New Links

I've added 3 new and I think major links to the reference page.

These links are to 3 of my personal notebooks in Evernote and are constantly updated with information I find around the web. I know I've gone on and on about how much I love Evernote and really I can't say enough. Those should show you the power of it. I have craft projects from sewing, to crochet, to knitting, along with felt food, and cupcakes. The projects notebook at this exact moment contains 137 notes. I'm sure by the end of the day their will be at least 5 more. Earlier today I clipped multiple tutorials from around the web on felt food. I've tried my best to ensure that all notes link back properly to their source.

Many of the project notes contain .pdfs or files that contain a pattern or the instructions. Please enjoy and continue to check back in with all the folders.

My Collections

• Personal Evernote Notebook of Patterns & Projects: This is a link to my personal Evernote notebook of my collected patterns and projects that I find over the web. Where possible I try to always link the source site. If it is a pdf then the site may be listed in the pdf itself.Updated Constantly
• Personal Evernote Notebook of Crafting Techniques: This is a link to my personal Evernote notebook containing tips and techniques I want to remember and find useful.Updated Constantly
• Personal Evernote Notebook of Creative Food: This is a link to my personal Evernote notebook containing clips to creative food. Mostly it is cupcake, cake and cookie decorating. Updated Constantly

I have a zillion different notebooks including one on recipes. In time I may share that one to the public also but at the moment I'm still trying to collect and compile it to be a good representation of what I have. For a long time I downloaded all my recipes as .pdfs to my computer and after awhile that did not lend well to good sorting. The technique was good for archiving everything  but one of the powers of Evernote is the ability to tag every note and search by tags or just words within a note.

I've thought of doing link round ups and posting some of these hear to the blog directly but I'm unsure as to what everyone wants to see. Are their any types of projects that someone is most interested in? If so I'll keep an eye out among my blog roll and post them as they come through.

A creative use for that lonely sock

 

So I found this on Lifehacker this morning and thought I'd share it with everyone. We all have that lonely sock or multiple lonely socks that have lost their mates. Well here is a useful way to put them to use. My office desk for sure could use one.

 

 

Conquer Your Cable Clutter with an Extra Sock

There is an alternate universe that claims our socks after we put them in the drier, leaving us with an orphaned member of the pair. What can you do with that extra sock? Home and lifestyle blog Real Simple suggests you use it as a cable organizer.

All you need to do is cut off the toe at the end of the sock to essentially create a fabric tube that can keep all your cables together while still giving them a little breathing room. To be extra safe, just keep the sock away from any electrical outlets or the base of the plugs.

2 Clever Ways to Organize Your Cords | Real Simple

Re-Organizing Mayhem

So remember awhile back when I started my Organizational series? I wrote one on Evernote and Part 1 of a group on Google products. Well I've been diligently trying to work on the the next one on Google Calendar but I use it for so much it's pretty complicated because I use it for a lot. Insert curve ball though in that Evernote just did a major update to 4.4 and it looks like I'm going to adjust a bit how I organize my meal planning. There has always been a kink in my process in that I have always desired a place to have a single list of our favorite recipes to easily reference. Well I've figured it out by combining my use of Evernote with Google Calendar.

I encourage anyone who is constantly bookmarking sites for inspiration in any manner but would love to add notes on top of it then Evernote is the greatest your best friend. I have recently started using it to help organize things in my office and it's streamlining things so well. No more trying to find that single note file I saved on how to do something, now it's at my finger tips, literally, since it have it both on my Android Smartphone and my Nook turned Android Tablet. (oh yah that's another post idea!) So to add to my too do list, my Google Calendar blog post, my Evernote part 2 post and turning my Nook into a full Android tablet.

I know I haven't sewn or made anything in a bit, though I did make my android a case but I really don't like it much. At least not enough to show it off. Maybe I'll try it again and show it off. I've been all about technology recently either regarding the Android, Evernote or searching out new blogs. If you go over to Treegold & Beegold I've added a Blog bundle of all the awesome Pagan blogs I've been reading recently. It's a pretty decently length list and I'll hopefully keep adding to it.

Is there any interest in my discussing Android apps I find useful for organizing crafts & family also? I'm forever hunting out new ones and trying them out. I don't know how many people have smart phones now and are specifically Android ones (though some of the bigger apps are on multiple platforms). If you're interested in that idea either leave a comment or just click the "interesting" box.

Okay well I'm off to make some notes and update my to do list.

Meal Planning Fail

Technorati Tags: cooking,organization,menuplanning

So I fell off the meal planning wagon. After our vacation to Florida Pagan Gathering I got completely screwed up. We came back and I immediately needed to grocery shop for a weeks groceries with no meals figured out. I also had to go back to work immediately so I didn't really have to free time to figure it out either. Well yes that was a few weeks ago and I still haven't gotten the full swing back.

This is horrible because without knowing what to cook our food bill went up immediately. I mean the difference was $40 when I bought things "just encase" I mean it isn't like the food went bad it's in the pantry or freezer still to be eaten but we didn't need to buy it. If I don't get my act together quick though we're going to repeat this all over again. I go shopping again this weekend and only have a handful of meals down on the calendar.

I think part of the problem is that I'm bored with I've been cooking. I need to change things up a bit. It can't be too much though or I know I'll feel overwhelmed. I picked up the Sneaky Chef Cookbooks because Lil 'R won't eat a vegetable save his life right now. I've already started adding a puree of sweet potatoes and carrots to our mac 'n cheese which he doesn't notice but I need to add more and more green vegetables at that. It has this recipe for egg and bacon breakfast bars that I want to make within the next few days.

Anyone have any favorite recipes that they cook that can be done either in the crockpot or within 30 minutes at night? I suck at making things ahead of time though I really wish that wasn't the case. If I could do that I know we'd be eating a thousand times better.

Organizing My World Via Google: Part 1 Setting up a Google Account and a brief description of the programs available.

I'm always hearing other moms swap how they manage organizing all the little details of their life such as appointments, meal planning etc. I've come up with a method that works great for my family and this is organizing via Google.

The first thing to explain is your Google account is based off of a Gmail address. If you already have a Gmail account then you're one step ahead here if not just sign up for one for free. Now that you've made an account you have access to all of Goggles tools and everything will be saved for you. Anything you do can be accessed from any location. Also if you've fully drunk the Google Kool-aid like me you have Android phone (which is Google's mobile OS system) so everything syncs nicely. Once you have a Gmail address not only can you use it for e-mail but you can then use it as your login for anything Google. The chief programs I use are: Calendar, Reader, Docs, Blogger, Bookmarks, and Voice. Youtube and Picasa are also owned by Google and can be linked to your same Gmail account but we won't be going into those.

The biggest power of using Google items is the ability to work on something on one computer and access it without the use of an external storage device anywhere I want. I function primarily in two different locations in my life, home and work, but I need access to organizational tools in both these places. I did this for a few years and recently added in a third, my Android cell phone.

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Google Calendar is exactly what it sounds like, it's a calendar but it has some extra functionality such as being able to make different calendars, share calendars, add items from e-mails, have a Task list, and import calendars from other sources.

Google Reader is an RSS Feed reader. It's where I read all my regular blogs and find some of the ideas for the stuff I create or learn new skills.

Google Docs is a simplified online Microsoft Office that allows sharing of spreadsheets, documents, forms, presentations across computers. It can also be used to view Microsoft or Openoffice Documents if you have neither program. It can even just be a storage place for other file types. You may not be able to view them but you can upload them for storage.

Blogger is the blog program I run this blog on so I don't think is needs much more explanation.

Google Bookmarks is my bookmarking program. I save everything based on tags and can access them from anywhere. No more worry about loosing bookmarks because they aren't local.

Google Voice is phone service where you can get a free phone number and make calls directly from your computer or even a cell phone if it has a data plan. I use mine for the free text messaging so I don't need a text plan on my cell phone and as a 2nd phone number. Currently that has little use but as I get closer to launching my store front it will have a purpose.

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That about covers the basics, await part 2 for more details on how to use each to organize for a typical family.

Going Mobile

I'm finding that I am entirely in love with living a mobile computing life. I knew I would though and I resisted updating entirely because of the cost of the phones and the monthly fees. I'm working on a longer post about how I'm integrating google into my organizing everything between my 3 primary computing devices, my office computer, my home desktop and my cell phone. I've been working using a portable system for quite awhile now but it relied on using my portable harddrive and the use of portable apps. I'm still doing this because not everything is easier mobile. Such as to really do a good blog post I prefer to do it on a computer and not my phone. The phone is great for the quick picture post but not for anything really longer.

I am learning that some of my previous systems are now useless. One such case is I spent a lot of time downloading and organizing all my recipes onto my harddrive and then hyperlinked them to a spreadsheet. I was going to use the spreadsheet to rate the recipes and make notes but in the end it just turned into a list. Now with my mobile phone I've gone back to using bookmarks so that I can access the recipe from my phone easily. I did try putting all the files on my phone but it is easier to read webpages then it is to read pdfs.

I'm soon going to be at the point where if I were to lose my phone I'd lose my entire life. Thank you google for backing it all up.

Work is kicking my butt this week but I promise to work on that fully flushed out, including screenshots of my phone to have it out by early next week.

Tech Tools I Use: Evernote

I want to start a series that I'll write on occasionally about technology I use to not only write to this blog but also as a tool to help with my crafting. I was raised a complete geek and have been using computers from a very early age. My mother was a self taught graphic designer starting in the early 1990s and let me play around with many programs. I'm also a bit Obsessive about finding the best programs to keep myself organized.

This time I wanted to mention Evernote. This is a great program that can be used to piece together information from multiple sources easily. I use it mostly for grouping ideas.

First here is the front of Evernote that you'll see when you first come to it. The greatest thing with it now that I have a smartphone is that I can access my entries at home where I have Evernote downloaded, from my phone where I have the app or at work where I go through the web. Evernote is free to a point. There if you have the paid subscription service then you can upload as much as you want per month, if not there is a monthly maximum. I have yet to reach that monthly amount though so at the moment I'm still on the free service.

Your notes are sorted both by notebooks and by tags. On the left you can see my notebooks and in the center some of my notes I have within one. This is my hodpodge notebook, as you can see it contains recipes, decorating ideas, and clips from webpages.

Here I am creating/editing the entry on making this post. It contains all of the normal formatting options though really I wish they were a bit more user friendly. I often have to fight with it if I want something pretty. Really though I've learned to just live with it being a bit messy and think of it as part of the creative process. You can also attach files to a note which is great for .pdf patterns or photos from the computer.

Once I've collected everything I need then it's time to implement the project in whatever way is appropriate. If it's a blog post well then I turn to writing it. And voila, from idea to published.

It'd be great to here how everyone else composes there ideas be it on a scratch pad by the fridge, or in a word document. So tell me what you do in the comments section.