Binkies and Briefcases

Hope you all had a great Easter Holiday! Ours was great but went by fast!

Eddie’s mom was here with me last week and it was so nice to have the help. We are caught up on laundry and dishes for the first time since….um, maybe ever.

We dyed eggs, I got to run a few errands, and we had a lot of fun. Now we’re back to the daily grind (Come back, Nana!) but my sister will be taking my older kids to see the Lorax movie this afternoon so I’m hoping to get some more stuff accomplished.

We just seem to get so busy this time of year. We spent all day Saturday cutting our grass at the new land and planting some baby trees from the Arbor Day Foundation, 2.4 acres sure takes a while to mow! Especially when everyone, including mommy, insists on having a turn on the new tractor.

We spend Easter doing a lot of running around. We were disappointed that we couldn’t make it to the Easter service at our church because we were traveling to see family, but we did an egg hunt with our Resurrection eggs and went over the story a few times. The kids were really into those eggs this year!

Then they got to have 2 more egg hunts later in the day. We also finally took a picture of the five of us together.

We stopped by my dad’s house, my mom’s house, and spent time with Eddie’s family at his Uncle’s. The weather was perfect and I hope the kids made some nice memories. I loved having the girls in matching dresses for the first time.

I might not be blogging much, but I hope I’ll remember to track our progress. We are in the permitting and financing stage of building the new house.

I’m back to work part-time.

I have a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow’s end of the year brunch for our Mom N Me group.

Nicholas is having all kinds of tests for his kindergarten placement this week and will be graduating out of play therapy in May. (Yay for his progress and our checkbook!)

The kids seem to be going on 8 million field trips for school.

My friend Lauren & I will be surprising Abby with a trip to the American Girl Store and possibly a Peter Rabbit Tea Party at the Ritz-Carton for her birthday! (Nicholas got to play a real round of golf with Daddy for his birthday)

We will also be planting our veggie garden this month.

Is spring a busy time for your family?

Cheri is having “Ger ‘er done” week over on her blog and encouraging moms to get stuff done around their house that they’ve been putting off for a while.
Well, my house still looks like a pig stye (even though we’ve cleaned it 3 times since Saturday) but we did get some things done this week.

Most importantly…

• Throw the kids’ party and also…
• Clean the baseboards, steps, and landing in the foyer
• Sort through hand me down bins and buy spring/summer clothes for the kids
• Meet with a different construction company for a comparison quote on the house
• Use coupons that have been cluttering the kitchen to score 2 packs of free crayons at Target
• Buy 3 composition books and start a “letters from mommy” book for each child
• Take Penny’s 3 month photo
• Put the Easter eggs together for the preschool egg hunt
• Schedule a date night (We went to see Hunger Games on Tuesday)
• Enter all the recipes into the computer for the Mom N Me cookbook
• We bought a riding mower so Eddie can start cutting the grass at out land. (and then we went back again 4 days later for a price adjustment because they starting giving away a free cart and free delivery for buying that mower)
• Sort the mountain of clean laundry that has taken over our master bedroom (but now it’s back again, the monster cannot be tamed)
• Make some more calls about finally getting the tax clearances for the business I closed 2 years ago.
• Work one night this week (I’m trying to stay on the schedule teaching parenting classes at least 1 night a week now to contribute a little bit more to our finances, next week I’ll start 2 nights a week for the month of April.)
• Prepare & give a speech on discipline for our Mom N Me group
• Do ALL of the dishes. (I think that is actually the first time I’ve been caught up since Penny was born. I started washing stuff by hand if it didn’t fit in the dish washer instead of leaving it for the next load.) I even washed 2 of my vases and the cup we use to shampoo little heads in the bathtub.
• Find Easter outfits
• Get my brother’s birthday gift (My baby brother is turning 16!)
• Get back in my pre-baby jeans (Although I still have a lovely little stretch-marked muffin top. Sigh. This body has had two children, this body has had 2 children, say it with me…)
• Plus we planted a little container garden for each of the older kids with the radish & lettuce seeds my Aunt Chotts sent for the first day of spring. Even though that was technically last week, I’m still counting it because we’ve been caring for them and watching them sprout.

Looking at it in a long list like that feels pretty good. I guess I got more done than I thought.

This week I’m hoping to:

• Dig out the Easter decorations and buy stuff for baskets
• Get the windows washed (I’m really not sure why I bother),
• Take a bunch of maternity clothes to a friend
• Give the dog a bath
• Get some more storage bins and tame our master closet and/or my sewing stuff

I’m trying to keep the goals down to 5, so I can do one each week day, but my MIL is coming on Wednesday to stay with us for a few days, so I hope maybe I can do some major de-cluttering while she’s here to keep an eye on the baby. Maybe list some stuff on Craigslist for my Disney fund (I’m trying to come up with $3,000 over the next year and a half so we can take a Disney vacation without touching any of Eddie’s salary.)

Also maybe sleep. I’ve only had 1 actual night of sleep in the past few months and that was only because I was doing a treatment for PUPPP (It’s gross, don’t Google it. Or maybe do, but only if you are close to your last trimester, just in case) so it wasn’t exactly pleasant. I’m so grateful to be able to breastfeed this time around, but I sooooo miss being able to take turns with a bottle fed baby at night.

Sorry for my rambling, mostly this is just a giant note to myself, but thanks for reading anyway.

What is on the list f things you have been meaning to get done?

So…normally (with the exception of children’s books and board games) I am like the opposite of a hoarder. I’m a purger. I like to giveaway tons of clothes several times a year, have yard sales, throw old junk away, etc.

But I do have one collection that’s getting slightly out of hand, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I love them. They are amazing. They are the best dishes ever.

Yes. I’m obsessed with dishes.

It’s a product sold on QVC (I’m not a huge QVC shopper, except for this brand and 2 Cottage Farms plants) called Temp-Tations. It’s affordable, hand painted stoneware that’s oven safe to 500 degrees & freezer, microwave, and dishwasher safe. Plus pretty much all of the bakeware comes with baskets, glass trivets, and plastic storage lids. I am in no way being compensated for this post (although I wouldn’t mind a few free pieces if you’d care to send them, Tara.)

I ordered a few new products the other day and Eddie was like “How much of that stuff do you already have?” Ummm…crickets. I have no idea. So I decided to take inventory.

Wanna see? So far I have all of the following. I mostly collect the black, but now I love the brand new cream color, so….. I also have some yellow & confetti pieces & one magnolia & some heritage. I’ve only ever had to return one piece because it arrived broken, but it was replaced right away.

All of these images are from qvc, some of the products are retired so you can’t get them anymore sorry.

Here we go…

I have this set in black

And this set in black
and this guy in yellow (to which Eddie may or may not have come home and said something along the lines of, “Did you really just pay money for a huge c**k and then expose it to the children?” Sometimes we revert back to 12-year-olds.) PS. Even though I’m not that into the rooster motif, this piece is a really good size and it’s less than 20 bucks right now, so it’s a great item to test run.
and I have these guys in black
and this in confetti

and two of these, one black and one yellow
and this guy in black
and these
and these in black (from the PA outlet, woot woot)

this tray in green (one of my all time favorites.)
and I just ordered this in the new cream color
and I have this in black, which I LOVE (sorry it’s retired)
and these guys in blue. They remind me of my mommom because she used to always give a bluebird of happiness as a housewarming gift.
This lovely lady in yellow holds my utensils next to my stove. She’s retired too, sorry.

and I have these in yellow, also retired.
and these in confetti. I think they might be retired too.
and these bowls in a pattern I think is called heritage.
And 2 sets of this dinnerware in black.
and last but not least, I have this set (probably the one I cook in most often) in confetti.

I love them. I chipped my pitcher the other day, completely my fault, and I almost cried. We’ve been using the dinnerware as our everyday dishes for about a year and a half and so far (knock on wood) not a single one has chipped or cracked and I’ve accidentally dropped them a couple times. I’ve also replaced all of my glass baking dishes with these and nothing has ever stuck. Not one thing. Ever. You really can just clean them with a damp paper towel.

I literally mix batter or whatever I’m making for dinner right in the 9×13, bake in it, serve in it, then put the lid on (almost all of the bakeware comes with plastic lids, unless they are already covered dishes) and put it in the fridge, then it can go straight in the dishwasher. I’m totally spoiled and now it annoys me if I have more than one dish to wash from preparing dinner.

Ok, I’ll shut up now. But there, now I know how much I have. I have the bluebirds on display as more of a sentimental piece, and I’ve only used the mini oval bakers a few times, but other than that, I use all of the other stuff on a daily basis.

I highly recommend it.

And if you’d care to buy me some more I’d be ok with that too. In the new cream color, please.