Organizing Kids Hair accessories

I love the cute kids hair accessories. I bought a few handfuls of them as soon as knew I was having a girl. I quickly realized many of them won't be useful during her 1st year. So I displayed them on one of the ribbons I saved from cute baby items packages. I just folded the ribbon in half, clipped all hair clips on it and hung it on a wall next to closet using a push pin. But as my collection grew, I had to unfold the ribbon.

Head bands were displayed on a bright pink magnetic flower I bought from Container Store while I was decorating the nursery, using little magnets that came with it.

Slowly that collection grew too and it ended up looking like this.

Couple of hooks from Michaels got the mess under control.

Now it looks like this.

Pretty organized ha... I found many wonderful ideas for hair accessories storage online. Few of my favorites.

I want to recreate this someday. If you have any unique ideas, please share.

Thermostat wall update

One of the most famous posts on this little blog is about framing our thermostat. But it was off center on the wall and I went back and forth on adding more frames to this narrow space. Finally I added couple more.

Colors in these pictures look darker than real life, sorry this is the darkest place in the house, no natural light at all. The top frame is from Ikea in metal finish. I added a patterned mat using some scrapbook paper and displayed the 3 hand painted strips I bought for a buck or two in Cancun on our vacation (best vacation EVER!). I saved them for 4 years for a perfect spot and finally it went on this wall.

The white frame is from Target. I loved the pattern on this. I framed the cake I made for my daughter on her 1st birthday. It has her name on it making it extra special.

These pictures really don't do justice, they look pretty good in real life. I am thinking on adding a vinyl text of some sort between the 2 new frames. Like this...

What do you guys think?

Weekly Meal Planning - Free Printable

Hope you all had a fabulous 4th of July. We had dinner in the backyard with friends and family. Kids fired some crackers too. As I promised, here is a free printable. A weekly menu planning printable for planning your meals Monday-Saturday. I skipped Sunday because everyone needs a break on Sunday, God took a break too. Hope you like it. Please let me know your valuable suggestions to improvise my printables so I can keep them in mind when I make more of these. Enjoy the rest of your weekend.

Greeting Cards Binder - Kids Birthday Cards

I have come across Greeting Card binders on internet and loved the idea of preserving precious greeting cards from special occasions. I have particularly seen many use this for cards received at their Wedding and for Christmas cards. We don't receive many Christmas cards and we didn't have many greeting cards for our wedding (we were married in a traditional way of our culture). But I did save my daughter's 1st birthday cards and we received many beautiful cards for her 2nd birthday recently. Though I can't save them from every year of her life, I thought keeping them as long as I can and as many as possible would be a good idea. I was planning on making my own but I stumbled upon shorter version of these binders at Target. They are perfect size for greeting cards and pretty too. But they were $5 each. I contemplated buying them for an hour while browsing the whole store and told myself, I might save a couple of dollars if I make my own, but I need to spend lot of time, plus it may not be as classy as this. So I brought the Orange one home. It looks classy yet whimsy with the gold dots.
I arranged the greeting cards by year and then by size, punched holes on them (lying, hubby did), put them in the rings and called it a night. Quick and easy. I plan on adding dividers, which I would like to personalize, along with the front of the binder. But it may be a while before I get to that. It still looks pretty as is.

This card was from 1st Birthday, I love how the Yellow/Lavender colors and the butterfly theme resembles her 1st Birthday party.

And this, from 2nd birthday, matches her Zoo themed 2nd birthday party. Love such coincidences.

My friend's 4 year old daughter made this cute card and sent all the way from Texas. Cards like this are the reason for this binder.

I like simple projects like this. They make me feel like I accomplished something, without having to put off the task for months or even years. My daughter liked it too, she flipped through it like a book, so its a win win.
I also found different binders at Micheals which could be a good fit for this type of project. They are from SN@P. But it rings pricier than Target ones even with a 40% off coupon ($14.99 originally). I did like the inserts for these binders that can be purchased seperately. I might try those for my dividers. Will keep you posted.

If any of you created greeting card binders to preserve your precious cards, please share the link in comments. I would like to know how I can improvise/personalize this.

Hope you guys are ready for extra long weekend. Sort of, even if you don't get to take off this friday. I am going to put together a quick and simple backyard party tomorrow. I will show you pictures if it turns out nice. If not, we'll just eat good food and enjoy good company.

Have a great 4th of July.

I will be back on Friday to share another free printable.

Weekly Planner - Free Printable

A free printable for folks like me that plan on Friday for the following week. Yup, My week doesn't start from Monday, it starts from Friday and ends on Thursday. Well, that's because I plan on Friday afternoon/evening for the weekend and the work week that follows. You might think why start with friday when I plan late in the day. Well, I complete some tasks on Friday evening like grocery shopping or atleast force myself to complete something around the house because I am usually a night owl on Fridays.

So here it is, for people like me. If you download please leave a comment (you don't have to mention your name, just be anonymous) so I know I have friends that think like me.

Again, it's still an image file, so right click on the image and open in new window or tab. Then right click on the image in new window/tab and save image to your computer. This way you will get a better quality file. I am yet to setup an online file share account so please bare with me.

HAVE A WONDERFUL WEEKEND.

Blog Header Redesign

When I first created this blog, I created a blog header using Picnik I think, I can't remember for sure. I found a collage template that I filled with some pictures and added my blog title text. Funny, I liked it then. I sized it to my initial blog template and it worked then. But as I gained more knowledge about blogging, my blog looked unattractive. Here is a picture of it.

What I don't like about it?

• Blog name is not showing properly
• Colors are dark
• Pictures shown in there are old and don't really look esthetic.
• Too tall and not wide enough

As I kept changing my blog template, I figured I liked the cleaner, modern look. So I tried changing the header, keeping in mind the things I wanted to change. Here it is now.

Its not the absolute best of what I wanted, but it looks a lot nicer. I will play with it some more but I think you'll see this for a while until my style changes and I feel like changing the whole look of this blog. I hope it makes you feel more invited to come back to my blog.

Next up, the menu bar below the header and then the social network icons. I better get on social networking before I make those icons. Working on it.

Have a great weekend everyone.

Zoo Themed Party - 2nd Birthday

As promised yesterday, I am posting some pictures of our daughter's 2nd birthday. Since the kid was really into animals during her 2nd year, not too much into farm animals as much as wild ones so I decided it would be cool to go with ZOO theme and decorate with stuffed animals and hire a petting zoo. We all had a blast and I can't stop looking at the pictures and feel proud of myself. Here are some for you.

 And some shots of the big girl...

Hope you enjoyed it. Photography by Capture Reality Photography. I will try to write about the details in near future. You can view the 1st birthday pictures here.

Quick Washi Labels - Cereal Dispensers

I am obsessed with Washi tape recently so I grabbed a tin full of them from Micheals when they had them for 40% off. Though I like the bright designs, I mainly like the simple ones because I like them to use as labels. This idea to use them as labels is from Jen's blog, I Heart Organizing. After reading her posts, I first used them on my file folders, which I loved. Then came the Cereal Dispensers.

We are not cereal-every-morning people, but we eat them about 3 days a week. Each of us have different choices (I know, just in a family of 3) including my 2 year old, so for now we buy 4 different kinds.

I think you can tell which one is the kid's favorite. I sneak in a 3rd of Whole grain Cheerios (Honey or Plain) in that colorful junk (sorry Fruit Loops lovers!). Mine is the healthy kind and Hubby alternates between Honey Bunches or Cookie crisps.

      

I just pasted grey Chevron Washi Tape strips (CHEVRON MADNESS still) wrote the names with Red Sharpie. They kept coming off so I added clear tape on top. Now they are going nowhere.

The best part, virtually cost free labels that can be changed when the contents change or mood. I am going to be using these labels a lot more around the house and you will read about them, stay tuned.

  

Yellow & Lavender Party - Daughter's First Birthday

It has been 1 year 3 months that our daughter turned ONE and I haven't posted about her beautiful birthday party that I worked so hard for. I wanted to write a long post with every little detail so I have been putting it off. She has turned 2, three months ago and I haven't posted about either of the parties. So I thought its time to atleast post some pictures of the 1st birthday party. I am so proud of it because I worked day and night for more than a month to put this together, most of which is designed/made by me. Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I do.

And the pretty girl ....

That's it, just pictures. Pictures by a local Photographer Kymberley Day. I will post the details soon, hopefully. Before that I will show you some pictures of the 2nd Birthday tomorrow.

Update: You can see 2nd Birthday pictures here.

Kids Rewards Chart - Free Printable

Happy Monday all. Last week I happened to make a rewards printable for my coworker for her son. Her son liked it very much and her daughter wanted one too, so I made a girly version of it. Here are the samples.

You can download the blank ones below and fill them up per your needs.

These are image files, you can right click on them and save to your drive. I am still trying to get an online account for sharing pdfs. Until I have that in place, please email me at LOVE2DECORATEBLOG@GMAIL.COM if you prefer a pdf. I will send it to you. No Charge! It's Free!

Hope you find them useful. Have a great week.