Santa is a-coming!

So tomorrow is December 1. This means it's the day we put up the Christmas Tree. It also means it's the day advent calendars get started.

I came across this really cool home made advent calendar idea on (you guessed it) Pinterest. Look here for the original blog post and how they did it

This is my version. The cotton balls will be added each morning by the kids, secured by double sided tape. I used the same poem and santa. I was quite lucky, I actually went shopping yesterday to try to find some papers to use but came up with nothing - I tried 3 local shops! In the end I decided I would just paint it. But today when I decided I realllllly had to get my A into G and get it done, I dug out some papers I bought ages ago when I tried my hand at scrapbooking, and turns out there were the perfect colours in there, even a skin colour! Fancy that. Was obviously meant to be.

Anyways, the picture:



The kids think its kinda cool, its hung on the wall in the dining room and the 2 big ones had to sit on the opposite side of the table to what they normally sit so that they could see Santa. A bit cute.

Filling a blank space

I have this wall in my kitchen that was happily empty. Till I started browsing Pinterest. Then I realised it needed something on it. I did have one particular craft idea that would have gone there oh so nicely, but I don't think I will ever find the time to do that project... at least not any time soon anyway. Anyways, the inspiration for this one actually came from TradeMe. I have no idea what I was browsing, but this particular wall art thing stood out to me, but I wasn't going to pay for it when I knew I could make it for free (had all the materials I needed just lying around - cardboard, a craft knife and paint).

This is what I created:

All I did, was find plates, bowls, plastic containers of various circle sizes. Grabbed an old cardboard box from the recycling and found my trusty craft knife. I looked for circles that would give me roughly the same dimensions per circle. This is what they looked like to start with:

As you can see, I off centred them, looks better that way. I then used my craft knife and carefully cut them all out. I did this 4x.



Once I had them all cut out, it put them back together and painted them (half black, half white, I found I needed 2 coats to get them looking nice. I wanted to throw a colour in there too, but my whole kitchen is in black and stainless steel, and the walls are a greyish pinkish colour so I thought I best stick to plain black and white and I'm glad I did). I'm quite happy with how it turned out, not bad for something that didn't cost me anything!

Another wall art I have done previously was in my bedroom - I always liked those wall quotes you can get but (in case you can't tell) I loathe to spend money on things like that. So I made my own - printed the letters out, traced them onto cardboard, cut them, painted them, and blu-tac'ed them to the wall:

(BTW it IS straight on the wall, I just took the photo on an angle!)

Organising my pantry one beer box at a time

OK, as a whole I love my kitchen. It is large and spacious. And the pantry is fantastically large but the problem is that it is SO BLOODY DEEP! And not only is it deep, but its TALL too. I have a top pantry and a bottom one. The bottom one is for storing back up supplies mostly (and the tray of eggs, and potatoes etc). Its easy to reach the back of that one. But the main pantry, well..... I suddenly had enough!

It started back in August, was trying to bake Mr4's birthday cake, and cupcakes etc for his party. I knew I had bought sprinkles for the fairy bread in the fortnightly shop nearly 2 weeks prior. But do you think I could locate the container anywhere? No of course not! So a couple of weeks after his party I decided enough was enough (we have been in this house for 1.5 years now,  I'm surprised it took me this long to do something about it lol!) and I was going to sort out the baking shelf... I did not have a plan in place, I just pulled everything out. And I refused to put it back until I had a better system in place.

Luckily for me and my pantry, I was all inspired from Pinterest ;). I decided I needed containers to group like ingredients together, then I can just grab the container. But I didn't want to spend any money either, which took me back to square one. Thought further and realised cardboard boxes would work, so went out to the recycling bin to see what I could find. That's where I found 2 empty beer boxes (thanks to hubby).

Cut them down and just used the bottom half. I had one box for cake decorating ingredients, and one for bread making ingredients. I then realised I needed another for the rest of the random small loose ingredients. That's when the waiting game began. Ya see, hubby generally only buys one box of beer a week. So yay, a week later finally my baking shelf was sorted.

 

Organised Mess!

Now however, I am trying to sort out my next problem shelf - the one I keep all the dinner type stuff (cans, spices, packets etc). Its a mess, I can never find the spices I want, and end up using whatever is at the front but not a lot from the back. So today I grabbed the box from the recycling (just in time, rubbish goes out tomorrow night) and the big sort of that shelf has started now. I think I'm about 3 weeks away from getting that shelf sorted.... then it will be on to the medicines on the highest shelf (impossible to reach anything on that shelf!).

Just Plain Mess...

 Lucky hubby is a good sport, keeping me in supply of beer boxes.... Because it's hard for him ya know?