Out With the Old

Posted on January 2, 2013 by shanagalen

I spent the New Year’s Day with some friends. While our kids played and our husbands watched football, we talked about what we were up to. Two of my friends were in the midst of major purges. They were cleaning out closets, toy rooms, garages, even tackling that towering stack of kids’ artwork. Then I texted another friend who told me she was spending New Year’s Day purging her house, and I started to wonder if we all don’t use the new year as an excuse to throw out the old and start fresh.

I get rid of stuff all year long. I’m not very sentimental, so I generally don’t have much to purge at any given time. But I do like to keep organized. Recently I decided I needed a better storage system for Baby Galen’s “artwork” and a better way to organize all my jewelry. There have been too many times recently when I was going through my jewelry box (boxes and pouches and zip lock baggies) and came across a bracelet or necklace I forgot I had.

So these are my solutions for the artwork and the jewelry.

I got this portfolio at Learning Express. It wasn’t cheap (about $20), but I liked that it was over-sized because a lot of the artwork Baby G brings home is on bigger sheets of paper. I thought I would file it by year, putting labeled dividers between each year.

I got this at The Container Store. It might not be large enough to hold all my jewelry, but maybe that will force me to get rid of some of it. And maybe other pieces will be worn more often.

I got this too because I forget what scarves I have all the time too. I have some really pretty ones and only wear them like once a year.

Are you purging for the new year? Do you have any favorite organization tools?

Shana Galen, Multitasker Mama
I’m Shana Galen, AKA Multitasker Mama (and aren’t we all?). I’m a wife, mom to a two-year-old daughter I call Baby Galen. My parenting motto is, “Keep moving. Don’t pass out. Don’t throw up.” Or maybe that’s my fitness motto? www.shanagalen.com

Clutter

Posted on December 6, 2012 by shanagalen

The one thing I never realized about having a child is all the clutter that comes with it. I thought the baby things were bad—the swing, the pack and play, the changing pad…in every room, the pacifiers and burp cloths and bottles…

But toddlers/preschoolers are even worse! No sooner had I gotten rid of the diaper pail and the boppy than I have all this stuff. Everywhere.

Stuff like this.

And this.

Everywhere I go, someone wants to give my kid a trinket. And she wants each one of those little trinkets—for about two minutes. And then it clutters my house. I have a storage solution, but even that is beginning to get overwhelmed. I have a feeling some of this stuff might just “fall” into the trash.

She’ll never notice, will she?

How do you deal with all the clutter kids bring?

Adventures in baking…

Posted on August 10, 2012 by robyndehart

This past weekend we had my youngest daughter’s birthday party. I chose a Minnie Mouse theme because my baby loves Minnie! I had in my mind the way I could do cupcakes that would look like Minnie and I wanted Babybee to be able to recognize it right away. Of course things don’t always go as planned,for example, I couldn’t find bow candy molds or a bow mini-cookie cutter so I chose the next best thing: a dog bone. Then I got a food pen to try and draw details on said bones to make them look like bows. I do think they ultimately turned out okay. And the most important part, they tasted amazing – homemade strawberry cupcakes with homemade buttercream frosting – yum!

Sometime last year Emily hosted a Harry Potter party at her house and I volunteered to make dessert because I had seen some darling owl cupcakes on-line. I suppose I could have called the first part of this blog: how to decorate cupcakes with oreos. Moving on….

So that’s some of my cuter baked goods and then we’ve had the flops, which oddly enough usually happen at Christmastime. One year I tried to make those little ball cookies where you hide hershey kisses inside…they didn’t work, instead I ended up with nipple cookies.

Then this past year, the first year I made my famous sugar cookies as a mother and Busybee asked for Rudolph cookies. Well, I don’t have a Rudolph cookie cutter, but I had seen elsewhere that you could use a gingerbread man cutter and just flip it upside down. Mine look like naughty women. So see, when I try to get creative with my baked goods, I tend to get pornographic.

Have you ever made something that didn’t come out just right? Did it taste good, but just look ugly? Share your story so you can entertain me while I’m rushing to the end of my deadline…

I’m Robyn DeHart, AKA Basket-Case Mama, but not because I’m crazy (though really, what mom isn’t?) but because I have a slight obsession with baskets, well containers really. I’m a bit of an organization nut and I love to containerize stuff. And yes, I’m authorized to use words like that because I am also a writer. But back to the kids, so I’m mom to two ridiculously beautiful little girls and I can say that without bragging because I didn’t actually make them. Last year my husband, The Professor, and I adopted said little lovelies from the foster-care system here in Texas and now we’re a big happy forever family. Busybee is three and so full of joy it just oozes from her. Babybee is a walking-talking toddler who has a heck of a temper but is so cute, it almost keeps her out of trouble. Though neither of my girls are newborns, I’m fairly new to motherhood compared to the other peanut butter moms, but we’ve settled in as a family as if we’ve always been together. When I’m not trying to keep up with my two bundles of energy, you can usually find me on my laptop on Pinterest, no, that’s not right, um…you can find me writing, yes, that’s it, writing my latest historical romance. www.robyndehart.com

Something about lemons and lemonade…

Posted on April 9, 2012 by robyndehart

When the girls first arrived at our house (a year ago yesterday!) we set them up in one bedroom; a crib on one side of the room, a toddler bed on the other. It quickly became evident that they would not be able to sleep in the same room. In the meantime, we opted to have a pack-in-play in our bedroom for a while for Babybee and then eventually I caved (cause I knew it was coming) and we moved her into my office and moved me out to share the loft office with The Professor. Admittedly it was an emotional weekend for me. I knew I’d lose that space to a kiddo someday, but I hadn’t thought it would happen so quickly. I loved my office, it was my space.

But Babybee needed her own room so we got down to coming up with a decorating scheme. Like most kiddos her age, she’s a big fan of Sesame Street – well, the characters at least because we actually don’t watch it all that often. So when I came across wall decals at Target that were the SS characters, I snatched them up. My mom found some bedding that’s super cute with a big face of Elmo and Oscar on it. So we set up the furniture and put the decals on the wall, but something was missing. We looked all over for wall art to add to it, but couldn’t find anything with Sesame Street peeps on it. And well, when all else fails, I just make it myself so here are the pictures I made for Babybee’s room.

Okay so I’ve had some questions from friends and family as to how I put these little babies together and really the answer is pretty simple, I actually had almost everything I needed already in my house. So here are the supplies you’ll need and you can make any kind of paper art you want:

*Coloring book (preferably one with large up close pictures)
*colored card stock
*adhesive (either a glue stick or scrapbook picture adhesive)
*good sharp scissors
*pencil
*tracing paper (optional, but helps!)

I took pics as I went with one of them for step-by-step directions though admittedly I wish I would have picked a different character considering he actually turned out to be my least favorite. But here we go, let’s put Ernie together.

Okay so step one is to pick your page from your coloring book, then you simply trace it onto the tracing paper. Next you cut out each individual element that will make up the picture, you’ll want to start larger and go smaller so like with my muppets here I started with the head, cut out the corresponding paper, and then cut down the other elements like the nose and eyes, etc. Then you just start piecing everything together, building your picture using your adhesive until you get everything glued together onto a solid piece of card stock. Now you might think you’re done here but this last step is important. You want to take your sharpie and just outline each element so that you give your picture dimension and make it come alive. Easy-peasie. Really it is. Granted all the scissor work can give you finger cramps, but it’s really a simple and fun craft. And Babybee loves all her wall buddies. She talks to them all the time which is totally charming.

So you start with a picture from a coloring book

then you trace it onto tracing paper

: cut out the individual elements out of the tracing paper

then use those pieces to cut out the colored card stock

: keep building each piece

finally you have everything put together

finally using a Sharpie, outline each element to bring it all together

So that’s pretty much it. Sorry for so many pictures. Next time I’ll share the princess dresses I had to make for Busybee once she saw the artwork I’d made for her little sister.

Do you do crafts for your kiddos or with your kiddos? What’s your favorite type of craft or project to work on?