FREE 2016 Printable Planner

I first created this printable planner for August 2014 - July 2015 and it was so popular that people requested pages for August 2015 - December 2015. Since then, I have had additional requests for a 2016 Calendar. I had hoped to make this available sooner but I switched software programs which made updating the planner more complicated. Then my son had some health issues that required surgery and pushed me into a long blogging hiatus. Now life is returning to our new "normal" and I am back to blogging. Better late than never, right? Anyway, here are updated calendar pages for 2016! Sometime soon I hope to share some pages that allow you to enter the dates yourself so that you can continue to use this calendar even if I am not able to update it for subsequent years. 

Printable Planner Updates

A few months ago I made a FREE 2014 - 2015 Printable Planner that followed the school year and ran from August 2014 - July 2015. After several requests, I now have some extra downloads for you that will take you through the rest of the 2015 calendar year. Click the links below for August 2015 - December 2015 calendar pages!

EDIT: You can now find pages for 2016 HERE.

Minimalism and Craft Blogging

Minimalism is about getting down to just the necessities while craft blogging tends to be about creating excess items. How can these two lifestyles co-exist? As I mentioned in my update about our journey towards simple living, my blogging has been pretty sporadic lately and that was mostly because I was confused by how our new semi-minimalist lifestyle could coincide with craft blogging. The two are kind of on opposite sides of the spectrum. 

FREE 2014-2015 Printable Planner

EDIT: Originally this was a school year planner that ran from August 2014 - July 2015. After several requests for one for the entire 2015 calendar year, I created an update. You can now get monthly and weekly calendar pages for August 2015 - December 2015 HERE. The pages for 2016 can be found HERE.

While getting the house organized I decided that it was time to consolidate all of my calendars, lists, and paper work. I searched all over the internet and every planner that I found was either too expensive or didn't have all of the features that I wanted. So I decided to make my own and I am sharing all of my files with you in case you want to make one too!

Battery Organization

Since January is national organization month I thought I would share another tip for getting your household in order. This simple plastic divider box has been keeping my batteries in order for over a year now. It makes it so much easier to find our batteries and I will never go back to just tossing them in a drawer.

Grocery Bag Organization

A lot of people like to organize during spring cleaning but for me the urge usually comes right after Christmas. After a few weeks of extra decor around the house followed by trying to find places to put the gifts that we received - I start to feel like the clutter is closing in on me. The Christmas decorations usually go back into storage on December 26th and the purging and organizing begins! One of my projects this time around was finding a better storage solution for grocery bags.

I ended up folding them like paper footballs and I am really pleased with the result. In the photo above, both the before and after show 20 grocery bags! It is a great space saver and now I can easily toss a couple in my purse and the glove compartment in the car so I always have one on hand. The rest fit nicely in a small corner of one of the kitchen drawers so I have extras to line the bathroom trash can. The folding process is super simple:

Mini Cereal Box Desk Organizer

About a year ago we got a package of those mini boxes of cereal for Jer as a special treat and the boxes have been sitting in my craft stash ever since. Why? Because I am one of those crazy crafters who hold onto trash because "I might be able to use it someday." ;) I tossed most of those things when we moved but I hung onto these because I love how colorful and fun they are!

Simplify

That is my current motto. Simplify. While I am trying to keep this in mind with how I spend my time - my main focus at the moment is on "stuff". All of the crap sitting around our house that we don't really need. We started purging a couple of years ago and each time we get rid of a big batch of stuff our house feels so much lighter that it makes us want to get rid of even more! I swear, it is like a freaking clown car or Mary Poppins' bag. We keep finding more and more crap that we don't really need and it makes me wonder how we ever crammed all of it in to begin with.

Lately we have been talking about building a small house in the country and by small I mean that my latest sketches are less than 500 sq ft. Not only will a house this size be cheaper to build and maintain, it will also force us to evaluate our belongings and determine what we really need because there just isn't a bunch of extra space to store the useless junk. We aren't getting rid of everything that would be considered "unnecessary" we are just going through all of our stuff with a more critical eye than before and only keeping the things that we really enjoy or that are used frequently enough to justify the amount of space that they occupy.

If you have spent much time around here, there is one area affected by the purge that may come as a shock: 

Dry Erase Notebook Page

If you need a dry erase board for your grocery list (or a menu, to-do list, etc.) why not make one that looks like a page from a notebook? It's easy to put together and looks really cute. Added bonus: it's just as cheap as the plain, boring ones!

My New Craft Room

My new craft room is complete! It isn't as fancy as some other craft rooms that I have seen but it is functional and has everything that I need. As you have seen over the last few days, I have also added a couple of cute and colorful touches.

Organizing User Manuals

I found this little organizing tip on Pinterest and had to share it with you guys.  It comes from Desiring Virtue and it is so simple I don't know why I didn't think of it myself.  

Dry Erase Calendar

I have printed calendars but I tend to change things all the time so I decided that a dry erase calendar would be easier.  I didn't want to spend the money on one though and I wanted it to be large enough to do two months at a time so I made my own using an extra dry erase board that we already had.

Fabric Swatch Ring

I don't know about you but every time I go to the fabric store I see some fabric that I like and can't remember if I have anything that would coordinate with it.  So I made up this swatch ring that I can take with me and know exactly what is in my stash at home.

Rearranging Furniture Made Easy

Now that the basement floor is finished it's time to start moving things back downstairs. We are changing things up though and need to do some rearranging. Instead of drawing up the floor plan a bunch of times with different furniture arrangements I brought back an old trick I made up years ago. My friends and family always teased me about it but when it came time to rearrange their rooms they would always ask me to do this for them.

Kid's Nutrition Chart Printable

I'm lucky enough to have a son who likes to eat healthy foods. The only problem is that he can be a bit picky and doesn't always get the variety that he needs. So I came up with this little system to help both of us keep track of his eating habits!
I went here to find out how many servings of each food group my son needs at his age. This site had a guide for serving sizes.

My New Craft Room

I think you have all seen my old craft closet by now. About six months ago I mentioned that my crafting area had moved to another room and I am just now getting around to showing you the full reveal. It was often in a state of chaos and I kept hoping that I would find time to get it all organized and decorated. Well, it still needs some fun, colorful decor but at least it is organized! So here we go.... As you can see, this was originally the storage area. We went through everything, got rid of a bunch of stuff and moved the remaining items to another area.

Toy Organization

Alright, I know I haven't been keeping up with the organizing challenge the last few days. It's just that my home doesn't have some of the areas suggested and the ones I do have are already pretty organized. Since I don't have shocking before pictures or creative storage ideas, I decided not to participate in those challenges. So I'm not a organization challenge dropout, I just ditched class for a few days. :)

Today's challenge though - toy organization - is an area that I worked on just last week. I don't have any before pictures because only intended to help Jeremy find places to put his new toys that he received for Christmas. Then it turned into a 3 1/2 hour toy purge. The best "before" picture I have is one of everything that was removed from his room:

Two bags of trash (mainly broken toys and clothes with holes or stains), three bags of out grown clothes, and ten bags of toys that either: he no longer plays with or are out of season.

Organizing Power Cords

While cleaning our messy junk drawer, I found several chargers for various electronics and decided that it was time to get them organized. Now we can find the exact one that we are looking for when we need it instead of trying to guess which one it is.

Recipe Book

Once again this is for myself and won't check a name off of my Christmas list. I have made these as gifts in the past though. It is a book full of my family's favorite recipes. It can be a great gift for people just starting out on their own as well as newlyweds or even people just looking for new meal ideas.

Dry Erase To-Do List

I have been seeing picture frame dry erase boards all over blogland lately and I decided to expand on that idea and create a dry erase checklist! I started out with this document sized frame from dollar tree: