Snakes and Snails and Sugar and Spice

Organization - Linen Closet and Coat Closet

2008-07-02T15:04:00.003-07:00

I finally found my battery charger. It was on my desk. Unfortunately, there was so much other stuff on my desk that I couldn't see it. My desk is now clean. I should take pictures of my desk while it's clean since it probably won't be that way for long.

Instead, here are pictures of the two closets in my hall. First is the coat closet. Since it's summer all of the winter things such as hats, gloves, scarves, etc. are in a container on the top shelf, along with Mike's winter boots. During the winter the boots are normally on the floor and everything else is distributed to the pockets that are hanging on the door. Mike and I each have two rows of pockets and the kids each have one row. You can't see it in this picture but there are labels with each person's name beside their row of pockets. During the summer the pockets hold things like hats, sunglasses and sunscreen. All of our winter coats are hung in the closet still, but we have nowhere else to put them during the summer and we really don't have anything to hang there now so the winter stuff stays. In the back corner on the floor is a small white container that has umbrellas in it, and then the shoes on the floor are some of Mike's, mine and Amaya's. We have shoes in the closet because our bedrooms are downstairs and we don't want to run downstairs every time we need some shoes. The boys' bedrooms are on either side of the hall so they keep their coats and shoes in their own closets. Mike has a tendency to accumulate every pair of shoes he owns and pile them at the bottom of this closet on top of my shoes, which drives me nuts. Every once in a while I take all of his shoes out and throw them in his closet and the bottom of this closet stays neat for a while until there is a build up of his shoes again.

Now for the linen closet. The top shelf has sheets, which are folded to the left, and pillowcases, which are in the basket. I used to try to keep my sheets folded neatly, but it takes too much time so now I just fold them a couple times and pile them up. I keep the pillow cases separate from the sheet sets because we have a lot of extra pillow cases. Mike and I each sleep with two pillows, so normally we have some mismatched cases, which doesn't bother me. If you look close you can see that every shelf is labeled with what should go where.

The next shelf (horrible picture, I know) holds extra blankets, and the one under that holds our towel sets. Each of us has our own set of towels, so the ones that we aren't using at the moment are on this shelf.

The next shelf holds beach towels and bath towels that aren't part of our sets. As you can see, I have some laundry to do because normally, when I'm caught up on folding laundry, every shelf in this closet is full. The next shelf holds two containers which hold extra hand towels, washcloths and dusting rags.

The floor of the closet holds first-aid and medical-type things. The red container is our first-aid kit. Under that, in the blue container, are things like a heating pad, arm splints, and large ace bandages. The box on the left holds Mike's nasal irrigation system (it's for his severe allergies), and there's a big ugly extension cord to use with it since our bathroom doesn't have an outlet. We plan on putting an outlet in the bathroom, but for now there's just a hole in the wall waiting for one. The hole's only been there for about 13 years. It's one of the many things we need to do to our house that we have just put off.

That is pretty much it for my lovely closets. They way they are organized really work for us. They've been this way for about six months and I don't have any plans to change anything in them yet.

Next up will be bathroom organization.

Two Days Late and A Battery Charger Lost

2008-07-01T21:31:00.002-07:00

I cannot find the charger for my camera battery, so I can't take pictures of my hall closets. If I can't find it tomorrow I will take pictures of the closets with my son's brand new digital camera. It takes blurry pictures because it is a toy camera, but it will be better than no pictures.

Obviously, the next thing I need to organize is my camera supplies. I have three cameras: a digital, a 35mm and a video camera. There are numerous batteries, chargers, cases, tapes, film and other accessories. This isn't the first time I've lost something that I really need for one of my cameras. It's very frustrating. That is why I'm on a quest to be organized, because I'm tired of being frustrated all the time.

A Day Late and a Camera Battery Short

2008-06-30T21:27:00.001-07:00

I am not posting pictures of my hall closet organization because my camera battery is dead and I think the charger is out in my truck and I'm too lazy to go get it. I have most of the day free tomorrow so I will definitely do it tomorrow.

Our House

2008-06-29T13:50:00.002-07:00

Right now the biggest annoyance in my life is my house. It needs a lot of work. Even though my goal for the year was to be organized by the end of December, for some reason my house is a disaster. A lot of things are organized, but most of my energy is going to keep the things I've organized so far organized instead of working on new things. Almost every room in our house needs to be redecorated to make it look decent. There are a lot of large projects we need to do to make it more livable and nicer to look at.

We bought our house in 1991. We bought it right before home prices started going way up so it was cheap compared to today's prices. I am guessing, based on what homes around us have sold for, that it is worth about four to five times what we paid. It is approximately 60-70 years old. This house was going to be our starter home. We were going to live here for several years and then sell it and get a bigger, nicer home. Things didn't work out that way and now we've lived here for 17 years.

When we moved in it needed some work done and we really haven't done much at all. In fact, the only things we've done are: redo most of the bathroom (it used to have black and pink tile on the walls), redo all three kids' rooms, build a garage out of an existing carport and put up a fence down the side of our yard since the other one was falling down. Other than that, we've neglected our house.

We've always had excuses for not working on our house. First Mike and I were both working full time and I was going to night school so we didn't have enough time. Then after I was done with school we didn't have enough money. Then we had Carson, which limited our time and money. Then we had Hayden, which limited our time and money even more. Then we decided to adopt a baby from China, which really left us with no money and no time to work on the house.

For a long time I haven't liked our house because it is small and old and needs some work. However, lately I've been thinking about how much I would love it if we could just fix it up. The best thing about our house is that our mortgage is going to be paid off in about six months. I know that if we sold it we would have plenty of money to buy a bigger, nicer house, but just knowing that we won't have a house payment really has made me think about staying here, fixing it up and not having a house payment anymore, instead of moving into a bigger house and then having an even bigger house payment than we've had. I'm really starting to think that it's a good idea to have more money and less stuff.

One of the biggest issues with this house has been our lack of storage. With my recent organizing endeavors I've kind of gotten on the less-is-more bandwagon. I really would love to get rid of a lot of our stuff that we don't really need and then we wouldn't have the storage problems that we've had. I've also realized how convenient our location is. We are about 1.5 miles from my mom, 1 mile from my sister, 1.5 miles from Mike's work and less than a mile from the kids' school. On the days that I work (usually 1.5 to 2 days a week) I usually only have to drive 5 miles at the most. Sometimes I go further away, but it's rare. We put less than 8,000 a year on our main vehicle (lucky since it's a gas-guzzling truck) and much, much less on our second vehicle. We love our neighborhood and our neighbors, except for the crazy lady across the street, who we had an ugly run-in with last night, but that's a story for another time. We love the school our kids go to and if we move they would have to go to a different school. We've decided to stay in this house at least until Amaya graduates from high school, which is in 15 years.

With the realization that we will be living her for a long time more, it's definitely time to start working on making our house the way we really want it. When my mom sold her house five years ago, the house my brother and sister and I had grown up in, her Realtor have her a video of how to make your house sell better. It had very simple, cheap tips on how to make your house appear more homey and comfortable. As we were watching the video I made a comment to my mom about how it's too bad she didn't do those things to her house while she was living in it to make it nicer. When people are getting ready to sell their house they fix things up and make it nicer for the new owners. It's a shame to do that kind of stuff for the people that are going to be living in it rather than for yourself when you live in it.

I am going to start regularly posting pictures of my organizing and redecorating efforts. I realize that I need to get everything organized before I start redecorating or things won't work out easily. I still have a lot of organizing left to do. One reason it's taking me so long is that after I get an entire room organized, as I'm trying to move on to the next room I keep thinking about the room I've already done and I'll go back and change things. I need to learn to finish a room and move on. Then, after I've organized everything, I can go back and change things if I want to.

I am going to start posting pictures of my organizing efforts, tips I've found to make my life run better and pictures of redecorating projects. I've decided to do this because I always get big ideas to do things and I rarely follow through. If I feel like I'm accountable in some way it makes me get motivated to do things.

So far I've posted organizing pictures of Carson's bedroom. Tomorrow I'll post pictures of my hallway organization, which includes the coat closet and the linen closet. My first big project for the house is the front yard. I'm doing that first because there is no organization involved, so I don't need to get things in order first. I just need to do it. I see quite a few trips to the home improvement store in my near future. I will take some before and after pictures.

I love organizing and I can't wait to get my house and life organized and my house looking beautiful and homey.

The Zoo

2008-06-27T14:26:00.003-07:00

Today we decided to go to the zoo instead of sit around the house like usual being bored. We were there for 2 1/2 hours and we didn't even look at the animals.

First we rode the brand new carousel. We attempted to go to the zoo several weeks ago to ride it but it was so crowded we left and went to the park instead. I hate large crowds.

I have to say that Amaya really isn't as goofy looking as she appears. She's just going through a serious goofy-face-for-photos stage lately. She looks at me and smiles until the second I push the button on my camera, and by the time my slower-than-molasses digital camera decides to take the picture, she is already looking somewhere else. I've given up taking 10 pictures of her to get one decent and decided to go with the goofiness, so she looks weird in almost every picture. Hayden is in the goofy-face-for-photos stage, too, but he only does it half the time so I can get good pictures of him sometimes.

After the carousel we went to the bird show. They had eagles and hawks and parrots and owls. It was pretty amazing. It's interesting that the Utah state bird is the California gull. It doesn't seem to make sense, does it? It's a Mormon thing. Just for clarification, I'm not a Mormon. The only reason I bring that is because whenever I go to another state and people ask where I'm from and I tell them Utah the first question is, "Are you a Mormon?" Contrary to popular belief, not everyone who lives in Utah is a Mormon.

Anyway, here is the majestic bald eagle.

Then we went to eat ice cream. Here's Little Miss Goofy Face again.

Then we went on a train ride. The last time we were at the zoo the train was not running for some reason and the kids were extremely annoyed about it. After I took this picture Hayden felt sorry for me because I was sitting alone, so he came and sat by me.

Now I'm planning Hayden's birthday party for tomorrow. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, huh. I've really got to get over my bad habit of procrastination. It makes my life somewhat stressful.

Cutting the Cheese

2008-06-26T10:08:00.003-07:00

The other day Amaya came crying to me saying, "Hayden said I cut the cheese and I didn't!" I had never heard my kids say the phrase "cut the cheese" before, so I asked her if she knew what "cut the cheese" meant. She said, "You get a bun and then you get a burger and then you cut the cheese and then you cook it and then you eat it and then you want some more." Her obsession with food is quite apparent.

What Color Should I Paint My Front Door?

2008-06-22T23:06:00.003-07:00

I am trying to get everything in my front yard and on the front of my house looking the way I want it to look. It is looking pretty good right now, but there are still a lot of little things to be done to make it perfect. Some projects are big, like scraping and painting the eaves, and some are small, like getting a new welcome mat. Right now there are 49 things on my list.

One thing I want to do is paint the front door, but I'm having a hard time deciding what color to use. Our door is wood and right now it is just a medium brown color. Our house is red brick and we have a bar tile roof, which is red. I like the idea of a red door, but I don't think that would be good with so much red on the front of the house, although I haven't ruled it out totally yet. I really like the idea of black, but there are already two other houses in our circle that have black, so I don't want to be a copycat. Everyone else in the circle has white, which I think is too boring. I would really like something bright and different, but I want it to look nice and not tacky. My favorite color is purple, but I don't think that would look good. Green is out because I don't want our house to look Christmasy. Orange is out because I really don't like the color orange, except I love the orange poppies I have in my yard. The two other colors I've thought about are blue and yellow. For some reason today I've really been leaning toward yellow.

I guess the worst that could happen is I would paint the door, it would look ridiculous and I would have to repaint it another color. I am taking suggestions as to what color to paint it. If I'm not being totally lazy, like I have been for months, I will take a picture of the front of our house and post it tomorrow.

Our Camping Trip with Lots of Pictures

2008-06-17T22:07:00.007-07:00

We went camping over the weekend at a reservoir called Smith and Morehouse in the Wasatch Cache National Forest. We had a lot of fun, even though it was absolutely freezing cold at night. Luckily we have warm sleeping bags, so once we are all bundled up in them we sleep just fine. Our tent is huge and it has two separate parts. There is a big main tent and a bedroom. We can add two more bedrooms if we want to. We always take both parts with us when we go camping, but sometimes we can only use one part because there isn't enough room for both parts. This time we had plenty of room for both parts.

I have actually downloaded all of the pictures I took with my digital camera, organized them and sent them off to be printed. I can pick up the prints tomorrow. I also took the film from my 35mm camera to be developed and then scanned them all in and organized them on my computer. I took a lot of pictures and I've posted a lot here; although they aren't in a very organized order because it takes me too long to figure out what order I want them in and I'm too lazy to switch them around after they are posted.

First, here are some pictures of Carson. He loves camping and fishing and playing in rivers and lakes.

Here he is relaxing at camp.

Here he is getting ready to fish.

Here he is playing in the stream.

Here he is really wanting to throw some rocks in the river.

Here are Carson, Hayden and Amaya gathering up rocks to throw in the river.

Hayden is digging for treasure.

He knew I was trying to get a cute picture of him so he did this.

Here's Hayden coming back from a hike. He was extremely pissed off at me at this point because I made him spill his Lucky Charms when I was helping him climb down some rocks on a steep hill so he wouldn't fall. I told him that it's not a good idea to bring a bowl of cereal with you when you're going on a hike. Notice that he is carrying his bowl back with him.

He is such a cutie.
Here are Carson and Hayden on the same hike. I'm holding Hayden's bowl of Lucky Charms before they spilled and he's still in a good mood in this picture.

We hung out on the dam one day fishing. Amaya climbed up and down and up and down the rocks over and over again. I think this picture was taken after she lost one shoe somewhere in the rocks. We did find it. She lost her shoe another time in the forest around our camp and we had to send Carson to go find it.

Here's Amaya in time out because she peed her pants. I didn't make her sit in the chair backwards. She did that because she knew I was going to take a picture of her. Yes, she is wearing one of her brothers' underwear. It's probably got Spiderman on it.
Here she is making shadows on the tent.

Here we are sitting on the dam while Mike fished. Sitting on rocks for hours on end is not very comfortable.

Amaya loves camping, too.

As we were setting up camp we noticed this sign on our picnic table. It basically tells you how to not get attacked by bears when you're sleeping. Last year an 11-year-old boy was dragged out of his tent and killed in a campground. Now the campground hosts make sure to warn campers of the dangers of bears. The reservoir we went to has three campgrounds nearby and on Saturday night in one campground (not ours, luckily) a black bear was spotted roaming around.

Here are some pictures of the lake. Notice the snow on the mountains. No wonder it was freezing cold at night. It was warm during the day, though, so we could wear shorts and not be cold.

There was a patch of snow about 20 feet from our picnic table.

I though these were hosta plants of some kind, but apparently they are wild cabbage. There were fields of them and they were so beautiful.

Here is Spot enjoying the sunshine. We take his crate and when he's in the tent he has to be in his crate because, being the germaphobe that I am, I don't want him getting the tent dirty. But it was so cold at night that I felt sorry for him so I let him sleep with us so he could have blankets on him. He is a bit of a woos when it's cold. I don't like to see him shiver.

Here's Amaya fishing. She was getting mad because only Carson and Mike were fishing so Mike had to let her take a turn. She didn't catch anything but she was happy anyway.
Here's Carson with one of the three fish he caught. I don't know how to work Photoshop, but hopefully I can figure out how to lighten him up a bit in this picture so he doesn't look like a shadow.
Here's Hayden holding the pole and giving a goofy grin so I could get a picture of him fishing. As soon as I snapped the picture he gave the pole back to Mike. He has no interest in fishing.
This seagull kept flying over us so I decided to try to get a picture of it. It had a certain route that it took and it would fly over us about every 10 minutes. It flew the same route for hours.

We had a lot of fun on our camping trip. One of the best parts about it was it was only an hour and 15 minutes from our house, and we only used 1/4 tank of gas on the entire trip. Not too bad. It is great to get out in nature and just relax for the weekend. I sat around a lot. I took naps in the tent. I read a book (The Da Vinci Code). I had a great time with my family. It was a very good weekend.

We're Going Camping

2008-06-13T07:59:00.002-07:00

This weekend ought to be fun. We are going camping up in the mountains. There's still snow in the mountains. Obviously we will be trying to find somewhere lower than the snow, but it's still going to be a little cooler than normal. I really didn't want to go camping yet, but Mike is insistent we are going, and since it's Father's Day weekend, I guess he gets his way. It will be nice just to get out of the house for a few days. I hope everyone has a good weekend.

What is Wrong With People?

2008-06-11T21:31:00.003-07:00

Tonight we had planned on going to the zoo because they have a new attraction and it was a members-only event. As soon as we pulled into the parking lot we realized we had made a terrible mistake. There were so many people there it was unbelievable. The line to get in was all the way out into the parking lot. I've never seen it so crowded before. I hate crowds and I refuse to wait in line for something like that. Mike and I decided we were not going to go in, so we pulled back out onto the road. Of course all the kids were very upset and started crying. We tried to explain to them that if we stayed we would spend most of our time standing in line and it wouldn't be very fun. They still cried. Thinking quickly I said, "How about if we go to the park and you can play on the playground?!!!" They bought it. So we went to the park instead and they had a great time.

As Mike and I were standing around watching the kids we noticed a mom standing next to her brat watching him as he peed in the middle of the playground. I mean he wasn't having an accident. He actually whipped it out and stood there and peed on the playground on purpose. What the hell is wrong with people? I don't know if she was just too lazy to walk the 10 yards it would have taken to get to the bathroom or what. It's times like that I wish I was more assertive. I really would have loved to have walked right up to that woman and told her what a classless piece of crap she is. People really piss me off sometimes.

I'm going to go think happy thoughts now.

Works For Me Wednesday

2008-06-10T20:45:00.003-07:00

Every year we plant about five or six tomato plants and they do very well. We plant them alongside our house on one side. We love tomatoes. I have always wanted to have a garden with more than just tomatoes in it, but our yard just isn't big enough. Most of our back yard is in the shade all day, and years ago we tried to grow a few vegetables back there but they just wouldn't work out. For years we've just enjoyed our tomatoes and been happy with just them. This year I decided to try something different. We planted some vegetables in our flower beds in our front yard. It was the only place we could think of to plant them. We planted cucumbers, green peppers, jalapeno peppers, eggplant, pumpkin and watermelon plants. They are spread out among our flowers and we really hope they do good. So far they are doing great.

So my tip for the week is if you have a very small yard but want a vegetable garden, just plant some veggies in your flower beds.

For more tips go to Rocks In My Dryer.

Organization - Carson's Bedroom

2008-06-09T22:03:00.002-07:00

So I didn't quite make it by the afternoon like I said I would, but here are some pictures of Carson's room. I am going to show some general pictures of his room along with the organizing pictures because I love his room. Mike and I did a "while you were out" redo of his bedroom one weekend when he went on a short trip with my mom to visit my brother.

I have a theory about decorating my kids' rooms. I've decided that there are three phases of kids' lives when they live at home: baby or young child (newborn to age 6), kid (age 7 to 12), and teenager (13 and beyond). I am going to decorate their rooms differently for each phase of their life while they're living at home. So far Carson is the only one who has made it to the second phase, but Hayden is getting close.

When Carson was born his room was decorated with sports teddy bears. It was so cute. Before I even found out I was having a boy I wanted to decorate the room that way if it was a boy. When it was time to redo his room, he wanted his room to be decorated with dinosaurs. He's loved dinosaurs since he was one year old and is still obsessed with them. He's even said he wants to be a paleontologist. When my mom took him away for the weekend I decided, the night before they left, to redo his room while he was gone and surprise him when he came back. It was a lot of hard work, but it was so worth it. He was so excited when he came home and saw it.

Anyway, finally, here are some pictures of his bedroom, all clean and organized. I'll start with the closet since the pictures aren't that great. It was hard to take pictures inside the closet because it is small. It is over the stairs so it is an odd-shaped closet. On one side there is a slant which is totally useless. A few years ago I built a big shelf over the slant so at least we could have some extra storage space.

At the top of the closet there are basically things that don't fit anywhere else. On the edge of the shelf I put labels of what item goes where so everything should be put in its place when it's done being used.

Next is the floor of the closet looking straight in. In the corner on the right-hand side is a drawer unit with Rescue Heroes in it and on top of that unit is the big Rescue Hero stuff. The other drawer unit has various things in the drawers, all labeled of course, such as bouncy balls, remote control vehicles, View Master and other things. His shoes are in their boxes in front of the Rescue Hero spot. There are a few Lego boxes that need to be dealt with (I'll talk about that when I show where Legos are usually kept) that we just haven't dealt with yet. The clothes rod is right above there and there are not clothes in his closet. Usually his school clothes are hanging up in the closet, but since school is out I took them out and put them in the drawer with his winter clothes. My kids have to wear uniforms to school, and even though they are perfectly nice clothes, once school is over I don't want to even see them until school starts again so they are banished to the off-season drawer. Now before you start thinking we can afford to send our kids to private school, we can't. They go to public school but they still have to wear uniforms.

This is to the left of the closet on a small shelf with the slant of the area above the stairs to the left of it. The bag has blocks, then there's his Hot Wheels, Tinker Toys, and the container in the back contains various electronic toys such as a Nerf dartboard and a robotic arm. Notice that I've labeled where each item should go.

This section is the large shelf that I built. The top two drawers broke but we use the space where they would go anyway. Artwork is in the top space and current school papers are in the second space. The other drawers contain things like Transformers, a spy kit, play animals and other things. The blue container in the front contains Legos. He is getting so many Legos that we are trying to come up with a better way to store them. I've been thinking of maybe a large tackle box with a lot of different compartments so the Legos can be sorted by color and shape. The shelving unit on the right used to have two drawers in it but they didn't work very well. I was going to get rid of it but then I decided to save the drawers and I used them as containers in Hayden's closet (which I'll post pictures of as soon as he gets his room cleaned!) and now I used the drawerless unit for Carson's puzzles to go on. Small puzzles are in baggies in the two white baskets. I'm not quite sure what that paper towel roll and green duct tape thing is. It's one of his projects and that was the best place to put it. Later you'll see his stash of supplies for things like that.

Robosapien wouldn't fit with the other remote control toys so he gets a special spot at the top.

I put a hook on the inside of the closet door for him to hang his coat on.
There's another hook just inside the door for him to hang his bath towel on. I didn't get in the pictures the fact that both of the hooks have labels above them.

This is the outside of his closet door.
Next is under-the-bed storage. These three containers take up the full width of the bed and fit perfectly between the legs. Two of the containers have Hot Wheel tracks in them (his and Hayden's) and the other one has coloring books, art books, paper and workbooks. Since his bed is near his desk it is easy for him to pull that container out when he wants something to work on at his desk. One thing I like about these containers under the bed is that they are using up normally wasted space, and having them there helps prevent toys from getting shoved under the bed.

When you look at his bed you can't even see the containers under it.
This is the shelf above his bed. I painted it and then bought little wooden dinosaurs and painted them and glued them on. I think it turned out cute. The shelf contains his beanie baby collection that he won't get rid of. Mike's mom used to collect them and now that she doesn't she just gives them away to my kids. I hate to think of the money that was wasted on them. Oh, well, it wasn't my money.

I got these dinosaur pictures off a clearance shelf and painted their baby blue frames red to match his room.

Next is the toy box. Dinosaurs adorn the top.

Dinosaurs are inside. Even though you can't see it very well, all the stuff on the left is in a container without a lid. It is all the big stuff. The small container on the right houses smaller dinosaurs and cavemen.
Next to the toy box, hidden in the corner behind a large dresser, is his hamper, a door from his dresser that Mike needs to put back on, a large piece of cardboard for one of his projects, and his Magnetix suitcase. This corner is hidden unless you walk right over to it, luckily.Here is his bookcase dresser. He has way too many stuffed animals but he won't get rid of them, so they sit on top. There are some miscellaneous things, trophies, books and more dinosaurs. The trophies used to be on a shelf above his bed, but since we live in a prime earthquake area, and since natural disasters seem to be occurring at a rapid pace, we moved them onto the bookshelf, just in case.

This is the cupboard with the missing door. On the top are various toys like his Leap Pad, Dino Dig, Creatrix and a dinosaur model. You can't tell but there are labels on the shelf. The bottom shelf holds the Light Brite and accessories.

The top drawer holds puppets and Pixter.

The middle drawer holds Marble Speedway and Gameboy items.

The bottom drawer holds action figures and various items taken out of recycle cans around the house for Carson to build whatever comes to mind. It bothers me that all of that stuff doesn't fit inside the container and they are spilled out into the drawer, but as long as he keeps them in the drawer I can live with it.Here's the wall next to the bookcase. There's his dinosaur bank.

He did this picture when he was in Kindergarten. Even though it's not a dinosaur (I'm not sure what it is) it was close enough for me so I framed it and hung it up.

Now for his clothes dresser. On top he has some very cool Robert Sabuda pop-up books. One, of course, is about dinosaurs.

The top drawer has containers , which are labeled, to keep blankets, swimming suits, and various accessories like hats, sunglasses, etc. separate. These containers came with lids, but since they won't fit in the drawer with the lids I am keeping them elsewhere so in the future if I decide to use these containers for something else I will still have the lids.The second drawer has containers for underwear, socks and pajamas. As you can tell, I have a bit of laundry to do since he only has one clean pair of socks. I bet you'll never guess what those socks have on them. If you guessed dinosaurs you were right!

I'm not putting pictures of the bottom two drawers because they are very boring. The bottom drawer has winter clothes and school clothes and the second from the bottom has current summer clothes. All of his clothes easily fit in those two drawers because he hardly has any. I need to go shopping. The poor kid is clothing deprived.

Last, but not least, is his desk area. He keeps it pretty neat. On the shelf is a container that holds art supplies such as crayons, markers and colored pencils.
Inside the drawer an organizer keeps things somewhat neat.

These garbage cans are in between his clothes dresser and his desk. One is for recyclables and one is for garbage. I don't know if you can tell, but they are labeled. They don't look great but they get the job done.

I love his bulletin board. I made it. It was a pain in the butt but I think it turned out pretty good. We redid his room two years ago and I still haven't put the molding around it that I painted and is just sitting in our garage. I'm sure you can tell, but there is a bulletin board on the top half, a magnet board to the left and a chalkboard to the right. It was one of the projects I was the most proud of. The only bad thing about it is it is so heavy that it is screwed directly into the wall so it can't be easily moved.

Here is the view of the whole desk/bulletin board area. His dinosaur calendar is hanging by the window and his own abstract art painted back pack is hanging on his chair.

Wow, that was a lot of pictures and it took me a long time to post. When I finally hit publish it will be before midnight so I did get it up today, like I said I would, just a little bit later than I planned.

Overall I really like Carson's room. He has been very good about keeping it clean and organized. He loves having the labels on everything. I don't know that he really needs everything labeled, but he likes it so we did it. We organized his room several months ago and he has been great about keeping it nice. I think it helped that he had input into everything I did. I didn't get rid of anything he really didn't want to get rid of. He helped decide where things should be and what containers we should use. He really likes it, and he even makes his own bed sometimes just to make it look nice!

Up next on the organizing agenda is the hallway, which includes the coat closet and the linen closet. I should be posting those fairly soon since they are organized. I just need to fold some laundry so my linen closet looks like a linen closet instead of an empty closet!

Organizing Pictures Coming Tomorrow

2008-06-08T20:19:00.002-07:00

I am going to start posting pictures of my organizing endeavors. My New Year's Resolution was to be totally organized by December 31, 2008. I've kind of slacked off lately so I decided that if I promised to post pictures of my results here it would make me get my butt in gear and get the rest of it done. For some reason I work well under pressure.

Coming up tomorrow will be pictures of Carson's bedroom and explanations of what we did. I have to work in the morning so I'll post it in the afternoon. I hope by seeing my pictures other people will get some good ideas for their own organizing. I also hope that if someone who sees them has great ideas of what might work better they will let me know. I need all the help I can get.

The Zoo

2008-06-05T08:26:00.002-07:00

On Sunday we went to the zoo. At one point as we were walking along the kids were in front of us and I noticed this:

They were voluntarily holding hands with each other. I think they were having such a good time and were so happy they all of the sudden felt some brotherly and sisterly love. They will hold hands with each other but usually it's in a situation when we're somewhere and I want everyone to stick together and I tell them to hold hands.

I thought they looked so cute together.

The zoo has a big metal elephant sculpture that the kids love to play on. It makes loud noises and squirts water out of its trunk. Every time we go to the zoo the kids sit on the trunk and I take a picture.
The reason Amaya is missing from the picture is because she was terrified of it. Every other time we've gone to the zoo, including the last time we went within the last two months, she has always sat on it. This time she would not get near it. It was really weird.

Instead of taking her picture on the elephant I took a picture of her at the playground.

Here's the best picture I could get of the three of them together. Amaya is in the weird-smiling stage right now and this picture with her looking over to the side is better than the one where she has a psychotic-looking grin on her face.

One funny thing that happened was when we went in one of the monkey houses one of the cages was empty of monkeys because they were outside. There was a stuffed monkey for the real monkeys to play with lying on the floor in the cage. As soon as Amaya saw it she said, "He can't get up. He's dead." She thought it was a real monkey. After we stopped laughing we explained to her that it wasn't real, it was only a toy. We didn't want her to be traumatized thinking she'd seen a dead monkey.

Since we have a membership to the zoo, we will be going there a lot this summer. It's nice to walk around and let the kids run and work off some energy. Now that we can take Amaya to the zoo without her being in a stroller we realized we might have to buy a wagon or something similar to carry stuff in. Having the stroller was great because we could put my purse, the cameras (I usually have my digital and my 35mm) drinks, snacks, jackets, hats, sunscreen, etc., and it's a pain in the butt not having anywhere to put all that stuff. So we either need to buy a wagon or we need to learn to travel with less stuff. I'm just so used to having to bring so much stuff for the kids that I don't know what to do.

Well, I'd better try to get some stuff done around the house before I pick up the boys from their last day of school. We're going to get ice cream right after and then summer vacation will be in full force. Too bad it's cold and rainy today.

Works For Me: The "Mom, I'm Bored Edition"

2008-06-03T21:45:00.003-07:00

Here is what I've done to try to help keep my kids from getting bored. I went to the craft store and bought a box with several hundred craft sticks of different colors in it. Then I sorted them out by colors and wrote all sorts of activities my kids can do when they're bored. Each color contains different types of activities, for instance, green sticks are all outdoor activities (blowing bubbles, drawing with sidewalk chalk, riding bikes, etc), red sticks are places we can go that cost money (amusement park, children's museum, etc), blue sticks are places we can go for free (park, zoo with our membership, etc.), yellow sticks are activities they can do inside (puzzles, read, color, etc). Then I put all of the sticks in a fancy cup I got from the circus back before I ever had kids (I have always loved the circus!) and when the kids are bored they can pick an activity out of the cup. If we're going somewhere I'll tell them if they can pick an activity that costs money or if it has to be a free activity. If it's raining outside I tell them they have to pick an indoor activity. If it's a nice day they can pick an outdoor activity. I do maintain a little bit of control over which category they can pick from, but then they can do whatever activity they pick out of the cup. Sometimes they'll pick an activity and it's something they don't feel like doing so they'll put it back and pick another one. They always find something they want to do. If this doesn't keep them from getting bored over the summer, nothing will.

Go to Rocks In My Dryer to check out a lot more boredom-busting ideas for summer vacation.

Organizing Round-Up

2008-06-03T06:49:00.005-07:00

This month I participated in The Org Junkie's Monthly Organizing Round-Up, which for the month of May was kids' rooms. Unfortunately, because I'm a major procrastinator, I didn't quite get finished with my daughter's room, but here are some before and after pictures of the parts I did get totally done.

Here is her messy bookcase before.

Here it is after. It even has one of the Three Little Pigs, Jiminy Cricket and the Saggy Baggy Elephant hanging out on it.

The only thing I did with her kitchen (no before pictures) is put a little basket in the empty cubbyhole to stash dishes or food in.

Her closet was the worst part. Not only was it very messy and unorganized, it was very difficult to get decent pictures of because I didn't have a good angle from which to shoot pictures. It is not really a closet, just a space under the stairs. Before it mostly held things that I need to get rid of, like a bassinet and a bunch of stuffed animals.

Here is the view looking straight in before.

Here it is after. Most of her clothes are in the dresser. That's why there is hardly any hanging up. I got rid of almost everything from the before picture.
Here is the angle that goes under the stairs before.
And here it is after. I moved some drawer units from another area of the house where they weren't needed anymore into the closet to make a place to put various toys. Behind the drawers I do have a few big things stashed like the playpen and the backpack we use to carry her in when we go on hikes. Those two items will be leaving soon, too.

Having these parts of her room organized will really help keep things neat because now everything has a place. Amaya is only three-years-old so I will need to help her keep it organized.

The rest of her room is organized, too, but I just need to put some finishing touches before I post pictures. Mainly I need to go to the dollar store to get some small baskets for her drawers. After school lets out on Thursday, I am going to post pictures of all of my kids' organized rooms and the methods I used in each one so check back later in the week.

2008-06-01T00:01:00.000-07:00

I saw this meme at What Was I Thinking? and I thought it looked really cool, and I was bored and needed something to do. If anyone wants to do it, let me know so I can come and check it out. It's pretty easy to figure out how to do it. If I could do it, most people probably could.

First, check out this mosaic.

Next, read the following questions and answers. The answers relate in some way to the above pictures in order.

1. What is your first name? Dawn
2. What is your favorite food? right now? Chocolate
3. What high school did you go to? Alta High School
4. What is your favorite color? Purple
5. Who is your celebrity crush? Al Pacino (when he was younger)
6. Favorite drink? Dr. Pepper
7. Dream vacation? Europe
8. Favorite dessert? Sabayon
9. What you want to be when you grow up? Happy
10. What do you love most in life? My kids
11. One Word to describe you. Unorganized
12. Your flickr name. I don't have one

I think all of the pictures, except for the last three, represent my answers pretty well. If I had a flickr account it would have helped out on numbers 10 and 12.

Created with fd'sFlickr Toys.

The concept:

a. Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
b. Using only the first page, pick an image.
c. Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into fd's mosaic maker).

Credits for the above pictures are as follows:

1. Waiting for dawn, 2. 14th August 2007 / Day 226, 3. The Victors, 4. Purple fingers, 5. Al Pacino, 6. Drink Dr. Pepper!, 7. Europe Tower, 8. Cremosos de Chocolate y Sabayon, 9. Happy Girls Under a Rainbow, 10. candy pop land, 11. Yellow in the dark, 12. For you / Para vosotras (Sant Jordi)

I'm A Geek

2008-05-30T21:41:00.002-07:00

I will admit that I spent Friday night watching the National Spelling Bee on TV. When I saw that it was going to be on I was excited. By the second hour even the rest of my family was watching it and trying to spell the words. I think I'm a pretty good speller, but there were some really hard words they had to spell. I'm amazed at all the work they have to put in to be able to spell those kinds of words.

When I was in 7th grade we had a spelling bee at school. There were several rounds that were done in classrooms and after so many kids had been eliminated the final round was going to be up in front of the whole school. I had made it to the last round before the final round and I was so nervous about having to be up in front of the entire school that I spelled my next word wrong on purpose so I could be eliminated. Looking back I wish I would have just kept going to see how far I could have gotten. My fear of being up in front of a bunch of people is still with me today.

Carson is in 2nd grade and his teacher had the kids do oral reports throughout the year. Whenever Carson was ready to do one I would ask him if he was nervous and he would say he wasn't. He really liked doing them. I think it's good to get kids started young doing things like that so they get used to it and never develop a fear of public speaking.

I hope we can find something a little more exciting and a little less nerdy to do tomorrow night.

"I Wish I Had A Big Butt"

2008-05-29T14:54:00.002-07:00

That is definitely not a quote from me. It's from Amaya. She said she wishes she had a big butt so it would fit better on the toilet and she wouldn't have to have someone hold onto her so she doesn't fall in.

Are You Looking For A New Pet?

2008-05-26T22:52:00.004-07:00

Try a couple of these.

Don't you think hissing cockroaches would make good pets? They are small, easy to care for and don't require a lot of attention. And the kids love them.

But I don't. Carson wants us to get some for pets, but I think we'll stick to the cute, furry kind of pet.

Those cockroaches are my sister's family's newest pets. To me, they are just plain creepy. If I wanted to get a small, somewhat creepy pet I would rather get a tarantula. At least they look furry.

We Have a Meeting Tomorrow

2008-05-22T22:21:00.002-07:00

Tomorrow afternoon we are going to our SW's (social worker) house to meet the director of an orphanage in Guangdong Province, China. Apparently he is in the United States visiting with some families that have adopted children from China to see what their lives are like and how they are fitting in. Our SW thought it would be good for us to come and visit with him. She will have an interpreter there to help with the communication.

It is going to be a busy day because I have to work tomorrow. I have to leave at 8:45 to drop the boys off at my mom's house. They don't have school because of Memorial Day weekend. Then I will take Amaya to school and go to my job. My job is at 10:00. My mom and the boys will pick Amaya up at 11:00. Whenever my job gets done I will either go to my mom's and hang out or go home and get a few things done depending on how much time I have. Then I will take Amaya and meet Mike at the SW's house at 2:15. We will stay for approximately 20 minutes (the director is only going to be there until 3:00) and then I have another job at 3:00. Our SW's house is only about five minutes from my afternoon job so everything should work out fine. Then Mike will take Amaya back to my mom's and I will pick the kids up when I'm done with work. I am so glad that our house, my mom's house, Mike's work, Amaya's school, our SW's house and my job are all within about a four-mile radius; otherwise days like tomorrow couldn't happen very easily.

After tomorrow I will be more than ready for a long weekend.

Organizing Bags

2008-05-21T18:21:00.003-07:00

I won a set of organizing bags from The Lazy Organizer because I guessed that her new baby was going to be a girl and would be born on May 15, 2008. I am really excited about getting the bags because I've been wanting to order some for a while now but just haven't done it yet. Now I will get to test them out and see what kinds of things I can use them for. They look like they would be great for all kinds of things and I can't wait to get them. Once I do, I will try them out and let you know what they're like.

In the meantime, go visit her website and check out the bags for yourselves, and also look at the pictures of her beautiful new baby girl. If I was younger it would probably make me want another baby.