Lisa Holcomb

I Really Do Cook, My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing, Saving Money

ABFoL Organizational Challenge, Day 12

Day 12 of the organizing challenge brought us to the spice cabinet, which I’d been thinking I’d organize this week anyway (on my modified Flylady calendar it’s the kitchen/dining room/laundry area week, so I’ve been very happy with the overlap on this last few challenges). I took all the spices out, made circle labels for the tops, organized them into bins (recycled from fruit cartons to save money) according to how I use them, and put them back away. Most things stayed on their original shelves, but I made sure that second shelf had labeled columns that made sense, rather than everything thrown in there willy-nilly. (And yes, to those observant folks, I do keep super glue & sharpies in there. That little bit of counter there is useless for most things besides drying wet glued items and labeling things.) That third shelf just got tidied, as that top shelf is too small to store anything anyway other than flat. The circle labels were made using the big sheets of sticker paper Wal-mart used to give out when you got portraits there (the software to make the stickers did not make cute things, so I never got around to using it) and my handy-dandy circle punches (which saved me money since I didn’t have to go out and buy little circle stickers!).

My Own Personal Weirdness, Organizing

ABFoL Organizational Challenge, Day 11

For Day 11, we’re supposed to clean out our freezers. We have two, the little one in the house (which is the one I use) and the big one in the garage (which scares me). I chose to do the one in the house. The big one would have required a lot of me climbing into the freezer to pull things out (it’s a chest freezer) and knowing my luck I’d get stuck in there and die.

Here’s what I did: I threw out all the old egg whites I’d been saving but never using. I threw out the orange peels because I never could get a hang of that recipe that used them. I put all the ice pack-type stuff in the door, where I can find them, except the larger ones which now live in between the two bins in the bottom. I sorted out all the fruits & veggies into the bin on the left and the nuts & grains into the one on the right. Ice cream and sorbet stayed on the top shelf in the back (we never eat them), meat moved up to the top shelf, the ice cube tray that held the trays moved out (we never put ice in there anyways), and the juice moved front & center so the kids could find them for easy lunch making. And that is all. The spouse says that if I really want to try organizing the big freezer that he can help me tomorrow afternoon on that. I’m okay with not know what’s out there, I really am.

My Own Personal Weirdness

“A bowl full of Lemons” challenges

Over at the blog “A Bowl Full of Lemons” they’re having a 21 days to organized house challenge and since I’m doing some of that already, I thought I’d join in with my before and afters for a bit of fun. I started late – on Monday night – so this is just a couple days of catch-up to get in sync with the rest of the group.

Day One was to clean your Junk Drawer. Well, my computer area junk drawer was already tidied earlier this year (hehe), so I went for the kitchen junk drawer. I looked to see what I’d need, ran over to Dollar Tree to get some supplies, then came back and started to work. Well, there was so much stuff in there that I had to send the overflow to the silverware drawer.

Day Two was to clean the top area of your computer desk. Mine was in desperate need of that, so I was quick to finish that one. I got inspiration from the original post to use a little mini tower I had leftover from the craft room move on the desk. The kids already love having it there full of pens and tape and notepaper that they can use! (They’ve been banned from my scrapbooking desk)

Day Three was to clean out your “Tupperware” cabinet. I did my storage container drawer. I bought two tall boxes while at the Dollar Tree earlier to hold a) the small containers the kids use for lunches and b) the lids to the rest of the smaller containers.

Day Four was to clean out your linen closet and ohwow did mine need it! I found 3 full size sheets (for a bed we got rid of 5 years ago), 10 twin sheet sets (only keeping 2 sheet sets per kid, 2 sets for us adults), 9 toddler sized sheets, a whole lot of curtains that didn’t fit our house’s needs when we moved in (7 years ago), and a huge number of empty bandage wrappers. The sheets & curtains all went to Goodwill and the trash went out the door, too. (Those boxes across the top hold china and off-season kitchen goods)

Day Five was to clean out your under-the-kitchen-sink area. Mine wasn’t too bad off, but I did repackage all those little refill bottles that we got on sale last year into something more managable.

Day Six was to clean out your dresser drawers. Umm. The one that needed the most work I had done a few weeks ago, but the rest got purged a little and now I can find all my socks again. Yay for socks! Also I had too many pairs of pajamas, most more than five years old. I’m sending one pair to my mom’s house and one to my mother-in-law’s house and now I can go visit without having to worry about “Did I pack my pj’s?” (No photos here as I am disinclined to show you all my underwear.)

Day Seven was to clean out your pantry. My pantry needed some TLC and I managed to get all my baking supplies into a basket for easy baking fun! 🙂 I also used baskets to tame the Back 40 where the rarely used supplies (Seaweed? Check. Shortening? Check. Oil for the FryDaddy? Check.) go. The flour, sugar, & shortening moved upwards to live with the rest of the baking supplies and the giant bowls moved out to the garage (we bought them for a church event; I will check and see if the church needs them before donating them).

Day Eight was also a scary day, as my front hallway closet could kill you, or at least the bottom half could. EVIL. As I cleared it out I realized two things: 1) I have too many bags and 2) my husband has too many gimme caps. So I stacked the hats all up for my husband to peruse when he comes home (he has 4 slots in the organizer free to store hats, so he can keep 8, I figure) and I put my donation pile into some of the bags I don’t want to keep (win/win, right?). I moved games and puzzles out of the closet to go live with the other games (except Risk, which has 8 trillion pieces so I think it still needs to live up high).

Day Nine was the Toy Organization challenge. I have to admit that that is one we’ve been working on for a while in this household. The kids get so many toys each year, even with our in-laws giving “experience” gifts and us only buying one present per kid per holiday, it gets pretty ridiculous around here. We do make them clear out a few things before each birthday or holiday, but that’s just not doing it for us anymore, not with three kids to one bedroom, so we’re allowing a bit of a spread of the stuff to make it easier on all of us. The Lego bricks and more solitary toys live in the Room of Requirement, the games all live out in the living room (which is where we play them anyway), sports stuff lives in the garage or outside, and the rest is in the kids room. (I took more photos, but this post is getting long enough!)

Day Ten (that’s today!) was to clean out your laundry room. Fortunately for me, that was on my own list for today! 🙂 Mostly I just tidied up, labeled the shelves, wiped them down, wiped down the washer & dryer & walls, hung things back up, and put things back in place.

Around the House

The Room of Requirement

We spent quite a lot of time this week working on our Cave of Solitude, which during the course of the week morphed into a new kind of room, instead: The Room of Requirement (yes, a Harry Potter reference). We moved out the craft table (which was really just a piece of plywood over two file cabinets) and moved in the old crib, reconfigured into it’s daybed format. We’re using an inflatable toddler-sized air mattress and some pillows the kids don’t use (because they have pillow pets now) for the cushions.

The rest of the room is not quite in order yet. There’s a couple sets of shelves in there for storing the kids art supplies, more solitary types of toys (Lego bricks, puzzles, science sets, etc), and books about making crafts or doing science experiments. There’s also my old hope chest with a mini TV for viewing videos or playing old Atari games on it in a pinch. There’s the file cabinets and the drawer systems with all kinds of old kids art, school programs, ticket stubs, etc. There’s also the tall table that used to the be kitchen island with an old computer attached to it for playing non-internet, ancient computer games. The closet is filled with sewing & giftwrapping supplies and clothes & shoes for various kids to grow into, spare artwork, my college diploma in its giant frame, and all the notes anyone ever sent me from elementary school til college. That sounds just like the Room of Requirement, doesn’t it?! I know, you’d love photos of all that. But today’s not that day. Today’s the day I’m going to organize it all. Photos to come later in the week when it’s looking more presentable.

The rest of the week, when we weren’t doing stuff in that one room, here is what we did:

Monday, the Greg and I made a few things in the Easy Bake oven. The cookies came from a mix someone was kind enough to give us over Christmas

and the pizza we made from this recipe. It was really excellent, especially with the olives we added.

Monday was also the day that Greg decided that writing words was a goodness. He chose my name as his starting point, having me write it at the top of the dry erase board, then writing and rewriting it himself until he was happy with it.

Tuesday was a MDO day for Greg (they made instant snow from a kit – he was so impressed), so I spent my day running all the little errands I’d saved up from during the break, got a free sandwich from Chik-fil-a (I registered with their site and they sent me a coupon!) and organizing my scrapbook papers and die cuts so I could get back into the scrapbooking more easily. That night was our first night back to piano lessons since the break. It was nice to get back into our routine.

Wednesday I had an embarassing moment with the police involving me being pulled over in front of the kids school because I hadn’t remembered where I put my registration sticker when the time came to put it back on. They were nice enough to leave me with a warning, so we went home and I finally filed all that stuff that I’ve been meaning to file for the last three months.

Then we went to the library and made bird feeders. We came home and explored the yard for animals and other signs of life in the winter garden.

That evening we had Double Lightsaber Dogs from the Star Wars cookbook (we’re on a roll!) and really only David loved them:

Thursday was again MDO day, so Greg went to school (they made snowballs out of rolled up socks and had a snowball fight) and I went to a couple estate sales with my friend Monaca. We didn’t find anything good to buy (way overpriced) so we treated ourselves to Chik-fil-a afterwards (twice in one week! the insanity! but never say no to a pregnant woman with a craving!). Thursday night I’d meant to go to a friends art show, but I managed to re-injure my head (remember I did that last month, too?), so I was too dizzy and nauseated to go anywhere.

Friday Greg and I cleaned up various messes, then headed up to Ben’s school to have lunch with him. He wanted to eat outside, but it was too chilly in the courtyard (there’s no sun in the part that has the tables set up), so we ate inside with his friends.

By the time the kids got home from school it had warmed up considerably, so the kids played basketball outside for the rest of the afternoon:

Yesterday we to church at our regular church. After deliberating all week and spending most of our evenings reading up on the various issues involved in our church’s big split (the big bad thing I alluded to last week), we decided that that was where logic dictated that we should go. Nick’s family and his sister’s in laws made the same decision, so that made it a bit easier, though we will miss our friends that chose to go to the other place. Since we’re lacking people to staff certain parts of the church, I signed on to the kitchen committee to help out serving snacks and potlucks and I will continue to help out with the kids Sabbath School classes. I’m also working on some duets with Nick’s mom for special music. Nick is an usher and the current president of the Men’s Leadership Club, as well as teaching at Sabbath School. After church the kids and I hung out at Nick’s parents house & they fed us while he went to his Men’s Club meeting.

Today was another basketball practice for the boys. I stayed home and tidied up from yesterday. Now the kids are “cleaning up” (which, judging from the noise in there includes anything but) and Nick is grocery shopping and I’m trying to get us ready for the snow that is coming. We’re excited about the snow; we never get it this early! (And only rarely get it all, actually).

Crafts, My Own Personal Weirdness

A little bit craftier

After spending the better part of the last 4 months decluttering & tidying up the house and developing a routine for cleaning that actually works, I’m finally getting around to the point that there’s time in my schedule to do a bit of crafting each day. Here’s what I made a couple days ago:

Part of it is that snowman that I had so much trouble photographing. Part of it is a little collage Greg and I made of paper and sidewalk chalk and glitter glue. The rest is an old frame that had seen better days and yet more glitter glue (plus a little sheet of paper that says “let it snow, let it snow, let it snow). It hangs in my back hallway across from the Kid Command Center.

Speaking of the Kid Command Center, let me introduce you to that as well:

We’d been having our family calendar in the front hallway, kids school notes on the fridge, our chore lists (now just called “dailies”) in the back hallway, and it was all confusion! So we made a Kid Command Center (why yes, we are a house full of boys!) in the back hallway by their rooms. I used an old bulletin board that had four frames around it that no one ever used (the board is too small for my uses in the craft area). The frames hold a list for each kid of their dailies (which just sounds better than chores, right?). Each kid has a slightly different list, according to age and need. Since they’re behind glass, we can mark things off daily with a dry erase marker, which makes me happy in so many ways (no more printing lists! save the trees! oh my sanity!).

I also have my Must Do list up there. We had a funny moment when I was trying to shrink our lists down to fit and mine kept overflowing out it’s frame. One of the kids said “Mommy, your list is sooooo long! Is that why you’re always tired?” *sigh* Mine now has two entries that basically say “Do one thing from the weekly/monthly list.” Other things on the lists: piano, scout activities, Bible time, personal reading for everyone, picking up toys (which already needs to be rephrased to “Pick things up off the floor” not just toys, as the boys now have more shoes than I do).

Yesterday I started the process of moving out of the craft room. I know, I know. I was so excited to have a craft room, but you know what? I realized one day that every time I go to do some kind of craft or to make a gift or something, I go into the craft room, gather up my stuff, come out into the living room or my bedroom or the kitchen and do my work there. The craft room idea would be great if a) it wasn’t so ever loving dark in there and b) I didn’t feel like I was stuck away from everyone. And yes, I did try lamps (Nick got me a cute little task light that I love) and letting the kids bring stuff in to do while I was in there. But what happened was that the room turned into the dumping ground room. So yesterday I cleared all the junk out of my grandmother’s desk, put all of the craft supplies that I found elsewhere around the house (the ones I use on a daily basis, I guess, since they weren’t in the craft room) into it, then grabbed my big wheeled cart that I thought was full of supplies and started emptying that. And that’s where the craziness started. I thought I had all these boxes full of craft supplies. Bins and bins of them. But as I emptied out drawers what I saw was a lot of memory stuff (kids papers, kids art, movie stubs, fliers from places we’d ate at or went to) and not as many of the craft supplies that I’d been expecting (Oh I do have a lot, don’t get me wrong, it’s just a manageable amount). So after hours of sorting all my supplies miraculously fit into my grandmothers desk and the little cart next to it. (The memory stuff? Not so much. I need a whole other day to sort through that and figure out where I’m storing it).

What’s going to happen to the craft room/studio/study-oh (as Greg calls it)? We’ve decided to make it our Cave of Solitude. But that’s another blog post. 🙂

Around the House, Family Time, health, I Am Traveling, My Own Personal Weirdness, Parenting

Happy New Year: 2011!

It has been a sincerely and completely crazy week. I’m not even going to try to tell all of it, that’s how insane it’s been.

Monday we wrote in our workbooks, ran Zhu-zhu & Kung Zhu hamsters all over the house, made food in the Easy Bake oven, looked up recipes to make reasonably priced food in the Easy Bake Oven, and generally stayed in our pajamas until it was long past time to be out of them.

Tuesday we did more of the same, but this time ventured out to a Post Holiday Jollies party at Double Daves with my former MOPS friends.
The kids ran around like crazy, the adults ate far too much in an attempt to recomp some of the money we spent on food the kids weren’t eating, and we generally laughed a lot and agreed that Christmas is totally ridiculous. A good time was had by all. 🙂

Wednesday we got up and after a couple false starts drove to Ft. Worth for D’s orthopedic visit. We got completely turned around at some point (bad directions, yay) and ended up getting to our appointment with only 4 minutes to spare, which was agonizing, as we’d left more than an hour of leeway in our schedule. My friend Kay watched the younger two at the park (along with her two) while I took D in to the doctor alone. He had his xrays done, his legs measured four ways (on a block, on the xray, with a measuring tape by hand, and another way I’ve forgotten now), and we got the whole hemihypertrophy schpiel again, as the med student in with us had never heard of it. The doctor reassured us that despite D’s “deformity” (his word, not mine), he was actually in really good shape and did I read any hemihypertrophy blogs or belong to any forums? I tried not to laugh at that. (For a really long time I was one of the top three hits on Google for hemihypertrophy) I explained that I had at one time, but really it got to be too much. The doctor said that D’s leg length difference is getting worse, not better, and that we need to keep coming back at 6 month intervals to keep an eye on it to make sure it’s not damaging his pelvis or his spine or anything. When he’s around 15 (sooner, if it keeps growing too fast), they’ll have to break his growth plate on the one leg so the other can catch up. I’m hoping that the health industry comes up with a better answer by then, as that sounds incredibly painful and time consuming and what 15 year old boy wants to take a time out from life for something like that?! Aie. Anyway, after the appointment, we went back to Kay’s parents (now Kays home as well, but they have two houses at the moment and it gets confusing) house and took the kids on an adventure and let the play games and fed them multi-colored pancakes for dinner. I think Kay has better photos than I do, but I will post those when I see her next.

Thursday I spent in pain because of all the driving I’ve been doing lately. Yay, pain. D and B each had friends over to play video games. G’s friends couldn’t make it, due to illness (argh), but B & his friend let him play Mario Kart & Wii Music with them, so he was pretty happy anyway.

New Year’s Eve day we spent running errands with Nick. We got fireworks for a future display (once the burn ban is over, I’ve been chanting this for months) and other stuff that required a trip out towards Nick’s parents house. Hung out there for a while with his dad. We had a big surprise over something that I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about yet, nothing family related, exactly, but something big we’re still talking over and making decisions about.

For the evening festivities, Nick made a whole lot of German food (sauerbrauten, red cabbage and apples, caramelized onions, etc) and

I made a lot of decorations that said 2011 and poppers for the kids.

My parents came over to eat and celebrate.

The kids got to do both my kind of poppers (with candy inside) and the more explosive kind (confetti explosion) and smoke bombs and sparklers. We had a bit of dancing in the living room and then an early countdown to the new year for the kids. Actually, for everyone.

My parents left right after that and Nick and I decided we’d had enough for the day and went to bed, too. 🙂

New Years Day was a Saturday and therefore a church day, but therein lies the madness, so we ended up going to services at two different churches. Like I said, not something I’m up for discussing at the moment, but it did take up all the day and into the evening. We had dinner at my parents house here in town, with the two D’s making us the Crazy Cantina Chili from the original Star Wars Cookbook. It turned out all right, kind of like Taco Soup, but without the meat (my dad threw some in at the end to fill it out a bit).

Yesterday we took the kids out for basketball practice, but there weren’t many kids there. They had fun, though.

We spent the afternoon at home doing necessary cleaning type stuff. I set up a Kids Command Center in their hallway with all their important info like calendars, lunch menus, emergency numbers, chore lists with dry erase markers, etc. I’ll do a post about that and the art we made today as well sometime tomorrow.

Anyway, hope everyone is having a very pleasant new year so far. 🙂

Around the House

From Twitter: 12-09-2010

7:56 am: Frosted windows? Check. Iced windshield? Check. Time for hot chocolate? CHECK! 🙂 #

From Twitter, imported by moi.

Around the House, My Own Personal Weirdness

From Twitter: 12-06-2010

6:07 pm: Had a nice quiet day at home after a whirlwind weekend (dinner party, baby shower, date night, christmas program). Ahhh…#

From Twitter, imported by moi.

Everywhere But Home, Friend Time

From Twitter: 12-03-2010

8:01 am: Had a funny lunch out yesterday with Emily: the first three places we tried to go to were all out of business! Finally ended up at Casa Ole. #

From Twitter, imported by moi.

Books, Friend Time

From Twitter: 12-1-2010

11:51 am: Small world: the Daily Science Fiction magazine story in my inbox this morning was written by my friend from high school’s brother. Weird! #

From Twitter

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