momarkelz's Profile

After spending the summer on the deck, the chalkboard had warped and wrinkled. So a great helper of mine took out the chalkboard and replaced it with a sheet of galvanized steel screwed in underneath. We then covered the opposite side with felt. Now, it's a great magnet board & felt board!

I would skip spending the money on a diaper pail, and put it into a really good kitchen garbage can. We bought a Brabantia can 8 years ago and it still looks good as new - and completely contains the the smell of our 2 kids in diaper household. The lid broke about 3 years ago, and they sent us a new one for free (as is their policy). Similar to other posters, we use the kitchen can for diapers as the more kids you have, the more regularly you take out the garbage anyway!

I used blue painters tape to do a test run on my daughter's alphabet cards and they've been up for 3 months - if it's not broke, don't fix it!

Oh man, when I first was living on my own, I overzealously decided to make a large batch of frosted sugar cookies for Christmas. I hardly ever baked. I used an old handmixer that had been passed down from old roommates long before. As I was mixing the icing for the cookies, I notice small globs flying out of the body of the mixer. To my horror, I discovered that MEALWORMS were shooting out of the motor of the mixer and into my icing! Flour must have gotten in through the grates long ago and bred the little buggers. Needless to say, I gave up on Christmas cookies right then and there. I've never made them since.

Baked potato soup with bacon & chives

It's a bit of a project, but we just finished installation of IKEA kitchen cabinets and they were so affordable! Even with hiring a company to come and install them, we paid less than half what it would have cost from traditional cabinet companies. And we are so excited about all of the little features - like dampers on the drawers and trays that fit each drawer. Added bonus: if we ever want to change the look of our kitchen, it will be so easy to just change the door fronts. The web site www.ikeafans.com was a huge help in understanding how to plan this project.

I found it really helpful to look at people's amazon.com wishlists and other online registries to get an idea of what I was missing.

The one thing we should have gotten that we had to run out and get early on was batteries. All of those swings/bouncers /mobiles need lots of batteries!