That’s Right, We Build Our Furniture

Every time we need a new piece of furniture we spend tons of time looking at the selection of build it yourself furniture. And every time I say to Zippercow that someday we will be grown up enough to buy furniture that we don’t have to assemble ourselves. But lets be honest, that will probably never happen. In the end the stuff you build yourself is just more affordable AND we don’t have to worry about if it will fit through the doorway to get it in the house. But most important of all is it is family friendly furniture. By that I mean it holds up to the  abuse children inevitably inflict upon it, and because it isn’t uber solid wood, I won’t have a heart attack every time a hot wheel screeches across it. Because lets face it with two boys everything (much to my dismay) is a hot wheel highway. So unless it is padded furniture it is probably some form of Sauder brand furniture or something from Ikea. And since we so rarely have to opportunity to visit Ikea, it more often then not is some variety of Sauder.

On this occasion we are in need of a computer desk.  Our current one has been broken for awhile and I’ve been waiting for it to collapse causing all sorts of doom. But in the spirit of organizing we thought we’d get a new desk so I can get on with the organizing of our office space in our room. And instead of putting shelves up over the desk we opted for one with a hutch. So while Zippercow is putting all of this desk together I am writing this post. Sure I could be helping him but I’ve learned that unless he asks for the help it is just best to stay out of his way. And weirdly enough I can’t wait to get to organizing the desk area. Strange I know! It has been so overwhelmingly terrible that I’ve avoided doing anything in our room so as to avoid the tragedy that had befallen our room, the office space.  Nothing really had a place, so just pile it here, and the like. But disaster no more! In just a few short….hours the desk will be complete and I can breath a sigh of relief. Aahh….

Are we alone here? Does anyone else pretend to be a carpenter and screw together inexpensive assembly required furniture?

Happy National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day!

Oh happy day!!! As a kick of to National Peanut Month March 1st is apparently known as National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day! This is recently known to me (like within the last hour) but since I just shared my favorite things I thought I just HAD to post on this because…

peanut butter is my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE!!!!

Seriously peeps, I really really love chocolate but I LOOOVVVEE peanut butter even more. If you know me at all you will know that I am famous for saying “peanut butter makes everything better”. And it is so true. First you start with this

then you add, well anything. Some great ideas are celery, carrots, apples, pears, saltines, ritz crackers, graham crackers, pretzels and of course ANY combination of peanut butter and chocolate! And it is no coincidence that today is also IHOP’s National Pancake Day, because lets face it, the only way to eat pancakes (or waffles) is with peanut butter and syrup.  Don’t forget the classic lunchtime staple, peanut butter and jelly!

Peanut butter toast is great too. So fabulous in fact, I eat a slice of whole wheat  toast with peanut butter and a small glass of milk every morning for breakfast, even when I was pregnant! I’m positive that is why Little Moo is also quite the peanut butter fan.

Some other great peanut butter tasties

YUM!

And of course this wonderful cookbook by Jessica Seinfeld introduced our family to peanut butter and jelly muffins, scrumptious!

Don’t forget how much peanut butter adds to desserts. Great in brownies, just make the brownies as you normally would and before putting them in the oven put some dollops of  peanut butter in the batter and swirl it in with a butter knife.

Or peanut butter cookies!

1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 egg. Mix together and bake 10-11 minutes at 400 degrees.

 

They are great plain, or you can add a chocolate to the top for a extra special treat. I also make excellent peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. They are my signature cookie! Ask for the recipe sometime, they are great!

I could go on about the magnificence of peanut butter (and on and on) but I will leave you to it. How do you like your peanut butter?

Mama Moo’s Favorite Things!

I have a lot of favorite things, but I will start off with my MOST FAVORITIST things

Of course the first two are these silly hooligans. Little Moo and Littlest Moo. Aren’t they adorable!!! Sure I might be biased but come on, they are about the cutest thing ever!

Then of course there is this guy. Not the little one (but he is the MOST adorable little boy ever) but the man holding him. Such a wonderful husband and father, and probably one of the funniest people I know. LOOOOVEE him!

 

Mushy, sure. But I can’t share my favorite things without first sharing my absolute most favorite things, my menfolk!!!

Now on to some of my favorite things in our home

This is my favorite grouping on a shelf in our house. It  is on a wall in Littlest Moo’s room. Cows. I know, shocking right? I love it for a couple reasons, mostly because right now it is the most put together thing in his room (I will show pictures of the rest of it in my next post. Yikes!) And because I made the cow pictures. I spray painted some Goodwill picture frames, found some cow coloring pictures and gussied them up.

What do you think? I love the dancing cow! I have written “moo” around the edge of the white paper. Love it!

Then of course there is the John Deere cow. ADORABLE!

Which brings me to my other favorite cow

We found this little guy at Fred Meyer in the clearance section. I couldn’t decide if I liked him or thought he was creepy. I’ve come around and now I love him. He has inspired décor for the living room that I would have never come up with if I didn’t find him. He’s my cowspiration! I will share that with you soon too. Currently he sits upon a shelf, but he has been spotted elsewhere as well

Those are a few of my favorites. Mostly cow inspired, but hey it IS Zipper Herd!

Under Construction…Always!

Okay, So I am fully aware that this is a less than flattering picture of myself, but it adequately depicts how I feel about the state of our house. Insert high pitched shriek. I’m sure it is mostly a bit of cabin fever ready for a healthy dose of some massive spring cleaning, but for goodness sakes!!!!! So. much. stuff.

Being “organized” seems so short lived in our home.  I feel I’ve been mislead, that once you get organized that is it, everything has a place and all is wonderful in the world. The problem seems to be that it only lasts as long as the stuff that you need to organize does. For instance we have our garage organized with shelves and totes, but what needs to be in some of  those totes continuously changes as do the other items in the garage.  So the trick is having the time to sort and label the items to go in the bins. And until then things just get shoved everywhere. Much with our closets in our home, everything can be folded and put in its place but after a couple months everything seems to be everywhere. Maybe I’m not as organized as I think I am? All I know is everything is everywhere and I need the garage organized before I can move things out there, and it is too cold to do that so everything seems to be “under construction” until the weather improves.

As if getting everything together wasn’t enough, we are also working on painting the interior of our home. We have opted for a slow but steady option, I say this because mostly the Hubs may leave if I asked him to tackle it all at once.  Mostly because I haven’t figured out how to do the painting and watch 3 children by myself.  So we have painted a little of the trim and doors every weekend over the last month or so and then we will paint the walls.  It hasn’t been decided if this really is the best way to carry this out, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed. So now we have stuff everywhere and partially painted walls.

 

Zippercow thought it would be best to paint our test spot in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Mostly because he can’t handle a random square on the wall. So we have this green over the pantry door, and a tan color in our dining room and kitchen. I promise pictures when we finish!

Here is our messy living room with partially painted trim down the hall. We are almost done with all the doors and trim in the hall.

So as you can see we have a lot of work ahead of us,  but I really wanted to share our progress with everyone. Why? Because when it is all done it will seem that much more fabulous!!! So over the next couple of days I will be posting pictures of our home in its pre-spring cleaning state and then (of course!) share the after pictures. I will tell you one thing, taking time to organize is always worth it, because it makes re-organizing  that much easier. Welcome to our decrapification!!!

A Proper Goodbye

I like to pretend that I don’t get attached to material things and I like to think that I am pretty good at letting go of the things we no longer need. But then we had our last baby. Now every time our Littlest Moo grows out of something I get a little sad when I think of parting with it. Like the cute little onesies  he wore as a newborn. Or the ones that both he and Little Moo wore. Those are hard. But of course there are a few things that we are ready to get rid of that we won’t be sad about. Like the baby bathtub. Those things are so huge and ridiculous and in a small house there really is no where to store it. man am I glad he no longer needs that thing! Also the baby swing. While a dear friend to us in his early months it takes up tons of floor space which is at a premium in our house so we were not sad to see it go!

I thought that I’d post to pay homage to those baby items in our home that served us well and deserve a proper send off.  These items being the cutest and most importantly served to make parenting just a teensie bit easier.

One of our favorite baby item was this bouncy chair. Zippercow and I still say it is the BEST $25 we ever spent! It was the ONLY place that I could put Little Moo down when he was a baby that he wouldn’t scream like a banshee and sometimes he’d even nap in it allowing precious moments to use the bathroom and brush last weeks morning breath away.

This is the magic baby chair.

It once had a toy bar

with cute little giraffes and a little blue ball.

It has served this household well

Both Little and Littlest Moo loved this chair! I wanted to cry when it was time to throw it out. Sadly it was too loved to pass on to someone else as you can probably see from the pictures above. The toy bar would not stay screwed on and the fabric was tearing. But it made it through my two kids and my niece so it seemed right to retire it. Still, it was hard to say goodbye. It just seemed…wrong. 

So how about you? Do you have a much beloved baby item that you just can’t  part with? Maybe you’ve already gotten rid of it but it made you sad to do so? Share!

I’m High-Jacking Our Blog!

The Zippercow so rarely did anything with our blog previously and we only used it to update friends and family on our little family, but now there is facebook so... As some may be aware I’m not the greatest at keeping our blog going, but this time will be different (I’m serious!). I felt our family blog in its previous form read more like the holiday letter that everyone sends out every year. My hope is to have more of my style (I know, I know, who needs that right?) honest mom moments, how we save money,  inexpensive decorating ideas and anything else my crazy brain comes up with. Zippercow may add his input  from time to time but mostly you just get me, and you know you love it!

A Little Sunshine

Look at this little sunshine! It is so smiley and unassuming. You would never know the evil things it is capable of. You might ask, "How can such a cute little sunshine toy be anything but cute?" Oh let me tell you!

We were fortunate enough to have some nice friends loan us their excersaucer for our Littlest Moo to use. And man does he love to sit in it and play! But I recently discovered the little sunshine is not so sweet and sunny because he doubles as a spit sling shot. Sadly our Littlest Moo spits up quite a bit (much like Little Moo did) so while he's playing he spits up and we wipe it up. Littlest Moo finds this little sunny guy the most appealing and can often be seen chewing away on it, which requires him to bend it towards him. Well sometimes he spits up and before we can get to him to clean it up he will have gotten some of the spit up all over this sunny little face and then it will slip out of his hands. But don't you worry, the sunshine shares!As he snaps himself into his upright position he flings all of that lovely spit up all over my living room. Yes, baby vomit in little specks all over my living room.not cool! I didn't realize how bad it was until the other day I found spots of orange on my couch in a couple places. I don't let the little kids snack in the living room so I had to ponder for a few minutes before realizing it was regurgitated carrots that was all over my couch.FAIL. So unassuming he is, just politely smiling. I'd consider taking it off but again, it is Littlest Moos favorite and how can you deny such a sweet face a little sun? So instead we just take cover from the sun.