Projects I Want to Complete

Projects

Kitchen - in this order

• Chairs Finished (We have been working on this for months. Half the chairs we have aren't finished. The other half are cheap chairs from IKEA and the back occasionally slips off and dumps the occupant in the floor. I do have to say this makes for some comic relief. Last night my oldest was right in the middle of a story and she says "And then she" right as the chair slips from beneath her her fell in to the floor slinging her orange juice every where. We all had a really good laugh, even her.
• Painted 
• Counters Replaced - the the ugliest green!

Spaghetti & Meatball Night - Check this link out for an explanation. My goal is February, the 27th to be exact. Means the house needs to be clean and the chairs have to be finished at the very least.

Our Room - It is always a disaster. It is the catch all for things that have no home. I really want to get it organized!

Petting Zoo - These animals need to start pulling their weight. Haha, we have 19. This does not include babies that are provided food by their parents.

Chicken Coop -  To add to the menagerie 

Distraction At It's Finest

The older and more self aware I have gotten the more I have learned how much my ADHD runs my life and always has. It was such a relief once I got a diagnosis because so much made since about growing up and why I didn't always fit the mold that I felt like I should. I don't take medication. I have before and they caused me severe anxiety so it is what it is. I look for tools that hopefully will help but usually don't. My mind jumps from subject to subject which leaves my life in chaos most the time. For the most part I try to embrace it. There are really things I love about it. I love that I face each project with the eyes of a child. Nothing will stop me and I don't care how crazy of an idea it is. It use to really bother me and I use to worry about what others would think. Again with self awareness comes the knowledge that it doesn't matter what someone else thinks. At the end of the day most peoples opinions of me really don't matter as long as I am happy.

I like telling my story about getting into surrogacy. The story explains a lot about how I am once I get an idea in my head. I had thought about being a surrogate years before but my ex-husband was totally against the idea. I didn't really think much about it again until my husband (boyfriend then) and I were talking. We were complaining about money and not having enough. He said something about donating plasma. In my crazy brain that triggered that old idea of being a surrogate. Over the next 4 hours I obsessively researched, if you know a person with ADHD you know all about this focus that all of a sudden comes from nowhere.  DH had no idea that what he had said had sparked something and by the time he got home I had made up my mind that I was going to have a baby for someone else and nothing was going to stop me. My grandmother always said "Emily is going to do what Emily is going to do". How right she is. Two surrogacies later and another on the horizon all it took was a joke about donating plasma. If anyone decides to read about my boring life you will find that my fun and crazy ideas often spark from something so simple.

What I haven't finished today or even started....

• My policies & procedures for my daycare. Really should have made an effort to take care of this.
• I really planned on getting some cleaning done in my room today. 

What I have done today...

• I wrote this blog entry
• I decluttered the bar area and found the key to my child care payment box (it has been missing since I bought it).
• I started dinner at 10:30am in the crock pot. This is huge for me. I very rarely ever remember to start a crockpot meal. Usually I forget and forget aaaannnnnd forget and what every I planned to make ends up turning into a science project in the fridge.
• I picked up some pizzeria chairs I found on WAX (an Asheville facebook group that puts all the crazy things I love about Asheville into one place). Got them for $4 a piece. Granted they need to be recovered but they will be perfect when they are finished.
• I took 3 kids to the indoor playground at the mall for two hours to get some energy out. 

Back to Blogging

So it has been a couple year since I have posted anything but I think it is time to start back up. I am not the best writer or speller, and my grammar is lacking so I occasionally get frustrated and quit. I also have severe ADHD so sometimes it is hard to stay focused but I have so many projects and ideas; I would love to keep up with them somewhere. Even if it is just for me.

So what did I do today???
Today I worked on my website and policies manual for my in home daycare, Emmy's House. I have found some software to keep me on track while I work. I only have a couple of hours during nap time to work so I have to make good use of my time and stay off facebook. Yesterday I was much more productive; today not so much. I never have less than ten tabs open in chrome at a time. I flip from project to project so I never seem to get one thing done. It is what it is. I will get it all done eventually. The two programs I tried were Focus Booster and a chrome extension, StayFocused. They did seem to help me at least be aware of the time that I was spending on each thing. Especially the clock that stays on top with Focus Booster.

This evening I cooked dinner. I know not that great of a feat but I hate making dinner. Even more then the hating to cook, I hate having to come up with what we are having for dinner. I would much rather be crafting or working on a new project. I think that is what got me thinking about blogging again. I figured maybe if kept track of what I was cooking and how much I paid for each meal I would be more interested in cooking.

On the menu for the night was Vegetable Tamale Pie. We have had this for dinner before and we loved it; well as usual some of us did. I thought it would be great because my middle daughter has been a vegetarian for about a year. Of course once I told her what it was she reminded me that it had sweet potatoes in it and she hates sweet potatoes. Who in their right mind hates sweet potatoes? Anywho this recipe comes from BudgetBytes. One of my favorite websites to get recipes from. I doubled the receipe because there are 5 of us and I like to have leftovers for hubby's lunch. I am going to copy the ingredients so I can compare what I spent to what she spent. For the rest of the recipe see the link above.

Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp olive oil $0.32 (.60)
• 1 small yellow onion $0.48 (.25)
• 2 cloves garlic $0.16 (.32)
• 1 small sweet potato $0.69 (1.07 for 3)
• 2 cups (or 1 can) black beans $0.56 (1.08 for 2 cans)
• ½ bunch green onions $0.25 left off
• 1 medium poblano pepper $0.84 (.22)
• 1 medium jalapeno pepper $0.12 left off
• 1 (10 oz.) can red enchilada sauce $1.53 (1.25)
• ½ Tbsp chili powder $0.07 (.14)
• ½ tsp cumin $0.03 (.06)
• ½ tsp salt $0.02 (.02)

CORNBREAD TOPPING

• 1 cup yellow cornmeal $0.24 (.58 for 2 cups)
• 1 cup all-purpose flour $0.15 (.30)
• ¼ cup sugar $0.04
• 4 tsp baking powder $0.12 (.24)
• ½ tsp salt $0.02 (.02)
• 1 cup milk $0.62 (.42 for 2 cups, Thanks Aldi!)
• 1 large egg $0.25 (.26 for 2)
• ¼ cup vegetable oil $0.21 (.40)
• 1 cup shredded cheddar (optional) $1.00 (1.30)
• ½ bunch cilantro (optional) $0.43

If it is marked out I left it out. I made almost a double batch for $9.18. If I get 15 servings out of it, it comes out to .61 cents a serving. Pretty impressive. Thanks budget bytes!

Upcoming Meals this Week
Sloppy Janes (Vegetarian Sloppy Joes)
Breakfast for Dinner
Creamy Vegetarian Enchilada Pasta
Broccoli Cheese Casserole with Chicken Added
White Chicken Chili
Moroccan Chicken with Cous Cous

Halloween

My latest project was our Halloween costumes. I love Halloween. Even as an adult it is so much fun to dress up. This year we all decided to go as DC Comic Book characters.

Batman & Wonder Woman

My husband made his Batman costume so I am not sure what all it was made with. The hardest part of my costume was making the silver pieces. I used silver styrene. I cut the shapes and then formed them by dipping them in boiling water and molding them while they were still hot. Every thing else I bought. Pants came from American Apparel. Jacket came from Buckle. Necklace came from Belks. Can't recall where the rest came from.

Poison Ivy

For the Poison Ivy costume I bought a leotard and sewed on leaves. Then wrapped her with a vine that also had leaves on it. Her eye pieces are made out of craft foam, painted, and then I added gold glitter paint to accent them. She wore brown tights with some brown boots.

Harley Quinn

For the Harley Quinn costume I used a purple dress that she already had. I cut the skirt part off the dress. Then used Heat & Bond to add red diamonds to it. Then I took the ties from the dress and added them to a corset that I was going to use for my Wonder Woman costume. The mallet was made out of a large car wash sponge that I paid a dollar for and a piece of pvc pipe wrapped in electrical tap. This was my last minute costume because she wasn't sure that she wanted to dress up. Here tights are just two pairs of with a leg cut off of each. The cut off leg I used for her gloves.

Robin 

The only costume we bought. We did make the domino mask by cutting a green lantern mask. He wasn't feeling well so he didn't have his full costume on. 

Car Trash Can on a Budget

I saw this...

And love the idea! My kids are constantly putting there trash in the floor of the car or in the cup holder. Ewwww!!!

So I went in search of the cereal containers. I needed 2 (one for each row of seats). They were a bit more then I wanted to spend at the moment ($6 a piece). My awesome friend Kirstin had been bringing these big pretzel containers to the pool and I wanted some for crafts or storage. Then I realized these would work perfect for my trash cans.

If you do not have an awesome friend who already has these you can buy them at Kmart with pretzels in them for $4.99 so you get a great kids snack and you get the trash can too! I am going to buy some better bags and take the sticker off, then I will have some great trash cans!

2012 Reads

1. The Best of Me by Nicholas Sparks
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
3. The Pawn (The Patrick Bowers Files, Book 1) by Steven James
4. Hunting Ground (Alpha and Omega, Book 2) by Patricia Briggs
5. Fair Game (Alpha and Omega, Book 3) by Patricia Briggs
6. I Am Number Four (Lorien Legacies)
7. The Power of Six (Lorien Legacies)
8. The Rise of Nine (Lorien Legacies)
9. Reread all 3 Hunger Games books
10. 
    
11. 
    
12. Tiger's Destiny
13. Maze Runner 
14. The Scortch Trials
15. Fifty Shades of Grey
16. Fifty Shades Darker
17. Fifty Shades Freed
18. Divergent (Divergent Series)
19. Insurgent (Divergent Series)
20. Reached (Matched Series)
21. The Host

Projects

I am really bad at updating blogs but I wanted to start posting some of my many hopeful upcoming projects. I have started to frequent pinterest.com and have fallen in love with the site. There are so many great crafts and DIY not to mention other wonderful links to all over the internet. It is like heaven for my ADD brain. I decided starting a list and prioritizing some of the things that I want to accomplish from the website might help me stay organized, haha. So here it is...

1. Gifts (can't post the actual project until they are completed and sent out)
2. Kitchen Island
   I got the idea from here. Ours will be red to match the rest of the kitchen. We desperately need some more storage space in the kitchen.
3. Lack Tiled Side Table
   I got this idea from two places. I wanted something different for our side table. Something that would add some more color. I saw this at IKEA Hackers and loved it but I couldn't find the right tiles to match our living room. Then I ran across this when I was Pinterest. So I am in the middle of first making 121 2x2 tiles with mod podge, some scrapbook paper, and clear gloss spray paint. After I am done with the tiles then I will glue them to the table and finally lay the grout. This project is almost complete and I will write a complete post along with picture on it when it is finished.
   
4. Family Rules Collage
   Hopefully this will look something along the lines of this. I want something that I can hang in the living room, maybe framed to remind the kids of our rules.
5. Bored Jar
   Love this idea. It is just what my kids need, especially my middle daughter. On days that she has misbehaved and lost TV and computer time she comes to me at least 25 times to let me know that she is bored. I think this may fix it.
6. Scrabble Coasters
   A gift for my mom.
7. Detail Chore Cards and Incentives
   This is something that I have worked on, on and off. I ran across another woman who did something similar and it reminded me that I needed to refresh mine and start back. I will make a separate post explaining how our incentive plan works or at least how I hope for it to work.
8. Towel Baskets in the Bathroom
   Great idea for our very small bathroom!
9. Advent Calendar
   I want to make sure the kids have an advent calendar this year. Now I just have to decide which one to make.