Holy Motivation!

Well, I have been pretty motivated tonight!  It's like I'm bordering on mania!  After supper I made two meals to be used as left overs out of things I needed to use up in the fridge before the expiration date (I thought bulk cottage cheese from Sam's Club was a good idea...opps!)
So I made creamy carrot soup from this pin from Pioneer Woman.  I cheated and didn't use raw carrots, but I did use up 4 cans of carrots that my mother in-law gave me that a friend had given her.  I was able to make the soup in minutes by putting it all in the blender!  It was great!

pioneer woman's picture...mine went straight to tupperware.

I also made manicotti.  I made up the recipe after reading a few others.  I put a bunch of cottage cheese in the blender and added spices and a little spaghetti sauce and put it in the in the cooked manicotti noodles then placed that in the over for 10 minutes and ta-da! (picture from before it was cooked.)

My greatest feat was that I did the taxes.  We finally got my husbands W-2 today.  I think I got it all entered correctly and we don't have to pay in this year!! YAY!

Who needs exercise anyway?

So, the exercise portion of the new years goal is really losing motivation.  It’s really difficult to do any sort of “formal” excise with my kids around. My husband and I decided to sign up for the YMCA because between both of our work’s discounts and rebates, it’s only about $30 a month for the entire family. How could we say no? They even have free daycare!Well, that’s great an all, but by the time I get home from work, and get things settled, it’s supper time, and then it’s calm down time, and then it’s bed time for the kids.  There is no way I’m going to be dragging them out and wiring them up right before bed all on my own. (Yay to being a wife of a second shifter...)  Then there is the option of me going to exercise before work.  Not really an option since who is going to watch, feed, and dress the kids?  My husband says he would get up and do it, but saying and doing are two different things.  Since the Y is near where I work, I could go over there on my lunch hour, which I may do eventually, but right now I’m still getting used to this new job and I haven’t been able to schedule it in.  So… for now, my husband is getting fit!  He’s going after he drops off the kids at where they need to be he works his butt off. He’s signed himself up for a triathlon that my sister and brother in-law do every Spring.  I jokingly asked him if I should sign up for it too, since everyone else is doing.  He looked at me and laughed.  I guess that’s a no.  I have it half in mind to sign up for it and show him who’s who, but yeah…he laughed because I would die and I really would.

In other areas of my new years resolutions, I’m doing great!  We are saving a lot of money by not going shopping as often and me not commuting as far to work anymore.  The house is much more organized.  

Here are a few things that I have done to keep it organized:

Under Sink tension rod to hang up my cleaning products.  I really don't use any cleaning products in I use Norwex (It's an all natural cleaner that kills germs with just a cloth and water!! It's amazing!)  I just can't get myself to part with cleaning products because that would be so wasteful.  Last year my boss was moving and was getting rid of his cleaning products and I took his so they wouldn't go in the landfill.   Sigh....so anyway, here is my collection.

I also got some help from my husband to make a electronics drawer.  We just drilled a hole in the back of the drawer for a power strip cord could go through it and the power strip just sits the in drawer and we can plug in all of our electronics and they aren't hanging out all over the place.  It's also perfect to keep the battery chargers at for the cameras there too!

Now in terms of having more fun with kids, I have been making a lot of snacks WITH them, rather than FOR them.  We made two different kinds of puppy chow (of muddy buddies as some people call them.)  One was the regular kind, the other was snickerdoodle cookie flavored.  I followed a pin on pinterest to The Recipe Critic to find that recipe. It was awesome and my husband loved it!  His favorite cookies are snicker doodle cookies.

The kids and I also attempted to make an igloo.  The idea was fun, but like me resolutions, the follow through wasn’t totally there.  My older son really wanted to build one, but he was the contractor, and I was the worker.  The younger son thought he should be the inspector and basically said none of the work was good enough and would knock it down and make me start over.  That left me and the contractor kind of frustrated.  After 2 hours and no real progress, we called it a day and went inside for some hot chocolate.

They say a Messy Office a Fertile Ground for Creative Mind?

What a fun and productive weekend!  Since my husband had early over time (am I the only on that thinks that phrase is weird?) I was alone with the boys all weekend.  This let me check off a few things on my Pinterest list!  My husband generally rolls his eyes at ideas that I have culled from Pinterest, so it was nice to have some freedom.
Since I had some crescent dough that I had to use up and it was a super cold day, I thought it would be a perfect day to have crescent roll s'mores.  The boys did a great job of helping me break apart the rock hard marshmellows that I hadn't stored very well from the last bon fire we had.  The end result was a super yummy dessert!  Eating them warm is the very best.  I tried a left over one without nuking it and it had an overpowering taste of butter crescent roll.  I stuck the half eating roll in the microwave and zapped it and it was much better.

Following the baking, came craft time.  My boys love to color and paint.  I made them an art bucket!  

All it is is a 5 gallon bucket and a tool caddy from a store like Lowes, Menards, or Home Depot.  I got mine at Menards.  It has all their art supplies, coloring books and stickers all in one spot! I found the idea on Pinterest. I want to give someone credit, but the link was broken to the site it came from. My closest guess from the broken address and the sites it lead me to is that this lady made it. http://mykotori.blogspot.com 

After the boys went to bed, I was able to tackle some paperwork.  There was a study that said that a "messy office is ground for a creative mind."  Well, I like to think of myself as creative, but a cluttered house is a cluttered mind to me.  After getting my new to me computer for Christmas, I decided I wanted to move my "office" downstairs to the spare room, or as my oldest calls it, Grammie's room.  This would allow me to work on the computer at night and not be in fear of waking up the sleeping monsters as neither the "office" or the boys' room have doors on them.  (We have an old house that has a strange set up.  There really is no way to put a door onto the office as it's more of an alcove, and the boys room...well, we don't feel like spending the money for a custom sized door just yet.  A black out curtain on a shower curtain rod does a fine job for now.)  


Anyway, I am a bit of a hoarder when it comes to paper, so this transition gave me a great opportunity to get things straightened out. On Pinterest I found a neat list of what papers to keep and pitch from the University of Illinois.  Wow, that just cleared out a TON of space!  For some reason, I thought you had to keep pay stubs for years.  Well, turns out, after you get your W-2 and all is accurate for taxes, you can get rid of those.  Sweet!  That alone cleared out a file drawer!  I am embarrassed to say that I also kept old utility bills....even to a house that has been bulldozed following a massive flood years ago.  So, needless to say, I much less overwhelmed with my filing cabinets. 

Before

After

By the way, I need to show off my awesome filing cabinet that I made over a while back.  It was a filing cabinet that I got at Goodwill for $5 that was a yucky mustardy color.  I lived with it for a few years, then Pinterest came around and I saw an awesome file cabinet makeover idea.  So, I went to the Dollar Tree and got a roll of contact paper for...you guessed it...$1 and I went to Walmart and got a 97cent can of white spray paint and went to town!  So, this is my $7 filing cabinet/side table and I love it!