Turning Old To New

When we bought our home 2 years ago, I had big plans. I was so tired of renting because I hated plain white walls. So when we moved in I just couldn't wait to start painting, then life happened. Soccer practices, dance classes, working, and everything else just got in the way. The only room that ended up getting painted was Alanna's room because we switched her into a big girls bed. I still plan to paint but who knows when I will get around to it.

So this spring I have decided to start on the outside. We have a big yard and nothing to keep the kids busy. My plan was to get all different play things for the kids but it hasn't happened yet. So I've been scoping out some "online yard sales" on Facebook and I found this old Little Tikes playhouse that someone was selling for $15. Now I am a Pinterest junkie like everyone else and I saw that someone had repurposed a little picnic table. So I decided to clean and paint it for the kids. All I can say that I am more than pleased with how it turned out. The kids are super excited to finally have something to play with and so am, I because they keep using beach shovels to dig holes all over my yard. My next adventure will be a swing set and then my flower gardens. I am hoping by Summer the outside will be how I want it, then we will tackle the inside.

It was relatively easy to do, but a lot of work. First I took it apart and scrubbed it with a scrub brush and hose. Then I used Rust-Oleum Indoor/outdoor spray paint and let it dry. It took about 2 days because I let it sit and dry but it didn't take that long to dry.

Getting Organized, One Day At A Time

My life is pretty chaotic between dance classes, soccer practices, church events, and birthday parties I'm lucky if I can remember what day it is. So for the last few weeks I have been trying to organize my life and I started with this......

It's our family command center. I'm obsessed with it and I can't begin to tell you how much of a life saver it has been. I need notes....everywhere.....to remind me of everything. I'm so forgetful and since I've had the kids I swear I have lost even more of my short term memory. So this was exactly what my chaos needed. The whole thing cost me about $25 including supplies to decorate the kids chore charts and I bought everything at Walmart and the dollar store. The first thing I got was the split cork/whiteboard  ($9.97) and the whiteboard calender  (also $9.97) Now, we have had chore charts for quite some time but like everything it was put on the back burner and forgot about. So I decided to revamp them and make it fun. I used 3 baking sheets from the Dollar store and I bought some foam letters and squares to cut the stars out. I already had a sheet of magnet that I cut and put on the back of the stars. And I bought the Family decal at the Dollar store also. 

I decided to try a point system in our house, if you get up and get dressed and ready for school without being told to get your shoes on 100 times ( let's face it, we all deal with that) then you get a point. At the end of the day if all of your chores are completed, you get another point. And if you do something without having to be told , ie: clean off the table, wipe off the counter , ect , then you get another point. You can also lose points, for not following directions or misbehaving. All we have to do is say we are taking away a point and they usually stop whatever they are doing at the time. So far I can say it has worked great! The kids are excited to do their chores and move their stars, they are eager to help around the house and they are even getting up and getting out the door in the morning without a fight. Not to mention the kids are starting to take on some responsibility, which is awesome.

Overall I can say this has been the best $25 spent, and my sanity is slowly coming back (yea right!)

I also made this magnetic behavior chart for my nephew. He's been having some trouble and I thought it would be helpful if he had some positive reinforcement. Everything I used for this came from the Dollar store as well. Like with the chore chart, I used the metal baking sheet and put stickers on the pieces of foam and added a magnet so they could be moved. Because let's face it, those printable sheets are time consuming. Oh and I used command strips to hang everything, those things are amazing!

Happy organizing!

An Addition

 The past few weeks have been pretty eventful. We bought a new home, and we added to our family in more ways then one! We had a new addition to the family this weekend. My sister in law had her baby on Saturday! (Hope you don't mind me talking about you in my blog Sis :) ) So we have a beautiful new niece and god daughter. She let me be in the room with her and it was the most amazing experience. Being that I had three c-sections and so has my sister I have never had the experience of seeing a birth. It was pretty exciting and I even cut the cord. Skyler Lynn made her appearance on July 9th at 3:38 pm weighing 8 lbs 7 oz.  and 21 1/2 inches long. She's quite the chunk too. :) And I just love the new baby smell hehe.

Mommy and Skyler

Me and Skyler...don't mind my roughness, I had been up since 4 am

In addition to Miss Skyler, we added an addition to our little family. Last weekend we went to the Heritage Fair.... and came home with a new puppy. I'm pretty sure I had a brief period of insanity when we decided to get him because looking back now...two weeks later, I have no idea what I was thinking. lol He's super sweet and adorable though.....but boy is he a pain in the butt. haha. And he likes to bite my toes, boy does it hurt too.  Leo decided he wanted to name him Cain. I have no idea why, just look at that face, nothing about him looks like a Cain. He is just too sweet to have such a tough name. They told us that he is a Chow and Border Collie mix, but I think he has lab in him. Either way we are guessing he's going to get big, although that's what we thought about Molly.

Speaking of Molly, she is having a ball with her new play mate. They wrestle non stop! At first I thought it was cute, now....not so much. They drive me crazy. Just imagine, three kids screaming and fighting and getting into things and top it off with two puppies constantly wrestling all over the house. That's just another normal day in my life. Not to mention we just finally got Molly house broken and now we have a puppy leaving spots all over our brand new carpet.

Thank goodness for Folex, it's  a life saver! I am telling you it is a miracle in a bottle, it has removed everything from pee stains to nail polish from my white carpet. I don't know what I would do with out it!  Here is our little pain in the behind...I mean puppy. He's 10 wks old.


So like I said it's been pretty eventful around here the past few weeks. Saturday we are having our house warming party and then hopefully life will calm down just a bit. Oh, I forgot to mention that I am doing camp during the day so not only are things crazy at home, I deal with crazy all day long. yay!