Cannisters Cannisters and MORE Cannisters....

Time for a "useful" post. Here's an idea I came up with last year that has totally helped me in so many ways!! We were building our food storage and had bought several containers of oatmeal to pour into 5 gallon buckets so that they would stay good longer. I kept looking at the mound of containers that we were going to be throwing away and wondering if there was some other use for them and here's what I came up with.

We live in a duplex with a very small kitchen. There's not a whole lot of cupboard space and we had to buy a cabinet to use as our pantry. Finding space for all the food has not been an easy task but with these cannisters it has been a whole lot easier! I have one for almost everything! :) I have one for each of the basics, flour, sugar, brown sugar, oatmeal, and rice. Then I have random things too, pasta, nuts, chocolate chips, pretzels, fruit snacks, ect.... When I do it again I will probably leave the brown sugar in its bag when I put it in the container. I've been emptying everything straight into the cannister and it's worked great except for Brown sugar and pretzels. The brown sugar gets a little clumpy and drier than I'd like and the pretzels were stale (of course it may have been the fact that we don't eat pretzels very often.) I keep separate bags of chocolate chips and nuts and anything else where there's an assortment of things in it.

To cover the cannisters to make them match my kitchen I bought a "big stack" of scrapbook paper from hobby lobby, that way the paper all ready had sort of a theme going on. I measured the paper against the cannisters, cut it, covered it with clear contact paper, and hot glued it to the container. I printed the labels from my computer and matted them on some matching paper. You'll need some super sticky double sided tape to apply it, the hot glue was a little messy on the front of the cannister.

I love my cannisters but I can't wait to get into a new house because I have other ideas for when I do them over again! :)

Have a great day!

My Guilty Pleasure.....

I must admit I love LOVE love chocolate chip cookie dough!!! A lot of times when I'm at the grocery store I will buy the refrigerated rolls to keep in my fridge for a snack...or a "Sanity Saver" Some people hide chocolate or other "normal" treats for their hard days but me, it's gotta be the yummy gooey chocolate chip cookie dough. It's just so good! My very very favorite kind is the kind from Papa Murphy's! I've never actually tried it to see if the cookies are any good but the dough is FANTASTIC!

Unfortunately I made the mistake of introducing my children to it last night and unfortunately the LIKED it!! Now they think I have to share with them. :( Oh well, one more crazy thing they like just like me, put it up there next to cold pizza for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast....hmmm Have a good day everyone! :)

Creative Notebooks

Sorry about not posting for a while. Our computer monitor died and the charger for the laptop quit working too!

Anyways, here are some ideas that I loved! I got the idea from my very crafty mom.

I LOVE to make lists! I make to-do lists, menus, shopping lists, inventory lists, packing lists, and all sorts of lists! I needed a way to keep them organized. I took composition notebooks and covered them with scrapbook paper and then covered that by clear contact paper. They look cute and they work great!! I have a main book that I carry with me that had sections for calendar, to-do lists, scribbles, and budget. The other books are for specific things like, menus/shopping lists, business endeavors, family home evening (to record ideas for and/or write down things we've done), and my scripture study journal. I went a little nutty with the books but it's fun for me!

Another idea:

Here is a page I took from my "menu/shopping list" book. It helps me so much! I make two columns on the page. On the left side I write 7 ideas for Breakfasts, lunches, and Dinners. Then I assign each meal a day. On the right side I write my shopping list according to those meals. I can either tear out the shopping list and take it with me or take the whole book shopping with me.

To keep within my food budget I try to make meals according to what I have in the house or buy only what I need for that week. I try to estimate a cost per item on the list. If the total comes out more than my budget I rearrange meals or try to cut back that way I know what I'm doing BEFORE I go to the store. It really helps.

Cheese puffs and Yogos

So we took my little Knowly (16 months 0ld) to the ER on Tuesday night to get stitches :( He was playing around and fell down and hit his head on the computer hutch. He had a nice clean cut on his forehead but it was really deep and I felt like it needed something to hold it together so it wouldn't get bigger. Anyways, so we're sitting in the waiting room for over an hour and luckily I had some change in my purse to buy some cheetos out of the vending machine. That kept him busy for quite a while. After we saw the doctor and he got his stitches I gave him some yogos that I'd grabbed on the way out of the house as a reward. It made him very happy. So I'm grateful for those two things keeping my little boy happy! :)

I only have a minute but....

I LOVE my dishwand! I wasn't sure if I would use it or not but for just a couple bucks I decided to try it. I think it does use a little more soap than I normally would use, but for some reason it helps my brain think that doing dishes is OK. I call it one of my "lazy man's tools".

Welcome!

Hey Everyone!
Thanks for visiting my new site. I love to organize and do things around the house so I thought I'd share. I do things as inexpensively as possible but still try to make cute-usable things. Hope you enjoy! Feel free to leave any comments/suggestions foe me!
Thanks