A Few of my Favorite Things

Do you have a few things that you just love (. . . people not included cause that list could get way too long.) I wanted to list a few of mine. Usually they are things I have come up with to solve a problem . . . like for instance, my Clean and Not Clean sign on my dishwasher. When we ran out of clean dishes in the cupboards, everyone turned to the dishwasher hoping it was clean. Needless to say, many times, they were not, even when we had thought they were. Finally when I got tired of trying to remember if I had actually filled up the dishwasher enough to justify starting that thing or not, I came up with these signs.

I am sure many of you have already done this, but for those that have not yet, it works great, . . . unless you forget to change the sign. I made these on the computer, printed and laminated them, then I stuck a magnet on the back of the sign. I keep them in a convenient place and as soon as I turn on the dishwasher, I put the clean sign on. When I clean out the dishwasher, I trade it for the not clean sign. It has saved us many times and eliminates a lot of frustrating moments when we realized the dish we are eating off of was not really clean yet. AHHH!

My Movie Shelf

I had this space in my computer room where the cement wall comes out a lot farther than the wood wall (because this floor is half underground). It created a shelf, but then the rest of the wall was just wasted space. I hate wasted space. (I blame my dad for that. Those stair ways that don’t utilize the space underneath them really bug me too.) Our movies were stacked on this “shelf” but it just wasn’t enough space. They were stacked on top of each other and constantly falling over. They looked like a very disorganized mess, and was an eyesore for me. Several Christmas’ ago, I told my husband the only thing I wanted was for him to build shelves on the “shelf”. He spent several days / several hours a day making this movie shelf for me. I LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT. It doesn’t “take up” any space except an unusable area and it looks great. The movies are in alphabetical order, or some other logical order, (they are so organized . . . until the kids get into them). But nonetheless, it is much easier to keep it organized. Again I LOVE IT!

A Plant Watering Thingy

A couple of years ago, MJ wanted sprinkler pipes for Christmas. I know, crazy hu. He had watched his dad make our sprinkler system and has loved pipes ever since. So I bought several pipes, cut them in exact lengths so he could build a little skeleton play house, then used an old couch cover and sewed it into the shape of the house. When he built the house with the sprinkler pipes, we would throw the old couch cover over it for the outside. The kids loved if for a long time; but he didn’t want to just use his pipes for that, . . . he had much bigger plans. Needless to say, we don’t have all the pieces for the house anymore, but he has found countless uses for those pipes, (Like burying them in the sand box with an L pipe on both ends, sticking the hose on one side and then when he turns on the hose, water shoots out the other side . . . and wallah, he has his own geyser) and now I too have found them very useful. I planted a few tomato plants early this year so that I can get an earlier harvest. I have a great window right above my sink that I keep them in, but every year I have had to deal with the fact that I either have to pull up a chair, and climb into the window to water those plants, or when I was lazy, I would just take my spray nozzle on my kitchen sink and spray them down (usually having more water hit the window and surrounding area then actually getting to the plants.) The other day I came up with this idea, and I asked MJ if I could use one of his pipes with an L link attached to one end. I cover the L end with my hand to keep the water from going through, fill up the pipe with water and it easily reaches my plants; no mess, no climbing into the window, no problems. And the amount of water that fills the pipe is amazingly the perfect amount I need to water each plant. I have only had it for a week now but I must say I LOVE IT!!! And when I need to move the plants, I use the”L” end of my pipe to grab the plants and pull them to where I can reach them. It’s totally awesome!!!

My Counter and a huge cup Problem

(This is not something I made myself but I still love it.) My counter next to the fridge that has a water dispenser (what did we ever do before they put the water in the fridge? My kids didn’t even know that you could get drinking water from the kitchen sink. They voodoo it like I used to think of getting water from the bathroom sink. Ok back to my previous thought), used to look like this.

Every day, I would have at least half of my dishwasher full of cups. I was getting very frustrated with this. We tried assigning one color of cup to each person in the family, but no one would stick to it. We tried putting names on the cups, but again, for whatever reason, that didn’t work either. (Maybe it was too much effort to actually read the names on the bottom.) Finally one day, I found these “cool” cups at Walmart AND all my kids were with me. (Yes I did survive the trip.) I told them to each pick out one cup. I even picked one out for the girl I babysit. This time it worked. Now my counter looks like this.

Not perfect, but Oh so much better. Those cups were well worth the $0.88 I paid for each of them. I am absolutely positive it has saved me much more than that in dishwasher detergent and especially in my own sanity.

A Valentines Idea

Valentines is one of those days I don’t particularly look forward to because of all the cards you have to prepare for your children to take to school, plus I don’t like all the candy anyway, and if I give my kids candy to give away too, I am just being a hypocrite. So I came up with these bookmarks this year. (MJ told me though that he thought everyone would just throw the bookmarks out. Probably, but maybe someone would keep one.) They are cute, inexpensive and fun for the kids. It’s a change from the normal candy card and a bit fun. I wouldn’t say I totally LOVE them, but I figured maybe someone else could use the idea too, so I included it.


Ok, now after writing this very long blog, I must admit that I am sooooo grateful for and LOVE . . . spell checker.