Quick Before I Get Sidetrack'd

For several months now I’ve heard tale of a beast roaming this land taking over the homes and free time of many across our fair nation and around the world. We’ve tracked this beast for many weeks now, but, though there have been sightings in our neck of the woods, the creature has remained elusive. One was spotted near BooMama’s a while back, and her tales made me want to lay hand on one even more. Finally, yesterday, one of the creatures wandered into our trap.

Proof that it really does exist:

We had lots of fun playing WiiSports yesterday and even got my dad in on the action. Right now we can bowl, golf, box, and play baseball and tennis; I’m sure more games will be soon to come.

If you need us, you are likely to find us standing in the living room with Wii Remote in hand!

I’ve mentioned before that I am not a crafty type of person. I would love to be able to sew, make pretty cards, smock dresses, etc. Some of these things I could probably figure out and do acceptably well if I would just take the time. However, my crafting tends to go as follows…

Little is having her 9-month pictures made today. She is going to wear either a white dress, a blue outfit, or a green dress. A while back I managed to lose both of her white hair bows. Because she has fine, baby hair the “alligator” clip type of barrettes work best; they are also the easiest to get in her hair.

I’m having trouble finding the clips at a price I’m willing to pay, so I decided to make some myself. We have some Gymboree clips that I like because both sides of the metal clip are covered with ribbon. The ribbon is sewn together at the sides to make a little pockets into which each side of clip slips. I set out a couple of weeks ago to round up the supplies and, finally, this week got everything together. Yesterday, when I got ready to make the first clip (a white one to wear for pictures today), I realized that the ribbon I have is too narrow to cover the clip and have room to sew a seam. What to do?

My options were to find wider ribbon or resort to gluing the ribbon in place. I was unable to quickly and efficiently locate wider ribbon yesterday afternoon. I bought a hot glue gun.

This morning around 4:30 (don’t ask why I was up; I really don’t know) I glued white ribbon onto a clip. It doesn’t exactly look professionally crafted, but it will definitely work for pictures!

I cannot seem to get a post up on Monday or Tuesday. I haven’t figured out why; I have post ideas, but for whatever reason I just don’t find the time to sit down and write. Oh well, hopefully I’ll get over it eventually. Anyway, on to the real post…

Have you ever had one of those weeks where it seemed like you bit off more than you could chew? I’m in the midst of one of those weeks. It isn’t that I’ve over-committed myself, it’s all stuff going on around home.

I have my usual chores (grocery shopping, cleaning house, cooking dinner), childcare, two different sets of company coming, and a brunch today for the last day of Bible study. I also decided that it was a good time to finally get started on Little’s closet makeover, I would like to make her some new hair clips (before her 9-month pictures on Friday), I made banana bread for her nursery workers last night, and I’m baking our bread today. Anyway, the last two evenings Matt has returned home to a tired wife!

Okay, so an update on Little’s closet...

The end of last week and over the weekend I searched out the storage containers that I wanted to use. We found some really cute pink and purple plastic bins and some vinyl storage bags at Target and some small pink and green bins at The Dollar Tree.

My plan was to work on purging and sorting while Little took her afternoon nap on Monday. I pulled everything out of the closet and into the living room so it would be ready when she went to sleep. She went down for her nap like usual and I set to work. I had no more than made a big mess in the living room floor when she woke up 30 minutes later and refused to go back down. I continued to work a bit but was limited in what I could do since she was “helping.”

When Matt came home it looked like all of our closets had exploded in the living room. There was clean laundry on the couch and the contents of Little’s closet spread about. By the end of the evening I had also added to the mess the load of Little’s laundry that had been in the wash.

By late yesterday afternoon I had all of her 6-9 month winter clothes cleared out of the closet and put aside for storage and all of her 6-9 month and 9-12 month summer clothes folded (or hung), organized, in baskets, and back in the closet. Overall it has been a pretty successful makeover so far. I still have some work to do on items that will be on the upper shelves and the floor of the closet, but it is coming along nicely. I will post pictures at the end of the 30 Day Organizational Challenge.

So, that is what we’ve been up to this week, and now I’m taking a short break.

Monday evening we were watching Wheel of Fortune because I’m a game show junkie it was on after the local news. There was one contestant who had not won a round, and Matt and I were discussing the fact that now you get $1,000 at the end of the game whether you solve a puzzle or not. The following conversation ensued:

Matt: “It was more fun when they gave party gifts like Metamucil and Pop Tarts.”

Me (laughing): “Did you say party gifts? They are part-ing gifts.”

Matt: “No, he used to say party gifts.”

Me (still laughing): “No he didn’t. They have always been parting gifts.”

Matt: “Well, I always wondered who had a party with Metamucil and Pop Tarts.”

In this corner, we have a desire to be budget conscious and lower expenses where we can. And in this corner, we have an addiction to intense like for a great cup of bold flavor, dark-roasted coffee.

It was confirmed again this week that Matt and I are coffee snobs. This is something that I readily admit as it has been shown again and again over the last few years. There is nothing like waking up to that great aroma of good, fresh coffee awaiting you. Several months ago we discovered organic, fair-trade, locally roasted beans that make a wonderful pot or two cup of strong, rich coffee.

So, that brings us to the frugality mentioned above. We decided that, since our favorite coffee runs about $9 for 12 ounces, we would try a less expensive brand for day to day drinking and reserve the best for occasional consumption. At the grocery last week, Matt selected a great smelling vanilla flavored coffee; it was a brand that we have had before and liked moderately well. Let’s just say that the creamer and sugar (or Splenda in Matt’s case) have been used to mask the flavor of the coffee instead of enhance it. In the beginning we thought we just didn’t brew it strong enough, but after several additional attempts it still didn’t work for us.

The results of this little experiment in frugality can be summed up in Matt’s comment Tuesday evening: “I’ve decided that coffee is not an area where we can cut spending.”