A reorganized pantry!

This past August, I organized our pantry.  And that worked well for a while.  But then it slowly started becoming more and more chaotic.  The main culprit was the craft center.  It just would never stay organized, and Cambria would get into it constantly without permission.  I cannot even count how many times I’d find her with paint everywhere.  So, that had to change.  It was getting so bad that I just never wanted to let the kids craft because of the messes Bri would make when she didn’t have permission!  I knew I wanted to keep the dresser in there because it’s really functional.  I just had to change up the arrangement. 

I’ve been thinking about how I wanted to do this for several weeks now.  I was waiting for my can organizers I ordered to finally arrive before I started.  Then it only took me about another 2 weeks after they did come to actually complete this project.    What I did was I moved all the craft supplies to the top shelf in the pantry.  They are still very easily accessible and visible (so they’re not out of sight, out of mind, never getting used!), but the catch is that they are only accessible by an adult!  That freed up 4 drawers in the craft center.  The top one is for our office supplies (pens, hole punch, stamps, etc.), and I knew that had to stay.  Then I realized I could put the kids’ board games into the drawers and free up a shelf in our kitchen/dining area.  The games were stored on the bottom shelf, and the printer was stored on the shelf right above that.  So I took all the games out of the cupboard, and I took most of them out of their boxes and put them into Ziploc bags.  Some of them were too big and had to stay in the boxes, but I was able to put all but 5 into bags.  This allowed me to fit something like 15-20 games (not to mention a lot of puzzles, dominoes, etc.) into 2 of the dresser drawers.  Then I took the printer out of that cupboard and put it on top of the craft center so it’s right with all the office supplies.  Now I have an entire cupboard completely empty and have no clue what to put in there!  I know, poor me, having too much storage space….  

I also moved Cambria’s easel out of her room and into the pantry.  This actually happened by accident.  I needed to keep her busy while I worked, so I decided to bring it in and let her draw/color/paint so she wouldn’t go crazy.  Then I realized I LOVED having it in there!  It’s right by all the craft supplies, so it will get used a lot more.  It’s not on carpet any more, so clean up will be way easier.  And it frees up a lot of very valuable space in her room.  Why didn’t I think of this before?! 

I went to Walmart and got 4 tupperware bins that are the perfect size to hold construction paper, coloring books, etc.  They were something like $4.75 a piece.  Then I went to the dollar store and got 3 little baskets.  I put colored pencils in 1 basket, crayons in another, and glue in another, simply because those things are used very frequently, and I didn’t want to have to go digging through a bin to find them every day.  This brings my grand total to about $63 for the whole transformation (that includes the 12 can organizers I got).  All the other baskets and containers I already had on hand.

So, here are the pictures!  The white basket on top of the dresser holds our computer paper.  The yellow bins on the shelves hold dessert stuff (pudding, jello, cake mixes) and seasoning packets (fajita, etc.).  The white tub previously held our bread, but now it holds Ramen noodles.  The yellow bin sitting on the easel contains the alphabet magnets that came with the easel and also chalk for the chalkboard side.  Not only is it way more organized, but I also have basically the entire bottom shelf completely empty now!  There are only 3 things stored there – a smaller container of cat food for easier access, soy sauce, and apple juice. 

It took me about 2.5 hours to finish, but it makes me so happy!!  I feel like I can breathe when I walk in there! 

Doing the dishes

Cambria seriously LOVES to do the dishes! And I seriously LOVE that she LOVES to do the dishes!!! She literally begs me to let her handwash anything that isn’t dishwasher safe. Be my guest, little one!! Plus, she looks way cuter doing the dishes than I do!

P.S. Her hair is finally almost long enough to put up in a pony tail again!! I tried to do it today, but as you can see it started falling out at the bottom. Let’s just hope she doesn’t cut it again!!

Isis and Zelda

I was cleaning up from dinner tonight and saw what I thought was a really cute photo op!   They just looked so sweet sitting there on the windowsill together. 

Homemade play doh

Before we bought our house, play doh was NOT allowed.  The reason for that is because in every other place we’ve lived in, there has always been carpet in the dining area.  And of course you know that play doh and carpet do NOT like each other.  Since moving here, though, we’ve been able to finally have fun with play doh.  I don’t know why it took us so long to try our hand at making our own, but we finally just did it today, and it turned out great! 

I got the recipe from this website.  It requires about 10 minutes of constant stirring, and your arm WILL feel like it’s going to fall off.  But the play doh turns out super soft and pliable, and it’s really easy to do.  Bri loved helping, and her favorite part was working in the food coloring at the end.  What I really loved is that you cook it on low, so the play doh doesn’t need very much time at all to be cool enough to handle (like maybe 5 minutes tops). 

Here are some pictures of our play doh fun! 

Cambria’s first piano lesson

Cambria has recently started becoming really into the idea of playing the piano. I think part of it is because she knows her cousin Lauren is learning to play, but her interest was sparked even before that. I finally decided I was going to start working with her, and she was so excited! I have 2 little books that I got from my mom a while ago (that we used when we were kids), so we sat down together and worked on the first few pages. She was such a good little student and spent way more time doing her lesson than I thought she would! I figured I’d get maybe 5 minutes out of her, tops, but she spent a good 15 or 20 minutes working with me before she wanted to stop! She listened to everything I said and did such a great job! I really love the picture of her little hands on the keyboard!

Two front teeth

Asher’s front teeth both fell out this week and has now officially lost 3 teeth!  One fell out yesterday, and the other followed today!  You can see in some of the pictures from the past few days that the one front tooth was SO loose that it was just completely crooked.  It was driving the poor kid crazy, and he was so relieved when he finally pulled it out!  I told him that it was definitely loose enough to just pull out, and he said, “No, it’s not, Mom!  See!”  And then out it came!  He was so surprised that he’d actually pulled it out that I couldn’t help but laugh.  He looks pretty darn cute (although admittedly slightly vampire-ish ) with his toothless grin, wouldn’t you agree?