Put all that paper to good use...

When Moo was born, I decided that I was a scrapbooker. I have albums, literally albums plural, from the first year of her life. Then she got older and it got harder and harder for me to keep up with it. Now that we zip around from Gymnastics class, to Pre-school, to Dance class, I seem to have no time for fussing with decorating the page I stick the photos to. I'm happy I'm even remembering to take photos! And now that #2 is on the way, I'm sure that I won't have the time to keep up with this hobby that was fun, but a bit pricey anyway. I'm not too sad about having to give it up to spend more time with my soon to be girls, but giving up this hobby leads me to a problem. What am I going to do with all the supplies that I have hoarded over the years? I have enough scrapbooking supplies to last through documenting a nuclear winter and still have some leftover for a good sized wedding or two.

In a seemingly unrelated matter, I have very little wall space in my kitchen. And with one of those side-by-side refrigerators with the drawer at the bottom freezer, my fridge's useable space (which isn't a lot) is taken up by the Hubby's work schedule, a calender and Moo's artwork. I have always had a shopping list problem. I have no space to put one anywhere in the kitchen. There is only one place in my lovely large kitchen with flat wall space and it's only a foot wide and holds the light switches for the room. I finally saw an cute photo in a magazine that gave me an idea and I had to rush home and try it.

I wish I knew what magazine it was, but I was sitting in a Borders on one of my few kid-free afternoons, flipping through every magazine they carry when I saw the cutest picture of a home office. It was one of those things where I saw it, but didn't really see how I could use it until a few magazines later while my mind was wandering. The picture featured these cute little clipboards hung in a line on the wall above a desk. They were plastic and came in these really cute graphic designs that went with the theme of the room. I thought it was a cute idea, but didn't really think I would find something like that for my house. Then it dawned on me that I have all this fabulous scrapbook paper lying around waiting to be used! I went to the office supply store and bought two mini clipboards (since my wall is so small) and went to work. All I did was cut some paper from my stash to fit the clipboards, cut out some flowers from another piece of paper and a strip of polka dots from another and decopaged them all together! A few more coats of decopage to seal the deal and they are ready to organize my shopping lists! I purchased two of the clipboards and hung one over the other on my little wall. One holds the grocery list, the other holds the miscellaneous list for the hardware store or the craft store, wherever I'm planning a trip for that doesn't involve groceries. Pretty and handy, wouldn't you say?