Keeping Organized With the Kids!

Wondering how to keep track of your pre-school kiddos activities? This is how I've been doing it for the last few months!

We got this lovely calendar from a friend for Valentines day, we already had one that we use to keep track of appointments and what we need to do for the week, when registration for story time is all the usual stuff... but as soon as we opened it and saw that it was a coloring calendar with pages that were easy to write on I knew exactly what to do with it!

So on the first of the month we sit down and color the picture of the the princesses and then I fill in the activities on the day that we will be doing them! 

It gives Delaney a chance to be a part of it and it also gives her an idea of what she will be doing and when... which makes her feel grown up and more a part of our daily activities...

As you can see its not always something elaborate or crazy... sometimes its as easy as the letter of the day or a color or that time is going ahead, just lets her know that we will be working on something and what it is. Plus it helps her keep me on my toes, she goes to the calendar and lets me know what is on there for the day or she looks at me and asks "What does today say Momma?"

Do we stick to it to the letter... ARE YOU KIDDING? of course not... there are lots of days that we don't do what is written down for the day but it does give us a better schedule or idea of a schedule... 

Do you have schedule for your daily activities? How do you keep up with your kids? Tell me all about it in the comments! 

New Years Resolution... Getting organized

Part of my New Years Resolutions was to get more organized so that I can get back into the swing of things and make life a bit easier on us all!

So I had a cruise around the web and of course had a look around Pintrest too... and here are my results, just a few of what I am sure are millions of great planners and organizing tools!

I wanted something that would help me get organized with everything I do daily and weekly and this one from "LeeLou" is great for that! It's several pages but they are wonderfully designed!

Click here for the "LeeLou" printable

But I also love this one here that lets you fill in the things you need to do daily! this would be great behind glass or laminated so you can write and wipe! You can also get this one already filled in so it will save you a bit of time if your schedule is similar.

Click here for the "only a breath" printable

I love the look of this menu planner and for the new year this is something that will hopefully help me get organized so that come 4 o'clock I be yelling out what am I making for supper! 

Click here for the "Scrimpalicious" menu planner

I hope that you are having more success than I am when it comes to getting organized in the new year but I just have to remind myself not to give up and that everyday is a brand new day to start over!

Do you have a plan for getting organized??? I'd love to hear it and lets face it I can use all the help I can get!!!!

Write and Wipe!

I have let things get away from me.... 

I swear we have a long weekend, the sun comes out and its so easy to get distracted...

I didn't even know that it was Tuesday until about an hour ago....

So here is a quick craft... one that I should have posted a while ago....

It's located in my Kitchen and it's honestly helped me eliminate a lot of paper lists and random sheets of paper in my house... (now that's not to say that our fridge isn't covered with papers and such we do have a toddler)

 I made this write and wipe the same way I made the "Notes" write and wipe I made for the desk organization project that I did a while ago....you can find that one here.

It's super easy and not time consuming at all. All you need is a frame (scored for $3 at the Sally Ann) some scrapbook paper and scrapbook letters.

I made this one with two colors rather than one.

(to divide "What we need" and "to do" AKA Honey do list!) 

I also changed the frame on this one I just used some glue to add some scrapbook paper to the frame to jazz it up a bit. (this one wasn't as nice as the one I used for "notes" one)

I wanted to make this one after seeing how great the "Notes" one turned out and I have seen some around the bloggy world done for menu planning (but we all know that menu planning isn't for me...)

I hope that it helps you reduce your paper lists and such in your kitchen!

Desk Organizing Part 2!

As I mentioned before I have been trying to get our desk at least a little bit more organized.... and I took the first step by making my Desk Organizer seen here! So as another step forward I added two more pieces that I am hoping will aid in the de-cluttering of the desk!

I'm not sure if I've already started "nesting" or if it's more of a Spring cleaning venture but as someone who is very unorganized I'm running with it either way! 

So here they are my two new desk organizing pieces! 

First up is my Notes Write And Wipe Frame...

This project was made in all of 5 mins! 

It's super easy and very useful!

I took these two thrifty finds...

The frame ran me all of 99 cents and the scrapbooking book (which I had all but forgotten about) cost me 3! 

The best thing about this book is as you can see on the cover it came with 16 sheets of scrapbooking paper!

Aren't they pretty and such variety too.... the only draw back of these papers are that they aren't standard scrapbook size so I had no idea what to do with them for a long while... (hence them sitting on the shelf being forgotten about)

So once I had a look through the papers and chose one that I liked I took the glass out of the frame and traced around it on the paper so that it would fit perfectly, then I glued the letters N-O-T-E-S on to the paper with a trust old glue stick and popped it in the frame... 

I swear the longest and hardest part of this project was picking out the paper to put in the frame! 

Next is my Little Notes Bulletin Board...

This one took a bit more time and a lot more glue... 

For this one I needed a few things but they were all things I had lying around the house (I either picked them up because they were super cheap or they were left overs of other projects) 

Still a small stack of supplies if you ask me...  Just a hot glue gun, scissors, ribbon and some cork coasters (I used Hexagon and square shape ones but really you can use any shape as long as they fit tightly together)

This one was quick once I got going but to start I cut down my cardboard backing to the size I wanted, then I laid out my smaller hexagon shaped cork coasters in a pattern so that they covered the whole board, cutting and piecing together where need be to make sure the whole board was covered.

Then I hot glued them all in place, after that I placed my square coasters on top and hot glued them in to place as well. Once that was done I just hot glued some ribbon over the seams and the edge to clean it up and make it pretty. I glued a small piece of left over ribbon on the back for hanging and then it went up on the wall!

And here they both are in place at the desk...

And  they are getting well used already if I can say so my self! 

They have reduced a lot of the clutter on our desk making it much easier to find a place to set my tea mug down and I also have enough space to put my newly covered and revamped idea binder too! 

I just hope I can stay on this organizing kick... If I can I will have a whole house  a lot of work to do around here...

(Look for my binder post on Tuesday of next week! I am pretty proud of how it turned out!)

Have you done some Spring cleaning and re-organizing this week? Made anything fun and useful out of thrifty or (better yet) free materials? Leave a comment and some inspiration!

Desk Organizer!

I have been looking at a messy, messy desk for a long time... 

I decided it was time I did something about the mess... even if it was small! What I came up with is small but I am hoping it should be able to help me keep track of the bills and other important mail. 

I took two boxes... 

I cut the flaps off the smaller box and left it pretty much the same then I cut the bigger box apart and made dividers for the smaller box... I tried to make them almost like recipe cards.

(sorry forgot to rotate before I put it in and now blogger wont let it rotate)

Then I covered the smaller box with scrapbook paper that I liked, I used a natural paper with leaves in it as well as the pattern paper seen below...

When I covered it I just took some white glue and brushed it on with a paint brush and then wrapped the paper around it...

Then I wanted the sides to lay flat so I wrapped it like I would a present and glued it again with the white glue, if it wont stay down (like one of my sides wouldn't) you can use hot glue to keep it down... 

Then on the front I added a triangle of the pattern paper to the front to pretty it up some!

Then I covered the dividers with coordinating scrapbook papers by gluing the paper to the cardboard box with a glue stick.

Put it all together and I was done!

Quick easy and helpful! 

Now if only our desk was that easy to organize and put together neatly....