10 things to do with clipboards

I am addicted to making clipboards. I love them. I love choosing the papers, I love how quickly they come together and I love having them around. When I take them to craft shows to sell, people look at them, think they are cute and then say "what would I do with one?"
So, in no particular order, here are 10 of my favorite ways to use clipboards:
1. Use it to hold a gratitude list. This clipboard sits prominently in my kitchen and reminds me to be happy.

2. Use them for chore charts. I give one to each of my children and they cross off their job when it's done. I don't have to remember what I told them, and they know when they can go play.

3. Use them to hold papers. Duh. No really, Dana over at D'lea Designs uses them to hold her kids' school papers, go see her great idea here.

4. Use them to organize. This kind of goes with no. 3, but I use different clipboards to hold papers for different subjects, ideas and things I want kept together.

5. Use them for lists. I keep one on my calendar with a notepad, and keep my menu list for the week on it.

6. Keep invitations and upcoming appointments together. Again, on my calendar, I have one I use to hold wedding announcements, party invites and other dates to remember.

7. Use them to hold pictures. I give them to teenage nieces and add a binder clip to the bottom so they can hold two different pictures at the same time.
8. Use them for a perpetual calendar. I made this one as a demo for a super Saturday class I'll be teaching, but it will probably land on my calendar. Write the date and name of birthdays and anniversary's and any other date that stays the same every year. Again, use a binder clip on the bottom to hold dates of birthdays that aren't necessarily ones you want to have on the permanent calendar (like kid's teachers, etc.)

9. Use them to keep on track. I have one that I use to keep a checklist of all the jobs I need to get done every week/month around the house. It lets me see where I need to head next when I am cleaning.
10. Last, but not least (and certainly not only) I have had this idea rattling around in my head for a while. I am going to put this one in my bathroom and hang it on the wall so I can see it every day. I love the sentiment and look forward to starting my day with it's message. But, when another thought strikes my fancy, I can change it out. But it will look lovely (better than the post-its I usually use) while it's there.

So if I've inspired you to make and use some clipboards, feel free to head over to my tutorial and make some for yourself. (I find the small ones at the dollar store, and the large ones at Wal-mart, but you can also get the small ones at Office Depot).

Go get some terrific organization ideas here:

I have a calling in church where I teach music to all the children ages 4-11. I love my job and try to make it as fun and interesting as I can.

When I needed a game to play to encourage participation and to help us review the many songs we have been learning, I turned to Stanley the Singing Bee. Stanley loves music and he is especially attracted to these special "song" flowers. When the music is sung really well, Stanley lands on the special flowers- but OOPS, his stinger pops the center of the flower, and we have to find another "song" flower for him!

To make your own Stanley and "song" flower garden, you will need flower shapes, water balloon size balloons (filled with air, not water- although after blowing just a couple of these up, you'll wish you could just use water!), 12" dowels, a container, and Stanley.

After your flowers are made, cut a small hole in the center. Push the tail of the balloon through and tie it around the dowel. This will hold the flower on, but when the balloon pops, the whole thing falls apart- the kids LOVE that. I cut out leaves and numbered them then glued them to the sticks- the numbers correspond with a song or verse that we are reviewing.

I put some Styrofoam into a flower container and then pushed all the dowels into the foam to make the garden. (You could certainly get much fancier than this, but I have found that children don't care and I have other things to watch on tv/do.)

Stanley is a large circle cut out of cardboard and covered with yellow paper and strips of black. He has two large white circle wings and a smaller black circle head. When I glued on the yellow paper, I placed a needle between the cardboard and the paper where his "stinger" should be so he could pop the balloons.

Some rules we have had: Stanley is afraid of loud noises- so if it's not reverent, or the singers shout instead of sing, he'll go away and won't come back out. Stanley really loves the words, so he needs to hear all of the words or he'll get bored and won't land on the flower.

I usually have a teacher or leader play Stanley, so I can focus on leading- and we get a more impartial "judge" to decide if they sang well enough for him to land. The kids love this, I have saved all the pieces and we've already used it a couple of times this year.

Embellished notebooks

I love shopping for school supplies. It's a crazy obsession that I have and one that drives my husband crazy. How many unopened boxes of crayons does one woman need anyway?

But as much as I love school supplies, I can't justify spending $1.50 for a notebook, just because it has a design on the cover, when I can pick up a plain one for $.15. So I bought a ton of these notebooks, and told my daughter and niece they could decorate them themselves and that I'd bust out the Cricut and cut whatever they wanted for them. I thought they'd put some flowers, maybe some butterflies or something- WRONG. They wanted full on scenes, backdrops, main characters, supporting cast- the whole works. They amazed me with their creativity and absolutely certainty that this is what they wanted to create. Great work ladies!

I forgot to take pictures during the whole event (there were six other kiddos running around while we worked on these) but these are of my daughter's finished notebook.