Week 3 Home Organization Challenge - The Pantry

Well once again, I'm behind a bit on the 14 Week Home Organization challenge by Bowl Full of Lemons...

I skipped week 2 as it was the garage.  So week 3 was the pantry.  I ended up doing week 3 in week 4 because I just couldn't get to it.

Last week was my last week of work at my previous job.  I have been there for 7 1/2 years and due to some changes on my contract (I work for a defense contractor), I chose to accept a severance payout and look for new opportunities.  So for the first time in 7 1/2 years, I am a housewife/stay-at-home mommy.  It's only temporary - as my husband keeps reminding me.  The last time I stayed home, Maddie was a newborn and I stayed home for 6 months.  So it is sort of exciting to have the entire day to tackle some stuff I really need to get accomplished around this house.  Being a full time working mommy, wife, grad student and part-time helper to my parents and grandmother leaves little time to do much around the house.  So I'm excited to have even a few weeks off from the working world to tackle some organizing and some painting.

So back to home organization - week 3 - the pantry.  Our pantry is pretty good size and in the shape of a U with shelves on 3 sides.  It typically becomes a huge mess.  So, being inspired by the organization challenge, I emptied out my pantry today.  I threw away expired food, 1/2 empty boxes and organized stuff into baskets.  I also found these adorable hanging tag labels by Avery and printed out the contents of the baskets.  I can't afford to buy matching baskets for the entire pantry right now, so my pantry is a mish-mash of different baskets - but hey, the tag are freaking adorable.

Here is a before picture - kind of messy and disorganized:

 

Here's the after pictures and a picture of the tags...I'm super excited...

 It's hard to tell, but the tags are designed with dark brown and ice blue stripes - one of my favorite color combinations.

So this week's challenge is the office.  I'm not sure I'll meet that one by the end of the week.  I have a ton of stuff I just brought home from my office at work.  Who knew you could accumulate so much in 7 1/2 years at an office.

Kitchen Organization

So, I'm a little behind the 14 week Home Organization 101 (link to the project at Bowl Full of Lemons is below)...  A few weeks ago it was Kitchen and Kitchen Cabinets.


I had recently cleaned out my cabinets, so I didn't really have much to do there so I hit the fridge.  I cleaned out all the food from each shelf, took the shelves out and scrubbed them clean and put it all back in nice and neat.  So I took pictures of that part of my kitchen and called the 1st week of the challenge finished.

The 2nd week of the challenge was the garage.  Our house doesn't  have a garage, as it was converted into the addition back in the late 1970s.  So I skipped that week..

The next challenge is the pantry.  I'll create a separate post for that week's challenge.

Home Organization 101

So summer is over, school is back in session (we go back early here in Arizona) and Maddie is in the 2nd grade.  My most recent Masters program class is over and I'm taking a breather.  I have so much to organize and clean out in my house and I found a great idea on one of my favorite blogs.

 

 I follow a great blog called "A Bowl Full of Lemons".  It's a great blog and one of my favorite.  So she's put together a 14 week Home Organization group and I enrolled.  Link is above...

This week is kitchen and kitchen cabinets.  I recently did this so I only have a few cabinets to go through and a few drawers.

I thought I'd post about it and then post pictures when I actually get started with each week's challenge.

More next time...

I'm back - An update on the summer

So I have been absent from blogging for a while :-)  I always have great intentions and then life happens.  I am not sure how people with more than 1 child have time to do so many things.  I only have work, Maddie, Jason, our dogs and my family (mom, step-dad, grandmother, aunts/uncles) that I help out with or that takes up my time.  And somehow the days and months seem to get away from me.

So it's been a busy winter and spring since I think I last posted anything on here.  I think I last updated with pictures from our Disneyland vacation.  Since then it was Maddie's 7th birthday, Jason's birthday, Thanksgiving and then Christmas.  Somewhere spring popped in and then school was out before I knew it.

Then this summer - what a summer we had.  Maddie finished 1st grade with high grades...4 quarters on the honor roll and finally a quarter with Perfect Attendance.  At the end of the school year, we had a great Girl Scouts sleep over and then Maddie's bridging ceremony.  That is where she bridged from being a Daisy to being a Brownie.  That was very exciting and definitely made Maddie feel very grown up.

About half way through the summer, Maddie decides she wanted to attend Girl Scouts' summer camp at Mt. Lemmon.  For those not familiar with Arizona, Mt. Lemmon is northeast of Tucson and there are camps towards the top of the mountain - about 8000 ft elevation and 20 miles up.  So we got busy picking which camp she wanted to attend (she chose Twist & Shout - all dancing and music), registration, and shopping for camp.  It was the 2nd Sunday in July when we drove her up to camp.  It's about 1 hour to Tucson but another 45 minutes up the very curvy roads up the mountain.  Maddie's first camp experience was probably harder on me than it was her!  I was nervous with butterflies in my stomach during the registration/in-processing piece.  Then her counselor scooped her off, we got a very quick hug and told to pick her the next Friday.  YIKES - I didn't even get to see where she was staying, and started freaking out on the ride down the mountain:  would she cry tonight without me? would she be ok? would she have fun?  would she get lost?  All the crazy thoughts of moms - especially this over protective mom!  I seriously cried the entire way down and I'm sure my husband laughed.  He then took me out to dinner before we drove the hour home to Sierra Vista.  It was so strange to come home and walk in the house without her.  I seriously didn't know what to do with myself.  After work was really strange - I didn't have to go pick her up at her summer program, I didn't have to get her ready for bed, and I was fairly sad.  It was a strange sensation to be at home without her all that time

I packed addressed/stamped envelopes for her to write to us and I stashed notes to her all throughout her suitcase.  It was so exciting to get that first letter from her.  I ran from the mailbox to show my husband!

That Friday finally came and we talked about how much fun she must have had the entire week.  When we got there, it was so nice to see her run to us and throw her arms around us.  She had such a great time and was so excited.  We asked, thinking we'd know the answer, if she wanted to come back that Sunday for the next camp - Crafty Critters.  She jumped at the chance - which through us for a loop.  So we registered for the next one and called the camp director and turned around on Sunday and took her back for a 2nd week.  By that Friday, I was so ready for my little girl to be home.

She had a great time and I'm glad we convinced her to do it.  She gained some confidence, learned to live with bugs and not scream at each and every one, and made new friends.   She's already talking about which camp she'll do next year.

Disneyland vacation 2011

So, I'm a little late in creating this post - just about a month to be more exact.  We planned an early birthday present for Madison this year, Disneyland in September.  We took Maddie when she was 4 1/2 and we decided 6 1/2 was a good time to go again.  This time Maddie would be tall enough to go on almost every ride.  We didn't take her until she was 46" the first time because it would eliminate over half of Disneyland.

We left for Disneyland on Sunday morning (September 18th) at 4am.  It's about an 8  hour drive, so we wanted to get an early start.  Let's rephrase that - Jason wanted to get an early start.  He would have been happy to leave at 2am or 3am.  We arrived at our hotel in  Anaheim around lunch time and unpacked.  Then it was off to Huntington Beach.  Maddie was so excited to play in the sand and in the ocean.  Last time we took her to the ocean, she wasn't really swimming on her own and was terrified of the waves.  This time, it was definitely a different story.  She's a real fish in the pool now, so we were hoping she would be timid about the ocean.  She did really well but wouldn't swim - the water was freezing.  So she and Jason chased waves while Mommy took pictures.  Then we built a few sand castles and headed off to Fat Burger to eat dinner.

Monday was our first day at Disneyland.  We could barely get Maddie to eat breakfast; but she finally believed that the gates didn't open until 10am - so we had plenty of time to eat.  We checked Yelp! and other sites to find a good place for breakfast near the hotel/Disneyland.  We are not the type to eat where the tourists eat.  We love to research and find a local 'mom & pop' place.   We found a great place called The Original Pancake House.  It was in downtown Anaheim and yummy!  We ended up eating there 2 mornings of our trip.  We got in line at Disney about 9:30 and were excited to start our day.  We started by getting an autograph book for Maddie.  She didn't want to use her old one from 2 years ago - she wanted a new one with a 'tiara' pen.  Then we dashed off to Indiana Jones ride.  Maddie was finally tall enough and there was only a 5 minute wait.  She didn't really care for it - but at least she tried and didn't cry!  We also hit the Haunted Mansion.  It was closed on our last trip and this time it was decorated for Halloween - what a great time for that ride.  Maddie didn't quite like the thunder/lightening on the 'elevator' but she enjoyed the rest.  We got to see Winnie the Pooh/Tigger that morning as well.  Throughout the day we did the Thunder Mountain Railroad a few times and also the updated Star Tours.  Later that day we hit the new Aerial ride in California Adventure and ended up being completely soaked on the Grizzly Rapids ride.  We saved it for the end of the day for a reason!

 

The second day was the early entry day - so we had breakfast at the restaurant outside the hotel.  We immediately did the Matterhorn ride and most of Fantasy Land.  We even got to see Rapunzel, Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter.  We also stood in an agonizing long line to meet a number of the princesses.  It made Maddie so happy, but wow - what a long morning that turned into!  We also were able to get into Pixie Hollow and see the fairies.  We spent more time at California Adventure and did Soaring over California.  That is one of my favorite rides.

Dav 3 was probably the slowest day of all - it was just going back to do all of our favorite rides one last time.  We did Matterhorn and Thunder Mountain Railroad at least 3 or 4 times each.  We also got to do the Monster's Inc and Toy Story rides multiple times without waiting in any lines.  That was great.  We had a great trip and hit the road early on Thursday morning to head home. The next Disney adventure for us will be a Disney Cruise while Maddie is still young enough to really enjoy the Disney characters!

Look at what we did today!

Today was a long day finishing off a long, long week. The best part was that we made it through the entire week. Maddie was sick with strep throat last Wednesday - the 3rd day of school! Anyway - back to the focus of this post. ORGANIZING!!

Over the last week, I have become addicted to reading people's blogs. Pinterest was the start of it all. From a picture my friend, Anastasia, pinned, I found my way to a blog named, A Bowl Full of Lemons. From there I read a ton of her posts, clicked on her blog list to find others that I loved and so on and so on. (FYI - I have linked these blogs to my page so that others can enjoy them as much as I have. Of course, if you're not into organizing, you might not enjoy them).

One of the blogs I have loved is, I Heart Organizing. From her blog, I got the ideas for the adorable stickers that I used today in organizing Maddie's coloring books, crayons, markers, papers, paints, etc. I did forget to take a before picture; but below is the finished product.

To start, I removed everything but her shoe cubby from the floor of her closet. Then I re-purposed a wire shelf I had in my pantry and was no longer using and decided to use it for holding coloring supplies, etc. I even found these adorable plastic letter trays at Target in the $1 section. Then we started purging and Maddie easily gave up over 1/2 of her old coloring books she was "too old" for. In 2 1/2 hour I went from a disorganized craft area just inside her door to 2 organized areas with everything organized, categorized and even labeled with these adorable labels.

I think it turned out quite well and Maddie now has a renewed interest in putting things back where they belong. Next it's my office and then the pantry with these cute labels. I'm going to print out some, laminate them and ziptie them to my baskets in the linen closet, pantry, etc.

This is the cubby organizer that used to look like a small tornado hit it...  Now it's cleaned out, labeled and everything is organized!

 The last two pictures are from her newly organized closet with all her coloring/painting supplies.

1st day of 1st grade...

Today was a big day for my little one. The 1st day of 1st grade. At last, after many weeks of asking 'how much longer', Maddie started a 'real' grade as she calls it. She told me that Kindergarten didn't really count as a 'real' grade because it didn't have a number.

She was so excited about today that she woke up at 5am and asked "Can we get up now, Mommy? It's the 1st day of school and I'm sooooo excited". It took all I had to get her to stay in bed until 6am. Then we had a special breakfast in bed - scrambled eggs and bacon. For me, that's a special breakfast on a school/work day. Normally she gets cereal or frozen waffles :-) Next, she put on her new dress and new black shoes and put a barrette in her hair. Then came the pictures. The dreaded pictures! She and Jason both would rather never have their pictures taken.

Finally at 8:10am we were off. We parked, walked to the playground and found Maddie's best friend, Darian. Sadly for them, they are not in the same class this year. The good news, they told me, is that they can see each other during lunch and recess. Then it was a quick picture of the girls and a swift "bye mommy" and she was off to play. I was proud of myself this year, no tears. Last year, they were streaming by this time.

According to Maddie, the best part of 1st grade so far:
(1) Each person has their own desk (not a table like in Kindergarten)
(2) Ms. Cangelosi gives you stickers for getting a 6 on the behavior chart (In Kindergarten, you had to get a 7 before you got a sticker)
(3) We keep a reading log and she receives stickers for reading a lot of books
and
(4) Her classroom door is closest to the recess/exit door

That's my girl. A few pictures to share...