How to get rid of ants, naturally!

Hello Friends! I am so sorry that I am such a slacker in this whole blogging department. It seems like my life has been super-duper crazy lately and I don't have time for doing anything anymore. I have also been in a battle for my household against a very small enemy. The little, but strong ant. Seriously, it has been a battle to get rid of them. In the beginning of the summer we even resorted to *gasp* chemicals to get rid of them. That's how bad they were. The chemicals really didn't help as much as we would have liked though. So, I decided to try to do things all naturally. I would be lying if I said its so easy to do and quick, because its not. It's hard, very time consuming, and it doesn't work overnight (or over a week even). I did get rid of the little scoundrels for most of the summer, but I started to slack and we have them again. You are not going to like the first thing I say to get rid of ants. It is the easiest, yet the hardest, thing to do. Keep food off the floor and keep things clean. It is really hard to do, but that is really the first step. I thought I would show you what else I am doing now to battle these little invaders!

I will start with the newest thing I am doing. I made a "spider-b-gone" spray because spiders are another thing that is crazy in this household! It is amazing at not only killing spiders but keeping them out since they hate the smell. Want to know how I made it? Peppermint essential oil! They hate the smell of peppermint and when I sprayed it on my ants, well they all died! Winning! This is the recipe for that:

Spray bottle

15 drops Young Living Peppermint Essential Oil

Tablespoon natural dish detergent (I used lavender mint by Seventh Generation)

Water

Yep, that's the only ingredients you need. You fill it up the spray bottle almost to the neck, my spray bottle went up to 24oz so I filled it up to there.

After you put water in it then you put in the tablespoon of dish detergent and the drops of peppermint essential oil. You swish it around gently and its ready to kill some ants! A lot of people say this deters ants but I personally haven't seen that! You can also add more peppermint essential oil if 15 isn't enough.

Second thing I do is make a mix of half and half baking soda and powdered sugar. You search for where they come in and you put the mixture by them. I found out that I have cracks where they come in. 

I fill them right up with the mixture. They eat it because of the powered sugar and they bring it back to the colony. The baking soda inside of the mixture kills them and the whole colony when they bring it back! Perfect! Also a huge thing to help out would be to take some caulking and fill up any cracks you see them coming in through. 

The hardest part is not killing them. when you see them eating the sugar. They need to take that back to the colony to kill them all. If you see them away from where it is well, that's when I kill them! I spray the "spider-b-gone" right on them and it kills them all right away. Here is a picture of a massive ant killing, thanks to "spider-b-gone":

The first time I got rid of them, it took a couple weeks. I am in the middle of doing it again, but its been hard with the kiddos around! I would recommend switching out the powder/baking soda mixture every other day and making sure food stays off the floors. Also actively killing whatever ants are not eating the mixture. Also if you see the ants are not taking a liking to the dry mixture, my mom swears by putting water in hers. She says that makes all the difference. I will do it every now and again to switch it up and I put the wet mixture in bottle caps. Here is what that looks like:

This mix of things seems to be helping me get rid of my problem! If you are on the loosing side of the battle with ants and want an all natural alternative, I suggest you try it out!

Want to learn more about essential oils? Click here.

Website to try! Crowdtap!

Hello Friends! I have had a busy couple of weeks so sorry I wasn't able to post in a while. We had my mother and brother in law to visit. We decided to do family portraits while they were out and they turned out awesome! We have a surgery date for our little Eli. Its January 13th, so we still have a little while to wait for it. Any prayers are greatly appreciated and we have truly felt all the prayers that people have been praying for our little man. He is doing awesome! I have also decided to become a Lemon Dropper with Young Living Oils! This is a huge step for me but I love the oils so much that I decided to at least try to make a business out of it. Now, on to my blog post.

I have been doing a website called Crowdtap for quite a while now. When I first started I was quite confused on how it worked. I did a month of activities on it and then just stopped doing them. I left my account in good standing but I didn't do any activities for a while. I did that until a couple months before I was due with Eli. I decided to give it another try and I am so glad that I did! First of all let me tell you how it works:

Crowdtap is a website in which it brings companies and consumers together and uses a lot of social networks to not only promote brands but get people talking about how they can be improved and why or why they don't buy the brand. A lot of top brands are on this site like; Ikea, McCormick, Post, Cottonelle, Kellogg's, Capri Sun, and much more!

There are many ways that the brands connect with little ol' consumers like us! Here is what a brands page looks like:

On this brand page you can see QUICKHITS. They are multiple choice questions that the companies page asks consumers. They are straight forward like the beer question in the above pic or they have another one where you have to view content then be asked a question like the one above. Here is what that one looks like:

Another way to interact with a company is the Challenges and Missions, these also include Sample Shares and Moderated Discussions! In the first pic I showed you they have a text challenge. It's a lot like writing out an essay. They have guidelines that you have to follow then other Crowdtappers get to judge if your response matches the guidelines and you can earn stars (which I will explain later.) Picture works a lot the same way but you have to take a picture of what they ask you too and then post it with a short response to the picture. You still get judged by other Crowdtappers and you can still earn stars for excellent responses. 

Next is Missions. I have just started to do these. On missions they have multiple things that you have to do like; text challenges, taking polls,  photo challenges, maybe posting stuff to your fb wall, etc. When you do that you have a chance to win tickets to things, gift cards, and much more. Here is what that looks like:

I just also got invited to do some Sample Shares in which then send you free product; which sometimes they send just samples to share with your friends or they send you a full sized product. What you do is try out the product then write a report about what you think about it. I love that they ask you to be 100% honest with your reports or anything that you do on this site and you don't get marked down for saying what you don't like. They want you to be honest with everything that you do on this site so the companies can improve. They send you an invite for the Sample Shares and after you accept the invitation and answer the questions they pick out lucky people to send the free products to. I just got approved for Listerine Naturals (which I got in the mail yesterday) and Skintimate. 

Another awesome thing (and I personally think its fun to do) is participate in Moderated Discussions. That's where a product asks a few questions and you do a response to the questions. Sometimes they have you answer questions to be approved for the discussions. After you are approved and do a response you can comment on others responses and in the end if you do a great job they give top awards out and stars. Its pretty awesome and straight forward.

I think that doing this stuff is awesome. I will show you my main screen. I have been really invested into my business and being a SAHM is not easy so I haven't been able to be on here as much as I like to so I have a lot to do! Here it is:

I love that you can support a Charity just by doing activities! How they explain it is you choose your Charity and complete your activities like usual. There are different charities to choose from and at the end of the month the charity that has the members earn the most points in earns a $1,000 donation from Crowdtap! 

Now your wondering what those points are for huh? When you complete activities you earn a points. Those points earn you prize entries. For every 100 points you get one prize entry and if you earn stars and top awards it gets you even more points. If you do awesome and get a lot of points they put you into the top 100 finishes. They give you even more points when you are a top 100 finish. 

Now I know what your thinking, "I just get prize entries and there is a chance I wont get a prize. I more than likely wont get a prize ever so why do this?" I am telling you for one I find it fun! Companies really take what you say to heart! We told Capri Sun that they should put in clear bottoms to their pouches and now they have clear bottoms! It's awesome to be able to influence your favorite brands and make them even better! Also you do win a lot! The first month I did it I didn't win anything so I think that's why I went on a hiatus. When I got back into it I the first month I still didn't get anything but I stuck it out and the next month I got a $5 gift card to Amazon! The next month I got $10 to Amazon and I keep on getting at least one gift card a month, which I use to buy my coconut oil and books! I just bought some coconut oil and now I am saving up to get some books to help me out with my oils. You can buy almost anything from Amazon I love to be able to get these gift cards! 

If you find yourself with a lot of downtime and want to influence some companies then I highly suggest Crowdtap! It is so much fun and winning some awesome things helps out a lot too! Seriously y'all try it out!

*The statements made in this blog are my personal experience and my own opinions. They do not represent the experiences of everyone and the opinions of the company. 

All Natural Carpet Deodorizer

Hello Friends! This week/weekend we are having my brother and mother-in-law come to visit us! We are super excited that they are able to make it and my brother-in-law drove in last night. He made it safe and sound and my husband was so excited to have his brother here! I told my husband next year we are visiting him in Tennessee! We have been cleaning and preparing our house for them to visit all week!

If you look at my post before this we got a new puppy! She is so cute but not quite potty trained so we are working on that! Our living room smelled like pee. It was pretty bad and I knew I had to get it taken care of before they got here! To be fair it wasn't all from the dog. We are trying to potty train Emelia and instead of going on the potty she liked to stand up and pee on the floor. So, it wasn't all from the puppy.

I am trying to do things as naturally as possible so I decided to take the leap and buy an essential oil kit to use in our home to try to keep our family healthy. I wasn't expecting it to come in before they came in but it did! After trying to clean our carpet with any soap I can find and vinegar I was excited to get the kit in! When I bought my kit I was added to this thing called the Lemon Aid Library on Facebook. On there I could look up the ways other people are using the oils and ask questions. I found the best way to use the oils on there for floor cleaning/deodorizing.

First let me tell you about the oils I used:

Lemon- Is a very useful oil. Can be used for allergies, weight-loss, and cleaning. It has antiseptic-like qualities to it. Can and will eat through plastic, just like any other citrus oil. 

Thieves- Is a blended oil. It has cloves, lemon, cinnamon bark, eucalyptus, and rosemary oils in it. Great for cleaning and works awesome as a antibacterial cleaner. Diffuse it when your sick to rid the air or bacteria and I use it when I brush my teeth. 

Purification- Is another blended oil. It has citronella, lemongrass, rosemary, melaleuca (tea-tree oil), lavadin, and myrtle oils in it. This also is an antiseptic and is wonderful with odors. Diffuse it to rid the air of odors or you can make a air-freshening spray. I will probably post the air-freshening spray sometime or later. It has a ton of things you can use it for! 

There you have it! Those are the big three I am using for cleaning. First thing I wanted to do is clean my floors really well. I have one of those FANTASTIC shark cleaning mops. We got it for a wedding present and I use it all the time. Trust me its a good investment and its all natural because it only uses water to make steam. It has a carpet glider so first I was going to use that to steam clean the carpets. I was racking my brain on how to figure out to use the oils to help me with the steam cleaning too. You cannot put oil into the water compartment so I had to figure out a different way. I decided to put it right on the cleaning pad and use it that way.  I only put one drop of each on the pad. It worked awesome!

It really didn't take too long to sanitize the floors and I went over where I know there was pee a couple times. After that I was able to put my nose to the floor and it smelled good. I still wanted to make a deodorizing powder to add a little extra odor absorbing power. These are the ingredients I used:

First I took a plain ol' spaghetti jar. I didn't want to go out the the store to buy a shaker so I thought I would make my own:

See, told you. Also don't mind the mess in the background. So, after I got the spaghetti jar and made sure it was super cleaned out I got a hammer and nail and poked holes in the top of the jar. I did 7 holes and made sure to space them out well. 

You can make your holes on top any size you want. I choose to make them a little bit bigger so that it was easy to sprinkle it out. I put my nail right on top and hammered it in. It was really easy to do. After I got my jar made I got out my baking soda and my oils. I only used one drop of each again and I put a half cup of baking soda in the jar. If you want more of a scent or need more deodorizing power you can put more in there. I had another spaghetti jar with an lid without holes in it and used that to shake it all together. I would think if you put tape over the holes it would be as good. I would make it as you need it, I am not sure how good the oils will stay in the jar since it has holes and its clear. That was enough to do my whole living room. This was what it looked like in my jar:

After it was all mixed I sprinkled it onto the carpet. I paid special attention to the places where I know that there was urine. I let it sit for a while, I would say a half hour. I went and cleaned my shower then when I was done I vacuumed it up. There was absolutely no urine smells! My hubby is getting annoyed with all my oils talk, he is quite the skeptic about these things. So, when he got home I told him to smell the carpet. Of course he said "No I am not sniffing the carpet." He did say along the lines of "I could tell a difference because it doesn't smell like pee in here." I will take it! 

There you have it. If you have horrible smells in your carpet here is something you can try to get rid of them! I used Young Living oils for this. I like them because they are the highest grade oils and can even be ingested! I got the starter kit for them which came with a bunch of stuff. I got samples, 10 everyday oils, one Stress Away oil, a diffuser for them, and much more! Plus now I can buy my oils at wholesale prices instead of paying full retail value. You also have the option to sell them but you are not forced to if you don't want to.If you want to learn more about essential oils click here. Now, go try it out!

Coconut Oil Pulling?

Hello friends! This week was crazy! My hubby went on a business trip so I was at home with 3 crazy kids and 1 crazy puppy. I really don't know how I survived! I do have a funny story though. So I just got done bathing Emelia and I stuck her next to Eli. Eli had his had into a little fist and Emelia bumped his fist with hers and said "fist bump." Seriously, that was the coolest thing ever lol. I feel like my husband and I are winning at parenting thing after that lol.

So anyways, onto my post. Have you heard of this thing called oil pulling? Its when you take a kind of oil and swish it around in your mouth for a while then spit it out. I have seen people using olive oil, vegetable oil, sesame oil, and coconut oil. I'm sure there are more oils out there to use also. I decided to try it and use coconut oil.

Now there are a lot of people out there that says it pretty much performs miracles. People in blogs say that it whitens teeth, gets rid of cavities, helps with sensitivity, helps out your whole body as a detox, and is great for your oral health. I saw all those things and had some gift cards to Amazon so I thought why not try it! The internet says that sesame oil is the best to use but I have heard great things about coconut oil and you can use it for multiple things.

My research told me that there are two type of coconut oil. There is refined which is made from coconut meat that has been dried. It doesn't have the coconut flavor that an unrefined type of coconut oil would have. That is because it has been bleached, treated to reduce bacteria, and cooked at a high heat to extract the smell and flavor of the coconut. Unrefined (virgin coconut oil is what it can be referred to) means that it has the smell and flavor of the coconut. It hasn't been treated or bleached in any way and most people say this is the type of oil to choose. So I followed what I read and bought Nutiva coconut oil from Amazon.

After reading a whole bunch of blog post about coconut oil pulling I was quite scared. A lot of them said it was a horrible experience and that they puked because of it! I have puked enough from having morning sickness from being pregnant, it is really not fun. I think I have puked enough to last a lifetime! I tried it anyways because that's what I do and all I could think is these people are wimps! I didn't puke and my husband loved how I didn't talk for 20 minutes each morning!

If you want to try this crazy trend and be a follower like me I will be glad to share with you how to do it! First thing in the morning you take a tablespoon of the coconut oil and plop it right into your mouth! I read not to eat before you do it. I ate a couple times and was just fine but I tried not to let my hunger control me!

That is what you would call my "stank face." After I plopped that big glob into my mouth I set the timer for 20 minutes on my stove. Yes you put it in your mouth for 20 minutes! I got the kids around for breakfast and made hubby's lunch while merrily swishing away. You don't want to swish vigorously, you mostly want to pull it though your teeth and swish gently. Trust me, if you do swish vigorously your jaw hurts a lot afterward! This is me swishing:

Nothing makes you feel more vain than having to take pictures of yourself! I am not a selfie type of girl so this was awkward for me! At about 15 minutes into swishing the amount of liquid inside your mouth doubles. Its hard to keep it all in. I do the ladylike thing, and spit a little bit of it out. At 20 minutes you spit it into your trash. You don't want to spit it in the sink because it can clog drains. It has a white milky look to it. That's a good thing! Then I swish my mouth out with salt water and brush my teeth. I will tell you that my teeth feel so smooth afterwards! I love the feeling it gives my teeth. It also makes my lips really smooth and soft. Bonus! Plus, if you have a kernel of popcorn stuck into you teeth, do a little oil pulling. It will pop that sucker right out!

 Now my cavities (yes, sadly I have a couple cavities) are still there. It didn't even lessen them. Oh well, I guess a trip to the dentist is in order. Also it might have decreased my sensitivity to things a little bit but I am still pretty sensitive to hot and cold. My teeth did look a shade or two whiter after a couple weeks of doing it. It wasn't a whole lot of difference though. It might still work for you guys though. I would still give it a try! Plus coconut oil is good for a lot of awesome things. Hair masks, lotions, good to eat, sunscreen, you name it. I will be blogging about some of the recipes I use it in when I perfect them a little! So all in all I would do this again and again. Plus coconut oil is now high on my shopping list! We are going to end it with my son looking for a fist bump! Right on!

*After I posed this and shared it to my facebook one of my friends let me know that they found out they were allergic to coconut oil. What I would suggest if your not much of a coconut eater then only take a little bit at first and swish it around for a couple minutes. Then after you spit that out wait about a half hour. Usually allergic reactions happen quickly but take the 30 to be safe. If no reaction your good! She said her mouth got really itchy and it was awful. 

How I Cleaned My Type S Couch!

Hello friends! We have had a good first week with our new puppy. My 6 year old decided to name her Rosie. She is such a cute pup. I wanted to show you what she looked like at her first day home:

Isn't she cute? Okay, I just had to show her off for a second. Now on to what you would actually want to read about! My couch is called a type S couch for cleaning. That means it needs to be cleaned with a "water-free" solvent or it needs to be professionally dry cleaned. Any water on it will cause staining. Believe me, I learned that the hard way! There are four different codes when it comes to cleaning. You can find these on the pamphlet that comes with any new couch or you can look at the bottom of the couch and there is usually a tag or a sticker that tells you what cleaning type your couch is. A W type means that you can use water on the couch or use a detergent that is water based. An X type means you have to hire a professional to clean it and you can only do vacuuming on the surface. An O type means that it should be washed in cold water and last but not least is my couches type S that I already told you about. 

I had a difficult time trying to figure out what to clean my couch with. Before I realized what type of couch mine was I cleaned it with water. That was a huge mistake! It ended up leaving a lot of stains in my couch that I couldn't get out. I didn't want to hire a professional cleaner or use store bought solvents that I don't even know what half the ingredients in them are! I want something that will be safe for my kids to play on. This is what my couch looked like:

Yeah that is gross. With three kids and me not knowing what the heck to clean my couch with it got gross fast. So, I took to the internet to try to figure out what to clean my couch with. Some of the suggestions were weird. One person suggested lighter fluid? Uhm, no thank you! Most suggested dry cleaning solvent or hiring a professional. That would be nice if I had the money to do that and if they had natural type of cleaners available that would clean my couch. Finally I saw one person that said you could use rubbing alcohol and since I already do cleaning with that I figured I would give it a try! 

The first thing I did was find a spray bottle. I had an empty Lysol cleaner bottle so I cleaned that out real well and let it dry out well also. I had a bottle of 70% Isopropyl alcohol so I put that straight into the bottle. I sprayed that right onto the couch. I had nothing to lose but if you only have a little spot to treat then I suggest spraying it on a spot that is well hidden and rub it with the towel to see if it leaves a mark. Anyways, after I sprayed it right on my couch I used my white towel and started to clean. I rubbed it in circular motions and put a little work into it! 

I made sure to cover the whole cushion and really scrubbed the parts that had the stains. Here is what my towel looked like after:

That was only one spot on the towel. By the time I was done there were spots like that all over. My couch was dirty! After I scrubbed real well I let it air dry. Alcohol when is wet smells real strong for a bit until it dries. My 6 year old was not too impressed at the smell, but it didn't bother me much. Studying to be a Medical Assistant makes you immune to the smell of rubbing alcohol. When its dry you don't even smell it though. Alcohol can make the fabric a little crunchy. I had to vacuum my couch anyways so I used my upholstery attachment an went over the couch with it. I made sure to vacuum it real well. Now its time for the before and after! 

I would be lying if I said that my couch was perfect and there was no stains left. Where I tried to clean with water still has a stain and a couple more didn't come out. As you can see though, a lot of the stains and dirt did come out. I was pretty impressed. I had to put a blanket on my couch cushions to cover up the stains before and now I am comfortable not having the blanket on. Rubbing alcohol is fairly inexpensive and I know the ingredients that are in it. If you have a dirty couch that you don't know how to clean then try this out! Then, let me know how you like it! 

DIY Super Weed Killer

Hello friends! I have had such a busy week! My hubby wasn't feeling too good so we had to take him to the docs. We still don't know whats going on so please pray for him! Also we decided to get a puppy! We are picking her up tomorrow so no pics today! Sorry, but next blog post I will have to add one! On the plus side our little Eli is doing great! So thanks for your prayers there and if you can continue to pray for our little guy I would appreciate it!

Now, on to the post. I have a ton of weeds popping up in-between the cracks in our driveway. It has been driving me crazy! I decided to do something about it! I didn't want to use the harmful chemicals found in weed killer so I decided to make my own. I have seen online that vinegar works wonders on weeds so I decided to look online to see what else works awesome. That led me to the formula I used to make my DIY Super Weed Killer. It took some figuring out and playing with different ingredients but I think I have something that works wonders!

These are the ingredients that I used for my weed killer. Very simple things and most we have at home! So here is the instructions:

DIY Super Weed Killer!

• Dawn Dish Soap
• Whole Cloves
• Iodized Salt
• White Distilled Vinegar
• Spray bottle
• Water

1. The first thing I did was take the cloves and a tiny bit of water. I took about 15 cloves. I added just enough water to cover them in a small pot and boil it to extract the clove. Also if you do essential oils (I am going to start soon!) there is a clove oil and you could use a couple drops of that and ignore having to boil it. 
2. Put the cloves and the water in the bottom of the spray bottle. If you look at my the above picture you will see how much water you should have. 
3. Put 1 1/2 tablespoons of salt in the bottle and swirl to stir. 
4. Put 2 tablespoons of dawn dish soap in the bottle and continue to swirl to stir. 
5. Last is to add the vinegar to fill the bottle. I filled up my bottle to the midpoint of the top neck.
6. Go outside and spray on weeds to saturate. 

That's all I did and let me tell you, I have some dead weeds. I will show you a pic in a sec but before I wanted to tell you some tips I found. First is if you spray it and the sun is shining on the weeds it actually kills it faster. Also you want to keep on spraying even after the weed looks dead because you want to kill the whole root. I would think it would take several days. I have sprayed mine twice today and will continue to spray for about a week. I think this works because it drys out the weed. I am not a chemist or any type of scientist so I have no clue if that is true or not but that's just what I think. Now, here is a before and after picture:

That was just after two sprays! I sprayed once at around 9 this morning and then again at about 1 this afternoon. I made sure to saturate the leaves quite well and made sure to get the middle of the weeds too. The difference is astounding! I also sprayed on a patch of weeds by our garage. I only sprayed a circle inside just so you could see the difference. Here that is:

I only sprayed that once just because I wanted you to see how well it worked. It was all green in the middle where that brown section is. I like this because your not using harmful chemicals. My 1 1/2 year old daughter was right by me the whole time and I even got some on her and it did no harm to her. You could spray this right on your skin and not have to worry about the horrible chemicals. I wouldn't, but you could unless your allergic to one of the ingredients. I should say that this will kill any plant. I wouldn't use it on a place where flowers are or get any on your plants that you want. There you have it, something new for you to try! Try it out and tell me how much you love it and how well it works for you!!!

DIY Activity Board!

Hello friends! I am super proud of myself and I cannot wait to show you what I made today! On Friday we went over to my best friends father and step-mothers house. They have a little girl that is the same age as Emelia (almost 2) and she is such a smart little girl! I was shown to her room to change both my little ones diapers and also to use their rocker when I needed to feed Eli. I saw that they had one of those magnetic boards and on it shown flash cards to help Audrey (best friends little sister) learn. I thought oh my gosh that is such a great idea! Also a friend of mine named Hope has a blog and on it she put up a post about a responsibility chart. Here is the link to that: A Responsibility Chart for Toddlers/Preschoolers.

So I decided to put them together and make an activity board for my kiddos. I had an old cookie sheet that was just in my craft tote so I decided to use that since it is magnetic and make my own! Here is what I used/am going to use for my activity board:

I have a ton of newspapers since I am a beginning coupon-er so I decided to recycle that for our activity board. I decided to take the newspaper and rip it up to fit on the cookie sheet and I started to take just regular Elmer's glue and glue it on. At first I did it the hard way and watered down the glue, applied it to the cookie sheet with a foam brush, put the paper on, made sure it was bubble-free, then I put more watered down glue on top. I did that until it was done and I let it dry. I found out when it dried the paper just came off so I decided to just put plain ol' glue on the sheet, use the brush to make a good layer across the cookie sheet, and then re-applied the paper. That worked out a lot better and the paper stuck. So here is what that process looked like:

When I had the layer of newspaper down I printed off the kids name on a piece of paper and applied that. After I did that I had to find a way to hang it up. I looked through my craft tote and of course I didn't have any ribbon or any twine in there! So after thinking a little I decided to roll up some newspaper and use that. I took a sheet of newspaper and split it in half. Like so:

Then after that I rolled up each of the half and in the end I had three rolled-up pieces. I started at one end of the newspaper and rolled it as tightly as possible. It took a couple tries with each sheet. Here is what that looked like:

After I had my three rolled up pieces I taped one end of them to a table and just braided it. I braided it as tightly as I could and then I rolled up the ends and hot glued them. This is what my braid looks like:

I know, my picture was blurry. I'm sorry. I hot glued it to the back of the cookie sheet like this:

It was all ready to hang up! I really liked what the outer lip of the cookie sheet looked like so I didn't do anything to it. If you don't like yours though you can paint it. A bright color might look really cool on the outer lip. I, however, liked the older antique look so I just kept it how it is. I got flash cards and magnetic clips from the dollar store to put on there. Here is what the finished product looks like:

I also am eventually going to make a chore chart for Bridgette and a potty chart for Emelia (and later Eli) to clip up on it. I put on the blank piece of paper to show where I would put that. I have a ton of foam stickers so once I get some magnets I am going to put them on to mark how well they are doing. I wish I saved all the flat magnets (you know, the type that are mostly used at business cards) that I didn't have use for but I just threw them away. I could have recycled them! I guess you live, you learn! Well, there you have it. My proud little DIY project. Are you going to try it? I would love to see what you guys come up with. You can email me your little creations and I will add them to the bottom of this post!