2013 Top Ten

Recently, I was glancing over my blog stats for 2013 and decided to compile a top ten list of your favorite posts of the year.  Here goes...

TEN

Makeshift Office:  I turned a small portion of our master closet into an office nook for Graham.

NINE

 Kelsey + Josh:  a mini photo-shoot with my sister and bro-in-law

EIGHT

What's the Fuss all About:  voicing my frustrations with the "Mommy Wars" including my take on Babywise

SEVEN

To Each of My Girls:  a letter to each of my babies

SIX

 Maternity Photos:  photos from my maternity shoot with my friend and amazing photographer, Ashley

FIVE

$6 Chair Makeover: a Goodwill chair makeover

FOUR

She's Here:  our sweet little Joy Tatum's arrival

THREE

Her Nursery: pictures of Joy's room

TWO

Christmas Home Tour: 2013 Christmas Home Tour link-up

ONE

31 Days of Balance as a Homeschool Mom: a series in which I wrote a post a day for the month of October on finding balance as a homeschool mom

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I look forward to another year of blogging and connecting.  My SIXTH year! Thanks for reading, y'all!

Simple Simmering Potpourri

I'm a  self-proclaimed scent-a-holic!  I love a good smelling home.  Don't we all?  I'm not much for floral and perfume-y scents; baked goods and spices are more my speed. 

*I'll add, I'm blessed/cursed with a "super-smeller" (my nose).  I can smell foul odors from across the room and overpowering scents give me a headache.*

This time of year is a scent-a-holic's dream come true!

I'm all about Scentsy.  Some of my favorite "flavors" (as I like to call them) are: Clove & Cinnamon, Mochadoodle, Honey Pear Cider, Cozy Fireside, Pumpkin Roll, Sticky Cinnamon Bun, and Central Park Pralines.

My #1 go to Christmas scent is Aromatique's: The Smell of Christmas.  I douse my pine cones, Christmas tree, and pine clippings with it several times a month.  Just perfect.

Candles, Scentsy, and sprays are great, but there are times when I just want something au naturale. 

 

If you have an orange, some cloves, cinnamon sticks, and some bay leaves, you have just what's needed for a wonderful simmering spice.   Trust me.  Your house will thank you!

Ingredients and Instructions:

• A small simmering pot
• A few bay leaves
• 2 or 3 cinnamon sticks
• I typically just put a whole orange in the pot, but sliced orange or orange peels are just as good. 
• Poking cloves in the orange has a two-fold effect:  1)the juices from the orange seep out and 2) it looks beautiful.  You can get as creative as you want with your clove design:

Isn't this beautiful?
My thoughts: Looks stunning, but...
Ain't nobody got time for that!

I'm tempted to fill a bowl with orange and clove pomanders for my Christmas party. Simply beautiful.

Place all of the ingredients in your pot, cover them with water, and simmer.  Add water whenever it gets too low.  My pot of spices usually lasts two days before I throw it out. 

{scratch and sniff}

Simple and it smells fantastic!

Dirty Laundry

Laundry is a big fat pain in the butt, but it has to be done.  I hate it, I hate it, I hate it!  You with me! Just as I'm finished, I have more in the hamper within minutes.  For me, doing laundry every day just doesn't work!  I would rather have designated times that work best for us.  Monday and Fridays are laundry days--that's how I balance it! 

I'm always looking for ways to include my girls in household chores that are age appropriate and don't violate child-labor laws.  It's a joke.  You can laugh!  Granted, it's much easier if I just do stuff myself, but that wouldn't be good for them, right? 

So the girls help how?  They can't fold well enough yet, but they can sure contribute. 

I dump all of the laundry in the center of the living room floor and they separate it into little piles according to its owner.  It's actually very helpful, plus it gets them involved.

 the laundry fairies

Tell me why the only man in the house has the biggest pile?

I'm always looking for laundry tips/tricks.  Whatcha got?  How do you involve your kids in household chores?

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Up next: A Day in the Life {Monday}

For more posts in this series, 31 Days of Balance as a Homeschool Mom, click HERE.

life-n-pics

Here we go--another life-n-pics post...

The girls went to a friend's bday party at The Pottery Cafe--such a neat place.  I noticed that most of the girls picked a dolphin, ladybug, or puppy to paint.  Not my girls!  Edy chose a dragon and AG chose a C-A-T!!! A CAT!!!!!!??????? She's revolting against her momma!

• Joy loves the bumbo seat 
• AG started soccer practice--she's on an all girls team in Bullard
• Joy hanging out at soccer practice
• Bottle #3 and she still refuses.  HELP!!!!! Suggestions??

Graham's parents have been visiting.  Graham learned how to make his mom's peanut butter fudge and divinity.  I learned how to make her pecan pie for the third time.  I'm a slow learner!

Monday, AG started Classical Conversations (CC).  It was FANTASTIC and I am so thankful that we get to be a part of this group.  We started the day with memory work, then we had Latin, Geography, Grammar, a science experiment, an art lesson, more memory work, and then lunch/recess.  

Joy is steadily learning new things.  She is close to rolling over and she can hold her head up really well.

I love routines and being back in the swing of things, but at the end of the day...I'm pooped!

work from home

Question:  Do any of you SAHMs do any kind of work (that pays) from home?  I still want to give the majority of my day to my kids and homemaking, but lately I've been pondering the idea of doing a little work from home. Nothing major, but maybe something that could bring in a couple hundred dollars a month--not looking to break the bank or anything.  Recently, I've been selling tons of stuff on Craigslist. I've made about 1K and it's been nice to have a little extra cash to put away for emergencies, vacation, odds and ends, etc.  But there's only so much that I can sell around here.  Graham said one day he's gonna come home to an empty house! :)  It got me thinking...and that might be where it ends. I'm interested to know what kinds of jobs (social media management comes to mind) might be available for a gal like me.  Suggestions?  Thoughts?  I'm all ears.

put a LABEL on it

By now, I'm sure many of you have heard of  the "Put a Bird on It" short made popular a couple of years ago by Portlandia.  Basically, this post has nothing to do with that skit. It's just a lame segue to my post title, "Put a Label on It". See how I did that?

Here's a better seque:

Any lovers of the sitcom, The Big Bang Theory?  It's one of our favorite shows.  Sheldon is a label-making fool. 

Sheldon: Wait, put this in the bathroom.
Leonard: What for?
Sheldon: I need to measure my fluid intake and output to make sure my kidneys aren't shutting down.
Leonard: I mix pancake batter in this!
Sheldon: No, that measuring cup has always been for urine.
Leonard: You had time to make a label for everything in this apartment, including the label maker, but you didn't have ten seconds to make a label that said "urine cup"?
Sheldon: It's right here on the bottom.
Leonard: Huh, I guess I owe the Betty Crocker Company a letter of apology.

Also... 

Last week, Howard told Bernadette: not only does Sheldon have a label on his label maker, but on the label maker's label, in a teeny-tiny font, are the letters l-a-b-e-l.  

Love me some Sheldon.  I realize he's a fictional character, but he's a man after my own heart.

Graham pokes fun at me about my labels, but he secretly loves it (really!) and here's why...

 Here it is...in all it's glory!

One of my spring cleaning jobs included updating all of the labels around the house...Happy, happy, happy!

  

school closet 

pantry

In my closet, I cut scrapbook paper and printed my labels on opaque craft paper.

 

my closet

 same thing in the girls' closet

I've got a few friends, who shall remain nameless, that tease me about my label/bin obsession.  It's true, I've got labels/bins in every closet/drawer, but I'm a freak-a-zoid for organization.  Bins/labels/sharpie markers/and everything else organization--it's just my thing!

Life is much easier when you #putalabelonit!

spring cleaning...

Spring cleaning is FINISHED!  It was long, hard, but SO rewarding.  My house has never been cleaner and I just love that feeling--stress-free for the moment!

Here's the run-down:

Ava/Edy's room: 4 hrs

master bath/closet: 2.5 hrs

master bedroom: 3hrs

laundry room:1 hr

Joy's room: 1.5 hrs

kitchen/entryway: 10hrs

hall bath: 1 hr

office: 2 hrs

garage: 3 hrs

grand total: 28 hours

Yes, that's a long time, but I spread it out over a couple of days (remember my kids were in AR) and I touched every square inch of this house...I'm not joking.  It was that kind of cleaning.

Indulge me as I show off some of the hard work...

 

Graham helped me with the garage, but he cleaned out his shop and really got it looking nice.  It's been really junky since we moved in.  I just love that he loves to organize as much as I do.  I was tickled with the finished product! Doesn't it look nice!

Now...before you start judging me by the next photo, let me take a quick second to explain:
Our house has a ton of tile, we live out in the country (lots of dust/dirt), and our house isn't elevated off the ground (everything gets tracked in).  I said all of that to say, the tile throughout the house was bad.  They've probably been this way since we moved in, but I didn't take a great look at it--looks can be deceiving.  About 7 months ago, I really noticed how bad it was, but I was in the midst of morning sickness and whatnot.  *Disclaimer: I mop every week without fail, but the dirt/dust embedded in the tile wouldn't come up with just an average mopping, it had to be scrubbed.  The worst places were the entryway, around corners/doorways, and up against the baseboards--where the dust/dirt settled.
Wanna see the pic? I know you peeked anyway.

 

 [left=dirty, right=clean]

Multiply this by like 1 million and you get the idea.  Oh yeah, picture me with knee pads on, scrub brush in hand, bucket of hot water/pine sol, and clean mop.  I scrubbed every.single.solitary.tile in our home and it nearly killed me, but I can say without hesitation that they've never been cleaner--except maybe for the day they were installed! *I have to say, the photo really magnifies the dirty side. It wasn't as easy to see as you would think or it wouldn't have taken me 2 years to take action.

Had to show my worn out knees after nearly 6 hours of scrubbing.

The final day of spring cleaning was spent doing fun stuff: touch-up paint, decorating, putting out fresh candles, labeling (post to come), and other little touches. 

Our laundry room is the only room in our home that has brown walls.  I always keep a little paint on hand for occasional touch-ups.  Apparently, I kept the wrong color so now I have a dark brown smear on the wall.  It's okay, I am repainting this room soon--hopefully before Joy gets here.

The run-down:
ceiling fans: check; baseboards: check; refrigerator/freezer: check; every cabinet/drawer/nook/cranny: check,check,check; dusting: check; walls, check; carpets: check; tile: check; you name it: check, check, check!

Saturday, I had a completely clean house and we went to pick-up our girls in Texarkana! YAY!  They hadn't been home an hour and I noticed a sticky blob on the kitchen tile.  It reminded me that we live in a fallen world.  I had to laugh/sigh/die inside--Ecclesiastes personified.  It's all vanity...futile.  Until our Lord returns, the tile is going to continue to dirty, the dust is going to acquire, the walls will get scratched.  I'm so glad I can say this world is not my home!

Spring Cleaning!

Hip! Hip! Hooray! for SPRING CLEANING!

I have been so pumped to go through every single room, drawer, bin, closet, cabinet square inch of my house and clean like a mad woman!  Some people call it cray-cray (I'm told that's the new word for crazy), but I call it stress-relieving.  I may be an anomaly, but I really do like to clean and organize.  It really does reduce stress for me.

What's on the agenda?

• baseboards
• ceiling fans
• closets
• donations
• consignment
• touch-up paint
• showers
• tile (every.single.one. is getting a good scrubbin')
• carpets
• decor updates
• minimizing (I like empty drawers, people!)
• shredding (or burning)
• organizing
• dusting
• closets
• and much more...

This isn't your average cleaning.  I like to think that I keep a really clean house (I guess it's my thing), but this is much more than a weekly cleaning.  Not only is it spring cleaning time, it's nesting time!  The count-down is on--less than two months before baby Joy gets here.  #unlessthiscleaningsendsmeintolabor

So...one room down ...

 

The girls' room may be the hardest because it's ever changing--new toys, clothes, junk, books, school stuff, etc.  They spend a lot of time in their room and it gets dirty.  Especially when you look at the fine print.  I moved out all of their winter clothes and exchanged them for the spring ones we have on hand.  I gathered 2 bags for Goodwill, 1 for consignment, and 1 huge bag of trash.  I am not a pack-rat and it's easy for me to let things go.  It's freeing.

Who's with me?  What are your spring cleaning chores?

week/weak review

Our week:

• AG has discovered infomercials.  This morning, she informed me that steel springs cause back pain and  lack of energy.  (Thanks, Sleep Number!)
• While eating dinner on Monday night, the drum light fell from the ceiling stopping just before it landed on the table.  Great!  Thankful that nothing was damaged and we weren't out any money to have it repaired. (gotta love that our church is full of handy-men)
• My computer semi-crashed on Tuesday.  I got it back yesterday and it is still having problems.  *sigh*
• AG just finished her fifth reader.  She read two new books this week!
• I just got word that the baby bedding should be here next week!  So excited.
• I got semi-bad/semi-good news from the doctor.  Apparently, this 'platelet thing' isn't going away.  I'll share in a later post. I've got some questions and concerns.  Good news:  Blood work is better and the anemia is lessening and platelets aren't affecting baby Joy.
• Edy has a mullet.  We are going for a haircut this afternoon.  Can't wait to see her with a new stacked bob.  I'll post pics later.
• Valentine's Day is fast approaching.  I love Valentine's!
• Got some Valentine goodies together for AG and Ro's MDO teachers.

How cute is this little treat?

How presh are these little girls in their new Valentine's shirts?  Thanks, Na and Pops!

• Getting baby things down from the attic this afternoon.  I'm excited!
• Edy spilled blood red Powerade on the carpet in her room.  It is NOT coming up. Suggestions welcome.
• We are checking out a new park in Bullard today.  Apparently, there are only 10 like it in the nation.  The girls are excited and I'm anxious to see what all the hype is about.
• I'm all caught up on Downton Abbey.  After being unimpressed with Season 1, I didn't jump on the bandwagon and watch Season 2.  A few weeks ago when Season 3 started, I DVR'd the episodes, checked out Season 2 from the library, loved it, and caught up on Season 3.  I'm all in and then some!!! #freebates #dowagercountess #sadaboutsybil
• I thought we had an interesting week, but after reading over this post, I find it rather boring--quite weak.  (That reminds me...To all the Downton fans out there, do you catch yourself trying to talk super proper after each episode?  G calls me out all the time! #southerngirlprobs)

Updates on the pregnancy, Edy's blue blanket situation, and baby room progress coming soon!  

Home Goals 2013

Last year, for the first time, I wrote down some home goals and I kept to them!  With this new year, I am happier with my house than ever before.  After 2.5 years of being in this house, it is starting to feel like my home.  I am getting to where I like it.  I am developing my style better--and I love it.  Here's the goals:

*Keep brightening things up (more light, bright, and beautiful).
*Keep doing what I like (not what I want to like, but what I like).
*Add more gold!  I have a few gold pieces, but I want MORE! (Don't we all!?!)
*Can't have enough naturals! Get my butt out in those woods surrounding the house and find stuff.  (Note to Graham:  Get the chainsaw fired up! Wait a second--Note to Graham:  Get a chainsaw! I want a wood stump pronto!)
*Don't buy new.  Find more treasures! One of my favorite things to do is browse junk/antique stores.  Don't get me wrong, I don't want my house to look like a flea market, but I want some pieces that make you stop and think, "Nice."  I have a few pieces like that and I love it.
*Continue to embrace my "less is more" attitude, but not at the expense of having lack-luster rooms (something I've noticed in certain areas of my home).


Since taking down Christmas, I've already been working on some things (pics to come):
*I rearranged some furniture and I am real happy with the changes.
*I painted some stuff (dining room chairs and entry way chair).
*I finally recovered my dining room chairs and I love the fabric!! (Graham, get to scotch-guarding!)
*Gave items new homes by moving little things around a bit.

Still to do:
1) Joy's room (Can't wait to get her bedding!!!  It should be here in a few weeks.)
2) Paint my bathroom (the last room in the house I have left to paint) and repaint the laundry room.
3) If money permits, make-over master bathroom.  If not, this will have to carry over to 2014.
4) This Spring, get to crackin' on the exterior of the house. (We haven't even touched it since moving in.  It's bad, bad, bad!)
5) Clean out the barn/shed/shop and determine what we are going to call said barn/shed/shop.  Barn? Shed? Shop?
6) Tell Graham he is responsible for numbers 4 and 5.

That's about it.  I'm excited about the changes.
(One more thing:  Order Graham to read this post!)

What are your home goals?

detergent

*This post has been in the 'draft mode' for over a month and I have neglected to post it.  I still use this detergent and love it.  It's tried and true.

There are TONS and TONS and TONS of detergent recipes floating around Pinterest and I'm sure they are great.  I have a friend in Arkansas who made me the following recipe a few years ago and I loved it then and still love it now.  I'm sharing it--mainly because I want to have a record of it for the future.

This recipe is GREAT for people with sensitive skin.  Uhh...that would be me and pretty much my whole family.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups water
• 1/3 bar Fels Naptha Laundry Bar Soap, grated (I used a cheese grater.  Walmart now carries this soap on the 'laundry detergent aisle'.)
• 1/2 cup Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 
• 1/2 cup 20 Mule Team Borax
• 2 gallon bucket
  
• 2-one gallon containers (milk jug, liquid laundry soap container, juice container, etc.)

Directions:

1. Mix grated soap in a large saucepan or pot with 6 cups of hot water and heat on the stove over LOW heat until dissolved. Don't get it too hot because it won't mix well later.  Do not allow to boil.  
2. Stir in the Super Washing Soda and Borax.  Stir until the mixture thickens and remove from heat.  
3. Pour  4 cups of hot water into the bucket.  
4. Pour in soap mixture and stir
5. Add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir
6. Pour into containers

*shake detergent before using 

*mixture will be a little bit lumpy and look kind of like egg whites

*spot treat clothing before washing
*use 1/2 cup per load

another {one} bites the dust

Remember how I was planning on growing a green thumb--magically turning my black one green?  Welp.....I've lost one of my plants...only one!!!!!! BUT, I haven't lost faith.  I'm gonna keep on keepin' on and try again.

Here's me keepin' it real with ya...or dead...

Killer?--over-watering I do believe.  I really, really, really tried not to over-water, but I'm finding that some of my plants require less/more than others.

What I've learned: Plants are kinda like children; you can't treat them all the same.  What works for one might not work for the next.

I'm not giving up...

I bought a little water worm thing that is supposed to help me determine when the plants need water. Hoping for the best.

A couple of things I am noticing in two of my plants are brown tips and a tad loss of color.  What should I do?

SUGGESTIONS are welcome!!!

**I LOVE my plants.  Even though I killed one and two are hanging in the balances--I've enjoyed them.  So... for now, I'm going to keep trying.