Are You a Morning Person?

Source

 One of the blogs that I subscribe to is Money Saving Mom. If you are looking to save money (and who isn't!?!) I highly suggest Crystals' site. She has everything from weekly store deals (with coupon matchups), frugal (and yummy) recipes (a lot of which are freezer friendly!), lots of info about freebies you can sign up for and tons of other things! Her site is super inspiring for those who want to learn how to spend less and save more. She has an ongoing series called "We Paid Cash" that will blow your socks off! To see the different ways that people have set aside money to pay cash for big items (everything from a new TV to cars and even houses!!) is really inspiring. She is a big fan of Dave Ramsey and I got turned on to him and his plan through her site. But Crystal isn't just an amazing home economist. She is inspiring in other ways too. She is the uber-queen of goal setting. She sets yearly, monthly, weekly, even daily goals. Oh to be that person! I really would love it! And she's not neurotic about it! One of Crystal's biggest things that she talks about is making sure that you are giving yourself grace in your life. We often extend grace to others very easily, but boy are we hard on ourselves! She sets her goals and if she doesn't cross everything off that's OK! She lets it go and/or carries it over to the next day/week/month and that's that! Oh to be that person! lol

A while ago Crystal had a Make the Most of Your Mornings Challenge. I didn't participate at the time because, well, I had a newborn! And was averaging 2 hours of uninterrupted sleep at a time. I was tired in the morning and the last thing I wanted to do was to try and be productive!! But, now our 7 month old is regularly sleeping through the night and as of next week Steven is off his crazy 2nd shift and back to 8:30 to 5 (YIP YIP YIPPY!!!). That means a few things for me, but the biggest is this: the hours I spend in the morning checking email, emptying my Google Reader, checking on Facebook, and maybe "swinging" by Pinterest (yeah, we all know how well that works out! lol) while lingering over my coffee have to end. Right now I tend to take my time in the mornings because I know that Steven won't be home til almost 9 most nights. (plus if he's still in bed or has gotten up earlier and then gone to take a nap with the baby before he has to leave, I don't feel like I really need to start my day yet.) This means that I have all afternoon and evening to get things done. With him being off at 5 I'll need my to do list to be finished by early afternoon so I can have dinner started. (Right now we have dinner, I clean up and then I do some more stuff before it's time to get the kids ready for bed. Then I either climb in bed too or do some more stuff til he gets home.)

What I have realized is that I don't make the most of my mornings. In fact, the morning hours are completely wasted around here! And a big reason is me just being lazy! I also hate mornings! Always have! But I need to learn to embrace the morning, make the most of it and get things done! So even though Crystal's challenge is officially over I'm going to take it for myself. If you want to join in follow the link above. It will take you to the main page of the challenge that has each day linked to it. I'll post here each week to let you know how things went for me (It's a 3 week challenge) Day 1 on her plan really just started with making the commitment to change your mornings and recognize what makes them unproductive. I've done that so check! lol Day 2 is realizing that your morning starts the night before so I'll be looking at my evening tonight and see what I can do to make my mornings run smoother.

How do you do with mornings? Are you a total morning person who greets the day and starts off running? Or are you an evening person who'd rather do your work later on after kids are in bed while watching your favorite shows? Or do you spread everything out equally all day long? I'd love to know!

31 Day Organization Challenge

***Warning: Lots of pictures ahead!***

One thing I talk about a lot on the blog is my never ending quest to get organized. And I feel like I'm getting a handle on things, one room, one drawer at a time. I follow several organization blogs and get tons of inspiration from these uber-organized women. They are amazing and I want to be just like them when I grow up :-)

One of the sites I've been following for years is I'm An Organizing Junkie. This is also where I take part in Menu Plan Monday (except for like the last 3 weeks!! Slacker!!! UGH!!) For the month of March Laura is hosting a 31 Day Organization Challenge. The challenge is to choose one room in your home and spend the next 31 days organizing it. Well, I've been kind of organizing every room in the house at once so I thought maybe it would be a good idea to step back and use her challenge to focus on the one room in the house that has been majorly neglected for the last 5 years: the Master suite. I've always dreamed of the perfectly organized and decorated master suite. A room with zero chaos, zero clutter, lots of style and the perfect relaxation oasis. I've yet to accomplish that here. We've spent so much time and effort on the rest of the house (kids rooms especially) that our room just gets ignored. Well, not anymore. This month I am focusing on purging, cleaning, organizing AND decorating our Master suite. This includes our bedroom, our bathroom and our walk in closet. 

To keep it real Laura has set a linky on her site where people can link up before pictures of their space if they want to. Just to be clear, posting before pictures now is not a requirement of taking part in this challenge, but you will have to show them in your big reveal so I thought, "Why not? I'll have to show them at some point anyway!". And just so you can see how much work I have to do to get this room in tip top, luxury hotel shape (Yeah, I wish!!!) I thought you should see what I'm starting with! And because I know some of you would never believe it unless you see it! (Gail, don't go into convulsions OK!?!?! lol) 

Clockwise from the door:

Steven's dresser. Looks OK until you open that top drawer!

Ahhh!!!!

The bags on top of that Rubbermaid container are going to an organization in Cincinnati called Dress for Success. Inside the container are some infant clothes for Steven's cousin. So that stuff will disappear very quickly.

The top drawer of Steven's bedside table. The bottom drawer holds his PJs.

Hello! You aren't clutter! Look! The bed got made that morning! SCORE!!!

My bedside table.

Inside the top drawer.

Inside the bottom drawer.

Our Prayer Altar

This box holds memorabilia for the kids from school. It's now so full I'm stacking thins on top :-(  Time to purge!!

Shoes...went through these the afternoon I took these pictures. Threw away a few. Donated a few. Set some aside for Micah and Eli.

Winter clothes needing to be boxed up. They will get taken to the consignment shop this winter. (Kitty photo bomb!)

Hi Monkey!

Spring/Summer clothes to be delivered to the consignment shop. They will be taken in on Saturday.

Behind the bathroom door. The baby's bouncy seat is in there for when we need to hop in the shower. Obviously our dirty clothes hamper and a miscellaneous bag full of PSR stuff that needs to either be thrown out or filed.

My dresser. I need a curio cabinet to hold my egg collection which I started when I was 13.

Our TV stand. Lots and lots of crap on here. The bags by the door were dropped off at Goodwill that afternoon. I'm not sure what that pile is on the other side of the door. Probably a lot of crap that needs to be thrown away, shredded or filed.

Another look at the crap on the TV stand.

So that's the bedroom. A quick look at the bathroom since it's not that big. But you'll notice we have almost ZERO storage space in our bathroom. We "upgraded" to have a vanity and only one sink. As you'll see the mirror (and only plug in the bathroom) was over the sink so the vanity area was pointless. That also meant we also only have one cabinet! And apparently having a medicine cabinet is now considered an upgrade (what?!?!) so we had to put that in after we moved in. But as you can see my tries to organize the space with Rubbermaid drawers is dying!

View from the door.

My pointless vanity area and our Rubbermaid drawers that are so not organized! Hello cluttered counter top!!

The cabinet! Yea, that crap makes me crazy!!

The medicine cabinet. We have a love/hate relationship!

The windowsill above my large soaker tub. Hello more clutter!!

And this is where things get totally out of control...the walk-in closet. Our closet is HUGE! I mean it takes up the half the length of the house! It is narrow but it is long! And it is so builders grade impractical! I swear these plans are drawn up by men. These closets they put in these spaces are so stupid. Wire shelves going almost the entire length of both walls. That's it! Drives me nuts! We have big plans for this closet one day, but for now I have to figure out how to make these stupid wire shelves work for us, until the day I get my California Closet knock off!! :-)  If you are claustrophobic or can't stand utterly disgusting and cluttered spaces you might just want to skip to the end. You have been warned!! I can't even give you a play by play of these next pictures. It upsets me too much to even go there! So I'll be back at the end.

Whew! So I realize that a good chunk of the mess in there is from plain laziness! Shoes have racks to be put on. Ties have racks to be put on. And yes that is a filing cabinet in the corner! I didn't take pictures to show you the disaster inside of that! It's all a little bit embarrassing and a lot overwhelming! But I have the next 26 days to finish up. 

I've already started. Most of the "mess" in the room is already gone, having been dropped off at thrift stores, thrown away, etc already. Just one step at a time. We can do it! And by the end of the month I think you will be shocked and amazed! (Hopefully for the better this time!) I hope this post didn't make you think any less of me! I told you I needed to work on this and it wasn't just an exaggeration as you can now see!

If you want to join the challenge head over to I'm An Organizing Junkie. You don't have to do a post like this one to participate but you will have to eventually show your before and after pictures so just rip the bandaid off! It only hurts for a while! And it's way worth it in the end! Oh and did I mention there are prizes!?!? Go check 'em out!! 

Ta-Da!

Yup! I'm great at disappearing! lol! I go through these cycles of loving blogging and hating blogging! Well, apparently last month I wasn't feeling it! Goodness! Well, now that my magic trick is done here's what you missed last month!

Valentine's Day:

Our Valentine's Day Mantel. You can read all about it here if you missed it!

The gifts that the kids gave their teachers for Valentine's Day: boxes of raspberry bar mix with tags that said Shooting for Brownie Points. Tags found on Pinterest (of course!!)

Jonah's Valentine's that, again, I found on Pinterest. We added a little cherry sucker. They were really cute and very Jonah!

Brianna's Valentine's box. The whole thing was foam and was so cool!

Brianna's Valentine's. She made them all herself with a kit we found at Michael's. We added Valentine's pencils that I found at the Dollar Tree. Brianna loves pencils and I thought it would be a nice change from candy!

The kids goodie bags, Micah's elephant Valentine's box (Brianna and Jonah both made sure Micah had a Valentine from them!) and Eli's owl Valentine (Whooo loves you baby!?! lol)

My 2 dozen long stem roses from my hubby! They were so gorgeous! And he's so good he had them delivered the day before! He's a keeper! ;-)

Our little cupid! He's getting really good at this sitting up thing!

 Various Fun:

Brianna being goofy with Eli at the dentist. All three kids had appointments and we were there for like 3 hours!! She got a little slap happy after a while! And I love the look on Eli's face!! It's like "Oh here we go again!" lol

Morning fun with daddy before he heads off to work. (I promise he changed and looked a lot more presentable for work!)

The thing about having a baby with a lot of hair means you get lots of crazy baby bed head!

Date night out at Mahogany's watching my brother-in-law Eric preform. He did awesome and it was such a fun night out. We had a whole crew there including my mom, Steven's parents and her friends Sue and Jim. And of course Samantha was there too to cheer on her hubby!

Eli's food list keeps growing. Here he is trying peaches for the first time!

Love these!! He kept turning his head towards the spoon for more! I really think making our own baby food was one of the best decisions we've ever made. And it takes almost no extra time because we just whip something up while we're making our food. Super easy and nutritious!

So that was the month of February for us! I hope your month was great too! Now on to our regularly scheduled programming!!!