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After 60 hours+ of sewing (80% of which was spent with my iron pressing seams), many battles with invisible thread, and numerous not-so-appreciated-try-ons-so-I-can-see-how-it-fits, Halloween costumes finally finished…this year anyway… Speed Racer
Tinker Bell
As a family, we are also working on introducing new healthy foods to our family’s weekly menus (though this has turned out to be more of a pre-schooler fasting episode since he refuses to eat 90% of what we put in front of him). We are working on potty training (which has been pretty messy and gross) and re-child-proofing our home to save those special things from 20-month-old fingers. I am working on Halloween costumes for the kids. Here is a photo preview of my daughter’s semi-completed Tinker Bell fairy outfit.
And we are learning to cope with fewer day-light hours, cooler temperatures, and a new pre-school schedule. On the blogging front: I am reading Tara Frey’s book Blogging for Bliss: Crafting Your Own Online Journal: A Guide for Crafters, Artists & Creatives of all Kinds
I am excited for the fall when I hope to share with you some crafty ways you can organize your health and green your home. I am also looking forward to introducing some of the sources of inspiration I turn to when I am organizing what is important to me in my life. I hope to also share with you some frugal, stress-less, green, and soulful ways to celebrate a truly meaningful holiday season with your family. So, stay-tuned to Organizing-Life.com. There is a lot to come in the months to come. Until then, Happy Organizing!
In the past we really have gone over-the-top. With a several thousand dollar budget, I catered his first birthday in a private party room.Baby jungle animal themed decorations included 100 balloons (some larger than the birthday boy), coordinated table cloths, paper and plastic-ware, ceiling hangings, stationary, and a custom printed banner and stickers. I baked a two tiered carrot cake complete with fondant baby jungle animals and we invited more than 100 friends and family. I also rented the traditional Korean first birthday decorations for the Tol ceremony. The child sits at a table and is offered many symbolic items that tell his or her future. Our son grabbed the pencil to be a scholar first and then stuck both of his little fat hands in the rice bowl, which symbolizes that he will never go hungry. At two years old, I pulled back a bit with a budget of several hundred dollars in coordinated decorations. I prepared tater-tots, chicken nuggets, juice and fruit at home. A cake the shape and color of the Lighting McQueen car from Disney topped it off and the kids ran outside to play in the kiddie pools, blow bubbles, and run under the sprinklers. This year, I decided to do even better with activities that are meaningful to our family, presents that he can actually enjoy, and fun he will remember. For birthday number 3:
Throwing kids birthday parties doesn’t have to be about impressing other parents.It can be about giving your child a day of simple fun. Giving your child stuff may cultivate a reliance on things to demonstrate their self-worth. It is hard for me to not give him everything. I want to really badly. But I know possessions aren’t going to teach him the value of self, only that possessions are valuable. Maybe the reason I still want to give him everything is because I still haven’t totally grasped the value of self? How have you created birthdays for your child that are simple, frugal, and meaningful? Leave a comment here and share your party planning ideas with others. Also, check out my printable party planner pages here to help you organize your next event! Happy Organizing.
I am working to shed all that extra “stuff”, become more conscious about what and how I consume, be aware of what values my children see me living, and to become debt free. In essence get back to a simple life like so many of you out there in the blog world are doing so wonderfully. Getting Rid of StuffTo start to purge the cluttered possessions in our home I sorted through my kid’s toys (they are too young to help with this) and chose 5 shoe boxes full of toys to keep. The rest will be given away to the doctors office and our therapy center. I cleared away 5 mega diaper boxes full of toys that the kids seldom, if ever, play with. Conscious ConsumerShopping for my son’s birthday present I asked myself, how much enjoyment will this item bring? Will it continue to bring someone else joy after we have tired of it? Does it elicit creativity or develop skill? Or is it merely a fixture. I am realizing now that although I want to give him everything, this will teach him to rely on stuff for entertainment instead of his own creativity. I don’t want him to feel deprived either, which is how I felt as a child, and I think is why I started buying things as soon as I could. I am buying items only when they have a planned landing spot in my home so that I don’t buy clutter. I also seeking to be a bit more resourceful by borrowing books from the library instead of buying a book for $30 that will sit on my non-existent shelves. Or, re-purposing an old accordion folder instead of buying a new one. My goal is to cut down on our spending and the number of items we have in our home. Getting to Debt-FreeNow you are probably wondering how we did the first month of our journey toward becoming debt free. I’d say we did very well. We added up our expenses, took a stab in the dark at a spending budget, and started using a cash envelope system. The run down? (Even though the month isn’t entirely over, we have a good idea of what we are going to spend this week.) :: We cut our spending by 50%. This month we spend 1/2 of what we usually spend for everything (other than bills.) :: Didn’t do well with the envelope system or logging purchases. I am so used to tossing cash receipts for items we aren’t going to return. I realized this month that most all our purchases were in cash and that there is no back-up method of tracking what you spent when. Also, my husband kept on buying things with his lunch money, and then needed to get “reimbursed” for it from another envelope. This made things more complicated. :: We ate together at home more. We ate out tons less and spent less cash doing so. I have also noticed the amount of food I toss in the trash has greatly diminished. Less waste, less money in the trash. :: I need to plan more inventive meals and meals on-the-go.I started taking sandwiches, snacks, and drinks with us to the park-play-dates we do. The kids are HUNGRY after running around in the sun and having food on hand prevents crankiness and trips through the drive-thru. The trick is giving them something that an 18 month old can handle in her seat (and she is still rear-facing so I can’t tell when she has made a mess,) and that my 3 year old picky son will eat. Does anyone have a non-messy alternative to peanut butter sandwiches? Nevertheless money saved. Nutrition better. Needed: better planned meals. :: Diapers and milk are still huge expensesand probably will be for a while to come. :: Easier to balance the checkbook with fewer transactions. :: We may need to adjust our spending budget a bit. This month we overspent on foods since we went to the farmers markets a bit. We also overspent on eating out. Some of this is poor meal planning and some of this is our busy lifestyle where schedules change quickly sometimes. Overall our first month getting to debt-free went really really well. I am now more sure we are going to get there as a family. Coming up this week, I will share with you a few ways to get back to a simpler life and share how we celebrated my son’s birthday on a budget and with the simple life philosophy. Do you have areas of your life you are working to simplify? If so, share them here for others to be inspired! Happy Organizing.
When people ask me, “are you planning to have more children,” my answer is, “we aren’t planning now, but if God is planning, than yes, then we’ll be planning too.” The reason is because I don’t know if I could keep up with the medical issues of a third baby if he or she had as many as my two children have had. I frequently wonder how I end up spending so much time coordinating doctor’s visits for my children. In three years, we have been to see the cardiologist, nephrologist, urologist, orthopedist, physical therapist, and countless radiologists in addition to their regular pediatrician and dentist. We have had only two ER visits for a clipped off finger pad and a nurse-maids’ elbow, a week’s stay in NICU, and one stay-in-the-hospital surgery to correct a Grade-5 kidney reflux condition. I count myself and my family lucky that we are in overall good health and that none of these medical issues are major. But I can’t help but wonder why I have a directory of medical specialists when most of our friends who have children simply brought their babies home from the hospital and never looked back. You are probably asking, why am I thinking of this now? I just scheduled my daughter for an Early Intervention evaluation to find out if she qualifies for physical therapy services (provided our insurance and budget cooperate) for gross and fine motor skill development. I am just not sure if it is her little premie-baby-attitude saying, “I’ll walk when I am good and ready!”, or if there are other bad-habits she has that are preventing her from developing the balance and muscle tone she needs to walk. She isn’t alarmingly late, not even trying to walk at 18 months, but I’d like her to eventually be able to interact appropriately with other toddlers her age who are now learning to run. So, how do I organize their complete medical histories? I carefully record and document each phone inquiry, visit, prescription, evaluation, follow-up, specialist’s contact information, and medical proceedure. A while back, I designed a health-care planner pages packet that you can download hereand print to help you organize your family’s medical information. I also send a copy of this info to my parents and to my in-laws (and keep a copy of relavent history handy for a sitter or other care-taker) in case of an emergency. Do you feel like you are in and out of the doctor’s office constantly? Do you wonder why God is giving you these challenges? Do you have a special system you use to organize your and your family’s medical information? Leave a comment here and share your experience with others! Happy Organizing.
The Rubbermaid 20-piece food saver set winner is #1 entry: Jessa! I hope these food storage containers come in handy when you are doing your next pantry organizing project! For help organizing your pantry take a look at my Pantry Organizing tips and tricks post. Congratulations Jessa! I have e-mailed you directly, so please contact me by Sunday, July 19, 2009, 11:59PM to clain your prize or I will have to draw another winner. Thank you to all who entered! Happy Organizing!
In the vein of organizing and decluttering, I am doing my first give-away. This box which has been sitting in my kitchen for a few months is begging for a new home, so here we go.
A few months back, I responded to a Rubbermaid blog Adventures in Organization post that asked for bloggers to blog about their food saving products. I received two Rubbermaid 20-piece Food Storage sets, one to try and one to giveaway to my readers. The set includes 4 different types of containers: Produce Saver, Lock-Its, Easy-Find Lids, and Premier. To tell you the truth, I gave away my set to my mother-in-law who seems to have a food-storage-container-exodus in her home. I am a user of the Rubbermaid Easy-Find Lids, and I really like them.I feel they have a good air-tight lid seal (I haven’t tried shaking soup in them), are easily stack-able in the fridge, don’t warp in the dishwasher, and the lids really do click-together and don’t fall all over my cabinet. I don’t like that the Easy-Find Lid containers turn orange when I heat up tomato sauce, or my Korean red-pepper paste, in the microwave, and I don’t like that the lids are so contoured that they are always wet when they come out of the dishwasher. I have had my Easy-Find Lid containers for about a year now, and they don’t stand up to dishwasher/toddler-throwing/picnic-going wear and tear as well as I’d like. The lid tops are showing signs of a dulled finish and roughed edges. Since I am a lover of uniformity, the Rubbermaid Easy-Find Lids are the only ones I use for left-overs in my home. I never lend these out, since I’d never get them back, because they are too expensive to replace. (I send goodies home with friends in those round plastic take-out containers.) The Produce Saver containers have a special insert that keeps food off the bottom of the container to keep produce fresh and crisp longer. My bluberry trial did work, and I thought my berries looked fresh and plump at day 5 after coming home from the market. The Lock-Its containers have the locking lid tabs for a tighter seal, and the Premier container is made of a different type of plastic that is stain resistant (which would probably solve my orange-plastic problem I mentioned above but I didn’t test this out.)
If you have a food-storage container exidous in your home and would like to win this Rubbermaid 20-piece set, please visit Rubbermaid’s blog, Adventures in Organizing post: Stories about Food Storage Organization from EasyFind Lids.com, and leave an entry in the from below describing which story you found funniest. (My favorite was about the lid-eating gremlin who works in cahoots with the dryer sock-monster.) You can also leave a comment at www.easyfindlids.com about your Rubbermaid story to enter to win one of 5 weekly 20-piece food storage set prizes (like this one) AND to be entered to win $500 in Rubbermaid products! (The grand prize winner to be picked at the end of October 2009.) I know you all love additional entries so here is how to get them:
You can enter up to three times (one for each type described above) and you must complete the form once per entry. Only one entry of each type per e-mail address will be counted. If you are seeing this post in a reader and can’t see the form below, please click over to fill out your entry. US only please. This contest is a quicky and will end tomorrow, Thursday, July 16, 2009, at 11:59PM eastern time. I’ll select one entry using Random.org and announce the winner here at Organizing-Life.com and contact the winner directly via e-mail Friday, July 17, 2009. The winner must respond to me by Sunday, July 19, 2009 at 11:59 PM with their mailing info, otherwise their prize will be forfeited and a new winner will be selected. Good luck! Happy Organizing. This contest is now closed. 7/17/2009. Thank you to all who entered, and thank you for reading Organizing-Life.com. Happy Organizing! I love tricks that make my life easier and healthier. Here are five of my favorite kitchen tools and how I use them to make cooking healthy meals for my family easier. (I know I said easy, but I meant eas-ier.)
1. The ice-cream scoopI have to admit, I stole this one from Martha Stewart, but I have been using it tons ever since. Use an ice-cream scoop for measuring muffin batter, waffle batter, and pancake batter. Or use it to form perfectly round cookies. The little scraper thingy makes portioning runny batter a neat and even, super-simple task. I have a large one that is 2″ and a small one that is 1″ wide that is perfect for those mini-muffins.
2. Ice-cube traysI mentioned in the popular “Save Your Money in Your Freezer” post that I like to save my extra stocks, juices, tea and coffee in the freezer. Save your little leftovers in perfect 1 tablespoon-sized portions in ice-cube trays and stash them away to make lemonade, iced-coffee, or iced-tea later. This is also the perfect way to save single portion veggie and fruit purees for your baby.
3. Pastry-piping tipsI stole this from Martha Stewart too. I love cake decorating and have tons of pastry piping tips. But, I don’t eat cherries enough to warrant buying a cherry pitter. So, I slip my finger into the pastry tip, a #7 Wilton will do, and poke the tip into the top of the cherry to extract that pesky little pit, and pop the rest into my mouth. YUM.
4. ScaleI use my kitchen scale for everything. It was the best wedding-registry gift ever. I use it for those European baking recipes where everything is in grams and when I need to weight a letter to find out how much I owe the Postal Service. I also use it to portion meats I buy in large packages. Tare the Ziploc bag, measure one pound of ground turkey, and seal up the bag, label it and stick it in the freezer and viola, you have the prefect portion. 5. CheeseclothThis is a great kitchen tool. Cut a square to make a pouch for mulling spices, bouquet garni, or roasted barley to make tea. Or, double it back to line a strainer, to cull the seeds from a berry puree or to catch the clots that might mess up your egg custard. Or, wrap herbs like lavender or sage in a piece of cheese cloth and place it in a small place that needs a special scent. Do you have favorite kitchen tools that make your life easier? Share your tips and tricks here to make other readers’ lives easier. Happy Organizing!  |
 I am a 35 year old mom to a 4 year old son, a 3 year old daughter, a son born in May, and a wife to my life wonderful. I write in this space when my crafty inspiration strikes or when I get to pondering about how we can live more simply and better connect with the earth around us. We are a family surviving the suburbs, contending with commercialism, and getting to a greener lifestyle. Welcome! ~Abbie |
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I am working on a lot of new things these days. Above you see how messy product development can be! I am working on a new owl design created lovingly out of recycled felted wool and cashmere sweaters.
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Hello all! I am taking a blogging vacation to finish out the last weeks of summer. My family and I are trying to squeeze out all those last drops of dappled daylight, vibrant colors at the market, sounds of chirping birds, and the smoky aroma of the barbeque. I hope you too consider taking a break and meet me back here September 8th for more Organizing Life. I can’t wait to check in with you and reading for a while with a glass of iced tea.
I wanted to point you all to a new page about me! If you are reading this in a reader, you’ll want to click through to the blog page to see the page tab entitled 
Tomorrow my son will be 3 years old. 
A month ago I wrote about my change of perspective about finances. You can find my posts 
