Clutter Busting Challenge February 2019

This month I'm purging 57 items. The bulk of the items came from my office/crafts and our grandkids toy closet. We did get our grandkids a few more age appropriate toys and books to replace what we purged from their toy closet at our house.


My Purge Pile:

My Card Making Afternoon

I was looking through my unfinished papercrafting project and decide to create little love note cards for my husband. I spent about 3 hours in the afternoon on it and created 19 cards. I put 1-2 cards  in each of my monthly sections of my Seasonal Notebooks. This way when the months comes I'll have the cards ready to go. I may not give him all the cards within this year but I have that option and if I don't give them all away their will be leftovers for next year.

I pull out a bag of purple themed notes that I had started collecting supplies for. I had stamped a few images, used a few paper punches, and collected some colored paper but never got around to creating the cards. It took a bit of time and thought but I was able to create 9 cards. A few are for our anniversary but the others are just because cards. 






















I had a bag of unfinished red themed notes that I had started collecting supplies for too. I had started 2 of the cards but never finished. I had a few cut-up cards to reuse, stickers, a few hearts that I had cut-out, doilies, and chipboard hearts. I was able to create 10 cards from my red collection. I did set aside two of the cards to give to him next Valentine's day but the rest are just because too.

I really like that I have them made ahead of time and can give him a little love note anytime I want without having to create it on the day that I want to give it.  It's fun to plan ahead and it saves time too. This is the two that I added to my March section of my Spring Notebook.

Indoor S’mores Bars

8 cups grahams cereal

1 bag (10 oz) miniature marshmallows (5 1/2 cups)

1 1/2 cups milk chocolate chips (9 oz)

5 tablespoons butter or margarine

1/4 cup sugar

1 tablespoon water

1 teaspoon vanilla

Grease 13x9-inch pan with butter. Measure cereal into large bowl. Reserve 1 cup of the marshmallows. In 3-quart saucepan, heat remaining 4 1/2 cups marshmallows, the chocolate chips, butter, sugar and water over low heat, stirring occasionally, until completely melted. Remove from heat; stir in vanilla. Pour marshmallow mixture over cereal in bowl; stir until evenly coated. Stir in remaining 1 cup marshmallows. Press firmly in pan. Cool at least 1 hour until firm. For bars, cut into 6 rows by 4 rows. Store loosely covered at room temperature.

Coloring Book: Color Your Happy Home Part 5

In my adult coloring book this month I colored: "Crafts", "Knitting", "Bubble Bath", and "Goodnight".

You may be interest in my other posts in this series:

Coloring Book: Color Your Happy Home

Coloring Book: Color Your Happy Home Part 2

My Card Making Evening

One of my goals for 2019 is to craft more. I plan to spend time each week doing something creative. I spent an evening working on my unfinished papercrafting project. I decide to work on a bag of card that was already pre-cut and a few that were partially assembled. I had bought the bag of card at a thrift store for $3 on our trip to PA in 2017. The monkey card wasn't included in the bag but I'm sharing it with this post anyway. I had worked on them last year but never finished. I got them out and finished them all within about 3-4 hours while listening to music on YouTube.

Peanut Butter Playdough

  

1 cup creamy peanut butter

2 cups powdered sugar

1/4 – 1/2 cup honey (just enough to make it stick together)

Mix all ingredients in a medium bowl with an electric mixer.

Note:

Substitute 1 cup of powdered milk in place of a cup of the powdered sugar.

Substitute 1/2 cup cocoa powder for a more chocolate-y experience.

eBay Selling

My husband has sold many things over the years on eBay but I'd never done eBay until a couple months ago. He's mostly sold electronic and computer parts. Our daughter-in-law Sarah is making quite a bit of money from selling on eBay and she had started giving us the lower end stuff that she doesn't want to sell since Autumn.

We turned our oldest son Shawn Jr.'s old bedroom into an eBay selling room in October. We furnished the room with stuff we already had and a few things our son and daughter-in-law gave us. It may not seem like a big deal to some people but this is new to me and has me going out of my comfort zone. I've gotten more involved by mostly doing the organizing of the room, organizing inventory, and taking pictures. I've done a few sell listings and packaging to mail but not as much as my husband since he's been doing it a long time. We made about $4,000 in 2018 on eBay which averaged to about $330 a month in sales. We've ramped up selling this year by creating a eBay Store, getting our selling limits raised, and posting items for sell more often. We're doing well but we'd like to move the inventory that we have out faster. We only have so much room and don't want to expand into other spaces in the house. 

Our eBay selling room: