Toddler Tuesday - Playing in Water

Posted By:  Stephanie

Happy Tuesday!  I hope your week has started off as a good one.  Can you believe we are SO close to the holidays?  I can't, this year went all to fast.

Yesterday I decided to take an idea that I found on Every Day Game Plan and put it into action with my girl.

First I got the largest bowl we have and put warm water in it with some dish soap.  I made it bubbly and then gave Little Lou her favorite kitchen items to play in the water.

Here she is checking out the bubbles.

She wasn't really sure about the bubbles so I tried to show her they weren't so bad by playing in the bubbles first.

That didn't work out so well.  Her favorite kitchen items ended up out of the bowl because...

she thought the bubbles were NOT COOL!

So I dumped out the bubbles and gave her some fresh water to work with.  She went for it.  At one point she was even trying to put her face in the bowl and rub water all over her face, silly girl.  Let me show you how much she enjoyed this activity...

THIS MUCH!

I don't know about most kids, but I really thought she would enjoy playing in the bubbles.  Oh well, she loved this activity anyway without them.  After playing in the water for a long time, I needed to get other things done but she didn't agree with being "all done", so I dumped out the water, dried the bowl and turned it over to let her bang on it and make noise instead.  She was okay with that.

Now go get a bowl out momma, your little one(s) wants to play in the water!

What other ideas do you have for water activities?

Portland's Largest Garage Sale and Cleaning Your Microwave

Posted By: Kristi

This weekend was relaxing and pretty uneventful for the most part. This is not something that happens very often so I took advantage of every single moment and was as lazy as possible. It felt good, real good!

There was a few hours on Saturday where I did manage to get out of the house. My Dad and I met up with Stephanie and a few others at Portland's Metropolitan Exposition Center for Portland's Largest Garage Sale. That is how it is advertised anyway.

It was a pretty large event and there were a ton of people there to check it out. In my opinion there was more junk than treasure but I did find a few things to bring home with me.

I bought an old galvanized tub that I am thinking about making into something like this.

via

I will use it as an ottoman or a dog bed (even thought I am sure those kids of mine will never sleep on it). I am also thinking about making an outdoor table out of it. I will share whatever I do end up using it for.

I also bought some brand new stuff to put in stockings but I can't tell you about those deals yet since some of the people who will be getting those gifts read this. Again, I will share later.

They were passing these out for free. I don't really need one but they are pretty cool for those who do.

I also cleaned our microwave. Usually this is a painful process but I found a helpful tip that made it much easier and it took about six minutes total. We had chili explode in our microwave recently so I was dreading cleaning it. Most of the time the mess is behind closed door (until it is time to heat something up) so it is easy to put off cleaning the microwave. But how embarrassing it is when you have guests over and they see what you've been hiding. Not cool.

This is embarrassing but I am being honest so here we go...our microwave, prior to cleaning.

Ummmm, YUCK!

For a quick fix place a microwave safe bowl filled with water in the microwave for five minutes.

The steam from the water will make it easy to remove all the nastiness from your microwave walls. Once five minutes has gone by, remove the bowl from the microwave. With a warm damp cloth wipe your microwave walls clean. This will go super fast, everything will come off easily. Remove the glass tray and clean it as well. That's it, it is that simple.

Now that I know this trick I am embarrassed that I let the mess sit there for even a day. Next time I will clean up right away.

It seems like all the projects I am currently working on are pretty big. Mostly furniture makeovers. Please bare with me, I am getting closer to having more time to work on projects and then will have a lot more to share with you.

Have a great week!

My "Must Fix" Moment - Pantry and Counter Organizing

Posted By:  Stephanie

Do you ever have a moment when you look at something in your house and think, WOW I need to fix that right now!?  I do.  This week I have had a few of those moments and my sweet girl has been such a trooper and helper through it all.  One of the moments lead to completely emptying our pantry and organizing it.  Over time it had gotten WAY out of hand.  

After some time in the kitchen with my little helper it went from this.

To this.

Those black containers are the ones that I talked about in this post.  I wasn't using them in my craft room so I decided to take advantage of them in the kitchen.

I was so happy that I was left with the lower left part of the cabinet free.  I was able to use that space for some small appliances and to store some egg containers I'm saving for a neighbor that had been sitting on the counter and on top of the microwave.  The counter and microwave were part of this "must fix" moment.  The clutter was hurting my eyes and my brain.

Just behind the plastic wrap you can see a little white thing popping up.  That is one of the grocery bags that is stored in one of my milk jug containers.  For those of you who have been reading all along since I posted about folding my grocery bags and are wondering if I still do that, the answer is YES and I LOVE it!

I'm sure from these pictures you can see what my problem was, without explanation.  Yahoo, it's fixed!  Now I just need to have a chat with Will about the cover for the plug in.  Why oh why do we not have covers on any of the kitchen plugs?  Painting has been complete for a long while now.

Little Lou (on the left) had been so helpful and didn't complain a bit much so I was so happy to be able to take her to play with her best friend at OMSI.  Deanna, this cutie's mommy, purchased a membership for the two of them so we have been able to go as guests twice now.  So fun!  

The girls were checking out the fish, I love watching them interact with each other.  Adorable.

Have you had a "must fix" moment lately that you acted on?  What was it?

Balled up sweater

Posted By: Kristi

Hi, friends! Today I am going to share with you a trick that I was taught just a couple of hours ago. Seriously, this is hot off the press new to me but I am sure some of you already know about it.

First, I must admit, Steph and I were discussing a title for this post and many of our ideas didn't sound so good. In fact, we even left this post titleless because for a while all we could think of was, "Bally Sweater" or "Sweater with Balls." Hopefully what we ended up choosing is a little more appropriate.

Anyway, time for the sharing part. Without further adieu...

I recently bought a sweater from Nordstrom Rack. I loved the sweater but after only one time of wearing it, it started to ball up a bit.

I was a bit bummed. I mean HELLO, this is a brand new sweater that I had only worn ONE TIME. Yes, it was a good deal but NOT only wear it once kind of deal!

Today, while I was at work I mentioned to one of my besties (yes, I work with one of my best gals. Lucky right?) how frustrating it was. She looked at me and said, "shave it."

WHAT?!

She replied, "take a razor and lightly shave it and the balls will disappear."

Really? East smeasy!

So of course, I just got home and ran (almost literally) to my dressing room and gave it a try.

It worked!

My friends are brilliant!

Next time your sweater is balling up, don't give up on it...give this a try! It is AWESOME!

I LOVE my friends!

Prepare Air Pop Popcorn in the Microwave! *Update - We're Guest Hosting Today!*

Posted By:  Stephanie

Surprise!  I got on today to find that we are the featured blog (Guest Host) at the Mingle With Us Blog Hop today!  Please take a moment to link up and let them know that you found the hop on 4Eighteen.  Thank you Keeping Up With Kristi, Joy in the Jumble, I Heart Crafty Things and Happy Go Lucky!

Prepare Air Pop Popcorn in the Microwave!

This is magic people, pure magic!  Are you a popcorn fan?  If so you know two things, air pop popcorn is the best, and that if you buy the microwave bag popcorn it gets expensive (not to mention the weird ingredients).  This will just change your world completely, if you are a popcorn fan, or even just eat it on occasion you know what I mean.

Now you can pop your air pop popcorn (that's a mouth full) in the microwave!

All you need is:

- Brown lunch bag

- 1/4 cup popcorn

- Air pop popcorn

- Microwave

Poor 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels into brown paper bag.

Fold the top down a couple times until it fits into your microwave.  You must fold it down at least twice to keep the heat in.

Turn the microwave on for about 1 min 50 seconds, microwaves vary.  Listen for the pops until there are about 2 seconds between each pop.  Stop the microwave immediately, popcorn will go from perfect to burnt way faster than you can blink!

1/4 cup made about two bowls worth.  This is so much less expensive and tastes SO yummy.  Once you take the popcorn out of the microwave you can season it how you like it.  I told my Granny K. about this, who is a popcorn fan for sure.  She says that she has done this now since I told her about the awesome magic trick and she loves making it this way instead of pulling out her air popper.

Speaking of Granny K...

This is Granny K. and my girl Little Lou reading a magazine together.  I just love this picture.  Please excuse the quality, it was taken with a phone and it wasn't one of those fancy smart ones, Granny K. and I don't have those spiffy phones.  We rock the cell phones old school.  = )

ENJOY!

Giveaway and Guest Post

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I'm guest posting today over at Well To Do You.  Please go over and say hi to Suz and leave her a nice comment.  Thank you!

Toddler Tuesday - Dress Up

Posted By:  Stephanie

Good morning!  Did you all survive the night with the trick or treating/treaters visiting your home?  We had a good time visiting family and Lou got some fun treats from Gramma and Auntie, lucky girl!  I was trying to get her to say "treat" on the way to see Gramma, instead she looked out the car window and started saying and pointing to the trees.  She cracks me up all. the. time!

Little Lou was a Ballerina, I was Will (this is what we call his uniform, the hat and the red shirt are his go to pieces) and he was a Navy guy.

Little Lou loved her costume, she walked around the house saying "Pretty"!  This got me thinking, about Toddler Tuesday.  Most times we put away the costumes to use the next year for another kid, instead why not keep it out and let them play dress up until the costume doesn't fit anymore?  It makes the kiddos happy and you will get much more use out of it.

If you haven't already, you should start a dress up box for your little one.  Our girl is just getting to the point where she is thinking it is fun to wear certain clothing items so we will get her collection started.  Dress up is fun for both boys and girls.

I remember going over to a friends house when I was little and they had a huge chest FULL of dress up clothes.  All 5 kids in that family would dress up all the time and when I went to their house I was happy to get in on the fun.  My favorite dress up item at our house was my flapper dress.  I loved putting that thing on a shaking around the house watching the tassels flap around.

Did you play dress up when you were little?  What was your favorite thing to dress up in?