To-Do To-Day

It’s 9:00.  All the kids are at school, and I’ve got a Hulu queue full of shows inappropriate for children to vege on.  BUT I also have a very messy house and a family to take care of.  So, I’m making a few goals for the day, which I will squeeze in between my shows.  :)

• Pick up all toys in the living room and James’ room.  (The girls WILL get their room done this afternoon!)
• Make the house vacuum-ready and make puppy-dog eyes at my husband when he gets home so he’ll vacuum for me.
• Go to HEB because they have very good deals on fruit in this ad cycle (that ends today).
• Go to the bank.
• Finish the load of laundry in the wash and remake the beds.  (Or, attempt puppy-dog eyes for this also.)
• Find the four tiny frogs James was playing with before Laura comes tomorrow.
• Put away all craft supplies in the cabinet and label the baskets… easily… somehow.

And there are nine thousand other things (similar to the last one) that need doing, but I know better than to overload my to-do list.  I think I may be able to accomplish this one!

Vacuuming

So it’s pretty sad that vacuuming is such a momentous occasion around here that it deserves it’s own blog post, but…

It is.

Our vacuum is pretty big and heavy; it means business, but I figured it was time to start teaching the kids how to use it anyway.  :)

(Joanna took these pictures for me.)

Note: It is much harder to vacuum with James’ “help.”  BUT he didn’t run screaming from it!

Natalie took a shot at vacuuming her room.  It was really hard for her to turn or even push it upright at all.  It won’t be too long though.

Joanna is much better at it, though it’s still pretty hard for her to do.

But we did learn that vacuuming can double as writing practice – look a Y!

She made an H at some point too.  I could totally homeschool.  :)

My cutie pie James. (He wears a PJ top and diaper a lot these days.  It’s rough being the only one who can’t dress yourself.)

After working on the kids’ rooms, the bathroom, and tiny hallway, I had to sit down.  I was absolutely beat.

I had to rest up to even make lunch.  :)

And my dining room looked like this:

So the kids had a picnic.

They loved it, and since I hadn’t vacuumed in there yet, it was perfect.  :)

It took the rest of the day (and some help from Matt) to get the rest of the house vacuumed.  But it is so much more pleasant to be in now!  I had spent time on Sunday and Monday morning putting things away and picking up and organizing to prep for the vacuuming.  I feel much better when the house is in good shape.  I had intended to do some more work including getting caught up on laundry on Tuesday, but I felt so nasty terrible that I scrapped that plan for survival.  :)  Today I actually feel a bit better (hallelujah!), but there are 5 kids here so not much is getting done. 

I was reading back in my blog from when I was was pregnant with James, and it appears that sometime in the 13th week is when I felt the “second trimester” kick in.  I remember with Joanna it was in the 17th week, and I was barely sick with Natalie so it’s not really applicable.  I’m hoping it won’t take tooooooo much longer with this pregnancy.  I’m trying to be patient.  And thankful.

Speaking of thankful, look what showed up on my doorstop today!

It’s our first official purchase for the babies!  I’m going to NOT wash and prep them right away, and I will put them up so I don’t feel tempted to let James break them in.  We really have plenty for diapering him right now, and I want these to be all fresh for the babies!

My favorite diapers are Bum Genius 4.0s and Freetimes from Cotton Babies.  Last week they made a bunch of “seconds” available, and I jumped on it!  I’ve bought seconds before and been so pleased.  Most of the time I can’ t even find the defects but when I do it’s usually like a tiny dot of dirt or ink or something.  I bought 16 Freetimes (a bit more expensive but “all in one” so easier on the laundry front) and 6 4.0s, which are the pockets.  I’ve never tried the Freetimes on a teeny baby, and the pockets just seem like they’ll be trimmer for when they are itty.  The one flowery print on the top of the picture I just couldn’t resist.  They didn’t have the cute “boy” pattern available, but they did have this sweet “girl” print.  If neither of the babies are girls then I’ll just pass it along!

It’s sad cleaning out the fridge happens so infrequently, it’s a picture-taking event.

It has been building for awhile…the desperate need to forsake all other aspects of my home and life to clean my fridge out.  Ew.  There was no way I was going to even take a before picture, much less post it!  But here are all the innards strewn over the counters:

Matt even took a few minutes to scrub the inside for me! 

Not that any of you need a tutorial to clean your fridge, but all I did was yank everything out, scrub the insides with soap and water in the sink, spray the inside with vinegar/water, and wipe down!  No chemicals where I keep my food, and it’s all very nice and shiny.  Even Joanna noticed.  I love her.  :)

It feels soooooo  good to have a clean fridge.  I cleaned the rest of the kitchen to match the next day.  Didn’t stick though.  Something about 4 or 5 kids in the house at any given time and the need to feed them.  :)

Child Labor

It’s not bad if they want to do it though… right?  :)

Today in My Kitchen

So about a year ago I made some laundry detergent, and it’s time to make more!  No, that 5 gallon bucket of detergent didn’t actually last the whole year.  For several months I used something else because the homemade stuff built up in our laundry (as in, the washcloths repelled water instead of absorbing them!).  I stopped using it in my diapers after a few months because of the build up problem and have switched to Rockin’ Green, which I LOVE for cloth diapers.  I also use it for my hand washing… ahem. 

Anyway, I started using my homemade stuff again after many months of not using it and I like it just fine.  If I have a problem with build up, I’ll just strip the towels (that’s really where the problems happen since I wash them a lot) and adjust how much detergent I use.  Wow this is a long rambling post about laundry.

Oh well.

So I opted to make the powdered version today simply because I like the idea of storing it better.  I only have room for so many five gallon buckets in my utility room.  Though it will be easier to store, I think it will be a little more difficult to use since I’ll have to make sure everything dissolves in every load.  I opted for a half batch to make sure it works for me.

That, and grating soap is hard work.  :)

Half a bar of Fels Naptha soap, grated finely.  This is one of those things where I think a food processor would be sooooo handy.

A cup each of super washing soda and Borax.

And mix it up!

I stored mine in a plastic container in the laundry room.  You use 1-2 Tablespoons per load.

In the middle of the day I washed a lot of dishes, cleaned out my fridge and freezer, washed some more dishes, tried to keep the kitchen cleanish, fed five people lunch and snack, then…

This evening we made pizza on the grill!

I used this recipe for the crust from Money Saving Mom.  The only adjustment was that I did it in the Kitchen Aid instead of by hand.  It’s sooooo easy.  Dump ingredients into the bowl, attach dough hook and go!

This was our first pizza on the grill experience, and I found these instructions to be helpful.  Man I love the internet.  And somewhere in all this searching about pizza and laundry soap, I earned myself enough Swagbucks for another $5 Amazon gift card.  Hmmmm… what Kindle book shall I buy with it?  Or maybe I should put it toward this giant set of blocks I was drooling over today?  It wouldn’t really make a dent in the camera I’m lusting over though.

I digress.  Where was I?

Ah yes.  I made the pizza dough and prepped the toppings.

Dr. Grill cooked it for us.

Oh yum.  I never claim to be good at rolling circles of dough.  I figure who cares what it looks like as long as it tastes good!

BBQ sauce, leftover rotisserie chicken, fresh spinach, and mozzarella cheese.

We were all fans!  I even left the sauce off a chunk of the pizza so James could enjoy it as well.  And he did.

There is just nothing sexier than a man cleaning my kitchen.

This man, to be specific.  :)

And some other pictures totally unrelated to Matt cleaning my kitchen.

One of my favorite pairs of PJs bit the dust this last week.  I knew it was coming.  They had started “pre-ripping” along the folding seams.  I had Joanna take this picture of me.  I’m pretty sure these pants were older than her… by a few years.

I’ve been thinking lately about what I would do diaper-wise if/when we have another heavy storm/hurricane (think Ike) that knocks our power out for a long while.  Part of me thinks I should just use disposables and not worry about it.  But the other bigger part of me really doesn’t want to little old lack of washing machine stop me from continuing to cloth diaper.  :)

So that being reason #1, I decided to order some “flat” cloth diapers.  These are just big squares of cotton that you fold to fit on the baby.  They were first, then came “pre-folds” because somebody figured out they could skip a step when it came to diapering. 

Reason #2 for ordering these diapers was that I wanted a few more pre-folds (or something like) to fit in the covers. I use them when I’m a little behind on laundry (which does happen!) or when Natalie’s diaper rash is pretty bad, I’ll pin one on her and go without the cover for better airflow.

I asked the girls to model how big they are.

So back to the hand-washing.  (By the way I’ll totally post if that actually happens. )  I feel like I really could get a washboard and clean these things in the bathtub.  :)  The flats would be the easiest thing to clean of all the diaper supplies I have because they’re sturdy and only one layer.  They’d wash easily and dry quickly.  Anything else I have has multiple layers, and I would worry that without a machine, the inside parts wouldn’t really get clean.

We found a video online of a five year old girl folding the diapers, so Joanna is very into “helping.”

One Better

Last week I posted my marvelous idea of using an extra pillowcase as a chair cover. Then my mother brought over these two giant pillow shams she had and made it that much better!


I guess they're king pillow shams and she doesn't use them. She brought over a couple of beige ones yesterday, and they're kind of padded! They slip on and off the chairs so easily and are far easier to clean than the chairs!
This is what I bought my poor husband at the store today:

We haven't been buying kleenex lately; we're just using toilet paper. However, when you have a cold, that gets pretty rough pretty fast. I really want to switch over to hankerchiefs but I haven't found/made any yet.

Joanna brought me this after rest time today:

Poor guy. She wants me to fix it. I'm hoping I can toss it and she won't miss it. :)

I probably won't be blogging much over the next week. (I say that!) My poor old computer died yesterday. Actually it's only mostly dead. But there's no miracle pill for it. I bought that thing in the fall of '05 I think. It could have been a little bit sooner. It has very little RAM and very little hard drive space. It even has serial ports in the back for a monitor and keyboard -- old school. It also does have usb ports though and a CD burner. From the fall of '09 to the fall of this year I primarily used my work computer from the church (which was a major work horse!), but of course I had to give it back when James was born and I stopped working. So lately we've only used this machine regularly for about 2 months. I could tell it was starting to suffer the strain -- very slow, the screen was taking a long time to come back on after it opened, etc., but I thought we could just live with the slowness for a while. It's hard to live with a dark screen though. Right now the computer itself seems to work fine but the screen will only show up for 5 seconds before darkening. Close, open, and another 5 seconds. Repeat. This allowed me to transfer anything new over to the external hard drive, but anything else was just not possible. Even though it felt a little selfish (the computer is after all a lifestyle thing: you can't eat it; I don't use it to make money, etc), we ordered a new one yesterday. I shopped around everywhere I could think of online and got the best deal for us. I probably should have visted a couple of brick and mortar stores, but that's just so hard with three kids in tow! I feel good about the deal we got and I should be able to pick it up Monday (or maybe sooner?). I know we'll just be amazed at the storage space and processing speed.

Right before the computer died I was planning on buying a Kindle! I've been wanting one forever, and they are really an affordable price right now. I got a little money for Christmas, plus a bonus I wasn't expecting, and an Amazon gift card. I decided to wait to get it though, (sniffle, sniffle) since we had to buy a computer. Matt really wants me to have one, so we'll likely go ahead and get it anyway soon. The computer money came out of the emergency fund, even though I'm not totally sure it was an emergency. :)

I Vacuumed on Christmas

And it was because I wanted to. :)

Wouldn’t you?

That’s what was in my big red box. 

Dad and Renee bought it at Home Depot here and had Matt’s mom and dad pick it up, wrap it, and deliver it to us.  Thanks guys!

I LOVE my Dyson!

My latest great invention

Both girls eat at the table in regular chairs; they usually sit up on their knees if they need to.  Consequently though, my chairs get pretty disgusting.  Natalie especially reaches around with her applesauce/peanut butter/spaghetti sauce fingers and touches the chairs.  Ew.

So as I was scrubbing them down yesterday I thought to myself that I needed to fashion some kind of cover that I could throw into the wash.  I was thinking, “I need something like a pillowcase…”  So you know what I did?

I went and got an extra pillowcase.

 

It fit.  Yay!! 

Here you can see evidence of Natalie’s applesauce fingers on the chair.

I think I’ll go to Wal-Mart and get a matching set since Natalie likes to chair hop.  Whoo hoo!

And she’s nesting

I have recently just been overcome with the desire to clean out my garage. Even though it’s 9 million degrees outside. Even though I’m 30 weeks pregnant.

So Friday morning the girls and I started working. My first goals were to fill the van with things to donate and pull out things I’d like to try and sell on Kingwood Yard Sales.

The girls had fun playing with all the strollers and toys that I pulled out to get around in the garage better.

I borrowed my mom’s new camera and upgraded to a one month “premiere” membership on KYS so I could post pictures ($8), and I listed a bunch of things yesterday afternoon. I’m happy to report I’ve already made $55 (minus the $8). Yay! Whatever doesn’t sell at the end of a month will be donated.

Today my urge to get out into the garage increased, combined with a desire to park my car in there before the baby comes. So I dragged my family out there for a full work day. This is only sort of a “before” picture. It’s actually from back in April, but it looked an awful lot like this when we got started today.

I discovered there is a FLOOR in the attic space above the garage, so a lot of things changed homes today. In addition to cleaning out the garage, I also tackled the stuff stored in our pantry/laundry room (which runs the width of the garage and used to be part of the garage before it was enclosed). So we pretty much filled up the attic space up there. Delightful! I had some stuff in the garage that was marked or needed to be marked for sale in Baby Daze next month. I moved it all into my bedroom (yikes!) along with the stuff for KYS. If it does not get sold, it’s NOT coming back! We filled up the car a couple of times with stuff to trash, donate, or recycle. There are still a few things (like paint) in the garage that need to be gotten rid of. Anybody know how to get rid of paint? And I also have a couple of old CPUs that need to be wiped and recycled or something.

Okay… are you ready?

Here’s the after:

When I walked out to the driveway to take that picture and really saw what it looked like, I cried. Literally.

And then I did this:

For the first time. Ever.

And the door closed.

If you look in the after picture, there are a few things against the far wall (between Joanna and Matt) that we had to move. The van is the length of the whole garage with no room to spare. I will need to have Matt hang a tennis ball or something from the ceiling to let me know when to stop so I don’t knock the wall down. But now we’ll be able to get into the car in the pouring rain and stay dry! My next project (tomorrow?) is to move some things around in the pantry/laundry room to make some “mud room” space. If we decide to make the garage door our main entrance, I’ll need to have a spot for the purse, diaper bag, coats, shoes, etc. that we currently keep by the front door.

It feels SO GOOD to have the garage cleaned out (or mostly, anyway). There’s still a lot of work to do out there, but we’re headed in the right direction! I am so excited!

House Clean

I received a truly wonderful birthday gift from a very good friend today: house cleaning from a professional.  This may just be the best birthday gift ever.

“The Cleaner Lady,” as Joanna called her, spent hours here and got my house so much cleaner that it’s most likely ever been.  I just took a few pics of some highlights.  :)

I found my vases were sparkling in the window sill!

Even my tea kettle was shiny!

The girls’ basket of blankets and babies was organized and looked so cute!

And this little place in the dish washer that I never use was clean.  Sorry if this is TMI, but mine’s always grungy.  (And I know what’s it’s for, I just don’t use it.)

When I got home today, the house smelled so clean and everything was dusted and looked so nice.

If you’ve been thinking about stopping by, do it now!

If I worked this hard all the time I could do it myself.

But I don't. And I can't. So there. :)
I've been very busy this weekend getting my house picked up and organized because...
DRUM ROLL...
My house is getting cleaned tomorrow, and I'm not doing it.
Ah.
So amazingly...
-All the laundry everywhere except what's dirty is folded or hung up and put away. That never happens.
-My giant stack of magazines that I've read has been gone through for recipes, etc. and recycled.
-The winter comforters have finally been vacuum sealed and stored.
-The toys are all put away in the playroom.
-Everything I can put away in the kitchen is put away.
-My ankles are swollen.

And for my reward, I will come home tomorrow from a hard day at work (Ha!) to a clean house. Do you hear the angels singing?
I do.

It’s not that easy being green…

But it sure is fun to try!

I took a little plunge into cloth diapering this week.  A pretty good deal at diapers.com combined with a little wiggle room in the grocery budget allowed me to purchase two pocket diapers.

They came yesterday and I was so excited!  I ordered one Fuzzi Bunz and one Bum Genius in neutralish colors.  The bumgenius is a one size, meaning it could actually fit an 8 pound newborn and a 35 pound potty trainer.  I may just have to see that to believe it.  :)  The Fuzzi Bunz is a medium, which fits about 15-30lbs I think (although the company does make a one-size).  These brands both get excellent reviews by the cloth diapering community, although people often prefer one or the other (or a different brand).  But all pocket diapers are pretty similar, I think.  I ordered one of each of these brands to see if I preferred one over the other before I made a huge investment in a stash of diapers.  These are not cheap.  At Amazon (often the best price around) they run $18 or $19… each.  So it will take a while before they start to save us money.

I forgot to take pictures of what they look like inside, and now they’re dirty so I’m not going to.  :)  They’re called pocket diapers because they have a pocket that you slip an absorbent liner into.  The outside of the diaper is water proof so even if something gets past the liner it won’t end up on the couch.

I’ve only used them one day but I’m in love.  :)  Natalie doesn’t seem to have any issues with them.  They’re so cute and soft!  They are more bulky than disposables, but since she’s always in a dress, that’s not really an issue right now.  If I can manage to build up a nice stash, I really see myself using them.  We’ll still use disposables at church and we’ll see about days that we’re running around.  I haven’t really tackled the laundry yet, but it doesn’t seem too daunting. 

Now, I’m a little embarrassed to say it, but I only changed Natalie’s diaper twice today.  So these two cloth diapers are all she wore.  No leaks.  These are way better than the gdiapers I’ve used before.  I think I’ll still use some of those, but more as backups for these (like when I’m behind on laundry) and with a washable liner versus the flushable ones.  I think I can even use a prefold in it (read: your momma’s cloth diaper).  I’m going to try anyway.  So I put the BumGenius on Natalie when she woke up this morning, and she wore it until after lunch.  She had poop, which fortunately went easily into the toilet, and it was very full, but there was no wetness on her or her clothes.  I then put her in the FuzziBunz (which I didn’t get pictures of), and she had a nap and wore it through dinner.  Again, pretty full but no leaks. 

My other recent green adventure (which is sort of related to the cloth diapering) is homemade laundry soap.  I, like my friend Shaun, used the recipe from the Duggars website.

Here are the ingredients, plus water.  They’re all available at Alspaugh’s, FYI, which is nice, and local.

First you grate the Fels-Naptha bar of soap.  Most recipes call for this, although I’ve seen that you can use ivory or kirk’s castille soap.  I’ve actually got a bar of the kirk’s, but I opted for the Fels-Naptha.  I think the kirk’s may be more friendly for sensitive skin (or I could be making that up), but we don’t have too much of that around here.

Anyway, I grated about 2/3s of the bar then turned it over to my husband.  I’m a weenie! 

 

Looks like cheese, doesn’t it?

Then you add it to hot water and stir until melted.  This took longer than I thought.  I was a little bored.  I ate M&Ms.

Then you fill a 5 gallon bucket halfway with hot water.

And you add the melted fels naptha, 1 cup of Arm and Hammer super washing soda and 1/2 cup of Borax.  I had the Borax, but I had to go buy the washing soda.  Turns out I also had the bucket, but I needed a lid.  So it was nice not to have to invest in all these things at once.  Although they’re weren’t pricey.

Stir until everything is dissolved.

 

Then fill it the rest of the way with hot water.

Now I just have to wait overnight for it to thicken.  I think I’ll sleep while I wait.

I’ve been thinking about making the laundry soap for a while.  The reason I went ahead and did it is for the cloth diapers.  I think this is going to be good stuff to wash them in.  You’re supposed to be careful not to use detergents with additives or brighteners in them.  Like I can even read the language printed on the back of detergent bottles!  Actually I use a “free and clear” detergent that would probably be fine.

This was fun though.  :)  And as you can see by the pink dress in most of the pictures, I had help.

And if my kitchen looks dirty in any of these pictures, I have no idea what you’re talking about and I blame my camera.

And on an unrelated note, I’m really feeling Baby Brother bounce around right now!