For the love of barrettes and bows...and organization

   




      I love barrettes. I love bows. I love ribbons. I love anything cute that I can put in Mya's hair. I just keep willing her hair to grow even more so I can start doing braids, pig tails and pony tails..I just can't wait for that.
     In saying that, I've also realized that my original system of putting all of her hair accessories in a basket in her dresser drawer just isn't working anymore. I spend way too much time searching for the specific hair clip that I know is in that pile of clips somewhere and the basket is becoming a dumping ground for everything from hair bands to hair elastics, with no real order to it at all. It's really just a mess, and I know it will only get worse as I continue to find more and more cute hair clips that I'll continue to add to the bucket as she continues to get older.
     So I finally decided to actually do something about it. I created a cute little hair clip holder that literally cost me $1 and took no time at all to make. All of a sudden I can see each clip, pick the one that I want and there's no longer an overflow of hair clips everywhere. Perfect.

Here is how I did it:

1) I bought a sheet of artist canvas at the dollar store for $1 (thanks Jen and Attila for the gift card!) and picked some ribbon and scrapbook paper that I already had in my craft cupboard at home.

2) Use a glue stick and cover the canvas with glue, then wrap the scrapbook paper around it like a present.

3) Use a hot glue gun and place a dab of glue on the back of the canvas and attach the ribbon. Make sure you leave a little bit of slack on each ribbon so that the clips can snap onto them easily.

4) Add your clips, and you're done.
p.s. You can use sticky Velcro to attach your clip holder to the back of a door or a wall. This is hanging on the back of Mya's closet door.

So easy..so cute..so functional. I just love it.

*****

And on a completely different topic, here are two things I recently learned that I thought I'd pass along as good tips....

DID YOU KNOW??

1) You can freeze milk. Who knew? Maybe you did...but I had no idea. Thanks for the tip mom! You just have to be sure to shake it well after it thaws (before you snip the bag open!!).

    We'll now buy Mya's homo milk when it's on sale and stock up, throwing it right in our freezer and pulling out each bag individually to thaw whenever she drinks through the bag in the fridge. We're now not wasting any milk that she can't drink through fast enough before the due date, and we're saving a bunch of money when buying all of our milk on sale.

2) You can shred cooked chicken in your Kitchen Aid mixer. Just throw your fully cooked chicken in the mixer (with the specific mixing attachment shown in this pic below), put your mixer on low and watch as your chicken transforms into professionally shredded chicken in seconds. I use mine all of the time now for lots of different meal ideas.

Ok, that's it...have a good night!