We reclaimed our living room....

and I slept 11 hours last night! Okay, so being 9 1/2 months pregnant, I probably should not have undertaken our tasks yesterday. But, oh my, it does feel good.

Living in a small house, it's easy for your world to be overtaken by stuff for toddlers and little kids. Now adding in another baby in less than a month, we were really starting to look like a daycare instead of a home. So...we took our junk room off the living room (which was really an old front entrance room (5x5) that had been closed off) and turned it into a toy room. Everything in that room finally found a home, we sorted through all of the toys. Which resulted in 2 garbage bags and 1 box of toys being sent to Goodwill and another garbage bag of toys that were either broke or missing most/all of the parts.

The kids absolutely love it. Instead of their toys and stuff being spread out, it's all separated into bins or stacked into a shelf. They can easily find everything. Connor still is a little hesitant about picking up one bin and putting it away before getting out another but time and patience...

Emily had to bring treats for her Christmas party at school and these are the two treats she made (I really should learn how to use my new camera because my outside pictures are fabulous...inside...not so much). We made Reindeer Pops using this tutorial and Melted Snowman Cookies using this tutorial.

OH. MY. YUMMINESS. The reindeer pops may be an everyday treat at our house until the baby is born. I could easily eat, well, okay, I can eat more than one, let's leave it at that.

My only goal for today is to do some more laundry and finish the dishes. Both of which are everyday events around our house but lately doing the dishes is difficult because I have to stand a foot back from the sink!

A simple kind of quilt...

I feel as if our house has imploded. I would like to think that we only have the grandparents to blame, however, we ourselves seem to have went a little overboard. It's hard because the kids are at "that" age where there is so much joy is the magic of Santa Claus. We did have a lovely Christmas with family and the candlelight service at church on Christmas Eve was truly beautiful and moving.

We have some organizational cleaning to do this week. The biggest project being cleaning out the "junk closet" in the living room and turning it into a toy/storage room. It's actually an old front entrance that we closed off and turned into a closet so it's a nice little 5x5 foot room.

I have two Christmas presents for the kids that I did not get finished before Christmas. They each were supposed to get a "kind of" quilt from mommy and daddy, however, I just ran out of time. Con was more than happy to get his Thomas the train blankkie this morning. I am calling it a "kind of" quilt because a quilt would cringe if they saw it!  :) My kids love textures so there is minky on the back side and a cotton woven on the front and I used satin quilt binding. Which I machined stitched on! I thought about doing yarn ties but settled for sewing a big X across it to keep it from bunching up. You gotta love a happy 2 year old!

Now I'm off to try to find the kitchen table and later to find some free patterns for Barbie Doll clothes because Daddy told Em, "Ask mom to make some." Thanks...a bunch...

I know we've been busy...

I'm just not sure what we've been doing! We did get about 20 inches of snow on Saturday. That was amazing! We haven't had snow like that in probably 20 years (and that just made me old since 20 years ago I was a freshman in high school).

Since we couldn't go anywhere, we started on some christmas presents...cause you know we really should have started them 3-4 weeks ago. We're giving away goodie bags full of yuumminess including homemade lip balm, sugar scrubs, and bath salts wrapped up in pretty little brown paper bags tied with raffia and an ornament. Saturday we did get the ornaments done and we made ornaments from paint sticks. I used this tutorial. My 4 year old daughter had a blast with helping me Modge Podge all of the ornaments. Dad even got into the fun and finished them up by tying on the wires. They really do look a lot cuter in real life than they do in the pictures. We used a brown spray paint that had gold glitter in it. We were able to use our ink jet printer with no smearing as long as I used the photo setting. (I'm really not sure why even picture I've taken today won't come out, I think the sun shining and the snow is throwing everything off).

Emily also helped me make her and her little brother some Christmas pillows.

You really can't get much simplier. Two pieces of fabric 11x17. We left an opening and Emily filled them full of polyfill from an old pillow we had laying around. The kids have no taken their regular pillows off their beds and will only sleep on their "Santa Pillows." You gotta love when the simple things in life make kids so happy!

Emily and I also made Chocolate Orange Lip Balm this morning and oh me oh my does the kitchen smell heavenly! So very easy. I tried taking a picture but between my flash, the bright snow sunshine and the clear tubes, it was not turning out. But here's the ingredients below.

Chocolate Orange Lip Balm
4 tbsp. Cocoa Butter
10 chocolate chips (I used milk chocolate but I think dark chocolate would taste even better)
1/2 tsp. Vitamin E oil
1/2 tsp. orange extract (I think vanilla would also be good!)

Melt the cocoa butter using a double boiler and remove from heat. Stir in chocolate chips, Vitamin E oil and extract. I used a syringe to place into lip balm tubes (placed in the freezer first). There was still some leakage in the tubes. I think if we continue to make this, I'd change to a pot container but for now since we have a ton of tubes, this works just fine!

We still have a ton of stuff to make but I think next we'll finish up the lip balms and then move onto the bath salts and scrubs.

A neckwarmer/cowl for kids...

Winter seems to again have decided to make an appearance in Wisconsin. This morning it is cold and gray. My daughter has decided that when she grows up, she is going to be an artist. She loves anything creative but at 3 (going on 16), it sometimes hard to find ways that she can help create when she wants to help me sew. Last week, when I put on my cowl to take her down the driveway to the bus stop, she said she wanted one. So off to the fabric store we went and picked up some fleece. This was probably one of the easiest things I've made. Two rectangles turned and topstitched (24" x 6") and then I added snaps in the color of her choice.

This is her measuring out the fabric and that was probably the longest part of the whole process. All these years I've been sewing and I never realized that along with a tape measure, the length in tractor tires was also important!  :)

And our finished product. There are two rows of snaps so it can be adjusted. Because fleece has stretch, we could have easily made it to just slip on and off over her head but sometimes it's nice to have things that come apart for those days when you haul a sleeping toddler into the house and have to undress them.

Blessings,

Lisa

A family picture

Last weekend, we were all in a family wedding. Yes, this extremely pregnant momma was actually willing to A) stuff her belly into a strapless, fitted bridesmaid gown, and B) be immortalized forever wearing a strapless, fitted bridesmaid gown.

"Vintage" Homemade Cabbage Patch Kids

I call them vintage because these were made for me by my momma for Christmas 1983 or 1984 and I probably would have been about 7 years old. That year for Christmas my mom made all of the girls in her family these cabbage patch kids. I got two. The one with brown hair was her first one and we called her E.T. (Elizabeth Theresa) because she looked like E.T. She wears a cast on her right arm because the dog chewed off a couple of her fingers. Afterwards, she turned their heads around and their faces weren't so wrinkled looking. These dolls went everywhere with me and I still love them today. And as far as I know, all of my mom's nieces still have their doll that my mom made for them.

This last weekend, my daughter and I visited Grandma and she sent these home with her and she loves them as much as I do. She proudly told her dad that "Grandma made these for mummy when she was a baby. See, mummy even wore this pink dress that Grandma made." Mom also said she thinks she still has the pattern and will find it because Em now wants a Boy Baby.

I only hope I can do as good of a job on them as my mom did! Although I do need for figure out how to wash their faces.  :)

Homemade cleaning products and tackling the laundry room mess

Like in my last post when I said that sometimes I feel like I'm falling behind and can't keep up and blamed it on my almost 2 year old, it also has to do with my pregnancy and that it's just fall. I think our bodies tend to slow down in the fall, almost like bears going into hibernation. Well, whatever it is, the housework has seemed to be slacking in the past couple of weeks. However, this morning I looked upon everything with a new resolve...okay, maybe just realized that gumption wasn't going to happen and I needed to create my own!

As part of our family's strive to be green and cheap frugal and spend wisely, one of the easiest ways I've found to do that is with making my own cleaning products. And it makes me feel better not having to chase the kids out of whatever room I'm cleaning because I don't want them to inhale the cleaner. That just doesn't make sense in my mind..."Sorry kids, mommy's cleaning to make a healthy environment for you but don't breathe the cleaner cuz it's dangerous."  Huh!?!

Anyways, some of my favorite homemade cleaning recipes are here. I know that many of them are listed in 2 million other places around the web but hey, the wonder of the internet!

Homemade SoftScrub
    2 cups baking soda
    1/2 cup liquid dish soap (Dawn works the best because it really tackles grease)
    Optionally you can add 5 drops of essential oil is you prefer

    This makes a nice creamy paste and 2 cups gives me enough to clean the tub and shower, bathroom sink and countertop, along with the stovetop, microwave, and countertops in the kitchen.

Tip 1: If it's been awhile since the microwave has been cleaned, place a microwave safe bowl full of water in microwave and cook on high for 5 minutes. The steam will loosen any crude in there, making it easier to clean.

Tip 2: For hard water stains in the tub, I found this solution works best using one of those green scratchy pads, however, if you're worried about scratching your porcelin, I'd use elbow grease.

All-Purpose Cleaner
2 cups vinegar
2 cups water
20-30 drops of essential oil (Tea tree oil is anti-bacterial)

I use this for everything. I keep it in a spray bottle behind the kitchen sink and use it for cleaning the kitchen, bathroom, hardwood floors, etc.

Wood Cleaner/Polish
Another cleaner I use on our wood floors is plain old water with a little dishsoap. I come from the Granny cleaning system where floors are cleaned on hands and knees. I sweep the floors first and then scrub them good with an old towel. If I'm really lazy, I soak down a bath towel and "scrub" the floors by walking around with the towel (kids love doing this!) Throughout the week, I use an old swiffer mop with a reuseable cleaning pad I made from old towels.

Every so often, I'll polish wood furniture and the hardwood floors with using the following recipe.
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup vinegar
20-30 drops lemon essential oil

My other disorganzed chaos is the laundry room. Because our house is old, our basement is rock wall with a dirt floor so it can't be used for storage, etc. We do have a nice sized attic but there are just thing that are easier kept in the laundry room for easy access. However, this often means the laundry room becomes the holding area for everything including my treadmill, the vacuum, carpet scrubber, and intermediate storage for outgrown clothing and the charity box. One of the things that helps me is having a storage bin next to the dryer for outgrown clothes. That way when I know something is outgrown, it gets put into the storage box as soon as it comes out of the dryer. When the bin is full, it gets labeled and put upstairs in the attic.

I also keep a charity box in the laundry room and anything I don't want to keep goes into the charity box and when we do our grocery shopping (usually every other week), the box gets loaded up into the truck and dropped off. Sometimes the box isn't full but I've found that if it stays in the house too long, someone goes into the box and finds something they've decided they can't live without.