My first ikea hack

I'm always drooling over those fabulous Organizer Systems you see on sites like Pottery Barn. Of course, I'm sure that when you add all the daily homework papers and school notices and junk mail you need to go through, even those spaces will lose some of their perfect look, right? Ok, maybe not, but I just can't see shelling out several hundred dollars for this stuff. Just think  what kind of camera goodies you can get for that kind of dough!
So, being the cheap thrifty person that I am, I came up with a nifty little hack that works great for our little kitchen corner. Hey, my own little ikea hack! I love that site; if you don't know it and love ikea, go check it out. Ok, so here it is. No wait, I want to point out that the pictures were taken with my iPhone (not my Nikon) while working, so they're not the greatest, but you should get the idea. Ok, so here goes:


I started out with two FJÄLLSTA picture frames ($14.99 each) and one KVISSLE Wall Magazine Rack ($14.99). I used the black frames to match my whiteboard calendar I already had (I think I bought that at Walmart for around $10).
Then I took two of the racks and used needle-nosed pliers to pry off the little tab at the top. 
Since I'm not using the racks as intended (meaning interlocking all of them to make one big rack), I need the hole for a small screw to attach to the picture frame. Make sure the screw is short enough not to go through the frame!

The holes are pretty close to the top, so it shouldn't be too hard to attach them. I used a really long cross-tip drill-bit (a long screwdriver will do as well).

That's really all there is to it. You could leave the frames as-is and attach them to your wall. 
I used a current school picture for each of the kiddos and put the frame back together. That way everyone knows which frame is their's. (Note, thanks to hubby for being my hand model)

I found that the hardest thing about the whole project was getting it attached to the wall. 

And here it is--all finished. Bring on the paper piles :D

Oh, the magnetic board on the left is the SPONTAN, also from ikea for $12.99.  Well, that's my little ikea hack project. I hope you found it useful. If you did, feel free to leave some comment <3.

 Please 

Read more...

Back to School - Yay!

So, I was spending some time on Pinterest--okay, A LOT of time! It's hard to just look around a bit, because it's so darn fun and you always find something interesting, fun, cute and stuff you think must have, that I usually end up spending hours pinning and re-pinning. If you haven't tried it, go check it out. It's great.
Anyway, one of the pins that caught my eye was about organizing school papers. Wait, what? I NEED that, like, NOW!  So, off I went--following that pin to a wonderful blog called iHeartOrganizing, where I promptly spent several hours looking around and ending up planning all sorts of projects to organize my house.
Ok, back to the article on Organizing School Paperwork; it's a neat way to file all those papers you're constantly looking for (hmmm, which pile did I put that in?) and the article is sooo well written and also has great pictures to show the process. And, if that wasn't enough, you can download the templates for the Labels and cover sheet.
I couldn't find any of the nice file boxes locally and was too impatient to order them online and wait for them. BUT, I did find 1/2 boxes at Office Max which are super cute and don't look like filing/storage boxes at all. Take a look, what do you think?

I scanned in all the school pictures for both my kids, a task I had planned to do anyway, so now I had a good reason to move that up on my To-Do List. I downloaded the template and opened  it up in Photoshop. Since I had seven pictures to process, I decided to place the first image as a Smart Object on a new layer and then clip the layer to the template (background) and mask out everything but the picture. After printing the first sheet, preparing for the next one is easy. You just right-click the picture layer (the Smart Object), select Replace Contents and pick the next picture when prompted. You may need to adjust your Layer Mask a bit and you'll need to change the Teacher's name and school info as needed.

I could stop here and call this project finished, but I wanted to be able to quickly know which binder is which, so I used the template for the folders and changed the dimensions to make it narrow to fit the spine for the binder. I also removed all information except for the name and--voila--individually marked Binder Spines!


I saved the Photoshop file for the Spine-sheet as a template and would like to share it, but I will contact iHeartOrganizing first to ask if she would mind--it was her original template after all. :D

So, that's it--on to the next project.

Read more...