Valentine's Day

So a little secret, Ben and I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. Instead it is an expectation to do little things for each other throughout the year!

Instead of doing something special for each other on one specific day we do something special for each other ALL THE TIME! 

This can be little things... cleaning up after the other person, surprising each other with dinner, buying each other chocolate, and leaving little love notes around the house.. and let's not forget about our penguin who still can be found in various places around the house. 

This year was a special year. When you spend time with two young girls it is hard to not get a little excited for Valentine's. We were lucky to spend a morning with Addison and Erin a few days before Valentine's.

Together we made a few Valentine's Day decorations to put up at their house to surprise their Mom and Dad. 

The Saturday before Valentine's Day was our day to create!

Then with some help from Ca (me!) the decorations were put up in time to surprise their parents for Valentine's Day. Ben and I babysat so their parents (Lauren and Eric) could spend some quality time together! 

We made heart garland.

And a special project making a heart with their handprints. 

The girls colored the hearts! 

Ben and his Valentine, Erin.

Me and my Valentine, Addison!

Our special Valentine treat, chocolate bread with chocolate chunks and cherries! Mmmmm!

OH: Week Five and Six

We've had a few busy weeks including a weekend that was so busy it didn't even feel like a weekend! 
The last two challenges to 52 Weeks to a More Organized Home were simple for our family. Yes, we could have made them more of a challenge but for where we are at in our lives, what we did is appropriate. 

Organize Your Home: Week 5

Create A Home Recycling Center

The main challenge here was to research your city's recycling policies and begin recycling in your home. Since we already recycle we just took things a step up.

Before:

Using a paperbag for our recycling.

After: (warning the change is drastic!)

WHOA! Look at the difference once $5 purchase can do! 

But really there is more than meets the eye.

Steps I completed for this challenge:

1. Clear out area.

2. Clean floors and wall (Ben likes to throw food in the general direction of the trash and sometimes uses the wall as a backboard!)

3. Empty all containers.

4.Wash out containers, inside and out.

5. Put everything back.

6. Replace the paperbag with a more durable container. 

Optional: Now if I had a Cricut or Silhouette I would cut vinyl to make these awesome decals from Picnik. 

The green bucket used to be our compost bucket but it now holds the potatoes from our garden. 

Organize Your Home: Week 6

Organize Your Coupons

This was an easy one for us. I just went through our coupons and got rid of the expired ones or ones I knew we would use. I only keep a few but do look online occasionally if we are going to a specialty store (some place other than Meijer). So nothing changed here. 

I clip out coupons and stick them on a clip on our fridge. Ta-Da! 

OH: Week Four

Organize Your Home: Week 4

Organize Recipes and Cookbooks

This week's challenge did not take a lot of time. This was a great challenge for this week because I didn't have a lot of time this week and barely found time to squeeze this challenge in.


A few years ago I made a recipe binder. Since then have printed off recipes and have done a fairly good job of keeping things organized. Since moving into our apartment in July are once organized recipe area got a little out of hand. This is what the recipe area looked like before I started the challenge.


With this challenge it was important to get rid of recipes. With places like pinterest.com and  foodgawker.com it is very easy to find new recipes. If I hadn't made the recipe yet I really considered if it was worth keeping. My cooking style has changed so I got rid of recipes that included canned items or other ingredients that I do not use.

So not terrible but not organized... 

I put recipes here until I have time to file them. 

Steps I completed for this weeks challenge:

1. Pull out all the recipe books.

2. Clean shelf.

3. Empty previously made binder and put all the recipes floating around the cabinet into one pile.

4. Go through recipes. Be honest with yourself about the recipes you will actually make. 

5. Recycle recipes you haven't made or ones that you know you can find quickly online. 

 5. Organize recipes into categories that makes sense for you and your family. My main categories were appetizers, salad, soup, chicken, main dishes, drinks, desserts (separated further by cookies, cakes, summer/ice cream based, muffins, fruit based (cobblers), etc.) and winter desserts. 

6. Hole punch ALL recipes including recipe cards. 

7. And finally put everything together! Before I did not have my recipe cards in the binder which led me to forget about some recipes. 

8. Take a moment to enjoy the progress!

9. Go through recipe books and donate what you have not/will not use.

10. Put everything back sorted from tallest to smallest. 

11. Leave room to grow. 

A cork board and recipe folder to store recipes until they can be organized into the recipe binder. 

There you have it! An organized recipe area!