Mason jar container #2

Several weeks ago I posted about using mason jars to store food items. This past weekend I finished off another jar of vodka sauce, this time to contain coffee beans.

I once again covered the lid with paper so it doesn't look so much like a jar of vodka sauce.

I tried to use a complementary pattern. I think they look pretty good together.

Here they are in their cheese crate, along with a coffee grinder. Which, admittedly does not really go along with them aesthetically, but it fits perfectly in the crate (and of course correlates thematically).

Egg carton bowl

Sometimes I'll see a project online that I want to try, so I go to the store and buy the materials, and then never actually make the project. I was looking through my bins of supplies and came across this bottle of fabric stiffener, along with an empty egg carton, and decided that today was the day to put them to use.

Fabric stiffener is exactly what it sounds like--a glue that you can use to stiffen fabric in whatever shape you'd like. I'd saved the egg carton with the idea that I could use the fabric stiffener to make a bowl with different compartments to organize small craft supplies.

I started brushing the glue onto both sides of the fabric with a foam brush.

When it was pretty saturated I started shaping it over the form of the egg carton (after lining it with some plastic wrap so it didn't adhere to the paper). It wasn't really taking the shape of the carton very well so I stuffed some pieces of plastic bag into each crevice (and one foil ball, after I ran out of plastic).

Then I waited awhile for it to dry...and look at that.

Not sure what I'll actually use it for, but you get the idea. Buttons, jump rings, magnets...anything small that needs organizing.

In hindsight I think I would have made the piece of fabric larger so that there was more of a lip to the bowl, as it looks a little weird like this. Oh well, live and learn.

Mason jar containers

Not too long ago I decided to move my vintage cheese crate to the kitchen counter, to corral the bags of coffee and sugar that were cluttering up the space. To further the de-cluttering, I decided to move the coffee and sugar into mason jars. We just finished a jar of vodka sauce that was perfectly sized, so I washed it out, wiped off the label, and glued some decorative paper to the lid (because otherwise it just looked like a spaghetti jar lid). Now I just need to consume another jar's worth of vodka sauce for the coffee.

Flea markets can make your life better

So maybe the statement in the title of this post is a bit far-fetched, but after buying this pair of vintage locker baskets at Brimfield the other day, that's kind of how I'm feeling. I'd been pretty confident that I'd stumble upon some, particularly because they've become a bit trendy lately (or at least I've been seeing a lot of them on design blogs), and I was sure they'd be perfect to put in my kitchen closet, which was in desperate need of organization. The gods did smile on me, as I found a guy selling them for $12 a piece (pretty good compared to what I've seen them priced at elsewhere). I only wish I'd bought more!

Which brings me to my kitchen closet. I'm almost too embarrassed to show the before photo (which is appropriately blurry). I used one basket to corral all the little half-used bags of lentils and rice and so on, and the other for boxes of ziploc bags and vacuum bags and such.

The results are pretty incredible. It's amazing what a couple of baskets can do. I hope it stays looking like this!

Recipe card file

I've been more and more turning to food blogs for recipes, which has resulted in lots of scraps of paper, with ingredients and directions scrawled on them, overflowing from between the cookbooks in my kitchen. Which is really not the most functional way to store them. So I began to search for that perfect recipe card file. I love this one that I found on etsy, but am not in love with the price tag, so I set out to create a similar, more budget-friendly version.

First I found a plain wooden box, also on etsy, for $6.

It came with a variety of alphabetized dividers, but I decided not to use most of them (I haven't completely discarded them though).

Also inside the box were these index cards dated from 1966. I'm not sure what exactly they refer to or what type of institution they might have been used by, but this Murray guy did a lot of fighting and "horseplay." Also of note is the name "Julius McJunkin."

Moving on...I bought a few packs of multi-colored index cards and used the address stamper to add "INGREDIENTS" and "INSTRUCTIONS" to each card.

Then I copied all of the handwritten recipes onto them. This was particularly time-consuming. And I'm not nearly done, as I still have to copy all of the bookmarked recipes online.

I cut up a thin cardboard mailer to make the dividers and used some alphabet stamps to label them, creating five categories (one for each color of index card): breakfast, sides, soups, entrees, and treats.

Finally, I made a stencil and painted the top to add a little something to the plain wooden box. It may not be quite as nice as the letterpressed cards, but it cost me less than $10 to make.

Steps to a more functional kitchen

Just recently I installed two items on the wall in the kitchen that have led to much greater efficiency.

I was getting a little tired of walking all the way across the room to the pantry every time I needed some seasoning. So I bought this spice rack at Ikea (only ten bucks!) and found the vintage Griffith's spice jars on eBay.

I love the look of the milk glass. The labels were sort of yellowing and ugly so I scraped them off and made new ones with the label blaster. (Combined with the card catalog, I had a lot of fun with the label blaster that weekend.) I think they look much better this way anyway.

On the same Ikea trip I picked up this wooden shelf and hung some of the pitchers that were crowding the top of the refrigerator. Now it's so much less cluttered, and the items are better displayed. Although I must admit, if money were no object, I would have much preferred this shelf. One can dream.

Boxes boxes boxes

Still hard at work on getting set up in the apartment. Some real progress has been made this weekend (for instance, finding the missing camera cord!), but it still seems like it'll be awhile before we can sit back and relax.

I've been feeling a bit swallowed by all the boxes lately, but thankfully they'll be gone soon. We'd been piling them up in the living room as we unpacked them, for eventual cutting down into LP-sized squares for mailing purposes. Believe it or not, there's actually a chair and a record cabinet under there.

(I'm happy to report that as I type, the boxes are diminishing into small piles, soon to be stored away until the next round of eBay sales.)

Desk organization: cork-covered cup

My desk at work is always a cluttered mess, so I've decided that I need to come up with a few new organization methods. And they might as well look cool too.

The first idea is this cork-covered cup for pencils, scissors, etc. I already have a pencil cup, but this one also serves as a place for notes, phone numbers, and reminders to myself. I'm a pretty obsessive list and note taker and my desk is always cluttered with them. It remains to be seen whether this will be the solution, but it's worth a try.

And anyway, it was really simple to do. I just rinsed out an empty aluminum can, making sure any jagged points were smoothed down with a hammer, cut down a piece of cork (I had some leftover from the map project) the size of the can, and attached it with two pieces of double-sided tape (one for each edge). And that's it.

Getting organized

A couple weeks ago, I saw this door organizer on Design*Sponge (I am going to refrain from using the horrible portmanteau "doorganizer" someone came up with in the comments section) and immediately thought of how Dave likes to empty the contents of his pockets every night and leave them on the dresser next to our fish tank:


Not a terrible spot, but it looks pretty cluttered. Thus, the door organizer seemed like a good solution, though I decided not to follow the tutorial exactly.


I had extra fabric from some pillows I made a long time ago, which seemed sturdy enough for the job.

I cut two equal sized pieces and sewed them together with the right sides facing to create a double-sided rectangle of fabric.

Next I used the jar of Mod Podge as a guide to cut out the circle to fit over the doorknob.

I then hand sewed the edges of the circle with some extra yarn I had.


Next came the white felt pockets. They were a little plain so I decided to cut out some random shapes from the patterned fabric as decoration.


It kind of looks like a weirdly cute monster.


The finished product in action. It originally sagged a little and lost its shape from all the weight in the pockets, so I cut down a dowel rod to fit across the top and sewed it inside, doing the same right above the bottom pocket, which had the desired effect.