Oh I Wish I Were an Organized Person

Apparently January is all about organizing.

Great! Who doesn't like a little bit of organization in their lives....less clutter & more space sounds good to me. But where do you start when you feel like you may just be as far from organized as any one person can be?!? Well if you are me, you start small...really small.

Magazines.

I have a bunch of magazines. I know it is kind of old school to save magazines, when it is so easy to have a folder on you computer to store all of your found inspirations. BUT, I love that I can pull out a Martha Stewart magazine from 3 years ago and get a great idea for a Christmas craft that 3 years ago I completely overlooked.

My only problem was I had two shelves of very unorganized magazines, so if I wanted to find a few inspirations for a Valentine's Day project it took a while to find all the February issues. My very simple solution was to sort all my magazines by month, thus making it much easier to find exactly what I was looking for. I made twelve different stacks and got busy sorting.

I started on the left hand side of the shelf and placed the magazines January through December...with a little extra room for a few more magazines:)

When I finally recover from the craziness that was Christmas, and I decide to work on Valentine's Day crafts, all of my February magazine are all in one place waiting to inspire me!

What kind of organizing projects are you working on?

linked up at:
Jen's Weekend Wrap Up Party:)

Wordless Wednesday: Where's Eli?

Back to Reality

We are back to real life today after a LONG two weeks! Back to reality around here means:

*Woke up had to drag myself out of bed at 6:30*

*Dropped Henry and Grant off at school*

*Jason left for work{late}*

*Eli and I headed to the walking track*

*Correctly portioned way too small bowl of Special K for breakfast*

*A couple hours of cleaning and laundry in my future*

*Forcing myself to eat healthy and somehow avoid the tons of leftover Christmas candy*

I have been such a bad blogger lately. Not only have I not posted anything or commented on my favorite blogs, but I also haven't done anything blog worthy either!! That means it may be a while before you see anything good posted here:) My craft dining room has been stuck in a time warp since a few days before Christmas aka there is still glitter everywhere and except for attempting to use my new ruffler that I got for Christmas nothing has moved for at least a week! What's even worse than not crafting, is that I also haven't taken ANY pictures! I think the one and only picture I have taken since Christmas morning was taken with my cell phone!

Jason and I went to Jacksonville, Florida to see the Mississippi State Bulldogs play in the Gator Bowl last weekend. It was a great trip made even better by the fact that State beat STOMPED Michigan 52-14! It was good for us that State won, because we were almost completely surrounded by Michigan fans....we were the only State fans on our whole row and we were really close to the Michigan band:) It was a quick trip, but fun! I did the math on the way home, and we were gone for about 37 hours and 14 of that was spent driving!

Do you make resolutions?!? I don't really...I think I just start out the year telling myself that I want to be better. Better at everything...diet, exercise, prayer, family, cleaning, blogging. It usually works for the first few months of the year, and then I get lazy and give up:) I actually managed to lose 10 pounds during the first 6 weeks of 2010, and then a little more during the summer. BUT the "evil trinity of diet-busting holidays" {Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas} hit and weight loss turned into weight gain. I'm making a few new goals this year and hopefully they will last longer than last year:)

I linked up one of my craft projects at Sew Dang Cute with the hopes of getting to participate in Crafting with the Stars:) Sounds like fun huh?!? Plus it would be great motivation to be more crafty this year! Go over and check out all the great projects and don't forget to click on my Recycled Frame Wreath {# 98} that I linked up:)

Eli is watching his most favorite cartoon ever {Diego}, so I need to go take advantage of this little bit of time and get busy cleaning and maybe a little crafting and picture taking too:)

Top 10 of 2010: A Countdown

  Part Two

5 Art in the Hall

4 Camp Out Birthday

3 Entertainment Center Turned Bench

2 Candy Corn

1 Rainbow Pudding Pops

Top 10 of 2010: A Countdown

Part One:
10 Magnet Board

9 C is for Appreciation

8 Inside Out Caramel Apples

7 Fork and Spoon Redo


6 Ribbon and Pearls

Wordless Wednesday: One More Christmas Picture

To see our past Christmas morning pictures click HERE and HERE:)

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to share one of my *most* favorite Christmas song with you....an awesome song with an even more awesome message! I hope you all have a very MERRY CHRISTMAS!

 

Quick Last Minute Christmas Crafts

I don't know about you, but these last few days before Christmas are just a little crazy!

*last minute shopping trips*

*wrapping presents*

*baking lots of goodies*

But if you are ahead of the game this year and are looking for a few quick crafts to tackle before Saturday, here is a list of a four SUPER fun and SUPER easy crafts to try!

#1

If you need to add a little bit of Christmas cheer to your house, you could make a Christmas version of my Candy Bottles. Just add red and green M&M's {or maybe even peppermints} and some vinyl letters, for a quick Christmas craft that can be used throughout the year.

#2
 I also added a little more glitter to my decor this year with some simple letters that I framed.  Cut out the letters of your choice, coat them with glue, sprinkle with glitter, and then framed them.

#3
To keep the kiddos busy, you could let them make these SUPER cute Rudolph Candy Canes. Check out the tutorial over on my friend Liz's blog Sugarplum Creations.

#4 
Check out this really great tutorial on how to make a Tulle and Pearl necklace over at Sumo's Sweet Stuff. This would be a great last minute gift for your sister or friend. I'm thinking of making one using some red tulle I have left over from wrapping presents:)

Wordless Wednesday: Quick Christmas Pics Before Church

Gingerbread (well technically Graham Cracker) Village

Last night was our annual gingerbread house making  night. We have done this for the past few years, and I honestly think it is one of the boys' favorite Christmas activities. Maybe because they get to play with candy...or maybe because they get to sneak candy while they are decorating:)

Jason constructs the little houses out of graham crackers and confectioner sugar icing, and then we basically have a free for all with our candy bowl and a few candies bought just for our gingerbread houses.

My {semi-ocd} house with lots of red and green. I saw the cute double stack bushes on another website, and bought those little gumdrops just so I could have cute bushes outside my gingerbread house:) There is also a cobblestone walkway made out of a variety of brown jelly beans.

Jason's perfect house has a Bubbletape roof and cute Christmas lights along the roof line. He also added windows out of yellow gummies and Swedish fish bushes all the way around his house.

Henry got creative with the decorations in his "yard" and made some cute lollipop and lifesaver lamp posts. He also added a really cute chimney that didn't make it through the night:) You can see it on the plate on the left hand side...we can try to reattach it later.

Grant had a free for all with every kind of candy we had. He added lifesavers to his roof along with a tootsie roll. He made a Swedish fish door and a {not very sturdy} Swedish fish fireplace on the back of his house. He also made bushes similar to mine, with what he called 'snow' made out of gum on top of them:)

Eli's house was completely made by Eli...and by that I mean he even used some of his spit to get things to stick! He would find a piece of candy, suck on it for a few minutes, and then decide to stick it to the roof of his house. He also got caught a few times sneaking things off the roof of his house to eat:)

Thanks for visiting our Gingerbread Village...I hope our little houses have inspired you to make your own village this year:)

Because Everything is Better with Glitter

Back in September, the boys and I gathered up some really cute little pine cones while we were out of town for our family reunion....yes I have been saving pine cones since September to do this project:) I actually put the pine cones in my glass jar during the fall, but I knew they needed to be fancied up a little bit for Christmas. So here are my Glittered Pine Cones, and a step by step just in case you have been saving pine cones for months too:)

 Start with your pine cones, spray adhesive, glitter in any color you would like, and brown paper lunch bags.

Lay your pine cones out on a protected surface.

 Open up your lunch bags and dump a pretty good amount of glitter into them. One color per bag...or you could be wild and mix them all together:)

 With your pine cones on a protected surface {aka newspaper} spray them with a liberal coat of spray adhesive.

 Drop your pine cone into the lunch bag, seal the top, and shake it around.

 Carefully remove your pine cone making sure to knock off any of the excess glitter...and you have SUPER cute Glittered Pine Cones!

 I did mine in red, green, and white but I think these would be really great in all white or maybe a few different shades of blue.The great thing about this project is that it is easy to modify to fit your decor!

 I think they look great in my glass container...much fancier than the plain ones before {because everything is better with glitter!}

 And just because I was in a glittery kind of mood, I also did made some cute glittered trees {as seen on eighteen25}. I sprayed the cones with adhesive, dropped them into the paper bag, gave them a shake, and then hot glued them to some glass candle holders from the dollar store.

cute, quick, and cheap...my favorite kind of craft!

Have you glittered anything today:)