Special Dates

This little organizer was made as a give-away at the Christmas event at Trinity Baptist Church we (Dawn, while I silently encouraged her from the front row) spoke at in December.

The left side is little folders with the months of the year on them that can hold receipts, lists, cards, etc. The right side is a perpetual calendar for important dates.

A perpetual calendar is a fantastic tool to have on hand - once you get all those special dates saved there is no scramble in January (or March for some of us) to copy everything over from last year's calendar.

If anyone wants instructions on how to make it leave a comment with your email address and I will get them to you!

Friday Quick Tip - EVERSODISGUSTINGMOLD!!

OK, so I think I'm a pretty clean girl... up until this point every spring where I discover all the mold in my window tracks. I attacked it today and thought I'd, hmmm hmmm, share.
(So Gross.)

I took a little spray bottle and filled it about 20% bleach 80% hot water.
Dressed in white just incase, (and I CAN'T believe that wedding gown still fits) I sprayed/soaked all the window tracks with the bleachy solution, (be careful of drips).

I left it alone for about 10 minutes, all the while telling myself how disgusting we must be.

Then I took an old toothbrush, an old cloth and filled spray bottle with just hot-water.

The guck came off so easily after soaking in the bleach solution. A little scrapy-scrape with the brush and a little squirty-squirt with the hot water and TA-DA! Gone-zo.

That was just about my least favorite job of the spring cleaning... I'm sooooo glad that's over.

To those of you who have already attacked your windows--I salute you!
To those who have put it off as long as I have-- I don't blame you, I can think of few things more icky.

p.s. I'm in a making-up-words mood. It might be the bleach fumes.

Time Saving Kitchen Clean-Up Tips...

aka stuff you might not have thought of...

To clean a blender, squirt a few drops of liquid soap into it, fill halfway with warm water, cover and blend away the mess. Rinse and repeat if necessary. You can also use this method for food processors.

To clean all that icky splatter out of your microwave, wet a couple of paper towels and place in microwave, turn on for about a minute (keep a close eye on it!). The steam will loosen all the food particles and then you can use the damp paper towel to wipe everything up.

For lime and mineral deposits on your kitchen sink faucet, wrap vinegar-soaked paper towels around faucets for about an hour. This breaks down the mineral scale, and the chrome will be clean and shiny after buffing with a dry paper towel.

Use a toothbrush to clean up around your faucets. Those little bristles get right in around those hard to reach places.

For a sparkling white kitchen sink, place paper towels across the bottom of your sink and saturate with household bleach. Leave for an hour or so. Scrub and rinse.

Spots on stainless steel sinks can be removed with white vinegar or Club soda.

And while we're on the subject of shiny sinks I want to share a little not-very-well-kept secret called Flylady.



Flylady is a support group that offers advice, tips and humor to assist people in keeping their homes tidier, especially for those suffering from "CHAOS" (Can't Have Anyone Over Syndrome).

While I don't follow their whole "get dressed including your shoes" first thing in the morning, as I kind of enjoy the guilty pleasure of driving the kids to school in my pyjamas, she has many many great tips on getting you organized. I joined her website when my kids were young and it really helped me keep on top of those problem spots in my house. And while I don't subscribe to her website anymore, I still try to shine my sink every night before I go to bed.

Check it out to see if she has any tips you can use!

Friday Quick Tip - Crock Pot Love

This is the easiest dinner in the world. Kind of a sweet & sour thing.
MUST be served with rice and corn (in our family opinion.)

CHICKEN ROSA
Put enough skinless Chicken Thighs (or other skinless chicken) to feed your family in the crock pot.
Mix together the ROSA in med bowl... adjust to taste:
R - Russian Salad Dressing (and if you want to lighten it up you can find a recipe for the dressing and cut the oil down), one small bottle is good for our family of four.
OS - Onion Soup Mix (about one packet)
A - Apricot Jam (a good sized glob, depending how sweet you like things)
Pour the sauce over the chicken and let it simmer away for a few hours.... sooooo yummy.

We'd love it if you would post your favorite slow-cooker recipe in the comments!

Without further ado...

Here is a pictorial account of our latest draw for a free 2 hour organizing session....

1. print names from all the lovely readers who entered their names in our draw














2. Find lovely assistant to make the draw...
(if lovely assistant is unavailable, find small disheveled boy to act as assistant)













3. Show the lucky winner's name...













Congratulations Karen - contact us at your earliest convenience to schedule an appointment!

I hope everyone had an excellent "first weekend of spring break" and happy organizing!

I'll leave you with this photo that I saved off of the internet a couple of years ago, I thought it was such a cute and inexpensive way to store extra towels, etc in a bathroom.

Child Labour - we're all for it!

Cheryl and I met a new client this afternoon. A lovely, young mom ready to get her home sorted and settled so she can enjoy it to it's full potential. And, like Cheryl and I, she has two young men in her home.

Kids.
Part of the problem or part of the solution?

Spring break is around the corner for those of us with school-aged kids. If you've been meaning to "get to" your kids' rooms, Spring Breatk is a great opportunity.

One suggestion is to let your kids know NOW that there will be a day over spring break where you're going to work through their bedrooms. Go in there with a garbage bag for everything that is broken or missing pieces, and a box for anything that is broken and can be donated/given away. Get all the "like" items gathered together in the same drawers/bins/shelves.

Go through their clothing. Find out what's worn out or out grown. Find anything you've been waiting for them to grow into and try it on. Don't be afraid to pass on stuff they just never wear for whatever reason. If it's good stuff, just pass it on to a friend (with less picky kids). Speaking as a mom of picky dressers, it felt good to know the awesome hoodie that my Brodie never wore was considered a "thcore!" (score) by Cheryl's son Lucas!!

Make it a date for the first week of the break... promise a sizeable reward if you have to (it will be worth it), and the kids will love the results as much as you do... they'll be able to see what they have and access it much more easily. From there on in, it's all about maintanence, baby.

HAVE FUN!!! and DON'T FORGET TO POST A COMMENT FOR THE DRAW!!

Closet Connection

Dawn mentioned in an earlier post that we had recently started working in conjunction with Artesano Cabinetry
(website coming soon!) and we completed our very first install back in December.

In all of the excitement my mad photo skills failed me and I only got a couple of usable shots, but in any event, here they are!


This is a "games closet" in the rec room of a beautiful new houses. We designed longer shelves to house board games as well as higher, shorter shelves for other games (all you parents will appreciate how many children's games have weird shaped boxes that are hard to find space for - Elefun anyone?





This is the pantry that we designed for their lovely home. The chocolate pearwood finish is so rich and classic looking and one thing I love about these shelves compared to wire is that there are no cracks for things to slip through.






If you are interested in any more information about these fabulous systems or want a quote, don't hesitate to drop us an email!

We will also be drawing later this week for the gift certificate we talked about in our last post. If you haven't left a comment yet and are interested, post away!

If We Clean it, Spring will come

At this time last year my kids started wearing shorts.

What's going on this year?

Global warming, my...

In our efforts to keep the dream of spring alive, we figured:

IT'S TIME TO GIVE AWAY A GIFT CERTIFICATE!!!!

How does 2 hours of free organizing help sound?

All you gotta do is post a comment about spring cleaning.

Any old comment will do:

"I hate it"
"I love it"

"I want to have Dawn and Cheryl to come help me."

You get the idea.

We'll draw a name from the posters on March 15th.

Bonus: if you refer a friend to our blog and they mention your name in their post, you will get two, count them two, entries in the draw. Double the chances, double the fun.

Post away!

Good Luck!