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Category: Making Life Easier

Muffin Tin Meals

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

muffin tin meal

I read about “Muffin Tin Mondays” on the blog http://sycamorestirrings.blogspot.com/.  Each Monday this woman (and several moms who have joined the trend) serves her children lunch from a muffin tin.  I tried it and my kids love it!  I use a mini muffin tin that holds a dozen muffins.  In each spot I put a different food.  In the above photo I have food like peanut butter, crackers, ham, green peppers, carrots, spinach leaves, cheese, raisons etc.  I also took a cookie cutter and cut a butterfly out of bread.  My kids got to decorate their butterfly and then eat it.  They loved it so much I bought more cookie cutters.  We now have a circle they can make a face from, a girl, a boy, and a bear (build a bear!).  They love it and I do too because I don’t have to cook anything.  I just toss in different things from the cabinet and fridge.

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Puppet Theater

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

puppet theatre

For Christmas I made my kids a puppet theater.  I saw several very expensive versions in catalogs and decided to make one myself.  I bought inexpensive fabric and sewed it together like a curtain.  You do not have to be good at sewing to make this.  Believe me because I am not a good sewer!  All you need to do is sew a straight line.  Fold the fabric over at the top and sew two straight lines where a curtain rod can fit through.  Fold the bottom up and sew a straight line for the hem.  Use an adjustable spring curtain rod and it will fit in any doorway.

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Waitress Kit

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

waitress kit

For my daughter’s birthday this year I made her a waitress kit.  It was very inexpensive and she loves it!  We already had most of the items for the kit at home.  All I had to do was buy a few items at the dollar store and make her menus which cost less than $5!  I gathered the apron and fake food that we already had.  I made her a menu with words and pictures of the food in the kit.  I put the pictures on so her little brother can play too.  I also put prices for each food item so she can learn about money.  I made a smaller version of the menu that she can use to take our order on.  I laminated them both and gave her a dry erase marker to use on the order card.  I purchased fake money from the dollar store and the tote that the kit is kept in.  The lid of the tote doubles as the serving tray.

Here’s a copy of the menu and order pad.  They are both two sided.

Waitress Kit

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Family Journal Jar

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

journal jar

This year I had my family over for Thanksgiving.  It was the first time in a few years my brother and his family have been in town for the holiday.  I planned a few activities for us to do throughout the day; but, our favorite was the Family Journal Jar.  We each drew out a question about ourselves or a family memory that we had.  We spent a few minutes writing our answers down and then we shared them with each other.  It was a lot of fun.  We learned about why I like being the oldest child, a time my husband got his car stuck in the snow in my parents driveway (on purpose) when we were dating, my sister’s weirdest dream, my brother’s favorite general authorities (LDS), my sister’s opinion on each family member, my sister-in-law’s goals for the future, my mom’s biggest bargain, and my dad’s favorite toy growing up.  There were such a variety of questions and we learned a lot about each other.  This was fun to do on Thanksgiving but I will definitely be pulling out the journal jar anytime we are together.

I am keeping our answers in page protectors in a notebook so we can read our family journal whenever we get together.  I made my journal jar out of an empty small paint can from the hardware store.  I used scrapbook paper to cover the can.  I collected all my questions from several different internet sites, printed them off, and cut them out separate.

Here are the questions I chose along with the pages we recorded our answers on for you to download:

family journal jar questions

family journal jar pages

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Christmas Tree Skirt

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christmas tree skirt 1

I thought I’d share my easy Christmas tree skirt idea.  I found this round tablecloth on clearance one year after Christmas.  I cut a circle in the center and now use it as my tree skirt.  See the diagram below and cut along the black line.  You could sew the cut edges but I didn’t.  I also purchased a rectangle tablecloth that I sewed into two table runners to match.  Very easy!

christmas tree skirt 2

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Halloween Trick or Treat Bags

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

trick or treat bag

Here is my daughter’s trick or treat bag I made for her to use this year.  I let each of my kids pick out their clipart images for their bags so they are very excited to use them.  You can purchase these bags in the craft section at the store.  You’ll also need to purchase iron on transfer paper from the office supply section.  Design your bag on Photoshop or any other design software.  It is very important that you flip your design horizontally before you print it so it won’t be backwards when you iron it on.  Then you print out your design on the iron on transfer paper and iron it on your bag according to the directions on your iron on transfer paper.  Very simple, inexpensive and cute!

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Electronic Cord Labels

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

cord labels

Have you ever found an electronic cord in a drawer somewhere and wondered what on earth it went to?  Well, I label all my electronic cords with my label maker.  It’s also helpful when you are looking at your tv and see all the cords plugged into it.  If they are labeled, you know what each cord is and what it goes to.  You can see in the above photo the white tag on the end of the cord.

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Plastic Bag Organizer

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trash bag container

I found this solution on www.meckmom.com and I think it’s a great idea.  I keep my plastic grocery bags when I get home from the store.  We use them for bathroom trash bags, dirty diaper bags, lunch bags for work, etc.  I used to put the bags in the bottom of a cabinet and no matter how hard I tried to keep them organized, they always ended up all over the cabinet.  Now, I keep all my bags in an empty crystal light container.  It holds about 10 bags.  I have a few of these containers in my cabinet and I can grab them when needed-on the way out the door, for the diaper bag, for the car etc.  It keeps them all nice and organized and, if you drink crystal light, it’s a free container!

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Baby Book

Mindy Zeigler 0 Comments

baby book

When I got pregnant I started looking through baby books.  I saw that my own baby book wasn’t completely filled out and neither were my sibling’s books.  I decided I wanted to be organized and keep my children’s baby books up to date.  I made a template for my book in Microsoft Word and I fill it out in my own handwriting.  I think my children will like to see what my handwriting looks like.  I started with pregnancy sheets to keep track of each month of pregnancy.  Then when they were born I started filling out their baby book pages.  I keep it updated monthly until they are two years old then I switch to every six months.  It keeps track of things they have accomplished, or silly things they’ve done or said.  It has a page for things that I hope I never forget about them as well as monthly notes about things they are learning and doing and their likes and dislikes.  I really treasure these books and I keep all the pages in page protectors in their own notebooks.

Here is a copy of my pregnancy and baby book pages you can download:

Pregnancy worksheets

Baby Book worksheets

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