Camping Like a Pro

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post. Things have been CRAZY at my house with traveling, festivals, moving, and everyday life. This weekend will be another busy one as well. We are going on my sons annual family Cub Scout camping trip.

My little Cub Scout trying on his uniform. He's 8 but he's so tiny. Still, isn't he adorable?

Ready for his 1st pack meeting in full gear. He really loves it.

I am really looking forward to it, just not the preparing for it. I decided to make myself a checklist for camping supplies. I'll admit I basically can't function without a list. I feel so frazzled, like I'm forgetting 110% of the things I should be taking with me. Anyway, this post is short and sweet. My checklist is here. Maybe if you need a good camping checklist split into categories it'll work for you. I already feel better about going home and getting all of it together.

Tension Rod Bakeware Storage

One day I PROMISE I will stop taking pictures with my phone and use a better camera. When I get it unpacked. 

I know I am not the only person who pulls out half of their pans to get to the one they need on the bottom. This is so frustrating. I have honestly decided not to cook certain things because the dishes were too much of a pain to get to. This is what I'm working with.

Left side of my bakeware cabinet.

Right side of my bakeware cabinet.

 I do have a few things that won't fit in here, but these are the main ones I use so I keep the others in a different cabinet. Isn't that a disgusting mess? Ugh. Since we're in the process of setting up the kitchen right now, I decided I would get this under control before we even got moved in. I just couldn't stand looking at it. I had seen an idea on Pinterest where someone (sorry I don't know who!) had used tension rods to separate their pots and pans. Since this makes it adjustable I decided it would be the best route for me to go. I found the best fit for me for the best price at Lowe's. I bought 10 to start off with. I will need more, but not for this particular cabinet and since we're unpacking I didn't want to have to store extras. We'll be making lots of trips to Lowe's soon so it's not a big deal. I set them up one at at time with specific widths for specific items. The original idea I saw used 2 rods per separation but one worked fine for me and cut my price in half. All I had to go was push them into place.


After I got my rods set up, I put my dishes back in. It looks SO much better and is much more manageable. Even my husband who is very helpful but doesn't care a thing about the kitchen was happy with it. I made sure to put my shorter things on one side so that I would have a little room in the front for a couple of extra dishes that didn't fit anywhere else.

Pulling things out without having to pull everything out is a win.

This project was a total success and will be repeated in other cabinets soon. It took me about an hour to completely finish this cabinet. It cost me less than $20 which was much cheaper than the expensive dividers I had originally been looking at.

Supplies:
8  - 18in-28in tension rods  - $2.27 each

Cleaning Cabinet Revamp

Before I put my cleaning stuff in my cleaning cabinet under the kitchen sink I decided I was not going to be removing 10 things to get to the 1 thing I needed way in the back because in my old house that"s exactly what always happened. Like almost everything else I do, I got inspiration for this organizing project from some genius person. It's such a great idea. Before I could do anything I had to buy a tension rod long enough and clean my new cabinet out. Cleaning the cleaning cabinet... I feel like there's something wrong with that. Anyway, I left the piece of linoleum in there so it would save the wood if things got spilled. That piece is easily replaceable, the wood is not.

This was after I wiped it down. No dust or gunk in it anywhere.

 Then I put my tension rod in. I tightened and tightened and tightened and then I tightened some more. When I felt like it was stable I started putting my stuff in.

Doesn't look like much at this point.

 I happen to have 2 side shelves in my cabinet so I put things on them first. Right side has pet shampoo, flea spray, bug spray (no spiders for me thank you), and mosquito spray because we have a ton here. The left side has furniture cleaner because we got a lot of really good stuff when we bought our furniture 3 years ago. It still looks new so it was worth it. Everything else except for spray bottles went in the bottom. I keep my sponges in a basket because I use them all the time and they tend to fall everywhere after you open the pack. The items I use the most are in the front for obvious reasons. Then I hung up my spray bottles. Let me just say my tension rod was not nearly as stable as I thought. Putting the weight on it made it move. So I went back to tightening. It does have a little curve to it but it is holding up nicely. It's been there for about a week now and hasn't moved at all.

 The hubs did say since he liked it he was going to install a wooden rod so there was no curvature. We'll see how that goes. He's busy too. If he does I'll post an updated pic. For now I have lots more space. It's always best to go up when you can because most vertical space just gets wasted. I've been wasting my vertical space for years, I'm just not doing it anymore. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I'm always up for better ways to do things.

Supplies:
1 - 32"-48" tension rod - $2.17

Paperwork Chaos Undone.

My kids started back to school earlier this month. They are loving it. My 4 year old, Bacon, seems to love everything about Pre-K but she especially loves the bus. I never let my 8 year old, B, ride the bus before, but since his sister wanted to this year we decided to try letting them ride it home. My anxiety level was through the roof for the first week but I've gotten over it now. They enjoy it and honestly it saves us some time and hassle. It comes by much too early in the morning for them to ride it to school. Thankfully B is liking the 3rd grade. He changed schools this year to a MUCH better district and it seems to have done him well. A huge difference is this school actually sends home paperwork. Looots of paperwork. Mix that with the mail that has been coming in and I've got a mess. Staying at the MILs is helpful money wise but we don't have a lot of space. One bedroom for us, one for the kids to share.

The kids have a good setup and have done surprisingly well in the same room.

Our pit bull, Roscoe, LOVES to photobomb. You'll probably see a lot of him.

Here he is again. At least he takes some of the attention off the mess.

I can't seem to break the hubby's habit of dropping everything right beside the bed, including his horde of Girl Scout cookies. (He's a Thin Mint junkie.)

Our YorkiePoo, Baylor. She does not sleep with us. Our dogs are inside but aren't allowed on the furniture. As you can see, she got an opportunity and sneaked right into Dad's spot.

As you can see we've done well with the space provided. Other than the t-shirts my husband refuses to throw anywhere but everywhere and the desk. Oh, the desk. It has been the bane of my existence for the past month and I have been ignoring hoping it would just clean itself. Didn't happen. So I took all the papers off and got them in a pile.

This is just part of them. They're everywhere.

That is what I got. That doesn't include all the papers I've been storing at work and in my purse. Papers everywhere. I also have refund checks from every bill we had. This is good news for us. My system of paying every 4 weeks instead of once a month has paid off. Woohoo! Maybe a post on budgeting sometime... Anyway, then I went shopping for supplies. Let me tell you, I'm a cheap shopper. If I can find a deal, that's what I'm doing. 

My steps were this: 

1. I got 2 plastic milk crates (1green, 1pink)! from Walmart for $3.97 each. I also "borrowed" some recycled file folders and tabs from my office. (My boss is great.) 

2. Decided to make one file for each grade per kid. 

3. I make binder covers every year, so I printed off an extra copy to put in the front of each file in case the tab pops off.

Bacon's binder cover this year. She loves
purple and stars.

B's binder cover this year. He loves
green and skulls.

4. I made tabs for the folders.

5. I put a couple of folders in each crate with tabs on them labeled with their current grade.

6. I put an extra folder in one crate so that we can put our paperwork in it while we're at the MILs. I'll move it to my normal filing spot when we get settled. 

My baby's first tag from school ever. *tear* We picked them up every day for the 1st week. 

The crates look empty but at the moment  they both only have one month of one grade in them. I figure that by 12th grade they'll be full.I thought about getting a box with a lid but for now it's more convenient to just drop stuff in. I may change later on. If so, I'm sure I'll still be able to find a use for these crates. I'm much happier with this than the method of "throw it on the desk and hope you can find it later".

Look at these little almost empty crates. B's will be half full by the time I put his paperwork from the past 4 years in it.

One big HUGE upcoming project for me is to create a homework command center. The kids aren't big enough yet to worry with a family command center. I know where they are at all times no matter what and I keep track of all appointments on my phone. But the homework command center will be a big help I think. Bacon brings home a monthly homework calendar and B has a weekly one in conjunction with the daily assignments he has to write down in his planner. They also have different lunch menus and memos from their schools, so I think one place to keep all of it central will be great. We'll see I guess.

**Afterthought: Isn't it CRAZY how much homework kids have these days? He has as much in 3rd grade as I did when I was in high school. Sometimes I just feel like they don't get to be kids anymore.**

-jFree

Dinner is about to get easier.

I'm done! I'm finally done! Okay, I know that sounds like some dreadful task is over but it's not the "I'm done!" of relief, it's the "I'm done!" of excitement. Seriously. I know I'm a little sad for looking at my new menu planner and being super excited, more so than any other time in the past month almost, but oh well. It's awesome and I'm happy. I won't drag it out. Here's how it went down...

I saw the original post on Pinterest. I thought that it was an exceptional idea from The Thinking Closet. Hers looked so good, but I needed to make it my own because hers didn't match my style. I talked to the hubs and we decided the idea would probably work for us, so I started on a menu list. Nothing spectacular, just jotting down meals we like (and that I'm capable of cooking since I'm a novice) on a piece of paper when we happened to think of something. I've got almost 40 items on it so far and I'm still adding to it. Then we bought this stuff.

Magnetic whiteboard. I liked the sharp corners. Made for very clean lines on the finished product.

Card stock, medium clothespins, larger and smaller wooden letters that were paintable, acrylic paints, and some cheap paintbrushes. We also bought black fabric, patterned fabric, 3/4 inch ribbon, spray adhesive, and index card holders since all of our stuff is packed up for now.

After we bought that stuff, I sat on my bed and painted each one of these different colors. The OP had all the letters nice and uniform and a patterned background. My background is solid so I went with bright letters and decorations. 

I was a little disappointed when I realized that all the bigger letters weren't uniform in size even though they came from the same pack, but in the end they looked fine. Also, my smaller pack only had 1 "T". I had to make the other from different letters. Hopefully you can't tell which.

By the way, I don't know if I've ever mentioned but my hubs is top notch. No doubt. He helps me with anything I need help with. You'll see pics of him often. Here he is helping hot glue the fabric I got to the magnetic whiteboard. I didn't do like the OP and spray adhesive all over. I thought one day I may not want the menu planner anymore (doubtful but you never know) but the calendar would still be useful. 

Look at him go! He said "Don't post pictures of me doing this. I like my man card." haha... oops.

Here it is with its nice tucked in corners and tight sides.

I think we make a great team.

Then we added a border. We went with a solid color since our letters were different colors and we didn't want it to be too busy. We weaved it over and under for a nice pattern. There is hot glue under the 4 ends that are on the bottom of the weave so it can't be seen and around the back where the ribbon attaches to the whiteboard.

After that we hot glued our 4 larger letters to spell out M-E-N-U and one of each of the smaller painted letter to 7 clothespins for our days of the week. Here we are putting magnets on the back of our clothespins after we hot glued the letters to them. I know it looks like I'm not doing a thing but I promise I am! =] We bought a roll of adhesive magnets and cut our magnets to size so that they would fit on the clothespins without being seen.

The magnets cut down really easily. I cut them with a pair of my kids school scissors.

This was the result after all that.

Our next to last step was to put boxes on our board. I bought 3 index card holders and cut off the flaps that close them (I was going to make boxes from cardboard and have a layout if anyone would rather do that but these were easier and perfect size for my board), then cut my fabric to fit. I left about an inch hanging out all the way around the top and enough on the sides so I could fold the sides like I was wrapping a present. I sprayed adhesive all over the outside and stuck my fabric down. Once it was glued down I cut lines down the edges of the extra fabric at the top, sprayed the fabric with adhesive, then pushed it inside so that it covered the boxes completely. Then I stuck magnets to the backs instead of gluing the boxes down so I could take them down since anything open winds up getting dirty inside. At least I can shake them out this way. Or change fabric if I ever want to. I wanted 3 boxes so I could have one just for desserts. I like to make one or two a week. The 2 other than the dessert box are for menu cards. One for new recipes and one for recipes we've used. When the "new" box gets empty we just take the cards out of the "old" box and start our rotation over. As it looks right now we won't be eating the same thing for about 6 weeks unless we just want to. This was my almost finished result.

Then the time came for the menu cards. These were my least favorite part of the whole project. They weren't fun. Just typing. OP had already made a layout in Microsoft Word which I downloaded from her original post so I didn't have to worry with that. I just had to fill in the names of meals and ingredients. I covered them with packing tape and cut to size after I had them all printed.

Maybe one day I can add better quality pictures when i get my good camera unpacked. :/
The names of the recipes are on the front and the ingredients are on the back. Make sure you know how your printer prints and do left to right on the front, but right to left on the back so that they line up correctly.

I will eventually redo all of these cards because I plan on making my own recipe binder. Once I get that made, I'll reprint all the cards with a page number on them so I can easily find it. I don't have recipe books. All mine are from family, friends, or Pinterest. Now all I have to do for my weekly grocery shopping trip is pick out 7 cards, flip them over, and add my list of ingredients to my Weekly Menu Planner List which is printable and fillable in Word. I can choose sides to go with the entrees and get it all written down together. I also made a printable shopping list to go with it because I think the sectioned list works best for me while I'm actually in the store. So my end result turned out like this. Also, my menu cards are color coded. I have a different color for Easy, Red Meat, Chicken, Pork, Seafood, and Soups so far.

I'm 110% happy with it. If anyone decides to make one, send me pictures. I love different ideas. My supply list is below in case anyone was wondering. The whole project cost about $35 but could have been much less. Since we're moving all my craft stuff is packed up so I had to buy everything new. I also bought a more expensive whiteboard because I liked the bigger size and square edges. You can find them for around $9 all the time.

Supplies:
1 - 16X20 magnetic whiteboard
hot glue gun and glue
1 - yard black fabric
1 - 18in X 21in piece of patterned fabric
80 inches of 3/4 in grosgrain ribbon
wooden letters (large and small)
7 - medium clothespins
3 - plastic index card holders
spray adhesive
cardstock in different colors
packing tape

Good luck making your own!

-jFree <3

**UPDATE: I got my menu planner hung up in the new house and I love it.**

This thing is great!