What I Wore Wednesdays

A couple of the blogs that I follow have been participating in What I Wore Wednesday for a while now.  I enjoy seeing all sorts of different outfits and thought that I would join in and share what's in my closet.

January Recipes

Here are some new recipes that I tried this month...

Holiday Bacon Appetizers
These were so simple!  My mom made them for a party we went to on Christmas Eve and they were so good I had to make them for one of our other family gatherings.  I did choose to do the brown sugar instead of the Parmesan cheese.  I love the combination of sweet and salty!

Brown Sugar Spiced Baked Chicken
This chicken was pretty good.  It was really easy to make and would make a good freezer meal (I plan on adding it to my rotation).  Remember to put foil or parchment paper on the pan when you are baking the chicken.  The brown sugar takes a lot of arm muscle to remove from the pan if you don't.

Whole-Wheat Monster Cookies
My daughter wanted to make cookies; I am trying to cut back on the sweets I am eating so I wanted to try and find a cookie recipe that is a little healthier for you than most.  This one fit the bill for me.  It is loaded with oats, some protein, and dried fruit. I also made all the dough, but froze over half of it so that I don't have all these cookies around to eat.

Cheesy Bacon Chicken Casserole
Amazing!  I am not a casserole person, however when I saw this recipe I liked everything in it so I thought I would give it a try.  Who can say no to cheese and bacon?  I am so glad I did.  My husband and I love bacon so the only thing I would change about this would be to add more bacon :)

I try very hard to not cook the same things over and over.  Of course we have our family favorites, but I also enjoy cooking new things.  I try to cook something new each week.  In the past, I have subscribed to many cooking magazines to get new ideas.  I would tear out recipes that interested me.  Just recently I create a new organized way to store and save these recipes.  You can read about that here - Recipe Binder.  Now I have Pinterest :) The nice thing about Pinterest is I don't have to print off the recipes.  I can pin them to my boards and quickly access them on my iPad when I am meal planning and cooking.  Here are my recipe boards if you want to take a look:
Yummy Snacks                         
Slow Cooker
Delicious Desserts                       
Soups
Drinks                                         
Daily Dinners

Good Morning Breakfast               
Lunches

Organizing Project Life

I have been doing Project Life now for just about four years now and I absolutely love it.  You can read about how I got started with this great scrapbooking system here.

What I want to talk about today is how I am planning on keeping all of my Project Life stuff organized this year.  I would love to have a whole room I could dedicate to scrapbooking, but I only have a shelf in a closet to store my supplies.  When I want to scrapbook, I take what I need to the dinning room table and do it there.

In the past, I have kept all the cards that come with the kit that I am currently using in the box that they came it.  When I want to scrapbook, I put that box and my scrapbook binder on the table and get busy.  Now, I have more supplies that I use instead of just the box of cards for a certain kit.  I have cards left over from other kits and specialty cards (holidays, ones from Pinterest, etc) and I have stickers and filler paper as well.  I didn't know how to keep this all organized so I would know where everything was and not have to carry a hundred boxes to the table when I wanted to scrapbook.

Here is the system that I have come up with to try this year.

First is how I am planning on recording the memories.  Last year when something happened that I wanted to put into my scrapbook, I jotted it down on a calendar and then every Saturday I would go through my pictures, pick the ones I wanted to include and complete the journaling for each one.  The pictures would go into a "To Print" folder on my desktop and would stay there until I found a good deal on print them through Snapfish.  This meant that when I did print pictures I would have a least 100 of them at a time to put into my binder.

I liked this system because I could journalize while the memory is still fresh in my mind.  However, this year I would like to really have the colors of my journal cards flow with the colors of my pictures.  Therefore, I am not going to complete the journal cards until I have the pictures in the binder.  I am still going to wait and develop a ton of pictures at time to save some money, so I needed to come up with something to help me plan a little a head of time.

I designed this template (click here for a printable).  It is pretty simple, but there is plenty of room to to journalize on this planning sheet plus jot down where on the page I want to place this picture and journal card plus any other "fluff" like stickers, memorabilia, etc.  I printed these pages back to back and have put them in a binder.

I also went through all my project life cards and grouped them by type of card and then by color.  This way, if I need to find a blue journaling card, I have them all in one place.  I found this plastic storage bin to hold all my cards, some stickers, my pens, pencils, etc.

I took all of the rest of my stickers and grouped them by theme.  I placed each them in a food storage bag and labeled them.  I don't use these a lot, so they will stay on a shelf in the closet.  However, when I need one, all I have to do is grab the theme that I need instead of having to page through many packs of stickers to find the one I need.

I am hoping that this system will work well this year :)  How do you keep all your scrapbooking stuff organized?

What I Wore Wednesday

A couple of the blogs that I follow have been participating in What I Wore Wednesday for a while now.  I enjoy seeing all sorts of different outfits and thought that I would join in and share what's in my closet.

Family Cookbook

I love to try out new recipes.  I have accumulated such a collection of ones to try, that I created a recipe binder to help organize them.  You can see how I did that here - Recipe Binder.

What I need now is an organized way to store my families favorite recipes.  The ones that I go to on a weekly basis because we love them so much.  I decided to create a family cookbook.

I set it all up in Microsoft Word.  I have a title page and title pages dividing up the different sections - Breakfast, Appetizers / Snacks, Soups, Dinners, and Desserts.  I then created a standard layout for each recipe.

I typed each recipe up in the appropriate section and printed it all out.  I placed the pages in page protectors before putting them in the binder.  I liked this idea because I can pull the page out of the binder when I need the recipe and it will be wipe-able if I happen to get the recipe itself dirty while cooking.

As we try different recipes out, if it is a family hit after making it a couple of times, I open up the cookbook on my computer and add it to the cookbook.  I only have to print out the page with the new recipe on it and then replace the old one with the new one in the binder.

I think this binder system better than a recipe box because it is easier to keep the recipes organized in categories.  If it falls off the shelf or a two-year old gets a hold of it, it can't be dumped all over the floor and have to be reorganized again :)  I also don't have to worry about having to find new recipe cards that I like or that will fit into my particular recipe box.

How do you organize all of your recipes?

What I Wore Wednesday

A couple of the blogs that I follow have been participating in What I Wore Wednesday for a while now.  I enjoy seeing all sorts of different outfits and thought that I would join in and share what's in my closet.

Organizing the Arts & Craft Supplies

My mother had these green plastic containers that she was going to donate.  She used them to store dried goods in her kitchen.  When I saw them, I thought they might work well to store all the arts and crafts goodies that I have now collected to use with my daughter.

So far, they are working great!  I made some labels for them so my husband and one day my daughter will be able to know what goes inside each one.  Right now, my daughter pulls them all out and looks through the clear covers until she finds the one she wants :)

Here is what they all look like lined up on the desk in our playroom.  It really helps keep everything neat and organized leaving plenty room on the desk for some great creative work to be made.

What I Wore Wednesday

A couple of the blogs that I follow have been participating in What I Wore Wednesday for a while now.  I enjoy seeing all sorts of different outfits and thought that I would join in and share what's in my closet.