busy busy!

Seems like I have been really busy lately but not getting that much done.  How, exactly, does that work?  I don't know, but I did want to share some of the fun stuff I have been doing and I have more to share later as well!

I had fun making my girlies a pink valentine's day breakfast.
Scalloped heart pancakes with strawberry milk and a pink straw of course!

Of course the breakfast was for the guys as well, sans the pink milk.  Have you ever had stawberry milk?  Kinda funky if you ask me.  But, the girls LOVE it!

I made these for my 3 little birds for valentine's day.

They were inspired by the amazing April at secondsister.  When I grow up I want to make button bracelets like her!

(The blue one is made from vintage buttons from my grandmother.  I will soon be getting a jar of buttons from my great-grandmother and I will definitely be showing those here when they are in my hot little hands!!)

I made these for a superbowl party we went to.

                                      

Pure chocolate goodness inside and out!  But, I don't think I will EVER make them again!  Molding chocolate into the shape of a football is just not that easy!

just discovered

I just took a look around the second sister blog for the first time today.   What a beautiful place!  First, as the second sister in my own family of 3 girls, I get the feeling we could share more than a few stories about life in the middle!

Her post on Jan 22 really spoke to me.  Letting go of old dreams so that we are ready to live out the new ones!  You know that dreams (and what we should do with them) has been on my mind.

Then, whoa!, check out this girls AMAZING jewelry designs!  I actually gasped a couple times.  Seriously.
I want these:

and this:

                                      

and these:

                                       

oh, and while i am at it, this too:

                                     

that is a bracelet people!!

Her etsy shop is here http://www.etsy.com/shop/secondsister

I just love window shopping :)

food management

Perhaps I am lazy or dumb or crazy, or a little of all of the above?!  Managing the food buying, cooking, and planning has been a major thorn in the heel of my life for quite some time.  I don't hate it but I have never really come up with a system that worked for the long term. I have had good days, weeks and months, but it pretty much stops there.  I haven't sustained it.

My current bff:  

House of Order Handbook.

  

I am working my way through this book and hope to totally organize myself for ever and ever, amen.  But for right this moment I am working on developing her system of menu planning, shopping, and cooking.  I am trying to NOT tweak it since it has been made painfully clear that I do not have it figured out!  Tweaking can come later after I have put her system in place and USED IT!  

I have daydreams of living an incredibly peaceful, sane, organized life in a tidy little house with children who are dressed every morning and we even have fixed hair and brushed teeth.  (Like I said, it IS a dream here!)  

Then I open my eyes and cry out, WHY ME!!!!!!!

Anyway, this great little book covers everything from setting up your desk in an efficient way, managing laundry, budgeting, buying in bulk, and (my favorite) getting your kids to help!  WOO HOO!  I can't wait for that chapter!

So, today, I am working on setting up my Master Menu of 28 dinner meals that will actually get eaten along with our favorites for breakfast, lunch and snacks.  I love that once this is done, I won't have to think.  That is really the way I prefer to keep things around here.  

One of the best parts of the book is that she gets right to the point in each chapter.  She starts with a checklist, then gives maybe a couple pages of information, then right to your worksheets and tells you to GET TO WORK, WOMAN!  Okay, not really but that is what I tell myself and it really helps sometimes.

I have my desk pretty much done and I will let you know how the food planning goes.  Then I will conquer the rest of my life and hopefully, somewhere under the chaos, I will find my sanity.  It has been gone for a while, and I'm starting to miss that pesky critter.