Vista, CA
Fallbrook, CA
Oceanside, CA
Roy, UT
Hill AFB, UT
Vista, CA
Oceanside, CA
Fredericksburg, VA
Twentynine Palms, CA (2 houses…and hopefully moving to a bigger house in a few months)

We also survived three deployments, including one that was for 345 days, and recruiting duty (Marine Corps wives will understand the significance of that one!).

Here we were on our way to dinner at 29 Palms Inn for our 15th anniversary.

Roy trying to avoid my camera. We both had steak and it was delicious!

So then of course Roy had to take one of me.

Carla (having twins!!) with Leah – Leah was attached to her most of the night!

Across the dining room and into the kitchen.

And me. Except you can’t even see my cute ruffly shirt or the fun curls that Samantha put all over my head.

It was a fun night. Kids were all in bed by 1 a.m. and Shannan and I stayed up until 3 a.m. talking! Morning came very quickly.

Grace ‘N Girls recently released dolls specific to American Heritage Girls. I knew Hannah would love one! She is a Pathfinder this year – her first year with AHG. They also sell just the clothes. After the doll arrived, I just had to open it up and get a picture.

And here is Hannah shortly after opening her new doll, and already dressing her in other clothes!

You can see Matthew in the background, enjoying his new gift: an iPod Shuffle!

This was a super simple project to do, just one I never thought of doing until I saw this Pin on Pinterest.

Such a simple idea. I have a large rubbermaid type container where I used to keep wrapping paper rolls but they were always getting messed up. I do still have bags, ribbon, and labels inside the container, but the wrapping paper (for the last 3 years) has been in this spot next to my bed.

I am even sharing my mess with you! Actually I’m surprised there are not more books stacked there. I cleaned up my nightstand, and put a simple trash can next to it for the rolls I currently have. I did have to move my nightstand over a couple inches for the trash can to fit.

And there you have it! Simple but effective. The rolls won’t fall over anymore, and get smushed by the closet door. The top drawer of my nightstand holds scissors, pens, and tape. My bed has always been a great (sometimes secret) place to wrap gifts and that is why the wrapping paper sits where it does.

You may also notice my quilting mat behind the night stand. I have a craft cupboard in the garage and our first summer here my mat broke all into pieces from the heat! When I finally got a new one, I needed a new (SAFE) place for it, and behind the nightstand is its home.

Where do you store your gift wrapping items?

You may notice that I am posting day 7 on what is really day 13. Yes, I’m behind. I have a few more projects done but could not find the time to sit down and type up my posts. We went out of town over the weekend to attend my mom’s retirement party! She and my dad put together a great party. We had fun visiting with cousins and old friends also. Then between house, my schoolwork, kid’s schoolwork, and well, blogging comes last. But here I am again.

I saw this picture on Pinterest and immediately put it in my Cool Stuff for Scouts board. They are so cute and I thought they’d be easy to make.

I decided to make them for our AHG Troop’s kick off night and bought all the stuff needed. I waited until that day to make a sample. Do you know that it is actually kind of a pain to PAINT styrofoam balls??? This project is not for children! Okay, maybe it just is not for me. Here was my sample:

I do think they are super cute and I probably will still make more with the girls and use up our supplies. However, I would paint all the balls ahead of time instead…actually I would SPRAY paint them ahead of time! See the lovely underneath of the ball:

Another leader helped with these and she was probably cursing me by the end of the night. There was paint everywhere! We even used skewers and a block of green florist stuff, but they were still a pain to paint.

Let me know if you try them!

We home school our children and one of the most challenging and rewarding parts of this is teaching them how to read. I pace the lessons to suit the child learning at the time. I want them to love reading, and do not want them to be frustrated with learning to read. Sam and Matt each learned at their own pace. Alex is moving along just fine. Hannah is who in kindergarten will probably be done with all the books this year!

Anyway, Alex is getting ready to move to book 4 in the Explode the Code series and I wanted to give him some references out of the previous book just in case he needed them. I saw this on Pinterest and made the idea my own (after adding it to my School Board).

At first I was going to just copy that one and then realized I should do the letter combinations as they appear in our books. So I did a chart that was specific to Explode the Code Book 3.

I’m going to make one for Hannah too as she works through Books 1 and 2. This is our homeschool bookshelf which is a disaster right now. Each year I set it up a little differently.

And there’s the chart hanging up. It’s behind where Alex sits at the table so he’ll be able to glance at it if he needs a reminder.

Do you see how straight my lines are?? I didn’t know they made these cool poster boards with really faint lines that you can only see in just the right light! Have you used them?

And there you have it! Six days worth of Pinterest projects done! I do have tomorrows done, but nothing after that. I need to get busy! Like I said before, they are simple items, but things I have been wanting to do, and without spending a lot of money. So tomorrow…finger puppets.

Day Five! Today’s Pin is another food item – this time a dessert. I’ve been staring at these for nine weeks in the food board. When I had some friends over on Saturday night, I was looking at my pins to see if there was anything new I wanted to try. Sam said she’d make a dessert (the kids all get to eat too!), and so we narrowed it down to 3 or so. Then we reviewed the recipes and she picked this one.

They were gone very quickly that night and she made more today! And that pan is 1/2 gone. They’re delicious. Basically you’re making a cookie recipe that uses mini-marshmallows and chocolate chips, and placing balls of dough on top of graham crackers. Half way through the cooking, take them out, add a portion of a Hershey’s bar, and put them back in to cook longer. You don’t really need to use the recipe from the site. You can use your favorite cookie dough recipe, just add marshmallows into it.

A batch of cookie dough worked for a huge pan that I have. I don’t even know what size it is. Big. At least 11 x 17. The layers are so yummy. The gooey marshmallows. Definitely a keeper.

This is already day four of this project. I really need to get to work on some of the projects on my list that will take longer than five minutes. Today’s Pin project was an easy one, but one I’ve been wanting to do for a while. It has taken this project to force me to do even the smallest Pins. Crazy.

My laundry room is a mess right now, but I am thankful to at least have a laundry room. The kids tend to dump items in there that they don’t want to put away in the garage. Plus I was using all my laundry baskets for clean clothes, though most of the baskets are for dirty clothes. They even have labels so the kids can sort their own stuff.

See?

Here’s a look at what is in my laundry room though that really isn’t the purpose of this post:

Behind the door is the furnace. Next to that is the washing machine. Next is an old microwave cart that I use to store laundry items and garbage bags. The labeled baskets go on top. Inside the drawer are batteries and other household tools. To the right of the door is my grandmother’s buffet that I painted years ago. Sitting on top is small cabinet that holds cleaning supplies. Next to it is the towel basket. Next to the buffet is the dryer. And next to that sits the vacuum with the broom and mops hanging on the wall.

Now that we actually have all the laundry folded … I should clean off the top of the microwave cart so that I can use all the baskets again.

Okay, so here is what bugs me the most about this room.

The top of the dryer. I do not like things sitting there! Earlier there were 2 games, a couple race cars, and a few rocks. Have you ever had to dig a rock out of the dryer vent because you didn’t see it and then shoved it into the dryer when putting the vent back. This has happened to me more than once!!! I really needed a basket or a jar or something to hold pocket items. Or even items that I find in the dryer because really I admit I don’t clean out pockets very well.

Here is the picture that inspired me from my Pinterest board Products I Love:

By the way, I’m not sure why I have categories for Products I Love and Must Have when they hold similar items. I should fix that.

Aren’t those dogs super duper cute????

Back to the Pin! I made a jar tonight and I put it up high. It’s labeled “Mom’s Tip Jar” because that is what I refer to found money as. My tips for doing laundry. And look! A dollar already! Items in Mom’s Tip Jar will not removed until mom decides to return them. People in this house might start cleaning out their own pockets!

Do you have a place to put pocket items? Or are you super duper good and immediately put away the found items?

Today’s Pin idea came from three different pins plus something my husband said. It all starts with the vacation we recently took to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho Falls (for his sister’s wedding). I am always sure to book a hotel that includes breakfast in its cost. This is very cost effective for our size family. I love when the breakfast is even better than we expect! The kids loved breakfast time. Hardboiled eggs, waffles, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, cereal, juice galore, pastries, muffins, and on and on it went. Each of the five hotels was slightly different, like the one that had “Egg McMuffins.” Oh yummy. That was my favorite.

As we were leaving our last hotel, my husband commented that the kids would be disappointed in only having cereal each morning. He said they’d want me to make breakfast each morning. I said fat chance to that. I’m not a morning person and really prefer to let them be in the kitchen on their own.

As I was contemplating doing this 31 Days challenge, I was looking through each of my boards, and while I was in my Organization Board I came across three pins that sparked an idea.

What if I did do continental breakfast each morning? Could I find a way to make that work?

Would they even like it? How would I limit them from eating all the fruit in one day? (Hard problem to have, right?)

I went to the exchange here on base and perused their very small selection of containers. I decided that one in particular would probably fit in my fridge and in the cereal cabinet. After I did breakfast for one week, I decided to add in snacks. So for this post, you get a 2 in 1! Here is how the cabinet looks now with the non-fridge items:

This is the bottom cabinet of my pantry. The top shelf is cups and the snack box. The second shelf is the breakfast box and 2 cereal containers.

And in the refrigerator, it looks like this:

The small container on the left is for snacks and the large one on the right is for breakfast.

So here’s how it works. I have a sheet in the kitchen that tells them they can have:

1. Small glass of juice
2. 1 or 2 hardboiled eggs
3. one fruit or one fruit cup
4. one bowl of cereal, one package of oatmeal, one bagel, or one piece of toast with peanut butter
5. small bowl of yogurt with granola

Additionally, they can only have one item at a time, and may not choose a second item until they finish with the first. I’m happy to say there has been no wasted food! Here’s the inside of the fridge breakfast container:

Inside is rice milk, juice, yogurt, cream cheese, hardboiled eggs. The box in the pantry has bread, oatmeal packets, peanut butter, bagels, granola, fruit cups, fruit. The cereal boxes sit next to it.

And then for your bonus: Snacks! In the fridge there are cheese sticks, yogurt, pickles, and carrots. Plus apples are in the drawer.

The pantry has granola bars, raisins, applesauce, craisins, fish crackers, and popcorn.

That’s not a very good picture of what is in there. Sorry! I love this set up and so do my children. No more searching in the pantry for items. And they love that it isn’t cereal every single morning of the week.

I even made a lunch shelf:

We eat left overs a lot for lunch, but if there are not any, or not what they like, then they have some choices on the new lunch shelf. Yes, even my 3-year-old can make her own sandwich and get her own breakfast.

I use Plan to Eat for my menu planning, and I have added “Breakfast Buffet” and “Snacks” as meals. I add them one day into the week and it adds all the above items to my grocery list. Then all I need to do is see what I’m out of or I can change things up and add new items. Do you have suggestions for me??

So what do you think? Yea or nay for your household? I hope this “organization” lasts for a long time. I’m so glad Roy’s comment along with the three pins sparked an idea for me.