First Grade Auction Project 2013

I helped out with the first grade auction project this year. I love pinterest, so many ideas. After some discussion, we decided to combine two of them.

Fingerprint art:



original source

And notecards from kids art


original source

I worked with another mom. We decided to do two different shapes, cross and dove. I came up with the outlines for the projects. The other mom, who was a teacher in a previous lifetime, went into total teacher mode while executing the project with the kids. I was the "clean the fingertip, coordinate the paint, keep kids moving" helper person. It went well, very well.

She got the originals to the printers to have them made into notecards and then I framed them.

I forgot to take pictures, but here are the ones of three of the four projects I took with my phone to send to the other mom.







She sent me a photo of the original proofs of the notecards. They cleaned the edges before they printed the real cards. Hopefully the project will turn out well.

Wrapping paper organization

We have some problems with linen storage in our house. We have places in both the kids' baths, but they aren't super functional. The boys' bath is narrow and shallow, the stacks of towels fall over when you try to take one out. The cabinet in A's bath is over the toilet and we've had incidents of open toilet lid while getting out fresh sheets. Not good.




I decided to do something about it. We have a linen closet in the hallway but we use it for games. I realized we have a whole second half of the closet that wasn't being put to good use. The wrapping paper and supplies are on the floor and we had holiday door decorations hanging on the rod.


I could put this space to much better use. I moved the holiday door decorations to the spare coat closet by the front door. I had to do some thinking on how to handle the wrapping paper.

I saw this pin on Pinterest.


source
I looked on the internet. I lusted after the Container Store solution, but even with the Elfa Sale discount, it was still too expensive. I finally found a ClosetMaid solution that fit my budget.

First I sorted out the mess of all our wrapping paper. I put 3 rolls of baby wrapping paper in the donation pile. We don't have friends having babies any more, and if more do, I can use the 20 baby gift bags I still have.




Once it was sorted, I figured out I needed hallow core door anchors to hold it all in place. Fast forward a week or so and I finally ended up with this.


Wrapping paper is now organized and off the floor, now I just have to figure out how to build shelves to hold the sheets and towels. I'm looking forward to that project, but honestly, it will probably take another Pinterest Challenge to get it done.


Check out the projects from the Pinterest Challenge Hosts, Sherry, Katie, Carmel, & Sarah

Clean your cookie sheet

I made another attempt at using a pin from Pinterest to solve a problem. A month or so ago, I made oven baked french fries for dinner. I forgot to line the cookie sheet with foil beforehand and it left me with a with a splotchy baked on olive oil mess.

I found this pin that explained that you should use baking soda and hydrogen peroxide to clean your cookies sheets. You make a paste and rub it on with your fingers. I thought it was worth the try.

I quickly found that rubbing with my fingers wasn't going to cut it. I needed to scrub and scrub hard.

You can see the splotchy oil where I have started scrubbing.


Once I spent time scrubbing it pulled up a lot of gross junk.


In the end, it looked a lot better. I tried scrubbing with just soapy water before. This definitely had better result.


Even though it is improved, it is not totally clean. When you run your hand across the surface, you can still feel and even see where the baked-on oil was. I have since looked at other pins and found this one. She made the paste and let it sit. No scrubbing and it came clean. I think I might try this one next.