Kitchen Counters - Utter Fail

Side note: If a cow stops producing milk, do they have an udder fail?

Ok, back on topic. Last week my goal was going to be clearing my kitchen counters. Well, hmm, I did not accomplish the task. I made progress, but they get messed up so quickly!!! So I tried to determine the problems so I could come up with solutions:

Problem #1: Dirty dishes on the counter.
Solution: Clean them.
This can be a problem for me. Our day is pretty fast-paced, so it's hard for me to get a moment to wash the dishes in between meals and I'm not Type A enough to really even care. For now, the solution is to TRY to clean them in between meals and hopefully have a dirty dish-free counter by bedtime.

Problem #2: No place for food items, such as bags of pretzels or chips, or for boxes of crackers, etc. 
Our house is not equipped with a pantry. It's a very poorly designed kitchen. I mean, it's nice and spacious and there are plenty of cupboards, but there is not a walk-in pantry or even a large, tall cupboard or closet. (We don't even have a hall closet for jackets.) I think our 1200 square foot apartment, when we first got married, had more pantry space than this house. Because there is inconvenient storage for these types of food items, they usually end up on the counters or on the playroom floor. Bad.

Solution: We have a back porch off our kitchen, and ideally I would enclose it and make it a sort of mudroom, butler's pantry, food storage type room. It's a dream of mine. But since that would likely cost in the 10's of thousands of dollars, I decided to buy a temporary cabinet at Lowe's to put in another area of the kitchen. The white matches our existing cabinets and it should nicely enclose the awkward packages of food that are encroaching my counter space and causing my utter fail. Right now the cabinet is sitting unassembled on my kitchen floor. I need to work up the courage to put it together. Here's a pic from Lowe's website. I'm kind of excited about it. I hope it holds up well:

It cost $138, which I still think costs a lot of money, but much less than $10,000. It's all relative.

Problem #3: Unorganized baking center.
For Christmas my dad gave us a Kitchen Aid. I was very excited because I'm not much of a baker and I thought that this might be an inspiration to be able to do some hands-free mixing. I have a nice spot for it in my kitchen, but my ingredients are not very handy. I want my ingredients to be handy by the mixer so that I'm inspired to bake.

Solution: I want to install a pullout drawer in one of my cabinets where I can put my flour, sugar, etc and easily scoop it into the mixer. The ones at Lowe's are about $55-65 which I think is expensive. I've been searching online and I think I can get a comparable one for about $37. Still haven't decided yet. I might just have to squat down and pull the containers out from under the cupboard. Gaw! It just feels so primitive! We MUST have convenience and exert as LITTLE effort as possible!!! Ok, so I might be getting a little spoiled here. I think I better start a budget and practice my squats for now.

Ok that's all for now. Totally boring post, but it's been what's been going on in my mind. This week's assignment is supposed to be kitchen cupboards and drawers. Thankfully, I did mine not that long ago, so I'm in pretty good shape in regards to my drawers and cupboards. Getting this cabinet assembled should help with with the kitchen organization overall. I'll keep you updated.

Ugh. I'm annoyed that I just created such a boring post! Such is life. I'll leave you with pictures:

 

 I took these last week. My counters have improved, but they still need some work. This is the counter that accumulates the dirty dishes.

This is the clean dish side. It's usually stacked with drying dishes.

This is unusually cluttered due to the holidays, but unfortunately it's still pretty bad. Aren't you excited to see the after pictures? Me too! This is where my beloved Kitchen Aid will go.

Solution Resolution

Tonight's Family Home Evening lesson was on New Year Resolutions. For our activity the kids wrote down at least three of their own resolutions. They came up with them on their own....well, maybe with a little help from mom and dad. At least the ones that seem to recur among children.

Emily's

Sarah's 

When I asked her what she meant by "riding" she said, "You know..." and then gestured with a writing motion. I think what she meant was spelling. And "cleaing" means "cleaning".

Bradley's 

Focus on piano, obedience, trying new food, and cleaning*

*Really need to do!" I'm glad he realizes that.

George's 

Learn how to properly dip a chocolate chip cookie in milk. It's not necessary to dip the hand past the wrist.

 Wendy's

Jason's

He chose not to write down any that mom and dad suggested, and he came up with this one all by himself, with a little help from an older sister with spelling.

Rachel slept through Family Home Evening.

In addition to our individual resolutions, my husband and I made a joint one to find Solutions to problem areas in the house. For example, my husband was very frustrated with our shower curtain hooks in our bathroom because they didn't slide smoothly. So he bought new ones that are very slick. He also bought a new shower curtain because ours had a lot of mildew growing on it and it was yellowing from all the times I have bleached it. Now my husband says that his day goes so much better now that he has a pleasant shower experience in the morning.

I found a cool website via Pinterest that focuses on one problem area of the home per week for 52 weeks. This week's focus is kitchen counters. Hopefully by Saturday I will have some good before and after pictures. Kitchen counters in our house are a major clutter magnet. I have to put my thinking cap on and find some solutions!

New Year Resolutions (5 of them)

Did you think I was dead? My sincerest apologies for the two month leave of absence. I'm not sure that anybody really even cares, but I do. I feel like I missed two whole months of documenting my life. My occasional Facebook Status update will have to suffice to fill in the gap. Anyways, I would like to call my leave of absence a bloggatical. You know, like when a professor leaves to go do something for a semester or two, they take a sabbatical? Well, yeah, that's what I did, except I'm not a professor. So I'm not really sorry, because the break was nice, but I should have warned you so you didn't think I died November 2. My daughter, Emily, finally got upset with me. and is strongly encouraging me to blog. I think she misses her weekly 15 minutes of fame.

Instead of trying to catch up with telling you everything that's been going on over the past two months, I'm starting fresh at the beginning of this year, and I'll throw in a thing or two from the past two months as they come to mind or relate to the topic.

So what are my New Year Resolutions? I don't like to get overly ambitious so that I don't feel like a failure by January 7th, so I'm going to keep it simple. I actually haven't put a whole lot of thought into it as of yet, so I am brainstorming as I type:

1. Increase my gratitude. I simply want to be more grateful for things, people, and experiences (including trials). And not only to feel the gratitude, but to express it as well. I don't think it's something I'm bad at, but I want to be better. I want to write down the things I am grateful for either on my blog, a thank you note, or in my journal.

2. Be faithful at keeping a written journal. My husband gave me a journal for Christmas and on the cover it says, "Love Your Life". I do love my life, and I want my descendants to know that I love it too. In case the Internet blows up, at least I will have a hard copy to prove it. I want to write at least a few lines a day and if the day was really exciting, I might actually write a whole page.

3. Be a Better Blogger. I'm not going to try to set a specific goal for how many posts per week. I just want to be consistent. I think I already used up my vacation leave the past two months.

4. Gain 35 pounds. I'm getting a little tired of stocking up on food because we are running out of space in our closets and under our beds, so I thought a little extra storage on the body might be helpful. Also, I think it's fun to gain weight.

5. Have a baby by the first week in July. I hope I didn't just jinx this whole having a baby thing. But I'm out of the closet now (my doctors words, not mine) because I just said it. Yes, I hope to be an octamom this summer. So this resolution possibly explains my bloggatical. There are moments in life when you need to set your priorities. In November and December my priority was to lay on the couch and watch Hallmark movies while I snacked away the nausea and paranoia. Hopefully I will be able to lose the 35 pounds by December and be done with that goal.

Yes, I've been super paranoid for the past 9 weeks. "Super" is actually an understatement. My blighted ovum in June permanently scarred me in regards to getting excited about pregnancy. But there was a heartbeat at 6.5 weeks this time around which was much more exciting than an seeing an empty gestational sac. There was still a heartbeat at 9.5 weeks. And there was yet, still a heartbeat at 12.5 weeks. I made my husband come with me to my last appointment this past Tuesday because I was so sure I wasn't pregnant anymore and I didn't want to be alone when the doctor couldn't find the heartbeat. So my husband stood my side as the doctor put the doppler on my abdomen. I heard something beating. I thought it was my own heart beating. Then my husband asked, "Is that the baby's heartbeat?" I piped in, "No, that's mine." Then the doctor looked at me confused and said, "No. Your heart is not beating 160 beats per minute. That is the baby's heart beat." He had to prove it to me and show me that mine was beating at 90 bpm because I didn't believe him. Like I said, I've been super paranoid and pessimistic this whole time. I need to get over it.

Ok, so there you have it. My New Year resolutions. Hopefully I will be consistent. You guys are my cheerlearders.

I need to post a picture. Don't I?

My physical journal. 

I don't usually post pictures of myself on my blog, but I was having a relatively good hair and complexion day on Christmas Eve. Pictures of kids coming soon. They are much cuter....

And if you feel inclined to comment, let me know what kind of posts you like to read. I need some direction on what to write about. I have all sorts of topics running through my head throughout the day, which I think overwhelms me at times, and my indecisiveness prevents me from writing anything at all. I can post about homeschooling, my attempts at organization, my cooking (I'll warn you that this could be boring), my messy house (lots of content for this one), my kids (that one is a give-in), my self-diagnosed ADD, my Hallmark movies, my stack of unread books on my nightstand, or I could simply just post about George because he is the the cutest kid in the family right now. (Don't worry, I haven't offended any of my other kids by writing that, because we voted on it, and it is unanimous.) I'm just curious what ya'll want to know about.  

Christmas Eve

Holiday Halloween

Ok, so I'm not a huge fan of Halloween. Why celebrate something that revolves around evil? We rejoice in goodness and light. However, I'm not going to be totally bah humbug, so we dress up and go trick or treating because really it's all about the free candy. Right?

So, if we are going to do Halloween, I require my kids to dress in a theme because my I have a theory that themed costumes receive more candy. There are lots of themed ideas, but the difficult part is getting them all to agree who is going to be what. For example, the Wizard of Oz would be a perfect theme, but nobody wants to be the wicked witch and all the girls want to be the Glenda, and it always ends up in arguing. This year I threw a few ideas on the table and finally one morning they came downstairs to breakfast and announced that they agreed to be holidays. Surprisingly there was not much arguing over who was going to be what holiday because the holidays are not very gender specific. I can honestly say that this year's costumes were VERY low budget. Now, of course I'm a tiny bit of a saver and suffer a mild case of pack-ratness which comes in very handy during times like this when some creativity and improvisation is essential.

Here they are:

Thanksgiving

We had the black tights, brown shorts and brown shirt. We cut feathers from 2 white poster boards ($0.69 each) and spray painted them with paint I already had. I also bought the foam for the turkey feet ($0.99). We stuck some feathers in her hair that I bought 10 years ago for a Thanksgiving project when Emily was 19 months old. The feathers are attached to Emily with a belt and some yarn around the arms. Total cost $2.47.

Fourth of July

Bradley is wearing a pair of my red capri pants to which I applied masking tape stripes (he is wearing a belt. My waist is not the same size an 8 year old boy's), a blue suit coat, a red sash from one of the girl's dresses for his tie, a vest from his magician's costume, and my husband's red striped socks. The hat is also from his magician's costume that he got for Christmas last year from my dad and sister. We put on red and white construction paper stripes, a blue velvet fabric scrap, and a white felt star. And of course cotton ball beard and eyebrows attached with double sticky tape. Bradley's costume cost $0.

Valentine's Day 

Sarah is wearing her pretty pink princess dress that my mother-in-law made last year. I attached some red felt hearts and paper Valentines. She is wearing heart ornaments around her ears and we made her a red glitter heart head headband. She is also wearing pink fairy wings that I had stashed in a closet. Sarah's costume cost $0.

Easter

For Wendy I cut out the bottom of a basket that has been sitting in our garage for the past seven years. It hung on her with grosgrain ribbon that I had in my ribbon stash. I made her some bunny ears from stiff felt ($0.99). I attached our plastic Easter eggs to a large wad of plastic Walmart grocery bags. The basket is essential to the costume or else the costume has a totally different look. Total cost $0.99.

St. Patrick's Day

This one required a little sewing. I made Jason a very rough pair of drawstring pants and a vest, because everyone has a yard or two of green gingham in their fabric stash, right? (No awards for the sewing. There were no hems or pretty stitches.) The green sequin bow is from some St. Patrick's Day goodies my mother-in-law sent a year or two ago. The hat is from our German family reunion in 2008 and I added a green shamrock to the side. Also the green boots are something that have been kicking around the house for awhile because I had to get them when they were clearanced for $2 at Walmart. Total cost $0. 

Christmas

Ok, so Rachel wasn't the most cooperative when it came to her costume. I had a great idea to transform Rachel into a Christmas tree. I had the perfect dress I was going to dye green and decorate like a tree. But she refused. I probably could've gone forward with my plan, but I really didn't want to put forth the effort of Rit dye if she was going to be a pain about it. So since she had a red dress, that my mother-in-law also made last year, we improvised and she was transformed into Holiday Barbie. I added holly leaves and berries to her beauty pageant sash to help make things a little clearer that she was Christmas. I'm still disappointed I didn't get to dress her as a Christmas tree. But you can't reason much with three year old little girls because all they want to be are princesses, and I couldn't convince Bradley to wear a dress.

Halloween 

I had an orange t-shirt about 2 or 3 sizes too big for George. I put it on him and wrapped a rubber band around his waist and the bottom of the t-shirt. I tacked on some black foam (that I already had) jack-o-lantern facial pieces that I cut and....Wallah!...a pumpkin. I would've taken it a step further and made him some leaves for his head, but George doesn't like things on his head, so I didn't bother. We stuffed his shirt with some of those big packing bubbles, like the really big ones that come in a perferated strip. You know what I mean? Anyway, we were lucky because we had just received about three packages from Amazon packed with them and they worked out really well, and he didn't mind being all puffed up all evening. Total cost $0.

Happy Holidays!

Oh and here is Emily's beak that we forgot to have her wear in the other picture. It's made from a birthday hat and orange paint with a red feather attached.

 Ok, so we might have added a little bit of evil to the evening. But it only lasted 2 seconds for the photo.

Halloween was a success. $3.46 for seven costumes and 17 pounds 10 ounces of free candy later, we are finished for another year. Moving on to Emily....I mean Thanksgiving.....

I'm Blogging. I'm Blogging.

I'm going to update you on the past 23 days in pictures. Seriously, 23 days? Positively shameful!

George squriting himself with a water bottle. It was about 10 minutes of quality entertaiment.

Bradley + leaf blower + basket of balls = 45 minutes of quality entertainment.

He hovered a variety of different types of balls. This was the best picture of my squishy Miracle Ball. It was fun watching the ping pong balls shoot out too.

We spent five weekends (yes, that's right, FIVE weekends cleaning and remodeling our garage. It had seven years of accumulation and junk and roach poop. It was A LOT of work, but so worth it. We hauled a bunch of stuff away to Goodwill, painted, and got carpet for half the garage, so the kids could play and study in there. This deserves a whole post, so hopefully I will post.

Always a good spot for the cordless phone. It's hanging on the back of the blinds on the back door.

Squeeze bottles for relish are just not a good idea. Chunks of pickle just don't come out smoothly from a 1/2 inch hole, and sometimes you end up with a pile.

Jason turned 5 years old!! But he crushed his birthday crown doing a flip off the couch.

We have moved onto rectangle cakes that are easily divisible by 9.

Playing in a box of crayons.

The after picture. Just to give you an idea of how much work this is....normally our garage is filled to maximum capacity with bikes, storage bins, gardening stuff and junk. We took it ALL out and it was on our lawn. People thought we were having a garage sale. I painted it a semi-gloss white, and that black on the right hand side is chalk board.

Wendy learned how to ride her bike without her training wheels. Mostly.

We got a new pencil sharpener. It was totally awesome, but it broke one week later :( 

I am shopping for a vintage steel one on eBay. I cannot find a good pencil sharpener!

"Look, Mommy! Four legs!"

Daddy and George. My husband and I decided we don't take enough pictures of ourselves with the kids, so we are trying to take more so our kids remember what we looked like after we are dead.

Reading. George loves books.

She's looking so grown up!

Wendy's a nut.

This is the night that Jason ate an entire 20 oz. can of crushed pineapple for dinner.

Finishing his ice cream.

Whip cream!

There. That should be good for a few days? Weeks? I promise not months.

Famous Hair

Rachel went to the "salon" today to get her hair done. After her appointment she was checking her texts.

I think George is thinking, "What? We can touch Mommy's iTouch?"'

 Realizing her talent for hair styling, Sarah decided to start her own business today. She hired Emily as an employee. 

It's called "Famous Hair: Hair for Famous (and ordanary) People

The Stylist and her own hair do.

Another Asian inspired style on Rachel.

Today was also Emily's half birthday.

(That's our new white board that I am loving in the playroom. We got a sheet of glossy wall board that we bought at Lowes  for $11.84. It works awesome with regular dry erase markers. It was much cheaper than buying a real white board.)

It was Bradley's idea to use the number candles that we had on hand to make the 10 3/6 fraction. It makes me happy to see him applying his math skills.