Paint Party

Ok, so I have another Dirty Little Secret... I hate paint. My poor kids rarely get to paint, and when they do we stick to watercolors. Even that takes DAYS to totally clean off every single surface that they touched. Sooooo.... I don't allow paint in the house. You know, because it's always spotless anyway! Uh, yeah. Moving on!

I saw this great idea at Little Hands, Big Work to put some paint in a sealed ziplock bag and 'draw' letters in it. I really wanted to try it, but due to my selective OCD I don't own any paint.

Luckily my mom and I has some free time to hit some yard sales on Saturday and while they were super disappointing in general I did come across this ONE thing- 6 big bottles of paint for a whole dollar.



They were so excited to see the paint, and even more excited when I started filling gallon bags with their favorite colors. I'm still me so I skipped the colored paper beneath it that she had on the blog, but they still thought it was really fun!

Little Man loves green, so he practiced his letters with the green bag.



Boo wanted blue and yellow and was more into feeling the paint squish between her hands than drawing letters.



And Sweetie Pie wanted to make purple, but took her time marbling the colors together slowly.



They played with them for 20-ish minutes this morning when we made them, but have picked them up and played for a few minutes at least 10 times already today. And the best part? NO clean up!!

Make Yo Play Dough

That was a sad attempt at a rhyming title by the way... Yesterday I bribed the kids with a secret project all day long but really I was the one that was so excited to try it out. I've had the recipe forever but never got around to actually making it until last night. The kids were SO thrilled to measure, stir, and pick their color that they didn't even realize what we were making until they were done. And then the real fun (and SILENCE) began.

They played with it for over an hour, and then we just sealed it up in ziplocks for next time. I loved that it wiped right off the table, and didn't smell like crap 'real' play doh. I'm dumping all our commercial 'doh' and only making this from now on!

{I halved the recipe and gave that amount to each kid}
Combine 1 cup flour, 1/2 cup of salt, 2 tbsp. vegetable oil. Then add a packet of Koolaid or 1-2 drops of food coloring and water until it reaches a good consistency. I added too much water of course, so I just dumped another scoop of flour in to dry it up. It worked perfectly and the kids had a blast.

Day 60- Schooled

Yesterday was the first day of our 'homeschool hour' that I started to keep the kids learning and engaged over the summer. I couldn't care less about their progress since they're natural geniuses like their mother *cough, cough* but I don't really want them watching nine hours of Spongebob everyday either. I bought a kindergarten workbook off eBay a few months ago and I've been copying worksheets out on my printer. The kids love it since it gives them something to do, and since we only do it for an hour (usually including a game or activity and treat) they don't get bored with it.



Today I really needed to wrap some change since I've got it piling up everywhere. I could have waited for the kids to rest but I thought pawning my work off onto 4 and 5 year olds was a better plan anyway. I dumped all our change into a big bucket and had 4 smaller bowls for each denomination. The kids and I talked all about the different coins and what we thought different people would buy if they had a bunch of money. We sorted all the coins into the right bowls, then counted them as I filled the coin wrappers. The kids thought is was really fun, and they didn't even have to know that they were doing Mama's job. I'm already looking forward to our exhilarating "lid matching" game I have planned for tomorrow's dishes!



I'm swimming in laundry that needs to be folded so that's my big plan for this afternoon. I also need to clean up our game room for poker night. Right now it looks like Polly Pocket had a rave since there's random clothing and face down dolls all over the floor. Luckily most of the accessories are small enough to go up the vacuum... not that I'd do that or anything.

My other big project is my pantry. I don't know if I'll get it done today or not, but I'm posting my before picture here to hopefully inspire myself to fix it. I can't find a thing and everything is mis-labeled from the last pantry overhaul I did over a year ago. There's even a stash of toys that got taken away when the kids refused to pick them up and then forgotten about. I'm having to re-buy things that I didn't know I had in there and I skipped lunch just because all I could find was cereal.



Don't feel too badly for me as I snuck a small bag of Cheetos out of Mr. Wright's work lunch stash. I was very careful to not disturb the other chips and alert Mr. Wright of the intruder... now I just have to remember to destroy the evidence before he gets home. Hmm, I wonder how well Cheeto bags burn... this lady's about to find out!

Day 25- Beanie Babies

Since I'm a slacker I have no real creative aspirations of my own that haven't been stolen from a book, magazine, or blog. This activity in particular was stolen from Flipflops and Applesauce, a wonderful blog that I've been keeping up with. I had to buy the balloons, but the black beans and black eyed peas were from the pantry. The only balloons I could find were the small kind, so we made mini bean balls instead. You're supposed to blow up the balloons first to stretch them out, but I'm actually unable to blow up balloons- Mr. Wright was trying to instruct me, but it just wasn't happening. He blew up a few and had to leave, so we brought out the trusty mattress pump. The kids thought pumping the balloons and playing in the beans was way better than making the balls anyway. I'm totally blown away by how long 3 kids can play with one bowl of beans, but if you try this at home be prepared to find them everywhere. Boo had 5 black beans and 4 black eyed peas aboard her diaper after this activity... And yes, my kids are wearing a variety of outfits as always, including a Christmas dress and a ballet leotard. I like to encourage no extra laundry.









You'd think the beans all over my house would encourage me to vacuum, but you'd be wrong. I'm in a slump, a MAJOR slump, and I just can't get it together like I had it a mere 10 days ago. I have 5 things that I HAVE to do as soon as possible, but I just can't get motivated to make the time. I don't even want to post them here for fear that someone would actually hold me accountable.

I have been keeping my head above water dishes-wise, and Senorita Snarkalicious even came over and did my dishes last night because she's awesome. And she brought me pie, which is double-y awesome. My kids' rooms no longer have visible floors, Mt. Washmore is rising, Mr. Wright had to ask three times yesterday for me to wash his pants, and I have no clue what I'm making for dinner. My counters are covered in junk, and I haven't even started on the 5 things that I HAVE to do... I just feel over my head with it all.

Everywhere I turn there is one more thing that needs to get done, plus those pesky kids with their darn eating and emotional needs still need attention too. I'm not even going to post the current status of my hair, but it's safe to say it has reached 'I've been living in a cave' levels. I don't understand why every other woman in the world can invite people over without apologizing, or look in a mirror without grimacing. I just want to be one of them.

I'm fine at maintaining a clean house, but it's like a golf ball on a tee- as long as I'm focusing all my energy on keeping it straight I'll be fine, but the second I tip or get a gust of wind in my direction the whole thing comes toppling down. Sorry to be such a downer today, but since this blog was originally chronicling how much I suck at this whole "responsible adult" thing I thought it was only fair to expose these recent shortcomings. For now I'm just going to wallow with some pie, and keep all my faith in Our Lady of the Blankie, Miss Boo.

Day 11- Get Back Here Wagon!

I can't say that I'm totally off the wagon, but I sure feel like I'm being dragged behind it... I can feel myself losing momentum, and as hard as I'm trying to sustain this new lifestyle of getting dressed and showering it sure is tiring. I've been really busy this week running errands and getting things accomplished, so today we stayed home to relax. Too bad the kids decided that they were all going to be cranky and fight all morning. I had big plans for a nature walk but it's pretty gloomy out so I finally got them on board for a project.

I wrote secret messages on computer paper with white crayon, then they painted over the paper to reveal the message. It distracted them for a while, but then Sweetie Pie realized that I committed the Mommy sin of giving Little Man a bigger paint brush and the fun was over. This was taken in semi-happier times:



From that angle you can hardly tell that Little Man is wearing Sweetie Pie's pajamas and that Sweetie Pie has a huge knot in the back of her hair! I better tag that photo for our Christmas cards...

I'm not sure if it is the kids' behavior, the gloomy weather, the fact that I'm wearing yoga pants with no plan of doing yoga, or a combination of the three, but I feel like I'm dragging something equal to the weight of the contents of my nasty van behind me. My house is still way better than it was when I started this, but I'm not feeling nearly as motivated today as I have been.

I do have some breaking news that it's 2:45pm here and I have a plan for dinner already, but that dog hair on the stairs that I mentioned the other day is still there, I never cleaned out the freezer and my upstairs bathroom is still 'closed for repairs'. Maybe if put a sign on the door to that effect it would stay clean once I cleaned it. Now I'm onto something!