Sometimes, the Crafting Stars Align

Often in my life, there is something that just bothers me.  Something little, which should be so simple for me to fix, but the solution eludes me.  When I am faced with those issues, I find nothing helps more than a bag of Cheetos.  I simply can't imagine why that baby weight hasn't come off yet.  At any rate, I was faced with another of those pesky situations in my life.

We love to grill at the Thrifty Crafty house.  We had a gas grill for years, but the smell and taste of cooking on charcoal sent us back to a regular grill.  As such, we find the need to start our charcoal fire with a chimney and newspaper, paper that we collect and hang on to so we can have it handy when we have the hankering for a grilled meal.  The problem?  Where do we put this paper?

I've been putting the newspaper in a plastic bag and hanging it on a hook in our laundry closet, an easy enough solution for storing these papers.  But it's not pretty.  And to be frank, it's in the way.  A fix needed to be found.

I went to my local Staples and found this:

It's a tray that you hang on the wall.  I'm sure there's a better name for it, but I don't have the energy to look at my receipt... it's been a long week.

My next stop was Michael's (of course) in the search for some good paper to dress up my fancy new tray.  I thought to myself, "Self, wouldn't it be great if I found some scrapbook paper that looked like newspaper? It would be just perfect! But of course, that would never happen... silly girl."

But it happened:

It's scrapbook paper... that looks like newspaper.  It's like the universe heard my wish.  It has not yet heard my wish for bacon-flavored gum yet, but I'll give it time.  At any rate, this paper is adorable... it has all kinds of happy story titles like "Pug Pal Proves To Be Good Friend" and "Adventure City Is Fun For Whole Family". Love it.  So I sprayed some adhesive on the paper and stuck it to the inside of the tray.

Adorable.  I just love this.

I hung the tray on the wall in the laundry closet and put some paper in it to make sure the whole thing looked pretty.  And pretty it is... so pretty!

There's a solution to every problem, I'm sure of it.  It just takes a little thinking, even for the 'simple' problems.  Also, any trip to the office supply store is never wasted.

Seriously though... anybody want to make that bacon-flavored gum for me?



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