Simplifiying our Home: Conquering the Moutain

I am also trying to simplify some family habits that we have that just drive me crazy. The first was the dirty clothes on the living room floor. I know, most people have this issue in the bedrooms, but we had this issue in the living room. We had dirty socks, sweatshirts, workout gear, pajamas, You name the article of clothing it has probably seen my living room floor. When they did get picked up they just got thrown to the bottom of the stairs and I ended up with a trecherous clothes pile at the bottom of the stairs. Some days it felt like the Mt Everest of clothes was forming at the bottom of the stairs and I would have to strap on some crampons and get an ice ax to climb to the top.

I was tired of the clothes on the living room floor and I was tired of navigating a mountain of dirty clothes at the bottom of the stairs. I decided that I had two options. I could try to change our habits or I could come up with a different solution. If I tried to change our habits that meant nagging Mark, Ashlyn, and myself to take the dirty clothes up to the laundry hampers in the bedrooms. Eventually I would get tired of nagging and they would get tired of listening, so nothing would change. Obviously we have been through something like this before.

I had to think outside of the box. I knew that the clothes were going to end up in the living room, and eventually at the bottom of the stairs. So what could I do to stop the process of them going from the living room to the bottom of the stairs? After I had asked myself this question a hundred times finally on the 101st time the clouds opened up and the light shone upon me ala Lion King.

Put a small laundry hamper in the living room! 

I know, who has a laundry hamper in the living room? I proudly say that I do! It has only been a couple weeks, but as of right now it has solved our problem without the nagging!

This was originally destined for shoes, but is now thriving as a laundry hamper.

Ashlyn happily puts her dirty clothes in there. I don't have random socks sticking out from under the couch. I even have a convenient place to throw my dirty kitchen towels. Now, I may eventually get one with a lid, HomeGoods here I come, but for right now this is what works for us. This was a simple solution to an odd family habit. I am loving this process so far.

Simplifying our Home: The First Great Purge

The older I get it seems like life just gets more complicated. Yep fairly certain that statement just made me sound like I am an old lady, but think about the stages of life. As a baby you just eat, sleep, cry and poop. As a toddler you are learning to walk and talk. Then you hit preschool and you start learning the alphabet, counting, and imaginative play. You are now in school and comes reading, writing, math, and science. And on and on it goes in life learning more and more complicated tasks, facts, and theories.

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Now, don't get me wrong, I love to learn new things and I love seeing Ashlyn learn something new everyday, but sometimes all of that learning can cause us to over complicate the things that should be simple. Right now at my phase in life I am feeling like my home is over complicated. I am on a mission to simplify my life by simplifying my home. 

No, I do not have a complicated automated home with a robot maid named Rosie and son named Elroy. Now, I really wouldn't mind having a robot maid named Rosie, maybe then my dishes would be done all of the time. A robot maid would be nice, but then I would always worry about it going all terminator on my ass and trying to destroy the human race and all that jazz. Yep totally think about robots taking over the world, or even zombies for that matter.

See Rosie the robot totally look like she could turn into a terminator at any moment.
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What I am talking about is the complication of having too much stuff. Yes, I know it is a total first person problem talking about having too much when there are people in the world that don't have anything, but this is what is going on in our home right now. I am on a mission to simplify our home. I am tired of having stuff that has no meaning or does not serve a purpose to our family. I am tired of having boxes in my closets full of stuff that just sits there taking up space. I am tired of my cupboards being full of gadgets and items that I have not used in years. I am tired of having stuff in my home just to have stuff.

I have started the Great Purge in my home and it feels so refreshing. I have started cleaning out closets, sorting through boxes that haven't been opened since we moved 1 1/2 years ago, going through my kitchen cupboards, etc. I made a rule that if the item has not served a purpose in the last 6 months and if it has no sentimental meaning to our family then it has to go.

I now have this huge pile in our basement ready for a garage sale when the weather warms up. I have also decided that whatever does not sell is not coming back in the house, but will be donated. Maybe someone else can find a purpose for these items in their home.

This is just my first pass, so I am sure I will have more to come, but I cannot tell you how freeing this feels. I don't know why but cleaned off spaces and empty shelves just feel comforting. Maybe it is because I have no attachment to these items, or maybe because the emptiness is giving me inspiration for creating meaningful purpose to that place previously filled with stuff. I am not sure, but whatever the reason it feels good.

Crispy Whole Wheat Waffles

It has been a long time since I have posted a recipe and there is a reason. Last year when I started this blog I had these great dreams of making up recipes and whipping up fantastic meals effortlessly and without spending a lot of money. I had been stalking food blogs for awhile and thought, hey if they can do it, I can do it.

I now look back and realize that at that time I must have unexpectedly been whisked away to OZ and then made my way back home without even realizing I was there. I totally wish I would have known I was there because I so would have joined the lollipop guild and floated around in a bubble with Glinda. OK, so off topic. Anyway I realized that right now I am not great at developing my own recipes, and if I want to write here more often and include recipes on a consistent basis then I need to take a different approach. On my way back from OZ I realized that I am way better at taking someone else's recipe and adjusting it to fit our tastes and health goals. So that is the direction I am going to take for right now.

These crispy whole wheat waffles came about from this recipe Classic Waffles. Waffles are our Sunday morning go to breakfast. When I ask Ashlyn what she wants for breakfast her answer is always waffles. These are vegan, whole wheat, and freeze fantastically. Instead buying frozen waffles from the grocery store I keep a bag of these in the freezer for a quick breakfast option during the week. I have tested and retested this recipe and I recommend that if you try this you make it just as written otherwise they may not come out crispy and may stick to your waffle iron. I promise I have tried this recipe for at least 6 months now with different ingredients and this is the only one that comes out perfect every time. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!

Crispy Whole Wheat Waffles
Makes 6 waffles

2 Tbs chia seeds
6 Tbs hot water
2 cups white whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
4 tsp baking powder
2 cups almond milk
1/3 cup olive oil
1 tsp vanilla extract

1. In a small container stir together the chia seeds and hot water. Let this sit while you put the other ingredients together. It will get all thick and gel like, don't worry that is normal.

2. In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, salt, and baking powder.

3. In a measuring cup or small bowl whisk together the milk, oil, and vanilla. Add the chia/water mixture and whisk the wet ingredients one more time.

4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and whisk just until mixed. Let the batter sit for 15 minutes.

5. While the batter is sitting warm up your waffle iron. *I use a regular waffle iron, not Belgian, so there may be a difference if using a Belgian waffle iron.*

6. Once the batter has rested and the waffle iron is hot spray your waffle iron with non stick spray. Ladle 1/2 cup of batter into the iron and close the lid. Cook the waffles until golden and crispy.

7. Enjoy with your favorite toppings. Some of ours are real maple syrup, peanut butter, fruit (those are warmed up frozen cherries in the pictures), or chocolate chips. Ashlyn highly recommends a waffle face with chocolate chip eyes and nose and a syrup mouth.

DIY No Sew Shag Rug

I have caught the DIY bug and this is my first project that I am going to share with you. I don't know how many of you have looked for area rugs lately, but I got tired of it really quickly. I found a lot of rugs that I liked alright, but did not love and I REALLY did not love the price tags of $200 to $500 on up.  So, I decided to start searching online to find DIY rugs. Now, a huge stipulation was that it could not involve a sewing machine because as of right now sewing is on my to learn list. My sewing machine just sits there wondering why I don't use it and I glace it's way and then run away in fear. I am not sure why I do this, but I will be conquering my fear soon.

Anyway after a lot of searching I found a tutorial for a DIY Shag Rug which once I saw I fell in love with and knew that was what I had been searching for. My way differed from the tutorial I found and actually ended up being cheaper than my inspiration, so YEA! If you are not bored with my rambling yet go ahead and scroll down to get a tutorial of how you can make your own DIY No Sew Shag Rug.

Materials:
Your material amounts are going to differ based upon how big you want your rug. I made a 4 1/2 ft by 7 ft rug for my dining room, so that is the size I am going by. If you want a smaller rug you won't need as many materials.

3 yds utility fabric rug liner (This is what I used) I highly recommend this as it is extremely soft!
18 yds of non-fraying fabric (This is what I used) I did 9 yds each of two different colors
Scissors or better yet rotary cutter and mat
A lot of time!

Cost: I paid $150 for all of my materials. I was able to get everything at least 40% off.

I will warn you first that this took me about 3 weeks to complete, but I am so happy with the outcome that I would definitely do it again.

1. Measure your rug liner to the size that you want your rug. I ended up cutting off about a 1/2 yard from my liner to get my size. Then trim up the edges to make sure you end up with a row of full squares on each side.

Now start cutting your fabric. You need to cut it into 1/2 in by 4 in strips. My fabric was 59 in wide, so I was able to get 1080 strips out of one yard. Yep you need to get that many strips 17 more times for a total of 19,234 strips. Told ya you needed a lot of time. I found that cutting the strips was the worst part of this project so that is why I would cut about a yard at a time of each color and then move on to the next step.

How to cut your strips

*I started doing it this way and then half way I wised up and got a rotary cutter and mat. Highly recommend going with the rotary cutter. Completely worth the money because it will save you time on this project.*

Lay your fabric out and measure 4 inches from the end.

I always have a little helper hiding in the background

Cut through both layers.

Take the ends of your strip and line them up.

Cut it in half.

You should now have two 30 inch strips. Lay out your strips.

Every half inch cut a slit. I did this all the way down the strip.

Once your slits are cut finish cutting all the way across.

This is how big they should be.

Now you may get some odd shaped ones, but don't discriminate they all go to the same cause. Oh, and once it is done you can't even tell there are some odd shaped ones in there.

Now for the fun part! Making 19,234 knots!

Slip the fabric through one hole and into another.

Tie it on up. If using more than one color alternate your colors.

Now, when you start the second row skip a row. You will not thread two pieces of fabric through the same hole.

See, can't tell you even skipped that row.

Two rows down, forever to go!

And 3 weeks later we are finally done!

Now the little one hiding in the above picture is asking for a purple rug for her room, which I will be starting on now.

Never too late (a Procrastinator's Christmas post)

Yep, I admit it I am a procrastinator. That is why I am sharing our Christmas decorations with you on January 24th. Hey, if there is some rule about posting Christmas stuff no later than a month after Christmas, then I at least beat it by one day. This Christmas I decided that I wanted to redo our Christmas decor, but I wanted to do it without spending a lot of money. I got started this year and can just add more as I go. Here are the pictures I took (right before taking everything down). Oh, and no I didn't just take my Christmas decorations down, I just procrastinated on writing about it. A large chunk of my decorations were either handmade this year, or had a handmade element to them. I didn't put together any tutorials about how to do any of these, but if you would like I can put something together for next Christmas. So, without further ado, here is our handmade Christmas.

The tree, and don't worry, I know it is a bad picture.

Some of my tree ornaments

My homemade tree skirt

A couple shots of my favorite part, my railing. Yes, you are seeing the mess of toys on the other side because our house is overrun by a 3 year old and keeping a room clean for more than 5 seconds if just about impossible.

I just had to share the cutest little deer that I found at Pier One this year. I just could not resist these cuties! Neither could Ashlyn since somehow they kept getting moved quite often. 

So, those were our mostly homemade Christmas decorations. There were more, but for some reason I didn't get pictures of them. Oh well life goes on and welcome back to Christmas one month later (or eleven months early) however you want to look at it.

A Big 3rd Birthday Party!

Yep, I know, you don't have to tell me. I disappeared for what is it, 3 months now? It was just one of those times when life gets away from you. Now, don't think I have just been sitting around for 3 months not doing anything because that is far from the truth. At the beginning of September I asked Ashlyn what theme she wanted for her birthday party this year (at the end of October). Her response, Jake and the Neverland Pirates! I was thrilled, because how much fun is a pirate party! Except of course 2 weeks before the actually party she told me she now wanted a princess party. Well, she got a pirate party and enjoyed it anyway. This year I told myself I would concentrate more on the decorations and not so much on the food. Yeah, didn't really work out that way since I eventually decided to go big on both. What can I say I was having fun!
We did do something a little different this year by doing an open house birthday party since our house is not very big, but we have lots of family and friends. So, we had it from 11 to 4 and let people come and go as they pleased. Ashlyn opened her present right away when someone showed up. This actually worked out perfectly (since we are doing family parties right now) that I think until she starts having friend parties we will continue this. Now instead of boring you with me describing everything I will just show a picture montage (insert your own montage music here). Just a warning, when I took these pictures the light in our house was just right to cast shadows on everything, so the pictures are definately over edited to get rid of as many shadows as possible.

 

This is the whole spread. Obviously the picture is way over edited!

 

Different Angle and yes we did make all of the decorations.

The Dessert Table. We did make that sail.

Main Food Table

How do Neverland Pirates get their light? By trapping fairies in jars of course!

Oh how the cake pops flowed! 5 different flavors!

Yummy fall inspired fruit salad!

 

I think this is how I will serve veggie dip from now on.

Chickpea, Tomato, and Spinach Salad. Yum Yum!

 

 

So, as you can see I have been busy. But what about the last month you say? Well, I have been busy with other things as well, but that post will come very soon. I promise it won't be 3 months!

 

I hope you enjoyed your peak into Ashlyn's 3rd Birthday party! If you have any questions about how we did some of the decorations, or if you want me to post any of the recipes please leave a comment below.