Channeling The Inner M.E.

For those of you who had the pleasure of meeting my Grandma C, you may have been told of one of her many aspirations which was to write a book entitled simply M.E., which stood for her initials for Margaret Elizabeth.  Great Grandma C, as she is now referred to, was quite a character and she was always up to the most interesting things, or so it seemed to me when we would visit her house.  I have so many memories of the things she kept in her cupboards and the how she had come to acquire some of the items in her house.  All of those are stories for another time because like Great Grandma C, I could go on for hours telling stories that jump from one topic to the next with no pause in between.  One memory in particular came back to me this week when McKenzie and I were making some guacamole to go with our tacos.   I removed the pit from the avocado and that started a whole series of questions about what it was and I told McKenzie that a plant could grow from that pit.  In my mind a perfect picture was formed of an avocado seed with toothpicks poking out on three sides sitting in the windowsill at my Grandma's house.  I knew we had to try it out.  I wondered if there was any special instructions or different ways to grow a tree from the pit and what I found on Google was exactly like what I pictured.  Though I don't have any pictures of the pit at my Grandma's or any recollection of the pit actually growing into anything I love that I can recreate this memory and use the opportunity to have some fun with my kids all these years later.

McKenzie loves any type of experiment - I'll call it that since I hold no hope that we can actually grow an avocado tree there in our cold climate.  Should be exciting to see if it does anything.

Ben wanted to get in on the action but he thought it was an egg.  Maybe if it does nothing by Easter it can magically turn into an egg!

Great Grandma C, in one of my favorite pictures of her.  She should have had this as the picture on the cover of M.E. if she had ever written her book.  She looks so young and carefree here and I know she never lost that ability to dream big because she always believed that her avocado pits would turn into something more.

Snow Days!

Snow is magical all on its own and then throw in its ability to alter all the normal routines and force more fun into every moment it stays around and you have a sure winner.  We had seven great days of snow last week and we took full advantage of it to sled, drink hot cocoa, make snowmen, and just enjoy it.

 Ben sure is a lucky guy to have a big sister who will haul him up the sledding hill. Hopefully someday he can return the favor.

Ben and Daddy made a snowman with the neighbor kids during the first snowfall.  I'm just glad that Ben looks a little happier than the snowman.  They made another one the next day that was probably seven feet tall.

Perfect ending to any snow fun - hot chocolate with marshmallows!   The kids sure acquired a taste for it quickly and demanded it every day.

You can tell how much fun has been had in the snow by the height of the clothes you have drying by the fire. This is exactly how I pictured my fireplace being decorated when we were planning out our new fireplace.  Love it!

McKenzie having no trouble catching snow in her mouth since it's coming down so hard.  This is only day three of snow so we got a lot more than what you see here.  It was amazingly beautiful!

Grandma and Grandpa C were able to make it over for a nice visit and some fun in the snow with the grandkids.  Everything is more fun when you're with Grandma and Grandpa.

We stopped to take a picture with a very cool snowman on the way to the big sledding hill in Aunt Kacey's neighborhood.

Aunt Kacey and her two favorite ladies, Kayla and Kenzie on a run down the hill.  They got wilder as the day went on and tried out the jump.

Ben had Grandma C wrapped around his little finger and had her riding all sorts of crazy sleds down the hill with him and then somehow convinced her to let him ride back up as well.  

It was so much fun to have such a great family activity waiting right outside our door.  We enjoyed the snow while it lasted and are now planning our next sledding adventure to use the gift cards Auntie Anne gave us for Christmas for the Snoqualmie Pass sledding hill.  Should be a lot of fun to make a day of it and try out some big runs with the kids.  

Four, Going On Fourteen

Today when I was dropping McKenzie off at school she asked me if we ever listened to Justin Bieber.  I had no idea how she even knew about Justin Bieber because no we don't listen to his music and if I actually did hear one of his songs I'd have no idea it was him.  I love listening to music but I have never been into selecting what I listen to.  I'm happy to just listen to the radio or now Pandora and just hope a song I like comes on.  Matt likes to quiz me about who signs songs but I rarely have any idea, that's what the Shazam app is for, but that's if I actually wanted to know who is singing.

After I got over my shock at McKenzie asking about Justin Bieber I told her we could listen to some of his music after school.  She remember and so I dialed up a Bieber station on Pandora and she found my rarely used headphones and was hooked.  I'm hoping it was more the novelty of the headphones that held her captive, I can't be hauling her to Bieber concerts just yet.  She was so hooked that we had to agree on a way to share my phone so I could read the recipe I was making for dinner and she could keep listening.  So I had a little shadow while making dinner just smiling away at the songs.

This little person continues to amaze me as she learns and expands her world.  Who knew she might be a music lover... it's a good thing I'm pretty flexible with what I listen to!

Mom's Room - Keep Out

As your kids grow older you start to realize that they slowly take over your house and before you know it they know what is in all your drawers and closets better than you do.  The one place in our house that I've kept sacred is my office, since I telecommute for work I like to have a very clear line between work and home.  I am rarely in my office when the kids are home and awake and the door remains closed.  Because of this my office has become a large junk drawer where we hastily stash anything we want to keep away from the kids.  Not that this is the right place for these things it's just a convenient place to stash things.  Last November I finally decided that needed to change and began to clear out the excess and look for ways to better use my space for the things I love.

McKenzie was kind enough to make me this sign for my office door so everyone is clear whose space the offiec is.  

As part of my room revamp I finally painted the walls that have needed painting since we moved in almost eight years ago.  I contemplated for a long time and finally settled on a light Tiffany's blue which gives the room a warm cheerful glow on even the most dreary of days.  I also moved out some extra furniture and have been looking for better ways to store the items that we do want to keep in there.  One of my main goals was to be able to actually use my scrapbook supplies at home instead of just when I go to a retreat.  This requires good storage and a space where I can leave a project out if I don't have time to finish in one sitting.  

For Christmas my Dad helped to build me a scrapbook workstation with a large countertop and two storage shelves below.  This is perfect for storing a lot of my supplies as well as giving me a much larger work space to have all my tools reachable when creating pages.  I also received some larger storage shelves specifically made to hold scrapbook sized papers which allows me to easily find the things I want to create a page.  

I have a long way to go in getting things fully organized but the addition of these two areas to my office has made it possible to more effectively use the space and allowed me to fit more scrapbooking into my daily life.  There is plenty of daily tasks in my declutter calendar that will focus me on my office so I'm continuing to take it one day at a time and enjoying each space that I can repurpose or improve along the way.  Maybe I'll even consider letting the kids in my office to do a few projects with me this year!

Capturing The Moments

Since discovering Pinterest, I have realized how many opportunities to capture little moments in my kids lives I have let slip by.  There are so many amazing pictures out there that capture all the things you think are just life when they are happening but then you look back and realize how precious they were and that you'll never get that moment again.

One of my goals for this year is to try to capture more of the little things in the kids lives and I also want to practice different photo and editing techniques so this is a win-win area to focus for me.

Here is a typical week night event for McKenzie and I after bubble baths - painting toes!  McKenzie loves to have her toes and finger nails painted    I usually don't paint mine but this week I decided to have a little fun along with her.  I had seen a picture on Pinterest of a Mom and her little baby with matching toes and decided I wanted to have a similar picture with Kenzie to remember these times. There will come a time when painting your toes with Mom won't be so exciting or will require a trip to the salon to get pedicures.  Now I have this moment to remember when she was little and loved to sit on my lap and compare toes.

Now is the time to close your browser if you're not a fan of feet!

Mission Organization

Among my many lofty goals for 2012, organization ranks high on my list.  I want to have more time to devote to the things I want to do this year, instead of spending extra time running to the grocery store multiple times each week because I didn't make a dinner plan or spending time search for matching socks.  I want to spend that time blogging, scrapbooking, reading books, exercising and all the other things I want to fit into my life but can't find the time.

Organization is key to meeting my goal and it's not just organizing a dinner plan, a grocery list, it's organizing our house and maybe my biggest challenge of all, teaching the kids organization skills so they can fit more fun into their lives too.  No one likes sitting down to a good game of Hungry Hungry Hippo only to find that all the marbles are missing.  Life is a lot more enjoyable when you take good care of your things.

To kick off my organization plan, I have gone a bit old school and have busted out a clipboard to track some of the basics.  I have a monthly menu plan, a list to write down the meals we actually enjoyed and want to eat again, an exercise log and then the all important 2012 Declutter Your Home daily calendar which will help me slowly, methodically get the entire house in shape.  I also have been using ZipList on my iPhone and computer to help with the shopping list.  I love this app because I always have my phone with me and wherever I am if I think of something we need at the store I just add it onto my list. Then I can forget it until I'm at the store and pull up the list.  I can also add or search for recipes on my computer and add the entire recipe to the list with one click.  This is so much easier than writing out a list.  Also I can check off the items as I put them in the cart.

Keeping It Real

My ZipList list from my iPhone

As I am moving through my decluttering tasks I'm also looking for ways to use the space I have in my house more effectively.  I'm trying to think outside the box and find new ways to make my space more useful to our family and how we live our life.  I get a lot of ideas from Pinterest, there are so many DIY ideas on this site which really appeals to my creative side and makes the whole organization project more enjoyable.  One major change I made before Christmas was in my laundry room.  I had seen a picture on Pinterest of a laundry room with big shelves for laundry baskets and I decided I wanted to have that someday.  Then as I was sitting in my laundry room one night folding the mountain of laundry (get a view of it here) I keep in there.  Here's a great example from 2009 of my laundry situation...

December 2009

I looked at my laundry room and was really mad at myself for not thinking of having open shelves in there when we did the remodel in 2006.  How could I have known how out of control laundry can get when you have two kids?  I couldn't so I thought doors on the cupboards were just fine.  Then another though struck me, I could just take off the cupboard doors and have the open shelving I was dreaming of.  So I did it!

A simple screwdriver and five minutes later I was feeling renewed by my space.  Now I can fold the laundry on the counter and the move it into each family members basket to be stored neatly until we put it away in rooms.  Before when I would fold the laundry it would stay on the counter with people picking through it each day until it was all basically unfolded again.

With that major victory under my belt I decided to take it one step further and enlist the kids into part of the laundry organization chain.  I bought them each hanging cloths shelves for their closets - there are five slots and we work together to pick out their outfits and pajamas for the weekdays so they are ready each morning to get up and get dressed.  No more scrambling looking for this shirt or that other sock, now we have a plan and the kids love filling up each shelf.  McKenzie has even started back filling as soon as she has an empty shelf.

Here are their shelves in action - ignore the surrounding clutter, kids closets haven't come up on my declutter calendar but they are on there!

So moral of the story is look out 2012, I'm off to a good start and I hope to continue the progress I've made already this January.  I'll be posting more of the ways I find to use my space better and be more organized as the year goes on.

Nearly New Years

At the start of 2011 we were running late with our midnight prep and so we paused the TV announcement of the countdown and then started it up five minutes later.  All year I kept remembering that when I was just a little late to things and so this year we made sure to celebrate early with the kids and observe the countdown on time.  Already I feel back on track and right with the world even if in the end 2011 was five minutes shorter than other years.

We headed out to Grandma and Grandpa Z's for our New Years celebration which was a special treat for the kids to have a sleepover with the whole family.  The kids had a marching band with all the noise makers and then we lite off some fireworks to send 2011 off in style.

Grandma Z with Claire, McKenzie and Ben in their New Years hats.

McKenzie and Ben helping Grandpa Z with the fireworks - Ben wanted more, more, more!

Matt woke up on New Years day and assembled the new jeep that Santa had brought to Grandma Z. Ben was so excited for a blue "race car" instead of having to drive the pink Barbie jeep.  The girls were very taken with the blue jeep too until Grandpa took the safety screw out of the Barbie jeep that let it go twice as fast.  McKenzie loved cruising even faster around the driveway loop.  Here the kids are testing it out before Daddy had finished building it.

Ben taking his big sister for a spin in the new jeep.  He must have been feeling wild since he left his bike helmet on for the ride.

Looking forward to more exciting adventures in 2012!