My PURSEonality

 I needed to get a new purse because I was basically living out of two separate ones. A diaper bag and a tote bag. In the diaper bag I had all my necessities and my tote bag had my wallet sunglasses and keys. Since my youngest came out of diapers 6 months ago I figured it was time to combine and downsize...which meant, NEW PURSE! I was on the hunt for awhile trying to find the perfect one and I found a cute little pink one. Since I had to organize my new beauty, I thought I would share with you my PURSEonality ;) and how I organize it. So here we go!!

This is my new beauty, isn't she cute?

I wanted a purse that had tons of compartments. This is a must in my purse searches. I LOVE compartments. This one has three compartments and this is how I divvy them up.

 

 I am a creature of preparedness so I have to tote around anything I may need at any given time. This is what is in my Medicine Bag.

My second compartment is the main middle section of my purse. This is where I put the things I use everyday.

I even organize my wallet. I have had this wallet forever and it has been my favorite of all time. I actually purchased it a Staples of all places. It houses all the cards you can collect ;)

I carry sunscreen for those unexpected trips outside when you go somewhere you thought was indoors. Diaper cream (Zinc) has many uses, not just for sore bums, and plastic bags for those wet or sticky situations kidlets get us in!
 

The back of my purse has a section for my phone. This is also an important area to look for when shopping. Usually if I would throw my phone into the inside of a purse I can never hear it. On the outside I can. 

Lastly a part that I keep in the car at all times, instead of toting around, is an extra pair of clothes. You never know when you come across a rain puddle or an accident so "it's better to be safe than sorry" ;)

I'll blog in the future about how I organize my van and what I stock in there for a rainy day situation!!

What's your PURSEonality?? Throw it all in or compartmentalize??
Happy purse organizing!!

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Watermelon Shark Bite!

This has been a huge week for my little man at school. On Friday he came home with a note asking if he could partake in a focus group, as a role model, to promote and build positive friendships and problem solving skills. I couldn't believe this (okay, yes I could) but I couldn't believe there would ever be such a "group" where he could be teaching his peers how to be a positive friend! Did I mention he is only 5!! I am so proud of him and honestly I am so proud of his teacher for recognizing and volunteering him for such a great program. I am very glad my little man has had the teacher he has for the past few years. She is wonderful and caring and has a small piece of my little man's heart. She is wonderful!

Last year for the last day of school, we decided to make a watermelon shark to wish everyone a great summer and thank the teachers for all the hard work they do, that doesn't go unnoticed in our eyes. I'm sure you have seen them all over the place, we loved the idea too and went with it. I found a step-by-step guide that I found crucial to getting the teeth cut out properly and that was from Rachel at Sun Scholars, you can see her step-by-step guide here. While you are there, poke around, she has some great ideas!!

So without further adieu, here is our shark...

First I needed a tray to house the watermelon so I went with this white one. I placed saran wrap over the tray and added little blobs of green jello that I added blue food colouring too, to make an ocean green colour. Than I placed more blobs of a blue raspberry jello over the green and Ta-Da!, the ocean look that I was going for. I placed the sharks head on top of the jello and placed a bowl inside to house the melon balls and all the messy juices that would collect at the bottom. I used a watermelon and cantaloupe mixture, yum! For the eye socket I used a blueberry that I secured with a  toothpick.

Lastly, I placed gummie fish all around the shark and in the slots of his mouth, he would good to go. The kids loved this guy as much as the teachers did. I found this shark to be incredibly easy to make, don't let the pictures fool ya, if you follow the guide it's easy as pie! Good luck!

I just wanted to say a quick apology to my readers for being a little absent lately. Family is my number one priority and when we get busy with life, we always need to make room for one another and sometimes, I get a little slow on the blog side of things. Blogging has really become a great outlet for me over the past few months that I have been doing it, and will continue to plug away at it. Please forgive me in the waves I may go through, I do have some catching up to do. I have not forgotten any of my to-do list, I will catch up, just bare with me. Hope you are having and awesome day!! *HUGS & THANKS*

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Easter Weekend Egg-stravaganza!

We had an amazing Easter weekend this year. We had no showings, no huge engagements, just tons of family time (my favorite!). On Easter morning after the kidlets came down and hunted for their eggs and gifts, they got right down to business opening everything and testing it out! 

Here they are playing the Oscar The Grouch Ants In A Can Game that my little girl received from the Easter Bunny. I am thrilled with this game because it is easy enough for my 2.5 year old to play AND I even think the game is FUN! Double whammy ;)

While the kidlets were busy checking out all their cool new stuff, I got busy making breakfast. 

I made peanut butter and jam "Easter Egg" toast, which I cut out with a cookie cutter and used a medicine syringe (the kind that comes in your children's medicine) filled with jam to add the decoration to the "eggs". Our "Easter Bunny" is made out of tangerine pieces, blueberry eyes and prunes for the whiskers. Also, we had blueberries in an Easter egg cup and yogurt to complete the breakfast! It was a hit!  

Since we had LOTS of time to do LOTS of fun stuff, we made all kinds of different Easter Eggs this year. 

 I think the Dino eggs were one of the favorites. We cracked hard boiled and eggs and placed the shattered eggs in warm water with food colouring for 30 minutes. We pulled out the eggs, removed the shells and they looked like dinosaur eggs. My son had done something like this at school the other week, but they were going for penguin eggs, same theory.

After all our egg decorated, we blew up Peeps in the microwave! I got this awesome idea from Bern at Mom to 2 Posh Lil Divas. She does so many awesome experiments with Peeps and tons of other things. You can check out her site here. Thanks Bern!! The kidlets loved this experiment. My little guy kept jumping up and down as the Peeps got bigger and bigger. We started with one at 30 secs and went up from there.

Then of course, we had to see if they tasted any different...they do! It went down the hatch so fast, this is the only picture I got to take.












After all that fun, we made lunch. On the menu, "Easter Bunny" cheeseburgers, "Carrot" fries and some actual carrots. Again, I used a cookie cutter to make the bunny shape. I used a carrot slice for the nose and put ketchup in a medical syringe for the eyes and whiskers. The top of the fries "carrot" is a green pepper and the "carrot" lines are ketchup, again with the syringe.You can check out some of our other Easter Fun Foods here.

 After lunch, we did some relaxing out side....

 ...some baseball playing...














And then, time for another craft! We used crayons to colour our eggs and then painted them with water colours. Cut out our ears and head band and made an Easter Egg Bunny Hats!

My little actor being a bunny!

My little girl wanting to do what her big brother did!

That's how we enjoyed our Easter Weekend! If you celebrated, I hope you had as much fun as we did, and if you didn't, I hope you enjoyed the extra family time!!

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Mamarazzi Monday-April 2

"I'm just gonna roll up and have a nap right in the middle of the door way, okay?"

Making This House A Home

 

As some of you may or may not know, we are currently in the process of selling our home. We have decided to move into a different neighbourhood where I can focus on expanding my daycare. This process, as those of you know that have sold a home before, is not wonderful. We have been on the market for not quite two weeks and have had a few handful of people come through. As I sit writing this post, it is currently 4 a.m. and I can't sleep. We had three groups come through the house yesterday, spanning over the entire afternoon, and I am curious to know feedback. Not only was it not fun trucking the kidlets all over town for 5 hours, they wanted to be no where but home yesterday. It was a rainy, stay-in-your-pajamas kind of day. Anyhoo, we got some errands done, got to see family and Daddy got to leave work a little early, all turned out just fine.

I think the most stressful part of all of this is coming to grips that I have kidlets and I can't have this house perfect on 30 minutes notice, as well as scheduling to be out of the house when you have all these kidlets to entertain. So far we have done library runs, mall runs, good ol' car drives, watching movies in the car, and of course the park. Small can of worms here I know.

So anyways, in all this in and out of the house, I thought I would share with you our past three years of making this house a home. Honestly, if I could transport this home somewhere else, I would. I love it! There is a lot of 'Blood, sweat and tears' that has gone into this house and it is an experience I will always treasure. My biggest THANK YOU, goes to my parents and in-laws for all the fixing, babysitting, advice and saving the day that has occurred over the last three years. I'm not quite sure where we would be without them.

Here is how we made this house a home...

Before

First up, the fireplace. This is the scene we walked into when we bought this house. It had some kind of desert theme on the wall as a mural and your good ol' brown fireplace. Not our style at all. So we changed it!

After

First I needed to get rid of the mural so I painted the whole wall a rust orange that I picked up from the trees on the far left side. Then I painted the brick a crisp white, threw in our decor and viola! New fireplace!

Carpet and railings

Next we pulled up all the carpet from the stairs, living room and dining room, as well as taking down all the ugly metal railings that ran through the whole house.

Staining the floors

My hubby and Dad sanded the floors and put a darker stain down that was more modern than the orange colour stain from when the house was originally built.






This is the final look of our living room...

As I said before, we removed all the old metal railings from the staircases, this is what they looked like before...

And this is now...
Once the railings were removed, we placed square wood posts and painted them all white. I painted the treads of the stairs brown to match the wood floors and the rest was finished in the same clean white.






I don't have very good before and after pictures for the rest of the house, but I have my afters so here they are...

This is our main bathroom. We painted an earthy green on the walls, painted the cabinets a deep brown and refinished the floors. Updating was done to the faucet and sink, mirror and light fixture.

This is our kitchen, another huge project on our list. In here we painted the walls a butter yellow colour, replaced the counter tops and floors as well as all the hardware.

For the back splash I opted for bead board, painted in a high gloss white. There was nothing here before aside from a large plastic medicine cabinet. It was hideous!












Since we didn't have the cupboard space to spare to install a dishwasher, we went with a portable one. The tops of portable dishwashers are never pretty, so when we ordered the counters, we placed an order of the same material for our dishwasher top. It gives the illusion that it is built in as well as offering more counter space.














This is the other end of the kitchen. We have our desk and Mother Board, which can be seen here. And we have a TV hutch that was reconfigured by my father in law to be our pantry and house our microwave. This piece was actually built by his father. I made the valances and added our decor. Another room done!

Next room in the house is the dining room. The floors were redone in this area as well. We changed the lighting fixture, it was a fan, is it just me or is that not gross flying above where you eat? Yuk! Made another valance and added our gallery wall and lastly our furniture.

This is the last room in our house that I haven't previously blogged about, which if you didn't see can be seen here. This is our master, not much done here but a new paint and decor. This room is getting another makeover in the new home, not quiet done yet :)

HOME Is Where Our Story Begins

Last stop on the tour, our foyer. We continued the rust colour down from the living room and my dad put up some moulding that I painted and used as our welcome mural. A little paint, a shelf and some nik-naks, a quote and we're done!

If I am being completely honest, I think the most stress comes from all of this is fear. The unknown. Will it sell, will we have to take it off the market, will we get to build the house that I thought would only ever exist in my dreams? This all occurs as a fight in my head, the other side says "Why are you so worried, there are much bigger fish to fry than this!, at least you have a home"...then the guilt sets in. Really it's just a hot mess going on in there. I guess that's what us over thinkers get ourselves into. And just in case you were wondering, I am not going to say anything about me being an analyzing Virgo, not one peep ;)

Hope you enjoyed our tour! On to bigger and better things right?

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