Snapping the Kids on My Birthday

Snapping pictures of my kiddos that is. I am not a party person, at least when I am the center of attention. So for my birthday we went to the gardens (one of my favorite places), picked up some nail polish in my favorite color, and had homemade barbecued cheeseburgers (my favorite food) for dinner. Then, Michael made me brownies for dessert. I had a wonderfully peaceful day.

Flowers

When I went on a date with Michael about a month ago, I had the opportunity to take some pictures. I am still perfecting my Macro (close-up) technique. I think it works better when I have my Macro lens, but here are some pictures I took with my camera on "close-up" setting.

Yummy Foods

I've been collecting recipes of things that look yummy on one of my bulletin boards on Pinterest. Instead of my boards becoming wish lists of things I will do someday, they are a collection of ideas for things I am doing now (well, all of them except the "house" and "home" ones.) Here are some of the yummy things I have made, pictured left to right, top to bottom.

• marinara sauce (and canned)
• baked broccoli
• Hawaiian barbecue chicken
• zucchini boats
• baked tomato and mozzarella pasta
• baked Parmesan tomatoes
• baked zucchini fries

My Camera Can Do That

When I purchased my "point and shoot" style of camera, I made sure it had a lot of manual adjustment options. I never quite got around to learning how to use all of those options. That is, until the other day. I discovered how to adjust the lighting while we were walking around the gardens waiting for our concert to start.

Too much light - adjustment to high

Too dark - no adjustment

What I felt like I was actually seeing - the right adjusment

Today, Disputing Children Saved Our Lives

Today it rained. I went out to run some errands and stopped at a red light at the top of road that goes over the railroad tracks. The children in the backseat started arguing about who touched who and who wasn't sharing their toys. I was scolding them, glanced up to see the light turn green, and turned back to finish my sentence instead of punching the gas like I usually do at this particular light. When I turned back around I watched a Semi Truck pulling two dirt/rock trailers careen through the red light. Had I punched the gas like I usually do, we would have been smashed by the truck because I wouldn't have been able to stop on the wet road or clear the intersection before the truck entered it.

Today, I am so grateful my children needed my attention at this stop light. It seriously saved our lives.

Child Play at the Gardens

Let's Get Organized

Thanks to Pinterest, I discovered a variety of solutions to some organizing dilemmas and have spent a lot of time lately reorganizing my house. I've included pictures of some of the things I actually did in addition to pictures of ideas I used but forgot to take pictures of.

Pictures from my house.

Homemade CD case for my car.

My car's visors are extra wide and the old CD case I had would not even wrap around the visor let alone hold all of the CDs I wanted to have in the car, so I mad this one using fabric scraps, cardboard, and hot glue.

Trashcan for my car: a cereal container attached with Velcro.

Plastic shoe boxes to sort and stack all of the small items I store in the bathroom closet. No more tipping over things to get to something in the back. I was also able to use the space more efficiently because I can use the whole height of the shelf instead of just the bottom half (the height of most objects or bottles that go in a bathroom closet.)

Sorted my makeup by eye, lips, face, etc. into containers so I no longer have to paw through the drawer to find what I am looking for.

Pictures of ideas I used, but not pictures of my house.



Instead of using a divider for my frying pans, I used it for my baking pans. Now, I can easily get out a cookie sheet, pie tin, cake pan, or muffin tin without having to remove and sort the entire stack.

No more opened packages of batteries taking up a whole drawer because they are awkward to stack and store. All of my batteries are in one case similar to this (I found one at the craft store, in the bead section) and only take up 1/3 of the space they used to.

Closet dividers for dresses, skirts, pants, and shirts, not just for baby clothes.



I took some old pillow cases and cut them either in thirds or quarters to make pillowcases for each sheet set. I tried to use actual pillowcases for each sheet set, but they were too big to work as nicely as in the pictures. Now, when I need to make a bed I can grab a pillowcase (I labeled mine) with correct size of sheets instead of having to dig for sheets and pillowcases.

Terra Cotta Pots

On Pinterest, I have been collecting ideas for terracotta pots because I picked up a ton for free about a month ago. Here are some of the things we have created.

Baby Escalator

Ryan has mastered climbing up our stairs. He has not mastered climbing down. However, he has mastered communicating (a series of grunts and whines) his need to be carried down the stairs. And, when he does, Mommy, Daddy, or big brother Benjamin become an escalator to tote him down the stairs to his desired destination. Before he could climb, he would communicate his need to go upstairs in a similar fashion with similar results. I find it entertaining how well Ryan uses his personal "escalator." Can't blame him for using his resources wisely from such a young age. What am I going to do when he gets older?