Salt Dough Ornaments

Today, I marked one major task off my holiday to-do list inside my holiday planner.

I'm happy to say it's beginning to feel like Christmas around our home.

The kids were excited and put oodles and oodles of handmade and commercial ornaments on our tree. Each one special in some sort of way, each child happy to find a place to hang something, and our tree actually starting to lean from the weight of their efforts.

For a moment we all stood and held our breath to see whether the tree topper, an angel, would stay atop without falling over on the tilted side of the tree.

All those salt dough ornaments we made pull a lot of weight when they're all placed on one side of tree.

One of the things I love most about salt dough ornaments, is that they are kid friendly for several reasons.

Salt dough ornaments are easy to make, you can paint and decorate them any way you want, and if they break - there's no sharp glass for young children or pets to get hurt.

Here's the recipe we use each year to bake up our holiday salt dough ornaments:


Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
1 cup water

Directions:
1. Mix salt and flour.
2. Add in half the water, then gradually add the remaining water.
3. Knead until the dough is smooth, this can take up to 10 minutes.

Create Ornaments:
Simple holiday cookie cutters will do, or sculpt with your hands. If the dough gets too sticky use flour. Kids love making ornaments from salt dough, it's just like making stuff out of play dough or clay.

After your ornament creations are finished, lay them on a baking sheet. Take a straw and poke holes at the top before baking.

Turn your oven on you lowest setting or about 200 degrees. You'll want to let them bake for around 2 hours, depending on the thickness.

(Just don't let any new comers in the house bite into a sample thinking they're sugar cookies, they might think your a bad cook. lol..)

Once they cool, you can let your child paint them, glitter them, or decorate them further.

Cut ribbon and tie through the hole to hang. Or you can go to your local fabric shop and get remnant fabric, snip 1/2" down the fabric and tear in strips to use instead of ribbon.

I'm sure no matter how they turned out, they'll be beautiful on your tree this year, and the smiles on your children's faces will be well worth the effort to make your own salt down ornaments this year.

10 Ways to Organize Your Filing System

Filing cabinets get overwhelmed quickly with the paper we stash there. Files from A-Z and tons of miscellaneous folders end up in home office filing.

Here are 10 ways to de-clutter and organize your home filing system.

1. Label your content
2. Color code your folders (example: yellow for home warranties, green for financial, blue for medical, orange for bill paying, red for items needing immediate attention, and so forth...)
3. Alphabetize your filing system. Within each color of folders you may have more than one folders. For example: Finances can be split into multiple folders for - loans, bills needing paid, bills paid, insurance, and taxes.
4. After a year has passed clean out all the receipts from your filing, if you stash them all year long and create a box for them that can be stored elsewhere. (IRS states you must keep receipts of expense and income for seven years in case of an audit.)
5. Make sure you are using an appropriate sized filing cabinet - small, medium, large. We tend to fill things when the appear empty only to take up the space.
6. Every file in your filing system needs to serve a purpose. Eliminate "Miscellaneous" files as much as possible. This will ease frustrations later when trying to find documents.
7. Have a stash box near your phone, computer, or anywhere you normally lay your mail. Take this box and sort weekly. File way the papers you need to keep and trash the rest.
8. Designate one area in your home for your home office and filing system. It's easier to accomplish household tasks, like paying bills if all the files are in one area.
9. Keep important documents such as, birth certificates, home and car titles, savings bonds, and wills in a fire proof - locked box rather than an ordinary filing cabinet for protection.
10. Review your filing system yearly, take out old files you no longer need, and create new ones for children or other life events to keep your household organized.

Organizing Itch

The two things I love most - besides my family - is sewing and writing. Lately, however, I've had the organzing itch.

Whether your a mom with three kids, like me, or just have a hetic schedule in general, it pays to be organized.

Today, I organzied my kitchen. I got rid of the piles of completed school work from my oldest that had started to tilt off the water cooler and threaten to spill across the floor. I sorted them into piles of keep and toss. The toss pile went straight into the garbage. The keep pile, I sorted again. I put things in order ofwhere they needed to go and filed them.

Then I moved on to my cupboards. I'm quite proud, I arranged my pantry and set up my lazy susan in an order where things were easy to find, even for my youngest, who will most likely mess up my organized lazy susan before supper time tomorrow.

What didn't need to be on my countertop I put away. If it didn't have a place I made one for it repectfull of how often I use it. Most things just went into the laundry room cupboard.

When I was finished I wiped my kitchen down. I didn't scrub, but wiped it down. It took less than an hour.

Tomorrow, I'm up for organizing my office. I have piles of writings that need files and put in some order that I can find them as I proceed from project to project. It would be nice to have everything pertaining to one manuscript, planner, or journal in a binder of file rather than the piles on the floor and over my desk.

I'll let you know howit turns out. Baby steps, but I may just find I have more time for the things I love- like family, writing, and sewing if I could find what I'm looking for rather than swiming in the footnotes with my kids searching for a quote.