Morning Routine {Printable}

I hate mornings at my house.  It's very very stressful.  Maggie won't get out of bed, I have to tell her 5 or 6 times and Sarah....oh Sarah.......She does great until it's time to get dressed then it all goes south. She is very particular about her clothes, socks and shoes.  Everything has to feel just right or she's not wearing it.  It's a horrible battle every morning and one or both of us end up crying.  It's really awful. This morning she missed the bus because she fiddle farts around and fusses and whatnot, so I told her from now on, she will be ready to leave at 6:30. Her bus comes between 6:40 and 6:45.  It's really exhausting.  SO, I have posted about this before, but I made us a new printable for our morning routine.  I shouldn't have to pay my child to do what she is supposed to do, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.  Judge me if you want, I don't care.  I need some sanity in my life.

Click HERE to download

Head Over Teal

September is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month, in case you didn't know.  I know because my sweet mother has been fighting this nasty beast for the last three years.  Her story is here and I think you should read it.  It's the third one on the page.

I feel like ovarian cancer is looked over so much, but it really shouldn't be.  There are no monthly or yearly exams that detect ovarian cancer.  Please read through the Laura Crandall Brown website to see how you can help.

At the end of September every year, there is a Head Over Teal 5K Walk/Run and I was very honored to have been able to walk the 5K, my first one by the way, and I am lucky to have done it in HONOR of my mother.  My Dad, brother and future sister in law and her mom and a bunch of my Mom's co-workers were there also.  Now I'm not saying this just because she's my Mom, she let me tell you, she is one special lady.  

I really like this picture of me and Mom.

These are some pictures from the photobooth after the run.  The quality is horrible because I was taking a picture of a picture.  You know how that goes. 

I'm not real sure what Mom is doing with the green glasses in this picture.  We have laughed and laughed about that.

It was so funny....we were all scrambling between shots to switch props we were all cracking up and screaming like crazy people.

I guess Dad thought he didn't need any props...goof ball.

We really had a great time and it is for a really good cause and I can't wait until September rolls around again so we can do this again!  I wish there was more awareness about ovarian cancer.  BUT please, once again, head on over to Think of Laura and check it out, read and be informed.

DIY Monogram

I've been wanting to do this for a while and I've had the materials for a while.  I got the wood letters and paint at Hobby Lobby and I always keep sponge brushes on hand.  Hobby Lobby is my favorite store for craft supplies, among many other things!

I used a sponge brush and had to put about 3-4 coats of silver on the "W", but it turned out looking pretty good.

I hot glued the letters together and hung them on the wall with THESE beauties that I just recently discovered.  I think it looks great on Maggie's wall.   She has had a purple room for a bit, but is thinking of changing to a lighter teal color.  This will still match because she will keep her black and white damask bedding and her furniture is white.

Disney World Day 1

We, reluctantly, decided to take the kids out of school the week of Labor Day and make our way to Disney World in Orlando.  It's really only about a 9 hour drive for us.  To me, that's not bad, I love road trips and our kids travel really well.  I just always make sure I have pillows, blankets, chargers and ear buds, for them of course.

We started off on Saturday August 30 and headed for Jacksonville, FL where my Aunt Cheryl and Uncle Terry live.  We haven't seen their new and I was definitely coveting.

We got there in time to watch the Alabama game and visit with some other family who live in the area that I haven't seen in quite a while.  It was a nice evening.  We got up really early the next day and headed for Orlando!

It was about a 2 1/2 hour drive.  Not bad at all and the weather was turning out to be gorgeous.  Still a little warm for my liking, but I can tolerate the heat a lot better now.  

Finally, we arrived, but we haven't updated the GPS in the car so it was a little rough finding our resort.  We stayed at The Caribbean Beach Resort.  It was our first time staying here and we opted to wait for one of renovated rooms with queen beds.  We were getting a little antsy because it was getting late in the day, we weren't in our room yet, we needed showers and all of our luggage was in the car and snacks were melting.  

We finally got in our room and showered quickly and took off to Hollywood Studios so we could get to dinner at Hollywood & Vine, which was a first and let me say, it was delicious.  Then after dinner we headed over to see the Fantasmic show.  Mike and I have seen it before, but it's been a long time and the kids had not.  We wanted this trip to be full of new experiences and new restaurants.  The kids are older and no stroller needed so we were ready to conquer Mickey and Friends.

Stay tuned for Day 2 of our trip!  It was a loooong day but so very fun!  

 

Menu Plan and Weekly Goals July 21-27

I really feel like things are about to get kicked into high gear!  Believe it or not, our schools start back August 7 and I feel a little panic setting in.  I think keeping myself organized and making menu plans every week is going to be a huge help.  Instead of having a huge list of things I want to do, I'm going to have small list and not let myself get so overwhelmed.  I do that to myself then I shut down and won't do anything.

So here's my menu plan for the week:

Breakfast choices:
Pancakes (frozen)
Biscuit waffles
Nutella/Cream Cheese
Bagels
Fruit with agave nectar
cereal

Lunch/snacks choices:
Ham/turkey wraps
Lunchables (the small ones)
Yogurt
Nutella to go
Fruit
Veggies
Mini muffins

Dinner:

Monday
BBQ Pork Roast sandwiches
Parmesan Roasted potatoes

Tuesday
Spaghetti squash with grilled chicken
Red or white sauce
Garlic bread

Wednesday*
Tilapia
Corn on the cob
Fried green tomatoes

Thursday*
Chicken pot pie

Friday
Not sure

Saturday
Taking dinner to Mike's mom

Sunday
Stuffed bell peppers
Baked sweet potato

*Subject to change!  Mike is working security at the Luke Bryan concert two nights this week!  We may eat sandwiches!

Our weekly summer schedule looks a little like this:

Monday: work/camp/body pump class
Tuesday work/camp/barre class
Wednesday: work/ camp/Sarah at gymnastics
Thursday: catch up night at home
Friday: all clear
Saturday: all clear
Sunday: Mike working extra job every other Sunday evening

My goals for the week are:

I really need to work on my recipe binders.  I have SEVERAL binders and a million printed recipes. So, I'm going to work on my breakfast binder this week, getting the recipes in alphabetical order and creating a table of contents.

Of course, this goes along with laundry, floors, etc.  This is my weekly cleaning schedule.  I don't always stick to it, but I do my best.

Hope you have a fantastic week and while you're at it, check out other menu plans at I'm an Organizing Junkie!  Not only can you get great meal ideas, she has a million great ways to get and stay organized!  

Before and After (again)

If you will remember this post a while back, I was down 80 pounds.....well, it's been a year since I've had surgery and here are the results!  I couldn't be happier!

Menu Plan Monday

I keep telling myself that if I would just plan my meals, my evenings would be a lot less crazy!  You would think summer would be full of fun, relaxing, swimming, etc., but NO!  In addition to working full time with an hour commute each way every. single. day., on Mondays and Tuesdays, I'm at the gym.  Also on Tuesdays, Mike works court, Wednesdays is gymnastics with Sarah and Thursdays-Sundays are pretty free, but I am playing catch up with housework and I'm doing two loads of laundry each night trying to keep camp clothes and work clothes clean. Thank goodness I don't have that extra 100 pounds on me anymore, I get around quicker now and have A LOT more energy.

Since I recently bought nearly $300 worth of groceries, and while I had a moment, I thought I would go ahead and hash out the weekly menu plan.  And it goes a little something like this.

Breakfast
Pancakes
Blueberry muffins
Cherrios
Fruit Loops
Breakfast burritos

Lunch
Ham/Turkey sandwich or roll-up
Blueberries
Grapes
Grape tomatoes
Goldfish crackers
Kiwi
Cucumber

Dinner
Monday - Hamburger Helper Buffalo Chicken, green beans, rolls
Tuesday (court night) - Pizza and/or Soup
Wednesday - BBQ Ranch Crockpot Chicken, rice and mixed veggies
Thursday - Pork chops, green beans and rice
Friday - It's pay and hopefully dinner out with friends!

That's what our week looks like!

Check out more weekly menus over at OrgJunkie.com!

Sarah's Bedroom Makeover

When we moved in our house (the third one) in the summer of 2006, Sarah wasn't quite a year old and she had the cutest room.  She was still in her baby bed then shortly thereafter, was transitioned to a toddler bed. We had to paint not long after we moved in because that room was also a small den and a textured border paper.  We removed the border paper and put up a chair rail because it left a mark on the wall.  I think the chair rail looks pretty good in there.  Once Sarah moved to a twin bed, we were able to find cute bedding from Target that matched her wall color.  Mike's least favorite thing is painting, but for some reason, he loves to do it.  Kinda crazy, huh?

Unfortunately for Sarah her room is very tiny, not a lot of space to work with in there as far as placement of furniture.  This is what it looked like before the makeover.

Her closet is tiny and poor girl, just has no room for her stuff and toys.  I'm slowing work on that though. Like her "Future Diva" poster?  We made this poster and one for Maggie when we took the girls to see WWE live.  Yes, we are that family (not sure what family that is, but we are it).  We had a great time, but back to the bedroom.

We had been looking and looking for new bedding for Sarah, she is quite picky so we finally found a good chevron pattern from Target and she finally agreed and wanted a decorative pillow and lamp to match.  AND the cool thing about Target's website is that it showed good paint colors to use with the bedding, so I sent Mike off to get the paint and I got the bedding.

One day Mike started painting and got it all done and he did a great job and he even rearranged a little so she would have more playing room.  She has really loved her new bedroom.

She loves that it's so "girly" and she actually sleeps in her room every night which has been a huge struggle in the past.  I love her room too.  I'm currently working on some wall decor for her, but seeing as how I work full time and have a 2+ hour commute every day and a family to take care of, I'm slow in getting it done. Stay tuned for more on Sarah's room and I will be updating Maggie's room too.  

My Favorite Things This Week

It's been a while since I've been here.  Just have not been making the time to do something I love.

I'm not a big shopper, never have been, but since losing 105 pounds, I'm trying to get myself to where I enjoy it.  I did venture into Old Navy this past weekend a found a couple of items I thought were really cute.  I've been wanting some of the skinny ankle pixie pants.

This what I bought this weekend.  I got another top that was a navy blue peasant top with tiny white flowers on it from the clearance rack but couldn't find a picture of it.

photos courtesy of

Old Navy

Lyst

I love that I can wear these pieces with several differents things, I can wear them to work or out on a date with the hubs.  I think I can get used to this shopping thing eventually.  I have to get used to the new me first, it's taking some time, but I'm getting there!  

F Is For Flooding

Boy have we had some flooding around these parts overnight and this morning.  

It rained so hard last night it was like white noise outside.  It was crazy.  It rained about 6-7 inches in less than 12 hours.  We had already had a good bit of rain on Friday which left the ground saturated and with the amount of rain we had last night, there was some major flooding issues around our area that caused schools to be delayed 2 hours.  

That kind of worked in our favor because I got to lay around this morning and the kids had a hard time going to sleep last night so it gave them an extra two hours to sleep.

I did not have any flooding at my house, but several roads in our town was closed, a train got stranded across a road, etc.  

A friend of mine who lives in the next town over had some flooding issues at her house.  Close to her house is a "creek" and usually there is an 8 foot waterfall, the water is shallow and people go down there to picnic and splash around.....not anytime soon! 

 

Here are some pictures of my friends house and street.

This is a landslide on a heavily traveled road.  

And some apartments that were flooded.  They did numerous rescues from this apartment building.  Hope everyone is safe.

 

Lots of flooding going on overnight, but hopefully these people can find a new place to live and they have insurance to replace their belongings.

E Is For Eggs

I'm so late blogging about this, but I was cleaning, rearranging and organizing on Saturday, so I'm going to double up today!  

Eggs.  

I used to LOVE some good ole cheesy scrambled eggs. 

I used to LOVE a good hard boiled egg with some salt and pepper, especially on Easter with all of the dyed eggs lying around.  

According to eHealthyTip these are the 7 best benefits of eggs......

1.  Egg have 6 gms of proteins and which is helpful to body and all necessary amino acids.

2.  Egg stops the woman from breast cancer and having egg daily has 40% less chances of breast cancer.

3.  Egg can treat macular degeneration which contains caroteinoids ,zeaxanthine and leutin  are present in excess amount in egg.

4.  Egg also cures the cataract , because  it contains zeaxanthine and leutine.

5.  Egg contains natural vitamin D.

6.  Egg yolk has 3 microgram of choline which is helpful for brain,nervous system and cardiac system.

7.  Having egg everyday puts an end to stroke and heart attack.

Have you had your egg today?

D Is For Dreams

Dreams.

I have dreams.

I dream of one day being able to work part time and be home when my kids get out of school.

My dream vacation is to fly "out west" (I'm in Alabama), drive around and sightsee for a couple of weeks then fly back home.

I had a dream once that my grandmother was still alive.  She died when I was on my honeymoon on November 19, 1999 from a long battle with cancer.  In my dream, she was in her bed and we watching Gone With The Wind, our favorite movie, and it's something we had done before she died.  I used to go visit and lay in the bed with her and watch old movies.  Anyway, in my dream she was telling me that it was going to be okay and I knew she was a Christian and would be going to heaven and she kept telling me over and over it was going to be okay, that she was going to be okay.  The next morning, my mother called me and told me my Great Aunt Carol, who was my grandmother's sister, had died the night before.  I really think my grandmother was trying to tell me that in my dream.  It's not something I will soon forget.

I have dreams of living in a bigger home one day where my kids can have their own space, their own "teen cave".

Everyone has dreams, dreams for your future, dreams when you sleep at night.....what are your dreams?

C - Compromise

I was going to blog out my co-workers, in general of course, but thought that might not be a good idea.  

So my word for the day is compromise.

Webster Dictionary defines this word as "a way of reaching agreement in which each person or group gives up something that was wanted in order to end an argument or dispute".

I think this is a very important word, it's important when it comes to work, marriage, kids and relationships in general.  Of course this can be taken too far (ha ha, I just typed "fart", but of course corrected it).  Unless you are talking about life or death, there can be and I think has to be compromise in almost every situation.  

Some people might see it defined this way...... "a change that makes something worse and that is not done for a good reason".

People have a tendency to compromise their beliefs and moral values for something or someone and it's all one sided. This won't ever turn out good if this is the way you are living.  

In general, folks just need to take others into consideration and be mindful that not everything will always go their way and they will have to compromise.

I think I'm pretty much rambling, but hopefully you understand that I'm saying.

Have a blessed day!

B is for Bad Service

In the little town  where I live, there are a million chain restaurants and a few hometown spots.  After volleyball practice or after a game or just hanging out with friends, we go to these chain restaurants and we go every 2-3 weeks.  We know the wait staff at some of these places and they know us.  When my family frequents an eatery that we have been to several times, I expect the service and food to be on spot.  WELL, we went to a place recently for hamburgers and not it wasn't McDonalds or Burger King, but it's well known for their steak burgers and shakes.  The service was BAD BAD BAD.

My daughter orders a cheesy cheddar burger and it came out looking like a dried up McDonald's cheeseburger, we had to ask 3-4 times for a refill of her coke, she had to ask for ranch dressing 2-3 times, the waiter told me mother in law that they couldn't find any lettuce for her grilled chicken salad then when they found it, it didn't have any grilled chicken on it!  BAD!!!

I'm not a complainer because I know people can have "off" days, I do sometimes, but I complained and low and behold, the manager contacted me by phone and sent us a $40 gift card for our trouble!  We will go back to this place with or without the gift card, but I won't soon forget the BAD service we received.  I will give them another chance.

I've joined the Blogging from A to Z Challenge....check it out here.

Have a good day!

A is for Anti-Bucket List

So many people these days are creating their bucket lists.  I created one too, but now I'm going to do just the opposite and create my Anti-Bucket List.

Bungee jump
Cliff dive
Sky dive
Play flag football
Hunt
Sit on the beach for an entire day
Have mor children. 2 is enough
Gain all of weight back
Smoke a cigarette
Drink Jaegermeister
Be room mother

Those are just a few I can think of right now.

This is my first time doing this challenge and I'm already late. Darn kids.

Homemade Laundry Detergent

I got the idea to make my own laundry detergent from a friend at work.  She gave me the recipe she uses and said it was about $30 for a years worth of laundry detergent!**  I'm like count me in!  I'm always looking for ways to cut back and this was a great one.  Laundry detergent is so stinking expensive and it's something fun for the kids to do.  The like pouring all of the stuff together.

This is what I used:

96 oz of Oxi Clean
1 box of Washing Powder
3 bars of Fels Naptha soap - I put this in my food processor and I used my cheese grater to grate the soap. Be careful not to bust your knuckles on the cheese grater like Maggie did.
2 cups of Baking Soda
1 big box of Borax
2 containers of Downy Unstopables.  I used Purex Crystals the first time I made the detergent and I think I like the Purex brand better.

The total cost of this is about $30, but you will use the baking soda more than once and I always find coupons for the Downy Unstopables or Purex Crystals.

I put all of this in two garbage bags, and seriously, use two because this stuff is heavy and it will bust through the bag and make a HUGE mess. I might have experienced this myself, on a small scale of course. Once you get everything in the bags, mix it up by rolling around the bags and then pour it in a container. I got this glass container from Walmart and I can't remember how much it is. I use the scoop out of the Oxi Clean for the detergent.  This detergent works fine in an HE washer.

**This is my second round of laundry detergent and it did not last me a year.  It lasted about 4 months. I'm okay with that, we do ALOT of laundry.  It's ridiculous.  The friend that gave me the recipe for this, it did last her a year.

Make this and let me know how you like it!  Hopefully it will last you whole year!