Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 28, 2013

My boyfriend and I live in a 2-bedroom apartment and those of you who live in small apartments know that storage is at a premium. We are lucky enough to have an extra bedroom to help out with storage. The only problem with having a second bedroom is that it does become basically that- another storage room.

We were having trouble with putting the room together after the move and up until the other week, it had been filled with boxes of things we hadn’t unpacked yet and random furniture we hadn’t been able to find a place for. We finally came up with a plan for the room and it started to come together. Once again, our second bedroom became the guest bedroom –slash- office-slash- craft room. The only problem is that because the room fills all of those functions, I need a different type of storage for my crafts so that I can I take out what I need when I need it.

This is what the craft closet looked like before:

Extra Closet Before Project

Total chaos. It was so hard to fine anything, which is not really conducive to creativity.

Storage Project

So what do you need? I bought a bunch of 16 and 6-quart Sterlite storage boxes from Target (they were the cheapest here: only $2.60 and $1.00 respectively) and a label maker from Amazon. You don’t really need a label maker to do this project- you can easily print out labels from your computer, cut them out, and put them on the box with clear mailing tape. Then, organize everything into all its own boxes and create labels.

New Closet Organization

You can box together whatever makes sense for you, but I had a box for: stationary, cookie cutters, fabric, ribbons and strings, sewing, paper cutters, paper, sprinkles and baking cups, and labels and markers.

Closet and Craft Organization After

Ta Da! I love the results- It is so much easier to find everything. Also, we finally got a tool box to fit both of our tools we have collected over the years. There are two file boxes on the floor for both of our files. I left them out in the open like that so we can put away important paperwork more easily and stay ahead of the piles of paper that build up so easily.

Closet Organization for Crafts

The games pretty much stayed the same, but I put the small games in a box together and it made them look neater.

My Favorite Label

This is my favorite storage label because I figured out how to use the icon on my label maker! A cupcake icon for the baking cups and sprinkles. Mmmm …makes me both happy and hungry for a cupcake! Yay for organization!!!

What projects have you been working on in the New Year?

sisterk (2)

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on February 8, 2012

Physical Storage of Recipes

While I often pick out recipes from cookbooks I own, I also love to peruse magazines and blogs to get inspiration for meals. After years of tearing out magazine pages and printing out recipes from on-line, I was left with mounds of paper. I rarely ever made a recipe from the pile since it was such a pain to find the piece of paper it was on. I finally got my act together a few months ago and organized all the recipes into two large binders.

This involved a few steps to get to this point:
-I went through all the recipes and threw out ones that I changed my mind about keeping
-I trimmed away all the excess paper around each recipe (for example, if I had tore out a page from a magazine with four recipes listed, I cut out only the one recipe I was interested in)
-I sorted each recipe into a category. The full list of categories I used are: Veggie Sides, Starch Sides, Chicken, Beef, Grilling, Pork, Lamb, Seafood/Fish, Italian, Indian, Mexican, Asian, Pizza, Chili, Cajun/Creole, Sandwiches, Appetizers, Drinks, Salads, Soups, Breakfast, Smoothies, Bread, Desserts, Cookies, Thanksgiving, and Cooking Classes.
-I purchased several large binders, plastic binder sleeves, and binder dividers.
-Using double-sided tape, I taped each recipe onto a blank sheet of 8.5×11″paper. I tried to fit as many recipes onto each piece of paper without overlapping the recipes.
-I put each sheet into a plastic sleeve, made a tab for each category, and filed it in a binder.

Before:

After:

Virtual Storage of Recipes

I recently received an invitation to try an online storage website called MyReci:

It has a concept pretty similar to Pinterest, but it solely focuses on recipes. After installing the MyReci bookmarklet, you can save any recipe you find on the internet to your virtual recipe box. You can then organize your recipe box into cookbooks (for example, a cookbook that just focuses on desserts.) Another cool features is that you also have the ability to edit any recipe you add to your recipe box.

After playing around with MyReci for awhile, I found it to be a very helpful recipe storage tool. I will probably still end up printing out any recipe before I attempt to make it as I like to have a physical copy of the recipe I am reading. (For me, using the laptop while cooking is just a disaster waiting to happen!) However, this would be a great tool to use to collect recipes when you are perusing the web.

One limitation I found was that it did not recognize blog recipes very well. I tried to save recipes from several different blogs, and each time I had to type in the name of the recipe. When I went back to my recipe box, it only provided a link back to the recipe. It did however work great with the large recipe sites such as foodnetwork.com, epicurious.com, allrecipes.com, etc. This would be a great tool to use if you had multiple accounts across these websites and wanted to aggregate all your recipes into one place online.

How do you keep your recipes organized? Do you prefer a soft or hard copy of all your recipes?

-m

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 21, 2012

Hello Readers,

M and I have been trying to update our page lately to help our readers browse and use our recipes easier. Recently we have added a recipe index to help you find our recipes faster.

The Recipe Index has all our recipes we have shared with you over the years listed in categories. To select the recipe you want to view, just click on the recipe title and it will bring you to that recipe.

For example, if you were looking for a breakfast food to make, you would scroll to our “Breakfast” section in the index. There you could see that we have a recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes or a French Omelette (note to self- share more breakfast foods with you, which is perfect because I just made something this morning for breakfast that I am pretty pumped about sharing with you.) To see the recipe for the Buttermilk Pancakes, just click on the words and it will take you to the recipe. Mmmmm, I forgot about the recipe for Buttermilk Pancakes…best pancakes ever! We are working on cross-referencing items like the Cranberry, Banana and Walnut Muffins under both Bread and Breakfast, since technically it could be considered both.

The next addition to our website was actually added this morning. I know when I read blogs, I like to have a link to click on to get to a printer-friendly version of the recipe or post. I like to have paper copy of recipes when I am cooking because I don’t like bringing my computer or phone into the kitchen. So now, you will notice a print friendly button on the bottom of all our postings.
If you find a posting that you would like to print, select the Print Friendly icon at the bottom of the posting. From there it will take you to a page that looks like this:
You can change how the view looks by changing the size of the font, taking out the images, and deleting sections. Lets start by changing the size of the font.
At the top of the print friendly version, there is a green bar. On the bar, there is a text pull-down menu. Click on the down arrow and select the font size you would like the posting to print out with. I like the small font because it will most likely print on to one page (depends on the size of the recipe though).

To get rid of the images just select the “no image” box and the images go away. Not that we want you to get rid of our images, but we understand that color ink can get expensive!

If you want to print just the recipe portion of the post for your files and get rid of the intro to the recipe, hover the mouse pointer over the paragraph you want to delete. It will automatically be highlighted in yellow with a “click to delete” in red at the top. Click on the paragraphs you wish to delete to get rid of them. If you accidentally click off a part you didn’t mean to delete, click the undo button at the top.

When finished with making the changes you desire, select print and your printer dialog box will come up. Print out the recipe and then run to your kitchen and make it!!

M and I hope to have a lot more additions to our site to make it easier to use. Let us know what you would like to see to make your experience at 2 Sisters 2 Cities better.

Thanks for reading!

-K

Posted by 2 Sisters 2 Cities on January 12, 2012

It’s been our first full week back since Hawaii so now that we are unpacked and no longer jet-lagged, I have been trying to focus on doing a little bit of organizing each day.

This week I tackled my junk drawer. When we first moved to our new house in October, Husband M and I each picked a kitchen drawer that would be ours for personal items (a huge luxury since our city condo definitely did not have enough storage space for this!) I had just been throwing random items in it up until this week, but I finally sorted it down to the items that I would need every week and put all the other miscellaneous items away where they belonged. I also repurposed a Crate & Barrel drawer tray to hold all the items. Behold, my new junk drawer:

While I was shopping at Target today, I stumbled across some super cute items from the brand Greenroom. I found this adorable binder for a little over $7:

In my resolutions post, I said I was going to re-use my old gray college internship binder to hold our important household papers, but how cute is this one?!? I decided it would be worth the splurge since I have been using the binder on an almost daily basis lately. There were a few other really great designs and I it was really difficult trying to pick just one (baby T was ready to jump out of the shopping cart I was taking so long!)

In this month’s Better Home and Gardens, there was an article about organizing all the papers that start to pile up every week. They recommended setting up a filing system with three sections: Do Now, Do Later, and Pending. I loved the file folders they used in their picture and here they are!

For 2012, I am also attempting to ditch the paper planner and do all my scheduling on my Apple i-Cal (using the new iCloud on my Mac and iPhone.) However, there are always instances where I need to jot something down on paper quickly. I found this little notepad for a little under $3:

Wow, these items definitely excite me way too much. I’m such a sucker for office supplies:

What organizing tips and products do you recommend for the new year?

-m

Posted by Meaghan Barry on January 31, 2010

This weekend was a pretty fun and productive one! We went out to dinner in Cambridge with another couple on Friday night at a French-Cambodian restaurant called the Elephant Walk. They are expecting a baby in May so it was fun to catch up with them on their big news. Saturday, we went to a paper supply store (Xpedx) to get some additional supplies for my letterpress. Who knew there were so many kinds of paper out there! While we in the ‘burbs, we also decided to do some stocking up at Costco. On Saturday evening, we went out for Mr. M’s uncle’s surprise 70th birthday party at a really cute restaurant in Harvard Square named Upstairs on the Square. Today, we headed over to the Whole Foods in Cambridge to stock up on groceries for the week (we spent a lot of time in Cambridge this weekend come to think of it).

I sat down this morning and mapped out the menu for the week. I may not get to making all of these dishes as we tend to order take-out or go out if work is particularly busy or I just don’t feel like cooking one night. It does feel good to have a game plan going into the week and being able to get all the groceries ahead of time so there is one less errand to run after work. I bought a lot of meat at Costco so this week’s menu is a bit more meat-intensive than normal:

Sunday: Rosemary-roasted rack of lamb with roasted cherry tomatoes (recipe from Bon Appetit Fast Fresh Easy)
Monday: Beef Medallions with Cognac Sauce with a side salad (recipe from Bon Appetit Fast Fresh Easy)
Tuesday: Shrimp & Scalli0n Stir Fry with Basmati Rice (Martha Stewart Everyday Jan/Feb ’10 issue)
Wednesday: Spiced Pork Tenderloin with side of steamed green beans (recipe from Bon Appetit Fast Fresh Easy)
Thursday: Curried Cauliflower with Chickpeas (Boston Organics e-mail)
Friday: Moroccan Chicken with Green Olives and Lemon with a side of couscous (Bon Appetit May 2009…this recipe is amazing!)
Saturday: Pizza Night or go out to a restaurant
Sunday: SUPER BOWL SUNDAY! Bourbon-Glazed Chicken Drumettes with Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce (Bon Appetit Feb ’10 issue…if you are still looking for Super Bowl snack ideas, check out this issue’s Super Bowl section. The recipes all look really good!), Veggies and dip, Homemade Chex mix (so gourmet!)

-M

Posted by Meaghan Barry on January 28, 2010

I am selling a pair of J Crew Wellies on Ebay if you are interested. Womens size 9…green boots with blue whale print. You’ll never walk through the city unnoticed in these babies…

-M