Organizing kids clutter

The Shaby Nest, is having a little organization "party" for kids clutter! Check her out to get some more organization ideas! My biggest eyesores lately, have been the upstairs playroom, Keira's room, and our black armoire (which has become a storage unit for books, Keira's coloring and scrapbook materials, and our printer and shredder)! I love baskets and bins, but they're just usually too expensive to buy a bunch at once! I"ve purchased a few here and there when I've seen a good deal, and have begun to organize some of our kids clutter! Here's what we've done.

This is our upstairs playroom. Edwin has done a lot of work in this room for me! It's kinda been the furniture storage room, and he helped me get rid of some of the clutter; although, we still have some stuff to get rid off to clear it out to sell! I really wanted to paint and make it more "fun", but since we're not staying here, I"m not going to bother. 

I bought these red canvas bins at Target and the small blue baskets (yes; they still have the tags on them!) at Babies R Us. I really want to paint this bookcase, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

This storage bin mainly holds Kai and Kade's "little guys". 

This is Keira's shoe organizer inside her closet! The girl's got some shoes!

This is here little white stove from Pottery Barn. She has so much kitchen stuff! I put a few baskets on the inside to help organize some of the stuff. 

I love this dollhouse bookcase from Pottery barn. I bought some cute baskets from Michaels and organized her books, hair stuff, and small toys.

I love this shelf with hooks (from Target). It holds a special picture the kids and Edwin made for me when we were dating long distance! The kids also hang their backpacks here (Keira and Kade are both at school, but Kai is home sick so his backpack is still hanging!)

This is a laundry basket from Target and it has all our blankets inside! 

Oh my lanta. Yes, this is our black armoire that has become a storage unit. 

This is the after. I love this green Canvas box from Target. I also used this Pottery Barn vase to display the crazy amount of crayons. It's on the inside of the armoire, but I still wanted it to look pretty.

Inside the green box, are two more storage bins I bought at Target. The clear one holds all of Keira's scrapbooking materials. The coloring books are underneath in the green bin. Also in the green bin (can you see the blue lid on the far right!?), is a three tiered storage box. Genius. One layer holds markers, another layer has crayons, and the top layer has colored pencils. 

I love this red bin and bill organizer (to the left of it). I can't remember where it was purchased. It's kinda a "junk drawer" with random papers, but at least its a pretty red bin, right?!

This is my file organizer that I use for the kids school papers (they each have their own tab and folder). Everyday I go through their papers and file them, and on the weekend I go through them again before school on Monday starts. Otherwise, there's random papers all over the kitchen counter and I can't keep up with it all! (IE: "Thursday is wear green day. Please send your kindergardener to school in green." "Friday is our 100th day party. Please make a shirt with 100 items glued on it!" "Friday is our cake party. Please send your child to school with one of the following items..."

Seriously

Last but not least; here's my sick Kai!

Welcome to our new blog!

I have now successfully copied all my posts from my old blog, to this one! I've lost all the original comments, but that's okay! Please start referring to this one!

my menu, movie with Keira, and hair cut

This weekend Edwin and I helped co-host a group of 11th grade girls, for a breaking free weekend at our church. Eddie and Lissa (my mother and father in law) graciously helped us out by watching the kids all weekend, so we could be at the house with the girls and attend all their sessions and activities. It was a great weekend and they were such a great group of young ladies! Edwin and I were blown away at their maturity, and some things they've already learned and realized, that took us a lot longer to figure out! Once the girls finally learned our ages, they couldn't believe Edwin was actually 30 and I was 27...AND that we have kids! They were blown away and it was hilarious. All weekend they told us how cute we were, and "oohed and awed" at us. Some of the girls were talking about how Edwin looks like "Chris Krump", and I asked who that was (feeling really old that I possibly didnt know whatever new actor they were talking about!). They said Chris Krump was the worship leader for Breaking Free and is GORGEOUS! I said, "yes, in that case my husband does look like Chris Krump".  For some reason the girls got a really big kick out of coming up with our fourth babies name; another "K". Seriously. All weekend they kept coming up with new names to tell us, up until the goodbye! It was pretty cute. For the record, I'm not pregnant.

After every main session (there were over 600 students there!), we broke up into our host home groups for smaller discussion. We blended with the 11th grade boys for these discussion one night, and not the last night. Edwin ended up leading all the discussions (unplanned and last minute), and did such a great job. The girls really took to him (well; duh!) and trusted to share things they're learning and going through, with him in the room. It was funny because Edwin and I realized that in a really large group, I"m the one that shuts down and gets quiet (I never talked in the large group), but i'll open up and have good conversations in a smaller group. Edwin led the main discussions and talked a lot, but will shut down and get quiet in smaller groups. AW; what a great team we are! It's a great balance when we're ministering to people!

This week's agenda:

*Now we're at home trying to recover from the lack of sleep, and I'm making sure I dont get sick (because I started to not feel well; wah, wah.). 

*This week, we're HOPING our roof will get fixed, but i'll believe it when I see it! 

*Keira and I are having "movie morning" like we did last week. She picks a movie (last week we watched Mary Poppins), and we watch it on my computer in my bed. 

I filled Muffin Tins (thanks to Michelle for her idea from Muffin Tin Monday)  full of snacks and we watched the movie cozy in bed! I told her we'd start doing it once a week, since she's still talking about "mary N poppins" with mama. 

*I have to make Kai a t-shirt with 100 items on it for school. I"m going to take him to Hobby Lobby and let him pick out a bunch of different stuff to put on his shirt. Should be a good time had by all. 

*Food! Here's my proposed menu for the week. Be sure to check our orgjunkie for more recipes and menus. (sorry no recipe links!)

Monday- Creamy Chicken Crescents (Recipe from Misty)

Tuesday- Crockpot Barbeque, baked beans, corn on the cob

Wednesday- Lantham Stew 

Thursday- Chicken Spaghetti (recipe from Jessica)

Friday- Kid's choice- chickfila or chili's hopefully! 

*Stay tuned for my menu next week! I have some things I'm concocting for Valentine's day with the kids! 

Last but not least, I cut and colored my hair a little bit again...

Happy Birthday Kade; Disaster version

So; I"m ready to share my cake disaster from Kade's birthday last night. As mentioned in my previous post, I made him a jersey cake. It proved to be more difficult than I thought and I was "fairly" pleased with the outcome. It's a little ghetto (what's up with the circle arms?!), but I did my best, and still think its rather cute.  I made it in the afternoon, so I wouldn't be rushed in the evening. Once the kids get home from school, its sometimes pretty difficult to get everything done; especially cook a large dinner for other people and watch Adison (they needed a babysitter yesterday and I said yes). Back to the cake...the roast was in the crock pot, the carrots were boiling, the potatoes were boiling, and I preheated the oven to make garlic cheese biscuits (like Red Lobster; yummy). A few minutes into the preheat, I began to smell something horrid. I opened the oven and there was my cake that I hid in there...in an large PLASTIC container! I completely forgot I put it in the oven earlier that day! The plastic container was completely melted and dripping to the bottom of the oven. I thought the house was going to burn down because the smell and smoke were so bad! I panicked and opened all the doors and turned fans on, and drenched the house in Lysol. Oh yeah, everyone was coming over in ten minutes. Edwin walked in the door five minutes later. He was laughing; I was crying. I wasn't boo hooing or anything; I was just upset! With his help, everything got cleaned up and the plastic pulled off the baking racks, once the oven cooled.  He took Kade and Keira to Walmart, to purchase a "redemption" cake. Everyone arrived, dinner was served, and we ate cake. 

Happy Birthday Kade!

Today is Kade's birthday. We had his birthday party with his friends over the weekend, and survived the slumber party! He had four friends come and spend the night, which was the perfect amount. I couldn't imagine more than that! Tonight, the Twitty fam is coming over for dinner and I'm making a roast and a Jersey cake! 

Over the past year, I've seen Kade mature and grow up alot. Now, he's still a kid; but, Edwin and I have been proud of a lot of the decisions he's made. He's made decisions to not hang out with certain kids that get him in trouble, and that's a MAJOR thing for a young boy. He stays on track with his chores and homework, and doesn't complain when he has a heap of laundry to put away (yes, Kai and Kade put their clothes away. I've trained them. haha) He's trying harder to do better in school, and take the steps necessary to succeed. For a kid that's had so many changes and trials in his life, I'm proud of who he is and who he's becoming. Happy Birthday Kade!

This is the after math from breakfast; 3 dozen donuts. 

Eating pizza (one of the boys came after dinner)

This is Kade's cake I made for tonight. It didn't turn out how I thought it would, but hey; it's gotta be better than a plain cake!

Menu Plan Monday

Hello my blog followers! Edwin and I went to a marriage conference this past Saturday at our church. The Author of "The Five Love Languages, Gary Chapmen, was the guest speaker. He's a really funny guy! Maybe later this week, i'll share some key points from our notes.  So here's what's on our menu for this week. I'm excited about trying Jambayla (mainly for Edwin, because I dont like shrimp or spicy foods!) and making homemade chicken and dumplings!

Monday- Jambayla with shrimp and sausage (this is a new recipe; and healthy, and might be too spicy for the kids. I'll have a kids backup plan!) 

Tuesday- Homemade chicken and dumplings

Wednesday- Crockpot beef taco soup 

Thursday- Parmesan garlic chicken, broccoli and raisin layered salad, and green beans

Friday-Pizza for Kade's birthday party! He's having a slumber party; pray for us! haha

A tribute to my husband

  As i'm sure everyone realizes, its difficult to eat healthy during the holidays especially at Disney! Edwin gained a little bit of weight during our Christmas/Disney vacation. I'm so proud of him because he's been working really hard to lose it, and has lost 7 pounds since Christmas! He's been riding our exercise bike almost every day, and eating really healthy! It's not easy to make healthy choices at home, especially when you have three kids in the house and all the food they like! The other day he told me he got the case of the munchies, and instead of driving to get a candy bar, he walked around his school twice! I mean, who does that?! He heard that cravings pass after ten minutes if you can resist that long.  His energy has shot up too, and we went shopping for "slim" modern jeans this past weekend (not to be confused with tight Jonas Brother jeans).  NIIIICCCCE.