Busy Busy Busy

Well, we have all been busy and tired this week. I know I haven't posted a whole lot, and I am sorry for that. Monday and Tuesday, I spent most of the day cleaning like a mad woman. Tuesday night I had a lady come interview me for day care for her two kids. So, I was busy getting her paperwork together, picking up the house, and cleaning it very well. She came on Tuesday night and was sooo happy with me, the house, the day care room, and the curriculum that I do. She told me that she had been to 5 other home day cares for interviews before coming to me and just didn't like any of them. But after seeing the day care room, in my basement, and going over the paperwork, she was sold. She put her deposit down and her kids start up on Monday! YAY! She has an adorable four year old boy and a super cute 9 month old girl.

I have been working on their curriculum a lot over the past few days and getting each week prepared. They are going to learn a letter each week. They will learn the sound that the letter makes, different words that start with that letter and the sign for the letter. Then using different words beginning with the letter, I incorporate math, social studies, science, songs, books, arts and crafts and a Bible lesson. It's going to be fun and I have found really neat things for them to do.

Yesterday morning, I was on the computer reading other people's blogs and some of the sites on my sidebar. I visited the Proverbs 31 site and read some articles there that made me realize that I spend too much time during the day on the computer and should instead be taking care of my house. There are some cluttered places that I had been meaning to organize lately. On their site they have printouts to help get organized. One was a pantry inventory list. We don't have an actual pantry in our kitchen, so I use one of our kitchen cabinets to house our food. The biggest drawback to that, is that lots of stuff gets put behind other things and to be honest, half the time I don't know what we do or do not have for food. I try to look before buying groceries, but the majority of the time, I buy things that we don't really need. Steve puts the groceries away and will say, "dear, we have like 10 bags of rice now and 4 boxes of popcorn." So, yesterday using forms on their site, I cleaned out my pantry and completed the inventory form and also prepared my dinner menu for next week. I then used the day care lunch menu, dinner menu and pantry inventory to prepare my shopping list. This way, I buy only what we need. It feels so good to be organized.

We had a junk cabinet in our kitchen too and it was so cluttered and messy, that when you'd open it, stuff would fall on you. So, I got that all organized as well. The top shelf houses all of my recipes and what not. I have some books but then there are also tons of recipes I have ripped out of magazines and what not. So, yesterday, I took a three ring binder and made dividers for appetizers, side items, meals and desserts and then organized all of my recipe pages that way.

I also went and made the bed. Silly, I know. I have never been a bed maker. It is the one thing that has never bothered me. I could care less if my bed is made or not. DH sometimes laughs at me because I'll clean our bedroom up all nice and then leave the bed unmade. I also know that he really likes it made. So, I made the bed.

I really felt like I accomplished a lot yesterday. With all of the rooms in the house being pretty clean, it's nice to now start working on little places and getting them cleaned up and organized. Plus, the menus and pantry forms will really help us save money on groceries. Since, I liked to just go and always buy the same things regardless of whether or not we needed them.

I am also going to try three brand new recipes next week. Two will use my crock-pot. So, I am excited to try the new dinners and I hope they are yummy. Poor Steve...I grew up eating very bland foods and I like my stuff plain. Steve likes flavor and spices and hot stuff. So, I am trying to find some happy mediums. Hopefully, slowly, I will get more into really hot stuff and spicy stuff.....it'll take baby steps.

Oh, if you are interested in any of the home organizing stuff, here are the two sites I used.
1. Virtuous Women Household Notebook
This site has food organizing charts, weekly and daily planners and also cleaning charts and schedules.
2. Organized Home
This site has tons of free printables that you can use to make your own planner if you wanted to. There are phone and birthday lists, calendars, party planning lists, menus, shopping lists, school schedules, homework lists, kids chore charts,
car maintenance schedules, financial organizers, and so forth.