Long Lost Long Locks

Yesterday was a stressful day. I had a million things to do around the house and only a few short hours that the kids were in school to get it all done. I spent the day folding, cleaning, mopping...you get the picture. Well, when I have days like this, Natalie gets stuck entertaing herself. I had her TV shows on (yes, I know...mother 'o the year) and a snack and I headed upstairs to fold literally 10 loads of laundry that had piled up in my room. I came downstairs a while later to see a big pile of black hair all over the couch. My first thought was that it was dog hair...but, after questioning the bored 3 year old trouble finder, I found out that it wasn't dog hair, but hair cut from a black stuffed dog. So, I take away the scissors, clean up the mess and get her down for 'rest-time' (what we now call it instead of a N-A-P...we mom's have to use tricky vocabulary sometimes). Later on that evening we had to head out to Jake's Cub Scout Pack Meeting. They were serving dinner, which I was grateful to not have to cook, but it's always a little hairy and chaotic when I'm with all the kids by myself. We're stitting there, waiting for our turn in the buffet line and I look over a Natalie. Her hair is falling out of her braid, which is not unusual. But, what WAS unusual was the HANDFUL of short, short hairs that were NOT SUPPOSED TO BE THERE!! Yes, she cut her own hair in her adventures with the stuffed dog that afternoon. Lucky for her we were in a public place where I couldn't come unglued...

This is what it looked like this morning as I was brushing through it. You can't quite see all the hairs that she managed to get in the back. They seemed to be at least long enough to make it into the pony tail.

This is Natalie the Trouble-Finder AFTER her haircut. (Slightly reminding me of Willie Wonka or Dora the Explorer?)It took quite awhile to get it straight and blend in all the stray short pieces that she had cut herself. Ugh! She was threatened with the statement that if she EVER CUT HER HAIR AGAIN, I will buzz it off with the hair clippers, just like Jakes. It moved her to tears and a few "I'm sorry" statements. Also, can you read her t-shirt? "Monkey See, Monkey Do, Monkey Get In Trouble Too". My sentiments, exactly! I am off to hide the scissors....

Deal 'O The Day: Cha-Ching!

I have been a serious coupon clipper for about 18 months now. It may sound cheezy and not worth the time it takes, but things are tight around here and WE'RE IN A RECESSION, right Vickie? I took a class through our local newspaper and saw how easy it was and I was hooked. She has a website, does all the hard work and all I have to do is clip and organize the coupons every Sunday. Well, the last few months my coupon clipping has gotten away from me....until this week. I finally sat down and got busy clipping, sorting and tossing expired ones. So, this morning I headed out to Albertson's to get a few things that were on sale....

Order #1: 10 Boxes assorted fruit snacks & fruit roll ups. I normally don't buy these things. I now have a system in place and they are carefully hidden from kids who can devour an entire box in one sitting. I handed the cashier coupons for the boxes and the boxes were already on sale this week, making them $1.75 a box...order total : $18.91. Not really that great of a deal until you take into account that after I rang up my order, the machine next to the cash register gave me a little present: one coupon for $10 off my next order and another $3.50 off my next order. (So, if I were to take into account those nice coupons, each box I just bought just cost me .40 a piece.)

Order #2: 4 boxes general mills cereal, 6 boxes Nature Valley granola bars. After using the manufacturer coupons that I had for each item, and the $13.50 store coupon from the above order, my total came to $8.75. Nice! And, because I had bought a total of 10 items from the sale list, I again got another $13.50 off my next order!

Order #3: 4 boxes Kellogs cereal, 1 gallon of milk (this was free with the purchase of these 4 boxes of cereal!), and a case - 12 cans - of 32 oz Hunts diced tomatoes. After using coupons that I had for each of these items, and the $13.50 off coupon from the above order, I paid...drumroll, please.....$2.62!!!!

Totally made all those hours of trying to get myself and my coupons organized worth it. I'm on a money saving high right now.....

My Pick 2009

It's only the first week of the top 36 contestants on American Idol and I've already found my guy pick for this season.....drumroll, please....DANNY GOKEY!! Bets, anyone???

Too Cute to Puke On!

Kim has been traveling to St. George for the past two weeks....he leaves on Sunday nights and comes home on Fridays. Only about 4 more weeks to go! It seems that the first few weeks aren't so bad. We do our usual daily stuff, we eat cold cereal or canned soup for dinner (yes, mother, I know it's horrifying!) and I can let the cleaning slide until Fridays. One thing that I have gotten into the habit of doing when Kim is not here is staying up until all hours of the night....it seems that these hours after about 9 pm are the only source of peace and quiet that I get in my day. So, when the kids go to bed, I get out the projects. Last week, I dusted off the sewing machine and made burp cloths and flannel baby blankets. This picture is my version of a pimped out burp cloth...it's waaaayyyy to cute to puke on! It's really just a cloth diaper with ribbon stitched on. Heaven knows I can't really sew, but I can stitch a straight line, I guess! I stayed up until 1:30 or 2:00 am. I had a movie on (all the chic flicks that Kim won't watch with me...this last week was 'The Secret Life of Bees' and 'Pride and Prejudice') and just sewed away until they were done. It wouldn't be so bad except I still have to get up and function the next day! I'll be grateful when Kim is home full time again. Until then, I'm holding down the fort. I hope that when he returns, the kids will still be alive and I won't have committed myself to the looney bin....

The Final Countdown...

A few weeks ago, Kim came home and proposed having our kitchen cabinets re-finished. A client of his (a painter) had been having some financial difficulties and Kim had managed to get his account cleared of some past due money. So, the guy feels indebted to Kim for the help and suggests that since his work is so slow right now, he could do us a favor in return. He came over about 3 weeks ago and looked over the cabinets and tells me that in a week I will have a whole new (looking) kitchen. All we had to do was supply the $$ for the supplies and he would do the labor for free. Yippee!! So, the next day, I set out and cleared the countertops and spent the better part of a day cleaning the faces of the cabinets for sanding. (He was going to do all the actual staining, we had to do quite a bit of prep work beforehand.) We had the kids sanding and washing and cleaning and then a day or so later, he came and set to work. The first few coats of stain I was not happy with. The cabinets were a dated oak color and the varnish was actually coming off in quite a few spots. They always looked dirty to me and no matter how much I cleaned them, they never looked nice. So, we wanted to go darker. A little more reddish-brown color. It took several attempts and much more than a week to get it right. But, yesterday, we hung the final product and added all the new hardware. It does need to have some final touch-ups done, but all in all I am very pleased at how they look. Check out the before and after pictures...my camera doesn't quite do it justice, but I am very happy with how they turned out. And, even more happy that it is almost done!

BEFORE

AFTER

Natalie, The Photographer

Our Natalie is obsessed with my camera. Anytime she can get ahold of it, she is snapping random pictures. As I went to download pictures onto the computer today, I found no less than 40 random pictures that she had taken of the dog, the computer screen, herself, the TV screen, the floor, etc. You get the picture. So, I start the download and then go in and start deleting the ones that she has taken. This picture caught my eye....my, my isn't she getting creative?? Ugh! And, notice the absence of toilet paper? Yuck-o. I think I will be hiding my camera from now on....

Just Another Manic Monday

Remember that song from the 80's made popular by the Bangles? Sing along now....

Six o'clock already

I was just in the middle of a dream

I was kissin' Valentino

By a crystal blue Italian stream

It's just another Manic Monday

I wish it was Sunday

Cause that's my funday

An I-don't-have-to-run day

It's just another Manic Monday

I don't know about Sunday being my 'funday'...in general now it's crazy busy. But, Monday's are definitely manic at our house. I woke up this morning to a house that was filthy dirty. Not ONE room clean. It seems to be our weekend habit to totally trash the house over the weekend. I generally don't feel like cleaning up on a Sunday, because frankly, it's everyone else's day off...why should I have to work? So, we generally thrash the house and then on Monday when everyone leaves for work/school, I get to clean house. Today I had more to do than just clean. I had some errands to run, laundry piled up to the ceiling, bills to pay, and then the cleaning. On Monday's I generally don't do a deep cleaning. Not today. The entire house needed a DEEP DEEP cleaning. Just a quick pick up of the main rooms, vacuum, and mop the kitchen floor: Not going to do work for today. This morning I got a call from my sister in law telling me that her huby, Mike and his work buddy needed a place to stay for tonight. So I added to my list: cleaning Abby and Jake's room, washing sheets, and scrubbing the bathroom downstairs. We love to have Mike stay with us, so down to the dungeon I trodded. It wasn't a big deal, or shouldn't have been if my 11 year old daughter wasn't such a stinkin slob. It took me an hour and entire kitchen tall garbage bag before her room was clean. I was having a full conversation with myself so I could express my frustrations about the mess outloud! To add to my Monday Mania, we have been re-finishing our kitchen cupboards. The kitchen has been torn apart literally for 2 weeks now. Today we went to pick up the fronts of the cabinets so that we could finally hang them and hide the messy interiors of the cabinets again. We go to pick them up, bring them inside and THEY DON'T MATCH! The cabinet boxes are an entirely different shade than the fronts! UGH! Now, instead of a light at the end of a messy tunnel, I foresee another week before the cabinet fronts are hung and new hardware is installed.

I have been going non-stop since 7 am. I still have tons of laundry to fold and coupons to clip. No, I haven't showered today. It's just another Manic Monday. And tomorrow will be a Trying Tuesday....