Sharpies (on clearance at Target for only $.88!) and dove right in. All it took was my mirror, my gold Sharpie, and a straight edge—in my case, I used the side of the box of our Mousetrap game. Mr. Bug hung with me and I knocked it out while we watched the newest Mindy Project episode. 

It’s not perfect but I was happy with the results and the girls were really excited. Not sure if I'm going to add any paint colors to any of the sections the way they did or just leave it as is. I'm also pretty stoked that I got this whole project done for around $6!

It’s not hung in their room yet, but I’m shooting for getting it up there in the next few days. I’ve had some sort of weird cold/fever/nausea thing the past couple of days so I’ve taken a break from all things housework-y. I haven’t even put away all of the groceries I got at the store yesterday. No judging, please : )

Party On! Adaleine's Fancy Nancy Birthday Party

Hello Dahlings! Just popping in to say bonjour and share with you all the particulars of Miss Adaleine’s Grand Birthday Soiree that we hosted last weekend! I think everyone had a mahvelous time!

I was so excited about these invitations. I purchased them for just $10 from the Etsy shop PixelParade (here's the link to these invites if you want it) and just used a little glue to attach some sparkly cardstock to the back. I got the sparkle cardstock when it was on sale at Hobby Lobby, but if you don't want to spend the extra bucks these invites would still look super cute without it.

And here is a picture of our birthday girl! (Sorry about the weird lighting. This house has wonky lighting all over the place. Sigh) I somehow missed this step last year, so I made sure to capture her pretty smile this year. Since it was a Fancy Nancy party, Sissy chose her fanciest dress, put a pink shirt underneath, and added some fun leggings to complete the ensemble. You can see one of the signs I made for the party on the door behind her. This one says, "Bonjour! Welcome to my soiree!"

Here is our food table before I got the pink punch out. I had so much fun with this and I think it turned out looking pretty fancy : ) I used doilies under everything so that upped the fancy factor, too. My cake-making sister moved away for a year (curse you, Minnesota!), so I went with cupcakes for Sweet Adaleine's party. Since my dear sister was unable to make cake for this party, she made a million tissue paper flowers instead! And I have to say, they really made the party. : ) If you want to see some of the cakes Tiffany has made for our other parties, click here, here, and here.

Side note about the cupcake stand: my husband rocks. He cut plywood pieces for me before going to work one night so I could set up this cupcake stand. I then covered the boards with some of the disposable table runner left over from Eden's butterfly party and used upside-down drinking glasses as supports. I got the idea from this brilliant lady here.

I added pink and purple food coloring to white cake mixes to color the cakes and just went with simple white frosting. Sprinkles and pom picks from Target {clearance!} made them fancy. I wish I had taken the time to make pretty wraps for all the cupcakes like this, but that would have just been too much for me this time.

I dipped a package of marshmallows in almond bark and then covered them in rainbow sprinkles that I already had. Bonus points for not dishing out more dough! (I'm so cheap it's scary)

I bet you were wondering where the pretzels were, huh? I simply cannot have a party without pretzels, so I went with the old 'dip them in almond bark' standby and called it good. I may have eaten a couple hundred while I was dipping them. Those things are so good!

For our games, we played 'Accessorize Fancy Ada,' which was a big hit. I had a Fancy Nancy coloring page (found here) printed as a 24x36" engineering print at Staples for less than $4! Then I bought a new box of colored pencils and turned on a movie. I colored her hair a little darker than the actual book character's so she looked more like the birthday girl. The bows are not in this picture, but I just used white return address labels and printed pink, orange, and purple bows onto them. 

I didn't think this one through since it was a preschool-age party and THEY CAN'T READ, but next we 'played' (being very kind with that word usage) 'Fancy Talk' where the kids match up fancy words and plain words. Oh well, I had fun making it. : )

Right behind this little stud muffin here you can see the table we had set up for the kids to kill a little time while they waited for everyone to arrive. The sign said 'Adorn Yourselves' and I got little plastic top hats for the boys and tiaras for the girls, along with mustaches and bracelets. I may be biased, but I think this kid really rocks the socks off that 'stache.

 I kept favors simple (and cheap!) by just doing little baggies of chocolate chip cookies tied up with ribbon and a card that said, "Thanks for being fancy with me! Merci!" 

And last but not least I had to share this picture. See sweet Adaleine with her little bouquet of flowers in this picture? See the little boy in the background? He brought her those all tied up with a ribbon. Cutest.thing.ever. I might be planning their wedding in my head already. Justkiddingnotreally.

I didn't get a picture for some reason, but I also hung up a buttload of streamers (reminds me of Wreck It Ralph every time I hear that phrase) all around the rooms so it just felt like a great big fancy party. Adaleine asked if we could keep them up forever. I said one week. It has now been eight days and I'm too tired to take them down. Hey, if we leave them up another couple weeks I can call them Christmas decorations!

Have a very fancy day! : )