Command Center (or our solution to the spot in our house that collects everything that doesn't have a home)

When we were purchasing our home and looking at floor plans, our builder was very proud of the fact that their floor plans were family-friendly and had areas labeled "Tech Zone" or "Prep Zone" where you could charge your devices or prep food or what-have-you.

The problem with our "Tech Zone," which is just a ledge nailed into a small recess in the wall, is that it was too small to hold our laptops and in a very random place. In our open-floor-plan, it's between the basement door and the stairs. We store Rufus's food and water under the little ledge and anything that was in our way on our kitchen island was deposited in our "Tech Zone." So, in all reality, it became a "Random Clutter Zone" with coupons, cookbooks, wallets, glasses, cameras, chargers, spare change, keys, Kleenex. Ugh! It was a mess. (I do consider us blessed to have the shelf already built - some people have to DIY those shelves and ours matches the rest of the trim in the house. So I won't complain about it.)

So I pinned a ton of command centers and we went to work.

To start off, we had to clear off everything. Except my iPad. And the chargers.

Next step? Raid Target. We had an idea of what we wanted to with our laptops. We wanted to store them upright so we could charge them and they wouldn't take up all the room on the ledge. We scoured Amazon.com and office supply store websites. But everyone knows that Target is pretty much awesome, so that's where we ended up. I think we spent around $35 total.

We really lucked out with these file holders. They have holes, presumably to look stylish and sophisticated, that happen to also be the perfect size for screws!

We planned where we wanted everything to go and Andy started drilling and hanging.

I don't think there was a single Pinterest command center that I wanted to duplicate. Every home has different clutter and I think it helps to plan your command center around your clutter. Ours was laptops, papers and coupons.

I'm going to expand on this later by getting a corkboard to hang above the keys and I want to put a dry-erase board on the other side of the stairs so I can write messages and Andy can write "Poop."

Eventually we'll get around to the closet by the front door and our mudroom/laundry room. :)

DIY Canvas Quotes

I love the quotes on canvas that you see on etsy and pinterest all the time. The problem is I'm too much of a DIY-er to buy them (I know, I know, it supports small businesses).

It was about as time-consuming as I expected (probably about 2 hours per sign).

1) Use a nifty font website to create your template. I used Dafont.com and downloaded a bunch of fonts and made my templates in Word.

2) Once you get them juuuuust right, print them off. On the back side (the side that doesn't have the font), shade behind all of the words with pencil. You'll be making a transfer. Looking back, I should have tried using white colored pencil for the transfers I was planning on doing on the green canvases. I could barely make out the pencil.

3) Paint your canvases.

4) I put a book under my canvases during the transfer so that my pencil wouldn't stretch the canvases or leave dents (Game of Thrones is both a good read and a good crafting tool) and traced the letters, pressing down hard, to transfer the lead from the back side of the paper onto the canvas.

5) I used Sharpies to fill in the letters I traced. It was much easier than paint and I had more control. I used silver and gold markers on the green and red canvases. It was pretty easy to tackle a canvas or two while Bubby was napping.

6) Voila!

Why salt dough ornaments are a tease (and other Christmas happenings)

Pinterest was going overboard with all of the cute salt dough recipes and ornaments on all kinds of pages (Holiday, Kids, DIY, EVERYWHERE!)

It was so easy, the pins promised. It was so cheap, the pins promised. It was so cute, the pins promised.

Bait taken.

Cheap? Sure, when you have most of the supplies on hand.
Cute? The jury's still out.
Easy? I almost abandoned this project three times. It was almost a pinterest fail.

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
1/2 cup salt
1/2 cup water

Mix all ingredients together.

Easy! Especially when Bubby is helping "cook."

Knead until a ball of dough forms. Bubby played with it for about two minutes before he got bored with dropping pieces of it onto the floor. (I must remember that he is only 15 months old, which means a two-minute attention span is actually an accomplishment.)

Save dough in container for about three days until you summon enough courage to press a toddler's foot into it.

Form two balls out of dough. Pick pieces of dog fur out of dough ball. Press flat.

Press screaming toddler's foot into flattened dough.

Repeat. Give toddler iPhone for two minutes as a thank you.

Poke holes in the top (mechanical pencils without the lead pushed out work nicely).

(There are no pictures of these processes)

Let dry.

For two weeks.

None of the sites I checked mentioned anything about taking two weeks to dry. I set them on a cooling rack. I set them on waxed paper. I flipped them over (and prayed that the footprint would be preserved). I contemplated baking them, but didn't really feel like running my oven at 175 degrees for over an hour for two piddly salt dough ornaments.

On the second day of the drying process, the footprint flattened out and I thought all was lost. However, DO NOT ABANDON HOPE! The footprint will flatten out and then the rest will flatten and you'll be okay.

I finally got around to painting them.

And the painting experience was horrible. Maybe I set my expectations too high. I'm used to painting things like canvas or paper or rocks. Things that are not highly water soluble.

I couldn't figure out why my paint wasn't sticking if I brushed over it more than twice and then I realized that the dough had become wet and softened and was getting all gummy again.

When you paint these buggers, make sure you glob on the paint and dab rather than swipe. Also, don't go over an area more than once.

It dried pretty quickly, and it's kind of a success. One definitely looks better than the other. I think they are very third-grade-holiday-craft-from-art-class-ish. But I like 'em!

String ribbon through the hole and hang on the tree. We aren't cutting a tree this year since we'll be out of town, but you can use your imagination.

We also took our family photo. I was tempted to make it all Pinterest-y, but that's not really our family. We aren't always coordinated and matchy. We aren't always smiley. Rufus jumped into and out of about six takes. Sparkles don't fly in the air around us. There is no bokeh. No cute chalkboard signs.

So this year, it's a good ol' selfie.

My favorites:

The one we are going with:

DIY Tied Wreath

Our neighbor is a Michigan fan, and every year, he hangs a flag off his front door (and every year, Andy crosses the street to go around his house on our walks). Our neighbor is probably pretty nice (we don't know him very well), but football rivalry blood runs deep in my husband's veins, so sometimes, he takes drastic measures. To show our Buckeye pride, I wanted to make a Buckeye wreath. Normally, Pinterest is my go-to DIY site. However, all of my wreath pins led to Etsy sites where I could buy a wreath for $XX plus shipping, or were dead ends (Oh, 404 Error, how I loathe thee!).

Fine. If Pinterest wasn't going to play nice, I'd wing it.

Ingredients:
3 yds of fabric, your choice of colors. I went with red, dark grey, and light grey
1 foam wreath form
pinking shears
swag

1) I'm not big measure-r, so I just started cutting approximately 1-2" strips of fabric and eyeballed the length. I wrapped the first one I cut around the wreath to see what it would look like. Cut to your desired length.

(I'm a naughty crafter and didn't even iron the fabric)

2) Tie strips around wreath form however you want. I'm a bit OCD about patterns, so I went red, light, dark. I thought about doing "rows" of colors, but Andy liked them all mixed together.

3) You can have the knots point any direction you want for different effects.

(Knots facing up, with a few turned back so I can glue something nifty to the corner)

(Knots facing out)

4) I added my Buckeye necklace to the wreath and attached them. (I also bought wooden letters O,S, and U, but thought they took up too much room.)

How to Freeze Homemade Baby Food the Non-Boring, Economical Way

Last month, I found an excellent blog with recipes for all kinds of homemade pureed baby food. I whipped up a heaping batch of pear oatmeal, tossed it in the freezer, thawed it out a few days later and...Hayseed hated it. So now I'm stuck with about 8 2-oz. cups of pear oatmeal to eat (wah wah) because I can't bring myself to throw it away (Danjou pears canNOT be thrown down the drain).

Enter baby-puree-money-saving idea. I don't want to be stuck with a gajillion cups of the same baby food for Hayseed to eat - the point of baby food isn't to feed baby - it's to introduce him to new flavors and textures. So I'm starting to make base foods that I freeze and then figure out spices and combinations of spices to add to the thawed bases.

The lovely beige ones are all of my oatmeal pear :(

Here is what I have so far for inexpensive bases and spices I have in my cupboard.

1) Sweet Potato - I make about a dozen cups using 2-3 sweet potatoes that I chop into 1 in. pieces, steam and puree. Divide into containers, freeze, and when ready - thaw and mix with one or more of the following:
Sweet: cinnamon, allspice, vanilla extract, vanilla yogurt, cloves, ginger, nutmeg
Savory: paprika, rosemary, carrot puree

2) Peas
Savory: chili powder, dillweed, marjoram, sage, rosemary

3) Carrots - Make sure you don't mix the carrots with their steam-water!
Sweet: allspice, cinnamon, cloves
Savory: basil, dillweed, marjoram, sage, rosemary

4) Green beans
Savory: basil, chili powder, cumin, dillweed, marjoram, sage, rosemary

If you're looking for more combinations, this website has a great breakdown of which spices pair well with different foods...

One Fun Pin Win

Cost: $28: 4 hooks @ $5/hook, 3 feet of wood trim @ $1ish/foot, $4 for spray paint. I already had the frames and photos. I still don't have a good photo of the bubbaloo and me to put in the last frame.

Two coats of spray paint on the already cut wood trim and I had a nice even color. I eye-balled where I wanted the hooks and pre-drilled the holes. We already had black cabinet screws from the Disaster* and used those to hang the coat rack. We had to put the wood trim up first and then the hooks because the screws went all the way through the board. I figured out where I wanted the photos and Andy and I used the level to hang the nail holes at the same level.

Final result: