Bathroom clean-up

we have ironbacteria in our well so our water stains everything it touches this beautiful rust color. misc clutter on the counter and whatnot

diaper changing table with un-stuffed cloth diapers (underneath is a bunch of dust bunnies and random stuff I am sure.)

shelves above the changing table for changing and baby care items. hooks under the shelves for airing wiped clean diaper covers. 

overflowing garbage can and more beautiful rust-colored water stains

Now for the afters:

clutter put away and counter wiped down

diapers stuffed and straightened and floor swept, including underneath

shelves decluttered and random hanger put away

garbage emptied and toilet wiped down

the entire job took just 2 15 minute sessions.

ETA: doing the swish and swipe daily since I began learning to FLY has kept this bathroom looking great. Potty Learning has helped too, whenever Ellie is on the potty I look around for something to pick up, put away or clean up. The tub is very much stained and with just a few minutes scrubbing the stain away when Ellie is on the potty or taking a bath should get it clean again in no time. 

Laundry room clean up.

I mentioned before in my laundry routine post how I would LOVE to make-over the laundry room in my in-law's house. Well I decided to just do it. I turned it into a gift to thank my MIL for always being so helpful with Ellie. 

The BEFORES

The AFTERS

I pulled all of the clothes down and swapped out mismatched hangers for matching white ones to eliminate some visual clutter. 

previously this wall was blank and the laundry hamper was shoved on the other wall. Random laundry and misc stuff sat on the floor. 

I got the huge cloth bin on the top because it matched the other small ones. After trying cleaning supplies in it, I realized it was much too big, and destined for much to high up to hold anything heavy. Elsewhere in the house was a costco size package of paper towels, they fit perfectly in the bin. 

I didnt have enough of the fabric bins for everything so I used some plastic shoe boxes. I have an idea to dress up the front to eliminate a little of the visual clutter though, perhaps later. 

The excuse I gave for starting the reorganization was my very tall bottle of Ecos laundry soap that previously lived on the floor, Ellie learned to twist off caps, so it, the bleach and the Clorox 2 had to move. I found some short square drink dispensers at Walmart for $15 and they work great for the laundry soap. ( I wanted to test with my Ecos soap before putting my MIL's ALL in one, it worked great though so now the ALL is in one too. I already had gotten 2 glass canisters for my old soap (before I started using Ecos I used powdered Country Save) and baking soda. I re-purposed the CS one for Oxy-Clean and added one for the IRON OUT my MIL uses on occasion. If I would have had time I would have used vinyl and cut out the labels with my Cricut for the powders and the liquid soaps. maybe later. 

I added a few clear glass jars for pretty items, clothes pins (this is a laundry room), extra dryer balls, and one for loose change from pockets. 

cleaning out another closet in the room (no pics sorry, im a bad blogger) I found the laundry bags on the green shelf thing, I will make a box or jar and label for them too. The open box of bounce sheets didnt fit under the little white shelf thing so I found a shallow plastic storage container. I like that it cleans up the visual clutter. 

NOTHING was purged. This wasn't MY space to decide what to get rid of. a few things were relocated, so that this would be mostly just Laundry. I only threw away actual garbage. 

FLYing Day 4

I woke up, got dressed to shoes, brushed hair, teeth, and washed my face. I did a swipe and swish last night so didn't need to again. Then I got the baby a healthy breakfast and then did the rest of my morning list: Made the bed,

I gathered a couple stray laundry items and sent a basket down with DH to start when he checked on his dad (we live on the same property as my in-laws and share their washer/dryer.)
I checked the calendar and asked DH for any to-dos. I filled up my water bottle and had a nice long drink and made myself a measured out portion controlled breakfast and logged it on my myfitnesspal.com app.
Enjoyed my shined sink 

and did dishes from yesterday (I couldn't do them last night because we are in a loft and dishes tend to wake the baby.)
After breakfast I
I took this picture: 

I set the timer for 15 minutes and got to work. 

After 15 minutes: 

Ellie's clothes are all away except dresses because the hanging bar fell down.

-I decided what was going to be for dinner- Parmesan Encrusted Tilapia, green salad, watermelon and pasta.
-I managed 19 minutes of loving movement/ exercise on the Wii Fit.

-The next thing on the list was to remove the trash from the bedroom, there was very little trash in there but I did that first and came back to finish the corner I started. At the end of the day it looked like this: 

throughout the week I will be working on my wardrobe and under the bed. 

Schoolwork Desk

Even though it wasnt the FLY zone this week, I had about an hour and a half with no kid this afternoon so I decided to work in my craft room, (its easier to work in the rest of the house with her) I picked up and put away random stuff at first then decided to target one space- what is supposed to be my schoolwork / household CEO station.

Here is some befores:

It could use a couple more minutes and my label maker but the baby woke up so I snapped those pics and went to bed.

Empty notebooks, spirals, and folders are together with dividers and notebook paper, textbooks and past terms classwork is on the top shelf. Household stuff is grouped.

Clearing off everything that didn't belong, I made myself put it away (as much as I could, some items are in temporary albeit logical homes) rather than just pile it on another surface.
It's great because I need to organize some bills and figure out some school stuff and now I have an inviting space to use.

Now for the Afters:

FLYzone: Bedroom Before

Sharing our bedroom with our daughter is wonderful, a whole lotta extra laundry and toys and books, but mostly wonderful. We have bed-shared since birth (after researching how to do so safely and finding that it REDUCES the risk of SIDS and improves breastfeeding relationship and affords mom-me more sleep) and we have had a never ending battle with baby clothes. Our lack of real closets and ever growing (and outgrowing) baby made keeping the bedroom from looking like a hotel room (which I'd love). This week I will get a little closer to that dream!

Here is a sneak peek, a before shot I took last week before becoming a FLYbaby.

I'm a FLYbaby

I've decided to follow FLYLady's plan to get in to better house-upkeep routines and declutter and organize.
I've been practicing her first few baby steps. Shine your Sink, Lace up Shoes, and Swipe n Swish. I have also been setting a time for 15 minutes at a time to clean. The bonus is that cleaning burns calories which follows along with my other personal improvement goal.

I've been keeping busy cleaning amd not being lazy last few days and I like it.

Tomorrow begins The Bedroom Zone where my decluttering is focused around the bedroom. I did some of this not long ago and moved a dresser in and some too small clothes out. I intend on purging a few pairs of shoes and some more pants this week.

I intend on posting quick from-my-phone updates on here on a somewhat regular basis, I hope you enjoy!

Super Mario Birthday Party

When I saw a Super Mario Birthday party on one of the other party blogs out in the blogosphere, and realized my sister was having her 25th birthday soon, I knew I had to throw her a party. I was going to keep the theme a surprise. Then she suggested a mario theme. I fibbed, I told her that I had already started getting Luau stuff and it would be more summery and grown up than a Super Mario party.

I didnt do invitations because there wasnt time to get them out, so I just made a facebook event and called a few people.

She was very surprised it wasnt a Luau when she walked in. I had put pink flamingo decorations at the end of our driveway and on the door to the shop.

The tables were simple green plastic table clothes, circles cut from polka dot napkins left over from Ellie's Ladybug Birthday, gold stars and plastic gold coins.

In the middle of the table were Piranha Plants, a green pipe and chocolate gold coins. 

Power Flowers 

The flower head is just cardstock and sharpie eyes. I decided to make it round instead of oblong because it was easier to find round items to trace than oblong. I found the plastic green pots with silk flowers in them at Dollar Tree. I pulled the flowers out of the styrofoam. I had flower stems/leaves leftover from the butterfly clips I made (and hadnt taken my craft room garbage out yet) so I taped the flower head to a stem and stuffed it into the styrofoam. This project took about 10 minutes

Boo Balloons

Boo was one of my pinata ideas, but decided to make balloons instead. I just blew up white balloons and drew the faces/arms on with sharpie. I thought of making arms out of white paper cones but wanted to get more things done so I saved a few minutes by just drawing arms on.

Chain Chomp

The Chain Chomp was another pinata idea. The only white balloons i found for the Boos were in a multi-pack with black ones so I made this guy pretty quickly. His face is just mailing lables cut up and sharpie for the eyes. The chain is a simple black paper chain  made with card stock and staples. It was funny where he was hanging, he would often jump off and bite at people coming in the doors. 

Star Balloons

at the dollar tree I saw these balloons and thought they would work great as Starmen, then at my nephew's graduation, I saw they used the same balloons in the decorations. My aunt is on the school board so I asked her to see if she could keep the balloons for me to reuse. I figured I could refill them if needed, graduation was Wednesday and the party was going to be on Sunday. They ended up not needing refilled so I got 6 helium filled star balloons for free. All I had to do was add the electrical tape eyes. 

Backdrop

The blue is a baby blue plastic Dollar Tree table cloth. I found the cloud image here, edited it and printed them from home. They were cut out by my hubby. The coins were punched with a circle punch out of a gold gift bag. The stars were a gold star billboard boarder from the teacher section of Dollar tree, I used sharpie to make eyes and cut them apart. 

I downloaded a free Super Mario Brothers font from here and made labels for the food items to tie in the theme. 

Princess Peach Punch 

The punch was 2 cartons of peach/orange/mango juice, a 2 liter of Sierra Mist, a packet of sugar free peach drink powder, and a bag of frozen peaches. 

  

Super Mushroom Cakes 

These are just box cake mixes with food coloring added. Red are strawberry and green are vanilla. I poked holes in the cupcakes with a straw and piped frosting in the holes. I topped the holes with upside-down white chocolate chips for the dots. 

Super Mario Cake! 

Made by Pink Princess Cakes

King Koopa Kookies

I used refridgerated sugar cookie dough, cut out circles and used a smaller circle cookie cutter as a stencil and sprayed on Wilton Color Mist inside the cutter, then baked. While still cooling, I poked candy corn into the cookies to look like Koopa's spikey shell. The colored part of the cookie crackled when it baked, which was unintentional but made the green look more like a shell.

Brick Brownies 

I used a box mix and my brownie pan, which makes individual brownies in squares. I piped on the grout lines. 

Starman Krispies Treats

These are just rice krispies treats cut into stars. 

Lemon Candy Question Blocks

 The recipe for these was on the back of the Chex Mix box, they're a white chocolate version of muddy buddies. I used lemon Jell-O instead of lemon zest.

Mario's Mustache Pops

I ordered the mold for these pops here. They were cheap so I bought 2 so it would be faster to make them. 

I got pictures of most of the guests with  mustaches.

Atomic Fireballs

Itsa Spaghetti anda Meata Ballsa

Power Up Pasta  

(with turtle shells noodles)

Bowser Breath Bread

 (garlic bread)

Although it was a grown-up's party I still wanted the kids to have some fun and goodies. 

I found the pin the mustache on Mario free printable here. I edited it slightly to use less ink when printed at home. 

  

The pinata was a Costco size cereal box covered in leftover brick corrugated cardboard from a fireplace design I made a Christmas. I had perferated the corners but it was still too strong, after all the kids got multiple turns, I tore the box and ended up just swinging the pinata across the floor to dump out the goodies. 

I had felt sticky mustaches for everyone to wear.

Pipe decorations

I had thought to get actual pipes and paint them green but pipe connectors (to make the rim) were kinda spendy. Last minute, I found green can cozys at walmart. I cut them in half, some went on painted green soda cans and some went on crystal light drink mix canisters and a can of beets covered in paper. 

Price breakdown

6 Green pipes 

3 can cozies: $3 (Walmart)

leftover green paint: free

recycled drink cans: free

$0.50 each 

8 Pirahna plants:

3 pack of terra cotta pots x 3= $3 (Dollar Tree)

8 pack of ping pong balls = $1 (Dollar Tree)

leftover red paint: Free (would be like $0.88 for a 2oz bottle)

leftover white paint: (would be like $0.88 for a 2oz bottle)

leftover green paint: (would be like $0.88 for a 2oz bottle)

Black paint: $0.88 (could have used sharpie)
$4.88 = $0.61 each


Power Flowers
plastic pots with flowers in them: $1 (Dollar Tree)
cardstock from my stash: Free (would be like $0.49/sheet from craft store)
garbage stems: free (maybe could have used the ones that came in the pot)


Clouds, Pin the Mustache, Coloring pages:
whatever some 8.5x11 paper, cardstock and ink costs
pin the mustache prizes 2/$1


Stars:
billboard boarder: $1 (Dollar Tree)


Coins:

Gold gift bag: $1

Pinata: Leftover brick corrugated stuff: Free

recycled cereal box: Free

Stuff for inside: under $15 (If i find the receipt, ill update)

goodie bags: $0.50 (Walmart, clearance)