Launch pad - before

Coat Launch Pad



Shoes Launch Pad

A bowl full of lemons is hosting some weekly challenges to help get your home organzied.  This week is the Launch Pad - a place to launch you out the door and to land when you arrive back home.  We don't really have an entry way in our house - you open the front door and BHAM! you are in the middle of the living room.

To the left of the front door we have a shoe rack that we store our shoes in.  I love that you can sit on the shoe rack to put your shoes on.  Right now, since only four of us walk, each person has two shelves.  The rule so far has been that you can have as many shoes as you want in the shoe rack - they just have to fit on your two shelves.  8 )  Once the baby starts walking and has her own shoes, one of us is going to loose a shelf.  I haven't figured out who that will be yet. 

I showed our hat and mitten holder yesterday and our coat hooks.  The girls use the hooks and hubs and I use coat hangers in the closet.

The only thing that we don't have in our lauch pad is a place for pocket junk - keys, sunglasses, change, etc.  To combat that, I put two baskets by our tv.  Hubs and I each have our own "key basket" for our own junk.  Here is mine -

and her is the hubs -

You can see that his is full of all kinds of ...... treasures!  8 )

These are "action" shots of our launch pad -



Shoe rack


You can see that this is where I store my purse.  Occasionally the shoe rack also holds things that need to go upstairs - the hairbrush and a book.  The shoes have become a bit jumbled thanks to daughter # 2 - she likes to rearrange them.

An action shot of the coats - not too bad from an organizational standpoint.

In the coat closet we have two bins that hold back up hats and mittens for the girls.  Daughter # 1 is on her seventh or eighth pair of "back up" mittens.  We are going to have to start mismatching the mittens so that both hands stay warm!

Back up hats and mittens

I'm sure that our system can be improved - or at least straightened some.  I'll have to think about how it can be improved and work on that this week.

Mitten & Hat Holder



Mitten & Hat Holder



It is not easy keeping three pink coats organized so that the right person can grab the correct coat!  8 )  In order to combat the 'we-have-too-many-pink-coats' dilemma AND to help my two big girls (age 5 and 2.5) gain a bit more independence, I created a mitten & hat holder on the inside of our coat closet door.  The coat hooks are hung low enough so that my 2.5 year old can reach her coat.  She can't hang her own hat and mittens yet, but she can stick them in the sleeve of her coat if I don't have a free hand to help her.



Hooks labeled with each girls name

 I used some stickers from my scrapbook stash to label the door right above the hooks.  I spelled out each name on the door and then added their initial to the hook.  The "S" on the middle hook is kind of hard to see.  I'm trying to work on name recognition with my 2.5 year old and I was hoping that seeing her name around the house would help.



Hooks for hats and mittens

 I spray painted some clothespins blue and then hot glued some matching ribbon to them.  I knotted the ribbon around the white hooks and then hung them above the coat hooks.  I was thinking that one clothespin would be for the hat and one clothes pin would be for the mittens.  Sometimes that happens, and sometimes they stick their knit mittens in the hat and use the other clothespin for their waterproof gloves.  Neither one of my girls likes to wear their waterproof gloves unless they are actually playing in the snow.  8 )

We have one free hook that is being used to hold their bags right now.  I guess that means we need to have one more kiddo so that we can fill up the coat hook with coats!  8 )

Friendship blossoms

I saw this idea in FamilyFun magazine a last year or the year before -  Friendship blossom link.  I've been hoarding ideas to use once my kids hit school and I am very excited that we got to use one!  These paper flowers were right up daughter # 1's alley!

We used pink cardstock from my scrapbooking stash.  Who would have guessed that I have eight different shades of pink in my stash?  I helped her cut out the hearts - which are used as the petals for the flowers - and she hole-punched them herself.  I also helped her cut out the middle - it was tricky even for me.  What can I say - I'm not great with scissors (- that's why I LOVE my cricuit!). 

The finished product

We weren't sure of the best way to transport these to school without the flowers getting squished - so hubs made this flower holder out of a pice of scrap wood -

Flower holder

Isn't that cool??

All of the flowers ready to go!

Once I saw it, I thought that it would still be pretty unweildy, so hubs made the holder vertical instead of horizontal - think like this lollipop stand  -

Lollipop stand

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture of the revised stand.  Now we are all set for Valentine's Day!

Long time - no post!

Wow - it has been a long time since I posted!  Life has been crazy!  My husband is still in his medical training and has worked A LOT since Thanksgiving.  I soooo can't wait for him to be done.  I added a tracker to the top to keep us (me) motivated. 


I just hope that the light at the end of this tunnel isn't a train coming to run us over!  8 )



I've worked on a few projects over the past 2 months.  Here's hoping that the kids let me post them!

Thanksgiving tree

My parents have been putting up two Christmas trees for about four years.  They have a big floor to ceiling tree in their family room where everyone hangs out and watches TV and they have this smaller three that sits on a table in their living room.  For the past two years, they have left the little tree up through the winter and removed the Christmas decorations and put snowmen on the tree.  Well, truthfully, the grandkids decorate the tree with non-breakable snowman ornaments that my mom has collected over the years.  This year they decided to do something different and put the tree up early to have a Thanksgiving tree.  My mom put white lights on the tree and gathered some fabric leaves.  She also repurposed some springs of berries and whatnot from an old wreath that she had that has seen better days.  The grandkids made foam pumpkins and foam turkeys from one of those kits that you can buy at Micheals or Hobby Lobby or your local craft store.




Here are some action shots of two of my kids making their turkeys:

Some action shots of decorating the tree:

Fake fruit that used to live on my mom's fall wreath



Foam Pumpkin Ornaments

 



One tired tree decorator!



 

Back pack tags



At the beginning of the school year, my daughter couldn't decide if she wanted to ride the bus home from school or if she wanted to be picked up in the car.  She thought that she might ride the bus one day and then get picked up the next.  To prevent her from getting confused, I made her these little tags for her back pack so that she would remember which way she was coming home that day.  And it would help out the teacher as well!

I did a google search for a bus .svg file and a car .svg file.  I can't remember the name of the websites where I found them but they were pretty easy to find.  I used my Cricuit and the Sure Cuts a Lot software to cut out the pieces for the bus and for the car.  I made the car green because we have a bluish-green car.  The paper is actually a pretty close match to the color of our car!

After the bus and car were assembled, I glued them to a rectangular piece of cardstock.  Then I laminated the cardstock for added durability.  I used a hole punch to make a hole in the tags.  I even added her bus number to the bus in case she forgot what bus she needed to get on.





My husband found some little carabiner hooks in the camping section of our meijer.  They were the perfect size for her back pack tags.  We hang the tags on the hook where her back pack goes and we change them out in the morning as needed depending on how she is coming home that day. 



Turkey Hats

How cute are these hats? 

My husband came up with this idea while I was out shopping yesterday.  My 5 year old drew the turkey heads and made the feathers on the back.  My husband did the cutting and the stapling.  My 2 year old just ran around shouting "Gobble gobble!".  8 )

I came home to them wearing their hats and swinging on the swingset.  They were having a blast and so proud of their work!

Gobble Gobble!