I have found that a little mini-book is important for many reasons. This little mini-book that I am going to show you how to make is great to carry in your back pocket to keep notes on, to write poetry in or to sketch in. It is also great for memory and scrap books. In the past I have used these little books as friendship books with penpals (meaning that we would send them to a penpal, they would sign it and add their address and what kind of penpals they were looking for, then they would mail it to one of their other penpals. When the book was full of penpals, it would be mailed back to the original creator full of people who have signed it). The book fits nicely in a small mailing envelope and the shipping is only the price of one stamp.

You can create these with the eight pages I am about to show you or you can add as many pages as you would like. You are only limited by the number of pages your stapler can staple through.

Step 1: Fold your Sheet of paper in half.

Step 2: Tear that piece of paper along the folded crease so you have two equal segments of paper. You may use scissors or a paper cutter if you would like a cleaner look. Tearing it gives it a more natural, unfinished look.

Step 3: Place the pages one on top of the other and fold them together leaving about an inch to an inch and a half at the end. That crease is going to be the spine of your book.

Step 4: Fold the flap at the end of the back pages so you can tear them off your finished book.

Step 5: Tear off the unusable flap. (You could make these little flaps into bookmarks if you were feeling really creative.)

Step 6: With your stapler, staple the spine of the book so the pages will stay together.

Now you have an eight page mini-book. Have fun decorating it. When you do use it, please come back to this page and tell me how you used it. I would like to know what else these little books are good for. I will be glad to share your picturesand videos on this post if you provide them.

We tend to go through a log of baby food jars in my house. I have found that there is a demand for them at schools and scouts and a number of other project oriented groups. These jars are expected to be completely cleaned inside and out, including the removal of the glue that holds the label onto the jar. It is extremely difficult to get the glue off these jars. It is definitely made to keep that label attached.

I have done a little research on the internet and have found that there is very little information on how to remove that glue. After a little digging, I did find 2 different ways. I have found that #2 is the most effective and the quickest way to remove the glue.

1. Before you remove the label, soak the jar in hot water. Then slowly remove the label making sure that all the glue comes off at the same time. This seems to be the easiest and cheapest way.
2. If your jars are already missing their labels, Use Goo Gone(you can get this at Walmart) to remove the glue with a little warm water and scrubbing. It actually comes off really easy with this product, but it has a very strong odor. Hake sure you have good ventallation