Little things

Got to get a July post up, not sure how the rest of the summer will go! As I probably say every year, just as September feels like a fresh start, summer always feels like a big deadline. Even though we normally travel for less than 2 months, it feels like I have to reach the end of my to-do list before we go away. If I haven't seen someone all year, it has to happen now even though it could happen in September. But now that we're leaving quite soon, I've abandoned all the lists and have focused my attention towards the suitcases and provisions across the pond.

Anyway, we did get a bunch of little projects done even if it wasn't as much as desired. A few examples are below. Little organizational fixes that will make life easier even if they're not anything fancy.

I'll do the fancier one first, though. This was hand-made by friends. I love being able to put up decorations that are made with love and not from IKEA. :)

I love seeing this as we walk in the door!

Next, some additional shelves for the floor-to-ceiling wardrobe. It was half-outfitted with shelves, and then there were a few sections with a rail for hanging coats. BUT it's a shallow wardrobe, so that would fit maybe 1 winter coat? Like it's made for someone's dress pants in their bedroom and not front hallway. Didn't make sense to me so we're putting shelves everywhere and hooks elsewhere in the entryway. The wardrobe also has cleaning supplies so it will get good use...not sure what to put on the top shelves, though!

Now each person has a shelf...reach in and grab
 your hat before heading out the door. Looks messy
 but it's out of sight. :)

Fiascos in Felt

I love the way finished felt projects look, so colorful and pretty and homey! I haven't quite mastered the medium, though. I seem to do better with paper, but maybe I will conquer felt in this lifetime!

I started making a felt Christmas storyboard for David last year, and lost momentum. So I took it up again this year.

My requirements were:

-representational, but simple
-big and sturdy enough for David to handle
-removable pieces that could be moved around


Problems and Troubleshooting:

Last year I cut out some figures but found them too floppy. Maybe if they were smaller it wouldn't have been as much of an issue. This year I finally fortified them a bit.

Didn't trim the edges.

Not all felt is created equal...it doesn't necessarily stick to other felt (without adhesive), and depending on the thickness might also need a pretty strong glue to hold together permanently.

Removable angel toupee.

What does YOUR medicine chest look like?

So today while David was napping I reorganized the spice shelf and the medicine shelves. Mainly I just took everything out and then put it back in a more orderly manner...no fancy Pinterest crafts here. I did use some smaller boxes to create tiers so that you can see everything at once.

This is the AFTER, in case you couldn't tell :)

The throat (and cough) remedy category (along the back wall) wins for being the most populated! I wonder if that is indicative of the climate/environment here. Lots and lots of people with chronic throat ailments.

Anyway....for now the medicines occupy 1.5 shelves of the wardrobe in the front hallway. Since the shelves are deeper than your typical bathroom medicine cabinet, it's hard to make it so that everything is easy to find. The way we have it right now pretty much works, though it isn't very pretty. When David gets a little older I think I will want something more closed, not a shelf that is completely exposed when the doors slide away.

I can't figure out what the optimal variation would be, though. I guess something with rather shallow shelves so that you can see all the labels at once? But then it would need to be really tall to fit everything! It was handy when we had them in the bedside table because we could open the drawer and look down and read the labels. But that wasn't child-proof. And drawers high up are rather silly; can't see into them.

Maybe one of those hanging things (shoe organizer?) with the clear pockets? But again, the medicines must be easy to find for US but out of sight to a child.

I haven't really found anything good online...do you have any ideas?

Recycling failure

I don't know how I've lived here all these years without coming up with a solution, but for the past 2 years I've had a growing pile of items that need to be RECYCLED. Maybe a lot of it is baby-related...lots of glass packaging and some cardboard.

I just couldn't figure out how to dispose of it properly, and that made me want to HOARD it even more. If it pricks my conscience to put it all in a landfill-bound heap, then I can just find a way to REUSE it. My suitcase is a lot lighter now that I'm not bringing craft supplies from the U.S.! And we have Pinterest now! Look how many ideas there are!

But enough is enough, and in the hopes of certain home improvement and decluttering projects becoming possible, I decided to find a way to finally get rid of some of these piles. But it turned out to not be so simple. I kept catching hints of recycling programs, only to learn that they were a bust; a temporary grant that people hadn't responded to actively, and therefore discontinued. It seemed to be one of those questions that goes unanswered in the forums, along with where to buy molasses and in what year the city will become handicapped-accessible...

A few times I stumbled upon a list of addresses published by environmental agencies. But as I ran those addresses through to double-check, most were defunct.

The glass seemed to be the hardest. We weren't even looking to redeem them for money. We just wanted to find a place that would take these dozens and dozens of glass jars and USE them for something. But I didn't find any reliable information.

So I gave up. Andrei took six bags of glass jars out to the dumpster yesterday. My only hope was that with them being all together, anyone looking for that kind of thing would find them before they got hauled away with the rest of the trash.

Apparently there ARE receptacles for paper. I have a HUGE garbage bag full of paper/cardboard remnants. I can think of so many ways I could use them: for Christmas cards/ornaments, decorations, Sunday school crafts, toilet paper towers, etc. But I just can't deal with the clutter. I'm not doing enough art to make up for it taking up so much space.

My comfort here is that we will build up another supply pretty fast. :)

Farewell, potential craft projects!

The paper garbage is going to be disposed of in the next few days and then I guess I will have to decide on a policy for future sorting.

I wish I could say I expect improvement in this city in the future, but I guess people just don't really have an incentive right now to sort their trash. I don't really like the idea of fining or otherwise punishing people for NOT doing it, but I do wish there were more options. We'll see.

A Very Pinterest Christmas

I joined Pinterest pretty recently. I had always sort of avoided it, but then one day the following observations made me want to give it a try:

1) Google Image search drives me nuts.
2) I always have tons of browser tabs open because I want to have all the ideas right there.
3) My hard drive tends to get cluttered with folders of images of projects I want to try.

Pinterest could definitely use some fine-tuning as a search engine, but for certain projects it is great. I think it works well because it is used by people with similar interests, who use the same key search phrases. This isn't to say that it doesn't return those extraneous results (people named "Christian" who make art, instead of "Christian (themed) art").

Anyway, I could probably go into a lot of detail about the pros and cons, but so far I am finding it really useful, especially when it comes to Advent and Christmas.

I still have way more ideas than I will ever use! Last year I didn't even get out most of the decorations. We had just moved and had an infant, etc. This year I will get out a different set. David is old enough to admire the decorations, but not old enough to keep his hands off. I have some hands-on materials with him in mind, though.

So we are starting to get underway here with that, and I will definitely post photos if/when anything gets to that point. :) Here's my Advent idea "board," for anyone interested. http://www.pinterest.com/elizabeth3806/advent-for-toddlers/