Climbing, Unearthing and Tackling - Challenge 2013

I don't know how else to phrase it, but I have a ton of work to do around the house. I have totes that need to go out to the shed filled with Christmas decorations, wrapping papers, trees, etc. I have filled boxes that need to be donated, I have filled another box that needs to go to my inlaw's house, I have another one that needs to go to my best friend's house, I have a cooler that needs to go to my Relief Society president's house (because in all reality, it is her's! It just so happens that I have had it for about six or eight months), I have toys to donate to our church nursery. I also have clothes for every.single.child. I take care of. (Boys ages 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 9 and girls ages 3, 4, 7, 8, 12) Plus, I have additional clothes that I just need to donate. Right now, all of these items still taking up space in my house is driving me just a little bit slightly insane! It's time to start a new project on here, one that I started and completed last year, but just did not blog about in it's entirety. And now, I'd like to present:

Challenge 2013

The challenge is to get rid of 2013 items in 2013.

You know, like, apart from regular household waste. This is the stuff that is taking up residence in your residence that you'd rather have used for other purposes. The rules are pretty loose. You can count individual items or you can count boxes or bags. But the idea is to get it OUT. We live in a society with so much excess that we don't even realize how much extra we have!

For instance, somehow this past winter, I went from having one set of dishes to having five sets. We have our normal set of dishes that we use everyday, but we were wanting something that was white and simple, so we found these plates at the Dollar Tree that we really liked and we bought 12 of them. $12 for 12 plates, not bad. But then, I found this other set of dishes that someone locally was selling for $10. Two complete dish sets (service for 8) for $10. Even better, right? Then, my mother-in-law bought us two complete dish sets (also service for 8) for Christmas. And then our friend who was moving out of state decided that he wanted to give us one of his dish sets. So now...if I need to plate, oh, let's say somewhere in the neighborhood of 50-60 meals at once, I could. But here's the crazy reality - I don't need to. The most that I need to plate at any one point in time is like 20, give or take. And most of the time, it's not more than 10. So I have decided to keep the plates that we got new for Christmas, the ones that we were using full time anyhow (at least until they all break or something) and maybe the simple set of 12 plates from Dollar Tree. I really do love them! I plan to sell or donate the set that I bought for $10 and to keep one of the plates from our friend to use on my plate rack. So, that would leave us with roughly 30 plates. Still more than we need, but in all reality, we lose one plate from our regular plate set about every month or so. We have kids and lots of extra kids around. They get used a lot. It happens.

I also inherited about $900 worth of yarn recently from one of my husband's co-workers. His mom had been a stockpiler and had purchased SO much yarn! Most of these skeins of yarn were probably about $3 each, so I ended up with roughly 300 skeins of yarn. Plus sewing patterns, supplies and notions, crochet patterns, stuffing for toys or pillows or something, Just lots and lots and lots of crafting materials. I had Bree come over and I sent her home with all but one (minor) sewing project, all of the crochet patterns and half of the yarn. But that also means that I still have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 skeins of yarn. I do plan to make LOTS of scarves and hats this year to donate to the those who are on the tree at our church at Christmas time. And if I make enough, maybe some to give to a facility for seniors in our area. I'm not quite sure yet, but I do have lots of ideas! But whatever I haven't used, I plan to donate at least 50% of it to an organization that can use it. I might even make some prayer shawls a hospice facility that I am familiar with and which is very dear to me.

There are lots and lots of other items that I am wanting and needing to get rid of, because in all practicality, we don't use these things often, if at all and I'm just done with it. I don't want our home to be overloaded or for me to be overwhelmed by caring for all of this stuff that doesn't really matter.

So, here I am starting this challenge for myself (and for any who may want to join in) of making 2013 items disappear from my home this year. Although, in actuality, I would strongly prefer the number of items to be at least double that figure. If you're in and would like to participate, leave me a comment and I'll make a button (I'll make one anyhow, most likely) for you to place on your page as well, if you want to join in.

Last Company Coffee of 2011

Today is the day for the last Company Coffee for the year and I am so excited about Rachel's Small Things coming up this year. And also for the big things that we will be doing as well! Yay! I haven't really tried to create as much Sanctuary here at our new place as I did the at old one. And we moved in July. Yeah. I think that pretty much sums it all up.

As it is right now, my house is in major need of a thorough deep clean, I have window treatments that need to go up. I finally did find some that are in our budget and much like the ones that were already here when we moved in, so that is exciting for me. Now I just have to wait til Hubby gets home after work today to show him.

Although the Sanctuary aspect of our home is missing lately, the kids have definitely enjoyed our little projects and work times together this semester break. We have made and decorated Rice Krispie treats (as opposed to cookies) and we have plans to make and decorate sugar cookies and gingerbread houses. These are projects that we work on while Hubby is at work because they stress him out and the kids and I would prefer to not stress him out.

We had a wonderful Christmas and I hope you all did as well. We have had three Christmas celebrations so far. One for Hubby's mom's side of the family, one for Hubby's dad's side of the family, and then our own little family. Tomorrow, we have one more with my mom and brother. I don't know yet if we are going to my mom's house or if they are coming over here but either way, it should be a great time as well.

We have a very full month. Four family Christmas celebrations, two violin performances, one piano performance, Wolf Scouts, Webelo Scouts, Daisy Scouts, working in the classrooms, field trips, illnesses, company in from out of town, you name it. And I love it!

So without further ado, I will turn you over to the other ladies at Company Coffee! Go check them all out and maybe link up yourself! It's a great chance to get to know some great ladies! Have a very Happy New Year!

Daisy Party

This past Monday was our Daisy meeting. For those of you that may not know, Daisies are the youngest group of Girl Scouts, made up of Kindergartners and First Graders. My Oralee is a Kindergartner. And this past Monday, we met with her other Daisy Scouts and celebrated Juliette Gordon-Low's birthday. Juliette is the founder of Girl Scouts and her birthday is October 31st. She founded Girl Scouts 100 years ago. So this is an important year in Girl Scouts.

We made a card for Juliette and we celebrated all of the girls' birthdays. It was quite a nice time! We also discussed (and earned!) the petals for "being a sister to other Girl Scouts". And the girls also decorated some shirts. It was a lot of fun and Oralee did a fantastic job!

Here is the (VERY!) decorated card that the girls made for Juliette:

I just love the creativity of the girls! They were so into decorating that card! It is quite the change from working with Cub Scouts the last 3-4 years, let me tell you!

Also we got preliminary information on Cookie Sales! We are doing direct sales this year - for the first time! The girls will have cookies that they can sell (and deliver) right away! No more card orders and waiting til March to get your cookies (unless of course, we run out! And even then, we would try to fill the order by getting it from the office or another troop or something. I am really excited about this! Oralee already has probably close to $100 in sales lined up for January 13th. This will be an awesome thing for her! She is so quiet and shy and I think it will really do her quite a bit of good to do the sales and build up her people skills and confidence. She did quite well tagging along with the boys while they were selling popcorn for Cub Scouts.

Very fun and exciting times!

Crafting Update and Other News

Otherwise known as a FAIL. Well, it is not FAIL exactly, as it is just incomplete. I did find the fabric that originally prompted me to buy the hoop, but I haven't gotten it put together and hung up. I did get ONE of the TWELVE panels completely finished and have three more in various states of progress. It's going fairly well. It just was not a priority this week.

This past week I feel like my feet have hardly touched the ground, I've been so busy. Between work and the kids' school and volunteering there and trying to get things done around the house and the music lessons and practices that need to get done, as well as house-sitting for my inlaws and then spending time with a friend who was in town for the weekend with some time to spend on me, well...yeah, crafting took a back seat.

This past Monday (Columbus Day) I volunteered at the kids' school. I was in Oralee's class working at the Art station with groups of children that changed about every 20 minutes. That may seem like a fair amount of time to work on an art project that correlates to their letter of the week (this past week was "M" - Mimi Mouse style) but really, it's a tight squeeze and some kids weren't able to get their projects cut out, glued and colored in the allotted time frame.

Monday night was music lessons. The boys did a fantastic job at their lessons! Cephas has a bow test, which I'm not completely sure that I personally understand, but he did well with it. And Koren's teacher told me that he has a real ear for music and rhythm. I find that to be true with all four of my children. They are all musical by nature. And I love that about them!

Wednesday night, we went to Hubby's work for dinner and enjoyed a nice time there as a family before heading home and getting the kids ready for bed. We so look forward to Wednesday nights! Especially now that I have that night off from work!

On Friday night, Hubby and I went out with a couple that we are friends with. Yes, my Hubby and I have been married for nearly 11 years and we stilll date. It was a great time! I think I had a better time than Hubby did though. I knew the people there better and I really enjoy dancing, although I am not very good at it.

Over this past weekend, we just spent time as a family getting chores and other miscellaneous things done around the house. I love having a clean, organized, clutter-free home. However, it does not often stay that way during the week. At all. Hopefully, by having a random day off in the middle of the week, it will help me to combat that issue.

But that is all for now. I will be working on some more detailed posts about some of the things I have written about and will hyper link them for your viewing convenience!

Crafting and Redecorating

We have recently decided to do our boys' room in an all-out sports theme. They have sports-themed comforters for their beds but I want to do the whole room in a sports theme. At the beginning of October, we had a birthday party for which I made some beanbags for a game that we played. I used sports fabric to make the bean bags and I bought more than I needed for the bean bags so I had some left over.

Today, I decided to go to a craft store to pick up an embroidery hoop to put the extra fabric on and use it as a simple yet cute wall hanging. But then, in the same aisle as the hoops were printed cross stitch patterns. I love those things! I also like counted cross stitch but at this point in my life, the less I have to keep track of, the better. And of course, they had some with a sports theme. There were 12 panels in the package, which you then embroider by hand and then sew together with other fabrics to make a quilt, right? Yeah, I had to get it. I mean, seriously, there are so many options. I can do up all 12 panels and use four apiece for each of the boys and use LOTS of sports theme fabrics. I can buy two more sets of them and make the quilt as directed. I can make throw pillows out of them for the boys' beds, I can create more wall art for them, the possibilities are just astounding to me! I cannot wait to get these twelve panels all finished up so that I can decide what to do with them!!!

I also got a set of 12 butterfly panels for Oralee's room. Since she is the only one in her room and her room is on the smaller side (and currently decorated in fairies and princesses) I have time to work on her panels. No big rush on hers. I'd like to get some more wall stickers from the dollar store for her room though. I saw that they have long blades of grass and flowers that I think would be absolutely adorable around the bottom half of her room. We could move the fairies down so that they could hide in the grass too, with the princesses and other stickers above them. I have great visions, I tell ya!

I am so enjoying the hand embroidery though! It is so relaxing! I learned how to do the stamped cross stitch when I was six. My grandmother taught me. I remember spending many nights at her house, working on embroidery squares while watching television with her. A lot of my handiwork, I learned from her actually. She taught me to sew on a machine (I'm still not good at it!), sew by hand (THAT I can handle - pun intended), embroider, crochet...the list goes on. She was talented, no doubt about it.

My goal for this week (in addition to my normal daily stuff that I won't bore you with - at least, not at this point) is to finish the panels for the boys' room. Maybe this time next week, I will have even decided what to do with them and can share some pictures of finished items with you. That would be fun!

I had to share that with you real quick but I'm off to finish up some basketballs on quilt blocks. Talk to you soon!

I just saw a link for this over at Absentminded Mother and had to click on over to I Can Teach My Child to check it out and see what it was all about.

I must say, I like the idea! I am also going to present it to my kiddos and suggest it as a family activity. It will also give us something to share about each night at dinner. It's also not a bad idea since the boys are in Scouts and one of the things that they are supposed to put into practice is to "Do A Good Turn" each day.

Some things I would like to do include:

volunteer at our homeless shelter
donate food to local charities
serve meals at one of the senior centers here
take a meal to a family
host a Thanksgiving meal for those who might otherwise not have a Thanksgiving
offer to babysit for a family for free
create a craft project of some sort to be given away

Plus, I really like all of the ideas that Absentminded Mother had as well! I look forward to seeing some of the ideas from the other participants so that it can spur on additional ideas for our family! I love to serve others. I do so with a (generally) grateful and happy heart. I long for my children to acquire that as well. I think they are on their way there. Koren most definitely. He wanted do a yard job for free just to be nice. I suggested that if he wanted to, he could do it for the money and then donate the money to a charity of his choice. That job ended up being cancelled, but I do believe that Koren's heart is in the right place.

So anyhow, I just wanted to let you all know about this great idea going on for this month. What do you think? Are you going to join up as well?