Organized: Recipe Binder

My recipe binder from here was bursting at the seems so I decided to upgrade.  I went through all of my favorite cooking magazines that I had piled in my cookbook cupboard and picked out my favorites and ones that I wanted to try, tore them out and threw the rest away.  No more clutter!  I also print out tons of recipes from Cook's Country, America's Test Kitchen, and Allrecipes.com so I had to organize those too. 

So I got a 2 inch binder and put in some cute scrapbook paper and used my label maker and put in dividers for each section.

Here are some chicken dishes I want to try from my Eating Well magazine. Looks yummy!

And here are some of the typed of recipes that I had from my recipe card box that I did up a few years ago. That's one thing I totally recommend...type up your recipe cards and streamline them into a cookbook! No more filing! Plus once you're all done typing them up you can save and print them for you and for your extended family!  Now my recipe binder has all my favorites and new recipes ready at my fingertips.  Now I don't have to look through my magazines or make them sit on a shelf forever!  Plus when one of my new magazines come through the door, I can immediately pull what I want and chuck the rest!

Spice Cupboard Makeover

We all know I like to cook and you have to have a lot of good spices and magic tricks to make your recipes taste really good.  Well, my spice cupboard was complete chaos.  Check it out....

I had to rummage through random spices to find what I needed every time I was cooking dinner.  Plus the amount of sprinkles I had accumulated with kids and Activity Days was ridiculous!  On top of that, my friend let me raid her spice cupboard when she moved so I got some extras and some new stuff that got sucked into the vortex of the chaos.  So while the kids were playing around with Ry during the ice storm I decided to go through everything.  I threw out stuff, I put things in different containers with labels, I condensed down stuff, etc etc.  So this is what it looked like after that...

Better, but I still didn't have easy access to things when I was cooking.  So I headed over to Target and got 4 turntable/lazy Susan things and put some of my stuff on there.  Now I feel like I can see everything, I can get to it quickly, and everything has a place.  So this is the final result.  It's a close up picture so it only shows the first 3 shelves.  The 4th shelf has a basket that holds all my sprinkles and cake decorating items.

It feels so refreshing! And can I just say that a label maker goes a long way! Everything looks better labeled! So what do you think?

@$%&

We don't use foul language in our home so it's not a normal thing around here. Well, Mr. Max is really picking up on new words and trying new phrases and some of them totally sound like he's swearing or using inappropriate language!

Max loves puzzles and he constantly asks me to play them with him or get them down from the shelf. So imagine saying puzzle without the "P" and saying it really fast. What does it sound like? Yeah...not good.

This one is horrible! We have a special movie that Max loves to watch and it's all about construction stuff. Well, one of the songs that they sing on the DVD is "Digger, Digger". Doesn't sound like that at all when he asks for more. He doesn't quite complete the D's and they come out like N's. Not good.

The other day I was at Bath and Body Works picking up a few freebies and Max loves to smell everything in there. So while he's walking out of there with lotion on his nose, he demands to smell more. Well, instead of saying "smell it" it sounds more like "smoke it"! My kid is yelling "smoke it!" over and over all the way out to the car. Gotta love it!

...And Today and Again Tomorrow!

What in the world is going on around here?  We've had -3 temps, ice everywhere, and rolling power outages!  We've already checked the news and school is closed again tomorrow!  We've been hanging around the house again today.  Finished any sort of laundry I could do, organized, cleaned my house, made homemade cinnamon rolls, held a feverish Max, and clipped all my coupons.  Now I know I have a whole other day to get stuff done around here.  Kind of nice, but I think my kids are wanting to get out and do something.  Max is sick so it's good to lay low with him and let him get better.  Hopefully it will warm up around here before the Superbowl!

School is Closed Today!

We had a little winter storm come through the area and it left us a bunch of ice and a little snow.  School is out today and Ry isn't going into work until later so we're enjoying a little bit of free time.  We don't really have snow clothes like I did growing up in Ohio and Pennsylvania so we have to make do with what we've got...including our fun snow equipment.  Ry made a little sled and pulled the boys on the ice for quite awhile.  While they were outside and freezing, I was washing sheets and organizing my spice cupboard.  So fun, right?  Now we're enjoying some hot chocolate and snuggly warm blankies straight from the dryer!

Office, continued

So here is a pic of where we moved things.  We took the big desk and moved it out from the window and put up against the wall and we took the little computer cart and we're going to sell that at the neighborhood garage sale.  We took one bookshelf and put it where the computer cart was and kept the other bookshelf where it was.  Then we took the big chair and put it in the opposite corner of where it was. 

As the day progress, we went through all the stuff that we took out of the office and tried to see what would could part with. Thankfully I had previously gone through ALL of our files and paperwork to clean all that out a week ago so we didn't have to do that too. Here's where we're at now. Still have a few boxes left to go through so this isn't our finished product yet. I still need to go to The Container Store for a few things and find some artwork.

I really like this layout better than the one we had before. It lets in a lot more light and I feel a lot lighter having thrown out all that stuff. I guess I grew up moving so much that we just purged each move so not moving anywhere for the past 4 years is really throwing me off. More organization to come as I attack my spice cupboard and my "station" so get ready!