Snack Holders

Another item from Pin Land. . .

And another item for the big drive across country!  My kids are a little old for this (at least a couple of them may be), but they liked it anyway.  The good thing about them being older is that the contents DID NOT end up on the floor of the van.  We had tons of snacks, but I wanted the kids to have access to some without me having to dish them out from the front seat.  I also tried to keep their items a little healthier than just candy.

First at Micheal's 40% off sale I purchased beading storage boxes.  Yes, it is worth paying extra money for removable dividers.  At first I thought I would need the big boxes - that is a lot of snacks, even for across country!  As you can see mine had two rows with five sections in them.  Plenty of treats.  Not to mention I had more of just about everything so I could fill them up if needed (I only needed to fill them up for the return home).  Here is what the three looked like.  The boy is picky and won't eat any nuts.  His is the least healthy.

I dug out my vinyl, circut, and gypsy (because on the gypsy you can design multiple cuts at once).  I decided to pick a cute shape and cut the letters out of it.  I also knew it would be easier to apply to the boxes (since I have yet to purchase the transfer paper).  Each kid picked out a color from what I had on hand.  Some had just their name cut out and some had their name and the word snacks.  As I'm thinking about it now if you just put their name they can use them for other things (like those pesky barbie shoes that end up all over the place - we use one of the big boxes for this very purpose).

Fill with snacks that your kids will eat.  It is great to keep in the diaper bag so you always have a variety. Or in the car for when you are gone longer than planned. Or maybe even in your desk at work.  If you have larger snacks just remove the dividers to make a little extra room.  Hmmm, I wonder where I put my extra dividers at?  Might need to find a home to store those.
  
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Car Organization

More travel posts.  We have traveled a few times across country and one of the things that I hate the most is the mess!  Every time the doors open stuff falls out.  Coloring books, crayons or pencils scattered across the floor, headphones to the DVD player - you get the picture.  To help combat that problem I searched for ideas online.  I found this tutorial to make an organizer on the back of your van seats.  As you learned in this post, I don't sew.  Apparently I'm not too bad at it because these projects have turned out.  If I can do it so can you!

The post has great instructions, but I will tell you about the few changes I made on mine.  The seats in my car aren't as wide as the tutorials so I made them a little more narrow.  It ended up being about 16 inches wide and the same length.  
The top of my seat aren't as deep either so I added another row of pockets.  This top row is only 3 inches tall (with 2 inches between each row). I sewed it in half so each pocket is 8 inches wide.  I haven't figured what will go here yet, but some ideas are pencils, sunglasses (or glasses case since they will be doing a lot of sleeping), or glow in the dark bracelets.  My second row has 3 pockets instead of 4.  I didn't think much could fit in 2 inches so I eliminated that one.  I made one 7 inches (for a project I'm hoping to get done), one 5 inches, and one 4 inches.  The bottom row of pockets has one at 10 inches and one at 6. 
I also added a Velcro loop on one side to hold the headphones and two button holes on the other side to attach carrabiners.  This is just an extra option to hold things in cases: DS, cameras, PSP, etc.  Their pillows already hold their iPod touch, or in my daughter's case my old iPhone that doesn't have service but still has games.
Post coming soon on an item I'm making to be stored in the little pockets :).

A Little Organization

I've been pinning all these organization ideas on Pintrest.  I so need to incorporate them.  Sadly, I have pinned them, but not even looked at 90% of them.  Then I noticed my sister (whom I dragged into Pintrest) was actually USING the things she saw online.  It got me thinking more about ways to organize my house.  Yesterday I had an inspiring idea.  I was going to organize all the board games.  I went from this:

To this:

And in the second picture there are FIVE more board games and EIGHT more card games.
I purchased eight 12x12 paper keepers from Michaels (they came in a 4 pack - normally $30, but on sale for 50% off) and a few plastic 4x6 photo holders and some travel soap holders.  I'm using these to store some of the card games.  Right now I have many of the pieces in plastic bags.  I'm still trying to decide if I should get containers or leave them in bags.


Here are some pictures to show you what I'm talking about:

  

This one actually has two Uno games in it and there is plenty of room.  If you have just one package the soap dish would be your best bet.

This one has two games in it as well.  An oversized Curios George Uno is on the bottom.  And a Go Fish game on the top.  Under the cards is instruction to Go Fish that wouldn't fit into the soap dish (but also works as a separator for the two games):

 Here is Phase 10 in the soap dish:

I have one more Uno game (think we have enough Uno cards?), Dice Game (Greed), and some regular playing cards that I need to pick up soap dish containers for.  Then my games should be organized.

FYI - I bought the 4x6 containers at Michaels.  They are $1.49, but are 40% off right now.  They are sold in the scrapbook organization aisle.  The soap dish you can get at Walmart or Target for $.99.

I arranged the games into the 12x12 containers just by the way they fit the best.  Since I was getting rid of the boxes I cut out their names.  I put the smaller names on the front and the bigger names on the top.  I just taped them on with packaging tape.  Some of the games already didn't have boxes anymore and some where in metal containers (all bent out of shape).  For these games we just wrote down their names and taped them on.

The five games pictured on top of the containers had game boards too long for the containers.  I was hoping would fit into a legal size hanging folder and I was going to file them away, but alas they are too long.  Hopefully their boxes won't be destroyed and they can sit nicely on top.  I also may purchase one more 12x12 container to put that red game into (pictured between the stacks of containers).  So if you like this idea you can go from this (plus 5 board games {Chess, Parcheesi, Chess, Jambo, Buckaroo}, lots of card games {Phase 10, Uno, Go Fish, Uno, Crazy 8's, Uno, Old Maid, and did I mention Uno?} and a dice game {Greed} and minus a toy laptop & art station):

To This:

Oh, and did I mention the 12x12 containers are made to stack so the won't just slide around like my games were before?  They should stay in two nicely stacked piles ~ until the kids forget to put them away :).

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Tatertots and Jello