Organizing Gift Cards

Gift cards seem to be the 'in' thing to give these days. I know we enjoy getting them. The boys love going to stores and picking out what they want and giving their card for it. My wallet was busting at the seems with gift cards, and that was just a small fraction of them lol. We had a stash in the car, a stash in the kitchen, and a stash on a shelf in the living room. I needed to figure something out so that they were organized, and not taking up valuable real estate in my wallet

I've recently became obsessed with Thirty-One. Mostly because it's just new in Canada, and I'm pretty sure it's only in Ontario. I've spent a lot of time lusting over their beautiful, coordinating, organizational product for a long time. I was so excited when they came here, and even more excited when one of my very good friends signed up to sell! I'm also slightly obsessed with Chevron. So it was an added bonus that they had a Chevron print. I ordered this coupon clutch because I thought it was cute. I wasn't totally sure what I was going to do with it. Maybe try the Dave Ramsey system and use this to organize the cash for our budget Odds are my husband would never take this to the hardware store, which would defeat the purpose. I don't use coupons, it just seems like a lot of work to save $0.40 on a can of tomatoes. Then it hit me! Why not use this for alllll of our gift cards! 

It worked perfectly! I broke it down into 5 categories - Food, Household, Clothing, Kids, and Tim Hortons. Everything is in one place. No more digging through my wallet to discover that the Build-A-Bear gift card is in the stash on the shelf, no more promising the kids McDonalds only to realize we forgot their gift cards (Not that I would break a promise over a silly gift card, but they love paying for their own stuff with their own 'money') If my husband is going some where, he knows he can find the gift cards in clutch in my purse. Now comes the fun part, putting all those gift cards to use! 

Sorry for the informalness of the pictures, I was outside playing with the boys when this idea hit me.

We LOVE Summer!

Well if you want to call this summer that is! I can not believe how COLD it's been this year! We've hardly been in the pool this summer :( But I'll give it to my boys, they don't let the cold weather stop them. They're still wanting to go outside and play on the trampoline or in the sandbox as soon as they're done breakfast in the morning and wanting to stay out until supper time. Which isn't that really what summer is all about? It's so hard to believe that in less then three weeks Bear will be starting Grade 1, the following week Monkey goes into his last year of preschool, and the week after that Bear turns 6. It makes me sad to think just how quickly time is going by. This summer our lives have got much slower and have allowed us to take every possible minute to drink up all the fun times.

As nice as it's been to have quality time with just my adorable little men, I'm looking forward to getting back into the routine that school brings! And don't get me wrong - I LOVE my kids more then anything, but the time has come lol. Bear and I are on a countdown to when he goes back. Him because he loves school, me because I love packing lunches :O lol I'm already planning lunches for the first few weeks. I've ordered some new fun lunch accessories. You can bet I'll post about that soon :)

Turning a New Leaf

First off, this is a long post, so go to the potty, refill your coffee, and site tight, you're going to be here a while ;) I'm sure not many who are reading this knows, but this Summer I'm turning 30. I've really struggled with it. Maybe struggled isn't the right word - I obsessed about it. From about the time I turned 25, I thought 'Oh no, I'm closer to 30 now then I am 20'. My 20's were FULL! Buying a home, getting married, having 2 beautiful babies. What was left? The only thing I could think of was growing old. Living the same life day in and day out. Just going through the motions to pass time. How fun was that? Who would look forward to that kind of life? Is THIS what I had envisioned my life being? I don't want to be 'that person' who is perpetually board/disappointed/underwhelmed.  What was I teaching my kids by just living life, not experiencing it?

In the process of stressing over turning 30, a lot of things in my life took a hit. My house because cluttered, I hate clutter. I wasn't the mom I wanted to be, again - how fair is that to my kids? They didn't ask to have a mom like me. I was treating people not the way they should be treated, and not the way I wanted to treat them.

One day, when I was sitting around feeling sorry for myself, wondering when my time for happiness would come around. It hit me! Happiness would never, E-V-E-R come to me unless I made it happen. Sure, some things in life just happen, but for the most part you need to make it happen! Some might say you're the luckiest person in the world to win the lottery, but had YOU never got up, gone to the store and BOUGHT the ticket, it never would have happened! That day I decided to kick everything that wasn't making me happy.

I had been doing home daycare for 5 years. I started when Bear was just shy of 1. I LOVED it! It was great, he had little friends that came over and played every day. I got to be the mom I wanted to be, make some money to help with family expenses and still let him have the social experiences that we felt were important for children. I was actually asked to go back to my old work when I was first pregnant with Monkey, and flat out refused because I was loving what I was doing. When Monkey was born I took 12 weeks off. My plan was 6, but he was a bit of a crier, and I was hoping we could get past that before we had kids come back. But we didn't! I wasn't liking it as much. I was tired, I had an infant that I was always trying to juggle with my own toddler and a handful of everyone else's toddlers. It was really hard. As time went on, the love wasn't coming back. But I was doing it for the kids. So they would still have their play time with friends, and so I could still make money to the fun things in life with them. As time marched on, I noticed my kids starting to feel the way I was about having other kids here. They didn't always want to share their toys with kids that were just wrecking them. I don't blame them. I was getting sick of buying nice toys for my kids, just to have someone else's kid ruin them. They didn't want to play with certain kids who they didn't like. I found my two kids going off to their bedrooms to play with each other. I was totally detached from their lives. Missing out on the moments that were so important. Missing out on them building a life long friendship. Missing out the reason why I stayed home in the first place. I didn't want that! Early this Spring, I decided that that was enough, I was going to quit doing daycare. No one was liking it, it was interfering with my kids lives and activities.

This past week, I said goodbye to the kids and the families who I loved so dearly. They were awesome. They totally supported me and understood whey I was done. In turn, this week I was able to go to Bear's Kindergarten graduation, his school play day, and his year end school trip, and help with Monkey's preschool's graduation, even though he wasn't a graduate, I was able to just go and help, so the parents there could enjoy and watch their kids. I'm looking forward to helping out at Bear's school next year. Being able to go in and volunteer for different programs that I haven't been able to for the last two years because I've been tired down with other people's kids. I'm looking forward to being a backup teacher at Monkey's preschool! Able to go and help in the classroom when one of the teachers is away. Something I haven't been able to do in the 4 years I've been involved in the preschool.

In the past few years my house has taken a toll. It's become cluttered and disorganized. Which isn't me, I've always felt there's a place for everything, and everything needs to be in it's place. Which hasn't been my house for sometime. With mess comes chaos and chaos breeds chaos. This spring we rented a dumpster and we just started to throw away stuff that we didn't need, was broken, or just weren't using. Don't worry, nothing that could have been any use to anyone else hit the dump! We still have a ways to go, but I do feel more at ease in my home.

I've also decided to set an hour a day for me time. I can't tell you how exhausting it can be to spend from the time I get up to the time I go to sleep taking care of everyone else. I know how this is going to sound, but I couldn't even find time in the day sometimes to get a shower in. I would shower right before I would go to bed because that was the only time I would have free time. I would wake up in the morning with a hot mess on my head from tossing and turning all night with wet hair. So whether it's to shower, or meditation, exercising (which is also a goal for me, to exercise more) I'm taking an hour!

Now I'm not saying this is the answer for everyone. But it's the answer for us. We're not going to have the nicest, trendiest house on the block, but we're going to have peace and happiness. Don't worry, we're not on our way to the poor house. Getting rid of the unhappy in my life isn't going to break us. At the end of the day, on the grand scale of your life, does any of that really matter? Or is what's pictured below what really matters? For everyone the answer if different. For me the answer was very clear. Life is to short just to live life. I want to experience it, and I want them all to experience it too.

Good Bye Kindergarten!

Where has time gone? It seems like just yesterday I was panicing about if Bear was ready for school? Will he be able to open his lunch containers by himself? Will he be too shy to ask for help? What if he's too shy to make friends? He was going to get on a great big school bus at 9 in the morning and not return until 4 that afternoon...ahhhh!!! I really thought there should be cameras in the classrooms connected to a website where parents could log on and watch to make sure their kids were okay.

So today was the big day! After 2 years in Kindergarten (JK&SK..no he didn't fail!), it was time to say good bye...unofficially, the last day isn't until next Thursday. The 2 SK classes gathered in the gym, where they had a slide show going to various songs that proved to be tear jerking. They had cute songs about kindergarten to the tune of 'The Adams Family' and 'Summer Lovin'. I'm not going to lie to you, it was pretty much the cutest thing I have ever seen! The kids were then called up one at a time to shake hands with the principal, the teachers and the EA and receive their diploma. Again, most adorable thing EV.ER!

I can't believe in September I will have a little boy in Grade 1! I know it's only a matter of time before I'm sitting in the gym watching him graduate high school :(

Something I've noticed

Okay, so today's post isn't about my kids. It's not about something fun we've done, it's not about how much I love them, which I could really write for days about that! Today's post is about a few things I've noticed about home organization blogs.

As I've mentioned a time for twenty, I really like Pinterest. I love thinking outside of the box, and I love getting ideas from other's who think like me, which is exactly what Pinterst is! Anywho! If you've looked through the home organization boards on Pinterest, I'm sure you've got some great ideas! I'm a little OCD, when my kids allow it. But let me tell you, those home organization boards make me look pretty loosey goosey. I have noticed a few things though, and the more blogs and pins I look through, the truer it becomes!

The first thing I notice is these people really like white! The walls, the furniture, the accessories. It's mind blowing to me. These people appear to have kids, how do you have a white couch? Again, I like things neat and put away, but if I had a white couch, it would look tie dye within 24 hours. Next, everyone seems to have a Mac. Either a Mac Book or a desk top version. I chalk this up to the fact that they're white. You rarely see anyone with a Toshiba or Dell on these site. I also think they keep the good people at Staples employed. They seem to have a large number of binders, page protectors, coloured pens, page dividers, and of course, INK for all those lists they print. I'm not knocking them. I love me a good list, but I really don't need to write down to shower in the morning. Lastly, they all seem to use Shaklee and Thirty-One. Which I get! I love green cleaning and I love matchy matchy organization.

Disclaimer** I'm not disrespecting anyone who does do things this way. I'm just saying, paint a room red and see how happy it makes you ;)

Monkey Turned THREE!

As much as I tried to stop it, April 1 rolled around again this year. Which means my little boy turned three. I would have said my baby turned three, but he's far too eager these days to remind me that he's not a baby, but a big boy. Let's all take a moment and weep. The past three years have FLOWN by! I don't know if it was the many, many sleepless nights, the forever crying for the first 2.5 years of his life, or the months of projectile vomiting, but it seemed like just yesterday I sat in the hospital looking the the most gorgeous baby I had ever seen, and now here we are celebrating three years.

Monkey was LOVING Elmo at the time of his birthday! So how perfect would an Elmo party be!! I of course searched Pinterest for the PERFECT cake! That's my thing, well not really MY thing, it's the thing I do. I find thee perfect cake, and then pay someone to make it happen lol. I spent probably the better part of a week looking for a cake that I knew would be perfect! I came across this cake. Luckily for us, we have a super talented neighbor who makes thee perfect cakes. I KNOW! How lucky am I? I pretty much have the small town version of the cake boss 2 doors down. All I needed was decorations!

As mentioned, we live in a really small town, and the nearest city is a good 30-45 minutes away. With the price of gas and the limited free time we actually have, I tend to order a lot of things online. I searched online and found this party kit. I needed to order a few extra things to make sure there were enough for everyone, but it all came right to my door!

So now that I've rambled for a while, distracting you while I look for pictures from the party on my computer and not just from the instant upload feature google+ offers for my phone, I realize I've backed them all up on my external hard drive. So the cake will have to do for now, sorry folks.

The day was perfect for Monkey. He loves having everyone together and playing with all of his cousins. He sang Happy Birthday to himself while everyone sang to him, got covered in blue icing, and tore every last bit of wrapping paper off of his gifts. As fun as it is to watch them grow, learn and form into this little person in front of us, I really hope the next three years drag by.

In the words of Robert Munsch 'I'll love you forever. I'll like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby you'll be.' Happy Birthday Monkey, I love you more then you will probably ever know.

Squishy Baff!

The nice weather is FINALLY here!! This past weekend was Victoria Day weekend. If you don't know what that means, it means summer has arrived!!! This winter seemed especially long for some reason. Maybe because it SNOWED on Mother's Day! Less then a week later, the kids were outside in swim suits or even less at times ;)

 Have you seen Squishy Baff advertised on TV? We've been seeing it for a while now, and Bear's been bugging for us to get some. There was no way I was wanting it in my house! But I'll admit it, it looked fun and I knew they would love it, I knew we had to try it. My brother gave us a little pool when Bear was a baby and it's been tucked away for a while because they've been too big. I thought that would be a perfect size! They had SO much fun with this! I picked up a 5 pack at Walmart for around $20. The best part about it being outside. If they don't get it all filled up with grass and dirt, it lasts and with this size, you only need 1/2 the package! I did use the whole package and it was reallllllly thick!

 They had so much fun jumping in it, laying down in it, and rubbing on themselves! It was realllly cold to start off with! After a while I think they were just numb lol. Thank goodness it was warm out! They played in it for probably a solid hour! I left it out, and they would come and go most of the afternoon. Ours was pretty grody when they were done, so I just dissolved it and dumped it. There was a lot on the grass so it didn't all get dissolved, but my husband raked it up and then shoveled it up...eww right! lol We will for sure do this again over the summer! I'm wrapping up today's post with what is probably my favorite picture of the two of them ever!! I said to my mom, it makes me just want to pinch their cheeks until they bleed!