color & shape theme for toddlers: beads and pipe cleaners.

sometimes i make blogging complicated.

i follow tons of bloggers that i love and admire, who do fairly elaborate posts 5 days a week and i wonder when they ever get sleep. or when they play with their kids. they must be way more efficient that i am!

i always want to post, but have been telling myself i can't right now because i have 2 kids that take up 90% of my day. They will ALWAYS be a priority over blogging, but i do love blogging. the 5 days a week of elaborate posting is not what's best for me and my family. it's not what works for me, but for some reason i've had it in my head that it's what i wanted to strive for.

silly me.

epiphany of the week: do what i have time for. this doesn't need to be an all or nothing thing. if i don't have time for an 80 page tutorial, blog anyway. 

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so here's a little something emery loves to do every few days:

color bead sorting. she sorts them onto pipe cleaners, she sorts them in muffin tins, she sorts them in piles on the floor. the girl has found a way to combine her OCD personality with her love colors.

// i kid you not, she really is OCD. when she cleans her toys and puts her 2 baskets away on the shelf, the baskets have to be lined up evenly. the shelf we use has no back to it, so last night she went back and forth between the two baskets, pushing them a little to get them even with the other one, until the baskets finally hit the wall and were perfectly lined up. she would push one, start to run off, and then realize they still weren't even and come back to push the other one a little. it took her 5 tries. i love her. //

{she normally sorts them by color...
i think this was the very first time
she did beads with a mini muffin tin,
so she didn't care what color went where}

so that's that. super simple, super easy, super fun for the toddler in your life.

love and OCD two year olds, 

amber.

organizing manuals.

i used to think i was being organized by having all my manuals in this:

but the truth was, i hated the idea of digging through this box, looking for multiple papers for one product. i don't want to tell you how many kitchen appliances have stopped working in the last 5 years, that were probably still under warranty, that i didn't return because i hated this box. i should have taken a picture of the mess inside.

but, thanks to pinterest, my dread is no longer.

in comes the manual binder - 

creative idea #28: manual organization.

idea sparked by: www.simplyfrugal.ca

tools:

• large binder - a few manuals take up a TON of space! i think mine is at least 2 inches.
• page protectors {preferably the ones that seal all the way up on both sides. i have some in here that are only closed on one side and the manuals slide around too much and almost fall out.}
• sticky tabs
• sharpie
• printer paper
• printer

directions:

• insert manuals into page protectors. group all papers for each product into one sleeve.
• use sharpie and tabs to label each sleeve.
• create pages to insert into binder cover to label binder. i got creative and labeled mine "manuals." {after i took these pics}

glory hallelujah. 

i don't dread needing a manual anymore because they're easy to find and all grouped together! no more digging in a dusty box :-)

love and happy manuals,

amber.