A Valentine for YOUR Sweetheart!

I was thinking today about my Man...he is so AWESOME! And then I was thinking about you all and all of YOUR AWESOME men...and with Valentine's Day around the corner...and thinking you may have a tight budget, or not, I wanted to give you an idea for a Valentine gift for your Man. I did this a couple years ago, acutually several, with some ladies, when I was facilitating M.O.P.S. and the ladies loved it!

Supplies:

1 large mason jar with lid

1" X 4" strips of paper Qty. 100

stickers, ribbon, sparkles, etc.

Valentine themed would be nice

Small candies, his favorite, not yours (heehee)

Basically you are going to write 100 reasons why you love your spouse. You are going to accordian fold them and place them in the mason jar. Add his favorite little candies. Decorate with stickers, glittler, etc. Now it may seem hard at first thinking you can come up with 100 "things" but you will. They can be serious, romantic, erotic, silly, honoring, teasing...whatever! A mixture would be PERFECT! You know your man best. This is actually really fun to do....start now so you can finish by Valentine's Day. I find the more I dwell on Dave's "perfections" the easier it is to not think about his "shortcomings" and it also puts you in a very romantic mood soooooo.....have fun with it!

Extra Tips:

Strips of decorative paper can be fed through your printer and you can have the strips already printed with "I love you because...." and then you can hand write in the rest.

If 100 is too much try 50.

Make sure your Valentine card says something like...100 reason I love you or 50 reasons I love you.

A small decorated box would work just as well as a mason jar. Use your creativity. The possibilites with this craft are really endless.

Dave STILL has his jar, we hide it so the kids won't read the little notes!

Organized Choas: Tip of the Week #5

Not just for shoes anymore! This is one great idea for storing a mess load of stuff conviently and easily. You can buy these over-the-door shoe holders, with 20 pockets, at any retail store for about $6. I've used them A LOT here and there.

Here they are in the school room closet. I have one on each side wall. They hold all of the communal school supplies.
Here they are in my office closet, I have 2 in there. This is where I store all my art and office supplies. You can also see the two sweater/shoe hangers. I use them as well to use my valuable space wisely. They slide along the rod in the closet and the shoe holders are fixed to the wall. You can find pretty good deals on the sweater/shoe hangers at Ross or TJ Maxx. You can also get them at your regular retail store.

Here is the door of my pantry. My everyday utensils are stored in the kitchen drawers. Utensils I use 3 or 4 times a week go in these pockets and my less-used items go in a bin somewhere else.

You can use these ANYWHERE for ANYTHING. They have ones made of mesh too so you could use them for mittens, hats and scarves, items that would need to have air circulating around them. A friend of mine uses a couple now to store all of her skeins of yarn. My mom uses one fore her scarves, hats and gloves.

You can use them to store:

spices

cosmetics

craft supplies

utensils

tools

ribbon

stickers

cleaning supplies (obviously out of the reach of little ones)

little food packets

school material

games

snacks

paints

baby stuff

just to rattle off a few......the possibilities are ENDLESS!

Oh and yes, you can use them for shoes too!