Everyone enjoys playing games, and Valentine Bingo gets the whole family involved.  Have everyone playing seated at a table and give them a pencil.  You will need as many sheets of paper as you have players, plus one extra sheet.  Draw a large square on each sheet of paper, and then divide the large square into five smaller squares, five across, and five down.  Mark the middle square as “FREE.”  Start with one person and go around the table naming something to do with Valentine’s Day such as arrow, heart, love, etc.   As each thing is mentioned have everyone draw that thing mentioned in one of their empty squares.   Have one person draw the pictures on two bingo sheets, then take one of the sheets,  and cut the squares apart.  Place those cut-up pieces in a basket or envelope.  Now that all of the squares on everyone’s sheet is full of pictures, you can begin the bingo game.  Have someone not playing the game be the caller, and pull a pictured square out of the basket or envelope.  Show it to everyone and tell what the picture is.  This will allow even the smallest players to have an equal chance of winning.

You can purchase small boxes of little candied hearts with words on them such as love you, be mine, etc., at most any store during this holiday period.  Use these candies as game pieces to cover the squares.  When you have one or more people yell, “BINGO,” you can give them a small gift, and then each person can eat their candied hearts if they like.  If they don’t want to eat the hearts, have some small picture frames on hand, and glue the candied hearts all around the edge.  Have them put in one of their favorite Valentine photos, and set it on a table for everyone to enjoy looking at.

When everything after the holidays has slowed down, it seems everyone starts to get cabin fever. Go to your local tourism or chamber of commerce and find out some interesting places to visit not far from home. Most of us do not know that right in the next town from where we live there may be a great little restaurant that serves the best plate lunches around. Or there may be a bed and breakfast nearby that is also open for touring, furnished with antiques from the past, and an old barn museum out back.

Start off the new year by finding out where places you’ve not visited around you are, and set goals to explore them within the next twelve months. You will discover that most of these places are not costly in terms of money. There may be a few that will require saving for the family to go to. This will help children have an opportunity to learn the value of saving for something they want to do at a later date. Let everyone help by doing odd jobs around the house or neighborhood to save funds for the outing. Before you know it, everyone will be jumping in the family vehicle for a trip for the day!

I keep a file folder on our kitchen counter, beside the local phone book, to put little notes and other items I may need later to update files.  I wrote “update information” on the tab of the folder.  Then I taped both ends of the folder closed so nothing would fall out.  When I have extra time, I get my rolodex file, Christmas Card file box, and address books out to put the updates in them.  Keeping the file folder handy is the key.  Otherwise notes and envelopes get lost or thrown away by mistake.

If I don’t think information in my other sources is correct, I can look through the one folder to double check.  This has saved a lot of time, energy and phone calls over the years.  Keeping information updated can help in emergency situations too, by having correct phone numbers handy.  I would much rather look in that one folder than go searching all through the house in hopes of finding information I need.

Use any type of flowers for this wreath.  Live or artificial will do.  You will need to use a wire coat hanger, which has been shaped into a circle, and then untwisted.  You will also need to get a bunch of live leaves, or you can use medium or large size artificial flowers that have had the petals taken apart.  String the leaves or flowers onto the wire with a hole punched near the middle, if needed.   Push them fairly close together.

Twist the wire back together again.  Form the hanger top into a circle and bend downward to make a hanger for the wreath.   You may want to add a colorful matching bow with nuts or small flowers glued among the ringlets of the bow itself.  If the wreath is made of live material, it will keep for about a week.  Place artificial wreaths in a covered box for storage when it is taken down for the season.  This will keep it from fading, and the wreath can be used again next year.

Every once in a while people still ‘wrap’ gifts.  Don’t throw the ribbon away that was wrapped around a gift.  With a warm iron, smooth it out again, cut it in strips and make book marks from it.  You can even attach charms to one end, or line it with stickers from top to bottom.

Save a few for yourself too.  When you give a book as a gift, slide one in as an extra little something made by you.  They make cute items to give as party favors, or as a small gift to members of a club to might belong to.

Don’t throw out an old shirt or blouse without saving the buttons on them.  Beautiful button brooches can be made from the buttons, and a few scraps of odds and end jewelry pieces.  Watches that quit working can be used for the brooches, as well as small pieces of lace.  Start with a small piece of cardboard,  cut in a circle about the size you would like your brooch to be.  Cover it with a piece of fabric that is a little larger than the cardboard.  Adhere it to the cardboard, wrapping it to the back of the cardboard and gluing all the edges down.  Glue a brooch pin to the back.

Glue the buttons, jewelry pieces and lace scraps to the front of the brooch, in any way you feel is attractive.  If you like, you may want to overlap the pieces.  These brooches sell for up to twenty dollars or more at specialty shops.   They make excellent, inexpensive gifts for friends and family throughout the year.

You now have a reason for saving all of those birthday cards from over the years.  Make birthday place mats from them.  For this project you will need birthday cards, a roll of clear contact paper, scissors and a little imagination.  If you want to use only portions of the cards, cut them accordingly.  You may want to use the whole card opened up.  This will allow you to use one side with only the decorative sides of the cards, and the other side to remind you of the many greetings people gave to you on your birthdays.  Cut two pieces of rectangular sized contact paper.  Lay the cards as you wish, on top of a piece of the contact paper, after removing the adhesive backing.  Now lay the second piece of contact paper directly on top of the first.  You may need to even the edges of the place mat with the scissors.

Make a set of the place mats for yourself, and give sets to others as gifts.  You may want to make a place mat for each person attending a party to take home.  The place mats can be made from Christmas cards for family gatherings too.

Decorate the trunk of your car to look like Noah’s Ark, complete with all of those stuffed animals your children have collected over the years.  Hand the candy out from a feed sack.  Everyone knows he had to have a lot of feed for all of those animals on that big boat.  Draw the boat on a large piece of cardboard, or use a large roll of brown mailing paper.  This works well because you can draw the boards of the boat on the paper, and they are already the right color!

Mrs. Noah can be standing on deck, making sure the animals don’t jump ship (have a large piece of brown paper or cardboard surrounding the ground outside of the trunk).  Find a pair of stuffed doves (get them at wedding displays in stores) to perch on the top of the open trunk with a sprig of artificial leaves in one of their beaks.  You could also draw the doves on white poster board and tape them to the open trunk.

If you have two of some of the stuffed animals, place them beside each other.  The more believable you make the Ark, the more fun the children will have.  Place a bale of hay on the deck for Mrs. Noah to sit on, if she gets tired of standing.  The animals ate that while they were in the ark all 40 days and nights too.  Get the whole family involved in drawing the Ark.  Children enjoy all the activity of getting ready for festive occasions, and coloring is one thing they can do well.  Praising them for the art work they create will help build their self esteem.

If you would like to revive the look of the grout between your tiles, there are several products on the market to use.  However, you can usually clean them with products you already have on hand.   A solution of bleach and hot soapy water used with a hand-held scrub brush, will get most of the dirt worked loose from the grout.  Be sure to mop with warm rinse water to remove all of the bleach solution from the floor.

This solution will whiten the tile grout around bathtubs too.  Again, be sure to rinse the tiles thoroughly.  The tub must be rinsed until it no longer has a slippery feeling from the bleach solution to avoid falls.  There are products available to repaint the grout between tiles for stubborn stains.  These products can be found at most larger hardware stores.

Ribbon is one item that we all use throughout the year.  Ribbon roll holders will keep your spools and rolls of ribbon handy and tangle free.  You will need wooden dowel sticks about half the circumference of your index finger.  They need to be at least that thick so as not to bend with the weight of the rolls of ribbon that will be on them.  Cut a piece of yarn about six inches longer than the dowel stick is long.  Tie one end of the yarn around one end of the dowel stick.  Repeat the process for the other end of the dowel stick.  Hang by the yarn on a nail.

You can put as many rolls of ribbon on the stick as it will hold side by side.  When you need to use some ribbon, just unroll as much as you need and cut it off.  If you need to remove rolls of ribbon, just slip the yarn off of one end, and take the roll you need off.  Put the yarn back on, and rehang.  I hang my ribbon holder at the back of a coat closet.  It comes in handy all year long to have it there.