Halloween Treats - Another Glow in the Dark gift idea

Ok, I know Halloween is long gone and we are headed towards Thanksgiving, but I only finished this project at 11.08 PM on Thursday night for the Halloween party at school on Friday, followed by weekend full of family fun, Trick or Treating and rushing into the week, this is the soonest I could post about these. But hey, the whole point of this blog is documenting pretty and important things, so sooner or later, it had to be posted.

You remember the glow in the dark sticks I sent out for school friends last year?

Well, I do not like to give out candy to the little ones, even though they would eat all they can get. But I wanted to give them something that they like to use. The glow in the dark idea struck in my head that I brainstormed a lot on what else I could do similar. We were at a birthday party where the mom got kids bracelet kits. It was easy snap plastic bracelet rings with some lettered pony beads. I thought a glow in the dark version of it would be great, but I did not find lettered pony beads (with big hole to fit in the bracelet rings) that glowed in dark. So I went with colorful elastic threads. Here is the outcome.

You can't see it well, but I wrote 'I GLOW IN DARK' with flourescent pen ont he card I attached bracelet to. Just to let them know.

Surprisingly, I found all the supplies at Walmart. Yup, couldn't get them all at Micheals or Jo Ann, but Walmart came through at the last minute. Can you believe those adorable pouches are from Walmart too?

I am just so happy that this year's treats were also so colorful and useful for kids. All the compliments from Moms and Teachers was delicious-whipped-frosting on the cake.

Medicine Organization

Every home has some medications, for seasonal illnesses, pain, personal health conditions, supplements, something or the other. Where do you store them? Do you really store any of them in medicine cabinets in bathroom? I always had this question. Does anybody really store medicines in medicine cabinets in their bathrooms? I personally don't like it. It is a humid place, not ideal for medications. Plus, how do we take them in bathroom? If we don't why should we store them in there? If we don't store them in there why are they called medicine cabinets? Anyway, I store them in linen closet.

When it was just the two of us, we had very minimal supply. So I stored them in a craft store photo box. Then the kid came along and our supply grew. I added another box, but it still wasn't enough. Some of them were placed next to the boxes in the closet. When we moved to this house 5 months ago we put them all in a small cardboard box and they stayed there for past 5 months. Kid was sick 6 times in past 5 months, we used up and bought more and added to the box, but did not figure out how to keep them organized. Did not take time to do it I guess.

I was actually planning to conquer under the kitchen sink after referring to Jen's post @ iHeartOrganizing that I pinned back in July. I made a list of items to buy from The Container Store and part of it was Clear Shoe Box. I was hoping to use a wider box to hold more items so I also purchased the Clear Shirt & Accessory Drawer with divider set. 

After coming home I realized our plumbing was blocking it a tab bit, I couldn't shut the cabinet door. So I had to use the smaller Shoe box. But a light bulb went off in my head and BOOM! this happened.

The dividers worked perfectly to group items by purpose. I finally broken the packaging of my almost 2 years old brand new label machine and labelled the sections. I grouped and named according to what works for our family. I left couple of them for miscellaneous items. 

Slide the drawer in and its all neatly organized.

Now I don't have to dig through adult medication to find the children's tylenol or fish for the thermometer when my daughter gets sick in the middle of the night.

Since the larger bottle didn't fit in the drawer and all those big bottles are supplements, I put them all in a basket and kept on kitchen counter so we can see and remember to take them.

So what didn't work for one area in the home worked like a charm for another. These Clear drawer boxes are so versatile and have a clean and modern look. Only complaint I have with this organization project is that I couldn't place this box in upper linen cabinets since these are 14 inches deep. It's ok, I will store them in lower cabinets. Over all I am very happy with it. Thanks to Jen for inspiration for my Under Kitchen Sink organization which led to this. For under kitchen sink, I literally copied her ideas because they were awesome. I will show that area soon. Have a good rest of the week.

Home Tour - Our First Home

We moved out of our beloved first home few months ago. From the perfect house in not-so-perfect-for-us location to completely-ugly-total-fixer-upper house in the most-perfect-for-us location. While we have been trying to make it livable and lovable, I look back to the pictures of our old home from time to time. I admit, our family is totally enjoying the short commutes and extra family time, but first home is first home, right? It's special. More so for us since it was in super pristine state when we bought it and all I did was accessorize it to make it look better. I don't have a post that shows each room of the house so here are some pictures for you.

My beloved plum/purple front door

Foyer

Dining Area

Living Room

Kitchen

Family Room

Family room - patio door to Backyard

Kitchen - view from Family Room

Guest bedroom

Girl's Nursery

2nd Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Side Yard

Back yard

Back yard

Back yard

 My heart is heavy now! Miss that home, so many memories!

Have a good weekend everyone. I hope to start showing our new-old house and what we have been doing for past 8 months pretty soon.

Baby Shower Printable for Girl - Guess Baby's Birthday

It's been a long time I posted anything here. We moved and things haven't settle down yet, so I took a long break from blogging. Hopefully I will start back up and show you a lot of things I am planning in the new abode.

Past weekend we planned a quick shower for a friend who is due with her 2nd baby soon. We only had 3-4 days to plan and prepare so we didn't do a lot, just ordered take out food, decorated a little, played baby shower games and had lot of fun. I realized the spontaneous get-togethers are quite fun since we don't stress so much about the arrangements. We used what we had on hand mostly for decorations. I did make a girly diaper cake and a little printable, oh did I say our friend is having a girl? So yeah, it was super girly, everything pink and gray with a little touch of yellow. I would have gone with other pastels than pink if she was having a 2nd girl but her first one was a boy so I knew she could handle some pink. Or a lot of it. Here is a quick look of that pinky pink diaper cake, sorry for the poor picture quality.

About the printable, it is a game that all guests will guess when the baby will be born. Obviously there is no winning during the shower, but mom can save it as a keepsake. I tried to find free printable for this online but I couldn't, so I made one. I thought I would share it so anyone looking for free printables for a last minute shower could use it. Since this is a monthly printable, I made for each month for the rest of the year. I will try to make some boy versions and post them soon.

Hope you like them. Please leave a note in the comments if you used these so I know that they are actually being used.

Worked for me! Display your cutting boards

and your trivets. Yes, display them on your counter for a pop of color and to keep them within reach.

I used IKEA GARBODA plate holder to hold different cutting boards and couple of IKEA HEAT trivets. Just put a pretty, new, colorful cutting board in the front and hide the daily used ones at the back. I also store microwave plate cover behind this, since it is in the corner.

The White Ice Effect

Happy Friday!

We have all white appliances and I love them, well, may be except the dishwasher. But I like the look of white over stainless steel. So when it was time to upgrade our basic apartment fridge, we looked for a white one with bottom freezer and no water dispenser. Yes, no water dispenser. It might seem strange to many, but we decided against it because it takes up lot of space inside and we don't really drink ice water. Water no ice, please! We installed a Reverse Osmosis system near our sink a while back and it has been good enough. So we thought we could just have an ice maker in the freezer for those chilly drinks once in a while and reclaim that space inside the fridge. Samsung was our first choice. After deciding on the model, we waited for the good sales to come along and snagged it during Thanksgiving sale at Lowes (not 2014, but 2013 thanksgiving, you know I don't post realtime) for an awesome $950 including 5 yr warranty (after using a 10% coupon and 5% Lowes credit card discount on the already low price). It retails for $1700.

It arrived with minor scratches that were barely noticeable but I thought, I went to Lowes for this because I wanted a pretty, shiny new one. For a scratched one, I could have gone to a refurbished store or craigslist. So I contacted Lowes and they happily agreed to replace, but they were out of stock for holidays so they asked us to use it and they will contact us to replace when they get new stock. So we kept it.

The size was right, it looked shiny so matched with our glass front ovens & stove, but something was off. After staring at it for few days, it hit me, it is the look of a giant white swatch between our maple cabinets. I tried covering the handles with some aluminium foil and BAAM! it looked awesome, matched better with the ovens (with the see through windows on the oven doors) and our stainless steel backsplash (read about that here). I was sold on the idea of buying new stainless steel handles and as I was searching for a good deal, hubby liked the idea so much he ordered them right away.

Look at the beauty. I have been eyeing on Whirlpool White Ice Refridgerator from the time they introduced the line, but they are so expensive it remained as a fantasy. But now it has come true! Though we spent $150 extra for the handles, we have a unique look and I love it.

Any other fans for Whirlpool Ice series? Anyone else prefer White over Stainless Steel? Am I the only wierdo?

Worked for Me! Protecting backsplash with another backsplash

Being addicted to Pinterest, I find so many tips & tricks to make life easier. Everytime I put a good tip to use I thank those that have come up with it and shared. So I thought I would share some of those tips & tricks that worked for our family, around the house and in our daily lives so others can benefit from them too. It could be something that I came up with or something I was inspired from or an idea from friends/family/Internet that I tried and benefited from. I will post them in a weekly series 'Worked for Me!'.  I will try as much as I can to maintain the weekly schedule.

Today's tip - Put a backsplash over your backsplash!

We were fortunate to have a house with pretty kitchen complete with backsplash, though not my style. It was an upgrade from builders when previous owners bought it, they chose light colored stone. I matched well with cabinets and flooring and looked nice.

But we knew we can't keep it that nice. We cook quite a bit so we knew there will be a lot of splatters that will stain the grout and make a greasy mess. So my husband came up with a brilliant idea of putting a stainless steel sheet over it right behind the cooktop. Easy to clean, reflects light and looks modern. I was sold. He had a piece cut to size and mounted with Command strips. It has been 5 years and it is still holding up strong. Above all, it's a breeze to keep it clean. 

It doesn't show as well in the pictures. It is really hard to take pictures of this space because of bright daylight all day long. Can't complain though. I love lot of light in the house.

You could keep it for day to day and take it off when you are having company/parties. We chose to keep it on because it looks good.

I am guessing a peel & stick stainless steel film like this one will work as well. Make sure it is wipeable and heat resistant.

Valentine's Day School Gifts & Free Printable

I literally finished these gifts at 10.51 PM last night. I am a planner to certain extent, still I am always rushing things at the last minute. I need to work on it. But these came out really good, thanks to the folks that give free printables of their work.

Weeks ago I browsed Pinterest for non candy school gift ideas and landed here.

After reading through I started to make my own printable on Picmonkey. I followed the pattern from the inspiration but changed up font and added hearts instead of bubbles.

The original printable is lovely as is, but if you need a variation and not in mood to create your own, here is my printable for free download.

Now for the twist, having this printable ready weeks ahead, I thought I had it all under control and didn't finish the project until last night. When I got my bubble tubes from Micheal's on my way back home yesterday (by the way, another perk of procrastination, I couldn't get the colorful tubes as planned, all I could find were white ones in wedding isle) and set to print at 9 PM last night, I was out of white card stock. I only had 4 pieces of card stock and I need to print 30 of these for everyone in the kiddo's class. Since I made the printable at 4X6 size, no way I could use it to make enough. Back to pinterest again, this time to one of the ideas I already pinned. Kaley's Valentines Bubbles were so adorable, simple yet sophisticated.

My 4 pieces of white card stock were just barely enough to make 30 gifts when I used Kaley's printable. Again, thanks to the folks that give free printables of their work. Big help to people like me. That's the very reason I share mine.

Here are the finished ones. I used washi tape to save me a step of punching holes for twine.

See those white lines on the colorful border? That's my printer. Need to change it big time. Now I am glad I didn't use my original printable, because there would have been lines all over it. This size, I could live with it.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A Sweet SMILE

It was just a quick update to my hallway gallery. I talked about adding some vinyl text to this wall in this post. This is how it looked.

I found some wooden signs on one of my trips to Micheals and 'Smile' caught my eye. The size was perfect and the script was pretty. It was raw wood, so I painted it bright pink and attached to the wall with sticky foam dots. It truly completes the little gallery.

It looks so pretty I really smile everytime I see it. Later I realized the pink matches with the paintings in the frame next to it. Talk about Happy coincidence!