What I've been up to...

I have been a little MIA lately, so I thought I'd fill you in on what I've been up to while I have been neglecting the poor blog.

I went home for a day to visit the fam and somehow ended up making supper and baking cookies!

I also did a little Iphone surgery with my "little" brother. It was a very loving event :)

I have also been cutting out things that I had laminated like crazy! 86 feet so far! And that my friends is a whole lot of cutting!!

Lots of things for my tutoring kids this summer and lots of fun things for Niki's kidlets too! I also scored a lot of awesome stuff on our huge sale at work the other day. wa-hoo for mega sales!

Also while I was home I snagged a stash of teacher stuff to use for my tutoring kids. I seriously bring a whole new meaning to the term pack rat! I have got to learn how to get rid of things!!

I have also been doing a lot of reading of teacher books. I have my reading endorsement but haven't really had a good chance to use it, so I did a little studying after meeting my tutoring girls and figuring out what we needed to work on. Yeah, I took notes, don't judge.

I have also been hard at work on Etsy orders and working on an update to our planner at the same time.   I'm feeling more busy now than I did during the school year!!

I have also been running like crazy! Niki wants to do a warrior dash and a 15k so this girl has got some serious training to do! Even got a new tank and I loooove it!!!

What have you been up to?? What things are you working on?

Finishing My Corner cubbies

I'm back to finish up my new cubbies in the corner that I used to replace my desk. After putting it together and popping it into place I started filling it up. Actually first I started sorting out all the stuff that needed to find a new home in each of the cubbies.

I grabbed these cubes at Target in the dollar spot. They were $3 each, which was awesome compared to the $6-12 price tag on all the others!

This little tray made the move from the desk to the new area. I love how it displays all of the cheery colored office supplies.

And here it is all filled up!  I like this soooo much better than that silly glass corner desk. It looks like it actually belongs there and isn't just a desk stuck randomly in the corner of the dining area!

Here's a closer peek at each space, left to right.

I also snagged these clear file boxes at Target for less than $3 each.

Operation Get It Together continues...

Move That Desk!! (clearly that was yelled Ty Pennington style) Next up in my mission to declutter my life, both mentally and physically is the desk area. It's this little disaster in the corner of my kitchen. Awhile ago we basically switched the desk and the dart board. And by we, I mean me. Yep moved that full sized dart board all by myself. But then it left the desk looking all weird in the corner.

So I decided the desk had to go. I don't think I have sat at it more than 5 times to actually use it as a desk. So there was no great loss as far as desk surfaces go. The obvious lack of storage was probably what lead to its demise. 

Which leads us to step 1.

Wait three days for boyfriend to move the desk to the garage. We live in an apartment so its not like just moving it out the door, it has to go quite a ways.

While you are waiting for said boyfriend to move the afore mentioned desk. Go to target and buy a cute little cube-y deal. Bonus points if you score it on sale like I did! Mine is made by Closet Maid, but I don't think the brand really matters for these friends.

Step 3. After the waiting period has passed and desk has been successfully removed, you put that baby together!! More bonus points if you can do it hillbilly style without a hammer! More points for most creative non-hammer tool used.

Then we wait, because here at our little blog we are realists and we don't have time to spend 4 hours creating a wonderful new corner area like we would like to. So this is a multi-day, multi-step process. But I am giddy about it already and I haven't even started filling it up yet!! I'm also glad to finally be doing a "real, hands on" project for Operation: Get It Together!

Beginning of the month planning {summer style}

My school year (sounds like I'm a middle schooler) schedule is quite a bit different than my (glorious) summer schedule. There will be no waking up at times that begin with a 5 uhthankyouverymuch. And hopefully I will not have to work in multiple towns in the same day. Though, I cannot guarantee that won't happen.

So here is a peek at my last week weeks.  The last week of school was a little crazy especially since we were all hanging out at the hospital from Friday afternoon until Tuesday around noon.

The first week out of school is still pretty swamped. Babysitting Niki's kidlets Monday through Thursday plus working a couple days and a work meeting....then off to Des Moines for the weekend for a wedding.

But then finally gaze at this glorious empty week!! (angles sing) I mean really, that baby is empty!! Wa-hoo!!

So here's June's calendar, the one that we share at home. Not much room for details on this one, just events for both of us are listed.

My menu calendar stated back in May and I am trying really hard to stick to it! I think it will be easier being home everyday to make "real meals" ya know, the kind you eat with a fork and not out of a paper bag. That's my goal anyway.

And my weekly cleaning checklist...I'm trying hard to stick to it this summer!

And that's all....woo-hoo!

Operation: Get it Together version N.2

A big part of Operation: Get it Together for me is getting my children on board with maintaining our household. I have been looking at all different kids of chore charts, online on paper and even apps. But they were all to complicated. I have 3 kids, and several chores that need to be done. I thought about a rotating schedule, but I couldn't really make that work. I thought about switching jobs every week, but didn't really like that either. My kids get bored easily. :)

I ended up with a Chore Jar. I'm sure there are tons of them all over the internet, and I know I have pinned a few. But I wanted just the things that were important to me right now.

I decided to go with 3 categories: Daily, Weekly and Extra Credit. Each of the kids has to pick 2 or 3 daily chores a day. They get completed and at the end of the night they are put back in the jar. Each kid gets to pick 1 or 2 weekly chores. They get put back on Sunday night. Extra Credit are things that the kids are not normally expected to do but can do to earn some extra money, or at my discretion.
I had Shannon whip me up some super cute chore chart cards:

I printed them, and Shannon cut, laminated and cut again. I want them to last for a while.

 Then she made me a super cute label for my container:

I had planned on putting these in a cute mason jar. But it just didn't work out that way. Shannon raided my shelf of extra storage and found this fun green container from Dollar Tree. I just printed this, cut it out and Mod Podged it on my container.

Right now we can't find the lid to the container, so there is no picture of that, but used your imagination for now, I will be back to add a picture when I find the lid!

We have started using it. The kids each pick 3 green chores (daily) and 1 orange (weekly) every day. They love the job of wiping the fridge and freezers, and it pays 50 cents, which they love even more! My fridge has never been this clean. So far, we have done a pretty good job of maintaining our house.

Look for our customizable chore jar kit in our Etsy shop soon!

How do you maintain your household? Are your kids doing chores? At what age did you start them? Any helpful hints to get me through this?