Ikea Hack- Trofast Lego Interlocking Brick Sorter

So my little lego-holic has a VAST collection of pieces and they tend to be kind of... everywhere.  Every time he has a build session he dumps his Legos onto the floor and then is to overwhelmed to clean them up by himself.  I figured if he had a lego sorter he could just use the big pieces or the medium pieces or whatever, or if he's looking for a hand he doesn't have to look through all the pieces trying to find one hand.  HOWEVER those sorter things from Lego are SOOOO expensive, and as a slight Ikea addict I figured I could use some of the bins we already had for storage and modify them to be a Lego sorter.

It seems to work and was basically free (since we already had the trofast for lego storage anyways)

We have this Trofast Frame  and use various of the containters available on this page.

When drilling these holes use a spiral (regular style) drill bit, not a paddle bit as you will wind up with a TON of sanding to do on the holes to get all the fraying out.

The right column (tallest section) is the Lego section.

For he top bin that catches large pieces I used a 1 inch padle bit and then sanded them bunches with a drill attached barrel sander (and STILL had to pick of small pieces)

Drill holes

What the Top bin Catches

For the middle bin that catches medium pieces and lets the small fall through I used a mix of a 3/8ths bit, a 1/2 inch bit and a 9/16ths paddle bit.  I should have used a 5/8ths, because I really have to get in to stir with my hands to get stuff to fall through, but it works.  It would just work alot better if there was a TINY bit more wiggle room.

Drill holes

What  the middle bin catches

The bottom of the sorting bins is a regular bin with nothing drilled out.  Beneath the sorting bins I have a large trofast to hold the very large pieces (duplo pieces and large plates)

Bottom of the sort bins

storage for extra large pieces

So far its seems to be working.  If this keeps working I may switch the medium bin to be a double deep bin, that's the size with the most pieces.  Otherwise I'm happy. Hopefully this will get little man to keep his room picked up a bit better :-)

Too cold outside

It is SOO cold outside (pic of my daughter waiting at the bus stop for proof) but I still got a sub 15 min mile in today :-). I walked one min than ran 2 minutes until I started getting bad side cramps so I'd walk until that passed, but I still squeaked in under 15 mins.  :-) progress

Running Play List (between 160 and 180 bpm)

OK, I mentioned I was going to try to post my running playlist.  I use Spotify Premium so I don't have ads, and you can download for offline play and I just shuffle this before each run so its always a little different.  So some of these songs are slower and some are faster, but either way its a running tempo, if you're SUPER into running, some of these are probably too slow for you, but if you've got short legs (like me), the slow ones are a light jog and the faster ones are at a pretty good clip, just take shorter steps. :-)

Irreplaceable - Beyonce
Umbrella - Rihanna, Jay-Z
Monkey Wrench - Foo Fighters
The Boys are Back in Town - Thin Lizzy
Head Over Feet - Alanis Morissette (2015 remastered version)
Bye Bye Bye - *Nsync
Love is a Battlefield - Pat Benatar
Fat Bottomed Girls - Queen
Helpless - OBC of Hamilton
Farmer Refuted- OBC of Hamilton
Roar - Katy Perry
Firework - Katy Perry
Shake It Off (Radio Edit)- Shara Caldwell and the LA exchange (T Swift doesn't allow her songs on spotify)
Chandelier - Sia
Everlong - Foo Fighters
The Climb - Miley Cyrus
Holiday (Live) - Green Day
Everybody Talks - Neon Trees
Jump- Rihanna
Under my Umbrella - Incubus
Breakin' Up - Gwen Stefani
The Beautiful People - Marilyn Manson
My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson
Every Little Thing She Does is Magic- The Police
Livin' La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin
Time Warp - Rocky Horror Picture Show
Wonderwall (remastered) - Oasis
Story of a Lonley Guy - Blink 182
Give me One Good Reason - Blink 182

Woah its December!

Holy cow time is going faster and faster... g0t outside to run last week, but today between the kiddos and the weather I'm on the treadmill again, though I managed a 15 min mile, which is good for me!  Hopefully I can get on here on my computer at home and post my running playlist, cause music at the right tempo helps SOOO MUCH.  My favorites today we're the time warp from Rocky horror, helpless from Hamilton and beautiful people by Marilyn Manson.

173 days for Couch to Half Marathon---Day 1

So this last year I ran the Indy Mini Marathon for the first time, I didn't post about it because I didn't have time. I had won entrance from a local tv station and would up with 4 weeks to train, I'd been exercising, but not really running, so I went into panic training mode.  Running a half had always been on my bucket list, but I never though it would happen.  So I survived, I kissed the bricks and then i plopped back on the couch.  Though I did pay for the 2018 race, I barely kept exercising, let alone running.  So when I wrote an essay to be a part of the Indy Mini Marathon Ambassador program I didn't really think to much about it. I thought it'd be great to get some upgrades and some gear, but they wouldn't take me, I'd only run it once and have never really trained, but I guess that unique perspective is what drew them to me.

 So I can officially announce that I am a 2018 Indy Mini Ambassador!  Guess i need to get off the couch...

So today is Day one of my journey to (hopefully) a 3:00 mini marathon on May 5th

Notice, less than a mile in 19 minutes... got some work to do

I'm going to start with an aggressive couch to 5k program, with a weights workout afterwards. and meal planning based on the 21 day fix (I've previously posted about my 21 day faux which has alot of the same information) and instead of shakeology (which costs $130 per month) I'm using Slim Fast (which costs about $10 per month) though I do count that as a red container and a yellow container, since its made with milk.

I probably won't be posting everyday, but I'll post at least once a week, hopefully 2 to 3 times a week.

If people are interested I can share my recipes and meal planning information about how I lose weight and still feed a family of 4 without cooking 2 meals at the same time or making them miserable.

If you are interested in running (or walking) the Mini Please let me know I'd be happy to talk to you about it, my experiences, and discuss if its the right race for you!

A Mother's Christmas Worries

Thinking through the presents we have yet to wrap and worrying that this is a small Christmas, will my children notice we don't have much?  Should I have worked harder to find what they wanted used so they could have more?  will the shiny boxes and un-scratched toys make up for the lack of volume? Will they notice that we only give home made to each other and the rest of our family or will they be so caught up in the joy that the magic fills in the gaps?

The light in their eyes is what i live for.  Seeing them really GET Santa this year was so magical for me.  Seeing them dance with the angels at our church pageant brought me such joy.  Singing Christmas carols with them on a sleigh ride at my moms house almost made me weep.  I don't need things, I don't need new, I shop at rummage sales but I long to make their fleeting childhood everything it could be. I know our situation is only temporary, once I graduate I can get a decent job and we won't be so tight.  We have a house, we have 2 cars, we have heat, we have food, I have a gym membership so that I can get 2 solid hours of homework time a day.  I know we are blessed, I know many people have less. That doesn't make it any easier when my children ask for more and I have to say no.  I KNOW its good for them. However, when my son literally is dreaming something, but we've already purchased what he asked for last month it breaks my heart a little.  When he asks to go to walmart to visit the toys since I told him they were decorations it breaks my heart a little.  I hold the little pieces together because I know they don't know they miss out on anything, but I know.

Instead of a store bought advent calendar ours is homemade and has activities we can do for free (like make paper snowflakes, and a clearance gingerbread from last years post Christmas sale). They don't realize that not everyone does that, and hopefully it makes memories they'll cherish

Instead of new Christmas stories we re wrapped the ones they opened they same ones they read last year.  They don't remember, but I do.

They joy on their faces gives me such hope

We don't have much but we have love.  we have hope.  we have each other.

The difrences between the Praxis II 5161 and the Indiana Core 035

OK, I know that title looks almost like gibberish, but it should make this post easier to find for those who need it.

I've been doing online school with WGU to get my secondary math Teaching certificate and, since the school is based in Utah, I had to take the Praxis to get my degree, but since I live in Indiana I had to take the Indiana Core 035 to get my Indiana license and thought, since I have experienced both tests it might be helpful to share my experiences.

My Preparations:

  The great thing about WGU is that they provided me with 3 practice Praxis tests plus the one free one that comes from ETS and a lot of practice worksheets (though i didn't find out about the worksheets until the night before the test for me, but that's more my fault than anything).  I also picked up a college Math workbook from Half Price books that let me go through and practice all the dusty old math from algebra and pre-calc.  I also watched alot of videos on you tube (especially kahn academy and mathbff) I used those for things like matrices which i never learned and Math/logic which I couldn't remember the specifics of since I took the class for that about a decade ago.


The Praxis

...had me more panicked.  There are so many articles and posts about how the 5161 is so intense, plus the median score is below passing and there's rumors about a 33% pass rate per taking... for those of us with math brains, that's a horror story right there... especially when you're a perfectionist like me.  The great thing is the graphing calculator for the Praxis, it will even calculate zeros, intersections, max, min, or anything you could need really.  They also provide a great reference sheet that includes all the info for polar/Cartesian conversion, volumes of solids and more (all available on the ETS site for perusal before the test)  The Praxis was a lovely 60 (or 66, can't remember right now) questions long and it felt like plenty of time.  I do recommend that If you can't think of how to solve the problem within the first 30 seconds or so of looking at it, guess, flag it and come back to it at the end.  You don't want to run out of time, and you don't get penalized for guessing. I used all but 5 mins of my time, and didn't feel rushed, but i may have been if I was 10 mins from the end and hadn't touched all the problems.

Core 035

... I wasn't really worried about this one because I'd just come off of the Praxis win and figured I should get this one out of the way when all the info was still fresh and holy cow did it kick my butt.  As of right now I've got a preliminary Pass, but I'll update that when I receive my official scores. If you haven't taken 3rd calc (or at least thats what wgu calls it) or at least know things like vector graphing, polar graphing, logic tables, and beginning teaching concepts I'd hold off.  There were things I'd never learned.  Plus the reference sheet is not as detailed and the digital calculator is a scientific not a graphing.  There was alot more matrix problems up to 3x4 that I saw.  Plus its 100 questions, which was a snug fit, I wish I'd had a half hour more.  I did get back to all my flagged questions, but I didn't have time to work them as thoroughly as I wished I could, and a few were blind guesses.


All in all I think the Praxis II 5161 is easier than the Core 035, though few people need to take both. Preparation material for one will work for the other with the added information of vectors and higher level calculus, all done without access to a graphing calculator for the IN035.