Setting Up A "Getting Rid Of It" Station

I'm on a mad dash to get things organized and settled before we hit the books again in September. This summer has been beyond crazy with moving, family events, and normal summer activities. I plan on spending the next couple of weeks gets things back under control. I came across Organized in 365 by The Happy Housewife via Pinterest and started scrolling through her tips.

At the top of the list was creating a spot in your house to stash items on the move. Things that need to go back to mom's, those pesky store returns, and small items that are in limbo between your house and the local thrift store or CraigsList.

I've had this in the back of my mind for a while now and decided today was the day.

I whipped up some cute tags using free printable paper I found here and iPiccy (which if you haven't used it you must go check it out!). I decided to use three different boxes: give, donate, sell.

Fortunately the tile floor was just finished in our laundry room, freeing up an entire shelf that was previously housing tile supplies. I figured I better scoop it up before it was piled high with jumk. 

I will most likely add a fourth crate at some point when I decide what I need it for.

Time: about 30 minutes

Cost: Free!! I've had the crates since highschool, they've been used for a hundred different things. I created the tags using free digital paper and iPiccy online (also free). I generally don't count printing costs or laminating sheets into my projects, these are just things I always have around. The miniature ric-rac came from my stash of scrapbooking supplies. 

"I love it when a plan comes together!"

~Hannibal

The Pin Test: Hot Chocolate Bar

I'm borrowing this picture from the original post at The Sweeting Spot, ironically though we have the same exact crockpot so we'll just pretend like I was awesome and took pictures of everything I did. Which I'm not, and I didn't.

We used miniature candy canes (annoyingly hard to find these days) and Werther's Originals because I couldn't find the soft chewy caramels shown here. You can find a crockpot cocoa recipe at The Sweeting Spot but I used regular old Nestle's hot cocoa mix and made a lot of it at once. Even on warm this crockpot stays really hot so I had to unplug it a couple of times, but the cocoa stayed nice and fresh throughout the entire day and seemed to be a big hit. We did this during A's birthday and our annual Christmas party which happened to fall on the same day last year. 

I'll be doing this again for winter get togethers since it's so easy and keeps a big group happy.

The Pin Test: Green Smoothie

I found this great pin but unfortunately the link doesn't work anymore, at least Blogger claims that the blog no longer exists. 

The pin had an attached recipe:

 two handfuls of baby spinach, 1 apple, 1 banana, 1 cup of yogurt, 5 strawberries, 1/2 orange.

 I also throw in ice cubes, otherwise it's more like juice than a smoothie. I love this smoothie and have been making it in the afternoons a few times a week. It's a great pick me up and the boys love it too which is perfect because A refuses to eat anything that's green. The recipe above with some ice makes enough for the three of us to have appropriate sized smoothies, it makes way too much for one person to drink in a sitting. Unfortunately when you add the strawberries it goes from the awesome green you see in the picture to a muddy green brown color.

 If you can get past the color, it's well worth the flavor.

The Pin Test: Homemade Cocoa Mix

Since I'm on the topic of homemade cocoa I figured I'd post about this awesome recipe I found.

It's from Mel's Kitchen Cafe and you can find the recipe there.

All of the ingrediants are common pantry items and can easily be stored so it's on hand whenever you need to make a batch. She was using her batches for gifts, but we selfishly kept all of the yumminess to ourselves.

My spin on the pin:

After we tried out Mel's recipe I swapped the white chocolate chips for Andes mint chips instead. It made a perfect peppermint hot cocoa mix for the holidays. 

Enjoy!

The Pin Test: Nutella Hot Cocoa

We've been going through a crazy amount of cocoa this winter. I've been drinking less coffee and now that I'm home most days of the week I like to bring a big mug of hot cocoa with me when I sit down to work in the afternoons. 

I've been experimenting with different recipes and when I saw this one for nutella hot chocolate I knew I had to try it!

Just heat up some milk in a sauce pan, add Nutella to taste (about 2 tsp./cup milk) and whisk together. SOOOOO good!

Definite keeper.