Practical Lego Storage and Putting the Life Back into Unused Toys

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We are back again, with more Lego storage solutions as well as tips to get your kids playing with their Lego's or other toys again.

Most likely like our family, your kids play with things in phases.  When there is a lull in play time with something like, Bionicle, Hero Factory, Lego Friends or Barbie put on the shows or a movie containing or pertaining to whatever your theme may be.

Many of us, make hefty investments with our children's toys and it's important to get your money's worth.  If your child starts to lose interest, it's often fine enough just to put the items back out in the open or displayed in a different light.  If your child doesn't play with a particular doll any more, try putting it in the living room, on the couch and covering it with a blanket, like it's sleeping.

Get out all of the Ninjago stuff and display it in a large picture window if you have space or on the coffee table with some nifty shoe boxes or totes for easy clean up.

Try colouring books, reading books, paraphernalia of various sorts like blankets, drinking cups, games, comic strips relating to that particular toy and so forth.

We had a Lego party a couple of years ago.  My hubby and I disassembled some Hero Factory dudes, divided up the pieces in zip loc bags, hid them around the house and formed a Scavenger Hunt for the boys.  With clues, they had to go around the house, looking for the pieces and assemble the dudes.  The first team to find all of the pieces and assemble the robot, won.  They absolutely loved that game and played with the robots for weeks after. There is a blog about the party with all kinds of other ideas and free printables for you, too.  You can find it here.

I often put things away where they can't be seen then after a couple of weeks or more, introduce them to a very visible place.  This strategy works really well.  Another strategy, ask them if you can throw or give it away.  My goodness, I don't know about you, but I can't get rid of a darn thing around here.  Hehehe...

One of the biggest problems we have with Lego and I know we are not alone here, is once the Lego piece is broken or disassembled, it isn't put back together and the pieces stay half assembled and untouched.

For the summer break, we dive into our Lego's and organise and disassmeble half built dudes, structures or transportive thingies.  Each category of our Lego, for example Ninjago, Chima, Minecraft, Mixels...has their own storage unit or shoe box.  As we disassemble, we put the bricks in its category.

We bought the boys some more Minecraft sets for the holidays.  It's brought new life to the older sets we had.  Now, we have quite a bit and the buildings are fairly large and not easy to transport.

Here's a look what I've done to get them to play with it again, rebuild, create new items and easily put pieces into organised categories.

I took the tray full of Minecraft pieces and subcategorised them according to colour(ish) and size.  Anything with 2 or more nubs gets thrown into the general box.  You can see it below.  While the image above is just my coffee table drawer, lined with silicone cupcake forms.  These forms contains the tiny and very small specialised pieces grouped by colour.  There is also a place for duders and their pieces, weapons and the very handy Lego separator thingy.

The last drawer is for the Minecraft books.  Here they can easily find the instructions on how to rebuild the buildings and put the back when finished.  It's so much easier to get kids to put things away when there is an exact place for it.

The big plan it to make or buy used, a table like this one and put it in the Epic Lego area of the kid's play paradise.  Actually, this table is totally beat.  I should just buy a new one and put this one in the play room.  Hehehe...

We've got several blogs dedicated to Lego if you are interested.  Check out some of these.

Here's our blog with free printable Lego invitations and another nifty storage idea.

This blog is full of really fun games to play at your Lego party.

This blog is a super mega blog full of more party ideas, like that Scavenger Hunt and a lot of free printables, too.

Feel free to share your storage ideas in the comments.

Thank you so much for checking out The Cherry.

How To Store Fresh Fruits And Vegetables

Welcome to The Cherry On Top.

We're back with more helpful hints in the kitchen and a bit of scrap-a-licious goodness, too!

We've recently started receiving organic fruit and vegetables delivered right to our door, once a week.  We never know what we are going to get.  So it's always an adventure.  We will be having an abundance of these fresh lovelies and I want to be sure I get as much life out of them as possible.  I went and did some research to make sure I had it right.

These wonderful strawberries are from our own garden.  The only thing our garden gets is rain water and perhaps a banana peel or egg shells.  No chemicals, ever.  If you pick your own berries and want or need to store them it's important to remember not to wash them until you are ready to eat them and if possible, lay them flat and not stacked.  Our berries never last because they are eaten almost immediately.

Here's a handy chart to help you with the rest of the typical fruits and vegetables. I had no idea that pairing particular fruits together actually promotes decay. Yikes! We've put a star next to those in the list.

Here's a glance at the lovely digital kit I used to make this chart.  It's from my gal Amanda at A-Manda Creation.  This kit is perfect for this time of year and it would be great for designing recipe cards, too.

Here's the proof, that the berries never make the jam!  Hehehe...This kit is from LouCee Creations and you can see more of Farm Fresh over at the Digital Scrapbooking Studio by clicking on the image.

 If you want to learn more about storing fruit and veg properly, check out this site.  It's really good and full of juicy details.

Thank you so much for making The Cherry a part of your day!

Our blog is full of recipes, tips and tricks and free printables that make life easier and more enjoyable.  Here are a couple of our most popular.  Simply click on the images to check out the blog.