I picked up this great book shelf at a yard sale awhile ago and as soon as I saw it I snatched it up knowing that it was going to be a useful bookcase whether I homeschooled my cupcakes or not!  This was one of those finds where I was happily surprised to find such a treasure only because I was not specifically looking for it.  But, have you ever tried to find something specific in stores or yard sales and could never find exactly what you were looking for?  So aggravating and so my story!
Anyway, one way I use this book case is to store "Books We Made" on the top shelf.  These are lapbooks, journals, stories, etc. that my cupcakes have made in the past and they enjoy pulling them out to look at them again and again.
Then on the bottom 2 shelves I have reserved for library books and my cupcakes know to always (when they remember) store their library books on these rows to make sure we do not lose any.  I wrote the "Library Books" and  "due on" phrases before I laminated the orange sign. (in the market for a laminator?  Be sure to click here to see the great laminator I use at a really great price and a $20 rebate until 7/31/10)  After lamination, I write with a wet-erase/Vis-a-Vis pen  the date the books will be due.  That way we will know when our books' due date is coming up so I can be sure to renew them or turn them in on time.  I do have an account set up at my local library that sends me an email reminder the day before the books are due, but sometimes that does not give me enough time to plan a trip to the library.  With this system I have set up I can always see when the due date is approaching and plan accordingly.  When we get a new stack of books, I can wipe off the old due date and write in the new date.  So far this has helped me not pay overdue library fines so my money can go toward buying more homeschool books/curriculum/resources!  Do you have a system in your home to make sure library books don't sneak under couches, chairs, beds, rugs, or get tucked away in a bookshelf never to be found again?  If so, leave a comment.  I would love to hear your tip!

Are you looking for a delicious chocolate cake to make that is easy (and not low cal or low sugar)? If so, I would like to share this Hershey cake recipe with you that I made last night for friends and family that came over for dinner. I got this recipe from a friend, who got it from someone else. I have made this Hershey cake several times and decorated it in different ways. You can see how I've decorated it for my "cupcake's" birthday cakes from my cake archives: Pumpkin Cake Elmo Cake Bug Cake Gymnastics Unlimited Cake #2 So here are the ingredients for the most delicious Hershey Cake: One box of Duncan Hines Swiss Chocolate cake mix Don't follow the box recipe, instead mix the cake mix with: 3 eggs 1/3 cup oil 1 1/2 cups milk Instant vanilla or french vanilla pudding (3.4 oz box) Mix all ingredients. Spray (2) 9" round cake pans with non-stick spray. Pour mix into pans Bake at 350 degrees for 30 minutes When cakes cool, cut each cake in half (to make 4 cake layers) Now for the icing ingredients: Mix together: 8 oz. softened cream cheese 1 cup sugar 1 cup powdered sugar 16 oz. Cool Whip 3 Hershey bars, chopped into small pieces Then spread icing in between each layer and then ice the whole cake when the last layer is on top. Enjoy! Here is a photo of half the cake from last night to show you the layers inside: (I'm sorry it doesn't look pretty, but it tastes oh so good!) Enjoy and if you try this cake recipe leave a comment and let me know how you liked it!

I have been busy these last several weeks reorganizing our classroom to prepare for our upcoming homeschool year. It's quite a task and sometimes overwhelming for me to decide what I will keep and what I can get rid of as far as academic resources go. We are recycling tons of old papers, magazines, and used workbooks and this morning I had a yard sale to get rid of some things. I sold some educational material, but mostly I had baby girl clothes for sale that my youngest cupcake has grown out of. It was a hot day, but I am happy to say that I got rid of ALL my baby clothes and shoes thanks to a sweet young mother who came to the sale. She has relatives and friends who live in Mexico and she teared up when she was telling me that there is so much poverty in Mexico so she has decided to collect children's clothing and she is personally delivering the collection to those families who need so much. She drove away with 3 garbage bags of clothes as I told her to take all that was left to help with her ministry to help those in need. Win-win situation for everyone! Besides decluttering, I am also reorganizing our classroom and I'm always looking for ways to store math manipulatives better. I love collecting empty containers and storing them until I find the right "stuff" to fill them. Since my youngest cupcake was a baby, I have held on to those cute Gerber plastic baby food containers thinking they are just too durable to throw away. They remind me of "mini" Rubbermaid/Sterilite boxes like those used in Sue Patrick's Workbox System and since baby food can be expensive, I was determined to find another use for the boxes besides filling up the trash can with them. So I have decided to store all my real coins in the boxes to make them easy to get to when we do money lessons in our homeschool day. I have several paper punch out coins from my days of teaching elementary school so I taped the "head" of each paper coin on top of the lid and the "tail" side on the front for the pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. From the pictures below you can see that I have also reused the plastic seasoning containers to store all the paper punch out coins. I used to store them in ziplock bags, but packing and unpacking ziplock bags does not make for quick cleanup or easy storage sometimes in my house and everything ended up on the floor. Cleaning up coins after an activity is easy now and makes for a great sorting lesson when my cupcakes place each type of coin in the right place. So are there other "Gerber geeks" out there who like and reuse these baby food containers in some way to store things? If so, I would love to hear what you put in them!