52 Weeks Of Organization Starts.....NOW!

 I had kind of a frustrating day yesterday. I had taken the day off work to drive my mom to a procedure (nothing major, no worries) but due to a miscommunication, we were refused at the surgery center and after I got her settled in back at home, I was spent. I've mentioned before I am the get busy type of gal when things are sad, tough, frustrating or I'm mad. Any kind of negative circumstance, I tend toward the "work it out" approach. There were so many things I could tackle. I found the best 52 weeks of organization checklist HERE (Laura Wittman at www.orgjunkie.com is great. Seriously, you should follow her!) and printed it off with great intentions over a month ago.

 

Where to start, where to start? I had let my closet get out of control! I decided to attack it with a vengeance. I won't bore you with every single detail but do want to give a shout out to a new great product I found at Target and had in my "Hey, this is on clearance. I'll bet I can find a great way to use this." arsenal. When I bought the multi-hanger shown below, it was in a clearance area for $3.50. I very sturdy and the hanger head turns so you can hang it flat or on the rod. There are lots of versions available but if you don't feel like heading to the store, or waiting for clearance, or just REALLY like this one, you can find it HERE or HERE.

 

 

It's original purpose was a tie hanger but Jeff's closet already had a tie hanger in it sooooooo I used it to get all of my tank tops out so I wasn't digging in dark drawers when I needed one. They had been clogging up the underwear drawer and closet shelf long enough!  

 

It turned out to be heavier than I expected so my trusty Command hooks wouldn't hold it. A purse hook hammered into the closet wall did work to hold it however. Depending on the size of your closet and how many clothing items you hang up, you may have room right on the closet rod. I don't, but that's another story. I DID manage four grocery bags of donations out of my cleaning frenzy though. 

 

The best part? I know me, and now that I've started the 52 weeks list, I will keep going. Beware house, husband, and son, mama's on a mission.

Fine Motor Skills In A Parmesan Container?

I saw the cutest idea on Pinterest for a pre-school fine motor skills tool/toy for Sam. He's working on a lot of 2 1/2 year old skills right now and the educational tools you can buy online are great but I already had all of the things to make this tool at the house. Saving money, crafting and making a fun tool/toy. Sign me up! Now I just had to wait until we used all of the Parmesan cheese...........

Ta Da!

Now it's a frog that we can feed bugs to with tweezers.

 

I did always think these canisters looked a little like a frog.

 

All I did was wash it out really good, take the label off, glue googly eyes onto black pom poms and glue those to the top of the canister. Super easy and Sam had a blast!! The bugs came from the million little plastic and rubber animals we have in tubs and the tweezers were part of another game. Voila, check out the fun!

 

 

Serious Frog Feeding Concentration

 

Of course, we had to get our regional bug book out to identify and name the bugs that were getting eaten.

 



We Love Bugs!

 

This was a great wind down the night, get ready for bed after bathtime activity, it kept Sam interested, entertained, learning and working on an important physical skill for over 20 minutes, AND it was free. Triple success!

 

I'll bet you have the stuff to make one just like it right now in you craft room, corner, box, drawer, shelf.....whatever you use. Happy crafting and learning!

 

P.S. Give me a break on the project photography. A photo box is coming up soon on the "I'm going to make this" list :).

 

 

 

 

Homemade Smoked Salmon Is Easier Than I Thought

We did something this weekend that I've always wanted to do. It was small something but still, I checked something off the life list! We smoked a salmon. We LOVE salmon in our house no matter the recipe but smoked salmon is far and away our favorite. In fact, we're maybe a little addicted. I already was before Jeff and I met, but I blame his addiction on ME.

Previous to a weekend birthday trip to Kansas City for my 36th, Jeff had never tried lox and bagels with cream cheese. I had to fix it! We got bagels, lox and all the trimmings at a local bagel shop and headed to the fountains at Crowne Center to enjoy our morning before heading home. The moment he took the first bite, I knew I had converted a "fish for breakfast?" doubter! We have since tracked down some beautiful lox, nova lox, gravlax, and Irish lox on our travels (for more information on the different kinds of smoked/cured salmon, see HERE). If there's a restaurant with any kind of reputation for smoked/cured salmon, we will find it. . Favorites so far include Kopperman's in St. Louis (you'll also want to get the latkes with homemade applesauce here), and Cocotal at the El Dorado Royale, Riviera Maya.

 

I had always thought that smoking a salmon would surely be a difficult process but a few things happened that made me want to give it a go. First, I've already mentioned that we love smoked salmon and would like to eat it much more than we do but it's not always easy to find at the store in Missouri. Second, when I do find it, it's expensive. Finally, I was at Sam's Club and found an absolutely beautiful salmon for $12.50 but it was huge and wasn't in the mood for salmon steaks. So, we smoked it.

 

First step was to brine the salmon. I used my largest stock pot filled it with 1 gallon of water, 1 cup of kosher salt, 1 cup of sugar, 1/4 cup of granulated garlic. You can find lots of recipes on Pinterest. The salmon brined for 24 hours in the refrigerator. Before church yesterday, I removed the salmon and discarded the brine. Here's what it looked like.

 

 

We needed to dry it out before the smoking process so I pat it pretty dry with paper towels and then sat a fan to blow across it while we were at church. When we returned, Jeff made a fire in the smoker box side of the grill and it was ready to start smoking. We left the skin on the salmon and placed it skin side down on the tin foil.

 

 

As you can see, we don't have a fancy grill but you don't need one for this. The smoker box on the right is holding the briquettes and wet pecan wood. We smoked the salmon for about 3 1/2 hours making sure the grill never got more than 16-170 degrees.

 

Here's about 1 1/2 hours in, starting to flake on the edges.

 

 

Sam and Jeff checking the salmon at about 2 1/2 hours. Sam was starting to get really excited and wanted to "eat it riiiiiggggghhhhht now Mommy".

 

Salmon Smoking Boys

 

We let it go about another 35-40 minutes and thankfully, it was ready because none of us could wait anymore! Here's the finished product.

 

Homemade Smoked Salmon

 

I put out all of the classic trimmings (except purple onion, we were out, bummer) and made a little cabbage/dill/yogurt slaw and we dug in.

 

 

We did a FANTASTIC job. It flaked to succulent, beautifully salty pieces. We have already stared discussing what we'll do different for the next one. I'll get a little fancier with the brine for sure and probably add lemon or lime, fresh garlic, maybe a little soy sauce/ginger combo instead. The possibilities are almost limitless. We're also thinking of turning an old mini-fridge into a cold smoker box. I love the thought of having a cold smoker box because then we could do some cheese too. This is another snack we love but don't buy frequently because of the cost. And, we're going to try different types of wood chips to see what flavors we can coax out of these wonderfully yummy fish. Best part, besides the eating of course? It was less than $15 with the cost of the fish, the little bit of pecan wood and the few briquettes that we used! The bigger investment was time. It took a little more than 3 hours of smoking time after 24 hours of brining but it's play in the yard, watch a movie, get some other meals prepared for the week time.

 

This was so much easier than I thought it was going to be. I urge you to give it a try. Save some money over going out and have a delicious meal at home.

 

Cut to this morning. I made Sam his pretty standard breakfast of a strawberry breakfast bar and some cut up fruit. He took one look and said "salmon Mommy". Ask and you shall receive my sweet. He ate the salmon THEN the fruit. So he's a great sous chef and has great taste!

 

 

 

A Few Of My Favorite Things Friday

Books! I love the way they feel, the way they smell, the way a stack of old books looks on a bookshelf. And, oh yea, the reading!

 

 

Stars! Whether jewelry, print, lights, trinkets, or most especially, the night sky, I'm a fan. Jeff found me a blue Druzy star very similar to this ring but it's a pendent and it's one of my favorite pieces ever!

 

Zombies! I love the movies, the shows, the books, the graphic novels, I love it all!

I would apologize for the language in the second picture but anyone who was watching that episode of the Walking Dead was thinking the EXACT SAME THING!! 

 

The Undercut! I seriously don't think there's a sexier, more classic haircut on a man.

 

Turquoise! Nugget style turquoise always looks beautiful, no matter the occasion, outfit, or style. The bracelet in the middle is mine and the other two pieces, well, they will be mine!

 

Aluminum Christmas trees! I am still on the hunt but this retro beauty will grace our holiday decorations someday.

 

 

Yves Saint Laurent Rouge Pur Couture Vernis à Lèvres Glossy Stain in #11 Rouge Gouache. This is the absolute most beautiful product! The color goes with almost anything, it lasts for a long time and does stain as it fades.

 

 

 

I'm getting #9 Rouge Laque and #27 Peche Cerra Colla next!

 

I'd love to hear about some of you favorite things!

Open Color Play "Apple Buckets"

A few months ago, I saw the cutest post on Pinterest with two little girls playing with colorful stained, wooden mini-buckets and matching "apples". I was sure Sam would love the game of matching colors and picking the "apples. He's all about object identifiers right now as he's learning the world around him AND he seems to share my attraction to all things miniature (yay!). I logged onto the store listed in the Pinterest post to investigate how to order the buckets for him and discovered that they were $48. Holy F, are you kidding me?!? $48 for six 2 1/2" little buckets and two matching wooden ball "apples" for each bucket. No thank you very much. I can make it!

 

I ordered six 2 1/16 inch buckets from a site I love called craftparts.com. They were $1.35 each with what could have been an unfortunate $8.95 cent shipping cost. I just used that as an excuse to add some other supplies I needed like wooden peg people and holiday cutouts, in shapes I couldn't find locally, to the cart to make it worth while. I purchased a package of thirty-five 3/4" birch balls from Hobby Lobby for $4.70 but with my ever present coupon was closer to $4. Plus I only needed twelve of them so I've got 23 remaining for another project. I already had umpteen colors of Rit dye which works really well on this type of raw wood. It works so well in fact, that I don't usually seal these types of product as the wood really absorbs the Rit dye. If you wanted to, you could spritz them with a polyurethane sealer after you stain. I really like the rustic look of them.

 

Color Match Open Play Buckets And "Apples"

 

I've set them up in all of the above configurations for open play. I've also just laid the box out and let Sam get them out as he likes. So far he's had a ball  figuring out which "apples" go with which buckets, putting the "apples" in the buckets, and dumping them out, over, and over, and over, and over, and over................... Our only problem so far has been a little disagreement over putting water in the buckets. Hard to explain to a 2 1/2 year old that they're not really meant for water.

 

Total project cost = Approximately $12.50. That's almost a 75% savings over the set I saw on the original site. Whoa!

Repurposing For Hands On Learning

Recently Sam has shown a ton of interest in learning letters and numbers. He runs around like a crazy person singing ABCDEHIJMNOPeeeeeeeeDubUYZ. Come on, there are some really good combinations in there! I decided to have some fun with letter sounds and try to practice some of the letters I don't hear much in Sam's alphabet song. AND, I got to repurpose something that only gets used for one month a year.

 

First, the "old" project.

This is the advent calendar I made last Christmas with the Christmas Paper Advent Calendar from Hobby Lobby. I'd love to provide a link but their customer service number tells me it's only available in the Christmas season. I guess this is very timely so that you can pick up one (or more) in August when they put Christmas out (sheesh!).

 

Handmade Advent Calendar

 

The box was $12.99 but I know I had a 40% off coupon so probably paid about $7.90. The glitter stick-on letters came from Dollar Tree but I had to buy two packages to make sure there were enough 1s and 2s so about $2.30 there. I already had the gold spray paint for the box structure and the sharpies to color the boxes.

 

I try really hard in our house to not be a candy, candy, candy family and we have about 17 million little plastic and rubber animals of the Toobs variety so I thought we'd have a Noah's Arc and add a different pair of animals each day leading up to Christmas with reindeer being the final animal. The Arc with a few animal pairs already on it is visible in the upper left background of this photo. I got the Arc from another of my favorite resources for great, cheap, product/craft supplies, Oriental Trading Company. It was $4.38 on clearance with $6 shipping which seems like a lot but I had other things in my cart too! Get it HERE.

 

"Candlelight" Dinner With My Boy

 

Even though this project only cost about $10 not including the supplies I already had, I hated to pack it away for 11 months of the year.

 

Enter - new project.

 

Handmade Learning Letters Play Box

 

I hadn't colored the back of the boxes (originally out of laziness but yay, how fortuitous!). I used a much more colorful palette for the letters side of the boxes than I had for the advent side. Unfortunately, Dollar Tree didn't have any letter stickers on this trip but Hobby Lobby had sheets for just over $4 in the scrapbooking area. Once again, we have what seems like a million little trinkets, animals, erasers, shaped beads, and tons of supplies left over from our sensory bins when Sam was a baby so, after digging I had plenty of letter specific items for each box.

 

I sort of let Sam choose how we play with the letter boxes. Sometimes, he wants to look at one box and everything in it and sometimes he wants to dump everything all over the table or a sheet on the floor and dig through it with lots of questions. I do make sure with this particular toy/tool it's always guided play though as there are small pieces and lots of them. Plus I can make sure than no matter how he's playing with the toys inside we are making our letter sounds as we go.

 

I just love it when a great item serves multiple purposes!

 

I Used A Table Saw Ya'll!

This was the perfect kind of weekend in every way. We started Saturday out with a family project to complete something I've wanted for a very long time, a compost bin for my backyard. We bought the following supplies:
8 1X6X96 boards
2 2X2X96 boards
1 box of 50 - 2" wood screws.

 

 

Thank goodness my brother and his girlfriend left their pick-up truck (hiccup truck according to Sam) for us while they traveled for the holiday. There is NO WAY we could have brought this home in my Cruiser! And thank goodness too that my Father-in-Law doesn't use his table saw so much anymore so cutting the boards to the sizes we needed was an absolute breeze.

 

 

This was the first time I got to use the table saw and I LOVE it! You'll notice that Sam is on his Regalo Toddler Travel Bed mentioned in an earlier post. It's been pretty rainy around here and the ground was "too wet on it" for Sam. Toddler Bed saves the day again! Here's another pic just because he's so darned cute. Happy, dry boy = easier projecting for mommy and daddy.

 

 

We cut 20 - 32" pieces from the 1X6X96 boards and 4 - 36" pieces from the 2X2X96 boards. Then screwed the  32 " pieces of 1X6 to the 2X2 with a little space in between for air circulation. We had a couple 34-ish" pieces left over that we attached to the bottom for some stability.

 

 

We had 2 pieces of 2X2 left over, about 30 inches each. I haven't figured out yet how to use them but oh, I will :). Total project cost = about $70. Total time invested = 2 hours. Total family project time value = priceless!

 

If you're like me, you know composting is a super great way to reduce waste while helping out your garden but you're not 100% sure what can and can't go into the bin. Here's a handy-dandy chart to help you out.

 

 

On Sunday, a colleague of Jeff's was having a birthday party for his daughter. At a little past 2 1/2, Sam is still mostly a parallel player but there were awesome activities including a scavenger hunt, fairy garden, bounce house AND a piñata.

 

 

Sam didn't care much for the fairy garden but I thought it was awesome. Inspiration! The bounce house on the other hand was hard to tear him away from until the piñata. I think he was like "wait, you WANT me to hit this with a bat....on purpose?". I'm definitely keeping a piñata in mind for Sam's birthday!

 

After Sam was in bed Sunday night, we had a surprise visit from my friend Steve. He had a birthday in early April and we just now had a chance to get together to have a drink and a celebration. It turned into a bottle per person/OMG, it's after midnight/friend sleeping on couch because there's no way he can drive home, kind of night. Rare these days, but always a blast! I had been holding on to a killer gift I picked up for him in Mexico in April. Behold the magnificence.......

 

Luchador Mask

And this was early in the night too.

 Memorial Day is a fun day for us to both remember, and celebrate. Check out my Sous Chef helping me make shortcake to go with the strawberries. Yep, that's raw flour on his face. He said it was "YUMMMMMM". What a kook.

Sous Chef

A little tip, I discovered well into the baking process that I didn't have any milk for the shortcake. I took a chance that instead of 2/3 cup milk, 1/3 cup cream and 1/3 cup half cream, half water would work and it was brilliant. I'll never make it with milk again!

 

I found this sweet margarita party ball at Sams Club. It reminded me of the Coors Light party balls that were really popular when I was in college so of course we had to have it!

 

Party Ball

And, my friend Erica joined us with her daughters. Her girls were so great with Sam. I am really lucky to have such great people in my life! Lucy, who's going to be a sixth grader, even got knee deep into the Duplos with Sam and very patiently made too many towers for him to knock over to count.

 

 

 One of the best parts of the day? The rain held off until the burgers and brats were done AND the kids had exhausted themselves on the trampoline!