The Mommy Diaries: February 2011

Sunday, February 27, 2011

6 Months {+ some videos}

{hangin' out with Dad}

My little boy is a whole half of a year old {does that even make sense? a whole half of a year... oh well} I can't believe he's 6 months old now! He is growing up fast too.

{Gray loves his bath time!}

He can roll onto his tummy like a pro in no time flat. We can't keep him on his back anymore in his crib. We've tried. He just rolls onto his tummy right away. Even being mostly asleep he'll roll back to his tummy if we roll him over.

{this might be my favorite picture of him right now}

He is sooo close to crawling. He gets in the position and rocks back and forth on his hands and knees. He also scoots backwards a lot in the crawling position as well. Any day now I'm sure.

{this big boy love to sit up}

Gray can now sit up! Woo-hoo!!! I've been waiting for this one. He's still a little unstable, but he can sit up for awhile on his own. We usually put a pillow behind him for when he falls- cause he always does eventually.

{just plain cuteness}

He loves to eat and loves everything we've given him. He eats rice cereal, oatmeal, barley cereal {first time today}, sweet potatoes, squash, and prunes. He does NOT like his face being wiped though. He cries and whines every time we clean his face off after eating.

{church outfit and hair today, first faux hawk :)}

Now for the video proof!

{sitting up and playing}

{about to crawl}

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Couponing

I haven't posted one my coupon deals in forever! And, let's be honest, it's because I haven't really done any solid couponing lately. A little bit here and there, but not much and definitely not consistently. This is in large part due to the fact that I have a HUGE stash of items saved up from when I was couponing hardcore. See this post if you want to see pictures of my stockpile. I haven't really needed anything because I still haven't run out even though it's been more than 6 months.

I want to get back in though! I'm on my last bottle of body wash {my first item to almost run out!} and so I decided to it was time. As I was looking through my coupons today and throwing away the expired ones I noticed some good diaper and wipes coupons. They were about to expire so I went to Target today to used them.

Here's what I got!

2 packages of diapers

2 baby wipes

Carefree panty liners

travel size Tide laundry detergant

for a total of...

just under $9!

The diapers were about $4 each, the wipes $0.50 each, and the Carefree and Tide were free!

Not bad, huh?

Still, I've gotten diapers a lot cheaper. Like $2-$3 cheap. But $4 is still good considering the coupons were about to expire. And the diapers were priced at $9. So I got all the above for the normal price of one package of diapers.

Yeah. I feel good about my trip back into couponing. :)

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Drawers, drawers, and MORE drawers!

As you know, I've been on a bit of an organizing spree lately. I participated in the 21 days organizing challenge at A Bowl Full of Lemons {which I'm almost done with} and I've been organizing other spaces in my home as well. This post shows some drawers I did in the kitchen recently.

Here are some quick reminder pictures of the 2 kitchen drawers.

The other day I was at Home Goods in the clearance section and found this great drawer organizer that I knew would be great for the drawer in our office/tv room. It had lots of small compartment that were perfect for all our different cords.

This drawer used to be complete chaos.

See?

It was the place to put all our cords and other random electrical/computer stuff. But with all those cords thrown in so haphazardly, they would get tangled. Plus it was hard to find the one you wanted. I'd pull out the one I thought was the camera cord, nope, put it back, and guess again.

Big. Pain. In. The. Butt.

In goes the handy dandy organizer. And there is happiness all around!

Ahhhhh, bliss.

This really was the perfect thing for this drawer. The large bottom left compartment holds our 2 camera cords {we have a spare one I bought when we temporarily lost the first} and Gray's nail clippers, the bottom right is our video camera cord, the one right above that has our 2 iPod cords, and the largest top compartment has some computer cds and the GPS cord.

Finally, all around the organizer placed nicely in the drawer is the other random computer things- old hard drive, smaller memory chips, wireless router, surge protector, and a big computer extenstion cord.

Here's my favorite- the side by side before and after shot!

So much better, right?

Right.

:)

{If you want to see some more great drawer organization, click below!}

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Hoo Are You?

{click above to play along!}

1. Where do you usually have your thermostat set at in the winter?

70, I think

2. What room do you tend to put off cleaning until last?

The bathroom, for sure!

3. Do you like to clean with music on or off?
On, most definitely

4. When do you take time to blog?
when my baby is napping {like now} or at night

5. How much time do you spend looking at other blogs a week?

3-4 hours

Monday, February 21, 2011

Tray Makeover

I bought a plain wooden tray on clearance at Hobby Lobby recently knowing I could make it a lot prettier. I forgot to take a before picture again! I know I know, I'll work on that... {Although, I have to warn you, another project I already started has no before either, but I may be able to find them in an old picture to show a before, we'll see} Anyways, this was quite a fast and easy transformation.

Before

Picture in your mind, and plain wooden tray with metal on the handle sides. Got it? Ok.

I spray primed it and then spray painted it with some great spray paint. Rustoleum American Accents in Heirloom White- love it!

Then I bought some contact paper at Target. I measures the inside of the tray and cut it out. Put down a layer of Mod Podge so the contact paper would stick. And then stuck on the contact paper.

Voila!

I also sanded the edges a little.

Now I knew jsut where to put it. The top of our dresser just cannot stay clean. It's the catchall for putting things down when we walk in.

See?

Especially the contents of Josh's pockets.

{Minus the candy, I've just been bugging him to take it school and share so we could get rid of it!}

The tray would go nicely here. It would help hold all this stuff and make the dresser top look cleaner.

Perfect!

Linking up here!

Baby Food

I learned how to make homemade baby food at a mom's group I attend. I was super excited to try it out. The first thing I did was sweet potatoes.

I bought 2 sweet potatoes at the store for under $2.

The first step was to peel and chop them.

Then, as you see below, boil them until they're soft. 3 is to puree, which I used a food processor for. {A blender supposedly works as well.}

Step 4- blend and blend {or process and process?} until it's as smooth as you can get it. Add water from the pot you boiled the food in to get it the right thickness for your babies' age. The younger they are, the thinner it should be. Also, you keep the water you boiled it in to use because that water has vitamins in it from the boiled food.

Step 5 & 6- scoop out and pour into containers. I used washed baby food containers and ice cube trays. After doing both, I prefer the ice cube trays. After they freeze, you put them all in a freezer ziploc bag. Then you can get as little or many cubes out at a time. The little baby food containers can be hard find in the freezer and get lost.