Fall Cleaning

When your eldest baby is born the same month as Jesus and is well-loved far and wide, you tend to accumulate a lot of stuff around this time of year.  Even with a bigger house and a playroom that I pictured looking like Pottery Barn and actually looks like a Ninja Turtle lair, we just don't have space.  So every year around this time, we do a "gut job" of Alli's room.  We reorganize the organizer bins, we chastise her for not putting things back in their place all year long, we get rid of clothes that don't fit her long legs anymore, and we stealthily slip Happy Meal toys, magic wands, painted rocks, and bouncy balls into trash bags to take to Goodwill.

Sweet Ryan spends his time reorganizing every bin, tossing toys, and sneakily taking the giant bags out to the car.  I empty the closet, boss him around, refuse to get rid of anything with a horse on it, and blog about it.  He loves the entire process.

At some point, the princess herself enters the room, begins playing with toys she hasn't in years, and begs for us to take some of the toys out of the bags.  "Oh, Kitty Softpaws!  Oh, my teacup piggies!  Oh, that weird painted rock someone bought me because I cried in Destin!!"  We argue, we beg, we bargain.  We win some, we lose some.  She accumulates more stuff in December, and we gripe about it until the gut job rolls around next year.  Anyone else in this vicious cycle?

You win this time, Kitty Softpaws.  But you won't make it next year.

Pleasing Pantry

While our bellies were filled with food and our hearts were filled with love this Thanksgiving, our pantry was filled with food, dishes, tablecloths, spices, and cookware.  With five adults rummaging through making various dishes, our normally orderly pantry took quite the beating.  It's taken me about a week of staring at it to decide something had to be done.

I had already starting the cleaning out process in the picture above, but you get an idea of the junkiness level we are talking about.  OCD mama's nightmare!!

Enter me - and about 30 minutes later, check out the results!

Deep breaths, everyone.  Isn't that better?

Resolved and Ready to Rock

It's been a while since I've blogged, my friends.  What a whirlwind year 2011 was - good and bad, and I'm ready to put it behind me and see what 2012 has in store.

One of my many resolutions for 2012 is to (yes, lose weight but also...) get back to doing the things I love in my personal life.  Including slowing down to savor special moments with my little one, taking more pictures, and blogging about it so I remember it all.  Here are a few shots of Alli at a swimming party she had today.  Yes, a swimming party in January.  She was pumped.

Another resolution Ryan and I made together was to declutter our home (and therefore our lives? We can only hope).  We're tackling one room per weekend, and this weekend just happened to be the most daunting of all - Alli's room.  YIKES!!  Our little lady has a lot of people who love her, and she's pretty convincing, so girl got toys.  It was time, post-Christmas and 7th birthday, to box up several and give away some.

On our Cotton Bowl vacation, we got a chance to go to Ikea.  Wow.  I'll save that blog for another time, but I was thrilled and overwhelmed all at once!  While there, we picked up some additional storage and a new desk for Alli.  I had been scouring Craigslist for a desk I could update, to no avail, so the quick and cheap fix of an Ikea desk seemed perfect.

The storage options were amazing.  We couldn't help but stock up on some extras there.  And the cheap frames and shelves?  Oh how I wish we had one closer!

She now has her own little artist corner.  And check out that creative, space saving solution for stuffed animals.  I think my stress level has dropped significantly.  Thanks, Ikea!!

And thanks to swimming in January as well.  Someone is worn out.