Copycat Decorating 101

Ok, so I don't claim to be an expert in the least bit on decorating, however I am pretty good at doing cute stuff on a tight budget.

I do admit, I snag ideas here and there, however I'm not using these for resale or for profit in any way, so ethically it's fine.  I just find something I like and copycat it.

My daughter wanted a music theme room.  I found some ideas for wall decor and did my own copycats of them.

First I did a wall mural.  I found the photo on Google that I liked and replicated it on her wall.

Here is the original image:

Here is my copycat of it.

Not too shabby, and it only cost me the paint  (which I all ready had on hand), and about an hour of my time.  I LOVE doing this kind of stuff.  It's fun for me.  So yesterday I was sick and stuck at home.  So I decided to take a stab at another idea I saw I liked.

Here is the original image:

And here is my copycat version of it;

Just had hubby find some extra plywood he had in the garage and he cut me 8x8 sections and sanded it down.  I painted the sides black, then the tops of two white and the other tops of two black, then after it dried I reversed the colors and used while paint was still drying I scratched it to reveal the opposite color underneath.  Voila!  And it didn't cost me anything because I had it lying around, and it was TOTALLY fun to do.

I'm working on one last piece for her room, but this one is an original, and I'm not quite done with it yet, but I'll give you a sample....

Overwhelmed

I woke up this morning and laid in bed with everything I needed to accomplish today swirling around in my head.  I immediately became overwhelmed.

See, I feel like I should be this super mom, who cleans, cooks, takes care of the kids, and keeps her house in perfect order.

My life is SO not like that.  I have laundry in the basket from two days ago that still needs folded.  I have at least four loads in my closet that need washed.  When I'm done cleaning the kitchen I walk into the living room to see that the dog has chewed up ANOTHER diaper (don't know where he finds these things...) and I have ANOTHER mess to clean up.  While I'm cleaning that mess, I walk in the den to realize that Evie has COLORED ON THE BIG SCREEN with crayon.  In the meantime, Lucy is crying and needs fed, and the dogs are fighting with each other.  I have homework that needs completed, I haven't even showered yet this morning.

I want to just go crawl back in bed, pull the covers over my head, and not come out until June.

Then I HATE myself for feeling angry and overwhelmed.  I begin to feel like a bad mother and housewife for having these emotions.  After all, I decided to stay at home to take care of these things, but I constantly feel that I fall short of "the standard".  I look at other women, and they seem to have it all together, and I constantly feel disheveled and like a complete and total wreck.

When I do give "proper" attention to one area, everything else falls apart.  I have issues with time management.

Is it just me? Am I totally alone here?  I strive to be the "wife of noble character" that is talked about in Proverbs 31, but that standard is so high, how can I possibly ever live up to that?

Sea Salt Hairspray : Fail

I have wavy hair.  Not the kind of wavy that is just naturally wavy and gorgeous, but the wavy kind of hair that I either have to blow dry straight or moose to death to get a decent amount of non frizzy wave.

Now, waves are all the rage right now, so I started researching what would be the best product to use on my hair.  I saw that a LOT of people use home made sea salt mixed with water.  It's ALL OVER the internet, youtube and everywhere else, so I thought I found the perfect solution for my waves. Here is what I was going for:

What I ended up getting looked more like this:

Ok, I may be exaggerating SLIGHTLY.  Seriously though, what do I have to do to get these gorgeous looking waves?

You'd think they grew on trees or something...

My two year old LOVES apples.  She usually eats at least one a day.

Tonight her daddy grabbed the last apple that we had.  She was NOT happy about it.  Daddy also doesn't like to share food.  In fact, he has stolen the quote from friends where Joey screams "JOEY DOESN'T SHARE FOOD," and changed it to "DADDY DOESN'T SHARE FOOD!"

I wish I was kidding, but I'm not.

But I digress...

Daddy had the apple.  Evie wanted it.

She comes over to me and gives me the sad face "I want an apple mommeeee."

"I'm sorry sweetie," I reply, "you have to ask your daddy."

"Daddy said NO."  (big pouty face)

"I'm sorry sweetie." I then turned my head and continued watching Idol.

Two seconds later I have a hand forcefully pushing my head in the direction of her father.

"YOU ASK HIM!" she yells.

Hide and Seek

Today I was playing "hide and seek" with my two year old.

I said "go hide and I'll count."  She runs VERY loudly into my closet.  I am in the same room as her.

I pretend to look for her in a few other spots then go to the closet and act surprised to see her there.

I decided to try it again.  I said "do you want to hide again or do you want to count?"

"I hide."  She said, but stopped and turned around, before she ran to go and hide she holds out her hand (in a "stop" motion) "ok mom, I go hide and you count.  I hide in the closet and you come and find me."

I don't think she understands the point of hide and seek.

Lifesaver

Yesterday my hubby and I were having a mellow afternoon, just playing games and, relaxing in front of a fire.  A scream broke through the silence of our home from upstairs.  It was that kind of scream where you know that someone is hurt.

Hubby and I ran quickly up the stairs to see what was going on.  My son was screaming hanging onto the ladder of his bed, with the cat hanging off of him.

I guess what had happened is that the dog had scared the cat onto the top of my sons loft bed.  This happens quite often in our house, the dog goes running after the cat, the cat runs and hides from the dog up high- no big deal, well, usually.

My son decided that he would "rescue" the cat from the bed by taking her down the ladder (while the dog happened to be in the room still).  The cat was still freaked and clawed onto the first thing that she could reach, which happened to be my son.

So there they both are, hanging, clawing, crying.

We pull the cats claw out of my son's belly and look at his tummy, we give him hugs and kisses, and explain that there is no need to "rescue" the cat.  We explain the cat is perfectly capable of defending herself from the suicidal beagle.

We go back downstairs to continue in our relaxing afternoon.  My son is still sobbing in tears.  He keeps pulling up his shirt to look at his "massive gaping wound" that he has.

The melodrama doesn't stop there.  He looks over at my husband and between sobs says "Thank you Dad for saving my life."

And here it is, the horrific wound that caused all the drama.

My Latest Project

So, I know for many of the moms that I'm friends with this is nothing new to them, but to me it is pretty fun and exhilarating.  I've decided to make my own baby food for Lucy.  With all three of my others I just bought the jar food, but this can get pretty costly, and with a family our size and with me being the stay at home mom, part of my job is to learn where we can save money and cut costs.

So, let me nerd out on you a bit and go into some detail.  Baby food stage one comes in a two pack.  This two pack costs 88 cents.  Lucy goes through 4 a day, two for lunch and two for dinner (breakfast and bedtime she has cereal).  This roughly comes to $52.80 per month.  That is a pretty hefty chunk of change for a one income family.  So, this is why I took on this endeavor.  I'd love to say it was for the health benefits, but that just ended up being a secondary perk...

So, I decided to puree my baby food.  I did peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, broccoli, butternut squash, bananas and pears.  I used the magic bullet and food processor.  I found that the magic bullet worked better than the large food processor because I could work in smaller portions and add more water or add more food as needed, whereas with the big processor if I messed up I would have lost the whole batch, and it also made a MUCH bigger mess to clean.

There is a shot of the sweet potatoes.  They look pretty gross, but I actually tasted them and I couldn't believe how yummy they were.  They were NOTHING like the jarred kind.  Once I tasted how good these meals for Lucy were and once I realized how much fun I was having making them I was hooked.  I wish I would have done this with all my others.

After I pureed the food I froze it into ice cube trays.  Two cubes equal about one jar of food.  So, after I was done with all the veggies, I counted how many meals I had and how much it cost me.  The total cost of the veggies came to $5.48, which if I would have purchased equal amounts of Gerber jar food it would have cost me $24.64, so it was a total savings of $19.16!  Score!

After the cubes of food were frozen, I popped them out of the ice trays and sealed and labeled them in ziplock baggies, to pull out for easy servings.  Lucy LOVES the food.  The cool thing about this is I can also puree leftovers of my own meals as she gets older and she will all ready be used to the flavor of our cooking!  I even pureed some leftover chicken noodle soup the other day and froze them into cubes (she is not quite ready for that yet, but I will have it when she is ready for the next stage!)

This project was so much fun, I thought it was going to be a huge chore and not worth all the work.  It is a bit time consuming, but it was actually fun and relaxing, and I loved knowing how much money I was saving and exactly what was going into Lucy's meals.  I'm totally converted and will never buy another ounce of jar food again!