Jenn Tries...

Well July flew certainly flew by! So you know what the means right? Its time for my July upcycle project! For this month I thought I would share some of my favorite upcycle desk organization ideas (and upcycle some old blog posts in the process!).  I found four of my favorites, so you can spread them out over the course of the month (that comes out to about one a week) or you can easily make them all in one weekend. It truly doesn't matter because in the end you'll end up with a more organized craft area and save the world from more trash! Project 1: Ribbon Holder Project instructions found at  Curbly Experiment #1 and Results This was actually one of my very first projects I posted on the blog. Here's how my original ribbon holder turned out: . I really loved this ribbon holder, but in the end it just wasn't practical for everyday use. It was hard to keep the ribbon pulled through the hole just right (it was either too little and it fell bac

Its Friday! So you know what that means; it's time for another addition to the Activity book!  I'm sure you know this by now, but I love looking around Pinterest for ideas (I mean I talk about it just about it every post!). And my favorite part is the more I look at activity book pages, the more pop up in my feed. So even when I'm not looking for activity books page inspiration, I still stumble upon a lot of pages that inspire me. And that is exactly how I found this page: I had never seen anything like it. It was simple and yet seemed like so much fun. And I knew instantly this was a page I had to put into our book. So long story short, this week I decided to go with: M is for Maze and this is how I made it my own The Project Here's What You Need Felt Square Mesh Square (Slightly larger than your felt square) Assorted Buttons Marker Yarn or Ribbon Sewing Machine (or Needle and thread) Here's How You Make It Step 1: Make Your

You know over six months ago I welcomed the new year with my new planner and a plan to get organized. That lasted probably a week longer than my post. I overfilled that planner too much and it was just too bulky to work for the real world. Not to mention, my life really isn't busy enough to need that big of a planner. So for the past couple of months I've been either making a lot of to do lists or trying to remember everything I have to do and the list of projects I want to focus on (and I swear its a good thing I'm not famous, those lists have gone anywhere and everywhere).Its not the best system, but at least it was better than nothing to keep all these wild thoughts organized. And for a while now I've been slowly redoing my office wall, so I was hoping to add a to do list dry erase board there, but I just couldn't find a printable to do list that I liked or that would work in the frame. Somewhere in my adventures on Pinterest, I stumbled across an idea t

Monday Monday Monday... I actually really enjoy most Mondays, but this Monday I just can't think about anything to write about. Life right now is in full crazy mode and right now my head is so full with so many different projects and ideas for even more projects that I might be burning too many candles right now. (The weird thing is that I've been doing this for so long, that I can't really function when I'm trying to do just one thing at a time) Other than that I've started a bullet journal and I'm trying to lay out plans for what projects I want to work when. And quite frankly its got me a little overwhelmed. There's still so much to this year and I wanted to add more projects onto the week (I've learned more posts equals more views and more views means I'm eventually going to find my audience!). But I'm just worried that I'm going to run out of projects  But I just need to remind myself that there are always more things to learn a

Update 7/30/16: I just wanted to do a quick rewrite and add more pictures to show the different colors of play dough I've made over the past week. And some of the adventures we got into while doing it! I think one of the most reoccurring projects I see on Pinterest is homemade play dough. And I've always thought it was a nice idea, but... its going to make a mess; I don't have time to make it; there's no way that it could possibly work. You name it I probably thought it (and probably still think it when I look at some of those recipes) The more I looked at the home made play dough, the more I wanted to try one. (I wanted to know if they actually could work). And Blue is getting that age where I can trust him with play dough, so I knew I had to find one I like. And I was going to test them all out and let you know which one works the best, but I really don't have time for that. So I decided to just stick with one recipe that claims to be good and gets its colo

I'm back again with another quick tip. This time its in the form of two toaster hacks Toaster Hack #1 Making Grilled Cheese in the Toaster ' I've tested this hack many a times and I love it. Here are a couple of quick tips to get the best grilled cheese: 1. If you put cheese on only one side make sure its on the top slice of bread  I actually haven't tried it with cheese on both sides, but I would watch the bottom cheese slice if you do; depending on your toaster it may go shooting out of there 2. Figure out which side cooks on its side better.  If I turn my toaster so the lever is facing the left it tends to burn the bread very quickly, but if I turn it so the lever is facing the right, it cooks a perfect grilled cheese. Toaster Hack #2 Creating the perfect toasted bread for Sandwiches I love this toaster hack and use it all the time (especially for my tomato sandwiches!). The only advice I have is turn down your toaster setting down

Update 7/20/16: The instant I posted I knew it just wasn't right. I somehow turned painting on chalkboard paint into a full on project, which it really isn't. Its just a fun decoration idea. So I decided to rewrite it as such! This week I wanted add another topic to the blog. For a while now I've just been copycat crafting and writing if I thought it was a good idea or not. So I decided to try my hand at decorating ideas from Pinterest. I am in way an interior designer, but I know what I like and I know what Mike likes, and I want to make the effort to decorate our house and I encourage you to try it too. So to kick off this segment, I thought I would try out chalkboard paint. I've loved the idea of chalkboard paint for a while now. (I mean who doesn't like coloring with chalk?). And when Jessica Simpson posted this picture to her Instagram (Photo from Jessica Simpson's Instagram ) I knew I wanted to try to recreate something similar in my house (an

I can't remember when it started. I don't remember what Mike was doing in our bathroom. I do vaguely remember one day noting ants around the bathroom. Not enough to bother me, but enough for me to notice. Until (and there's always an until), I started putting on my work pants and ended up getting bitten by fire ants. Needless to say Mike used Raid on the bathroom real fast. And it got rid of the ants... for a while... But while Raid works fast it doesn't get rid of the source and the ants always seem to come back, no matter how many times you spray for them. And as my luck would have it, I'd recently stumbled across a couple of homemade ant killers on Pinterest. (And yes that really is my life works. Throw it out to the universe and the universe will give you just what you need. Some people call it the secret or God. We call it the Universe). So for this Try Me! Tuesday, I decided that I would not only try homemade ant killers; I would also see which homemade

Happy Monday All! Well I was going to write about how happy I was to finally have all my balls in the air, but then life got in the way again. (Story of my life!) Work has been extremely slow this summer, so its forced my hand with this blog. I don't really expect it to be fully functional until after the new year, but I needed to do something to start getting the blog really taking off. So I decided on a soft launch this week for the blog! First step was to finally decide on a name. I've been coming up with names for the blog and finding other blogs with that name (or a very similar name) in google for a month now. And even changing the name to Jenn Tries It was a hassle. There's another blog named ' Jenn Tries Stuff '. So I thought it might be a little to close, but I've slowly stalked her blog and it only has two posts and the last one was posted in mid April. So I figured it would be all right if I just went ahead with my new name. And with the ne