In The Mind of A Thirtysomething Mom

Product Review: Mr. Clean

So here is where I come out of the hole I climbed into awhile back and finally give my review of the Mr. Clean cleaning products I received in February.  Yeah, I'm that pathetic.

As I posted here and here, I buckled down in March and did my annual Spring Cleaning (with lots of breaks for important stuff, like well anything other than cleaning).  I locked myself in the bathrooms armed with my new Mr. Clean Multi-Surfaces Spray with Febreze Freshness in the Lavender scent and got to work.  Now we live in a "hard water area" which means that we get this orange film on the curtains and walls of the shower.  As soon as I see it, I remove it.  Orange is so not a color I like.  The Mr. Clean Multi-Surfaces Spray with Febreze Freshness made it so easy to get the gunk off!  Seriously.  I usually use the foaming bubbles stuff, but this stuff works better.  I just sprayed, wiped with a sponge and rinsed clean.  Easy as that.  And seeing how much I *love* to clean, easy is a Godsend!  It also works on counters, stoves and other surfaces-hence the multi-surface part of the name.  :)  If needed to buy cleaning products (I don't right now since they sent them to me to review), I'd totally buy these.  Oh, it smells lovely too!  I didn't need to turn the fan on or open the window (not that you should clean locked in a room though.  Turn your fans on and open your windows!  Do as I say, not as I do!).  Mr. Smoochiefrog and the kids even liked the scent.

I got a Swiffer thingy too, but we haven't lived here long enough for dusting to be worth doing yet.  No really, it's not.  Something about Winter and being locked up inside the house.  I haven't needed to dust.  As soon as I do though, I'll let you know about 2 months after I use the Swiffer thing.  Promise.

Now if I can just get busy and use the menu planning kit and K'nex stuff so I can review those too.  Don't give up on me yet people.  It's coming, I swear.  It only took 2 months for the cleaning stuff to be reviewed.  Hopefully it won't take that long for the next one.  :)

Now if anyone wants to send me some food, like chocolate for instance, to review, I'm so down with that.  That's a review that'll be up quickly!

Random Musings

I'm posting this late because, well I've been busy and haven't had a chance until now.

I'm trying to get ready for Thursday when D and my dad arrive.  I get to spend about 4 hours in the airport waiting for them both to come in.  D will be here first, and then 2 hours later my dad will arrive.  Of course like a tool, I scheduled D's plane to come in so early that I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to get to the airport on time.  Gotta love holiday travel and not knowing how long it'll take to get an escort pass.  Once D gets here, we'll hang out together waiting on my dad.  No sense in leaving and then coming back.  We'll do food and discuss school (yes D, saw those finals grades-we WILL be talking).  I still don't know exactly what he wants for Christmas though.  I told him he was getting a Chia-Pet and he was about as pleased with that as the Hello Kitty pillow and blankie idea.  Tell me what you want boy and all embarrassment will be avoided!

Anywho, I'm busy cleaning and straightening things around here so it looks perfect when they arrive.  I'm still trying to get all the pictures on the walls in "just the right place".  Yeah, I'm about to commit myself just to get away for a bit.  I spent earlier today cleaning the kitchen.  Tomorrow I'll be vacuuming all the floors and mopping.  Fun, fun, fun!  I would ask someone to come do it for me, but then I would have issues with how it was done and do it all over so there goes that idea (dang OCD is in overdrive right now).

B had his "Winter Concert" (God forbid we call it a Christmas Concert right?) tonight.  He's in the school chorus and they did a dual concert with the school bands.  It was nice and much different than what we've been going to (read-he's been in a private school for the past 3 years and now he's in a public school).  I was pleasantly suprised when there was a sing-a-long part of the program and *GASP* we sang Joy to the World, Silent Night and We Wish you a Merry Christmas!  Finally someone decides "screw this PC crap" and lets the school rafters ring with the REAL reason for the season!!!!  I'm sure lawyers and the ACLU have already been contacted.

Now let's talk a minute about the Biggest Loser finale.  I must say that I was suprised at how great Julie looked (especially due to how much I dislike her).  She really did a great job and would have easily won if it had just been the women.  But those twins!  Good for them!  Was it just me or did Jim seem a little gaunt?  He looked like he had lost too much weight!  Put a bit of meat back on his bones, maybe 10-15lbs, and I think he'd look great.  I was very glad Bill won!  Since Neil wasn't in the final, Bill deserved it.

One last thing, just to rub salt in the wounds of those last minute Lucys.

I've finished Christmas shopping!!!! 

Although D never really told me what he wanted, even he has presents.  I've even got all the stocking stuffers!  This is the first time I've actually been completely finished well before Christmas!  Now wrapping, not even started!  When you've got Fingers Malone running rampant in the house, putting a present under the tree before Christmas Eve night is just a dumb idea.  It's hard enough keeping her from taking ornaments off the tree, I'm not willing to try and keep her from tearing the presents.  

Tomorrow I'll share some Christmas traditions we do around here.  Hopefully you'll want to share some too!

Until then, 

Cleaning, Organizing and Stalking Oh My!

I've spent today working on organizing the house. It's amazing how much I can get finished when I don't have to work alone. As I'm typing this, I've only completely finished the girls room, but I've also been a taxi service as well as a chef today, so I haven't had as much time as I'd have liked. I'm going to work on B's room after I finish this post, and possibly D's room too.

I thought I'd share the finished girls room, sans pictures on the wall.

Looking into the room. Notice the craptastic old Wal-Mart table that needs a cover. I've got to get one that matches the room. Also notice the shelves of Precious Moments figurines. There's supposed to be one for every year of M's life thus far, yeah stopped at 2 b/c the brunette ones are hard to find and online is too expensive. Haven't even tried to find them for K. Also note the cute fuzzy lamp on said craptastic table. $5 on clearance, gotta love it!

K's side of the room. Notice another cute $5 fuzzy lamp. Obviously Tramp was starting to suffocate under the dragon in the stuffed animal bin and he had to peek out from underneath him to breathe.

M's side of the room. We had to move her bed away from the window b/c she kept pulling the curtains down onto her head while she slept. Hopefully we'll be able to afford the headboard soon and we can move it back. Note the radio on her dresser. It is always on and plays the radio station mentioned yesterday. It's the only way the girls sleep well at night. It's been a constant since they were both first born. Because of it, they're such good sleepers they can sleep through just about anything. Also notice the annoying rocking horse. The way the mouth moves on that thing is creepy!

Finally the nightstand and small toy shelf. MR. Smoochiefrog just built the toy shelf today. I think the rocking horse is stalking the stick pony by the nightstand.

Speaking of stalking, the church we visited last Sunday just doesn't give up. They mailed us a letter wanting us to fill out a survey about what we thought of the church. I sent it back. Blank. Stalkers!

On the other hand, the church we visited 2 weeks ago just now sent us a thank you for visiting card with a coffee gift card enclosed. See, that my friends is how to properly get people to come back to your church. Don't hound people until they're ready to file a restraining order! You can catch more bees with honey than vinegar!

Back to the trenches. Hopefully I'll make it out in one piece.

For your Viewing Pleasure

I'm not going to write a long drawn out post today. (I know most of you are shouting yea at this point.) I feel like I've been run over by a mack truck and I can't breathe. I was fine until I started cleaning. That's it, I'm allergic to cleaning. Ha! Think that excuse will work? Nah, I didn't think so either. Instead, I'll share some pictures I've taken recently.

This is an art project B had to do for school. He had to listen to a piece of music and cut shapes that were indicative of how he felt while listening to it. He listened to "We Bow Down" which is a praise song. He said he felt love so that is what he showed. Great job huh?

This is a Bible project M had to do today. She had to color the pictures of God's animals and glue them on the paper. Well, gluing them flat wasn't good enough. She opted for the 3-D farmyard. I told her that it might be difficult, but she made it work. The legless horse is my personal favorite. I think she did a super job!

Can't show pictures without showing Miss K. Gee, wonder where she gets the "Mom, enough with the pictures" attitude. Couldn't be M now could it? Nah!

Um, yeah. This is what I pulled from the inner storage room yesterday. I've got to go through these and get the ones my dear friends aren't purchasing and put them on Ebay. As much as I love my friends, I don't think they're going to buy all these sets. 2 came by yesterday and 2 are coming by tonight. Hey, I've got to make money to pay for M's new bed somehow.

If you're interested on bidding on some great Stampin' Up! sets, my Ebay ID is Smoochiefrog. I'll get some up tonight and more will be up through the course of next week. There are over 100 left, so it'll take me some time.

We get the keys to our new house tomorrow, and I'll be painting tomorrow night. K's birthday is Saturday so I probably won't be around to post again until Sunday or so. Have a great weekend!

P.S. I see that I've had over 100 hits since last Monday. I hope I haven't bored over 100 people to death. If you've been bored to death, please accept my apologies. I'll do better, I promise. :)

Hi, I'm Tina and I'm a Packrat: but I'm halfway done

Yesterday after the morning chauffeur service was finished, we decided (read I told Mr. Smoochiefrog) to hit the outside storage to clear it out before we move. It didn't take too long, we got rid of 3 empty boxes (do you really need to keep the original packaging JIC you move again?-please share your thoughts on this) and we had some fun in the process (water fight & bike riding). So last night, I decided a little before 10 that I was going to start clearing out the inner storage area. Um, yeah. I probably should have stopped while I was ahead. Now you have to understand. The inner storage area is filled floor to ceiling with my stuff. Craft supplies, teaching materials, various things I forgot I had until last night, you get the point. So clearing out to me is a long drawn out process of looking things over, sorting into piles to look at again, and so on and so forth. Mr. Smoochiefrog's idea is to drag it all out and once it's out it doesn't go back in. Of course that sounds good to him as NONE OF IT IS HIS STUFF! So I start looking through stuff and about 20 minutes in, call to him for some help. I just wanted him to help a little, but when he saw what I was about to do next and how long doing that room was going to take, he suggested starting from the back and working out. Okay fine but in the back is were all the boxes filled with my teaching stuff are and I can not pick up on my own. Hee hee, sucker just locked himself into a nice long night. It started out innocently enough, he grabbed some craft stuff and carried it to the dining table for me to go through. Then I saw his face when he spotted the box of Priority Mail boxes:

Him: "Why do you have mailing boxes?"

Me: "For shipping stuff."

Him: "What are you shipping?"

Me: "You know, stuff I sell on Ebay."

Him: "You haven't sold on Ebay in years!"

Me: "Nuh-uh, I have stuff up right now!"

Him: "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr"

This continues with random outbursts of "These boxes are multiplying like rabbits." and "Did you really need to buy all this stuff in the first place?" until there is a line of about 4 boxes of teaching stuff for me to go through.

Over the next 4 hours, I go through 12 boxes of teaching stuff filled with art supplies, curriculum, literature, supplementary materials, files, bulletin board charts, etc. Enough stuff to make the people on Clean Sweep (is that show still on?) shake their heads and go "Wow." My teaching stuff is now condensed to just 2 boxes. We ended up with 9 boxes on the front porch for Freecycle and a back wall of the storage room that you could actually see. (For those of you who don't know, Freecycle is a great site set up for people to give stuff they don't want away and people can come pick it up. You know the whole "One mans trash is another mans treasure" principle. http://www.freecycle.org/)

I posted my Freecycle message at a little after 2AM and crawled into bed. M came in to our room this morning telling me that there was a lady getting school stuff. I told her OK and rolled back over to sleep a little more (this was about 7:30/8ish). I got up at 9:15 to get ready for church and came downstairs to see how much stuff she had taken. Imagine my suprise when I opened the door to see ALL 9 BOXES GONE!!!!!!!! The one woman took all the boxes! I about freaked out I was so happy! I checked my email before church and saw this message.

Oh my gosh! I would LOVE to have these for my dearest friend who just had her huge art bag of teaching supplies, hundreds of dollars, destroyed Friday after someone dumped the stuff in the trash to steal the bag. Most of it was rained on and ruined. She would be so excited as she just started teaching preschool again this month. Please, please, please consider sharing with her--it would really make her so very excited. Thanks so much. I could pick up ASAP!!

She then sent another message that she would let her friend know about it. I wondered if it was her that picked up all the stuff. I checked my email after church and saw this message.

Just wanted to thank you. I was at your house at like 8:30 and met your little girl. I asked if it was okay to take things and she said yes. First of all, let me say that I can't thank you enough for offering your supplies. Mine were just stolen off my porch then dumped in the trash and were rained on and ruined. I was crushed. This morning, I was getting ready to post some things on freecycle when I saw your post. You can't imagine how grateful I am. I will definitely be able to use most of the things. What I can not, I will freecycle if that is okay with you. All my bulletin board things were ruined so they will help so much. Again, you can't even imagine how this helps. I just started teaching again after being off for five years with my boys. I am so grateful to you. Good luck with your move and thank you so much for everything. If there is anything you may need, I hope I can help. Thank you so much.

I LOVE IT when Freecycle things turn out like that. Bonus score is that I've had our Treadmill up on Craigslist since Wednesday. I got an email this morning about someone wanting to see it today. They showed up at about 2 and bought it!!!!!!!! Woo Hoo!!!! That money refunds the money I spent this weekend on paint for the new house. Speaking of which, here are the colors:

the yellow is for the kitchen (yes, I HATE yellow but I like it for a kitchen-call me strange-it's also not this dark)
the blue is for the master bathroom

the purple (which isn't really this dark) is for the girls room-it matches M's comforter

So even though I'm halfway done, this is what I still have to go through. Please no negative comments. As stated in the post title, I now admit I'm a packrat and I'm moving on by sorting through and throwing out. And this time I'm NOT asking Mr. Smoochiefrog for help!