So

I have fallen off the 21 day challenge wagon /sigh

Girl Scout cookies have been eating a lot of my free afternoon "nap" time. Phone calls, emails, a billion texts a day.

So I'll be working on it as I can, but it won't be every day.

21 day - days 13 and 14

Yesterday, day 13, was to organize my pantry.

I organized the food part, but there is so much crap in there that belongs to my mom that I can't do anything with it (anyone sensing a pattern?!)

Today was the patio. Ross and kaeley did the patio while Connor napped and I was at a spinning get together at the Lantana library! It was awesome, both the spinning and getting help with the challenge.

Tomorrow I organize the dressers! It's going to take forever /sigh

It's that time again

Girl Scout cookie time!!

Our local sale starts January 24th and runs through February 17th.

This morning we (mom and I) went to the cookie cupboard and picked up our troops cookies. All 97 cases of them.

After stacking them by species we spend two hours sorting each girls cases from "booth cookies".

If you don't have a daughter, have never been involved in scouts as an adult, or been involved but didn't care...I seriously suggest you thank your local troop leaders and cookie parents.

The amount of crap we go through, rules we have to follow and hoops we have to jump through, not only for council but for other parents (and the general public during cookie season) is ridiculous!

Enjoy your cookies, help your local troops, support the scouts of America. These girls, boys and registered adults work REALLY hard to bring you these products, for very little in return.

21 day - day 12

So today was craft stuff.
This is a hard one for me. Because I have a lot of it.

I pulled everything together, all my yarn, popped open the tub.

I even printed out and bagged each group of yarn so all I have to do is grab the next project.

I found two spindles I'll be destashing because I haven't used them at all. And made a clear space to my spinning wheel.

I'm looking for an easel that my weaving loom can stand on.

All the "ugh not using this" yarn is being split, some shipping off to a friend and the rest to knitting group to see who wants it.

Tomorrow I go pick up Girl Scout cookies with mom. The sale starts next week Thursday. But when I get home I'll be organizing the kitchen pantry.

21 day - day 11

Today I organized the front entry. I'm not really happy with it, honestly. There is a lot of stuff that lives there that really doesn't have a home.

Like our cloth totes for groceries. We never freaking use them. Ok we'll we use the library bags, three of them. Kaeley's books, mommy and daddy's books, and the return bag. I'm sure Connor will have his own soon enough.

The problem is that I'm cheap, so I do my grocery shopping at super Walmart. They won't use cloth bags. Even if you buy one if theirs. If you want to use them, you have to bag yourself. But I buy 2-3 weeks of groceries at a time. With 1-2 children in tow. I need extra arms.

I'll probably keep one bag for the veggie market and give the rest to my mom.

My big achievement is the shoe rack. Typically my husbeast tosses all the shoes into a pile when he "cleans". The rack should help with that.

I need to go through the mail bin still.

Tomorrow is my craft bins, that will take more time and have a ton of pictures!

21 day - day 10

well, yesterday i discovered that my closet door is broken. we have mirrored sliding doors on all the closets in the house (i have hated them for 16 years....) personally i'd love to replace the ones in ours and the kids rooms with wood, maybe faux barn doors. but i don't see it happening. my mom (the landlord dum dum duuuuuuuuuuum) feels they make the rooms look bigger. i argue that, no, the vaulted ceilings do that. but whatev.

so i didn't get to organize my closets. it's going to have to wait until the fix-it man (my stepdad) gets here. he was supposed to come today, but i made a trip to storage (and the awesome 99c thrift shop!!)

i also got a really great purple leather purse at Ross. because i needed another bag like i needed another hole in my head. (I have 4 earring holes thanks)

Since i didn't organize the closet i spent three hours washing my washing machine. yes. i washed a machine that is full of soap and water! and yes, it really took that long. Longer actually.

first you pour a quart of bleach in the the machine. set it to high water and hot and let it fill. agitate for about 30 seconds and then leave the door propped to soak (I HAVE A TOP LOADER!). soaks for about an hour, mine was actually longer. since i forgot about it. the water was nasty black dingy. omg bleck. then you let it run the rest of the longest wash cycle. mine takes about 40 minutes.

after the bleach is the vinegar cycle. refill high water/hot and pour in a cup of white vinegar. agitate for 30 seconds to a minute then let sit. while it was sitting with the vinegar, i took a sponge and cleaned off the agitator, and the edges, i also cleaned out the little bleach cup on the side. you know the one that's supposed to add the bleach without ruining your clothes. soak for an hour and then let it run another long cycle.

i ran a load of cloth diapers right after. and they came out much cleaner than usual. i think we get detergent build up from the powder i use on our regular clothes, and it effects the diapers even with the Free and Clear detergent i use with them.

So yeah, that was my day yesterday!

Today i did the front entry

21 day - day 9

Today was the bookshelves. We have 4 in our house. One in the living room, one in the kids room, and two in our bedroom.

Says a lot about the kind of people we are lol.

The shelf in the living room needs more attention. I did what I could with the time I had, and kae got in on the action by doing the shelf in their room. I'll need to go over it again when she's not home of course.

I packed up all of Ross' Magic: The Gathering decks and put them into baggies. The boys get on a kick and play every few weeks. (My decks are in fancy metal deck boxes. I have a black/green deck and a blue/green elf deck).

I admit I got distracted. I've been catching up on The Walking Dead and put it on while working...I hate Lori, Shane and Andrea...lots..also Carl is a moron.

I do have a box of books to go to the used book store (or library if they won't take them for store credit).

Tomorrow I tackle the bedroom closets! Eep! Ours is full of comic books ::face palm::

21 day challenge - day 8

Don't go searching for day 6 part 2 or day 7. My phone decided it was time to die. Like really dead. Green screen of death dead.

I did do under my kitchen sink and the fridge/freezer Sunday afternoon. I just don't have pictures to prove it /sigh

Today was kitchen cabinets. We don't have many, the cups and dishes are good, the doors won't close if we don't keep that organized. We have one food cabinet. And a pantry (that's later this week I think).






















But we do have the BIG cabinet. It houses the griddle, crockpot, rice cooker, baking dishes and Tupperware.

I sorted all the containers without lids and made a decent home for the griddle.






















Oh and made a home for Connor's baby food lazy Susan. Holds baby food jars, very handy. Might become a baby food jar spice rack when he doesn't use jar food anymore.

tomorrow...the bookshelves!

21 day challenge day 6 part one

So I wasn't home yesterday to organize under my sinks. So I'm having to do two days worth at once. Not bad, just hard with the husband and both kids.

We had breakfast out, so now I'm trying to get motivated to clean.

The bathroom sink was my first task, it was bad. I got some stacking organization bins at Wally-world and used our existing ones. Found a bunch of crap I didn't know was there...like 6 bars of soap, and two huge bottles of body wash.

Even as a 7 year old kaeley has more soaps and lotions than I do. Jeez!

Horsin Around

I am reminded every day how wonderful the knitting community is. The ladies at the local group I attend are some of the nicest and most supportive people I know.

I was telling them how hard school has been for kae so far this year, and my friend Kim offered for kae to come out and meet her horses!

Kae got to feed them carrots and horse cookies, she got to brush one and brush her mane. Then she got to learn how to pick the hooves and took Hershey for a walk around the paddock.

She also wanted to help clean the paddock. I have video lol

It was fun, and a great experience for kae. I'm glad she got to be around horses at least once, so she's not as left out with the really horse crazy girls in class.

Then grandma helped her pick seeds for the new raised bed garden she's getting for Easter!

21 day challenge - day 5

Today was a good day! Did Zumba and yoga. Connor has been great.

I made a stop at goodwill and dropped off the bag from the linen closet and the bag of toys.

I got some organization stuff for this weekend and early next week. A shoe rack being the most important one.

After I made salsa corn dog minis for freezer lunches (thank you o-bento) If anyone wants the recipe lemme know! I got to work on my purse.

It wasn't all THAT bad, since I'd cleaned it out couple days before Christmas.

 on the table: christmas card envelopes, my wallet, cosmetics pouch, sunglasses case, tictacs, receipts, snickers bar, play food hamburger bun bottom, bookmarks, octopus earrings, quarter machine ninja, crochet hooks (3, h, i, j), whoppers, build a bear bow, Squishables red panda, girl scout paperwork.


After!

-wallet
-zippy pouch with "cosmetics"
-fish coin purse
-eyeglass case


Plus a couple other important things, checks, tictacs, the key to the church for Girl Scouts.

I also used this opportunity to switch purses from my blue-green paisley Vera Bradley to my Asian print Vera Bradley. They are the only two purses I own now

At least, the only two "mommy" purses I own now...


Tomorrow is under my sinks, kitchen and bathroom. I'm scared...

21 day challenge day 4

Today I "rested" from my new work out routine by doing yoga. Which isn't really resting, but it's not high cardio.

Connor was a monster, he pulled the coat rack down and dumped my purse, pulled the hat I started off the needles, and destroyed a skein of sock yarn.

He's the most destructive child I have ever met. And I was a preschool teacher in a two year old room.

So my organization today is easy, it's my laundry area. I'd had a brain fart earlier in the week on how in the heck I was going to manage this space.

The problem is our washer/dryer. It's stacked, and crammed into a tiny little cubby at the end of the hall. There is no door, only an accordion panel. The fit is so tight the ironing board barely fits in there. So the laundry supplies (soap, bleach, dawn, cloth diaper detergent, dryer sheets) were either on the floor in the hallway, or crammed on top of the dryer.

We also have a laundry basket on the floor in front of the linen closet door holding laundry to be washed. It looks bad, but there isn't anything I can really do about it. Even a hamper would have to live in the hallway, we have very little space for 4 people's laundry.

So I moved the rest of the soaps onto the shelf in the linen closet I cleared just for them, and removed the piece of plywood in the hall, I have no idea why it was there, just always was!

I'm open to suggestions on how to house the unwashed laundry without taking up my whole hallway, or blocking the linen closet.


Tomorrow i'm going to switch out my purse, and clean TRY and organize it in the process. Mom purses are like Mary Poppins bags, they must have everything all.the.time.

21 day challenge - day 3

Today I sorted toys...lots and lots of toys. Toys I'm not even sure why we still have! Mr potato head parts with no body, Barbies exploded all over the closet floor.

My lovely daughter is a hoarder.

I tell her to sort her toys to make room for new ones. I find the bye bye toys crammed in the back of the closet!

I was truly only able to sort the stuff in the main part of their room. I'll have to tackle the closet toy boxes on a weekend when Ross can take them to the park or something.

Tomorrow i really organize the laundry area!

21 day Challenge - day 2

Ok so my day started much better today. I got up on time, got kae off to school with zero crying! (That never happens)

Put Connor in his jumperoo and got in some Zumba (ozmg kicked my ass)

Got pissed at the mean librarians about them losing another book so we keep getting fees. I know a lot of people lie, but we're super careful about library books. This is the 4th time it's happened!

Then got to work on the hall closet.

Before:
we had a few sets of sheets for each bed, pillowcases, random quilts, towels..omg the towels.

After:

so what i did was sort the sheets by set and stored them in their pillowcase, i found it on pinterest, works well actually. This way kae can grab the spare sheets for her bed all at once. Refolded all the towels, threw out the parts for the vacuum cleaner that doesn't exist anymore, and look what i found! MORE PAINT CANS! /sigh but now i have a whole shelf clear for laundry stuff. which means the new vacuum has a home! hurray.


Up Tomorrow, under the Kids beds and non-closet toys!

21 day challenge - day 1

First day! My day didn't start as expected. Connor was up at 3am, and didn't go back to sleep until 6:45.

Also I was expecting kae to be back at school today, but it's a teacher planning day.

I slept in, until 9:15, when Connor woke up again.

You see where this is going?

I didn't get in my scheduled morning exercise (My Dolphina Bellydance dvd), since my other resolution involves weight loss - go fig.

Then, around 10:30 an online friend reminded me about this, yes, even though it's in my phone, which beeped to remind me, I forgot :(

So I packed the kids up and headed to the Depot. Online it says they carry replacement medicine cabinet shelves...they do not. So I had to improvise...twice!

First trip I bought plastic sheeting, pretty thick. And convinced the guy who cut wood to cut it for me. He was nice, and my kids are cute. This collapsed almost immediately.

Second trip I bought 1/8th inch thick laminated particle board. It's only slightly sturdier than the plastic, but its holding.

So now for the before and after pics. Please keep in mind this bathroom is used by 3 and a half people!

before, useless cabinet, cluttered counter top.

AFTER!

not so cluttered countertop, just the stuff we use everyday that doesn't fit anywhere else, our toothbrushes, paste and hairbrushes. the big silver thing is a hands free soap dispenser we got for christmas. oh, and kae's zooble that's drying next to the sink, she accidentally dropped it in the toilet, it was very dramatic.

Shelves! top is medicines so the kids can't reach them, middle is...stuff, bottom is more stuff..
yes, if you count there are 5 bottles of female perfume on the bottom shelf...4 of them are mine. the two on the far left are mostly empty.

Stay Tuned for tomorrow's episode of see how messy my house is! The Linen Closet!

21 Day Organization Challenge

so my first "resolution" project of the year involves getting the house decluttered and organized. again. it's constant work that i just don't always want to do. ever.

but the list i'm going to use, and the challenge set up, is easy, you start with small items, and don't overwhelm yourself by trying to get everything done in a few days.

i'll be starting when kae goes back to school on monday, and if i remember, I'll post some before and after pics of what i get done. I'll probably be making a lot of trips to goodwill, and posting a lot of stuff up on Freecycle.

Some of the stuff on this list just doesn't fit into our house, so i'll be replacing it with things that do. Example, we do not have an attic, or a basement. so i'll be doing the Bookshelves, and My Desk/Kae's Desk. also my jewelry box doesn't need to be done, so that's "Kids toys (Again)".

I'm also going to try and include some of the home organization projects i've got on my Pinterest. a ton of ideas, none of them get used.

December Reading List

December
1-72 Once Burned - Jeaniene Frost (12/4) - free/library
2-73 Lover Reborn - J. R. Ward (12/16) - free/library
3-74 First Grave on the Right - Darynda Jones (12/20) - Free/Contest Win
4-75 French Girl Knits Accessories - (12/23) - free/library

i also had an attempt at Opening Atlantis by Harry Turtledove. This seemed fantastic in theory. the premise. but in execution, not so much. I, personally, found it very boring. And i LOVE alternate history.

First Grave on the Right was a contest win through St Martin's Paperback, i honestly don't even remember entering..it must have been through goodreads lol

I have a whole huge list of books i plan to read for 2013:

January
Oliver Twist
Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World
book 2 Tree Shepherd's Daughter
Book 3 tree Shepherd's daughter

February
The adventures of Sherlock Holmes
nurture shock
Miss Peregrin's Home for Peculiar Children
Skinwalker (Jane Yellowrock)

March
The Crucible
because i said so
Water for Elephants
The Mark of Athena

April
peter pan
10 mindful minutes
The Child Thief
Nightlife (Cal Leandros)

May
The Witch of Blackbird Pond
raising your spirited child
blood rights (commare)
i am number 4

June
siddhartha
Darwin's Ghosts
the forest of hands and teeth
lament, the fairie queen's deception

July
The Jungle Book
Consider the fork
 Rosemary and Rue (October Daye, #1)
 Ever Shade (A Dark Faerie Tale, #1)


august
the beautiful and damned
Cleopatra : A Life
hood
everneath


September
the Iliad
cleaning house
Royal Street (Sentinels of New Orleans, #1)
Hemlock Grove: A Novel

October
the secret garden
Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children
Daughter of Smoke & Bone (Daughter of Smoke & Bone, #1)
 Faerie Wars (The Faerie Wars Chronicles, #1)

November
The Bell Jar (Paperback)
Fingerprints of the gods
Blood Faerie (Caledonia Fae, #1)
 The Changelings (War of the Fae, #1)


December
 A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mass Market Paperback)
Freeing Your Child from Anxiety: Powerful, Practical Solutions to Overcome Your Child's Fears, Worries, and Phobias
Ironskin (Ironskin, #1)
Falling Under (Falling Under, #1)





 This list includes one unread "classic" a month, as well as one non-fiction. almost all the regular fiction on my list has been on my To Be Read list for a year or more, granted i have wiggle room for new releases (new Anita Blake, New BDB, New Mercy Thompson).

Some people would look at the fact that I've made a list as controlling and weird. but with two kids, both of them needing a good amount of attention, and you know, housekeeping and crap. I need to actually SCHEDULE reading time these days. (Girl Scouts cookie sales starts in three weeks...NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO)

 Oliver Twist is part of a KAL/RAL for the Storied Yarns group on Rav, i technically have three months to read it, but i plan to be finished by the end of January. I'm also doing a Buddy read in the 52 books in 52 weeks group for Cleopatra : A Life. If anyone who reads my blog wants to read along on anything, lemme know :D