I made dd much needed jammies, which included tweaking a muslin for a pattern I did not like. I will make another pair this week now that I know they fit~lol! I am using up stash fabric for this~yay! I also sewing 2 more pair of needed leggings for Aidra:)

I am decluttering like mad, sending off things that I no longer have use for, good quality bras(I am completely converted to Blue Canoe forever!), and baby clothes have made their way into other homes. Last night my babysitter was here, she is a student midwife, and I gave her my book "Breech Birth Woman Wise" by Maggie Banks, I had it for my student midwife who was at Aidra's birth, but I lost touch with her when she moved...so now it has a perfect home. She squealed when I gave to her:)
I gave away kids and mama clothes(again NICE stuff) to my girlfriend who is struggling to raise 2 kids and pay off debt. YAY! And I pulled fabric from my stash to make a dress for her little dd's birthday next month.
It is very liberating to give the stuff away to JUST the right home, instead of selling it. It feels really good.

Next week..I really need to list my boutique girls clothing for spring/summer...so I can make some money and move them out of here.

Oh, I love finding just the right home for things! That's the best feeling. :D I'm glad you've had so much of it this week.

Accomplishments for this week:
~priced and dropped off 1 rubbermaid tub full of spring/summer clothes that no longer fit my children. I priced everything to sell quickly....even though it wasn't a huge quantity, at least it's all out of my house and maybe I'll make a little $$ in the process!

~after my hospital stay in January for a kidney infection, I disputed some of the charges on the bill. I just got confirmation yesterday (after almost 2 1/2 months of "review") that they had credited back 4 different charges....it took almost $1000 off of our bill!

~my house is clean; my deep freezer has a few weeks' worth of "post-baby" meals stored in it; my grocery shopping is done for the week; I'm caught up on laundry; etc. Basically, I'm ready for our little one's arrival at any time!

~this weekend we got the last of our garden plants from the farmer's market and got them in the ground! We now have 16 tomato plants (various varieties), 12 pepper plants (mainly jalapeno & anaheim), cucumbers, squash, zucchini and broccoli. We have a few strawberry, raspberry and blueberry plants also, as well as a small herb garden!

I cleaned out a section in my house that I thought couldn't get more decluttered. I have some fabric for the charity that makes kids' blankets. I had some leftover fleece hats that will go to another charity. I sold a bit of fabric, and I'll mend the stuffed animals that where hiding there.

I plan on putting up shelving in the space and clearing off some more tables in the family room.

We accomplished a LOT this week! We had our foster relicensing which makes me go crazy-obsessed with the cleanliness of the house. Good thing though! I had been avoiding the closet under the stairs cause the kids were just dumping all their stuff in there. Well, I cleaned it out. 90% of the stuff got thrown away or donated - and that closet was FULL! Even my brother who was visiting was SHOCKED! LOL

We've pretty much cleared out the whole house. We made many,many trips to the thrifts. I also brought all the stuff for the foster baby into my bathroom linen closet & got it all organized.

Oh, got our pantry pretty well stocked & organized too.

For the next week I need to go through the house & get the last of what we dont need. We'll have a garage sale on Sat to make some needed $. I will be cleaning & organizing the nursery. I payed my teen to do it, but she didn't do as good of a job as I would have liked. We'll be cleaning out the garage. I also want to re-organize/declutter my closet even more. All of this needs to happen immediately though as we were told to eexpect a baby this week. I dont think I'll get much done once that happens! LOL

I also found out that a shoe box is great for baby toys. I set 9 month old dd out with a shoe box of toys. It keeps her entertained pulling them out, its the perfect amount of toys & easy to clean up & store.

Oh, I need to do some planting too. I have some tomatoes & watermelons that need to be planted right away. I better get it done today!

Yay! I get so jazzed when I hear what everyone has been up to.

Earlier in the week I was feeling all out of sorts and cranky. Finally the weather broke yesterday afternoon. We had gone and bought a bunch of stuff to finish up various projects around the house. So we now have a dimmer on our relatively new track lighting. I massively decluttered my office area and did a ton of filing. I rearranged the furniture and it looks so much nicer! I cleared off my desk, which was a mess, and made the filing cabinet closer to the desk so that it is easier to file. Hung my backpack next to my desk. Moved a bench and a corner shelf around to open up space in the middle of the house and I love the way it looks now!

I still have some stuff to clean up from that...a pile of stuff to go through and declutter in the middle of the room, but that will come.

Today dh and I put up a full length mirror in the bedroom (we had no full length mirror anywhere in the house before this), tore out the medicine cabinet in the bathroom, put up his grandmother's mirror there, took down the towel ring and replaced it with a bar in a better spot, took down our organizing baskets and replaced them with a white cabinet for toiletries. And then he spray foamed a hole in the wall by the sink and put up the baseboard trim we bought six months ago for the bathroom wall! We had to cut out part of the wall because of dog pee damage when we moved in...now we still need 2 more pieces of trim for the other walls, but the yucky cut out spot is covered!!

And YES I will have pics...;) on Saturday when high speed internet comes!

I went to Fred Meyers and got a yard of organic compost (it was on sale) and seeds for carrots, red sunflowers, scarlet runner beans, and kale. I am digging a trench that will outline the sunflower house and then I will fill it with the compost and plant the sunflowers and the beans in it. Sunflowers need to take hold first, so I won't be planting the beans until they are about a foot tall. But it should be beautiful, red sunflowers and red flowered beans to fill in the cracks.

I started 2 egg cartons of tomato seeds from last year. I started an egg carton of pumpkins, and two different kinds of peppers. I will plant them in a week or so when the seedlings are big enough and forming their third leaves.

I am planning on finishing what I started in the garden and get all the weeds and grass out. Then I need to move the pathway from where the chicken coop is going and put them into the garden pathway.... where I am using the black garden fabric that I pulled up three years ago from my first city garden to stop the grass from growing back in the pathway.

Then I need to research the pipe hoop houses for the chicken coop. Hopefully it wont be too expensive. Then I am going to get straw (which will also work in favor of a few things in the garden like mulch for strawberries, and cabbages)... I am going to salvage a few peices of board from my dads house and hopefully there will be enough for both a chicken coop house and pathways for the garden (I have three boards that I have used for years and it seems like the best way to make paths to me so far). He will be fine to give up whatever wood he has because he is moving and has told me to come get stuff like that if I want it before he gets rid of it elsewhere.

That is my plan for the next week. Don will be home this weekend, and I still need to stake the raspberries, but again, I need to go to my dads for that as well becuase he has the sledgehammer and forgot it on Easter.

The rest of the stuff I have to do will be for next week. I have a bit of sewing, the cleaning of the garage, and a few other small around the house things... but for the most part, my work is outside now. :) And today is sunny... so I am going to get back to it while the kids are napping. :heart:

I had a charity pick up a bunch of stuff today and they're coming again on Monday :)

We transferred seedlings to the garden all weekend and planted seeds. So far: pumpkins, tomatoes, spinach, mesclun, kale, swiss chard, carrots, potatoes, onions, bell pepper, hot pepper, arugula, peas, sunflowers and strawberries. I feel like I'm forgetting something...

In the front yard: flowers for cutting. Useful: nasturtium (for eating), an herb garden with all the usual, peas, lavender, pansies, coneflower, chamomile. Again, feel like I'm forgetting something. Two forsythia in a corner and 5 lillies, courtesy of the arbor day foundation.

We planted 67 small, dormant plants at MIL's. 66 north privets for a hedge around her side yard and back, mostly to block the neighbors (LOL) and 1 red maple.

I cleaned out the back porch. It's more of a laundry area. It gets piled with sooooo much junk. All cleaned out. :)

My house is now so well-decluttered that I'm not walking around trying to find things to get rid of. It's very peaceful. I actually managed to sit and read yesterday without feeling crowded or as if I had something else to do. And the house is clean, so clean! I love it.

Last but certainly not least: ds is now fully pl'd at home, even waking up dry! If only I could manage to get him to pee when we're out and about. Do I just go cold-turkey on dipes and he'll eventually get it?

Oh I am still so jealous of all the mamas doing the gardens. I am finally dug out from snow - I can see the garden, I can get into the cow shed (Jenni, I'm going out there after breakfast to find your crayons and modeling beeswax!).

This week I have the kids home w/me and want to have an "as if we are homeschooling" week. Dh is at work. So it's like the old days when they were wee and home with me all day, the last year of that was when Katie was kindergarten age and homeschooled and Jake was 3-4 yo.

My goals for this week are:
*declutter and organize the kids' room, it is a disaster again. This includes going through books and putting a ton of them in storage or giving them away (Katie wants "to save all my books for my kids" so I may just box them up for her...I understand the packrat mentality, LOL, and we have the storage space.)
*get my taxes finished and sent off! (I filed an extension)
*plan the garden and start some flower seeds inside. I decided to make it easy on myself this year and get starts for most of the veggies. I have had a hard time getting seeds to do well and I spent a fortune on plastic trays and soil last year.
*Get the garden and flower beds cleared out - Katie will help me with weeding/clearing, she loves it! ;)
*Make a few batches of muffins to freeze for snacks. It will help to have the kids home to eat "testers" so I'm hopeful I can get a recipe that everyone likes, down pat this week. I'm starting with the Full Meal Muffins from the Vegan Lunchbox blog.

Jenni, on the potty thing - I did go cold turkey when out and about. I'd remind Jake like this, "There is a potty in this store, if you have to go potty, be sure to tell me and we can go to the potty in the store!" Pretty soon he'd say, "Go potty?" and we'd run him over to the bathroom and ooh and ah over how great he did when he went.

Another option is to do a pull up style for out and about just until you're sure he gets it, so he doesn't have an accident.

You guys are killing me with this garden talk. I'm green :D

I want to get a compost tumbler SO badly. I'm scared to start gardening because I always manage to kill it ALL. :shake:

Once we get the house unpacked, we'll get started on a few things and cross our fingers.

This week I feel like I've accomplished nothing, but truth be told the kitchen is 100% done. That's something!

Well, all I actually got done was the kids' room. But it looks awesome. :D And we hung out two days with friends - one a new family that moved here last fall, and one day w/Meeshi's Nico and her bio mom! Katie was over the moon to meet her pen pal IRL.

And there is progress on the taxes...should be able to finish them up first thing Monday morning.

Garage sale didn't happen last weekend due to rain, so now its happening tomorrow. Dh is moving stuff to the garage right now. Not having it is NOT an option, we need gas $. LOL So,we declutter & make some $ tomorrow. :)

We got the planting done that I posted about before. Today we will get in some: sunflowers,radishes, nasturtiums, cosmos,etc. A nice mix of edibles & non-edible-but-just-too-wonderful-to-pass-up plants. :)

We dont have any $ for groceries right now, so we are eating through what we have. Which is good, cause then I can get the fridge cleaned out good once it is emptier. :) Which reminds me - I really need to get that placenta out of the freezer & into the ground... :lol:

We're selling the bookshelves & such from the nursery, I think,so I will have to organize the nursery walk-in closet big time. Its all shelves, which i hate (the previous owner had the nursery for an office) but will be convenient right now for books & such.


I know there is more, but those are the things that have my attention right now. :)