Category: Installation

Holiday Cover Up

Let’s be honest. I panicked when I looked at the calendar and saw that I’m hosting a family get together on Christmas Eve.

I panicked a lot.

My house is tiny and very much lived in by three small children. And the state of this door says it all.

That hole in the paint, that’s where my oldest scrubbed the door until the paint came off. It was a stubborn pen stain. And who knew you could scrub the door so much the paint would come off???

We’ve lived in our house for over a decade. And I know it’s past time to repaint everything. In fact I have the vision for how I want to update our house interior. But I seriously can’t pull the trigger until we’re out of the color on the wall phase. All three do it. The oldest knows better but does it to push buttons when he’s angry at us. And evidently scrubbing his retaliation isn’t enough to break these outbursts.

Let’s just say that with all three back to back, I tell people it’s kind of nice because when you hit a phase you absolutely hate you only have to go through it once. Well the “wall art” phase is the first one that I hate. I just have to make it past this phase and I won’t have to go through it again!

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The inspiration for this “hide my ugly doors” Holiday Cover Up was inspired by this YouTube video from Life of Style Blog, Dollar Tree Christmas DIYS 2022. I can’t improve her walk through for making a Paper Bag Snowflake, so I’m going to direct you to the 4:50 minute mark in the video. However I will give you some tips on how to make the snowflakes without making some easy to avoid mistakes.

Paper Bag Snowflake Tips

The paper bags that I used were not brown paper lunch bags. I happened to have white paper 2 lb bags that measure 4″ x 2.5″ and 7.5″ tall. Yes, my bags are smaller in proportion than the ones used in the video. But the shape of the bag is going to behave the same way no matter the size of the bag. I do want to mention that this 2 lb bag created about a 16″ snowflake. So if you do go with a lunch bag size paper bag, you are going to end up with a beautiful large snowflake!

  1. Leave large spaces between your cuts. I tried making delicate lines. And as you can see (picture 1 above) the spokes snapped when I glued the snowflake together.
  2. If you glue to the bag’s open end corners, 7 bags is only going to give you a half circle. Picture 2 shows you how stressed the paper becomes when you take it to the bag corners. You end up taking away the flexibility of the paper because you limit yourself to the length of the small side of your bag base. In my case, I limited the distance between spokes down to 2.5″.
  3. If you glue to the edge of the bag’s open end, 7 bags may not be enough. (Picture 3) I started off with 7 bags, but when I went to fold the two ends together, the 3D snowflake structure started to collapse and flatten. I cut more of the pattern and added in 2 bags first, but found that wasn’t enough. At that point I just made another 3 to bring the number to 12 bags and that was enough to take the stress out of the paper. It no longer looked like it was going to collapse and flatten.
  4. If you glue to the middle of the bag, the snowflake will be loose enough to not be stressed looking. I was most happy with everything about picture 4 (below). The paper was not stressed at all. There was flexibility. And it was the least frustrating in closing the snowflake. (If you are craft challenged, I think this tip will be the option that you will find most forgiving and less stressful for you.)

If you want additional ideas on who to close the snowflake AND make it reusable, check out the comments under the video. The velcro comment is ingenious and I will be making reusable snowflakes for the rest of the ones that I make for the season.

And let me just say this, I will not make a snowflake the old way again! Until a new idea comes around, this is my go to for making snowflakes. Depending on how intricate your cut design, I estimate that it took me about 7 minutes to make the snowflake (below) with three triangles down each side.

Please don’t limit this craft to just snowflakes. You can easily purchase bright fun color gift bags and make bunting for baby showers, birthdays, bridal showers, anniversaries, and anything else that you are celebrating. If you opt for the bunting, non-snowflake option, I highly recommend Tip 3 (above). It gives a full circle that reminds me of Latino bunting. And the airiness fits perfectly with Boho style.

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Rigging Snowflakes

As I mentioned earlier, I have a small house. Most decorations I use are the ones that I can hang somewhere. So I made these snowflakes with a hanging line installed in the hot glue between two bags.

The easiest way of doing this is to make a loop on the end that you will be putting in the hot glue between the bags. Experience, through the years, has shown me that just gluing in the string with no further feature for the glue to hold on to, the string is just going to pull right out. So I’ve always used a loop, like you see here.

The loop allows glue to connect and hold on to three points of the string. Think of it acting like a Y. There is a natural pooling space between the arms of the Y and in the arm pits. And with paper also glued on either side, the string is anchored in pace.

In fact, my youngest swung at a snowflake hanging from my ceiling, with a roll of wrapping paper, like a piñata and the paper broke but the string held its place.

Hide the Ugly Door

At the Dollar Store I found rolls of candy striped wrapping paper. 1 roll of 40 square feet is enough to cover one door (front and back with a little left over for patch work).

I decided to wrap my doors instead of scrubbing and/or painting them because I have zero time to move this task to the top of my to-do list. I don’t have time to paint on top of the normal craziness that December brings every year. Not to mention that the only space I have to paint doors is outside and currently we have off and on snow. Wrapping the door did take me somewhere between an hour and two as it was. I couldn’t keep an active count because I did this while chasing and feeding kids. So I count this a success.

This door, I wrapped while it was still on its hinges. I’m pretty sure that this was the time suck because of how much time I had to spend in sliding the paper under the door and through the hinge space.

With the exception of working around the door handles, wrapping a door would most certainly be easier to do when it’s removed from the doorway.

That being said, I’m going to show you how I did this while keeping the door in place.

Do the front of the door first.

With some prepped pieces of painter’s tape, I draped the top of the paper over the top of the door and held it in place with a piece of tape. This freed me to go to the back side of the door and position the paper before anchoring it down.

TIP: Painter’s tape is amazing for this first part because it’s strong enough to keep the paper in place but release the paper and door without ripping the paper.

Now that the wrapping paper is going to stay in place, I went back to the front side and dealt with the door knob.

Take an exacto knife. With your free hand, run the paper down smoothly from the top of the door down to the top of the door knob. With the paper held in place, cut around the edge of the door knob with the exacto knife.

If you find it difficult to cut smoothly without ripping your paper (I did because the Dollar Store paper is cheap and very thin–it rips when you look at it funny) than cut an X or + over the door knob. This allows the knob to come through the paper and becomes easier to work around.

TIP: If your cuts are too big, it’s not a problem. Grab your clear tape that you use for wrapping presents. No one is really going to notice if the tape is glossy. They have to look for it to see it. But if you want to be thorough, use a matte finish tape. It will become invisible and no one is ever going to find it.

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TIP: If the cut lines are jagged and uneven, don’t worry. When you’re all finished you can hide this by tying a thick ribbon around the door knob, hang a door decoration or even a stocking from the knob. When in doubt, place an accent decoration piece over the rough edge.

Once the door knob has a clean cut circle around it, this is now another anchor point to help you wrap the paper around the edges of the door.

For the hinges and the latch for the door, use the exacto knife and cut from the edge of the paper to the edge of the door. The flap that you want to remove you can either cut it off or fold it and slide it behind the paper on the face of the door.

TIP: The most difficult areas for me to work around were the top and bottom corners on the hinge side of the door. If you need to, cut the diagonal so that you’re only wrapping around one side at a time rather than two at the same time.

When you come to the bottom of the door, cut the paper from the roll a little longer than you think. I thought I gave myself about two or three inches to come up the back side of the door, I just barely had enough to come up onto the back face of the door. So don’t be afraid to give yourself more paper than you think you need.

Once the front face is all taped down, pick up the remnant of paper and hold it up to the back of the door. Find out where you need to cut to cover the exposed door, width wise. Lengthwise you will see that there’s not enough. And that’s okay. The excess width that you cut off will be enough to cover that bottom section and some pieces to patch around the other side of the door knob and anything you want to clean up (like painter’s tape that you used to tape down the front face).

With the pieces cut and ready to go, start taping those up. I started with the bottom so I could hold those pieces up with painter’s tape (which would then be covered by the larger back face paper). With these edges being seen (much like a present that you wrap in a piece meal fashion because of an oversized box or using paper scraps because you ran out of paper on Christmas Eve), use the clear tape and be as liberal as you would like to.

TIP: With the right printed pattern, it is possible to make everything line up perfectly and not have that piecemeal look. I had hoped that this candy cane print would have done that, but I got caught a few times where the stripes just wouldn’t line up.

Decorating the Door

There are so many options that you can go from here.

For example, one of the fads right for the last couple years is wrapping mirrors or paintings on the wall as presents. The door can be decorated the same way with ribbons and bows.

Don’t have enough wide ribbon. I found colored metallic duct tape in the auto aisle of my local dollar store. They weren’t on my shopping list, but I did take note. And if you hate ribbons slipping (like they will on a door), the metallic duct tape would be a perfect alternative because those “ribbons” will definitely stay in place once you lay them down.

Another idea is to take a poster board and make a “Do Not Open Til Christmas” sticker. (I probably won’t do it this year, but it’s on my list for future ideas.) Or an over sized gift label.

The Paper Bag Snowflake Video that I shared with you above was one video that my kiddos watched with me and they wanted to make those. So the snowflakes are my go to this year for decorating. It’s an easy enough craft that they can do with me. And now that I know how to optimize our production, even my young preschooler can practice his cutting skills and be able to make something for Christmas.

Please share with me your snowflake or door decorations.

How did these crafts go for you? What accent pieces did you use to complete your projects?

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2 responses to “Holiday Cover Up”

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    Pacific Northwest Event Design

    When I add the comment block, I hit the + (add block icon) and type “comments” in the search bar. The comment plug in is then automatically added into the post. (It’s a feature that is already available and no additional download was needed.)

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Making Decorations You Can’t Buy


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Sometimes I love being a mom. And there’s days where I can be found saying, “You want what?!”

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of an over exaggeration. But only a little bit. Because when I asked my son what he wanted for his birthday theme, he told me he wanted a ghost eating, pellet chomping birthday. To my credit I didn’t flinch or bat an eye. But there was an onslaught on thoughts that ran through my head. Are you kidding me? No one has those decorations! How am I going to pull this one off???

The short story is that I put on my big girl crafty panties and I got to work.

The problems with trademarked images are endless. Anyone who is reputable will not make the trademarked characters for you. And those who can have gone through the trouble of getting the licensing rights to do so, which means you’re paying an arm and a leg for another person to make it for you.

In the area of cakes, the easy go around is to decorate the cake with toys and action figures that you can buy on any store toy aisle. But how do you decorate for a theme where nothing is for sale???

Yes, I actually questioned my rational as a mother for introducing my boys to retro arcade games. But I did conquer the boss round on this problem!

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Buy what you can

Pac Man may not be the decorating be on the shelves, but plenty of ideas were.

Thanks to 8-bit style games like Mine Craft still kind of popular, there are the plates and napkins. Yes, the Game On is the wrong font and style. And the game controller is definitely the wrong millennium. Fortunately for me, this was a five year old’s birthday party. I wasn’t going to be given the fifth degree on accuracy of my decor.

Thank God!

The one score that I was most excited for, and got me in the proper mind set for actually pulling this party off, was the stack of round yellow sticky notes that I found at the dollar store. The moment I saw them in the office supply aisle I had to severely restrain myself from doing my happy dance and squealing like an excited 5 year old!

For as much work as I was going to do in creating my own designs, I wasn’t going to have enough time to make a birthday banner. So you better believe I had zero issues with giving the round yellow sticky notes to my kids and telling them to put them all over the walls, windows, and on top of the black plastic table cloths. For under $10 I had the skeleton that made a Pac Man birthday happen!

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Make What You Need

Fortunately for me, Pac Man was made in an era where things were basic in design and easy to create in my design program. And with this font, I was able to make things that my son was excited for and proud to talk about!

I was very excited when I found the round stick it notes, because this idea came right to me. The yellow M&M’s are perfect power pellets and the other colors are along just for the ride. But with the primary colors being predominant, it fits with the whole theme.

These are super easy to make to! All you have to do is put a scoop of M&M’s in a cellophane bag, fold it over to keep everything in, and staple a label over the top of the bag.

Tip: if you use a permanent pen to color the staples you can make the staples “disappear” and make a clean presentation.

The gift bags I also got from the dollar store, all I needed was a solid colored paper bag. I wanted blue or yellow, but green was all that was in stock. Not a problem, it’s a primary color that was present in the 80’s video games.

I used vinyl here just because it was quicker to make up all the bags this way, not worry about gluing a million pieces, and I could pack the bags right away!

And for my boys, no birthday is complete without a birthday shirt.

I think my favorite part is “Toss me a Quarter” because my husband and I recently took my boys to a retro arcade and I lost count of how many times we were asked for more quarters. This design just brings back so many memories. And the best part is that you can remove this central figure (which is not included in the design for copy right reasons) and put any other character in. This is definitely a blank slate for your 8-bit digital art. Fortunately this character is simple enough to do on your own. In your cutting program take a circle and cut a slice of pie out of the circle with a triangle. If you’re cutting program is able to modify a circle, you can use that feature.

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Solve A Problem

Sometimes the ideas that you need to decorate on otherwise obscure theme, is to solve a problem.

One problem that I’m forever facing at birthday parties and other get togethers where lots of people are around is the abandoned beverage can or bottle. I was able to incorporate my character in one more place by laminating my yellow buddy and attaching elastic to make a Can Label.

There are a few benefits of making these for a character party.

One, all you need is a wet erase pen and names stay legible. And after the party you erase names and you’re ready to go to reuse these beverage labels again in the future.

All you have to do is hot glue your hair elastic on (preferably where the seam is, to prevent elastic breakage). With a silicone finger cot, you can flatten your hot glue without burning your fingers.

Two, and possibly the best benefit of all, is if you ever find yourself in a situation where you forgot a hair elastic or yours breaks, this guy is easy to spot in a purse or car floor and your hair needs are over!

This idea will work with any kind of party or event. Bridal shower, cut out a diamond. Baby shower, cut out a bottle.

I know all this information was quick to get through and exciting. I have two more ideas to share with you next week, in addition on tips on how to order a trade mark cake from a bakery who doesn’t make trade mark cakes. So be sure to come back next week for those and a funny story about how this was a birthday party that my boys will NEVER forget!

Can these designs save you time for your next party that you can’t buy decorations for? Get Gift Bag, Level Up, and Arcade Labels here.

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Finding Hardware

What are your feelings about sharing a garage/shop with someone?

I find it frustrating! I have my office/craft space organized with containers that are labeled with its contents. So even if I have containers down I know exactly what’s in it at a glance. And it’s super easy to put away and clean up.

The garage… I so wish, with every wish available I could send my family away for the weekend to organize it and find an official home for everything. And you can guess it. My problem is that my husband has a way he wants it and our two ways of organizing a work space for repairs, large projects, and keeping our hand tools are two very different ways of thinking. The funny part is that more times than not, it’s my husband who’s coming to me to find a specific tool. And yes, I keep my own stash of hammer, screw drivers, and allen wrenches that I zealously guard like my fabric scissors. If you touch them, you better put them back where they belong, LOL.

And if you’ve built anything for any length of time, you know how hard it is to find screws, nails, and washers specific for your project. God Bless my Husband, but he has that garage that we’ve all seen our grandfather’s have: screws in a coffee can, nails in jars… they may have a home but you have to dig for the style and size of hardware that you’re hunting for.

So for my husband’s birthday this year, I had my boys help me build my husband a caddy to separate all those pieces of hardware into an easy to access place that you can quickly grab without feeling like you’re sorting through that bag of unmatched socks. And Bonus for my bragging rights, is that I sourced everything for this caddy from our garage.

This caddy is perfect for a garage, craft room (of all types), office, or anywhere you need to space save and easily access anything. While you’ll see I labeled these specific for garage hardware, you can take this idea and run with it for crafting. Instead of nails, label it buttons. For a Teacher’s classroom, instead of tacks, label for push pins. Change bolts to paper clips. You can completely cater this project to anyone and their passion!

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Here is everything that I used:

  • Wood Box
  • Hammer
  • Tack Nails
  • Hand Sander
  • Black Wood Stain
  • Acrylic Paint with Brushes
  • Glass jars
  • Electric Drill with Drill Bit
  • Nuts and Bolts (small)
  • Size Appropriate Wrenches
  • Vinyl
  • Hardware Labels
  • Weeding Tools
  • Transfer Tape

The box that I used is a wooden box (about 12″ by 8″) that’s very similar to a cigar box with sliding lid. The lid was missing and one of the long sides was about to fall off. So I just removed the lid and nailed it to the top of the box.

One reason why I wanted to reshape the box was to have a little hidey shelf, in case my husband wanted it. You know the little objects you want to put in a safe place, but usually any counter space is a place prime for losing the thing you want to put in a safe place. So here’s a safe place. This box was rough, because it wasn’t meant to be decorative. I sanded the box on all sided before staining it. Yes, it maintained the rough look and feel. But I also fully appreciate the rustic aesthetic.

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While the stain dried, I cleaned out my fridge from all the jars of pickled items. I’m not a pickle eater. Nor am I a fan of pickled vegetables. BUT my husband loves them. And my fridge door is where I sourced this collection of empty jars for this project. (I was not about ready to take from my canning jars, although I’ve seen people use canning jars for their hardware holders.)

After the jars were washed and I found which ones were similar in size, I placed them on the underside of this caddy. The smallest jars I put on the shelf. And I went back and forth if I wanted the row of two or the row of three jars to be in front. I chose to put the set of three in the center just for symmetry. Plus, I knew the screws were going to go in the larger jars. And other than the nails, these are the most sought after hardware in my house. So I put those in the front to make it the most convenient to grab.

While the jars dried, from their scrubbing, I set the kiddos up for painting the caddy. They got a bit distracted and wanted to play instead of use tools, but they dropped everything to paint for their dad. And since my husband loves their art, I sacrificed my want to keep the wood stain, which was my favorite part. But I kept the underside stained so a piece of me was still there.

I’m showing you this step, because you can make your caddy however you favor it. You can keep it clean and upscale. Or you can make it very family orientated. There’s no wrong way to make this caddy.

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During this drying time, I cut out my labels with my cutting machine and assembled the layers ahead of time. That way when I was ready to apply theses labels, everything was lined up and ready for a simple peel and stick on the jars.

When the jars and the acrylic paint dried, I grabbed my drill, nuts, bolts, and jars. The first thing I did was drill a hole in the center of the lids. (If you are opting to use canning jars, make sure the lids you choose to use have already been used to preserve your food. That way you still have good canning lids ready to use in the future.)

After you are finished drilling, place your jars on the caddy in the exact places you want them. This pre-spacing is very important, especially when you have rows of jars next to each other like I have on the center and right side. I didn’t want the row to go over the edge, for esthetic reasons. If you have all your jars the same size and they second row comes over the edge, it’s okay. You may want to consider painting the jar lids to keep a uniform look. But the placement is also important because you will find that your jar lids are a smaller diameter than your jar sides. So by pre-spacing your lids, you will make sure you can screw your jars into your lids and not have an issue with the box sides or the shelf.

While you hold your lid in place, drill a hole through your caddy. When you hold is completed, you thread the bolt through the caddy and the lid and secure it with the nut. Hand tightening the nut and bolt will not be enough. You will want to tighten them with a wrench. This is most important if your bolts are short and if you want to be able to (un)screw your jar without holding onto the lid.

TROUBLE SHOOTING: If you find it difficult to keep your lid in the correct place for drilling, without moving, here are a couple of ideas you can use to assist in keeping your lids in place. Before drilling, use masking tape to tape your lid down to the caddy. Another option is to use a hot glue gun and place a circle of glue around the center of the lid. Be careful not to glue the center. You don’t want to drill through glue.

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Once your jar lids are all secure, you’re ready to label!

To get labels to stick with the most success, clean your jar with a cotton ball soaked in rubbing alcohol. This will remove any oils, dust, soap, or anything else that could cause your vinyl to not secure cleanly to the jar.

It is crafter’s choice how you want to add the labels. You can place your jars on a work surface and apply them off the caddy. Or you can apply the labels while on the caddy. I chose to have all the jars attached to the caddy because the only jars that were a perfect match were the three that put in the center row. They were from the same company of pickled vegetables. All my other jars were different sizes, but very similar in measurements. However, if I applied my labels off caddy and centered them on the jars, then none of my labels would have lined up. However, with my jars on caddy, I could get the labels to line up near perfectly and give the illusion that all my jars are matching. The exceptions of course are my small jars in the back (washers and nuts). But those are tiny jars hidden in the back and completely understandable why nuts would be larger than washers.

However, if you’re the personality type that is bothered by things not absolutely, perfectly matching, then please ignore my chaos here. Work to your strengths and show us the beauty of our symmetry and perfectly lined labels. I love watching your work. But if you’re the type that can’t get things to line up perfectly, know that there are ways of lining things up even when your jars are millimeters off in their heights.

Mounting the Hardware Caddy

I’m sorry I do not have a picture of this for you today. We’re in the process of reorganizing our garage and we’re not sure yet if we’re wall mounting or rack mounting this caddy. I will update this post when we get that project finished, so you can see how you might choose to mount your caddy.

The one thing that you need to be aware of is how gravity is going to work when you have the jars filled with their hardware.

Remember, I organized my jars so that my heaviest and largest jars are on one side. If I install with screw jars forward, all the weight and pull are going to be forward. So I will need to compensate. If I install the screw jars in the back, toward a wall, there will be very little compensated needed because the center of gravity will be near the wall and negligible.

For wall mounting, I would want to have my screw jars forward and screw the back side of the box into the wall, with a screw in each corner of that board. Preferably I would want to screw the caddy into a stud, because that will carry the weight beautifully. If it’s impossible, hit at least one stud (which I would center the caddy on and put in an additional set of two screws, in additional to the corner screws). If all I have available is drywall, I will definitely put in wall anchors and drill the screws into those. That way the weight of the hardware will not weaken the dry wall and pull out of the wall under too much weight.

If we choose to go with mounting the caddy on our rack, I will do that using conduit bracket mounts. I will use at least three brackets on the screw jars side. That way, the weight of the screws will pull straight down. there will also be a bracket or two on the back just for stability purposes for when the screw jars are removed, and the center of gravity changes.

Another option for rack mounting is to use a block of wood. The caddy (jars removed for installation) I would put on the bottom side of the wire shelf, with the block of wood on the top of the shelf. Then drilling a screw through the open space of the shelf into the block of wood. This option is not the one I would personally go with, because it doesn’t work with how we use our shelves in the garage. But I did want to mention it because the caddy can be screwed into an existing shelf that you might have.

While there are many ways of installing a caddy like this, I want to put out one more idea. If none of the above work for your situation, you can add wall mounts to the back of your caddy. There are all sorts of alligator grip picture hanging mounts that you can use. With a trip to your local hardware store, you can find picture mounts that can hold portraits up to 50 pounds. That is over kill for this project, but I want to mention that this is another option that could work for you.

Please send in pictures or let me know who make this for. As I mentioned, this example of a hardware caddy I made for my husband for his birthday. But this is perfect for a Father’s Day gift, Graduation gift, something for a teacher, crafter, or even just as another option for home organization.

Files used for this project:

You can find Hardware Labels here.

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On the Move

Photo by SHVETS production on Pexels.com

Some of the most fun conversations are the ones where I get to talk about some things that just don’t come up in a normal conversation. And there is one that I just can’t pass up!

From my personal Facebook account Lynn Z. wrote:

Congratulations❤️❤️❤️Great. Moving this week to new home and I need help!

Lynn, Congratulations on your new home!!!! I am so excited for you. There’s so many opportunities and possibilities with a new home. I can’t wait to see the pictures you share of your home once you’re settled.

It’s been a while since I’ve moved so any moving tips I might have are going to be outdated and everyone knows already. For example, box up your rooms individually and mark each room on all sides. That way you’re not hunting for the lable and the box gets dropped off in its appropriate place. An analytical (list detailed) person would take it a step further and write a number on each box. And in your new home place a post it, with a number written on it, so anyone helping you move can help put the right “Bedroom” box in the correct bedroom. Having a number on the box also allows the analytical person to make an exact detailed list of everything that is in each box so you don’t have to open a box to find that specific one thing you’re looking for.

Now this tip isn’t exactly a moving tip, but I know it sure is helpful in so many areas of life. Especially when you’ve lived a lifetime in a house, like I know Lynn has.

These small totes are amazing! They are in and out of stock all the time at my local dollar store. I always grabe a few more when I see them in stock. They are an 8 x 6 x 4 inch container that has been amazing for my small house. As you can see above, they are my work mule for my crafting space. (I have the wall mounted 4 sqauare cubbies. They stack beautifully and I ovbiously have enough room for two rows. It keeps my items organized and I can find my supplies in seconds when I’m creating.

But I also use these all around my house. You know how you’re hall/bathroom closet gets overrun with all those small items so you don’t have room for your bath towels? This was my solution. I have a container for back up toothbrushes and tooth paste, my boys’ bath soaps/bubbles/other items, hair cutting supplies/tools, and most importantly my first aid kit! Let’s face it, when you’ve lived in your home for a while (or live in a tiny house for a family my size), you don’t keep the packaging. So something like this makes it easier to organize your home without losing prime real estate. And in the case of moving, the ability to put in a box quick, stack, put straight on your new shelves is a God send.

Taking from the days of decorating large venues, it also helps organize your boxes. For Christmas we would decorate Casinos during the night. We would load up 2 or 3 box trucks and have a crew that was broken up into multiple teams. If you’ve been in a casino, you can appreciate how much work takes into transforming those buildings in just one night. We had measurements for each surface we hung garland on, clusters of ornaments, trees, wreaths…everything. Everything matched and we had to make sure each team had all their area’s specialized items.

On a house moving scale, I also recommend having a Box A and Box B method. If someone is downsizing or starting their new home in a minimalistic fashion, it helps to have your household broken down into must-haves and want-to-keep. You don’t want to spend your whole time in your new house fishing through boxes and deciding on the spot what you have room for and what you want to get rid of. Open your Box A/must-haves first. Place those items. If you have room for anything in your Box B/want-to-keep, then you can add those. However, we all know that when we move, we want our homes to look like home ASAP and not live in boxes. So that’s the benefit of Box A. You have that ready to put away the moment you enter that room to unpack. Box B can be left in a corner to get to in a couple of days, or when time allows. Meanwhile, your home is functional from day one.

Here is an example of my Box A and Box B method for my christmas tree decorations. My boys are 5, 4, and 3. So you better believe I have tree decorations that they are not allowed to touch. Box A has all my fragile items. Box B has all the items that if dropped or handled by boys, they’re not going to devestate me. This makes it so easy for me and my Christmas loving boys. I pull out my boxes and the boys can start right in on decorating the tree without me having to hover or them asking. They know that these are theirs and they have complete liberty to decorate the family tree.

It doesn’t matter if you’re moving, decorating a large venue, putting together a small party, it is definitely a time saver to plan everything ahead of time. Organize your work space to create the atmousphere of quick assembly. Have everything you need within reach and at easy disposal. When you’ve finished assembling your decorations, put them in travel containers/boxes that make sense for depositing in one place for a quick installation and efficient movement. Keep all your table decor together. You’re entryway items in their own container. This is especially important for Wedding DIYers. You depend on friends and family members to set up what you spent months putting together and planning. If everything is in the one box, they don’t have to hunt for anything. And it makes the clean up afterward just as quick. It goes back in that one container. Nothing gets left behind and everything is quick. And lets face it, everyone wants to party and not spend all night cleaning up. Beign efficient is the name of the game to allowing friends and family enjoy themselves and be the help you need to pull off that wedding of your dreams.

This box divider is my BEST friend. In fact I have a few variations of this. I forget where I bought this 11 x 6.5 x 1.5 inch plastic box. But I’ve very certain this was orginally packaged and sold for storing cake decorating supplies. At least that is what I kept my tips, connectors, and bags in when I took a cake decorating class before I met my husband and made my last move. As you can see, I found a new home for my cake decorating and put my household fix it items here. This is where I keep all my exta pieces from IKEA build it yourself items, my dry wall screws, nails, screws, washers, allen wrenches (before this I could never find those bad boys when I needed them) and left over components to my bed frame. This type of set up made my last big move (after marrying my husband) an absolute breeze. I didn’t lose my washers and screws for my canapy frame. They were all there and ready for assembling when we arrived. Plastic bags always get lost in a move. But a good storage container like this, keeps things organized and easier to find in a room that’s filling up with opened boxes and fill.

Compartmental organization like this also a must have for installing or striking an event. For weddings I cannot tell you how many saftey pins I have gone through. And there is always a need for three different sized pins. Having all your tools and equipment on hand and seperated for quick grabs is essential. It always feels like you never have enough time to get done all that you need to get done. So whatever leg up you can give yourself, the more you will thank yourself.

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