Every year we give our kids a new ornament to represent a memory form the year. Sometimes its from a place we visited or can be from a fad they are into. For example this year my girls love Frozen. The problem is the demand and cost of frozen ornaments is ridiculous. I decided to make my own.
I started with buying this little wood rectangles from my local hobby store. They came with 4 to a pack. You can paint this if you want just make sure they dry all the way before moving on to the modge podge part of it.

Then I printed out the pictures  I waned on picture paper from my printer. Then I modge podged them on.

The wood  was so soft I just used a screw driver to punch a whole in them and string them. My girls loved them! They were so excited to hand them on the tree. The other nice thing is that there was plenty of room to put their names, the date and a little story on the back.

Ever wonder what to do with the ends of the bread. Or have your kids left the bag wide open and the bread started getting hard? You should make your own bread crumbs with it. I love how expensive bread crumbs are. Really? It crumbs! From bread!
Its really pretty easy. I leave the bread out on a plate to dry out for a day or 2. Then I crunch it up to fit in my magic bullet and I pulse it. Then I add some Italian seasoning, shake it up and store it in a mason jar. Done, see not hard at all!

Next I need to make some of my own meatballs and freeze them. Tweet me your favorite meatball recipes.

I was having a rough "mom" day recently when I decided I needed a nap so I could wake up refreshed and a happier mommy. Although while I was resting this little girl decided she needed to bathe in the Vaseline. I mean the entire Costco size tub all over her! Her Legs were coated (and drawn on), her entire dress was coated as if made of Vaseline, her arms, neck, face and last but not least her entire head of hair. Now I have had kids get some Vaseline in their hair before but not like this. Not an entire mask of it. So I called my hair dresser mom friend, asked Facebook for advice and googled it. Here is what I found based on top ideas and suggestions.


Corn starch was my #1 favorite. I went through a whole box. I sprinkled it throughout her hair let it soak some up then squeezed tons out. I did that 2-3 times. Then washed it with dish soap. Dish soap is meant to help cut and fight grease. I did that twice before washing it.
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My hairstylist mom friend recommended a clarifying shampoo as well. This also helped out when I was washing in between all the different household products I found.
In the end I must have washed her hair a dozen times, because she laid there for almost an hour. Even then her hair was still pretty greasy over the next 2-3 days till after a few mores wear and washed it finally came clean.

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One of my easy go to gifts for holidays or kids birthdays is a coloring book or printed coloring pages with homemade crayons. It's a great way to get rid of some of those nasty, old, broken and sad looking crayons you have laying around.
Step 1: Break up pieces of crayons into muffin cups. If you have bakeware in cool shapes you could do it straight in them, but I don't so this is how I do it.

Step 2:Put them in the oven on the lowest setting.
Step 3: When they are liquidey then pull them out.

Step 4: Then I pour the muffin cup carefully into the shaped container. These are ice cube trays I picked up at Ikea for a dollar. I have used jello jigglier molds as well, but they don't pop out as easy, but are great for seasonal gifts.

Step 5: Let them cool down.

 Step 6: Then just pop them out and voila! cool crayons!

A while back I posted about my gross toilet. When we bought our house it had just sat for a few months giving the upstairs bathrooms toilets hard water stains. I tried everything. I tried, CLR, Lime Away, white vinegar and baking soda, bleach and good ol' weekly elbow grease. My friend Tawny from Tawny's Tid Bits talk to a janitor at her work and suggested something acidic. I almost went to a local janitorial supply store to request just that, until I solved the problem with no out of pocket cost.
One very late night at book club apparently everyone but me knew how to fix the problem. The solution is to just use a pumice stone or really fine sandpaper. I grabbed some sandpaper out of my garage, and voila problem solved. I couldn't believe after fighting this for over a year it only took a few minutes to fix. More surprising was it didn't cost me any extra out of pocket cost.

One thing I do in my spare time is volunteer my time to work with the 8 and 9 year old girls in my neighborhood. The LDS church has a program for 8-11 year old girls called Activity Days. Twice a month I get to work with these amazing young ladies. Last time we decided to do something for Mother's Day. What could I do that would be easy, nearly free or ridiculously cheap and fun? We ended up making bookmarks.

The bookmark I made is meant to list 10 reason's why you love your mom on one side, and then do an acronym of the word "MOTHER" on the other. Then we tied a ribbon on the top and voila a great homemade gift. I would recommend laminating them first to help preserve the sweet memento.