What I'm Reading...

4 Simple Ways To Make Your Kids The Best Of Friends.  I am tucking away the hand-holding in time-outs idea for not too far down the road.  (Motherhood Your Way)


How I Save Loads Of Time In The Grocery Store.  I do this too, kind of.  I do produce, meat, dairy/cold, WIC, and other.  And occasionally non-food, if we're buying more than one non-food item.  It really works! (Simple Organized Living)

Overcoming The Stress Of Having Kids In The Kitchen.  I so agree with this post, but I didn't realize it until I read it.  Cooking with one kid in the kitchen is fine.  Cooking with two kids in the kitchen seems so much harder.  P.S. I love this "Eat Well, Spend Less" series of blog posts.  (Food Your Way)

Ignoring Your Partner After You Have A Baby Happens, And It Sucks.  It does, and, well, it does.  (Offbeat Mama)

That's all for this week.  I'm celebrating family graduations and confirmations and catching up on all the latest from my relatives.  Traveling to get-togethers with two kids is not easy, but it's worth it.

Menu Plan Monday

Monday: Pizza Pockets (plus extra for the freezer)
Tuesday: Veggie Stir Fry
Wednesday: Enchiladas, with the sauce from this recipe  (but with ground turkey, beans, and corn inside)
Thursday-Sunday: The boys and I will be traveling to a few family graduations and parties, so Jesse will be eating leftover enchiladas, pizza pockets from the freezer, and frozen pizzas for his dinners.  Not the greatest, but he likes that it will all be pretty much ready to eat.

Since I'll be gone for a chunk of this week, I wanted to make sure we had an easy meal plan, so I wouldn't have to worry about spending a lot of time on food preparation before we go, and so Jesse would have food to eat while we're gone.  He is a good cook, but he tends to use more expensive ingredients and make tons of dishes when he cooks, so this is my way of staying on budget, and not coming home to a sink full of dishes.  This is also a week where I spent a little extra money on easy snacks for the boys, like goldfish crackers and single-serve fruit cups.  They think "trip snacks" are awesome!

What I'm Reading...

Confessions Of An Autopilot Parent.  My computer is both my friend and my enemy for sure.  (Motherhood Your Way)

SEO Optimize Your Blog Posts Using Keywords.  I don't blog to make money, but this is helpful for those who do.  (Blogging Your Way)

Garage Sale Tips For The Non-Garage Saler.  I love this list of tips for someone hosting a garage sale, from the perspective of someone who goes to a lot of garage sales.  (Organizing Junkie)

A Beginner's Guide To Freezer Cooking.  (Money Saving Mom)

Make Clearance Sales Work For You.  If you don't read any of the other posts linked here, read this one.  Such a smart list of how to effectively shop clearance sales.  (Northern Cheapskate)


Great Idea Of The Day: Make Skull Art With Bookcases.  Go look at the picture.  It's cool.  (Offbeat Home)

How To Talk To Little Boys.  I thought the title of this was misleading, but it's a good post about how boys don't like to read and think it's a "girl thing".  (Offbeat Mama)


How A Second Chance Question Can Make Us Better Moms.  Spoiler: "What can you do differently next time?" Effective for both kids and moms.  (Motherhood Your Way)

Trash to Treasure Toy Shelf

A few weeks ago, people started putting large items out on the curb for the annual spring cleaning trash pick-up.  (Side-note: Do we as a society really have that much stuff that we need to do this every year?)  I found this shelf on a family walk, and I knew it would make awesome toy storage, so I carried it the half block or so home.  In a dress.  I'm sure I looked quite ridiculous. 

It also had a couple of brackets and some lovely orange and yellow puppy paw-print fabric on top, but I took those off in the hallway before bringing it into our apartment (along with giving it a good cleaning/disinfecting), so I don't have a picture.  Use your imagination...

I set to work painting in our kitchen, which is rather small, but provided an easier place to clean up if any of the paint dripped, since the rest of our place is carpeted.  So I got to contort myself into all sorts of positions to get into all those shelves. 

I used Valspar Caribbean Blue, a paint sample can that I had gotten in the mail, which came with a little tray and roller, so my total cost for this project was FREE.  Love that!

And then this:

So after letting the paint dry overnight, which was long enough according to the can, we started loading it up.  And the paint chipped like crazy.  So I decided since it was only chipping on the parts that had been white (mostly the shelves), I would just scrape those off and leave them white, and then repaint the top.  This is the first time I've painted furniture, so it was a learning experience.  I realized a few days later that it probably just needed to dry longer, since it was no longer chipping, but since I had already started scraping, I finished that anyways, and then repainted the top.  Based on that, we're going to let the top dry for a week or so before putting anything on it, just to make sure it won't chip.  But the rest we can use:

 

The boys helped me load up the shelves with all of their big trucks and Little People sets.  They don't fit perfectly, but they are close enough, and now they don't have to hog all the space in the toy box.  I really like how this shelf turned out, and I also like the possibilities it has for craft storage in the future when the kids no longer play with big trucks. 

Baking Soda Scrub

Several of my mixing bowls have a funky greasy crud on the bottom (probably from sitting in the sink while other things get rinsed around them). 

I decided to experiment using a not-so-secret ingredient:

Baking Soda!
I simply made a paste of a large sprinkle of baking soda and a bit of water, and scrubbed it around with my fingertips. 

It's not perfect, especially around the raised markings on the bottom, but it's so much better!  I ended up doing 3 bowls this way, and they look much nicer.  What fun uses for baking soda have you found?

Menu Plan Monday

Nothing too exciting this week - just some recipes we know and love.  Most of the new recipes we've had in the past couple weeks have just been so-so.  I decided to stick with what we know this time around.

Monday/Tuesday: Crockpot Bean & Sausage Stew, Homemade Bread
Wednesday: Veggie Pot Pie
Thursday: Homemade Macaroni & Cheese, Hot Dogs
Friday/Saturday: Church Book Retreat (food included)
Sunday: Waffles, Scrambled Eggs

I'll also be making a batch of Chili and a pot of Tomato Veggie Soup for the freezer for Jesse's lunches over the next few weeks.  Making the soups and freezing them in individual portions worked really well over the last two weeks, so we're going to continue to do that for now.

What I'm Reading...

Overnight Success: How To Be A More Patient Mom.  I'm a totally different person when I've gotten enough rest.  (I've also discovered "enough" is not as much as I thought) (Motherhood Your Way)

Lazy Parenting And The Better Late Than Early Philosophy.  I'm learning that my kids will not learn something before they're ready, even if it is late.  (Motherhood Your Way)

Reader Mailbag.  #4 is pretty awesome.  I had never thought of that before.  (The Simple Dollar)

Container Organization.  I very much agree with the sentiment of this post - I love containers too.  (Organizing Junkie)

7 Reasons Your Kitchen Counters Are Cluttered.  I've been making an effort to keep my counters more cleared off, but there's still too much on them.  (Organizing Your Way)