Clean Up, Clean Up...

I feel like I am CONSTANTLY cleaning! I spend half my day on my hands and knees wiping up meal messes and the other half running up and down the stairs doing load after load of laundry. I know you can relate. Having young kids is tough on the tidiness of a house. 

I used to have a very orderly, clean home. I swept, mopped, dusted, scrubbed, wiped - the works - every Saturday. It would stay really clean for a couple days, then slowly get messier and start to irritate me by the next Saturday. But NOW...oh now, if I actually find an hour or two to do a decent cleaning (still nothing as thorough as before), it stays clean for approximately 3.5 hours and then you'd never know the extent of my labor. Crumbs here, toys there, dirty laundry over there...

To be honest, I regularly {choose} my children over cleaning. I've become pretty comfortable with a lesser degree of tidiness than the perfectionist in me ever would have accepted before and I think it's quite a healthy adjustment. I live with crumbs until the kids go down for a nap or let that pile of laundry sit on the dresser for a day or two until I get to it. I love this saying as a reminder of what really matters: 

While my kids are teaching me to relax and invest my time where it counts, I also want to teach them to be organized and responsible. So, this week I turned my attention to our basement/play room where toys have historically found their homes scattered all across the floor. I like having a room in the house where such chaos is acceptable or at least doesn't affect the functioning of the home. However, I've also been dreaming of some added order to the space to help keep things from getting quite so out of hand. Here's what we came up with:

This was a very affordable organization project. Two $17 shelves from Walmart and a dozen bins from the Dollar Tree. My husband was able to print and laminate labels for me at work and then we attached them to the front of each bin with clear packing tape. I made the simple "Play Time" banner hung across the top in about twenty minutes with a couple pieces of scrapbook paper and some twine. Love it! 

The kids are doing a great job choosing one bin at a time to play with and then helping put that one away before moving on to the next toy. And I'm working hard to constantly be engaged with them and make wise decisions about how my time is spent. 

Wishing you and your family a home full of memories (and not too many messes)! :)

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Pinwheel 1st Birthday Party + {Giveaway}

I was {so} excited when I found out I was getting to help plan a first birthday party with this adorable theme: Pinwheels!! Our inspiration started with this precious pink and aqua pinwheel invitation from Carli at DimplePrints, which she turned into an entire printable party package for us!

Guests were greeted with a sweet little favor table where all the kids received a "Thanks for spinning by" pinwheel and candy bag. I  made lots of mini pinwheels to use throughout the party - you can see them here as a banner strung across the favor basket.

The main food table is usually the most enjoyable part for me to plan because I love engulfing myself in all the tiny details and clean rows! We used lots more mini pinwheels on this table, including as food clips for our bags of pretzels and as cupcake toppers. I also made partially edible pinwheels by attaching a paper pinwheel to pink candy sticks! Finally, I made two over-sized pinwheels and put them in vases as the flanks for this table display.

We added custom pink and aqua pinwheel cakepops by April's Cake Pops to our table, which are always a yummy, adorable addition! I also embellished aqua lollipops with a simple pink "P" and ribbon for another cute and easy dessert.

I'm always looking for that "special touch" piece to pull my main food table together. That's why I was so excited when I stumbled across these adorable pom pom garlands by ThreadingMarigolds. They are well-made and were the perfect finishing touch draped across the front of our table. {SO CUTE!}  And you can enter to win one of your own today! Details below.

As always, the printables paved the way for coordinated decor throughout the party space! I made a sweet "Presley Kate is One" highchair banner, in addition to the "Favors" and "Gifts" banners for their respective tables.

Threading Marigolds is giving away this adorable spring pom pom garland to one lucky reader - great for parties, nurseries, photo props and more! Easy entry below and be sure to share with your friends!

  

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Read more about Threading Marigolds:

Threading Marigolds is a collective that brings together a love of both vintage and handcrafted pieces. We specialize in bringing you vintage clothing, accessories, and housewares, handmade fabric pom poms for party decorations or home decor, handmade fabric owls and beautifully scented soy candles.

Made up of a cousin and two sisters, we spent most of our youth crafting, playing dress-up with family vintage heirlooms, running around in cornfields, climbing trees and enjoying one another’s company. Today we still get together from our diverse locations—Illinois, Virginia and Florida—for craft-a-thons and antiquing shenanigans. We pride our collective not only the quality of pieces we sell, but also on our shared inspirations and diverse aesthetics.

Our vintage collection strives to provide you with both a professional vintage wardrobe as well as some fun casual pieces.

When crafting, we enjoy using a variety of mediums: from vintage fabrics, terra cotta, metal and glass to assorted painting mediums and soy-candle making. We are also able to make customized orders!

Our inspirations most broadly come from our love of nature, nostalgia for the past and the beauty we find in diverse cultures. Find out more about each of us in our 'about' section. You can also find us on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter!


Please contact us anytime!

-lisa, jamy & kristi

 

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Red Hot Popcorn

I have long commissioned my mother-in-law to make her delicious Red Hot Popcorn for various events I have coordinated. I like the bright red coloring, and love the yummy cinnamon flavor!

This past weekend I needed an extra large batch to use as favors at a Fireman Baby Shower and decided to try it myself. The recipe was a little more tedious than I am usually willing to try, but with the help of my husband, we nailed it! 

We served this yummy Red Hot Popcorn as the favor at a friend's Fireman Baby Shower. Here it is, packaged and ready to be enjoyed by the baby shower guests!

Red Hot Popcorn Recipe

6 qts cooked popcorn
12 oz Brachs Red Hots & white sugar to make 2 cups*

1 tsp salt

2 sticks butter

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp vanilla

*Pour red hots into measuring cup then fill with sugar up to the 2 cup mark; sift sugar back out to separate

1) Bring to boil: butter, sugar, corn syrup, salt

2) Stir in red hots, stirring constantly until dissolved

3) Boil mixture for 5 minutes, stirring constantly

4) Remove from heat, stir in vanilla and baking soda

5) Pour mixture over popcorn and stir until well coated

6) Bake at 250 F on a greased cookie sheet for one hour, stirring every 15 minutes

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Mama Hen

I wish my children would stay young and innocent forever. I want to protect them from every emotional and physical harm that would try to come their way. And the more of life's injustices and crap I experience myself, the more I want to draw them in under my mama wings and keep them safe and happy there forever. I guess it's just an instinct - a {strong} instinct.

I've had a few conversations recently about this yearning to protect them. It plays itself out in decisions not to allow them to go almost anywhere without myself or my husband (granted, they are only one and two right now, but I don't plan on changing this policy for a LONG time). We are picky about who is allowed to babysit and I've decided my kids will not be allowed in a public restroom without me or my husband until middle school or longer. They will have a very, very short list of pre-approved places that they are allowed to go play without us and I will be hard-pressed to find anywhere I really want them spending the night on a regular basis.

But look around. Can you really blame me? There are molesters, flashers and drunkards all around. There are neglectful parents, harsh dads or emotionally vacant moms in many homes. I've experienced it myself and I want to protect my children from it all. (I realize I'm fully embracing my "glass-half-empty" side right now)

Wait, yeah, I've experienced it all myself. 

It clicked to me for the first time the other night that I cannot protect my children from everything. That there are wise rules I can put in place to protect their innocence while they are young, but that at some point, life will just happen. I guess that seems obvious enough, but honestly, the mother hen in me has a hard time accepting it and only recently even considered the reality of it. I hate the thought of someone doing them wrong, hurting their feelings, betraying their trust, breaching their innocence. It makes me sick and angry and ready to fight.

But if there's one thing I've learned over the past 3-4 years, it's that life just sucks sometimes. People can be immensely cruel, life can be completely unfair, and often we have absolutely no control over any of it. Friends will betray us and leave us when we're most vulnerable, people will get sick and die - many long, long before their time - corruption will infest people's minds and cause them to do awful things; and we will all cry and weep and break at some point in life, probably several points. The control-freak in me hates the truth of this. But it is true.

There's so much we cannot control.

So as I thought about the extreme opposites of my young, precious children that I'm desperate to protect and this often nasty, unfair world, I was struck by a second task I have as a  mama. Not only do I need to preserve their innocence and keep them from experiencing things that are not age-appropriate, but when the time is right, I need to teach them how to deal with the injustices and pains and realities of the broken world they live in.  And of course, the best teacher is one that teaches with action, not just words.

So it's got me to thinking about my own life and the ways I've handled the various trials, big and small, that have come my way. Do I run away and hide or bottle up the emotion? Do I play the victim and romanticize the pain? Do I become embittered or revengeful? What do I do with pain? How do I respond to injustice and the uncontrollable craziness of life? Am I authentic? Am I honest? Am I strong?

It's sobering and it's challenging. If I'm to prepare my children to deal graciously and bravely with the hardships they will face in life, I need to figure out  how to do that myself. I need to wrestle with my own fears, stare down injustice rather than back down from it, be honest about the cards I've been dealt. I'm not totally sure how to do that and I don't think I can do it alone, but at least my response to life is one thing I can control.

It's amazing at one and two that my children are challenging me so much already!

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