Busy Monday, October 13

Today's 'To-Do' List

• Get kids to bus 6:40 & 7:15 -- Brielle's bus never showed up or came early so I ended up driving her to school. 
• Make menu / Grocery List
• Write Blog
• Search for Coupons
• Lunch with Peter
• B12 Shot
• Get Groceries
• Laundry
• Pack up old kitchen lights
• Whatever other various cleaning I can get done or tasks... we'll see how the day goes

Menu

• Roasted Chicken (pre-cooked), mashed potatoes, gravy, veggie (haven't decided if I'm going to do corn or pick up something on sale in the fresh selection)... maybe stuffing I have some up in the cabinet to use. 
• Hamburger Helper w/Green Beans
• Crockpot - Creole Chicken
• Crockpot - Beef Stroganoff
• Pizza
• Fishsticks & Tater-tots w/alternative Chicken Nuggets & French Fries (since Peter won't eat Fishsticks or Tater-tots)
• Spaghetti w/Meatballs

This Week's 'To-Do' List

• Work -M,Tu, W,F - Thursday off. 
•  Clean up around the house - This is a permanent main stay. 
• Tuesday - School Picture Day!! for Miss. Kat. 
• Wednesday - 4-H STEM club
• Thursday - String Instrument Sale (Brielle's Orchestra teacher has suggest we go ahead and invest in buying Brielle her own instrument instead of renting... It does make sense in a way but I'm afraid of if something happens to the instrument because as it stands renting means that if god forbid something happened they would replace it without cost)
• Friday - Peter goes to Friday Night Magic and I work on Katherine's Halloween costume. I'm running out of time. I've almost got the zipper in. Then I need to hand stitch in the bodice lining, hem up the bottom and then make all the accessories. I also need to make some accessories for Brielle's costume. I have 2 weeks to get this done and at my current rate I'm not going to make it!!
• Pull out Halloween Decorations -- yeah... I never got this done last week. 
• Find a place to put old kitchen lights.
• Put away stuff that belongs in the shed... I have quite the large box full of 'shed' stuff that has just been left in the house. 

Last Week

So last weeks post I actually went through Tuesday it just has been very busy as of recently. Wednesday I just went to work nothing special there. 

 Okay now here's a reality check. I haven't had the time nor the energy to try and take care of the kids room nor do I believe I should be in after a 14 yr old and 10 yr old. The sad reality of it is though that we have younger kids that come by here and they love to dump all the toys and then when it's time to clean up everyone throws things everywhere. The below is REAL life! And the sad thing is the 'Before' pictures are me already an hour and a half into it before I decided pictures needed to be taken.
I normally don't do this kind of thing but had stayed in such a state for so long after so many kids I just couldn't stand it any more. I know once it's done the kids won't have that big of a problem keeping it that way until the next time we have guests and the next parent that wants to leave within 10 minutes but knows their child enjoys dumping out ALL the toys I shall beat them with a ball bat or something... take out their knees!
I didn't finish with this project as can be seen around the desk where I piled up papers that should be kept plus I never got to organize everything on that dresser and desk. After 6 hours on Friday of working on this I was just done. I figured the kids could handle the rest so I will be keeping these pictures handy as a strong reminder.

Pretty bad right? Well at least progress was made. The sad thing is people say... oh well they just have too much but the fact is I had empty bins after I organized everything. Though the tote on the dresser there is full of items I deemed we could donate. Everything else was just organization and trash clean up. 

Here's my darling husband working on changing out the porch light.
When we had the new siding put on when they re-installed our porchlight they cut the hole too high up so we couldn't take off the cap to change the lightbulb so I've been without a porch light for awhile now.
They finally had some white porch lights in stock and we found this one that is a dusk to dawn light with a motion sensor to 'brighten'. I thought this would be a good way to cut down on spending because I often forget to turn off the porch light. I also thought this would be nice so that I don't have to remember to turn on the porch light when we leave during the day but won't be home until after dark.



Peter and I got all the lights changed in the kitchen. We found a 3 pack of lights for under $70 and we've been talking about it for years so it was hard to pass up clearance.

So I got the zipper basted in. This is a pain in the rear! A 10" zipper in a HUGE fluffy dress... it's not ideal and makes things very hard.
I tried it on Katherine last night and it seemed to work though the zipper tried to stick but I believe that is due mostly to loose threads because I've zipped it up and down a couple times.
It is not the best zipper and I was hoping to have it hidden a little better but it functions and hopefully no one will judge me too harshly. 

Katherine seems to really love it at least.

Have a great week folks! -- Oh and I started finishing up my 'Lost Socks' board I'll take pictures of that later don't feel like walking out to where I have it at the moment. :)