The cute stripes…

And the polka dots…

Not only are these great for kids, but what a great idea for adults, as well.  Housewarming, grandparent gift, party favors, themed plates for your lake house, ranch house, out house!   The possibilities are endless.  What about Bridesmaid’s gifts, birth plates, patio plates.  I am getting really excited here.  The owner is a mother (of two boys, no less…There’s no wonder I like her product!) who is also an artist.  She merged her art with melamine and Voila!  These great personalizable plates were created. When you look at her website, be aware that each design comes in multiple color choices…just click the plate to see more choices of color, font, and personalization.

They are just fabulous.  Check her out.

The cute “Chubby Tubby”…

Darling buckets…

Pitchers and Vases…

Fabulous bins…

Totes and Caddies…

Creative solutions…

Check out all the fun patterns here.  Also, if you request to receive a catalog, once you confirm you are a real person via email, you will receive $25 off an order of $100 or more.  So, get busy and check out all the great ideas for organizing your things.  Hup to it!

Then, my mom introduced me to velvet hangers.  Where have these been all my life?  I was too proud to buy them when she told me about them.  Either that, or I barely heard what she said.  One day I was piddling thru a store sans kids when I ran across velvet hangers and recalled her telling me how great they were.  I fell in love instantly and bought a couple of sets.

I immediately went home and placed my more “delicate” things on my pretty new pink hangers (they come in all colors).  As I slowly replace the hangers in my closet, yet again, I was completely satisfied with the velvet hangers.  My things don’t slide off the end of the hanger…ever.  My clothes just seem to hang better on the velvet and pants don’t slip on the bottom.  They are fantastic.  If you need a little help in the hanger department, these are the best yet and easily affordable. Recycle those old wire hangers and start replacing with velvet.  Everybody’s doing it…

So…now it’s time to re-organize that closet.  Clean out, give-away, and re-hang all your fab clothes!

I bought this portable hook-on chair, not for my home, but for everywhere BUT home. I was disgusted on a regular basis at the high chairs I encountered at restaurants. I knew they weren’t cleaned between uses and I spent too much time wiping high chairs down in restaurants…they should have paid me for my cleaning prowess. Highchairs in restaurants have caked-on food, layers of dried slobber, and who-knows-what-else.  On top of cleanliness, I found that many industrial high chairs weren’t very safe for my babies.  They could slide out, slide through, or even climb out, as the seat belts never seemed to be functioning.  I couldn’t take it anymore! So, the Hippo Chair entered our family.

There are certainly pros and cons to this chair, but the pros outweigh the cons for our purposes. It does take extra hands to put the seat on the table….a set to hold baby and a set to attach the chair. We also don’t take the chair apart and return it to its bag. I just fold it up and throw it in the back of our car so we have it on the road at all times. We sometimes get weird looks as we carry in our own chair to the restaurant, but more often than not, our meals are kindly interrupted by admiring parents asking us where we got our cool chair.

I amcertain I have increased Chicco sales of the Hippo Chair single-handedly.  On top of that, I am no longer squeamish about putting my child in restaurant high chair.  It’s always clean, safe and fits my baby perfectly.  Amen! and Amen!

 There are currently 18 locations in and around the Houston area.  We pass one on our way to Oklahoma about 45 minutes after we leave our house.  Because it is so close, we have never stopped there simply because at 45 minutes, the kids are finally settling in and getting quiet for our long ride home.  However, people love Buc-ees.  Friends from Houston make Buc-ees their first stop on a road trip north.  So, I had to find out what the fuss was all about.

I was alone and driving back home and decided to make a dash to Buc-ees.  First, there is no dash.  Buc-ees is amazing…cue the Wally World music.  At first notice, you see an impeccably clean and organized gas station despite the hundreds, and I mean hundreds of people filtering in and out.  As I walked around the store, I saw food and gifts of great varieties.

 The food.  Oh, the food….homemade fudge behind a deli bar with at least 50 choices of flavors.  The same goes for homemade beef jerky.  I am not a jerky girl, but the assortment and freshness of beef jerky made even me want to try it.

 They have fresh deli sandwiches, desserts, and the standard cokes, candy, etc.  But who sees that stuff when “fresh” is everywhere you turn?

The gifts…a baby section with darling clothes, toys and books…  A native Texan section with everything you can think of with a Texas flag or the state of Texas on it… A Texas College section with college paraphernalia and clothing.  There is even a cooking section with cookbooks and kitchen items…CUTE kitchen items.

Everyone that works there is friendly, dressed nice, have all their teeth and not covered in tats.  That is a rule for hire…no outward piercings, tats and no criminal history.  The people that work there are upstanding citizens and they appear to really enjoy their job. 

Next door to this amazing wonder store is the Outdoor Store. 

 In the Outdoor Store, they sell furniture, gifts, clothing, cookware…all of the rustic sort.

An outdoorsman’s kind of store.  Antlers are a-plenty.  I was amazed at what they had to offer and was thinking that I should of brought a U-Haul with me to the middle of nowhere on I-45!

After being at Buc-ees for at least an hour, I came home with a T-shirt for everyone in my family (we had to conform!), a few gifts, and a few pieces of Texas paraphernalia.  If you are anywhere near any of the Buc-ees locations, run, don’t walk.  It will certainly be one of the best potty stops you will make in the Houston area.  I can only hope that Buc-ees continues to grow and spread north…all the way to Oklahoma so I can make every stop a Buc-ees stop!

The beauty of Scentsy is this.  The fire hazard is almost nil.  The heat provided is via a light bulb under a ceramic dish that holds the scented wax, parrafin wax.  I leave mine on all the time.  The wax melts and makes my entire house smell beautifully.  The different waxes come in these cute little plastic containers.  If you are ready for a flavor switch, simply let the wax liquefy and pour it back in the plastic holder.  It will dry in to a square and you can use it again later.  Wipe your warmer clean with a paper towel, pop a new square out of the cute plastic containers and you have a fresh scent going in your house.  I absolutely love these.  These are for the candle-impaired like me.  And truly, very safe in a house with kiddos.

Not only do they make warmers, but car fresheners, room sprays, wall plugs, and travel tins.  Let me tell you about the travel tins.  I love these, as well.  The tins are the size of an Altoid tin, but they slide open.  Heather takes them to hotel rooms when she travels, she stashes them under the car seat in her car and the best idea, yet…behind the potty in the boys’ bathroom.  If you have boys you are jumping for joy right now.  Is that not so clever?

I just had a party today and had so much fun sniffing.  I loved finding out what everyone else likes, too.  Some like the bakery and tropical scents.  Others like the floral or spa scents.  Every single scent on my list was “Scentsy Man.”  It’s true.  I am a Scentsy Man.  I loved all the scents that were musky, cologne-ish, and masculine. 

Now, once you have your scent chosen, you have to choose your warmer.  There are plug-ins, mid-size and full size warmers.  Here are a few of my favorites…

My very favorite and they warmer that is sitting in my foyer now…

This traditional warmer makes a great gift…

.

And for those stinky boy rooms…I just bought the baseball…

How about this for a cute graduation gift for the girls in your life?

I was most impressed with the affordability of these cute things.  The warmers are inexpensive and the wax bars are only $5!  So, you can buy multiple flavors at a time, or they  make great stocking stuffers, birthday and graduation gifts.  What a great idea for bridesmaid’s gifts.  The funny part is, it is my BOYS that love the smells the most in my house.  They go nuts over new flavors.   Once you have given a warmer as a gift, it is simple for the gift receiver to buy refill scents via a Scentsy rep online.  If you are oogling over these right now like I am, you can jump in on MY PARTY and order on-line by Monday May 10th. Or, you can go to Heather’s site and buy from her anytime.  She is a GREAT rep with lots of fun ideas and suggestions.  Have fun and may your house never be stinky again!

For the record, I am currently reclaiming organization in my life.  In my life before kids, I was an organizing maniac.  Then, I got married and two people were using my clean space…then, three, four and now five people! And the space just “ain’t” clean like I like it.    HOW do you stay organized with five rug rats (and a big dog) in one space?  ahhh!  I am currently organizing all the pages I have ripped from magazines.  I got tired of storing loads of magazines that I never went through again, so I decided to rip what I like and recycle the rest.  HUGE difference in space.  I tear recipes, decorating ideas, kid projects.  And now, I have an “Idea Book.”  I also have two huge binders for my recipes.  I dropped and broke one too many recipe boxes, so I moved all my cards into photo pages in a binder and merged them with my recipes I print from the computer, find in magazines, etc and put in sheet protectors.  Binders work!

Of course, I also like “cute.”  So when I found these custom binders I was in Heaven!  There are loads of pre-designed binders that you can insert your own text in OR you can start from scratch and make your very own.  I can’t wait to get started.  Just by perusing their ideas, I came up with lots of reasons to make new binders.  A recipe binder is the best idea.  This way you can add and remove on a whim.  What a great gift…wedding, birthday, housewarming!  There are many many cute recipe binders to choose from…

Binders with your own photos inserted…

There is this cute “Wedding Binder”…a place to keep all those wedding plans organized. 

If you have any sort of business, a binder is a great idea to keep your portfolio…like this cute Cake Binder…

Or if you have a need for a Baby book…for pictures, guest lists, keepsakes…

I get so excited at all the endless ideas to get yourself organized…a binder to keep track of finances, a journal, a business, cute teen gift to personalize a school binder, a special binder for a big project, photos, recipes, meal plans…tell me your ideas!  I love it!  Let’s get organized!  Click the link below and search for “Custom Binders.”  Voila! 

Don’t forget, Penelope will donate 20% of all proceeds to a local charity if you shop/link through Penelope’s Pitstop…

Anybody have a little boy (or girl) that stashes things like crayons in their pockets?  Unfortunately, I found out mine did just that when I opened the dryer yesterday and everything was coated with red crayon.  It looked like there had been a major injury in the dryer.  I was so upset- it was my whites and Khakis…all the kids school uniforms.  I was in tears thinking of buying all new uniforms after church today.

I got on the Internet and Google sent me to a website www.thriftyfun.com.  Apparently I am not the only one who has experienced this.  There was a recipe that I want to share that was on that website that included lots of comments on how it worked.  I was skeptical, but figured I had nothing to lose.  I only wish I had taken pictures to show how amazingly it worked.

Recipe:

1 c Tide

1 c Oxiclean liquid

1/2 c Borax

1 c Shout or Spray and Wash

1 c Vinegar

 Fill washtub with hot water.  Add recipe.  Add clothes.  Let agitate for a minute or two to make sure it is all mix up.  Let sit overnight…at least 6 hours.  Drain tub.  Wash load as usual.  

I was stunned when I took the clothes out!  Gone!!! There were a couple light yellow spots on a couple white shirts which I soaked in Borax and Oxiclean again for about 30 minutes, then washed. A whole load of whites that I thought would be trash is back in business!  I was so amazed at this, I had to share it.  Put this in an important place!  I wonder if it would also help when lipstick gets run through the wash? Done that before, too.  I wish I had tried it.

If you live in the Tulsa area you have probably seen some of Lisa Regan’s art from Garden Deva.  She has sculptures from large to small seen in many stores, galleries and art shows around the country.  Kingspoint shopping center in Tulsa has her whimsical kids throughout the area.  She has a warehouse in downtown Tulsa where she does all of her metal working and sales.  For those of you not in Tulsa, she has a great online selection!  Everything online is stock that she always keeps of these popular styles.  She also will customize anything.  The prices range from $15 and beyond depending on the size.  

When we moved into our house, our new neighbors had a 12 inch house made for us with our family name on it- what a great housewarming gift!  My mom, sister and I also collect the awesome Christmas trees for the holidays.  I also have a garden flower on a stick and a cute picture frame, too!  There are so many great items!  Go ahead!  Check out Garden Deva!

Garden Deva has so many cute things…more than she could ever keep up with on the Internet.  The key is that Lisa will customize anything you want.  Our tree collection is so much fun.  Every year we get the “Tree of the Year” and add it to our growing cluster of fun Garden Deva trees.  If you don’t already know about Garden Deva, you must check them out.

If you purchase via the link above, it is also available for FREE shipping!  Last minute gift…check!

For the record, The Junior League of North Harris and South Montgomery County is just a mouthful for the Junior League of  The Woodlands, Texas.