Who needs it?...

One of my first areas of the Who needs it challenge was to clean out our dining room cupboard. We live in a small house and don't have a study, basement, attic or any real place to store anything. So this cupboard is the one place where we can store things inside the house.

Before:

After:

I can't believe how many boxes for old phones and even our W.ii was saved in this cupboard. What was left over was all our board games, appliances that don't fit in our kitchen, car DVD, BBQ tray, first-aid kits, electrical cords and a box I've filled with the boys birthday cards and drawings. 

Even though I kept most of the things in the cupboard (I still filled a rubbish bag full of crap), I feel so much better for cleaning it out and finishing the task. I had been putting it off for so long because I didn't know what I wanted to do with the things stored in there. I even managed to clean out one of my kitchen cupboards that I had been meaning to so I could keep my recipe books somewhere! Sorry I didn't take a before photo, just imagine a cupboard filled with stubby coolers. 

After:

 

If you want to get involved with the Who Needs It, visit Veggie Sausages!

The Monday Snapshot...

Today was the first day of full-time daycare for the boys. I go back to work next week. I totally forgot to get a photo of them before I dropped them off, so I tried to get one after we got home. As you can see, I wasn't very successful!

Wordless Wednesday - Jumping Castle Edition...

Who needs it...?

Part of my plans for 2014, were to spruce up our house and get organised (and stay organised). Since posting my commitments, SRB from Veggie Sausages has started an awesome incentive for us all to start de-cluttering our lives, and start getting our space back. Who needs it? We probably all have an area (or several) in our lives that needs a clean out and reorganise. This is the place to start. 

My list of areas to clean out are as follows:

Dining room cupboard

Linen cupboard

Kitchen cupboards

Bathroom cupboard

Under the bed

Kids cupboards

 

To start off I want to get the dining room cupboard and kids cupboards cleaned out before I head back to work (28 January). This is the dining room cupboard as it stands today:

There is a heap of old applicances, board games and boxes sitting in there waiting for me to clean them out. Hopefully I'll be able to reclaim some of this space back.

It's hard to work out where to start since a lot of the rooms need to be done at the same time. Like, some of the appliances from this cupboard, could go into the kitchen cupboards once they are cleaned out but I need to clean the kitchen cupboards out first. Oh well, if at least we can start then I can work out those minor details later. The key step is to start with an area and finish it. One bite of the elephant at a time!

If you would like to join the crusade to clean out, please following this link to head over to Veggie Sausages! 

http://veggiesausages.wordpress.com/2014/01/07/who-needs-it-challenge-1/#comments

Mum's say the darndest things...

Usually it's the funny things that kids say that makes us laugh. But I've found myself saying stupid things to my kids lately to either explain something (I can't be the only one who forgets word she wants while talking) or just trying to stop the madness sometimes. 

"James stop being so entertaining, I'm trying to change your brother" 

Babies rolling on change mats just get worse when you add an entertaining toddler. 

Or I make up songs about how cute they are. I sing this to the tune of Copacabana by Barry Manilow. 

Patchy

You are a small guy

But you so cute and so soft

Oh the Patch

He is cutest

Cute as a button 

And just so delicious

He's the cutest 

Little guy around

So soft and cute

Does anyone else do this to keep themselves entertained or is it just me?

Ten months...

Dear Patchy

We finally have a tooth and it looks like the second one is just under your gums ready to push through too. You handled the teething business pretty well and I'm not sure if we've just been blessed with good tethers or there is something to the Amber braclets you and James wear.

In a few days you will have your first Christmas. We've had the tree and other Christmas decorations up now since the beginning of the month and you (and James) love to watch the lights and dance along to the singing Christmas dog your Grandparents brought. I love this time of the year and now with you and James sharing in our traditions, it just makes it all that much sweeter. 

Patrick, you continue to commando crawl and pull yourself up on things. We've even had to lower your cot to the lowest setting since you had started standing up and playing with the window blinds!

You continue to be a terrific eater and will give anything a go. It's great to be able to try new foods with you as you get older. At the moment you love banana, apple, weet-bix, Vegemite toast, most mashed up veggies, yogurt, and even stone fruit! You also love to munch on chicken drumsticks and lamb cutlets! 

We were having trouble with your daytime sleeps last month. You would go down okay but would only sleep for half an hour. By the end of the day you were so tired and really cranky. So I looked at your daytime routine and tinkered a bit with your nap times in the hope this would lengthen the amount of time you were sleeping for. After a couple of weeks it seems like we have figured it out, at least for the time being! You usually wake up around 6am (or a bit later, if I'm lucky), your first nap is around 9:30 (after a book and bottle) and you are  pretty tired by this stage. You sleep until 10:30. Then your second nap is after lunch, more books and another bottle and then sleep at 1pm. For this nap you are usually not really that tired but you will just talk to yourself for around ten-fifteen minutes before failing asleep until 3pm. During this nap, James also has his sleep, which means Mumma gets a whole hour to herself (if she's lucky) to have lunch, start dinner, clean up and sometimes even do a bit of reading. You have dinner by 5:15pm (any later and you are getting too tired to sit for dinner) and you and your brother are in bed by 7pm. 

Keep going strong little man, looking forward to your first Christmas!

Love always

Your Mumma xxxooo

2014...

After reading some of the new year resolutions for 2014, I thought I would list a few things I would like to work on this year. 

Spend time enjoying our family - I head back to work at the end of January and I'm scared about how much time we will get to spend as a family. So we need to get the most out of the time we spend as a family, while we are together. 

Revamp the house - at the end of 2013 we started revamping the house to make it more "our home" and less "this is the place we have all our shit". I wanted to hang the professional photos we got done when Patrick was born and also hang some of the photos we have of the travelling we've done. I also wanted to declutter my kitchen and linen cupboard as well as purging our wardrobes.  I want this revamping to continue into the new year. I have plenty of ideas to make our house somewhere we are comfortable in but also proud to show off!

Revamp myself - for my birthday this year BJ surprised me with a $500 gift voucher at one our local shopping centres, so I could spend some money on clothes. Since breastfeeding takes away alot of your fashion choices, I wanted to stop nursing before spending the voucher. Luckily I have twelve months from August to spend the voucher and it doesn't have to be spent all at once! I've already used a little on a couple of new dresses and shoes and I want to continue to revamp my clothes (as much as I can afford, at least) but also start to get regular hair cuts again and even cut my hair short again?!?

I also need to continue to excerise even after I head back to work. This is going to be tough. I start work at 7:30am and finish at 3:30pm. We generally eat dinner at 5-5:30pm and then the kids are in bed by 7:00pm. Which means the only times I get to excerise is before I go to work, which means I need to get up at 5am or 5:30am, in order to excerise and get home to get us all ready and out the door by 7:00am. Or go after the kids are in bed, in the dark. I usually walk around the block, so any ideas are appreciated!

Get organised - as I mentioned with me starting back at work this month, dinner times and weekends will be sacred. So there are a few things I want to do to make sure I can spend as much time with my little guys when I'm at home. 

Get my meal plan finished and start using it! Have all the ingredients in the house for all the meals we will have for the week (hopefully fortnight), so I don't have to run to the store to get last minute forgotten ingredients. 

Hire a cleaner to come in once a fortnight. We can afford to hire someone to come in and clean the floors, bathroom and do some dusting and general cleaning. So now I just need to get some recommendations and hire someone!

Stay organised - do these things and stick to them!

I hope you all had a wonderful festive season and an enjoyable start to 2014! Here are a couple of photos of my boys on Christmas Day.