Must Clean All the Things!!!

Alright, so maybe not ALL the things. Some of the things? Instead of going to Green Bluff and frolicking through pumpkins I convinced myself (and Zippercow)  that there were more important things we needed to do here.  I may have been right, but kind of wish I wasn’t. So after cleaning the house, garage and doing some fall planting I decided to tackle the puzzle cupboard.

Ugh.

The puzzle cupboard is a a small cupboard in our entertainment stand that has all of Little Moo’s puzzles. In all I think he has more than ten puzzles and I believe almost all the pieces (of the 25 piece puzzles) were in a giant pile mixed on the bottom shelf.  Just thinking about it makes me itch and he wasn’t ever putting any of them together because I think he too was overwhelmed by the chaos of it all. To top it off any time the cupboard was opened most of its contents would  spill onto the floor, much to Littlest Moos delight. So I decided to remedy that.

Thanks to one of my favorite blogs Thrifty Decor Chick  I think I have a great way to keep all the pieces off the floor and organized enough that Little Moo will actually find them useful.

I started with cutting out the picture from the front of the box.

Then I wrote the name of the puzzle, how many pieces it had (because on some of them the piece count got cut off) and then numbered it.

Then I put that number on all the pieces that belonged to that puzzle.

Lastly I put each puzzle with the front of its box  in its own quart size Ziploc and put them all in a plastic shoe box bin.

Tada!!!! No more hives for Mommy! The best part? Little Moo has already used the puzzles more in the last three days than he has in the last 6 months! Success!

I love the occasional productive day!

La LA la!

Little Moo asked me to put on some music, so I tore myself away from America’s Next Top Model (a very embarrassing addiction) and turned on some awesome 90’s music tunes. While the kids were eating lunch I was putting away the dishes and busting out in song. About a minute later Little Moo interrupted my dream of being a moody pop star with

“Mom, I don’t want you to sing”

everyone’s a critic.

I personally think I have a unique voice like Melanie Safka. You know, delightfully terrible! Sorry kiddos, that is a direct consequence of listening to music in our home, and I can promise it will only get worse as you get older. I learned from the best (your grandpa) and plan on carrying on the tradition of getting into the music and embarrassing  you to your very core. Good luck! We’ll laugh about it on the other side. Promise.

Winning!!!!

How do you measure success day-to-day? It is different each day. Some days getting everyone dressed and out the door is all I need, others having the house clean, pleasant children, folded laundry and dinner ready when my husband gets home is a successful day. Those days are pretty rare…okay so mostly nonexistent. My bar is pretty low actually, I will settle for children still alive.

 

Today I measured success in brushing the teeth of 15 rambunctious children 4 and under in less than 20 minutes at work then later in the evening (despite being hella tired) playing Candy Land with Little Moo.

Oh, then I brushed the teeth of Littlest Moo!