Meal Organization

   As a wife/mom, one of my obvios jobs is preparing daily meals. Along with that, one of my most dreaded tasks has always been deciding what we were going to have for supper. I will open the fridge and stare blankly, then I will wonder to the pantry and do the same, and then back and forth to see what I have the all the ingredients for etc. Then call to the family for ideas only to hear "doesn't matter", or "I don't care". Lol, only really,  no help.

    A while back I saw an idea on pinterest for a meal board.  I made one.  It was the one in the photo frame with the horizontal clothes pins,  one for each day of the week,  holding a card with a meal written thereon. Really neat.  I kept losing cards, and broke off a couple clothes pins. ..we're rough here,  so I decided to use the same concept,  inside a glass frame, using the glass as a dry erase board.  It turned out great!

 

This did help my meal Organization,  but what I came up with next, really went the extra mile.  Using the same thought,  I printed out a list (organized by meat type) of the meals I make.  When I make my list for grocery shopping, I look at this,  and decide what I want to make for the week, and make my list from there.  Then, once home from shopping,  I circle all the meals that I have everything to make,  so no more going from fridge to panty trying to figure out what I 'can' make, it's right there on the wall!  Once a particular meal has been prepared,  I erase the circle from around it. Simple! 

I printed both these out using a regular ole word processing app, nothing fancy, and printed on regular white printer paper, and trimmed the excess to fit in an 8x10 frame. Dollar store dry erase makers are only $1 abs work fine :)

Hope this helps someone out there with their meal planning.  Time is precious, save it when you can :)

Fast Easy Valentines Day Hair

A Valentines Day Hair-doo!!

This is cute in pigtails too, but my little one has really thin fine hair, so, one it is :)

To do this, i made a simple ponytail, rather high on the head, loosened it, and made an upside-down topsy tail.  Then, just split the topsy tail in two equal strands and fold them down into a heart shape and secure it with a cute little hairbow. 

Took just a couple minutes all together!!

Valentines Day Card Idea

This was Cali's Valentines Day card last year (kindergarten).  Thinking about doing something similar this year, but undecided. 

I saw a similar one on pinterest, it was taken outdoors. . . this would have looked much better outdoors due to the fact that the hand catches all the flash.

Anywho, to make one, just take a pic of your cutie with their hand to one side in a fist, make sure the fist is made like they are holding something, with thumb towards their body.

Mine looked like this:

Then, to make it look like a card, I added a border, and a Short Valentine Message (make sure its still 4x6 size)

 I printed them (4x6) at my local wal*mart, and cut little slits with an exacto knife on the top and bottom of her fist, and inserted a valentine blow pop

Finished Product, pretty cute huh? and just imagine if I had taken the pic outside, how much better!!

Old Top Repurposed!!

So, I had this cute short sleeve sweater. . . Which is much too tight.  This is why in the pic I chose to hold it up to me, rather than try it on. LoL.

Using my creative mind, I decided to repurpose it!! Meaning, I decided to transform it from an old ill fitting sweater, into a cute girls sweater dress.

First (no pic of this sorry), I put it over my girl, and pinched the sides together to get an idea of how much smaller it need to be.  I pinched up a bit more than an inch on either side.


I laid the dress flat, inside out and sewed a seam down each arm as shown below (about
 same as I had pinched together on her earlier)

Make sure if you do this that you round out the underarm, and cut the excess off as close to the seam under the arm as possible, so it lays right when turned back inside right.

Once sewn down both sides, trim excess close to seam, and turn inside right.

It was a hit! She loved the dress!

Cali turns 4

So my daughter turned 4 on Tuesday (march 23rd). It doesnt seem like she should have, she's getting so big. When I asked her what kind of party she wanted, her answer was simple. . . "Spongebob"; dont we all love that guy. lol.

For her tee shirt to the side --> I found a spongebob image on google opened it in paint and found a cute font (billo) and wrote "birthday girl" beside it. I colored it to match the theme and printed it on that iron-on tee shirt paper i got from walmart. All you do is print your image out (mirrored) and iron it on! so easy! And she loved it.

Weather was supposed to be bad so i had to come up with an activity or 2 for a bunch of children under 5. . . and i thought. . . yep a cardboard playhouse will be cheap and effective. It turned out really well so i thought i may share it, incase someone elses child just has to have a pinapple under the sea!

What u will need

*really big cardboard box

*grey paint

*3 yellow plastic tablecloths

*grey duck tape

*wire or big stapler

Constructing a "Pinapple Under the Sea"

1- find a really big cardboard box, or 2. (appliance stores have these alot)

2- bend the box to make it more round/octogonal shaped.

3- cut out the rounded door shape, and a few round windows. (i painted the door grey as i went)

4. Now begin to assemble the top. Sorry i didnt have a picture of this, but i just stood all the top sides up at an angle so there was a smaller octogonal shape at the top and i wired it together because the duck tape wouldnt hold.

5. Next I cut a piece of cardboard the shape of the octogonal opening left at the top and taped this down, so the top of the box was closed in. This made the overall shape.

6. Yellow paint would cost way too much to cover this, so i chose yellow tablecloths for less than $2 apiece and taped them on the inside to cover the entire area. These also hid all the uneven areas, so it worked out alot better.

7. i cut out around the windows and duck taped them down, it looked like this:

* The pipe at the side was an old wrapping paper roll i just covered with duck tape. I cut a slit in the side of the house and pushed it in.

*I taped the top piece down with clear tape so it would look nice.

8. for the pinapple leaves on top i cut these shapes (in much larger form ofcourse) out of cardboard and painted them green. (i watered down my paint a bit so it would take less). I assembled them together just putting the larger in the middle, sliding the rectangle onto it in the cutouts, and then placing the taller single leaves into the front and back cutouts on the rectangle.

9. tape the pinapple leaves down to the top of the pinapple

10. lastly, just for looks i made a "nautical wheel" out of an old plastic lid and some small dowel rods that i cut and covered with tape, i put this on the door, then used an orange sharpie to draw the pinapple pattern around the house.

***** another awesome spongebob birthday party decoration i came up with is jellyfish balloons***

all you need is light pink balloons and light pink streamer and clear tape!and its cheap and easy!

*just blow up the balloons

*tape a ring of streamer to the bottom to cover up the tied part

*tape a few long streamers hanging down out of that bottom part

*maybe even draw some darker pink or red shapes on the top of the balloon to resemble the jelleyfish

*use tape and some streamer or string to hang them from the celing!

i know im horrible at explaining things, so, thanks for baring through that, maybe i'll get better at it later!

God Bless!

Ang