Wine Bottles

Anyone that knows me, knows I like a good glass of wine! So I usually have an empty bottle or two sitting around. I received a chalkboard painted bottle for a gift from a friend. I keep it in my wine themed kitchen on the counter and love to write messages on my bottle. At Christmas I wrote Ho! Ho! Ho! at Easter a Happy Easter wish and when it is a family members birthday I write a birthday wish on it. There were many times I wish I had two more bottles to split the message up on 3 bottles. That's when I began to collect the empty bottles over the winter. As spring was approaching I got my bottles ready by removing all the labels.

I soaked them in hot water and used a razor blade to scrape off the all paper. Any left over residue I used a little Goo Gone to clean the bottles off. I then set them aside to dry and wait for warmer weather to spray paint them.

Here in Chicago we had a slow go from winter temps to spring temps. Actually I think summer is hear now but we had some unseasonable low temps. When the weather finally warmed up a bit to paint we had terrible winds. No good for spray painting! Finally I had a nice, warm, non-windy day and got all the bottles primed and painted! 

I added two extra bottles to my existing one on the counter and plan to make a count down till our Florida vacation on it. 

The next thing I wanted to do with the bottles was add some to my upper cabinet for wine decor in my kitchen. I first thought I would write one letter on each bottle of our last name. Well that would take 7 bottles and really who thinks our last name is decor let alone fits in my wine themed kitchen! So I decided with 4 bottles each one spelling out Vino. Much better!! I first tried to write with my chalk pen but did not like the results. I then tried with regular chalk and decided it is just my handwriting that I am not happy with. So I had to come up with another way to spell out vino on the bottles. I was cleaning up my scrap room and came across my vinyl.......light bulb! I immediately pulled out my cricket, found a font I liked and cut my letters out.

I loved how they came out! I gave them a home on top of my cabinet and can't wait to add some lighting!

Do you have any interesting things you have made with wine bottles? I would love to see them. Please leave me a link in the comments!

Teacher Gifts!

Wow, these last few weeks of May are flying by! I have so much going on with the kiddos before they get out of school. Just a few weeks ago it was teacher appreciation day. The kids always give their teachers something small to just let their teachers know they are appreciated.

I found the cute printable tags on one of my favorite blogs eighteen25! I love, love their ideas. You can find the printable here on their blog.

For the end of the year gift for the teachers I like to do a bit more to give them a BIG thank you for all that they do. Here is what I pulled together for the teachers last year.

You can find my post about it here. I got wonderful feed back from the teacher on how much they loved them. This year my boys gave me the best Mother's Day present created by my Mom. I loved them so much I decided to make them and give them to the boy's teachers.

Aren't they so stinking cute??? They were so easy to make. All you need is a pair of rain boots, rocks or gravel, dirt, and herb plant of your choice. I also added the colorful duct tape for more color but it is not easy to put on with out any kinks! My husband drilled holes in the bottom of the boots for drainage. I filled the bottom of the boots with rocks to weight them down and then filled with dirt. Planted the herb, gave it some water and attached a to/from tag to it. My son who was in preschool is finished now and his teachers absolutely loved them!

What are you giving the teachers for the last day of school? I would love to see.

Mommy Got a Mini Vacation - Vegas Style!

Hi all! Sorry about the lack of post this week but I had an opportunity to sneak away with the husband to Vegas! We have not been away, without kids, for almost 5 years so it was way overdue!

I have never been to Vegas! It was wonderful! I loved all the lights at night,and the fountain at the Bellagio! We stayed at the Mandaley Bay Hotel and had a wonderful strip view. It was so nice to have some adult time with my husband. It was also wonderful not to have to cook, clean, care for kids, do laundry, and the other bazillion things I do. As a stay at home mom there are no vacation days unless I get away like this.  It was nice to just relax (something else I am not good at doing and really need to get better at doing).

I am very lucky and blessed to have wonderful family to care for my boys who allowed me to sneak away with my husband. A huge, heartfelt thank you to my mother who ended up taking care of both my boys who came down with the stomach flu while I was in Vegas. I am sure that is was way more than she bargained for but I knew my boys were in good hands as she was the best nurse to me when I was sick! Thank you Mom - I love you! 

Well it's back to the grind stone and I have already been doing laundry and disinfecting my home to make sure the nasty bug is gone from our home! This week we will be getting back to our organizing challenge and organizing the laundry room!

Organizing the Boys Closets - Reveal

I'm so excited to show you how the boys closets turned out! If you saw my before pictures here you know I was working with a mess of items, and in a sea of un-organization! Knowing that I did not have a budget to get my dream organizers for both closets I worked with what I had on hand. I once again used dollar store storage to tidy up both closets.

I created, using some old Ikea wicker baskets I had laying around, a basket for clothes that are too big and one for clothes that are two small.

I love the tags I made. Green for one son and Red for the other! I printed out the paper, and text. Trimmed and inked the edges of the text paper just to make it pop out a bit. Then matted and laminated. Then tied it off with some matching ribbon.

I had some left over dollars on my Office Depot gift card so I picked up two green file bins as I knew they would be the perfect size to house all the boys friends. When do boys out grow stuffed animals? The boys stood their ground about not wanting to give away their friends!

My younger son gets all the hand-me-downs including shoes. 13 is too big for him right now so I keep them in the buckets for when he will fit into them. They were previously in a diaper box and I had no idea what type of shoes or size were in there. Now I can easily see I have a few pairs for him when his feet grow.

Since our house is brand new and we are waiting to paint after our year patching is done by the builder, I created a decor bin. Our younger son continued with his train room theme that he had in his old house, so the items in his bin are ones that will go up after we paint. My older son wants a lego room, so as I find items for his theme I have been placing them in his decor bin. I also put baseball pants, shirts and socks in their hats for an easy grab at game time.

Both boys closets are now color coded which makes it easy for them to pick out a shirt that matches their pants or shorts.

Now when I am hanging up their laundry I am happy to do so. Before I would go into their closets to hang up their laundry and want to quickly shut the door again. Now I can't help but have a smile on my face when I open the door. Silly how the simple things like an organized closet make me happy!!

Organizing the Boys Closet - Preview

This week I am focusing on organizing the kids closets! 

They were a mess and I needed to get them back in control. The boys were just throwing stuff in there, my husband and I were stacking clothes on the top shelf that were either to big or to small. Here is my 5 year old's closet:

 

Let's play a game called what's wrong with this picture. I need to have my boys and my clothes organized by sleeve length and color. For example my closet  runs: no sleeves, short sleeves, 3/4 sleeves and long sleeves and then by the rainbow (red, orange, yellow...). I usually set up the kids the same way. My 5 year old never follows it! Look at the pampers box - ha my kid has been out of diapers for so long. There is a bazillion shoes in there. I also love the swim stuff mixed in with the sweaters - same season right?? 

Hmmmm......animals, shoes and clothes - seems organized to me NOT!! The bin holds clothes that are too small for my son but the bin wasn't big enough to hold all the clothes so the solution: stack it on top so your 5 year old can knock it down! 

I have some work to do in this closet!! Here is my older son who is 7, he carries some of my characteristic in organization - he keep his closet color coded!

Ready for round two of what's wrong with this picture! Basically his whole top self is full of clothes - clothes from summer that never got put away, clothes that are too big, jeans that he has put a hole in the knee (that I swear I am going to fix but by the time I get around to it they are too small for him) and a bunch of socks that my son wore for months and then said they are too big and keep falling down! 

Both boys just chuck stuff on the floor!

Hmmm.....something seems familiar here - animals, shoes, and if we just throw some clothes on the floor it will look just like my 5 year old's closet!

As much as I would love to put up an organization system for them (we had them in our previous house and it worked great for them) we have so many "new home projects" that I have to put that on hold for now. However, if I don't find a way to organize the closet in a functional way for the boys it will continue to end up like this, and only get worse. So off to the Dollar Store I go to find fun, colorful, storage for the boys!

Organizing the Boy Bathroom - Reveal

Wow this week is went by fast but I made great progress in the boys bathroom. You can see my before pictures here. I had a mess to deal with but after sorting out everything and getting rid of items I didn't need, I was ready to start. I found some liner for the boys drawers because my boys are messy. I love the Chevron look right now!

I then added organizers and made tags to help the boys put items back were they belong. 

Under one sink I used a storage drawer and baskets that I picked up at the Dollar Store to organized items.

Under the second sink the boys share some space with me. I have neatly tucked away my curling irons and created a space to store extra toilet paper.

The boys are very into laundry right now so I am riding that wave! I have labeled their linen closet to help them put towels and linens where they belong. I then used zip ties to hold them in place.

At the bottom of the linen closet I added some buckets to hold our suntan lotions and aloe products.

The space is wonderful now and the boys are already putting items back where they belong instead of leaving them on the counter. 

Have you liked Casual Fridays on Facebook yet, followed Casual Fridays on Twitter,  or followed my organizational board on Pinterest yet? 

Organizing the Boys Bathroom - Labeling Project

I have been busy working on the boys bathroom and thought I would give you a quick peek at part of the project that I have been working on. I love to make tags and label. Being that I am a digital scrapbook and I am on a creative team for Bella Gypsy I knew when I saw this kit I wanted to use the colors in the boys bathroom. 

Isn't this a great kit! You can pick it up here. I printed out some of the papers and used Photoshop to create my tags. I trimmed and matted them and then ran them through my laminator to help make them durable. 

Wa-la! Instant, colorful, tags!