Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Oh the Good ol’ days

Before I get into this post I want to say that I DO NOT want to go back to high school! That being said I do miss cheerleading! I realize that may sound very girlie and idealistic to some but I do miss it! I think we all have things we miss from our pasts. For some its sports, friends, crazyness, band, but for me its cheering! I loved being out on that track cheering for your team, getting the crowd involved. Getting the crowd going when they have been dead all night and all of a sudden the players can feel that energy and the game turns around is awesome! Yes I know if you ask the guys they will tell you that we had nothing to do with it but we know better! LOL I miss the friendships I made, many of which I am still friends with today. Thank you Facebook for putting those of us that are not still in the area together again! I miss the crazy stunts we did, the toilet papering on Homecoming (and other nights) I miss the bus rides and cheering in the rain! Most of my great memories from high school involve cheering.  Now don’t get me wrong I am not sitting around wishing I could put my cheer uniform on again (well I do but that’s because its like a size 0 and I am no longer a size 0)! I  just got to thinking as I was online the other day and saw a pic of a cheer team that WOW I miss that!  Do you ever see a picture someplace and think that?


Saturday, July 28, 2012

DIY Decorative Boxes




So first let me say that I am not a DIYer! I am one of those that would love to be but am really no good at it. But I am hoping it is like other things in life and the more you practice the better you become! Wish me luck! 

That being said I will show you one of my 1st projects that actually turned out!

I sometimes have a problem deciding on what I want in my house. Do you ever have that problem? I want the house to be just so but with limited resources (money) I get really picky about what come in my house.  Well at least the expensive things that come in my house. I have been looking for a way to store my daughter’s things in her closet until I can re-do her closet organizer. But to me those cute decorative boxes are just too expensive to buy when I don’t know if it will work. I came across this idea on Pinterest, to take an old cardboard box you have lying around and wrapping it in duck tape to be used as a decorative storage box, and thought that would be great as a waiting till I find the perfect item storage container! Here is the final product.
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Here are the instructions and tutorial of how I created the box above.So I started with a empty box, scissors, and duck tape (zebra print)
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Then I cut the top flaps off the box so that it looked like this:
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Next you are going to take your duck tape and wrap it around the top of the box but leave enough at the top to fold over to cover the very top of the box061062
Then I just folded over the top
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Be sure to pull in tight so that your top looks smooth and clean.
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After you have your tops all folded over on all sides you are going to start to go down the box by wrapping the tape around the box.I lined up the tape so that it just barely covered the first round of tape.(sorry for this pic I was using 2 hands and asked my 10 year old to take the pic...I won't do that again! LOL)
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Keep going with this until you are down to the bottom. 068The size of my box ended up that I had some at the bottom, so I did one more tape around and then pulled the excess as you see here tightly just as I did when I started. 
069 And at the end of it you end up with this cute box that will work great for closet storage!
 070I actually made 2 boxes and put them in my daughters closet. 072 
As you can see I still need one more for the socks but I think its pretty cute for as cheap it is! Total cost of this project was $3.87! This is the cost for only 1 box I did 2 so it would be double that.  The box was free so all it cost me was the tape!1 roll of duck tape will cover 1 box almost 2 but not quite! I know this because I tried to do 1 more box and was just short! Let me tell ya that can make you mad!!


Do you do love DIY projects? I love how frugal I feel! Oh and anyone can do this project!

Friday, July 27, 2012

Jacob the Kid is 3!

I can’t believe my baby boy is 3!! It doesn’t seem possible. We lucked out and the 100 plus degrees that we had the week leading up to the party stopped and it was a glorious 85ish that day.I thought it was going to rain in the morning so I was kind of panicking about what was I going to do with all these kids and stuck inside. I know, I know I should have had a backup plan. But the sun came out and we set up and I was one happy mom!
He wanted a Cowboy party, so I tried to give him a Cowboy party on a shoe string budget!
We kept it pretty simple with red checked table clothes, cowboy hats and red and white balloons.
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The balloons pulled thru the the hat, it was windy so if I could do it over again I would have used something different to hold the balloons down, if you are having your party inside I would say the hat would work just fine.
Food again was pretty simple we had hot dogs, bbq, chips, haystack cookies, s’more pops, pasta salad, cow chow (puppy chow), baked beans, veggies, lemon aid and of course cake.
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I covered some of the tables in burlap for effect too.
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Here are a few of the birthday boy blowing out his candles. DSCN0370DSCN0372
And when all the presents were opened although he has since played with all the toys there was definitely a favorite for this baseball obsessed little boy!DSCN0379
He got his own baseball gloves, cleats and helmet, along with a ball bag to carry them all in which has literally gone everywhere with us!! 
He looks to have had a great day and that’s really all that matters!!!
Have a great Tuesday!

Love when its Clean

Hey guys-

So I did some MAJOR cleaning this past weekend. We had my 3 year olds birthday party (I will post those pics later this week) and I decided the house needed to be clean. Because at an outside party everyone comes to look at your house! Yes I am weird and this is one of my quirks. So I took some before and after pictures for you to see. Please don’t judge!

     

So here is the floor under my stove before I cleaned it with Shaklee Basic H2.

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Yes its gross I know! But I moved on, swept it out and took the basic H2 mixed it with water and wiped it down. 

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Here is the after. It was so nice to see it clean. Sorry for the bad lighting the sun was shining in the window and gave me really bad shadows! I will work on my photography I promise!!

I then moved to the sides of the stove itself. I hate how it gets so gross from cooking! 

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Again all I used was Basic H2 mixed with water and wiped it down again. I did use a toothbrush dipped in water to clean the crack.

Here is the after…059

Can you believe it! I was in shock. I know I shouldn’t be by now but my Shaklee products just keep proving how great they are! And for not a lot of money! One of the things I love is the fact that they  are so affordable. With 1 bottle of Basic H2 I have floor cleaner, window cleaner and and all purpose cleaner. And it lasts FORVER!!! I seriously had the same bottle of it for almost a year! That is a ton of savings for our family! With 4 kids you can imagine how much window or floor cleaner we would have to buy.

What do you think? You can click the link on the right and it will take you to my website if you are interested in getting your own Basic H2. I would love to hear about your before and after's!

Hope you all have a great Monday!

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Stain Be-Gone!

Who else has ever had their kids at a family members or babysitters while you are either working or at a meeting, whatever and you get them back and the clothes you sent them in is stained? If you like me you don’t want to be “that mom” you know the one that is upset because the clothes you just sent her in are now stained so you pretend to be cool with it, like it doesn’t matter. Its just clothes right? Well maybe its just me but clothes are not cheap and I don’t know about you but I don’t have a money tree to just keep buying new ones. So I went on a mission to find something that would get the stains out! I FOUND IT!!!! Its Shaklee’s Nature Bright. It comes in a 2lb package and it’s the best thing  Here is a picture of the outfit my daughter  came home in…                                                                                                    133                                                                                                              And here is it after a short soak in water and Nature Bright…                     001 (2)                                                                                  I was AMAZED!!! Have you tried Nature Bright? Did you love it? I have since used it on tons of other clothes and love that I don’t have to go buy new ones. I LOVE saving money! I would love you to try the Nature Bright so I linked it above to my site and you can get you some as we call it money savings in a bag! Click on the words Shaklee’s Nature Bright, or the CLEAN picture and either will take you there. Please let me know if you love it as much as we do.  Have a great Tuesday! If you would like to leave a comment on anything you would like to see on the blog (topic, tutorials, anything) I will work on getting that up! Also follow my page by simply entering your email address over on the right side.