Totally Organized Tuesday: Christmas Storage

I know if you haven't already done it, most of you are thinking about the dreaded task of taking down your Christmas tree and decorations. I personally don't take my tree down until usually the second week of January so I won't have too many pictures to share with you just yet but I wanted to share this before everyone has their decor packed away.

 Now is the best time to go through and get rid of all of the stuff you probably won't use again.  Afterall, most people have "get more organized" on their list of New Years resolutions.

My favorite organizing tip for Christmas storage is to get rid of all those boxes that hold your ornaments and use these ornament storage containers by Sterilite. It doesn't take up as much space as all those boxes and makes it easier to see everything. I also should add that almost all the ornaments below are glass and none of them broke being transported in these storage boxes during our move.

I also like to seperate them by color so if I change the theme of my tree and only need the red ones next year I won't have to drag out the gold ones. 

I also have some red ornament storage boxes that have the ornaments for the boy's tree.

The fabulous parties I am linking up to:

Lil Luna
Organize and Decorate Everything
Crystal and Co.
House of Hepworths
Delightful Order
Gluesticks
Tatertots and Jello
Be Different Act Normal
I Heart Naptime
Tip Junkie
A Bowl Full of Lemons
Let Birds Fly
Somewhat Simple
Fingerprints on the Fridge
Tidy Mom
320 Sycamore

Twas the Night Before Christmas

Christmas PJs on....check!

Family Picture in front of tree...check! Even if it is some crazy ones, it shows how our life is at this point.

Twas the Night Before Christmas read...check! Even if they didn't listen ;)

Cookies for Santa...check!

Children all nestled, all snug in their bed...check!

While visions of sugarplums dance in their heads...check!

Train table all ready for two boys to play with in the morning....check!

Mommy and Daddy super tired....check! Santa gets off easy :)

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Merry Christmas

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year!

photo is by BLM Photography

Visiting Santa

The boys love to talk about Santa, read about Santa, and say "HO HO HO" but when it came to meet with Santa it didn't quite go as planned.

Santa Round 1 was at Nana's work.

The only way we could get a pic with them and Santa is if we sat down and had Santa sneak behind us.

 Santa Round 2 was at Scooter's work party.

 Notice: Grant is throwing himself back. He was not going to move one step closer.

He did decide he would take the candy cane from Santa.

For comparison , here is last years pictures at 11 months old.

Totally Organized Tuesday: Gift Wrap Ideas

Last time I shared with you how we organized our Gift Wrap Station. Today I will show you how I keep all those gifts straight.

We have so much family and so many different places to go that I have been known to forget gifts at home. So this year I color coded the wrapping paper by the different places we have to go and the stuff that stays at our house. I used red, green and brown kraft paper to wrap the presents and found different ways to make them look pretty other than buying pretty paper and putting on traditional bows.

I curled some old wrapping paper like you would ribbon to make this bow and then stamped on the letters.

Instead of using traditional tags like I did in the past I just put a initial. This wouldn't work if you had many people with that initial but for the side of the family that I am using red paper on there is only one person with name that starts with C.

This present was for a gift exchange so I didn't know who would get it to put an initial on it.

Anyone else have tips on how to make sure their presents make it to the right place?

If I could just find a way to remember whose present I just wrapped when I am in the middle of some late night wrapping, which is usually my sign that I need to go to bed ;)

Breakfast from Santa

Our elf Charlie came back on December 1st and brought the boys a special breakfast from Santa.

They had pancakes that looked like Rudolph.

They don't get sweets much unless they are with their granparents so this was a special treat.

The mommy must have been good too because Charlie brought me some hot chocolate ;)



Want to see what else we have planned for this holiday season?

25 Days of Christmas Activities

Gabe and Grant's Toddler Proofed Christmas Tree

I have talked about how I have baby proofed my home and then had to go back and "Gabe and Grant proof" it because the child safety locks that most kids can't get open my two can with no issues. Well the tree was no different.

While out shopping last year I ran into a old coworker ,who has a daughter a year older than mine, (she had just turned 2 and mine were about to be one) I told her how I was so shocked yet pleased that the boys hadn't really messed with the tree at all. She told me "oh honey, it's not this year you have to worry about. It's next year you will have to worry about." Now fast forward a year , and I know exactly what she meant by that.

This is their tree, it has shatter-proof ornaments. I was still having problems keeping them from using the ornaments as toys so I wired the ornaments on to the tree. This might something a lot of people already do but if so nobody decided to share it with me, so I decided I would share it with you if you have some mischevious toddlers like I do.

First you need to hot glue the top metal piece(where you hang the hook from) onto the actual ball part. Just trust me and don't skip this step because I tried to hang the ornaments with just attatching wire and they would rip the ball out and leave the metal and wire still hanging on the tree.

I took a regular ornament hook and wrapped it around the top of the ornament several times.

I then straightened out the other piece that you would normally just hook on the tree.

Then you just wrap it around the limb of the tree several times until you have no wire left.

Gabe testing out the tree to make sure it was "Gabe and Grant proofed". I am happy to say it passed the test :)

And for fun here are some of my favorite ornaments on their little tree.

Anyone else have any other tips on how to keep a toddler out of the tree?

I will be sharing pictures of my big tree later this week and how I keep little hands out of it because it is glass ornaments.

The fabulous parties I am linking up to:

Lil Luna
Organize and Decorate Everything
Crystal and Co.
House of Hepworths
Delightful Order
Gluesticks
Tatertots and Jello
Be Different Act Normal
I Heart Naptime
Tip Junkie
A Bowl Full of Lemons
Let Birds Fly
Somewhat Simple
Fingerprints on the Fridge
Tidy Mom
320 Sycamore

25 Days of Christmas Acvtivities

I have 25 activities planned for the boys to countdown until Christmas. I put a slip of paper with one activity on it in each drawer of their train advent calendar.

The other side has the rest of the numbers.

Day 1: Our Elf on the Shelf Charlie will reappear with a breakfast from the North Pole for the boys.

Day 2: We are donating some new toys to a toy drive that a local news station has.

Day 3: Read Story of Christmas book.

Day 4: Talk about Mary using Nativity.

Day 5: Talk about the angel Gabriel using Nativity.

Day 6: Talk about Joseph using Nativity.

Day 7: Go visit Santa at Nana's work.

Day 8: Talk about the Stable using Nativity.

Day 9: Live Nativity with Mimi and Scooter.

Day 10: Felt Christmas Tree Activity.

Day 11: Go look at Christmas Lights.

Day 12: Talk about the North Star using the Nativity.

Day 13: Lighted Christmas Parade.

Day 14: Talk about the Wise Men using Nativity.

Day 15: Talk about all of the animals using Nativity.

Day 16:  Spend the night with Nana.

Day 17: Christmas Crafts.

Day 18:  Watch Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

Day 19: Make Gingerbread Playdough.

Day 20: Donate Clothes to Salvation Army.

Day 21: Read Llama Llama Holiday Drama.

Day 22: Make Fudge.

Day 23: Bake Cookies for Santa.

Day 24: Read The Night Before Christmas.

Day 25: Talk about the manger and baby Jesus.

 Here is a site I found that has toddler friendly ways to explain Christmas through a religious perspective.

Who knows if we will get to do everything but that's the plan.

How do you help your kids countdown for Christmas?

The fabulous parties I am linking up to:

Lil Luna
Organize and Decorate Everything
Crystal and Co.
House of Hepworths
Delightful Order
Gluesticks
Tatertots and Jello
Be Different Act Normal
I Heart Naptime
Tip Junkie
A Bowl Full of Lemons
Let Birds Fly
Somewhat Simple
Fingerprints on the Fridge
Tidy Mom
320 Sycamore

Totally Organized Tuesdays: Gift Wrap Station

I am sure a lot of you have seen the gift wrap station from Better Home and Gardens. I wanted to do something similar with my mess of gift wrap to get ready for all the wrapping I would be doing for the upcoming holiday season.

I bought this Over the Door Organizer through Amazon and got busy putting it all together. The racks are all adjustable so you can put as many or as little as you want and place them however you want. Some of my wrapping paper was very tall so I could only put two shelves.

At the top, I store my scissors, gift tags, tape, and christmas ribbon (I have a designated place for all my other ribbon).

Only problem with this set up is that the bottom wasn't tall enough to keep the wrapping paper from falling when the door swung open and close.

I was just going to take a bungee cord and put it across the top. But  my husband being the genius that he is (shh don't tell him I said that) cut out the bottom wires of one of the shelves that I wasn't using and now all the wrapping paper stays in place.

It also gave me a great place to hang my tissue paper.

As for my gift bags, I hang them on a command hook in my craft room closet.

Now I just need to tackle wrapping all the presents I  bought on Black Friday.

The fabulous parties I am linking up to:

Lil Luna
Organize and Decorate Everything
Crystal and Co.
House of Hepworths
Delightful Order
Gluesticks
Tatertots and Jello
Be Different Act Normal
I Heart Naptime
Tip Junkie
A Bowl Full of Lemons
Let Birds Fly
Somewhat Simple
Fingerprints on the Fridge
Tidy Mom
320 Sycamore