r u l y

We made it to the end of December and the end of the holiday season!! Pat yourself on the back if you are still standing! It is time to start a new month and a new Ruly theme but first a quick recap of December’s posts, comments and organizing news.

Holiday Organizing Tips

• Ruly Tip: Organize Your Holiday Shopping with a Gift Spreadsheet
• Holiday Card Tree

Homemade gifts:

• Homemade Liquid Hand Soap for Sensitive Skin
• How to “Embroider” with a Standard Sewing Machine

Ruly Business: A Look at How Charities Organized Holiday Fundraising Campaigns This Season

• 2011 Charity Fundraising Strategies
• A Marketing Strategy Charities Use that Would Fail in the Business World
• Corporations that Give Back: Coca-Cola
• Corporations that Give Back: Dominion Virginia Power

Time Capsule of My Own Struggles with Christmas Organizing

• December’s Theme: Simple Holidays and Toy Storage (my priority list of tasks)
• Child Reactions to Santa: 3 Personality Types
• Status: 11 Days to Christmas
• 2 Days Before Christmas: Scrubbing for Santa
• Ruly Kids: Easy Christmas Decorations
• 2011 Rudolph Sightings
• Ruly Kids: Instant Elf Hats with Pajama Pants
• Best and Worst of our Christmas Celebration

Toy Storage Organizing Tips

• Ruly Ruth’s SuperCool Toy Storage Tips
• The Barbie Closet
• Legos

The most popular comment this month we got both online and behind the scenes was, “Where did you encounter Santa on an airplane/subway?” in response to our kids and Santa post.  This cute Santa and Mrs. Claus pair was on the Virginia Railway Express Santa Train event held each December where kids take a short train ride with Santa. The event is also held as a fundraiser for Toys for Tots and an educational opportunity about train safety from Operation Lifesaver, Inc.  (which, come to think of it, I could have profiled in my charitable strategies series).

My favorite comments, I have to say, however, reflected the stress that EVERYONE experiences during the holidays.

Kristin commented:

“My holiday projects have been thwarted by a burnt-out car headlight (really?!?), a very sick little boy (better now, thank goodness), and… oh, yeah, my JOB. *sigh*”

Ruth commented:

“Okay–so why wouldn’t everyone move across country the week before Xmas?? I think everyone should do this—ARGH!!! On Monday, the movers came with our stuff. Tuesday we worked on unpacking boxes. Wednesday we got the tree up–prelit but now decorated . . . Thursday started Xmas shopping–finishing up today–ugh! So needless to say presents being sent are all late! And we’ve been living in transient housing from the 7th to the 16th–we’re lucky to have clean laundry let alone Xmas–speaking of which the dryer’s heating element is shot–should arrive by 1/2—-UGH!!!!”

Maegan Tintari wrote on her blog . . . love Maegan

“I have a bit of work to do but hopefully plan on spending the rest of the day baking holiday treats for our family and friends & finish wrapping presents. I honestly am not sure why I have not been taking Xanax all week or downing copious amounts of merlot to deal with all this stress… but I think I will start now. It’s vacation, right?”

–Maegan Tintari, “Holiday Decorating . . . and a few updates,” . . . LoveMaegan blog, December 23, 2011

Charity Beasley wrote a very insightful post on her indietutes blog:

“Did I mention that the holidays bum me out and I feel shell shocked by the cold air and lack of sunlight? Did I mention that I want to just flap my arms around and yell shutupshutupshutup to Christmas and tell everyone to go back to bed? I’m sorry. This is not a merry season for me. This is a quiet time of year, to take naps, to reflect and evaluate. Take a breather. Rest.”

–Charity Beasley, “hush,” indietutes blog, December 21, 2011

Organizer Erin Doland also wrote a hilarious review of The Elf on the Shelf:

“I like the holidays. I really do. I enjoy spending time with my family and sharing a good meal with good conversation and watching my son in the Christmas pageant. I look forward to exchanging gifts with my nearest and dearest and trimming the tree. I’m someone who prefers her holidays to be simple and free of rats who tattle on you to Santa Claus, like The Elf on the Shelf does.”

–Erin Doland, “Unitasker Wednesday: The Elf on the Shelf,” unclutterer blog, December 14, 2011

As I was rushing about this holiday season, there were a few brief moments when I had time to stop and think for a bit. The short days and darkness of this time of year coupled with the cold, bleak landscape and thinking of memories and family sometimes made me sad. There wasn’t much time to focus on that because there was so much to do. It made me realize that perhaps all this craziness at the holiday season is sort of a form of distraction therapy for all of us. Perhaps people throughout centuries have felt a bit down at this time of year and just had to get themselves through to the solstice when the days would begin lengthening again marching toward spring. So rather than complain about all there is to do, perhaps I should be grateful for it.

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season, however you celebrated (or didn’t) and that this month’s posts gave you some assistance in your busy season. I am already taking my own medicine and doing some early prep for next year’s holiday season. It is a great time to buy nice ornaments and other seasonal wares on deep discount, great for cookie and ornament exchanges, or maybe your Christmas sweater for next year’s “ugly sweater” party. It is also great to print out and plan for any projects, recipes or patterns you may have seen made this year by others to try for yourself next year! (oh no! only 356 days and counting left!)

My holiday card tree this year. (Blurred for privacy.)

This year’s crop of holiday cards has been absolutely gorgeous and heartwarming. I sincerely appreciate everyone who took the time to create the cards, track down addresses, and pay the postage to send these beauties off.

Earlier this year, I saw a tip from Isabelle Thornton at the La Chateau des Fleurs blog to display holiday cards on a bouquet of branches. I loved it because if there is one thing we have a huge, underutilized supply of it is tree branches. The cards look great and help remind you of all the great people supporting you in your life.

I plan to keep my card tree up until after Valentine’s Day to soothe my pining for the days when everyone sent Valentine’s cards and bouquets of flowers with secret meanings, (having recently watched the great “Return to Cranford” series on PBS). The annual holiday card exchange is about as close as we come to a “real” Valentine’s exchange.

The Juggle blog at The Wall Street Journal recently posted about the pains of sending out holiday cards, which ended up generating a discussion in the comments about who should be sending these cards (Single? Married? Married with young children? Empty nester?). While some people feel that only cute small children or animals should be featured on holiday photo cards, I am firmly in the opposite camp. I would love to get a holiday card (photo or otherwise) from any of my friends and family, regardless of age, marital or parental status. I hope everyone feels so happy and proud of their respective lives that they want to be featured on a holiday photo card. Please share your vacation, your family group shot, your occupational accomplishments or even your struggles or sadness. Some of the cards that meant the most this year came from friends who I know have been through some rough times but this year are proudly smiling in their own holiday photo card. And if you don’t send your own holiday cards but like receiving them from others just make sure at some point in the year you tell that person how great that card was or how much it meant to you. You’ll be sure to stay on the “send” list.

What to do with all those holiday cards after the holidays?

Martha Stewart gives 9 different ideas here

My grandmother used to cut traditional folded cards she received in half, creating a postcard. Other times if someone just wrote on the bottom of the inside of the card, she would just cut off the bottom personalized part. She would then re-use the cards the next year either as package tags or to send out her own greetings! There are a lot of hazards to this method (what if you accidentally sent the card back to the original sender?) but I give her points for a frugal-chic solution.

What to do with the card tree after the holidays?  This is a great multi-purpose display tool.  Here, I put balloons on it and used it as a “wild” centerpiece at my daughter’s birthday party.

Nature-lovers balloon bouquet!

Do you enjoy sending and receiving holiday cards? Please share in the comments.

Duplo animals

At our house, Christmas just isn’t Christmas without Legos. The classic construction toy is so much fun to build with and admire. Depending on your preference, you either build your kit once and store it in pristine condition like a model or you keep tearing it down to build something new.

The only downside of Lego is that they can be a pain to put away, figuratively and literally (for anyone who has had the pleasure of stepping on small Lego pieces in bare feet. Ouch!)

This year, there have been a few new innovations in Lego storage. The Container Store offers cute Lego brick and Lego head-shaped containers that you can dump the Legos into.

Large LEGO Storage Brick at amazon.com.

Large LEGO Storage Head Boy Yellow at amazon.com.

BOX4BLOX at amazon.com.

Also, I recently received an email from Peter and Moira Botherway, inventors in New Zealand who have created a unique Lego sorting and storage system called the Box4Blox. You can watch a short video about the product here. Basically, you dump assorted small Legos in the top and the Box4Blox will filter the collection by size into different sized trays. It is made in the USA, which is also very cool.

Of course, the best question is, “How does Lego store its Lego collection?” Lego recently sent out free DVDs to kids who are members of its Lego Club for Kids. On the DVD are several short movies about how Lego designers design and build various Lego sets at the Lego factory. I went crazy when I saw this clip where the Lego designer goes to the “element basement” to pick out exactly which blocks he needs for his project. They show how all the blocks are sorted by color and size in labeled boxes in labeled shelving units. Some people’s version of heaven would be to wander these aisles for eternity.

One other tip we have learned with Legos is that it is a good idea to wash them once in a while to get rid of greasy and sticky fingerprints, particularly for the Duplo blocks aimed at younger children. The easiest way we have found to wash the blocks is to dump them into a bathtub and fill the tub with hot water. Add a little dishwashing soap and a little bleach. Let them soak for a while then carefully drain the tub and let the Legos air dry on towels.

I did this recently for our collection and found the sight of the Legos bobbing in the water so funny that I took a few pictures.

Bobbing Legos being washed.

Struggling to get clean.

What methods do you prefer for Lego storage? Please share in the comments.

This Christmas we did something radical . . . for us. We bought used!

I didn’t have a plan to do this. It sort of evolved when I was not enthused by the latest Barbie fashions. (I will sound like an old lady but some of those clothes are truly short and inappropriate . . and have you seen the bizarre outfits they have Ken wearing these days?) So, I went looking for some vintage Barbie clothes. The problem was, so was everyone else. The clothes were being sold for high bids on eBay and disappearing from CraigsList as fast as they could be posted. But in my search, I came across a really neat vintage Barbie closet. . . and a new idea for a gift was born.

The closet wasn’t anything “official” Barbie, just a tiny, plain wooden closet. It included hangers and a set of plastic luggage for the bargain price of $10!

Since I was yearning for vintage Barbie clothes, instead of the actual clothes, I decided to turn this gift into creative juice for my 6 year old. I bought two Barbie books used. One was by one of my favorite knitters, Nicky Epstein, about how to knit your own Barbie clothes and the other was a great scrapbook of sorts showing all the different vintage Barbies and their outfits.

The creative juice part worked! My daughter LOVED the closet. She has already traced, cut out and colored one of the hangers to make her own paper hanger (to put paper clothes on, she informed me).

She also liked the idea that we could design our own clothes for the Barbie. (FYI, designer Cynthia Rowley indicates she got her start in fashion design designing for her Barbie as a child.) “Great!” I said and expected her to tell me which pattern she wanted to make from the Barbie knitting book. “What would you like to make?”

“Pajamas!”

“Pajamas? OK, great! Let’s just find some pajamas. . . .” It turns out that there is not a single pattern for pajamas! I even Googled. No one but my daughter wants to make Barbie pajamas. So, we improvised. She drew on a piece of paper her idea and brought me yarns from my yarn stash to make it from.

I made up a simple dress pattern on the fly. I didn’t replicate her idea exactly but used her yarn choices and her idea to put hearts on the jammies. Once the pajamas were finished, the second request came:

“Now she needs slippers!”

Here is our finished result! A Barbie original.

Our original design for Barbie pajamas.

We also like the fact that the closet is an organizing solution for the Barbie. My husband was complaining that he didn’t want Barbie clothes and shoes all over the place. Now we have a place to put them all. Since we are making the clothes ourselves, my daughter seems to take a little more pride and care with them too, making sure to hang up all the clothes that are not being used.

What are your favorite Barbie organizing solutions? Please share in the comments.

Where to put all these new Christmas gifts?

In this resting space between Christmas and New Year’s you get a real sense of someone’s personality. Some people are still vacationing and relaxing. Others have already taken down the tree and packed it away and are currently putting down their resolutions and buying new calendars and planners for 2012. In our house, our primary concern is puzzling over where to put all those Christmas toys!! Ruly Ruth (and her King) come to our rescue with some clever solutions.

I am the most disorganized storage person on earth! Once a method is established I can somewhat follow it—but to create it is NOT my forte. Enter my amazing husband–who is the KING of spacial organization! When you have young children, toys are an essential part of childhood, and storing these on a daily basis is a talent and an art.

For a variety of ages, board games are a fabulous way to entertain children. The parts are generally for 3+ year olds, and are colorful and attractive–I love moving my Marine Monopoly tank around the board! For a 2 year old, we dumb it down to counting spaces. But storing this montage of games can be puzzling. Top shelves of hall closets are often used. My amazing husband actually built a coffee table where we remove the two ends to provide abundant storage for our multitude of games. This is not the first of its kind–there are obviously other coffee table storage methods–but this is an elegant solution.

Custom-made game storage table -- open.

Game storage table -- closed. Sleek, clean and the toys are all easy to access when needed.

We love those amazing kids’ storage solutions sold at Walmart and Target that have a wooden shell and cubbies for specially-made bins. We try to segment themed toys into each bin. So for example, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are in one, dolls in another, etc. This way in an ideal world they would pull out one bin at a time. Which is more realistic the older they get–we still have multiple bins out for Emily though. Lots of clean-up practice for both of us!

Toy cubby shelves with pull-out bins.

Another style of toy cubby and bins.

For small Lego parts–this was brilliant on my husband’s part—segmented tool boxes are ideal! TJ’s are about 4″ deep with clear plastic lids–and lots of sections for a variety of Lego sizes! Love that! He can easily see the parts, and divide them based on color, size, function–whatever works for him.

Too many toys making you climb the walls? Let the toys "climb" the walls instead!

An ingenious idea for beautiful big toys is to hang them on the wall—my husband came up with this creation for my son’s ATTE. He does need someone to help him put the hangars under the middle legs–but when not in use it looks like it’s crawling up his wall–a virtual artwork.

An idea for wall hangings, especially as kids get older, is sports equipment. In the above photo, note the baseball bat hanging below the ATTE. And one of our son’s prized airsoft guns, as well as a mini-marshmallow shooter he made at a friend’s birthday party–and for those of you that are old Ed, Edd & Edddy fans–PLANK! This way you get the things kids are passionate about literally surrounding them. I love that!

An airsoft gun cleverly mounted to the wall in a tiny space between doors.

Another ingenious use of otherwise wasted space. "Plank" mounted to the wall in a small space between windows.

The final most amazing piece I have to share in this posting is my husband’s own creation. It’s one-of-a-kind and it’s so cool!!! We had an ancient old Burton snowboard (as in a kid told RJ once when he was riding it “Dude! You boarded back in the DAY!” Yup!) And a skateboard from Walmart that TJ picked out–and RJ made a toy display shelf out of the two–designed and built it himself. The snowboard is the top shelf, a middle wooden shelf, and the skateboard makes the bottom shelf. TJ even often hangs hats off of the wheels!

Repurposed snowboard and skateboard shelves. Awesome!

These amazing creations work for us. They are easily accessible for the kids to play with, yet can be hid away for company and for quiet evenings. I praise my husband’s creativity and ingenuity on a daily basis for his efforts in creating these amazing ideas for our family.

We at Ruly would LOVE to see and hear all of your creative toy storage creations! Please share in the comments. Happy New Year everyone!

–Ruly Ruth

O Christmas Tree! Better late than never!

For those who were wondering, yes, we did manage to get that tree up!

It was around 7:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve but we got it done.  We listened to Mozart and shared a big bowl of French Onion soup.

French Onion Soup for Two

And then of course Santa came to visit . . .

Post-Santa.

but now Santa is tired.

Christmas aftermath.

We wanted to spend a few days relaxing but a perfectly timed Christmas cold virus has come to visit instead.  The children are affected worse than the adults but it is no fun for anyone.

So, between nursing care and cleaning up and getting a little stir-crazy at home, we are not yet rejuvenated from our celebrations but hope to be soon.

Christmas/the holiday season is always so busy and when it is over we tend to want to stop thinking about it completely and move on to something else.  However, I encourage you to take just 5 minutes to create a list of the best and worst things about your celebration this year.  What would you do again next year?  What will you definitely scratch off the list or improve next year?  For me, the list includes:

Best:

• Warm(ish) weather!
• Attending the Nutcracker with my daughters.
• Mozart on Christmas Eve.  A surprising CD pick by one of my children fit the mood of the evening just perfectly.
• Surprised children on Christmas morning.

Worst:

• Too many activities every weekend.  It got too exhausting.  Next year we will definitely scale back.  One big event per weekend is about our limit.
• Hunting down last-minute gifts.  Updating our gift spreadsheet for next year with the missing recipients so we will plan ahead next year.
• Would have liked to have done more charity initiatives.

In the meantime, I wanted to share two of the homemade gifts I made this year.  (It is now time to share them since my family are such devoted readers of my blog.)

• Homemade Liquid Hand Soap for Sensitive Skin
• How to “Embroider” With a Standard Sewing Machine

How did your holiday celebrations fare?  Please share in the comments.

Making homemade hand soap from bar soap is all over the blogosphere lately.  When I first read about this, my first reaction was, “Interesting but I don’t think I will ever do that.  Nice, scented, liquid hand soap is so cheap anyway.”  But in a classic “never say never” example, I found myself in a situation where this particular project suited the job perfectly.

You see, it is pretty easy to find liquid hand soap in every color of the rainbow and every scent imaginable.  But it is almost impossible to find liquid hand soap without any scents, colors, or antibacterial agents in it!  Believe me, I have looked!

We also happen to have a member of our family who is very allergy-sensitive to various soaps and must always use Dove white bar soap.  So, the bar soap to liquid hand soap project was a perfect fit!

There are a lot of recipes out there to try.  I was in a bit of a hurry to make mailing deadlines when I had to make my batch so I went with the simplest recipe possible, which was this one.

First, assemble your tools.

You will need:

• A bar of soap
• A cheese grater
• A medium-large microwave safe bowl
• A funnel
• Water (preferably RO, distilled or filtered water)
• Glycerin
• A decorative pump bottle to put your finished hand soap in

First, grate the bar of soap into little shreds.

Be careful with small children who might mistake it for cheese!

Mix with 3 cups water

And two teaspoons glycerin.  (You can find glycerin at CVS pharmacy in the facial soap section.)

Microwave for 3 minutes.

You will have  a bubbly soup.

Let it cool and use the funnel to pour it into your bottle of choice.

You can create a nice label for the bottle by printing on a computer label, sticking that to the bottle and then putting a piece of clear packing tape over the label to make it somewhat waterproof.

Done!

This recipe made a lot of soap.  In addition to this bottle, we had at least another bottle’s worth left over.  We poured the rest into a large soap pump we already had with some remaining soap in it.  The consistency of this soap is quite watery.  It is not thick and gelatinous like regular hand soap.  It is more like milk.  But it does the job and is a little more convenient to use than bar soap and doesn’t make a mess in the soap dish/counter like bar soap does.

We have another bar to convert and may try it without the glycerin this time to see if it thickens up a bit more.

Another handmade gift this Christmas arose from another family request.  Several Christmases ago, I ordered custom screenprinted shirts with my eldest daughter’s artwork on them.  They turned out great and I received requests to do it again with my younger daughter’s artwork.  The only problem is that the screenprint order minimum is pretty high (at least 25 or so) and while we peppered our family and friends with shirts from the first go-round, I wasn’t sure if we wanted to do that again.

So, I needed another alternative to put my daughter’s artwork on a shirt in a high quality way but in a limited quantity.

I recently used my embroidery machine for one of our Halloween costumes so I wondered if I could embroider a custom design onto shirts.   It turns out that you can but you have to have special software for your machine that converts designs into instructions the machine can read.  I was in a hurry and didn’t have such software nor any time to find someone who did.

After a little Googling, I found two YouTube videos suggesting that you could “embroider” with just a regular sewing machine.  Some recommend that you use a “free hand” embroidery foot that allows you to flexibly manipulate the fabric and sew in multiple directions but some people don’t use even that!

Artist Julie Dunbar is the queen of freehand machine embroidery and while I was inspired by her YouTube video profile by Threadbangers, I just discovered that Martha Stewart also did a profile on her a while back and you can even download some of her cute design templates from Martha’s site.

While I loved the look of Julie Dunbar’s designs, it wasn’t exactly what I needed for my artwork project since my daughter did not draw in lines of uniform thickness.  Some were thick and some were thin.  So, what to do?  My inspiration came from this YouTube video of a woman embroidering cat appliques using just the zigzag stitch by varying the thickness of the stitch as she sewed.  You can tell she has had a lot of practice and her technique is pretty amazing.

So, I ended up using a cross between the Dunbar technique and the cat applique technique.

Warning:  If you are a perfectionist you will not like freehand embroidery.  There are a lot of imperfections to this method, which just add to the handmade quality.  If you are trying to reproduce the results of machine embroidery and everything has to be exact or match, this method is probably not going to satisfy you.

Before you start, preshrink the clothing you want to attach the design to (i.e. wash and dry it as you normally would, preferably in hot water).

First, trace your pattern with a waterproof marker onto water-soluble stabilizer.  I used the sulky SuperSolvy brand that I found at Hancock Fabrics (just coincidentally when they were having a 50% off sale on sewing notions).

Then attach the stabilizer to your fabric.  Julie Dunbar likes painters tape.  I just used sewing pins.

Play around with your sewing machine to find a stitch and stitch width that gives you the look you want.  It might be the zigzag stitch or a buttonhole stitch.  I am not sure what the name of the stitch is that I used.  It was number 20 from a list of unusual stitches.

If you want, you can try putting an embroidery hoop around the stabilizer and the fabric but sometimes this doesn’t work so well.  Julie Dunbar doesn’t use a hoop and I found it was generally easier not to as well.

Begin sewing your design.  It won’t always sew exactly perfectly in line.  You have to move the fabric through the machine at a steady, slow pace.  If you have the freehand foot, you can just back up and go forward again as you need to.  Sometimes you might slip off the design a bit so it won’t be 100% accurate but it will probably be about 90-95% accurate.

If you don’t use the hoop, you have to be conscious of keeping the fabric and stabilizer taut (but not too taut—again this is one of the imperfections of this method).

When you are done, your design will look something like this.

Julie Dunbar advises that you then pull the top threads to the backside of the work and tie a knot with the bobbin threads to keep the threads from unraveling.  I tried this and sometimes I was able to figure out how to do it and sometimes I didn’t have time or it didn’t work so I just clipped the threads short.

I then cut away the excess stabilizer from the design (may not be necessary).  I found that while you can run the finished design under a faucet to rinse off the stabilizer, the stabilizer tends to get a bit gummy when wet so it worked out better to just wash the shirts again in the washing machine with soap.  After washing, here was the result:

Here are some of the other finished designs:

I used cotton knit fabric so my finished designs show a little puckering from the nature of the fabric but again, this is all part of the art of the shirts.  Each one is a unique original.  From regular viewing distance, no one will notice all those imperfections.

The perfect gift presentation for these shirts was to roll them up and wrap them in our eco-friendly accumulated stockpile of lesser art works that I showed you last year.

I like how they came out, imperfections and all!

What do you think of this technique?  What would you use it for?  Please share in the comments.

My 6 year old came up with this super easy, cost-free tip to generate instant elves and cute photos.  The steps are simple and kids love it!

1. Find a pair of pajama pants, leggings or other stretchy pants.
2. Put them on your head!

Results:

The most memorable decorations of 2011 for us have been Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer themed. Have you seen the Rudolph-ed cars driving around, complete with antlers tucked in the windows and red nose above the license plate?  They tend to belong to people who also wear Christmas sweaters and appear to be totally on top of their Christmas preparations.

My favorite, though was when my daughter came home from preschool Rudolph-ed.

Any other Rudolph sightings out there?