Sticker Chart

At the request of a friend, I've made a new printable! It's a sticker chart for positive reinforcement. For my kiddos stickers are an always welcome and exciting reward. I'll just have to replace "potty" with something else for use around our house. Given all the fussing the kids have been doing lately, I think an "I cleaned up my toys" chart is in the not-so-distant future.

I put one up in my etsy shop too. Stop by for a visit by clicking here.

What could go wrong?

I love our new house. I do, but one thing I didn't really pay much attention to before we bought it is that there's a lot of wallpaper in this house. It's everywhere.

It's in the:
Dining Room
Half Bath
Laundry Room
Basement Wet Bar area
Movie Room
Basement Bath
Basement Bedroom
and quite possibly some other little nooks and crannies I've forgotten about.

It wasn't until this past summer, when my husband and I removed a border in the kids playroom, that we realized what a mess we'd gotten ourselves into. The project seemed to take forever, and we had plenty of gouge marks to repair afterwards. Obviously, we aren't the most skilled wallpaper removers.

I'm definitely not considering putting any wallpaper into this house, but I would love for some of the walls to have a little personality so when I found this website I got very excited. I've never applied a stencil before (I'm not kidding when I say I'm new to this do-it-yourself stuff), but I want to give it a try.

I'm thinking about this Aspen Stencil for our home office but in a light shade of purple and white. Honestly, I'm a little scared to do something even remotely bold, but it's just paint, right? That's easy enough to fix if something goes wrong.

Cash Wallet

Today, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, IHeartOrganizing, where author Jen was discussing how she and her husband organize and keep track of their family budget. Then she mentioned this adorable etsy shop, and $20 immediately disappeared from my wallet. An impulse buy... that's something my new purchase is, humorously enough, designed to prevent.

I've been wanting to transition to a cash only, or mainly cash, system for a while now in hopes of making impulse buys more difficult due to limited funds or simply the pain of handing over the cold, hard dollars and cents. I'm hoping this cute new addition will help me make the transition. It has 6 dividers inside that can be categorized for different things. Groceries, dining out, and entertainment will be a must for me.

I am beyond thrilled! Ever since we moved into our new home (9 months ago now!) I've wanted to make it feel like our home. Unfortunately, our previous house didn't sell as quickly as we anticipated so we were stuck paying two mortages for months on end. That was a painful, scary, and expensive lesson, but I can confidently say that we will never again buy a new home while still owning the last.
Thankfully, we were able to sell it a couple months ago, and I finally feel like we can focus on this house now.

The only room that really feels finished at this point is the master bedroom, and my current goal is tackling the craft room/office. I've noticed lately that my taste in decor seems to be transitioning more towards modern, crisp lines, bright colors, and a clean, fresh feel. I want our home to feel cheery and inviting, and I'm ready to try some new styles... so off to Ikea we went.

Honestly, as we were packing up the three kids and heading out in the snow all I could think was, "Do we really need to go to Ikea today?" Despite the fact that the trip was my idea, trucking the entire crew 90 minutes round trip for nothing in particular is not always the most exciting task. Now, I'm so glad we went. Today, I finally started to see the finished space in my head. I've never made a mood board before, but I think I'm going to make my first one soon to see how everything ties together outside of my thoughts.

One addition will be this new folding table that we stumbled upon while shopping. It's meant for dining, but this is going to be the perfect addition to my crafting space.

I'll be able to pull it out when I need a large surface to work on and fold it up and put it away when I don't want it in the middle of the room. I'm beyond excited about this... really probably too excited given that it's just a table, but I guess it finally feels like the room is starting to take shape, and after 9 months of feeling "blah" about our new home it's nice to feel energized and excited.

Click here to visit Ikea's website for more information on this piece.

Clean Freaks

I would like to take a moment to personally thank HGTV for making me feel like the laziest slob to ever walk the face of the Earth.  How did this happen, you may ask? I watched Clean Freaks online last night, and it left me feeling like a complete failure as a person. Alright, that might be a bit melodramatic, but it did leave me feeling pretty inadequate in my homemaking skills.

I like to think of myself as a fairly organized person, even if sometimes that organization never really makes it out of my head and into reality. I remember speaking with someone before my husband and I got married about why I didn't have him over to my house as much as he would've liked. My reason? I wanted my house to look like a magazine, and if it didn't meet that standard (or as close as I could get anyway) I didn't want to let anyone in. This was met, perhaps understandably so, with laughter and a reassuring, "You better get over that if you want a lot of kids!" How right they were.

Now I frequently feel like I live with a bunch of evil gremlins whose sole mission on this planet is to destroy any sense of order I'm able to create in this house. Of course, these gremlins are some of my favorite people in the world, and I also happen to think they're the sweetest, most amazing things since sliced bread, but they do love to create a good mess. It's hard to make much progress in organizing and decorating this new(ish) home when I have three little ones running after me knocking over everything in sight.

Having a house that resembles a magazine is still my goal though. In preparing our old house for sale, we finally decorated and used spaces that had been empty for years. I don't want to wait until we're trying to get rid of this place to make it into a space we love and enjoy. It's a daunting task though. Our old house was the first my husband and I shared together. Most of our furniture was purchased for specific rooms, and we basically had a blank slate. In our new house, none of our furniture really seems to fit. Unfortunately, we don't have a great budget for furniture this time around so we're just going to do our best to make things work and maybe diy the rest.

Here's a link to HGTV's page Clean Freaks... watch if you dare! (And in all seriousness, there are some really great ideas in this episode. The gentle lights and music to wake up would be amazing!)

My Helper

I mentioned in my last post that I greatly dislike grocery shopping, but two things do make it better: 1) an organized list so I can breeze through the store (my most recent trip took only 35 minutes for a week's worth of groceries. Without an organized list it would've easily taken an hour) and 2) a wonderful helper!

Meal Planning

I made these weekly meal planning and grocery shopping papers to help me plan our meals and make my grocery shopping trips as efficient as possible. I love grocery lists that are organized by product type and store location. I don't particularly enjoy grocery shopping so I enjoy it even less when I reach the end of a trip only to realize the last item I need is at the other end of the store where I started my trip. Such inefficiencies pretty much guarantee that my little ones will have meltdowns in the check out line, if not before, and I like to avoid those at all costs. By organizing my lists by type of food I'm able to grab everything I need as I go and get out of there as soon as possible.

Another great feature of these lists, they increase husband efficiency too! I love to have my husband at home as much as possible because: 1) I love his company and 2) I'm a stay at home mom so any help and relief I can get is much appreciated. The sooner he can get home from a errand the better.

I made a general list:

And one that's personalized:

Interested in getting a copy? Click HERE to visit my etsy store.

I'm always looking for better and faster ways to do things so I'm curious, what tips and tricks do you use to meal plan and keep grocery trips as short as possible?