Archives for 2011

Bathroom Cabinet and New Bunk Beds

June 22, 2011 by Amy

Well FINALLY we got our bathroom cabinets the day before I got back from Vegas. I am just ecstatic with them! They are exactly what I wanted

If you remember, these were my inspiration pictures:

From HGTV; Designer Lina Khatib

I’m very happy with how it turned out.

I just love how the lights are everywhere with all the glass and mirror in the room!

And while we’re at it, I’ll show you the girls’ room so far. I finally found a set of bunk beds on Craigslist and we went Sunday night to get them. The girls adore them but do NOT adore sleeping on the top bunk. Both have insisted it would be their turn on top the previous two nights and yet, they both end up on the bottom *twin* bunk together. Oh well, I’m going to take it while I can. Soon enough their bedrooms won’t be far enough apart.

The room is certainly not done, just the basics. I actually want to move the side table and get Scott to build the girls lockers so they can put their jackets, book bags and purses in it. They are also begging for a white board on that large green space in the last picture. Did you know white boards aren’t cheap?? Even the paint to do it yourself is $75 at Lowe’s!

All in all VERY happy with where we are. Still so much work to do, but we’re having final inspection on the addition on Friday. Wish us luck!

Ten Time-Saving Tips for Moms

June 22, 2011 by Amy 3 Comments

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Lexi asleep with my work laptop (and Starbucks Frappuccino) nearby

Since I’ve gone full-time at work, it’s been really difficult to fit in everything I want to do. In fact, some things have completely fallen off the list altogether. But I’ve learned a few things over the years as a mom, and especially the past few months, to help life happen around here.

The Evening is Your Friend

As tired as you are set aside time after the kids’ bed time and before yours to get ready for the next day. Set out clothes, pack as much lunch as you can, even shower.

Freeze Your Meals

My mother will love this one but cooking and freezing ahead will be a huge time-saver, not to mention a stress-reducer.

Watch TV on DVR

Isn’t this a must? Don’t ever waste your time watching a show live. Did you know for a one hour show nearly 20 minutes are commercials? You save 30% of your time just by using a DVR. It doesn’t take much math to realize whatever the cost, it is worth it!

Or, Don’t Watch TV

Yep, I’m going there. Honestly, I do not watch TV since I started my full-time job. It saves HOURS every week and I do not miss it. Yes, you may need to wean yourself off like me. Even before I took my job, I started weeding out shows that I wasn’t fanatic about.

Run Errands Weekly

I used to run to the grocery store and bank anytime I needed. I had every lunch hour free to do whatever I want. But now, I group all my errands for a day that I work from home and run, run, run.

Use Your Drive Time

Use your commute time wisely. When commuting alone, use that time for prayer or listening to an audio book that you don’t otherwise have time to read. When commuting as a family, use that time for good family chatting or testing of skills like multiplication.

Put Your Kids to Work

Do not underestimate what your kids can help out with. My kids LOVE to help with laundry and yes, even clean the toilet. It saves you time and helps them learn tasks.

Automate Your Bills and Go Paperless

This is a no-brainer for me but making your payments automatically will save you time from keeping your eye on the due date, saves time writing the bills, not to mention the money on the checks. And while you’re at it, go paperless on all your bills and save yourself the time on opening and filing mail.

Put Your Calendar On Your Phone

It saves me so much time and headache to put all of our appointments in my phone with 2 reminders each. No longer do I have to spend head-space remembering them but I also don’t have to keep up with all the reminder cards or cleaning off the fridge or my purse of them. Plus, I don’t miss appointments.

Get Help

Maybe at one point you had it all together and could do everything but maybe, like me, a child or promotion later you just don’t have the time to get it all done. Don’t be afraid to ask for help. I have no shame in someone else cleaning my house. I’m exhilarated that my Mom cleaned out my fridge while we were on vacation. Paid or not, welcome help. You don’t have to do it all. Let me repeat, you don’t have to do it all.

So, busy people, what else am I missing? I would love more tips on saving time as a mom!

I wrote this blog post while participating in the SocialMoms and Starbucks blogging program, for a gift card worth $30. For more information on how you can participate, click here.

Butch’s Baked Spaghetti Casserole

June 21, 2011 by Amy 7 Comments

OK, to be fair, today’s post is not really a top 10 list. It’s the top 10 steps if you want to make Butch’s Spaghetti Casserole. Actually, it’s not “Butch’s Spaghetti Casserole” but my father-in-law is the one I learned it from so to me it is.

There’s nothing much healthy about this, but it’s one of those meals that is super easy to make and feeds a huge crowd. For father’s day, it fed 6 adults, 2 kids and we had at least 5 servings left over. If you can make spaghetti you can certainly make this!

1 – Brown 2 lbs of hamburger and cook 1 lb of noodles. There are no noodles in this picture but, you know, I’m not Pioneer Woman!

2 – When the meat is done, mix in 2 jars of Prego Traditional spaghetti sauce. So ok, you could use a different kind. Or not. It really is the best.

3 – While the noodles finish, let the sauce simmer and put in two cans of Cream of Mushroom into a 9×13 baking dish. And if you don’t have a Pampered Chef stone one, find one RIGHT NOW.

4 – Drain the noodles. Yes, I really took a picture of that.

5 – Dump the noodles on top of the cream of mushroom in the baking dish

6 – Stir the noodles and soup and flatten out a tad.

7 – Pour the meat sauce that’s been simmering on top. No need to stir a thing.

8 – Sprinkle about 2 cups of shredded cheese on top. Freshly graded!

9 – Cook on 350 for about 25 minutes or until the cheese is melted and the sauce begins to bubble on the side.

10 – Stick some garlic toast in the oven!

Be sure to give each serving a little stir and you’ll have some creamy spaghetti goodness! Throw it on top a piece of garlic toast for a few bites. Mmmm….

Find more Top 10 posts over at ohamanda.com

Back from Vacation

June 20, 2011 by Amy 2 Comments

How do I put two weeks worth of a visits to Vegas, Disney and an island stay in one post? Well, I don’t. I didn’t really mean to make all two weeks of our summer vacation into a big blog break. In fact, I thought without work and any real schedule to follow that I would have tons of time to do what I love but it turns out we were always busy doing something, even if it was doing nothing beside some sort of body of water.

So I just wanted to say hi and say that we’re back. And I can’t help it, I’ll leave you with some favorite moments in pictures.

Finally seeing Vegas for myself (and realizing it’s not for me)

Revisiting our Honeymoon Island

Eating at that little shack down the pier

Watching the magic on Lexi’s face seeing the princesses at Disney for the first time this year.

Watching Scott cackle at turning at teacup into a tornado

Having a little buddy all week when he normally is obsessed with Scott

Being with my family

And this generally being my life for a week

Weekend Recap

June 6, 2011 by Amy 1 Comment

A pretty busy weekend here! We started out watching Lexi test for her purple belt. She did great and I can’t wait to see her in that purple belt!

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Friday evening the girls had a sleepover so Scott and I went for a late dinner at Beef and Bottle with a recent LivingSocial deal. The food was awesome but to be completely frank all I could think about was all the Compassion posts I read last week and how our one meal, even with a coupon, could have sponsored a child for a month. 2011-06-04

Right or wrong, it felt good then to wake up and volunteer with my work’s Day of Caring over at the Plant a Row garden at the Dairy Barn. A master gardener in the area started this entire garden for charity. We painted the shed, picked carrots, potatoes, green beans, squash and radishes as well as planted some pole beans. The men also built new boxes. All the food gets donated to a local church and mostly gets dispersed to senior citizens as well as a local program called Meals on Wheels. If you are in the area I highly recommend getting a group and going over. It was so fun for the kids. You would have thought the kids had struck gold when they were pulling up the carrots and potatoes. We were only there for 2 hours but were able to shave off 2 weeks of work for the owner.

Scott got his Highway Patrol corner in the closet completed with his framed picture. I think it looks great.

Sunday we went church and then I was in complete packing mode. I did laundry all day, packed and then rested at the pool in between. Very nice relaxing day with the kids before I head out to Vegas today. In case you missed it, Mom and Heather won two trips to Vegas with a guest. Free airfare, lodging at the Bellagio and a ticket to Cirque de Soleil. I certainly could not turn down the offer as I’ve never been.

I didn’t feel comfortable yet taking the kids to Vegas so Scott was awesome enough to take a few days off and play Mr. Mom. My only comfort is that when I get back we are taking off together for a week to Florida. What a week this will be.

Neither Heather nor I are taking laptops so I’m not sure how much blogging I’ll be doing while I’m gone. If not much, be sure to follow me on Twitter as I’ll be tweeting my way through the trip!

Klout Says

June 2, 2011 by Amy 1 Comment

So these are the things Klout says I talk about on Twitter and Facebook. So I’m just thinking. If I mesh all of these together it basically looks like this: get a bunch of moms together at a Starbucks to watch American Idol and discuss our faith and then blog about it. Genius!

Lexi Graduates Kindergarten and Emma Finishes Year 3

June 2, 2011 by Amy 6 Comments

She stood in a checked pink dress and watched the flat iron brush through her hair in the mirror. She’s taller than she was back in August. And I remember brushing the flat iron through her hair back then while she stood in another pink dress. Brand new shoes. Depending on her big sister to help her navigate this new place. Since then she’s lost her baby face. Lost a few teeth too. But she’s gained a lot of confidence. Reading skills. Friends. A favorite teacher. A love of school. And today, a graduation certificate to commemorate a beautiful year of Kindergarten. I sincerely could not have asked for a better teacher, classmates or school. It’s been nothing short of miraculous answer to prayer.

And for the record, MawMaw and PawPaw had to scoot out before we could get pictures. They definitely were there to support you, Lexi-bug.

And Miss Emma finished 2nd grade. After Lexi’s graduation, we called her out of class to meet us at the office but decided to go get a picture of her and her teacher. A not-so little girl was already half-way down the hall. “Sup, Alex,” she called out to a passing classmate. She giggled after he passed and said, “Sup. I just wanted to say that.” More giggling. How did she get so confident? Gone was the hesitant little girl I left with half my heart in Kindergarten almost 3 years ago. We snapped a picture of her and her teacher in the classroom. Once again, a wonderful answer to prayer.

But this is the year of friends for Emma. Definitely some strong friendship. Maybe a little drama. But mostly fun.

And with that, we say goodbye to school…

…and hello to summer.

Blinds

June 1, 2011 by Amy 3 Comments

Well it’s looking like no cabinet or mirror until first of next week. In the meantime, we have ordered and installed our custom blinds!

If you didn’t know, my mom owns a custom blinds and window treatments business, Diana’s Blinds and Designs. We are lucky to get such wonderful Hunter Douglas blinds at great prices. Let me show you what cool things we got for the addition.

The bathroom and closet both face the road so we wanted those two rooms to match. We decided on the bronze metal 2” blinds (Natural Elements line) that I LOVE. They go perfectly with all the dark wood in the closet and really ties in the dark color into the toilet room. I love that the bronze gives it a little bling.

In the bedroom, our number 1 requirement was that the blinds were black-out. When Scott has to sleep during the day, it’s really hard when the sun comes up in our corner of the house. The other thing we wanted was top-down bottom-up. This is great for bedrooms where you want privacy but you also want the blinds open. We went with a Duette Honeycomb. Let me know show you how it works.

Here the blinds are shut. You can see that not a peep of light is coming through the blind, just a little around the edges. I had to turn the lights on just to get a decent picture.

You can also pull them up like traditional blinds. You can still see how much light it’s blocking.

Or, here are the tops down. This is my favorite and usually how I set the blinds for the day. Plenty of light is coming in but no one sees us walking around.

And if you’re feeling funky, you can do both:

I didn’t picture it but of course, you can pull the blind all the way to the top, exposing the entire window. The other thing I love is that these have NO CORDS. Just a tab on the headers and up and down it goes!

Aren’t they great?

We have matching ones on the French doors although they are not top-down bottom-up. My blind lady assured me we did not want them that way. So these get yanked up all the way to the top every day and I really do love all the light streaming in. In fact, it’s why I insisted on French doors anyway. But the black-out really helps Scott when he needs to sleep.

We love all of them. I think they were the perfect fit for us. The cool thing is there are HUNDREDS of options and combinations. You probably don’t realize how many things you have to pick from. The great thing about Hunter Douglas is their personalized service (free consultation!), installation and a guarantee that doesn’t compare to any store-bought blind. Seriously, by the time you replace that metal mini-blind from Home Depot a few times, you could have had an awesome Hunter Douglas one the whole time!

Ok, Mom, how’d I do? LOL If you’re in the area, definitely give them a call or hit them up on Facebook. Mom seriously loves to help people find the perfect window covering to finish a room. Speaking of, Mom, we need to talk panels!