Organize My Life: Game Closet

In my family its all about the games. Growing up we would go to Grandma's house and play games almost every Sunday. Back then it was simple games of Scum (Corporation in my family they didn't like the name Scum) or Hand and Foot. But now it has evolved into bigger and more complicated games that we just can't get enough of. I love games! When Andrew and I married he would complain sometime about how he just wanted to sit and talk on Sundays sometimes and not play games. He was getting burned out. Now I have brought his to the gray side.(gray since it's not really bad except for the pocket book sometimes...) Our game closet has grown and it won't be getting any smaller soon. In fact we just bought 4 new games. All we have played before except Shadows over Camelot. In case your curious we also bought Stone Age, Fresco, and expansions for Dominion and Cities and Knights of Catan (FINALLY!). With getting the new games I needed to make room for them since, well, our game closet looks like this:

 So dis-organized and a little scary though it has been worse in the past. I love the bottom shelf with pledge, scissors, chalk and pillows! Almost a junk drawer down there. This is my first offical spring cleaned area. I got a bucket of suds out and washed the area top to bottom and got all the missing pieces back into their boxes. It makes me wish I had "Spring cleaned" the previous organization..... Here is how it looks now:

 So much nicer.  If you can see in the picture we have a lid of a show box in our game closet. This is for pens, paper and for any missing pieces that we find around and are too lazy to put them back away. This helps to keep them from being lost forever as well as not having to go and search for paper and pens.

I counted our games I was curious how many. We have 50 adult games and 15 children games in addition we have about 8 decks of cards that aren't assigned to a specific game. Wow, though I'm not surprised.

At the bottom there I have a blankets, pillows, and step stools. (I am kind of short)

I'm so happy that I got this looking good again it was overdue. Next week will be the Toy closet

Crochet School

Sorry for my lack of posting lately. I have had a few things thrown at me and I wasn't able to keep up with everything! so so sorry. I wanted to share something with you all.

Do you know how to crochet? No? Then you MUST go to Craftyminx she has 23 lessons to teach you how. I have only finished the first 9 lesson and check out my progress.

Not too shabby for only doing one project before this I think...

She teaches all the ins and outs of crocheting, and has video tutorials for both left and right hand-ers!. I have absolutely enjoyed learning it. I have done crocheting before but only an Afghan with granny squares. My mom showed me how to do it and I copied. Not much learning involved there! So I want to thank Dana for providing and doing the work with this! Also there is word that she is working on a knitting school. I hope she can get that going soon, wouldn't mind adding that to my talents.  :)

Next week I'll be getting back to my Organize my Life segment. I just haven't been feeling it. With the sun out I wanted to be outside not indoors cleaning! I'll be working on the game closet next. We just got 150 dollars worth of new games or expansions. If you live close come play!

Flower Lace Headhand

The sweetest family let me go through their Mother's home after she passed and was able to grab whatever I wanted. Their mother was into crafts and decorating so I went home twice with a full car. So grateful for that opportunity, especially since I am a wife of a grad student and therefore poor.

She had a basket of lace that I took and have been trying to find projects to use it for. This lace was the first one I fell in love with and wanted it to be something I would use a lot.

Pretty flowers right? so I made it into this

I used fabric stiffener to make the flowers form to my liking. I used one of our large balls to have it dry on. Then sewed on the elastic at the back. I love how it turned out!

 I wore it for the first time on Saturday for St. Patrick's. When my son Austin saw it he was envious, and asked if he could have flowers in his hair too. I search and found a little strand of it for him. He was so happy to get them and very concerned about losing them. It was quite windy. I really wonder how many people thought I had a little girl and not a boy wearing pink flowers....

 

Happy Green Day!

Here is my extra post this week! I hope you're wearing green today so that you are pinch proof! If not hurry it's still early grab some grass since we have NO snow on the ground. I can't believe it...

I have been put in Activity Day for my Church. That means I get to figure out ideas for 10 and 11 years old that are fun and still teach gospel principles. I have been put with someone that has already been in the calling before and in Young Women's so it's awesome to have that as a resource! We had our first activity last week and had a lot of green fun. Everyone was to dress up in green and learn more about each other . They filled a "ME in a Bag" with items that showed what they like to do and anything else they would like to share. It was awesome to know that I have some of the same interests as them and will be able to use those later in the year.

We also did a game with fun sized candy bars. We had them pick 5 bars and then after told them they would have to share according to what they grabbed.
Twix- Share a trick or a talent
Milky Way- Share a dream or goal
3 Musketeers- Name 2 people you admire and why
M&M's- Share a memorable moment
and Snickers- Share an embarrassing moment

So if you grabbed all snickers you would be giving away a lot of those memories you'd rather not tell....
It was GREAT fun we went one by one sharing. After they shared they could eat that candy bar so added bonus!

I made some green treats that I wanted to check out, found on Pinterest of course!

The drink in the yellow bowl was SO easy and so good, one of the girls was asking for the recipes afterwards. :) It's just 1 qt lime sherbet,2 cans of sprite, and lime concentrate 1/2 cup (I accidentally put the whole thing in but we didn't drink it right away so the sherbert melted a bit to help it taste better and I added a little more sprite to it.) Originally found HERE

The other things didn't make it to a photo shoot since everyone ate them faster than I could take one!

Don't they look so good? Well they are. I didn't do the white over the top but I'm sure that makes them better! :) Go over the sixsisters to get the recipe yourself.

I also printed some printable available for free and I thought you might like them for your collection! For the cups I printed off these at Benign object. It's not just for beer..
I also printed off subway art Todays fabulous find

This was the one I printed but she has others in different color combos.
So much fun! I even had a few Mom's come up to me on Sunday telling me that the girls had a lot of fun! That means sucess! Til next time!

Cowboy Delight

Sorry for my absence on Wednesday. I just didn't want to get on the computer at all! I'll do an extra post to make up for it sometime soon! I find myself today without kids for 5 hours so I'm going to be putting a lot of my time into creating things to share here! I am so excited you have no idea! Thanks to in-laws and a husband willing to take the kids at his place of work on campus. (It was his idea even!) Here's to a productive day!
So here is some food for Friday.


Cowboy Delight

What ya need:
1 lb Ground hamburger
2 cans cream of mushroom soup
2 cans tomato Soup
1 tsp celery salt
1 tsp chilli powder
2 cups cooked macaroni

What ya do:

Brown hamburger. Add all other ingredients cook at simmer for about 20-25 minutes. Serve.

Yum, all the kids in our family love it, including cousins! FYI-You can half this recipe. The amount written can feed about 8 people with some left over I think... We always make a full batch since it is good leftovers so that's why I'm unsure.

Hanging Fun

Like the plaques I got? I purchased theses at Hobby Lobby for 60 cents each! Can't help but love their 80% off section. I am not a coffee or tea fan but those were only held on by small screws, so I removed them easily. I will be doing something with those some day, I keep ya informed.

After taking the coffee and tea off I primed and painted them. Put on cute scrapbook paper. (I have no idea why there is a fork in the picture!)

Grab hammer and nails and choose your spot. These ones are for the boys.

To put their bags and hats on them. They were so excited about it when they saw it. Has anything been put on them since? No. All well I'll get them trained yet!

This one is for me! For keeping my necklaces untangled. I don't have very many of them so this works for me. I've also seen putting on little hooks on the bottom side of a canvas, like HERE, if you need more space and hooks for your jewelry.

FreshFoto Giveaway

 A friend of mine has started up a new Photograpgy blog, Freshfoto&design and in honors of starting it up she is giving away a Foto session to anyone in cache Valley or to anyone that can get to cache valley. Does that pertain to you? Then head on over there and look at her amazing fotos and sign up for a chance to win!

Organize My Life: Food storage room

My food storage room has been really scary for sometime. I get home from shopping and just plop all the food storage on the floor. Months worth of groceries were piled on top of each other. Luckily nothing that would spoil, thank goodness. Here's a little picture of it. I can't find the one of the other side! But just picture a pile of boxes on top of each other almost touching the ceiling! With the ShopVac somewhere buried under it.

Here is how it is now:

Look at all the nicely placed cans of everything. Makes me smile!

On the other side, see all the bottles I put up last summer? Some of it is from family the previous year before. We had to purchase the black shelves for this project. All the applesauce and most of the pears had no home and were in boxes all over. It's nice to have the extra space.

Don't you just LOVE the 2 different strips of carpet? Blue and brown go so well together I just couldn't choose...HAHA nope that's thanks to the previous owners.

Now I told you I was a coupon-er. I have really only just started and I'm not a FREAK about it,yet, but I have my resources that I use and receive 5 Sunday newspapers from Herald Journal, and my in-laws keep the Redplum they get in the mail since I don't receive one at mine. The website I use is SavvyShopperDeals The people that make up that site are from Utah County so some of the unadvertised sales aren't the same as here but everything else I have been able to find! They also don't do Fresh Market but that's the only grocery store they don't in cache valley. So if you have been wanting to coupon but don't know how to go about it go the the website and learn. They also have classes all over Utah to teach you. I went to one in Logan and won some free stuff! :)

This is my favorite shelf. Why? I received everything for 1.00 or less. Mostly less. All the toothpaste (except 3D whitening), toothbrushes and floss I got for free. It also show what I've learned, and that is NEVER pay more than 50 cents for things in the bathroom.

Framed T-shirt Pom Poms

Once again I put my sister's t-shirts to use!

This Project cost me $0. And I mean 0. The t- shirts, from the sister, the frame from a home I was asked to go through and take whatever I could use and the Ric Rac from Andrew's Mother. Not one of my pennies was used to make this project! Can't help but LOVE that!

First, I cut 1/2 inch strips out of the t-shirts, I then made something like THIS to make the pom poms. (link shows how to make the pom poms. It's the method I used I didn't make mine as BIG though.) NOTE: When getting to the cutting stage do not be tempted to move anything. Just keep cutting around or you will have a bunch of 2 inch strips of fabric everywhere! I did that to the turquoise one, it took me SO much time to get it all back together!

I then cleaned up the frame, added the ric rac and stapled the pom poms where I wanted them. Done within 1 hour! And there you have it!

Autumn Soup

I wanted to share some of the recipes that my family uses on a monthly basis. I am NOT a cook. I only do it out of necessity. With saying that all these things I can make and most of the time they taste the same as they did as my mom's house. So first up is a super easy one!

Autumn Soup

What you need:
1 lb ground beef
1/2 cup diced onion
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup sliced celery (optional)
1 cup cubed potatoes
4 cups water
2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1 bay leaf
1 qt of bottle tomatoes (yeah for food storage!)

What to do:
Brown beef and onion together in pan, drain fat. Add remainder of ingredients EXCEPT Tomatoes and simmer 20 minutes stir occasionally. Add tomatoes and cook 10 minutes or until vegetables are soft. Remember to remove bay leaf!


That's it. An easy soup to do on a cold day or when your sick, and sick of chicken noodle soup. What I like about this soup is, because of the bay leaf, it makes the broth a little sweet.

Have a great weekend!