small things {lists}

small things #42 ... lists

I have been genetically engineered to be a list-maker.  I can't help it as this trait is an intrinsic part of my DNA.  I make daily lists and weekly lists.  I experience great satisfaction in marking items off my list and I've been known to add unlisted items to my list after I do them just so I can mark them off.

List-making and list-marking is in my blood.

And now for your viewing pleasure ... my To-Do list for the month of June:

1. Survive --- er, that is ... Enjoy VBS next week.  The great countdown to fun has begun and I'm whittling my VBS list down on a daily basis.  And adding to it daily, as well.
2. Stay ahead of the laundry beast.  I don't want to just keep it at bay, I want to keep it tamed.  (Down boy!  Sit.  Staaaay ... stay ... Good boy.)
3. Start the kids' trip around the US of A.  They'll be learning capitals and exploring state facts.  And I'll be learning my capitals and geography all over again.  (What do you mean the capital of Maine isn't Bangor?!?  Uh ... don't listen to you mom.)
4. Lounge on the couch for a movie morning or two.  And not "lounging" while making phone calls and sending emails.  Actually lounging with my feet up and a kid snuggled on my lap.  This also goes for playing games with my kids 100% and being crafty and artsy without my mind being busy with ... my lists.
5. Keep up with my morning walks.  How else do I intend to up on current events unless I listen to Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me?!?  And my me-time also keeps me sane ... even if it has to start really early.
6. Enjoy a weekend with Auntie Steph.  We can't wait to see you!  Rest up because we're going to be ready to play, play, play!  (see number 8)
7. Try a few new recipes.  Even if the kids peer at their dinners and ask, "What is it?", I have no intentions of eating hamburgers, tuna noodle salad and lemon alfredo every week ad finitum.  (Not bad by themselves, but week after week?  No thanks.)
8. Sit out in the front yard and watch the kids play:  slip-n-slide, trampoline, biking, scootering, basketball, frisbee and tag.  Not all at the same time, of course.  That would be dangerous.
9. Write a bit.  Hopefully more than "a bit", but I'm keeping my expectations low so that I will only be pleased with the amount of writing I get done.  That's my Danish heritage, Mom.
10. Run away for a long, long weekend to Steamboat Springs with my family at the end of the month.  happy dance, happy dance!

Now ... let's see if I can get it all marked off!  I'll let you know!

Lists ... my way of keeping my sanity and keeping track of all the bits and pieces of life that threaten to make me crazy!

__________________________________

#1 - 10 To-Do's in June

I Resolve ... Ah! Who Am I Kidding?!

I am a less than victorious resolution keeper.  Like a majority of the population, year after year I make the same vows:  lose weight, get closer to God, learn to clog.  What?  Just me on that last one?  Oh.

Well this year, I have made a list of resolutions I have no hope of keeping.  I figure if I go into 2012 with this honest perspective (read:  low expectations), I won't be disappointed!

Thank you to Liz of a belle, a bean and a chicago dog for her inspiration!


Here are my 12 Goals of 2012 (that won't happen):

1)  Not smiling in my sleep when a night-time visitor chooses Daddy's side of the bed over mine.

2)  Drinking my coffee black.  Aack.  Blech.  Where's.  My.  Tourani.  Syrup?

3)  Dusting my house on a regular basis.  Even in preparation for company coming to visit, this is the last (and typically not accomplished) chore on my list.  I appreciate that our family and friends refrain from writing their names in the accumulation.

4)  Not turning tail and running to my stash of dark chocolate every time my little hoodlums begin to challenge the laws of the land.  There is power in that square (or two) of chocolatey goodness, I tell you.

5)  Maintaining clean windows, inside or out.  The inside ones are almost always smeared with fingers, noses and tongues (both the kids and the dog are guilty here) and the outside ones have that lovely privacy film.  If I clean them, the kids (and dog) test the inside cleanliness with their grimy mitts and if I clean the outside ones, it inevitably rains.  And then Utah blows into town.  What's the point?

6)  Keeping up with all the mementos and "oh, I can't throw that away" treasures, maintaining an organized email inbox or staying ahead of the school papers.  help...

7)  Not obsessing about how I perceive people to regard me.  (Physically, emotionally, spiritually, personally, mentally, comically, grammatically, hygienically, creatively, fashionably, organizationally, etc.)

8)  Keeping my dresser top clear.  Currently it is the home to:  2 unopened packages of plastic darts, 1 package of dart tips, 14 pair-less socks, a cut-out wood block of my name (from my Uncle Jim, 4 million years ago), a few Squirt and Nehi bottles (an inside family joke about my petiteness), a stack of mementos (see #6), dress up beads, 2 bracelets from Noah's Ark Water Park from this summer's vacation, 1 empty zip-lock bag, 1 pillowcase that needs mending, 1 t-shirt to turn into a pillow, "Goodnight Moon" awaiting the bookbinder fairy, a sewing kit, 1 pair of capris to mend, 1 penny, 1 broken girly necklace, the face off of someone's Dollar Store watch, a jewelry box, a handful of ribbons, a gnome figurine from my Nana and a dusty blue vase.

9)  Avoiding a daily trip to Kidzplex for gymnastics.  If you are calling Monday through Friday from between 3:45 and 4:45, please leave a message at the beep.  Beeeep.

10)  Mastering a backside air-to-fakie with a rusty trombone on my new Shaun White snowboard Wii game.  But, I'm willing to put in the hard work and extra practice time to try to do so.

11)  Getting up with the kids before Brett on a weekend morning.  We both know this is an impossibility.

12)  Inadvertently exhausting the height, depth, length or width of God's love.  (Ephesians 3:16-19)  Amen.

And you?  What do you know you won't do this year?

It's liberating to start 2012 with fresh and realistic expectations!
_____________________________

Prompt #5 ~ Resolutions for 2012

How Many Feet Do You Have?!?

We all have those areas of our houses that make us want to pull our hair out.  Okay ... to be perfectly honest, I have about a dozen of those little nooks and crannies in my home.

There's the drawer in the living room hutch that is jam packed with all sorts of odds and ends:  candles, old pictures, holiday cards, dice, a matryoshka doll and frame with Aaron's baby handprint ... just to name a few.  I'd go take a peek to see what else is in there, but it's a scary little drawer!  When I need something from there, I quickly pull it open, search around for the needed item, stuff everything back in and close it quickly while poking back in the junk that's trying to escape and try not to catch my finger in the drawer.

My closet is also a disaster zone, but the good news is that there is nice strong door holding it all in there.  If that door were to ever collapse under the pressure, there would be an avalanche of clothing, suitcases, dusty shoes, my foot massager/hot water bath gizmo, a file folder full of preschool activities I never revisited after organizing them two years ago, a box of things I'm collecting for GoodWill, and a bunch of random maternity clothes that missed out on being stored with the rest of my prego wardrobe.  Those really need to go.

My sister helped me organize my pantry several months ago but it looks like I need to schedule another appointment with my private organizer. :)  It's amazing how quickly I can fill up the shelves with bags of random "important" things and lose any semblance of order.  We currently have a grocery sack of fish paraphanelia perched precariously on the top shelf, right next to our stash of tea, a hodge-podge of place-mats and Pete's birdseed.  And that's just the top right corner.  Scary.  Now I just stuff in my pantry items when I get home from the grocery, carefully close the door (we don't want any seismic activity) and hope that the next time I need to get in there, I don't end up with a box of ziplock bags on my head.

Then there is the goody drawer and silverware drawer, but I already lamented that mess!

Phew!  And that's not even taking into consideration all the kids' crazy nooks and crannies!  They are famous for stuffing small spaces with inordinate amounts of "treasures" and then stepping back and saying, "There!  Perfect!"  Most of those little pack-rat nests I have been willing to walk past, but if the mess starts creeping into our common living areas, I have to do something.  One such area is the laundry room.

The laundry room that houses so much more than just laundry!  Of course there's the washer and dryer and all the soaps and cleaners that go along with that.  With a little hunting you might find my dusty iron and ironing board ... maybe.  This is also were Gimi's house is nestled under a set of shelves full of crafts, and whole lot of other odds-n-ends:  citronella candles for summer nights, Easter eggs to hide in the spring, buckets of beads for the girls to make necklaces and my bucket of bathroom cleaning supplies.  What an interesting conglomeration of bits and pieces!

There is also a clothing rod that currently holds extra coats, snow pants, table clothes and a few random bags full of other random items.  Just below that is the vacuum and a box full of enough shoes to clad an entire kindergarten!  And just above that are ten little coat hooks covered with enough coats to keep that kindergarten class warm and cozy!  And that would be swell if this was a kindergarten class, but it's not. But if that's the case, why do our four kids need so many shoes and coats!?!

Brett and I tackled this little problem several weeks ago and discovered that while there was room for improvement, we couldn't actually get rid of much.  We just needed to organize it better.  Here is the before picture so that you can see that I wasn't making anything up:

Sorry I don't have a wide-lense camera
for the full effect!  There's an extra set of hooks
behind the door ... if you dare to take a peek!

We went through the shoes and tried to streamline what went in the shoe bin.  For each kid we tried to choose one pair of tennis shoes, dress shoes and slip on shoes.  Of course, that still amounted to a dozen pairs of shoes ... so it's hard to call that better. :)  We took the snow-boots and put them in a cardboard box and stored it on the shelf above the dryer.  That way those clunky guys are only out and about when we actually need them.

Next we had the kids each choose two coats:  a heavy one and a light one.  All the other sweatshirts and warm wraps went to live in the kids' closets.  This went a long way towards making the area feel more organized.  That meant that Lydia and Ashley each had two coat hooks for their coats and Aaron and Norah had a hook for each coat and one for their backpacks.  Completely do-able even for a kid in a hurry!

Finally we sorted and refreshed the current organizer on the back of the laundry room door.  I actually love this little hanger-guy.  It's an old shoe sorter that I picked up from Wal-Mart years ago.

Why there is a pool inner-tube in with the
winter stuff is a mystery to me, too,

It's perfect for all the little bits and pieces that we need.  In the summer we fill the sleeves with sun hats, baseball caps, sunscreen, bug spray, pool toys and visors.  Then, in the winter, we trade out the warm weather supplies for the cold weather parts:  hats, gloves, scarves, hand warmers and more of all the above.  Again ... we apparently have more than four children living here!  But at least they are organized.

Now our laundry room is a bit more functional and a bit less frustrating.  The door actually opens all the way instead of getting hung up on the coat that fell off the over-loaded hook or the back-pack that got dropped to the floor in a pile.

And now when you walk in there, you don't run the risk of getting ganged up on by a bunch of hoodies and held at glove-point! :)

What's for Dinner?

There are three things that make me hold my head:  play-doh, not feeling 100% and listening to the clock strike four without a clue as to what's for dinner.  Unfortunately, all three things happened today.  I guess you could say it was the perfect trifecta of woe! :)  Gratefully, my day doesn't typically look like this!

In a moment of weakness :) I agreed to play-doh this afternoon.  Aaron & Ashley asked to pull out the colorful, crumbly, creative clay to play with while waiting for Norah to get home from gymnastics.  I actually shook hands with Ashley ... a verbal agreement that there would be hands-on participants in the cleaning-up process.  They really did have fun (isn't that the way with messy, squishing stuff?) and for the most part, the play-doh was contained to the table.  Aaron was vying for the world record in play-doh noodle length.  He made a string of play-doh a whopping 100 inches long!  That is an accomplishment.  Ashley made several meals including purple french fries and red cookies ... yum!  Speaking of "yum", Lydia ate some of Ashley's items.  Just a typical play-doh play-time!  As agreed, the big kids did help with the de-play-dohing quite a bit ... and Daddy got home just in time!

As for me ... I have an appointment to be healed tomorrow. :)  Just one too many days of a headache, a cough and the blahs.  Hopefully I'll be as good as new in just a few days.  I know my family will be glad to have me back and then they can say goodbye to the slumpy, grumpy lady who has been here the past couple of days!

And then there was dinner.  Aaron had requested earlier in the week to have my home-made chicken noodle soup.  While that might have some good healing agents that would benefit me ... I just couldn't get excited about hot soup when it was up to 90-something today.  So ... while I wandered from fridge to pantry to freezer and back to pantry, I was reminded of how glad I am that I make up a weekly dinner list.  Whew!  It is so great to not have to "come up" with something during that infamous hour before dinner.  Dr. Kevin Leman calls the epoch from 4 pm to dinner time the "piranha hour" and he's so very right on!  This is the one time of the day when I am d-o-n-e done and the kids are done and dinner is not done ... and that, my friends, is a recipe for disaster!

So, in an attempt to minimize the challenges of this time of day, I have long been in the habit of making up my dinner menus on Sunday and having the week planned before we even get started on Monday morning.  Sunday is my time to take a look at the calendar for the next seven days and see what nights have conflicts (or in most cases, what one night are we home!) and plan accordingly.  In light of our recent full family schedule, I have been planning lots of meals that can either be made ahead and served "fresh" from the fridge or crock pot dinners that I can plug in and forget about.  (Just so you know ... I'm working on a crock-pot Food For Thought for this weekend .... yummy!)  I also like to plan meals that I can get two dinners out of.  For example, I have a pork roast for tomorrow that will be enjoyed twice:  half for tacos and half for bbq sandwiches.  Any way that I can simplify my life is awesome and I'm more inclined to have this forethought if I actually thought about it before. :)

Here's a basic breakdown of my weekly planning:

I have a little spiral bound notebook that I use for both my list of meals and my shopping list.

No comments regarding my handwriting. :)

On the right side I have the the days of the week and then my meal plans including sides, salads and breads.  I try to be as specific as I can be so that I can shop accordingly and so that I don't have to get creative when I'm ... you got it:  done.  On the left is my shopping list for the week.  I make my list from the ingredients needed for the recipes and then add anything else that we need around the house:  pantry items, baking supplies, breakfast options and anything specific the kids asked for on their lunch check list.  By having my shopping list and menu list attached, I have saved myself the trouble of getting home only to realize that I need two pasta sauces, one for two different nights.  Often times, if I have planned to grill something, I plan the rest of the meal, but wait until I get to the store to decide what meat to buy.  That allows me to shop for something on sale or to check over in the Manager's Mark-down area (there are awesome deals there sometimes!)

As for meal ideas, I like having my little notebook because I can look back over previous weeks and get ideas for things people really liked.  It also works well because I can steer clear of meals that didn't go over too great, as well.  Most of my dinner ideas from just a few places.  I have my grungy recipe box which is bursting with grubby index cards.  :) I have a few cookbooks I like and use often.  One is my mom's family cookbook ... it's almost been used to smithereens!  The other one is  "The Dinner Doctor" by Anne Byrn.  I like it because she uses a lot of "ready-made food" to make really fresh dinners.  I also have subscriptions to two magazines:  FoodNetwork Magazine and Taste of Home Cooking.  I would highly recommend either of those for family meal inspiration.  And they're also good for browsing and day-dreaming about the day when mac-n-cheese won't be the top-rated meal from your kitchen!

I also have a fantastic app on my iPod ... my life-saver in the kitchen trenches.  It is called Epicurious, or Epi for short.  I understand that there is full-scale website you can use, but I like the handiness of this app and the fact that I can take it with me to the store and then back to the kitchen!  (And it's free!)  You really just have to check it out for yourself, but here is a basic description.  At the main menu you have the option to choose from a long list of meal-types (seasonal, holiday, health restrictions, ease of preparation, etc.)  Or ... and this is what I use ... you can type in your ingredients (say:  tomatoes, eggplant and zucchini) and then select if you are looking for a salad, main course, or hot side dish and then hit "search".  In the blink of an eye you have, literally at your finger-tips, 150 recipes that fit your description.  You can narrow it down further by adding additional info or just start browsing.  Each recipe has a source, a list of ingredients, detailed directions and, in many cases, a picture and ratings & reviews by other readers/cooks.  When you find one that might work, you simply add it to your "favorites" and keep browsing.  When you have a few recipes to choose from, you can go back to your "favorites" and compare and revisit your options.  When you find the winner for the night, you can view the shopping list and you are set to go!  It's great and so very easy to use!

So ... that is my meal-making in a nutshell.  I hope that you find it a tad bit helpful and I would highly recommend that you give it a try.  I can almost guarantee that if you did this for a month, you wouldn't go back to the "Hmmmm ... what I can do with a frozen pound of beef and this package of creamed spinach?"-style of dinner planning! :)

DIY - Bulletin Boards

A few weeks ago, I conquered the unruly school shelf.  Which, I'd like to add, has continued to stay organized and tidy ... without any mommy-help.  It has been wonderful to have the kids keep track of their own school folders, papers, books, etc. and I have not made one trip to school to bring anything anyone forgot ... boo-yeah!  But ... we still had the problem of lost slips of paper, forgotten reminders of upcoming events and misplaced teacher notes.  In light of this, it became quite clear that a bulletin board was in order, but not just any bulletin board.  I wanted something cute. :)  So, I thought back to an article I had read in a recent FamilyFun magazine issue.  I don't have a subscription (yet!) to this magazine ... I had one a few years ago, but found that my life was too full to actually sit down and read it or put any of their wonderful, ingenious, creative ideas to work.  The typical, cyclical irony being that by the time I actually had the time to enjoy their ideas, my kids would be all grown up and the suggestions irrelevant.  But ... I digress ...

Seeing as I don't usually follow directions anyway, I figured I could fake it and make something that would work.  It ended up being so easy ... I made four! :)  So, if you can wrap a present, have a way to make things stick (a hot glue gun is my tool of choice ... I wouldn't recommend chewing gum!), extra fabric odds and ends, any extra embellishments lying around and an empty diaper box ... you're good to go!

My odds and ends ... and gizmos

First, I flattened the cardboard box down.  (For the smaller ones I made for the kids, I cut the box in half and had two forms for two separate bulletin boards.)  Then I laid the fabric on the counter, smoothed it out and laid the flattened box in the middle.  I then wrapped the fabric around the side and ran a bead of glue along the cardboard and then pressed the fabric into the hot glue and made sure it was really stuck.  I did this in 3 inch sections so that the glue didn't cool before I got the fabric attached.  I did one long side, followed by the opposite long side, being sure to pull the fabric tight.  Then I turned the cardboard around and folded the short end like you would at the end of a gift box and then pulled this almost triangular end up and glued it in place.  Maybe the picture will help you to see how very much the back looks like a Christmas present.

To the left is the long side and along the bottom is the folded end.

To make this a little trickier, I found that the fabric remnant I had wasn't wide enough to cover the box.  It was plenty long enough, so I cut it in half which left me with two pieces that could wrap around the cardboard the long way, but would only meet about half-way across the front of the box.  To fix this problem I had to lay the two pieces with the printed sides facing each other.  I folded one piece back and then ran some hot glue along the edge of the fabric and pressed the two pieces together.  Once it was cooled, I could fold the top piece back and I had one large square of fabric with a "seam" in the middle.  If you really wanted to be fancy, you could make a patch-work quilt look to your bulletin board by using a variety of fabrics and gluing them in the same way.

To hide the "seam" and make the bulletin board cutsy, I used a ribbon to run long ways along that line.  I cut the ribbon long enough to wrap about 2 inches around the back and glued them into place.  I chose one ribbon to wrap long ways and then I wrapped another ribbon perpendicular to the first, but I edged it  to one side a bit so I didn't have to worry about making sure it was exactly in the middle.  It was a little more pleasing to the eye, too!  You can see from the following picture that it even looks like a present from the front now! :)  The ribbons will also come in hand for hanging notes and cards as they can just slide under the ribbon without the need for tacks.  This idea is taken from the french bulletin boards that I have seen at craft stores and home decorating stores.  I didn't have enough ribbon to crisscross multiple times (remember ... these are all supplies that I had on hand), but maybe next time!

Notice the position of the ribbon ... now for the bling!

Down in my craft bin I found some loose silk flowers that my mom-in-law had given me for making cards.  The flowers have the little holes from being on the stem.  I also had decorative brads in my card making supply.  I layered two flowers together and slid a brad in the middle ... ta-dah!  Adorable three-dimensional flowers to girly-up my functional bulletin board.  

Next I had to affix them to the board.  To make this work, I had to get a little creative ... but once I got the hang of it, it became easier.  The brads weren't pointed enough to poke into the cardboard through the ribbon and fabric, so I had to make a small hole with a tack, put a little dab of hot glue over the minuscule hole and then press the brad through the flowers, through the ribbon and through the gluey fabric ... quickly!  I pressed it in place until the glue cooled and I was pleased to discover that the brads were glued to the cardboard underneath.  Yeah!

Here I am pressing the brad through all the supplies and making it secure.

I did five different flowers:  one at the intersection of the ribbons and then one on each of ribbons at varying spots.  When all the flowers were glued on, I turned the entire board over and glued a small section of ribbon in a loop in the back for hanging it on the wall.  

Ready for the fun, flowery finished product?

So fun!  And functional!!

Like I said, I also made three for the bigger kids.  They were thrilled and already have tagged mementos to their flowered, butterfly and football memory boards.

I hope this was inspiring (you can make this!!) and not too hard to understand (it's tough to put into words what my hands do and make it make sense!).  If you have any questions, let me know ... otherwise, have fun!

Mom ... I Forgot My __________ .

This morning, after traipsing home from dropping the kids off at school, I found a message on the machine from my recently dropped-off son.

"Uh, Mom?  I forgot my book bag ... again.  Uh ... could you bring it up? ...(pause)... That would, uh, that would make me real happy."  Click.

Well ... seeing as I'm a good mom :) and want to make my son happy :) :) I drove his ziplock book bag to school.  For the second time in two weeks.   It really isn't that big a deal, but I didn't feel that it was a very good portent of the coming weeks.  I had a vision of me making daily visits to the school, book bag in hand with a sheepish boy claiming said book-bag and a 3rd grade teacher wondering what sort of disorganized mayhem we live in.  Well ... while our house isn't a total mess, there are certainly areas that could use some improvement.  For example, the school shelf.  See ... it wasn't entirely his fault.  This is what he had to work with:

yes ... that's a spool of curling ribbon ... it needs to find it's true home!

We have a saying in our house when it's time to clean up, "Put it where it lives."  The implied significance being that everything has it's place and if it doesn't have a home, either we need to find it one or toss it out.  This was the problem that I was facing with the school shelf.  Most everything had a home (crayons, markers, pencils, etc.) but the papers and notebooks and folders were homeless ... and causing some trouble.

Now, seeing as I had just spent $40 on our couch, I knew that my organization budget was a little on the slim side.  So ... armed with an empty peach box, an extra piece of cardboard, an exacto knife, some craft paper and my rusty, trusty glue gun ... I set out to find our school stuff a home ... and not spend a cent!  Here is my step-by-step process to a nifty organizer box.

First I cut the extra cardboard so that it would fit snugly in the box as a divider.  I folded the sides and bottom so that I would have something to glue to the box.  See the picture for a better description.  I did two of these dividers with the purpose of having three sections, one each for Aaron, Norah & Ashley.  In retrospect I would have covered these with something pretty, but seeing as I hadn't thought that far in advance upon gluing ... they are brown. :(  Oh, well ... they are still functional.

I glued along the sides and bottom
to make it secure.

Next I chose some fun paper to cover the outside of the box.  I have a store-house of 12x12 inch paper downstairs (thanks to my mom-in-law!) so I chose some pages that were girly and some that would be okay for a boy ... and yet made sure they looked fun together.  I then folded the paper around the edges of the box and glued them in place starting with the middle portion and then moving round the sides making sure to keep the edges of the paper lined up and glued securely.

Here I have started covering the box.

Finally, I added a little embellishment by printing their names on printer paper and then gluing those to three different decorative papers that complimented their particular pattern.  I then glued those names to the front of the box, designating each kid's slot.  Ta-dah!

Doesn't that look cute?  And functional, too!

Here is our new and improved school shelf:

I wonder how long it will stay so pretty? :)

A few other school shelf pointers I would add:

• We have several boxes (as you can see) that we have divided up for storing crayons, markers, stamping supplies and miscellaneous school supplies.  We have labeled each box so that there will be limited confusion.
• The middle shelf houses a variety of things:  dictionaries, frequently used resource books, spiral-bound notebooks the kids use for journalling and the kids' Bibles.  We keep all the coloring books and activity books (which seem to reproduce all by themselves!) in a bin in the pantry which helps to keep them from crawling out and taking over the kitchen table.
• We have a wire tray that the kids use to put all their papers that come home from school.  I am convinced that in a given year, we have cleared an entire forest as a result of the number of papers that come home ... but that's for another post! :)  This wire basket is cleaned out (i.e. to the recycling bin for most and to the memory box for a few precious things) every couple of weeks.  This saves me from having lots of random pages floating around the kitchen.  I typically let the kids pick their top two favorite school projects and then I choose one or two and then the rest go away!
• If the kids have a large project (specifically in art) that they don't want to toss, I take a picture of them holding it.  That way we have a memory of their creative project (forever!) but I don't have to figure out how to store the 4 foot x 4 foot collage made from magazine clippings!
• I just saw a "recipe" for a bulletin board in a FamilyFun Magazine.  I think I will make one to hang in the kitchen for visual reminders.  Hopefully it will help us to fight the "out of sight, out of mind" monster!  I'll let you know!

Hope this helps as you traverse the rest of the school year ... and that you won't be making too many return trips for forgotten papers, books and folders.