Pinterest Find: Shape Sticks

Esther had a blast playing with shape sticks this morning!

I found the idea here, and bought sticks and Velcro from Amazon (see below for links).

I printed and laminated the cards, then spent a few minutes sticking Velcro on popsicle sticks.  It all fits inside a zipper top Ziploc bag for storage.

Esther was so proud of her flower!  She's such a puzzle whiz, I just handed her the cards and she figured out how to make things.  Lucy enjoyed making some of the alphabet letters with her too.

Basement Mess to Playroom!

We live in a tiny two bedroom house.  with four kids.  and a dog.

The other day I decided to clean out the girls' bedroom.  I ended up removing most of their toys in order to give them more space and calm.  They still have bins of things stored under their beds, but the toy shelves moved downstairs.  The problem with downstairs was that it looked like... well, you'll see.  It wasn't really useable.  Therefore, my next project was tackling the basement mess.

Before:

After:

We bought metal shelving from Costco that completely covered one wall and gave us so much more storage space.

I don't have before and after pictures of the laundry room, but we also added more shelves in there to store food, toilet paper, etc that had all piled up.

I love my clean organized basement; its like adding a whole room to our house!  Thanks to my wonderful husband for working hard all weekend to help me get this done.  :)

Madeon Hard Lotion Sale

Our favorite lotion - Madeon Hard Lotion is having a free shipping weekend.  Use the code "backtoschool" for free shipping Friday and Saturday.  This is the only lotion that has helped Lucy's severe dry hands in the past.  We're big fans of the hard lotion bars and the Beesilk jr for soft baby skin.  Stock up now for winter!  :)

Bedroom Organizing

The great end-of-summer house cleaning has begun!  Here is a look at the girls' bedroom before we tackled it the other day.  Sadly, this was in its "clean" state; it pretty much always looked like this or worse.

We made more of a mess while cleaning.

And there's still a mess in the playroom downstairs.  We're working on it.

But they love their peaceful bedroom now!

 I gave the girls a big pep talk before we started.  We live in a small two bedroom house, and just can't continue piling up things and filling our house!  I talked to them about making space to play, getting rid of what we don't love and keeping what we enjoy most.  We talked about how "things" are to be used and enjoyed, not hoarded, and sometimes that means giving those things to someone else who will use and enjoy them.  Someday we may have a bigger house, but this is what we have now and we need to fit into it!  They know that other people do not even have homes and we are very blessed to have the one that we live in.  While we wish for a bigger one, we should do the best we can with our little house.  (This was a pep talk to myself as well.)

I am so proud of them for making good choices!  They got rid of an entire laundry basket full of stuffed animals, threw away lots of random papers and junk, and chose to pass along some things we didn't need anymore.  They LOVE their new baby doll corner and all the space that they have to play now.  We moved the toy shelf to a downstairs room that we are working on organizing as well.  That is a bigger project that requires purchasing some new shelves, but hopefully that will happen soon.  I've been very overwhelmed with our house and it feels great to be organizing it now.  We tackled the hallway school cupboard and several other messy spots this week too.  My bedroom bookshelves will be getting whipped into shape tomorrow!