Making Crayons…
Molly loves doing “projecks.” I cannot tell you how much I love that about her!
She received a huge tower of brand new crayons for Christmas from my brother so I thought we could do a “projeck” with our old crayons. (I’ve had that box of crayons since high school folks!)
This crayon project has been all over the internet, so I know this isn’t anything new. But it was fun, simple, and took something we already had and made it into something new and fun for us to use!
We took off the paper, Molly sorted by colors she wanted together, and then I melted them in the oven at 250 and let them cool! Molly calls them her “new” crayons! She is quite the little artist with her new up-cycled crayons.
A Simple Valentine’s Day…
What? Valentine’s Day is this week? How did that happen? Am I the only one who feels like this?
Its great to have a day to focus on loving and appreciating the important folks in your life, but does it need to be a holiday you go all out for? For me– not so much.
I have some simple plans for making V-day special at our house thanks to some awesome pins on my beloved Pinterest!
For breakfast, heart shaped pancakes for Molly, and heart shaped eggs in a basket for hubbie.
For some simple activities, Molly and I will be making a heart stamp out of a toilet paper tube to make cards for family and friends, and making a quick V-day treat together in the kitchen… Valentine’s Day fudge! (Recipe is just a can of pink frosting mixed with a bag of white chocolate chips! How easy is that?)
Last but not least, Molly will also help momma make dinner for daddy, heart shaped homemade pizza!
All these simple ideas use ingredients or supplies I already have! The exceptions being the frosting and white chocolate chips, but those cost me about $3.50 to buy and I just included them in my weekly grocery shopping. No other additional funds are needed for this Valentine’s Day! (Yay for keeping the budget simple AND STILL making the day special!)
As for decorations? I just added a few paper hearts here and there to my existing wintery decor.
Centerpiece.
Mantel.
My dining room hutch.
Aren’t they cute? Just scrapbook paper hearts taped to a wooden skewer and placed inside a grouping of white bud vases. Love it!
Happy Valentine’s Day!
My Computer Is Back!
Yay! My computer needed some work done the last week and I missed it! I’ve had so many blogging ideas over the past week that I’ve just had to set aside because our computer was “in the shop!” I really need to start writing these ideas down though, because once it was back earlier this week, I couldn’t remember anything I had thought to blog about!
Mommy brain? I think YES.
I did have my second ultrasound last week and we have a confirmed gender of boy! I found these cute little Tommy Hilfiger rompers at Goodwill for $.99 each the other day in 18 month size and snagged them! He’ll wear them next summer. (If I do buy clothes for my kiddos, I try to buy ahead as we often receive clothing gifts in their current or smaller sizes. This way I have a bit of a stockpile of clothes before they are needed!)
I love that they look like men’s dress shirts! My brother loves Tommy, so I told him we’d have to have them match for a picture at some point.
So fun to the whole boy thing now! I can’t wait to show you all the progress on our nursery! All be it very slow progress, I have managed to finish a couple things I’ll share soon.
Have fun watching Superbowl tomorrow all!
Pinterest Recipes We’ve Loved…
What an amazing tool Pinterest has been for me in my meal planning! I have tried more new recipes in the last month than I have in the last year put together!
I wanted to share some of our favorites with you all because its always a risk to try something new without knowing the end result– this way you know at least we thought the recipes were amazing!
Baked Potato Soup! (This soooo very good and is done in the crockpot!)
Fried Egg and avocado sandwich (Very good for dinner or lunch!)
Coffee Cake In a MUG! (So easy and made me feel better about indulging in a treat because I was only making a single serving and not an entire cake!)
Cheesy Vegetable Chowder (SO GOOD and meatless, so very budget friendly.)
Crockpot Italian Chicken (This has very quickly become a family favorite, so easy too! We serve it over noodles instead of rice.)
No Bake Peanut Butter Bars (I made these for neighbors for Christmas– YUM!)
Poppy Seed Pancakes (We LOVED these! We made our topping with raspberries from our bush frozen from the summer and it was mind blowing.)
I also tried the tip on Pinterest to boil chicken and then shred it using your kitchen aid, it works sooo well! I have four meals worth of shredded chicken in the freezer right now!
HOpe you enjoy these recipes as much as we have! Which Pinterest recipes have you loved?
The Big Girl Bed… A Story of FREE!
ALL summer long I looked for a nice twin bed frame at yard sales, thrift stores, and on Craigslist. Everything I looked for was either a massive project that was more trouble than it was worth, too much money for even second hand, or not age appropriate for a toddler.
I wanted to skip the whole toddler bed thing. Toddler beds only last so long before they need to be replaced with a twin. We decided to start with a twin with a guard rail and then remove the rail as she got older.
With all that searching, I found nothing. Nada. NO appropriate, affordable twin bed frames.
UNTIL…
A friend of mine who rents from a wonderful lady who happens to be the mother of one of my dearest high school friends called me up one day at the end of the summer. She said her land lord was in town and was cleaning out her storage unit. She had two pink twin bed frames and a mattress set and wanted to know if I wanted them. WHAT?? YES!!!!!
I knew at that point that we were hoping for baby #2, though no one else did yet. I kind of got giddy at the fact that if this next one was a girl, I would have two pink matching beds! (But it wasn’t meant to be, and that’s okay! We are excited to have a son!)
I picked up the bed, cleaned it up a bit and had Nate set it up a few weeks later. I used a twin quilt that I used in college, just with the plain white side up to match Molly’s room more. I don’t love the guard rail, but it keeps her safe.
I also don’t love the little flower garland just hanging there. It looks unfinished. I used to have an adorable hand made quilt hanging up there:
But the pinks of the quilt clashed with the pinks of the bed and curtains.I also had plans to put new artwork up there, but when we found out for sure that we were pregnant, I decided to wait on more projects until we knew the gender. SO glad I did that!
Now that Molly has this totally free bed, I am trying to decide what I should do with it in a shared gender room. Paint it? But what if I have a third baby and its a girl and the two of them share a room? Wouldn’t it be fun to have them both be pink?
The other issue I have is that the baby comes at the end of April, which means good outdoor painting weather will not have come yet. SO I will not be able to paint it until May or June. I kind of want that room 100% done before baby– I will sleep better that way.
I kind of have some ideas floating around in my head about what I could do… we will see what ends up happening. For now? I am pleased as punch to have free twin for my growing little girl and from such an awesome family too!
Tab Tops To Pocket Curtains…
I’m just not a fan of tab top curtains. They kind of make me feel like the window isn’t finished. I know other people who have them in their homes and they look great with their styling. But for me– they just have never worked.
I found two sets of tab top, pink curtains at a yard this last summer. $3 for all. I had some cute valances up on Molly’s window, but they weren’t doing much to keep out that early morning summer sun. (4 am wake up times are so not cool.)
The process was truly simple. All I did was take a seam ripper to each tab and rip it off. There was already a pocket seam there that was large enough for our smaller curtain rods.
When I hung them up, I didn’t love them. They are WAY too pink! Its like Pepto Bismol puked all over her windows! But, its what I have and they do block out the morning light. I will take ugly pink over less sleep!
Simple, cheap project.
Now I need to replace these with something more gender neutral. (Read here if you missed our announcement!)
We’ll see what I come up with.
When Your Toddler Takes A Pen To YOur Favorite Chair…
Tell yourself repeatedly to calm down and take deep breaths. Get Dawn dish soap on a wet rag right away. (Shout would have worked too, but I didn’t have any at the time.) Take deep breaths and calmly put the child in time out while you scrub like crazy on your chair.
Relax when it all comes out and it actually looks cleaner than it did before.
Revisit child in time out and calmly explain that pens are for paper only while they cry and tell you sorry over and over. (She could tell I was very upset; maybe it was because I started crying as soon as I saw the damage.)
Put a “no pens for Molly until your 13″ rule in place to further protect your home from damage.
All is well.
Project De-Uglify Our House…
So, these stairs are the stairs to our UGLY basement. Thick, green shag baby!
I have yet to ever show you all pictures of our basement because its just that hideous. We live on the main floor of our house, so we’ve never had the need to update down there. We’ve been focusing our energies and renovation dollars on the more “live-able” spaces in our house. AKA everywhere else but the basement!
When we first moved in, the carpets in the two bedrooms down there were moldy. We removed them and bleached the floors. We didn’t remove the carpet on the stairs because…. I don’t know why. It wasn’t moldy and we were running out of steam.
For my birthday, my hubbie attacked those stairs and ripped up that ugly green shag for me! I was hoping the stairs underneath would be paintable– but they are in not great shape so we will most likely need to recover with new carpet when the time comes.
I thought it’d be super cute to do something like this!
In the mean time, I’m glad that dirty, ugly carpet is out of my house!
(But the kitchen carpet is still there! Ew. We have plans for that this summer!)
Nate said it cost him less than $3 to take the old carpet to the dump, so this was a very frugal and very refreshing project for us. The next step, recovering them, won’t be as cheap, but I’m grateful for the lack of shag in my house now.
Oh, and I can’t forget my hubbie’s super cute “helper!” She had “tools” (a spatula) and was hammering away in the kitchen while daddy worked on the stairs. It was stinkin’ adorable!
The Cloth Update…
Cloth diapering is one of the best things that has happened to me as a mama. I’m not joking! I am really enjoying it and so grateful I took the risk and dove in!
My stash has increased greatly since my initial Econobums purchase in November. I bought two Econobums when they were on sale buy one get one for $9.95 from sweetbottomsbaby.com. I went ahead and did this deal again and bought two more at the end of November giving me 4 covers and 4 prefold inserts in addition to my Gerber prefolds I had from a shower gift when I was pregnant with Molly. Because the covers are reusable, I was able to wipe them clean and just use an additional prefold while letting the one I just wiped air dry out. If the cover got soiled by a BM, I would wash it before using again.
Using my Gerber prefolds as stand bys, I was able to diaper Molly during the day using just one and sometimes no disposables. I still used disposables at night because I didn’t have a great night time diaper. I was needing to wash diapers EVERY night though. With very few diapers, this was no fun.
In December, I purchased an Imagine diaper from Nickisdiapers.com. These diapers are $9.95 and are a pocket diaper with an insert. I actually really like this diaper! Its bulky on Molly, but works great for her at night!
Then mid December, my mom blew me away by letting me know that she purchased 12 Fuzzibunz one size diapers and 10 BumGenius newborn diapers for me for Christmas! I kind of couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.
I’ve been using the Fuzzibunz on Molly– they are actually already on the largest setting and fitting a bit snug. I’m really hoping she potty trains soon!
After her bath this evening, I was hoping to take a picture of her in her diaper, but she wanted to run around the house and be silly! Thus the crazy pics!
The back of them say “cloth is cool.”
Some of the ones my mom got me say, “Does this diaper make my butt look big?” Too funny!
I’m still learning so much about this whole process. I still have some things I need to purchase to make the process easier; especially if Molly isn’t potty trained by the time baby comes! I need a diaper pail upstairs and down stairs by our laundry. I need a wet bag, cloth diaper safe diaper rash cream, more cloth wipes, and I’d LOVE a diaper sprayer, but have been surviving without one.
I also need to add more diapers to my stash. I have enough for Molly right now, but if she outgrows the Fuzzibunz before she’s potty trained, I will need to find more that are larger.
And the more research I do about newborns, the more I realize I do not have a realistic stash for him. Most diapering moms say that you need at least 24 diapers for newborns. I have 10 newborn diapers, plus the one size Fuzzibunz– which again most mamas have said that one size diapers usually don’t fit baby until they are around 10 pounds. Molly didn’t weigh that much for weeks… so I think I need some more extra small diapers.
Once baby reaches 10 plus pounds– I have enough. Until they outgrow the newborn diapers, and then I will need more again.
If I think about it too much, it gets overwhelming!
I’m choosing to tackle my diapering needs one by one as the budget allows. I know God will meet our needs and has blessed us so abundantly with so many so far– and I’ve only spent about $30!
I’m hoping to be able to nab some great deals at the Just Between Friends sale in Spokane in March as I’ve heard they sell LOTS of cloth diapers and supplies! I also regularly sign up for giveaways and check sales on websites. We will get to a full stash eventually.
All in all, I am excited about this journey and love that I’m saving my family money, throwing less trash away, and keeping away the skin irritations Molly has from disposables! Its worth it!
What We Got Molly…
This Christmas I kept Molly’s gifts very, very simple. We were on a tighter budget than we planned because we had car trouble in December and had to use our Christmas budget to cover the cost.
I was grateful that over the yard sale season, I had been thinking ahead and purchased Molly some things for extremely cheap! We also wanted to keep gifts small this year as soon we are going to need to fit TWO little people in a tiny room and have very little space for loads of toys.
I found this really fun Sesame Street felt board book at a yard sale for $2.50 back in June and set it aside for Christmas. All the little characters can be moved around from page to page; Molly loves it!
For stocking stuffers, I found these like new Dr. Suess books for $.50 each and again, she loves them! I also bought her a jump rope at the Dollar Tree and a chocolate Santa, and that was her stocking! Very little in it, but does a two year old need much more?
So in total on Molly, I spent $6.50! And she is so happy with her presents.
Why am I sharing this now after Christmas? Because I wanted to share how simple gifts can somehow mean the most. How less can truly be meaningful and memorable.
As you are picking up little items here and there on sale or at yard sales, I just thought it would be helpful to keep in mind the simple joy of a simple gift. Living contentedly with less is something to strive for year round, and not just at the holidays– a lesson I very much want to pass on to my little ones.
Tons of toys do not make you happy whether you are 45 or 5! Am I right?
Happy year round deal hunting!
