Travel Organizations

As I told you all before I love to organize and one of my most favorite things to organize is my luggage. I am going to share with you some of my favorite packing tips here.

Packing Luggage


Packing cubes

A well packed luggage means you can take more in less space.  Now a days checking one bags comes with baggage fees.  Checked bags fees have gotten way out of hand.   So I try to pack efficiently. Having less bags means less hassle too.  I love to pack and over the years I have put in place many packing systems.  I am always looking for ways to pack more in less space.

In my quest to pack more in less space I have fell in love with a packing system from the Container store called Eagle Creek.  They have several pieces to their system.  I absolutely love the Eagle Creek Pack-It Folders.  They keep my clothes wrinkle-free, plus I'm able to pack more with this system. Each Pack-it Folder comes with a special lightweight board that helps you fold your clothes so they can fit into the folders.  I have been using these for a while now and I will not go back to my old system.

Picture source - Amazon.com

What I love about these packing cubes is that they make my life easier.  All I have to do is pack these cubes up and once I reach my destination I just have to take them out of my luggage and pop them into the hotel drawers.  No unpacking needed. (Chorus of Angels inserted here).  I have found that since I started using these I am able to pack a week worth of clothes in a small carry-on bag.  That means less hassles at the air port which who wouldn't love that.

Zip-lock Baggies

Now I know these little babies are kind of expensive (but truly worth their weight in gold) so if you can't purchase these for your packing there are alternatives.  Prior to finding these cubes I used to pack using zip-lock bags.   Yes zip-lock bags!   

Zip-lock bags are useful if you have small children.  I used to pack a whole outfit in a quart size bag for my young child.  I would be able to put a shirt, shorts, underwear and socks in one bag squeezed out the air and pack the zip-lock bags into my luggage.  Using them saved on space and also made it easy for my child to pick out there own clothes while we were away.

I also used zip-lock bags to organize electronics that I took with me on trips.  This helps when you have more than one cell phone charger or DS games.  You can put it in a bag and lable them for each member of your family.


Rolling Clothes

When packing cubes and zip-lock bags aren't an option.  Then try rolling your clothes.  If done right you can get to your destination with wrinkle free clothes.   I usually fold a t-shirt in half then fold in the arms of the shirt then start rolling. What I don't like about these system is that  you are not always guaranteed that your clothing will come out wrinkle-free.

I hope you find these tips helpful.

I'm still here!

Sorry for the long break, but it was a much needed break.  Lots going on around here.   With the kids off school and family issues I've had a hard time concentrating on my blog.  Things look like they are slowing down and I miss blogging.   I have decided to branch out into different areas besides crafting with my blog and I hope that you will continue to visit me here.

Thanks for understanding and stay tuned for new post soon.

Where did it go?

Some how some where I have lost it.  That is my creativity.....  I feel like I should apologize for being such a bad blogger.  My mind is so far from being creativity at this time, but I have to say that I've been busy doing my 2nd most favorite thing and that is organizing.   I am trying to tackle some big projects around the house.   They are organizing projects.   I have already cleaned out, sorted and reorganized my storage room.  That was a huge project and has taken me a long time to finish.  I decided that I needed to clean out the storage room prior to picking up my son who has been away at college, because I knew he would have a truck load of stuff that he was bringing home with him that he wouldn't be using during the summer.

After finishing that project I was thinking  maybe I should of blogged about this since I don't feel like being creative at this time and I love to organize and reorganize things.  I have a few more big projects in mind to do around here and I decided that I will bring you along with me this time.   So stay tuned.

What's happening

Life has been very busy here lately.  With two kids on two separate Spring breaks, a visit with my parents and a little decorating what can I say I've been a bad blogger.

This is the first year that both my son and daughter were not on the same Spring break schedule and I wasn't prepared for this as you can see my posting dropped off at the start of my son's break.  Today my daughter return back to school from her Spring break.  

I have a few projects that I am in the middle of and will be posting on these this week.  Stay tuned folks....

Project Life

SO COOOL

Have you ever wished that you could some way capture your video and put them into your Project Life album?  Is it even possible you are asking to yourself right now?  Well I am here to tell you that it is possible.   All you need is a smart phone.   Now I know a lot of you out there already taking pictures with your IPhone to use in your Project Life Album.  Now you can start shooting videos too.   It's really simple and I am going to walk you through the process right now.

First thing first have you ever heard of a QR code.  A QR code is a matrix bar code (or two dimensional code), readable by QR scanners, Mobile phones with cameras and smart phones. I bet you have seen them.  They look like this...

So what do you need in order to accomplish this task?

Smart phone (I have an IPhone)

QR code (You can go on line and generate this QR codes for free like here)

A video with a URL link (I use Vimeo to upload my videos)

A printer

That's all you need.  The first step is to shoot your video on your smart phone.  Then you need to upload to a site like Vimeo or YouTube in order to create a URL link.  You can sign up for free to both Vimeo or Youtube.  Follow the directions to upload your video.  After uploading your video you need to copy the URL link and paste it into the a QR code generator.

Within minutes you will have a QR code bar.   Copy your code (by right clicking on your code and do a copy save as) then opened a Word file and paste it into word.     

Once you have it pasted into word you can re-size it to whatever size you like,   Now you need to down load the QR code reader (I use the QR code reader for IPhone),    Once that's been uploaded to your phone all you have to do is place your QR code into your Project Life album and scan your code and it will take you to your video,

If you have any questions please leave me a comment I will get back to you with the answer.



This was linked to Some What Simply

I have received an award from one of my dear blogging friends Paula at Scrappy Me.  Here is how it works:

"Liebster" is German for 'dearest.' The award is a 'share-the-love' arrangement, given to inspirational bloggers with fewer than 200 followers (based on Google followers). 

Here's the to-do list of any Liebster award recipient:
1. Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you
2. Reveal your five blogger picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog
3. Copy and paste the award on your blog (see above)4. Hope that those you award forward it to their favorite bloggers

So here goes.  I've decided to give this award to the following lovely bloggers, all of their blogs are so worth seeing and I get great enjoyment in reading about their latest projects and their life in general.  Please stop by all of their blogs to see for yourself I think you just may become a follower too.  

1.  Natalie from NorthShore Days a very talented lady - I have just started following Natalie's blog and her projects are a must see,

2. Karen from Somewhat Quirky I just love her post they are so well written and her projects don't get me started, please pop over to her blog to see for yourself.

3. Feeding Four her blog is full of wonderful recipes and her last project turned out so well.  Why don't you skip over there to see what I  mean.


4. Debbie from Beautiful things and trashy she such a creative and talented lady and she has so many wonderful projects on her blog.

5. Paula from Scrappy Me I don't know if this is allowed since she gave me this award but Paula is a very talented and creative card marker.  I've been following her blog for a very long time and she is such a sweet lady.  Please stop by her blog to see for yourself.

My Happiness Project

Okay I have to confess something - At the end of last year I finished reading the Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin and thought wow this is a great book, but deep down I questioned if it would really work.  So I set out to do my own experiment  to test it out.  

Source

If you haven't read this book it's all about how the author Gretchen Rubin took a year of her life to do things that would bring her more happiness in her life.   Each month she focuses on something new which she thought would bring her happiness.   It's a very inspirational book and it got me motivated for sure.

So starting on Jan 1st I wrote my goals down that I wanted to accomplish in order to bring more happiness into my life.  To tell you the truth I don't know if I will make it through the whole year but I am happy to say that I've made it happen for two months now and that's encouraging to me.

I think that any time you get a chance to reach outside of your comfort zone you receive rewards.  So far my little experiment has only proven me right.

So what have I've been up to in these last two months?????

Well for January the things I focus on were:

January


To act like I wanted to feel -  This goal might be confusing to you.  How can you act like you want to feel?   Simple it meant instead of letting outside matters control the way I felt I concentrated on how I wanted to feel,   So many times I've simply let people in my life affect the way I felt.  For example if I ran into a crabby kid I noticed that I started to feel that way too.   So I decided to focus on how I wanted to feel and stuck to it.  No matter what I ran into I choose that I wouldn't  let outside interference change the way I wanted to feel.

To do what ought to be done -  I noticed that when I set out to do something and I did what needed to be done it felt so good.  For example I've been really working on sticking to my cleaning schedule that I made for myself.  When I stuck to my goals the house was kept cleaned and I was able to do more things which increased my happiness factor.   Also in the beginning of the year I joined Ail Edwards one little word workshop and picked the word DISCIPLINE.  So these two little goals went hand in hand together.  It takes discipline for me to get the things done that needed to be done.  When I achieved what I wanted to get done I couldn't help but to feel happy.

February


To count my blessings -  I have fond this goal to bring me the most happiness.   At first it wasn't something natural for me to do.  Most days I would walk around not even thinking what I felt blessed about.  However, when I started to make an effort to be grateful for what I had around me it really did make me feel happier.


Focus on something I really enjoyed -  I wanted to focus on one thing that I really enjoyed.  This goal was a tough one for me,  Let's face it I'm very crafty person I enjoy crafting and I enjoy showing people what I have accomplished but I found that I was always scattered.  I would have three projects going at the same time.  As much as I tried to stay focus on this goal in the beginning of February it didn't turn out.  So I decided that I would change the goal up a little.  I knew that no matter what, I wasn't going to change the fact that I had more than one project going at a time so I decided to focus on my blog.  By just picking one thing to focus on (like my blog)   I got enjoyment out of it.  I focused on setting goals for my blog and by setting these goals I've accomplish one of the things I always wanted to do and that's to grow my blog.  I got a few more followers and that gave me a thrill like you wouldn't believe.

Like Gretchen observed in her book it takes a conscious effort to be happy and by being a little bit more aware of that fact any one can set out to be a more happier person.