Been a While!?!?!?!

Good grief it's been a while! May I just say I think I've had an excuse! I had a baby, bought a house, and moved all in the last 3 months.

Here's a few sanity savers for you though:

Dishwashing gloves. I never really cared for them until we bought our new house. There were a LOT of creepies in the cupboards and corners but with these gloves on it was like a super power! I had no few I could clean whatever needed to be done! Plus our new house doesn't have a dishwasher....yet, so it saves my hands.

My swiffer was AMAZING when we moved in! Did you know it works GREAT on walls? You know how when you move in to a new place and it's been closed for a while and it stinks? Well, I went through and gave it a thorough cleansing. I put a cleaning rag on the swiffer and scrubbed the walls all the way up and down without having to haul a chair around or use a stool. It was really nice and it cut down on my time too.

I don't know what the technical name for this is but it's an allen wrench that's like a pocket knife and keeps all the sizes together. I didn't know we had one until we moved! What a genius idea! I've gone to the tool box many times looking for a specific size and of course the one I needed would be gone. Problem solved!

Preparing Simple Food Ahead of Time....

(I've been trying to post this for four days now, hope it works this time!)

This week I've been very busy browning 20 pounds of ground beef! Our local Food 4 Less grocery store usually has great deals on meat! I get ground beef for $1.78/lb when I buy it in a 10 lb. roll. It's a ton of meat but it's so worth it!

We used to take the meat and cut it into about one pound sections, wrap it in plastic wrap and freeze it that way. It worked well but I still had to defrost it and cook it when I wanted to use it. We did that for about a year and now we make it just a little bit easier! I take half of the meat and make "spaghetti meat" with it. I brown it with some garlic and chopped onions and seasonings. It's seasoned for things like shepherd's pie, spaghetti, strogenoff (sp?), and anything else that uses meat like that. The other half I do as taco meat. I use the taco seasoning packets and it comes out great! After I've drained all the grease from it and it's cooled down a bit I put the meat in ziplock sandwich baggies. Some bags I fill rather full and others I put like 1/2 a pound in. Zip them up and then they go in the freezer.

It takes a little bit of time but it's not hard at all and then when I'm running late it helps my meals cook faster! I can make a shepherd's pie in under 10 minutes plus the time to bake it as opposed to like 30-40 minutes plus baking time!

Another good thing to cook and freeze is chicken. We get the boneless skinless chicken breast when they're on sale (this week at Food 4 Less I found them for $1.75/lb!) and we grill it, slice it, and freeze it. We have a George Forman grill so it makes it pretty easy. Daniel likes to marinade it but I don't know the recipe for how he does it...I don't think he does either, it's just a little of this and a little of that. We put it in little sandwich baggies like the beef so it's perfect for one meal. We use it in chicken pastas, casseroles, lots of salads, tortilla wraps, pizza, or whatever else we feel like throwing chicken into.

As I posted in an earlier post I LOVE cookie dough! So this week I made a batch of cookie dough, rolled it into balls, and froze them on a cookie sheet. When they were hard I put them into sandwich baggies and froze them together. Freezing them separately first helps them not stick together. Now I have a snack whenever I want them!! :

Super Sturdy Table Cloth

Does your table ever look like this? If you have toddlers that are aspiring artists like mine you probably do! Our poor table has taken some hits lately. One of the first projects when we move into a house is to refinish the table and make it look like new again....as for now we have to find a way to cover it up and protect it from more "characteristic marks."

I owe this solution to my Dad. Thanks Dad! :)

We love vinyl tablecloths with the flannel backing at our house! They protect the table and wipe off easily and they're cheap enough that if they do get ruined you don't feel bad about throwing it away. They make them in some really pretty designs or very festive for the holidays so you don't have to settle for anything boring. But have you ever tried keeping one in place on a table??? Good grief! It's not an easy task, especially with children sitting at the table. We tried putting heavy things on the table to keep it in place but it just got in the way and never worked well.

So, here's what we found. One day when I was little we went to a restaurant and they had vinyl table cloths on the tables, only theirs didn't move! My dad, being the inquisitive person that he is, peeked under the table cloth to see how they kept it in place. All it was was another tablecloth only upside-down! The flannel against flannel made it very hard to move. So he went home and tried it, he taped one upside-down to the table and placed one right side up on top and we've stuck to it ever since.

Try it it works GREAT!!!

(this is the upside-down one taped to the table. I just used packing tape.)

Here is my everyday tablecloth. I found this one at Walmart for $5 and it's nice but they only had a couple to choose from. Yesterday I went to Big Lots and found a TON of them for $3.50! They had a whole bunch of styles and sizes. They had a bunch for Easter too so that was fun.

Definitely a Great Help!

Thanks everyone for sharing their ideas about their ways of doing laundry. My sweet husband reminded me that our system is that HE HELPS!! Am I lucky or what? :) I didn't realize this was our system but this is how it seems to be working for us lately. We have baskets lining the laundry room, whites, lights, darks, and towels so they're all ready separated. I start the washer most of the time and he will put them in the dryer and take them out when they're dry and then lay them on the couch. He lays out every thing that needs to be hung up in a pile and folds everything that needs folding, I come behind him and put hangers in the hang up pile and put all the clothes away. He informed me sweetly that he has the hardest time actually hanging up the clothes and putting them away where as for me it's the opposite! I hate to fold them but I don't mind putting them away! He also folds all of the socks because if it were up to me they'd all just be in bucket!! I'd probably have one bucket per person but they wouldn't be matched, when you own all the same kind, style, color, and size of a sock it seems kind of pointless to me to match them. :)

My Grandma in TN, a nurse and mother of 3 boys, sent me an email that really made me grateful for the way we do laundry, just thought I'd share it with you:

"When your Dad was little, Brad 18 months behind, doing clothes was awful. I worked over 50 hours a week in surgery and was on call one evening plus weekend call each week. My washer was always in a dark, damp basement. I had to fill the washer with a hose, sort and put in clothes then time it to wash. While it was washing, I filled two tubs of rinse water. I had to put the clothes through a wringer (and becareful not to catch fingers) from the washer into the first rinse. I would stir it around in there then send it through the wringer into the second tub of water. Next it was time to wring it out and take it outside or on lines in the basement and hang it up. Grandpa didn't like for the boys to wear teeshirts so all of their shirts were little cotton ones with collars. I had to make starch, dip, wring and hang all of them.....and there was a lot. After it dried, I had to "sprinkle down" all of the starch pieces, roll them individually and put them into a basket In about 12 hours, the water was all even through them and it was time to iron them. By then I was back at work and sometimes they mildewed and I had to start all over. I ironed each little shirt and pairs of pants, pillow cases, tablechothes as well as mine and Dannnie's stuff. Everything was cotton and there was no "Downey " to make them soft and easier to iron. It was the same when I was pregnant for Brad............the clothes was just a little bigger. I think I got an automatic washer and a dryer when we moved to North Carolina.....Your Dad was starting the first grade. I only wish I could have had it sooo much sooner."

Thanks Grandma for reminding me how lucky and blessed I am to have a washing machine AND a dryer! :)

Someone Save My Sanity!!!

I'm curious, how do YOU stay on top of your laundry?

Cannisters Cannisters and MORE Cannisters....

Time for a "useful" post. Here's an idea I came up with last year that has totally helped me in so many ways!! We were building our food storage and had bought several containers of oatmeal to pour into 5 gallon buckets so that they would stay good longer. I kept looking at the mound of containers that we were going to be throwing away and wondering if there was some other use for them and here's what I came up with.

We live in a duplex with a very small kitchen. There's not a whole lot of cupboard space and we had to buy a cabinet to use as our pantry. Finding space for all the food has not been an easy task but with these cannisters it has been a whole lot easier! I have one for almost everything! :) I have one for each of the basics, flour, sugar, brown sugar, oatmeal, and rice. Then I have random things too, pasta, nuts, chocolate chips, pretzels, fruit snacks, ect.... When I do it again I will probably leave the brown sugar in its bag when I put it in the container. I've been emptying everything straight into the cannister and it's worked great except for Brown sugar and pretzels. The brown sugar gets a little clumpy and drier than I'd like and the pretzels were stale (of course it may have been the fact that we don't eat pretzels very often.) I keep separate bags of chocolate chips and nuts and anything else where there's an assortment of things in it.

To cover the cannisters to make them match my kitchen I bought a "big stack" of scrapbook paper from hobby lobby, that way the paper all ready had sort of a theme going on. I measured the paper against the cannisters, cut it, covered it with clear contact paper, and hot glued it to the container. I printed the labels from my computer and matted them on some matching paper. You'll need some super sticky double sided tape to apply it, the hot glue was a little messy on the front of the cannister.

I love my cannisters but I can't wait to get into a new house because I have other ideas for when I do them over again! :)

Have a great day!

My Guilty Pleasure.....

I must admit I love LOVE love chocolate chip cookie dough!!! A lot of times when I'm at the grocery store I will buy the refrigerated rolls to keep in my fridge for a snack...or a "Sanity Saver" Some people hide chocolate or other "normal" treats for their hard days but me, it's gotta be the yummy gooey chocolate chip cookie dough. It's just so good! My very very favorite kind is the kind from Papa Murphy's! I've never actually tried it to see if the cookies are any good but the dough is FANTASTIC!

Unfortunately I made the mistake of introducing my children to it last night and unfortunately the LIKED it!! Now they think I have to share with them. :( Oh well, one more crazy thing they like just like me, put it up there next to cold pizza for breakfast. Speaking of breakfast....hmmm Have a good day everyone! :)

Creative Notebooks

Sorry about not posting for a while. Our computer monitor died and the charger for the laptop quit working too!

Anyways, here are some ideas that I loved! I got the idea from my very crafty mom.

I LOVE to make lists! I make to-do lists, menus, shopping lists, inventory lists, packing lists, and all sorts of lists! I needed a way to keep them organized. I took composition notebooks and covered them with scrapbook paper and then covered that by clear contact paper. They look cute and they work great!! I have a main book that I carry with me that had sections for calendar, to-do lists, scribbles, and budget. The other books are for specific things like, menus/shopping lists, business endeavors, family home evening (to record ideas for and/or write down things we've done), and my scripture study journal. I went a little nutty with the books but it's fun for me!

Another idea:

Here is a page I took from my "menu/shopping list" book. It helps me so much! I make two columns on the page. On the left side I write 7 ideas for Breakfasts, lunches, and Dinners. Then I assign each meal a day. On the right side I write my shopping list according to those meals. I can either tear out the shopping list and take it with me or take the whole book shopping with me.

To keep within my food budget I try to make meals according to what I have in the house or buy only what I need for that week. I try to estimate a cost per item on the list. If the total comes out more than my budget I rearrange meals or try to cut back that way I know what I'm doing BEFORE I go to the store. It really helps.

Cheese puffs and Yogos

So we took my little Knowly (16 months 0ld) to the ER on Tuesday night to get stitches :( He was playing around and fell down and hit his head on the computer hutch. He had a nice clean cut on his forehead but it was really deep and I felt like it needed something to hold it together so it wouldn't get bigger. Anyways, so we're sitting in the waiting room for over an hour and luckily I had some change in my purse to buy some cheetos out of the vending machine. That kept him busy for quite a while. After we saw the doctor and he got his stitches I gave him some yogos that I'd grabbed on the way out of the house as a reward. It made him very happy. So I'm grateful for those two things keeping my little boy happy! :)

I only have a minute but....

I LOVE my dishwand! I wasn't sure if I would use it or not but for just a couple bucks I decided to try it. I think it does use a little more soap than I normally would use, but for some reason it helps my brain think that doing dishes is OK. I call it one of my "lazy man's tools".

Welcome!

Hey Everyone!
Thanks for visiting my new site. I love to organize and do things around the house so I thought I'd share. I do things as inexpensively as possible but still try to make cute-usable things. Hope you enjoy! Feel free to leave any comments/suggestions foe me!
Thanks