{Organization Wednesday: Huggable Hangers + warmer weather}

My back seems to be getting better, but now the right lower back hurts. Oh well... This has just meant that not as much nothing has been getting done at home (think cleaning), and I have been going to bed early. I originally planned to switch out the hangers in my closet with my new Huggable Hangers this week:

but that didn't happen. I am hoping I can do it over the weekend. I LOVE Huggable Hangers, because none of my shirts slip off of them. They have a velvety coating on them. They are also pretty thin:

Here is one next to the plastic hangers I have in my closet:

The box I got for my birthday also has some different types of hangers, so I am looking forward to all of the extra room in my closet.

Today was the first day in a long time that was nice outside. It was over 40 degrees! The kids LOVED it. Tricia said they played outside almost all day. Here they were when I got there to pick them up:

Caden with some of his buds.

Lilli loves walking in the snow.

Caden also wanted to test to make sure he still remembers how to ride on two wheels:

Yep!

I didn't have the heart to tell the kids this nice weather will be short-lived. The weather man could be wrong, right?

The kids and I also stopped at Dada's office. He did NOT have to meet with his group for school, so the kids were THRILLED he would be home early. Can you tell how much they love him?

This pic is so funny. They were holding fishing poles they made for him that he keeps in his office from Father's Day :)

Until later!
Barby

{Organization Wednesday: Entry Way}

Hello! Today I decided to try to figure out a different way to organize the entry way so it doesn't end up looking like this:

Not good...

The main problem is with all of the snow, we need a place to put our shoes when we get home. The kids more times than not just walk right out of their shoes as they walk in, and then the shoes are right in the middle of the rug. I didn't want to have to buy anything new, so I looked around the house. I realized that I had a shoe tray in the garage, so I brought that into the house and scrubbed it clean. Then I removed the little table thing where the plant was resting. That thing was in the way anyway. I transferred the plant onto the end table that holds the dog leashes and shopping bags. With the little table thing out, I had room to put the shoe tray there. What do you think?

 

Much better :)

Until later!
Barby

{Organization Wednesday: School Edition + Happy Birthday, Ryan!}

I have to start by saying Happy Birthday to Ryan. We started the morning right with our T25 workout. I will post pics from tonight and his birthday dinner tomorrow :)

I decided to switch things up a bit for Organization Wednesday and show off some of my organizational techniques in my classroom. I know I did a little classroom tour before school started, but this time I can let you see a little bit more of where I spend the bulk of my week.

I will start with the table where my students turn in their work:

I love it... It makes me happy :)

I have a basket for each class I teach so the work doesn't get mixed up.

I also have the organizer here with supplies that my students may use:

I have this in the front of my room:

I put extra copies of assignments for each class. Then I have them in one spot. It saves a lot of time for me when students need an extra copy.

Here is my bulletin board with information for my students. I have my weekly lesson plans posted here, the school calendar, and also the grading scale that I use:

Here are some overall shots of my classroom:

Looking from the front to the back

Another shot from the front looking to the back

From the back looking to the front

Here is my desk:

Yes, it usually looks like this. I can't stand it when I have things piled up on my desk. I can't function that way. By the end of the day, I will also have that stack of papers and book put away as well.

I did end up filling the bulletin board with pics:

I also have pics behind my desk:

And on the radiator (Is that what it is?) next to my desk:

I also have pics from the kids (both home and school kids) below

Hope you enjoyed the tour of my organizational items in my classroom! Next week I will be back at home with my Organization Wednesday :)


Until later!
Barby

{Organization Wednesday: the Junk Drawer & Easy Bake Oven}

We all have a junk drawer. We don't expect it to look pretty, but at least we want to be able to find whatever it may be that we need from said drawer. That is the problem with ours. I can't always find what I need. And usually it is something that is needed immediately, like superglue or something. I decided it was time to conquer ours, and do it this time in a way that would last. This involved a trip to Target. Oh darn... Here is what I found:

The first thing I did was pull EVERYTHING out of the drawer. Oh,  you want to see what it looked like before? Okay...

Yep...horrible. There was an attempt at organization. Do you see that large bag for the writing utensils? That never worked.

Here is the clean drawer:

I also evaluated what we really needed to keep upstairs when I had everything out of the drawer. Did we really need 25 pens in the drawer? Uh, no. I didn't throw them away, I am just storing them downstairs with office supplies. Here are the after pics:

I put the large tape rolls behind the organizer trays.

So lovely. Now the trick will be to keep it that way :)

I will leave you with some pics from last night. Nicole gave the kiddos an Easy Bake Oven, and we decided to break it out last night. The kids made "cupcakes." I am not really sure if we can call them that... They were pretty tiny. I will say, after my first attempt with the machine...not a fan. Lilli asked me at one point, "Mama, are you happy?" I said yes. She said, "Then why does your face look like that?" Yep, she could tell. The batter smeared all over when Caden pushed in the tray. The kids still had fun. Here are the pics:

Until later!
Barby

{Organization Wednesday: children's artwork}

I don't know about you, but I seem to have piles of artwork from the kids all over the house...

The top one is from Sunday school.

We display a lot of it:

Is it time to pull down the Christmas artwork....?

It is definitely time to take down the two-headed Thanksgiving turkey :)

Here are Caden's homework sheets from school.

Unfortunately, there is no way to display all of it. I was stumped by how to organize it all. I did some searching online to find a solution. I had to criteria for the solution: 1) It must be free, and 2) It has to look nice. I ended up decided to use from magazine organizers I had down in my scrapping room. They only have a few things in them that I could easily reorganize to another room. I put each kid's name on one of them, and then I put their work in the holder. Once these are too full to hold all of the work, I will relocate to a tote. Here is how they look on my shelf in the scrapping room:

I am looking forward to also displaying the kids' work in a more formal way. I am also excited that we received a frame like this for Christmas:

We will be able to change out the kids' artwork. I think I will probably snag another one so I have one for each kiddo.

I also found a horizontal artwork holder at Target in their organization section they put out right after New Year's. It can hold three pieces of artwork. I will take a pic of this one once I put it up in the playroom.


I will leave you with a pic from Lilli last night. She decided instead of taking a bath that she wanted to take a shower. She cracks me up...

Until later!
Barby