Woodpecker(s) in our yard

Not sure if we have one or two woodpeckers feasting on our pecan trees. We love them. The kids love watching them and the bird(s) could care less.

My Babycakes machine!

I was tooling around my fave thriftstore and what do I see?! A pink Babycakes mini cupcake maker!! I squeeeeeealed and about fell over at the 6$ price. It was pristine looking!

These are cupcakes. I was trying to decide how much batter to use and what spoon or implement works best for filling the wells.

Overfilled and slightly crunchy or underfilled – didn’t matter. 7 minutes for cupcakes rocks! At our xmas party I put some girls (hey, Jones Girls!!) in charge of it and they had a blast and did great!

Quickie

 

I picked up some little cork board tiles at a yardsale.

Glue gunned them to the inside of a couple of kitchen cabinets.

Tacked a couple of photos that make me smile and recipes etc on them.

The only tricky bit is to make sure the tack does not hit the shelf when the door is closed.

Easy cheesy!

Toilet paper Roll = pencil holder

Cannot recall where I first saw it but we have been making these things for years now. Toilet paper tube + 2-3 binder clips (depending on size of clips). Clip one med or lrg or 2 small at one end of the tube to hold it shut. Clip another on one side and fold one silver arm up to create the hanger. Fits easily over a push pin. We have these on each corkboard and several by the kids’ desk. Yes, you can write on the tube to jazz it up. We also sometime staple the end shut and just use the binder clip for hanging.

Orange you glad?

I like to hang laundry on the line and today it struck me just how many orange t shirts we have.

Hook Em!

Warning: Replacing a water heater causes decluttering / reorganization

 

The water heater was here before we were and we have been in this house for 18 years. It was a real workhorse until recently. Then the water was only warm . .  and only for about 20 minutes at a time. We started having to calculate showers, dishwashing, laundry, etc. So after much discussion and debating and fretting by me, Pete with the help of our neighbor changed out the water heater.

Awhile back we had our garage enclosed creating a laundry room / large walk in pantry and, beyond that, a very large storage room guestroom. Something you might not know about me is I am one of those crazy couponers – I stockpile something when I find an awesome deal. So the thought of something happening in the Water Heater Changeout causing water to gush and flood because I am paranoid about my precious foodstores gave me heart palpitations!

So I emptied half of my pantry. I boxed and bagged all the food and moved the shelves and everything into the spareroom. Let’s see the before:

 

So here are the messy before pictures. There were wire racks full of empty glass canning jars mounted on the walls at either end, the cart taking up a good chunk of space and even though I work hard to keep the metro shelves tidy (I use tiles as “floors” and lots of shelfy dividers and baskets and bins), it just comes off looking kinda overstuffed.

Soooo, you can probably tell I hit a couple of deals – the oatmeal was ridiculously cheap after coupons and the chips after the buy one / get one sale and the coupons were crazy cheap!

To the right is the foodstuffs and the water heater. To the left is the laundry center and the non food stuff – serving pieces, cloth napkins and placemats, kitty litter box, drawers with spin art machines (I have 3 – shuddup!), electronics kits (we have 5 – shuddup!) and other stuff.Yes, I have 3 feather dusters- my nice Flylady one (that no one but me is allowed to use!) and 2 others for the kids to use.

 

I emptied the food side and he replaced the water heater (awesomely, by the way! Nice to have hot water again!!) and the we put the shelving back and reloaded them- purging and rearranging. But then the laundry side felt unkempt. Can you see where this is going? I purged and rearranged that side little by little until the pantry feels so much better. I am happy to walk in there now.

Here are the after photos:

 

Getting rid of the wire wall racks and the cart freed up space for the vacuums. Purged and rearranged. There are actually *EMPTY* baskets! See!?!

 

To the other side- also got rid of the wire wall shelving and the plastic drawers, shifting the catbox over (and yes, that is a wicker placemat being used as a litter catcher). I labeled the baskets that I hadn’t labeled before and got rid of a lot of serving pieces we really were using once ever year or two. How the heck did I end up with so much paper product (have wayyyy too much paper plates and plasticware)

I labeled each of the baskets and went through them (ugH!). Cleaning the pantry snowballed into cleaning out the hall craft closet (post coming soon) and the house looked quite a mess for awhile. It is slowly looking better.

I am disappointed that my wall racks and shelfy organization bits have not sold on craigslist. Next project is to clear the flat surfaces – the island (there are 2 baskets of stuff awaiting “repair”), the diningroom bookcase (kid projects tend to fester there), the top of the scrapbooking cart (a microwave cart that hold all my paper gear – I moved it next to the table so I could clean it out and sort and purge but now the top is full of clutter).

Closet Case

So, it took me almost a week and I do it a couple of times a year but . . . . the craft closet is clean!!

Ahhhhh, I love it when it is all organized and neat. We *really* need to start doing more crafts and use some of these supplies up! Seriously, how many pipe cleaners and glitter and googley eyes does one family need!!

And there are crafting things not in this closet- shhh! I have 3 spin art machines (shuddup! stop laughing!!). One is the Explosion and I have never used it (50c yard sale find). I think I will let that go soon.

 

I am *such* a labeler! And I use whatever I have handy. Most of my supplies are from yardsales. It is handy to have the craft closet but we are just not crafting regularly. I hope to keep up with the goal of one craft a weekend.

Upcoming crafts: shrinky dinks (gotta use the leftover bits from the xmas ornaments), hand casts (think the boys can hold their hands in a Hook Em sign while in a bucket of goo?), and beaded cd case magnetic picture frames. Stay Tuned!

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Have you ever spray painted a *DOOR*??

You can and it works great!! We have had this sad white bathroom door for years. It was dingy (boys with dirty hands will do that) no matter how much we tried to clean it, it just looked grubby so I made an executive decision to spray paint it and sent Hubby off to Home Depot for supplies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He came back with a trigger sprayer and a few cans of celery green paint.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Tape the knob and spray away. Flip, repeat. Hang and admire.

ahhhhhh - - You have to trust me that it looks good because my Autistic son likes to peel paint and the doorframes look reeeeeally bad. When i get a chance to repaint them, I’ll take a follow up photo. *sigh* The project list continues!

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I went shopping at the DUMP!

My dump has a Resale Center.

I only recently discovered it and I am hooked! Hooked I tell you!!

I wish I had known they have doors (some really nice ones, too!) starting at 6$! They are all sizes and kinds. I bought a new barrel to burn leaves in for 6$ and they cut the top off for free. They kind of have stuff grouped.

There was a bin of glass blocks (1$ each), a crate full of bbq grill grates , there were bed frames and a non working go cart and lamps and fencing materials and shower stall doors and all kinds of tubes and pipes and tires and bikes and lamps and skis and toilet tank lids and a boat anchor (4$!!). There were drinking glasses and smaller stuff but I was more interested in the odds and ends.

I also ended up with these bun feet. Not sure what I will use them for yet but they were neat. At 3$ each I thought they were on the high end but they are solid wood and in great shape. I think I want to give them a wash in a bleach solution but hubby thinks it might damage the wood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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hair clip storage

 

Super easy cheesy. I cut ribbon – this is ribbon for making bows for flower arrangements or presents – to lengths and used clears push pins at each ribbon’s ends.

Clip the hair clips on and done.

This works best on the pinch clips and snap clips – not so much on the french clips.

    ~~

How We Survived the Plague

We got the H1N1. Tested positive, bought Tamiflu and endured it. It was like a bad cold. The problem was that *I* was laid low and Pete had to run things for a couple of days. After 1 round of meds when I could not recall what time I had my last dose (let alone try and remember the kids’!), I started this whiteboard. It was INVALUABLE!! I could tell at a glance who needed what and when the next round of doses were due.

Pete was such a trooper. he kept the kids busy and let me sleep for almost 2 days straight. Stay at home mommies need sick days, too!

We are all better. And it really was not as bad as hyped. We have had strep or colds worse than this for sure.

~ ~

Hooks for the guitars

So the guitars for Guitar Hero were laying around and I knew they were gonna get damaged so I sent Pete to Home Depot with the action item to get some hooks. He came home with these:

and now our guitars are hung on the wall in the little niche next to the entertainment center.

 

 

 

 

 

They actually look cute – a little small when dwarfed next to the entertainment center but now I am thinking small shelf for the wiimotes etc to help alleviate some of the electrical cord overkill that happens right there with the roombas (yes, I have two, don’t laugh!) and the wii stuff etc.

Deanna

Yep, we won – thanks to you!

So- yep, thanks to all our peeps and friends and friends of friends we won the essay contest for $5K!

Sorry for the delayed post - I waited to say anything for fear of jinxing it.

We decided to be grown ups and do responsible stuff with the money (even though a new sofa or new flat screen tv were whispering in my ear!).

The first big thing was- and this just proves things happen for a reason (or the power of coincidence)- our fridge went out. I took this photo for March’s 12 on the 12th (you can see T’s bamboo painting and a coin one of the kids earned!) and then a month later on the 12th I was taking photos of the new fridge (a great find from craigslist - $750!).   It was a *bear* to

move- we had to take the front door off the seller’s house! And get it in our house. It was a crazy long day but well worth it. We *LOVE* all the space. And the bottom freezer glides so nicely. And- get this!- it has a built in open door alarm!!

The second thing we did was some dirt work in the yard (about $3K). Our house has flooded twice in the past 10 years - once just the sunken living room and garage and three years later  the whole house (ankle deep to calf deep)- from what is called "urban flooding"- rainwater runoff that gets diverted by houses and sheds and does not flow where it should. 
In our case our septic field and my neighbor's create two giant humps and the rainwater from the entire neighborhood funnels straight into our backyard instead of down the easement and into the drainage ditch one house over. This first photo is our backyard and the neighbor’s backyard where our septic fields make the humps. The fence was removed and later put back at the higher elevation. The second photo, I was trying to get the drop out our back gate into the easement.  We hired a really good contractor and he graded the front side yard and dug out the back easement and  moved some dirt  around in our almost half-acre sized back yard. Basically, he merged the two septic field hills into one long berm or hill, effectively,  blocking the water flow into our yard. The third photo is from the back gate down the easement (some call it an alleyway). You can see the drop and the now lower-level of the easement

And, yes, we bought the Mosquito Magnet. I wanted the biggest fanciest cordless one but found one on clearance that is last year's corded model. It is up and running in the backyard. We are still getting one or two bites a night. We need to find the perfect spot to put it. The manual is woefully unclear on that. But it is way better than the bazillion bites were were getting.

We also put in a small vegetable garden - tomatoes,  peppers and some herbs. This photo was taken the day the plants went in- they are a little bigger and in tomato cages now.  And we are using the fresh dill already!

We did not get the sprinkler system. Money started to dwindle and we were already in a drought. We knew we were not going to be able to use the system if we put it in, and keeping new grass alive was out of the question. So with the remainder of the money, we paid bills- boring but useful.

It sure came in handy when the almost 2 yr old had to go to the ER (scary! bad cold, breathing issues- but she's fine now) and everyone in the house caught the plague – pretty sure it was the plague!- and there were sooo many doctors’ visits and prescriptions- I literally was at my friendly CVS each day of the week picking up prescriptions that week- every . . single . . day!

So, there ya go- thanks to anyone and everyone who voted!! <hug hug!>
Deanna

I (heart) Sam’s club!

Sam’s has this thing called click n pull. love it!! I’ve used it for well over 6 years now. It is placing your order online and picking it up (or sweet talking your sweetie into picking it up on his way home!) the next day.

It is a little tricky to set up – you have to create grocery lists when you first start and it takes quiet awhile and you despair that the whole system is fatally flawed. But after that- easy cheesy! I can place my regular order in about 5 minutes.

For me, avoiding the temptations is the big plus. Not having the schlep a squirmy toddler though the warehouse is another.

I wish I knew of other places that offered this kind of service. On line shopping is great in alot of cities and I am sure it is the wave of the future but for now – I (heart) Sam’s click n pull!!