Making the Bed

Have you ever had one of those moments where you just said to yourself, "Wow, I've been REALLY lazy!"?  I had one today.

I have never been really great at making the bed.  I was the sheets every week or every other week (we both take showers at night so they don't get dirty very fast) and if I finish everything and remember long before bedtime, I'll put the sheets back on the bed and then make the bed look all nice.  If I forget about it and get distracted, or something more pressing comes up, I usually put the sheets on right before we go to sleep, feeling bad that my hubby has to stay awake a few minutes longer when I know he's already dead on his feet from exhaustion as it is.  The rest of the time I usually either don't think about it or think that it will be too much work, and will take too much time.  So I leave the bed untidy and my husband usually goes to bed first and he's usually too warm for any sheets or blankets or anything, so he either sleeps on top of the crumpled mess or used the haphazard comforter under his legs to ease his back pain do he doesn't have to look around for the extra pillows.  I get in bed, and I'm ALWAYS cold at night, so I try to get under the sheet, which is usually twisted, grope around in the dark for the blanket, realize it's under my hubby, then either leave it and snuggle up to him in hopes that his body heat will warm me enough to sleep, or decide that me being warm is more important than his back and take the blanket out from under his legs.  the bad thing  about that is that my husband sleepwalks, and slightly stirring him like that is usually enough to make him sleepwalk, during which he'll eat and often fall back asleep on the couch in a very awkward position.  This doesn't help with the back pain, incidentally.  But when the bed is made, things go smoother.
Still thinking that it was too time consuming to make the bed, I was reading an article about how we make more work for ourselves by not stopping to fix things that are slowing us down.  The author compared this to being too busy driving to stop for gas.  She also suggested timing how long it takes to do these things that you think are too much trouble.  So I figured I might as well try.  While holding a small child in one arm, and still being very sick and sluggish and light headed, and having to rearrange the pillows and go back and forth to the other side of the bed a few times since I was working one-handedly, it took me less than two minutes.  I didn't do hospital corner or anything.  I did those in the military and they only work well with a small cot and a this wool blanket.  My main point was to "re-fold" the bed so it looks decent and if someone walked into my bedroom they wouldn't think that they had woken my from a mid day nap (something I wish I were taking).
Here is my wonderfully accomplishment :)

All made, and the extra pillows are under the regular pillows so the hubs won't have to use the blanket (it's more work to use the blanket when it's laid out all nice anyway)

Yay for small accomplishments!

How to be miserable when you're sick.

Warning:  This post was written by a sarcastic sick lady who can't spell, so used all of her mental power to use spell check.

Most people, when they get sick, do a pretty good job being miserable even f they get to spend all day in bed, sleeping and watching their favorite show, with whatever food or drink they please at they please at their finger tips and someone waiting on them hand and foot, giving them massages and making sure the kids are quiet or out playing somewhere.  Well, sometimes homemakers get a little extra misery when they get sick.  If you want to be miserable, here are my tips to maximize how yucky you feel:

Wait to get sick until everyone else in your family had gotten sick and you've spent the past week either constantly holding a fevery child or getting up in the middle of the nigt several times every night because someone's medication wore off and their headache and fever came back full strength at 3 in the morning, or because someone was so exhausted from being sick that they didn't wake up to go potty at 2 in the morning and had an accident at 2 in the morning so you get to change their bedding and help them get cleaned up instead of doing something that would strengthen your immune system to keep you from getting too sick, namely sleeping.

Make sure your husband gets sick first too because you love him and take care of him as much as you do your children (except carrying him around the house on your hip, that might hurt your back, especially if your hubby is as muscley as mine is).

Be sure that no one gets COMPLETELY over their aliments before you get sick, make sure they're just to the point where they have energy again, but they are still sick enough for a headache to come on suddenly so they can start screaming about the littlest thing and later on not be able to go to sleep.

Make sure that you are potty training a child and that he has a poop and tinkle accident in his underwear right when you are feeling the worst. 

Wait for all of this to take place right after your husband gets a promotion and gets transferred to another location so he's commuting 30 minutes each way, and working 50 hours a week, in addition to trying to get over his own illness so he has no more energy than you do in the few minutes he is home. 

Make sure it is at LEAST 100  degrees outside and that you have no yard so your kids are always inside and getting cabin fever.  Also make sure that they swimming pool in your apartment complex has not been checked off by the health department and gave your boys eye infections the month before, so you can't take your kids to any outside location to release their wiggle and wear them out.

Have downstairs neighbors who pound on the ceiling every time your kids speed walk in the living room.

Don't go grocery shopping for a week before getting sick so there is nothing simple and easy you can think to fix right away, so you have to exert your brain to be creative and sill be somewhat healthy.

*
Having said all that, I have a few new best friends:
Exercise ball,  It's a good thing to sit on instead of a chair (you know, when you're not lying down because that rarely happens when kids are awake) because it's most cushy and you can move around on it to ease some of that achiness in your lower back that comes from being sick. You can also kneel on the floor and hug it and rock to ease aches in your upper back. 


TV.  Yes I said that.  I don't think kids should watch TV all day, every day, but if your wonderful brother sent them a movie they love and it's wholesome and not annoying, it's a good thing  if you're so light headed that you can't keep switching rooms to check on them.  I also use this when someone has a tummy bug so they don't jump around and make things even worse.  Just make sure that you go back to regular activity and only a little TV when you're better or it won't work as well (voice of experience here).

Ramen noodles.  These were a staple in college, but I don't usually use them now because I try to go all whole wheat and low sodium, but they're easy to make when your head is throbbing and they will fill up your kids so they're happy.  The other day I improvised and used thin spaghetti, beef bouillon, and parsley.  The kids LOVED it!  After lunch they asked me if they could have that for dinner too, I made something similar, but with more nutrition. (ground beef, egg noddle, fresh tomato, Italian diced tomatoes (canned), onion and garlic powder, parsley, basil and oregano, corn, cheese.  Cheese makes everything taste good)


Youtube.  I looked up some somewhat education videos yesterday about tornadoes and it kept my five year old enthralled for a while and helped with the education aspect. 

Play-doh.  My kids got a big case with lots of play-doh varieties this past Christmas and it is wonderful.  That's actually what my 3 year old is doing right now!  We make sure that they only use it at the kitchen table and only make impressions in it with things mom or dad approve of to avoid the headache of play-doh in the carpet or on stuffed animals.  And the neighbors usually don't band on the ceiling when my kids play with play-doh (they have little kids too, so I don't know when they expect the living room to be quiet in the middle of the day, and they let their toddle bang on the horn in their car when my kids are napping and I don't open the windows and through rotten fruit at them or anything.  I normally try not to gripe about people, but I'm sick so I'm allowed this once.

Fruit and ice cream.  Things that are easy to chew and easy to swallow so as to not make the headache worse.  Chocolate ice cream, watermelon, and bananas are dietary staples right now. 

Ibuprofen.  Normally I don't take any kinds of medicine.  I've only had a little pain med to take the edge off when I had two of my kids, nothing with the other (and I was induced, they were all over 8 pounds, all posterior, and the one with no pain meds at all was 10 pound 4 ounces!), and then an ibuprofen afterwords, but other than that I really don't take pain meds.  Now though, I've had to take something just so I can walk around! I take the minimum dose, since I rarely use medicine this seems to work pretty well for me, and only when I absolutely need it, it's been wonderful!

Water.  Before I started my own family, I was in the Army, and there water is the cure to every ailment.  There is a lot of truth to that though,  your body can't regulate temperature if it's dehydrated, so it's good in hot and cold, dehydration can cause headaches and poor judgement, and it can help you body flush out bad things.  I haven't noticed a difference with t hings like ache and sprained ankles, but my drill sergeants in basic training swore it would work!  Either way, it helps be be less light headed and wakes me up with I'm feeling woozy.


Sorry for the complete randomness of this post, but not so sorry that I won't publish it. :)

Adventures in spray paint part 1

I named this blog "attempted homemaking" because I'm learning to be a homemaker as I go, and learning means trying new things that don't always go the way I've planned.  When we moved in to this apartment, my husbands former boss gave us these lamps (there are no overhead lights in the bedrooms here)

They both came with the pleated lamps shades but we have a toddler who likes to throw toys so we got a new one (we keep the nicer one in our bedroom, in case he's destructive again).
Nice lamps right?  They're great, but I'm really not big on the brass look.  I've read several articles about spray painting lamps so I got a can of spray paint, cleaned and dusted the lamps, "sanded" them with some fine steel wool, and then put an old sheet up on our balcony and spray painted them.
I used plasic bags and tape to protect the plug prongs and the light bulb part.
This is how they came out:

From a distance it almost looks like I meant to let some of the shiny brass shine through, but I didn't.  It was a matte paint that I was intending to coat them completely with.  I thought that they don't looks to bad and I could leave them like that, even though my five year old told me that they look disgusting (self esteem boost for you right there).  But I noticed they were really uneven as I turned them and there was a thick hair (looked like my husband's) on one of them which came off and left a lovely mark.  Plus the matte paint comes off really easily (even though it says it's for metal).  So I will be redoing them.  Thing is, it might be a while because the spray paint is supposed to be used between 65 and 90 degrees.  If you're following the weather channel, you know that here in Texas, temperatures below 90 degrees are rare!  The only times it's below 90 in after midnight and before 8:30 a.m..  Not wanting to do this in the dark, that leaves about a 2 hour winder (about 6:30 to about 8:30 most days) when I have light and it's less than 90 degrees.   I have little kids who like to get up in that time frame and they think they should have breakfast in the morning (go figure), plus I need to go to the store to get some more spray paint.  So I don't know when I'll finish.  For now they're going back in the bedrooms because we'll need them tonight.

Things I've learned:
           Only do one at a time, even though it's a small project, I couldn't put the layers I wanted on them because I ran out
          Use glossy paint.  It is more durable (won't rub off as easily) and it will look very nice with those lamps
          Wear a mask.  Even though I was outside and the wind was blowing away, and I had my husbands old work shirt over my mouth, I was still sucking in nasty fumes.  Or I could get a low VOC paint (that might be a little better for the environment anyway)
         Use more steel wool, so the paint sticks better.
         Clean and dust long before, so I'm not rushed.

Whenever I do this again, I will post about my endevors.

To be continued.............eventually.........

X-salada

My  brother served a two year mission for our Church in Brazil.  While he was there he discovered Brazilian cheeseburgers.  They're basically like American cheeseburgers, but you put corn and peas and shoestring potatoes and maybe a fried egg on them.  Keep in mind that if you put regular french fries on them, it won't be nearly as tasty, so here's the ever-so-complicated recipe for shoestring potatoes:

2 pounds (about) potatoes
2-3 Tbs. vegetable oil (depending on your preference for oily-ness)
1/4 tsp. salt (or more to taste)
1/4 tsp. pepper

Wash potatoes and cu them into very thin, long pieces, like french fries on weight watchers.  Put the other stuff in a large, seal able plastic bag and mix, add potatoes to bag, seal, shake to mix (very fun for little helpers in the kitchen).  Spread in a single layer on a cookie sheet, bake at 450 degrees until crisp, about 1/2 hour.  I like to kind of "stir" them around once or twice while baking so they brown a little better and don't stick to the cookie sheet as much.

Once your potatoes are ready and crispy, put them on your burger with your peas, corn, meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and whatever else you like.  This is really good, and my picky eater even ate the peas and corn with no complaint this way!

Second-hand for the "germ-o-phobe"

One thing every frugal person knows is to get things second hand whenever possible.  But some of us can't help but think about who else had it first, what they did with it, and what kinds of diseases they might have been carrying.  I'm not talking about someone with a serious mental disorder like OCD, but just people who the heebie-jeedies from something someone else has used again and again.  My hubby and I are in the category of people who over think about what's on an object.  On the other hand, we don't have much (meaning ANY) disposable income, and we have three going kids, plus we've moved a lot and had to downsize each time, but we've had good friends and family, plus a few random kind strangers, who have  helped us out.   When we've been given something second-hand that we can use, we graciously thank them for their generosity and then clean the heck out of it!  Here are a few of our tips for second hand stuff:

Wash all clothes, even if you think they're clean, and use detergent!

Be very selective where you get anything upholstered from.  Our couches we free from people we knew very well and had visited with on multiple occasions.  For a year and a half we had a second hand mattress from someone we knew from church.  Even then we still sprayed some Lysol disinfectant and vacuumed these things really well. Lysol is my friend.

If it's been stored outside or in a garage or something, you could sprinkle a little boric acid on it (keep away from kids)  to kill any bugs (a worry in places where it rarely gets cold enough to freeze the bugs) and after a few hours vacuum it off.  This is usually overkill (no pun intended) but if your imagination gets going.....

Things that aren't upholstered or porous can just be cleaned with some all purpose cleaner and a rag.

Interestingly enough, most of our stuff is second hand, but we almost never go to thrift stores or yard sales.  I'm signed up for freecycle, and regularly check the free section of craigslist, but it seems my timing is always off and it's already gone, or I don't have any way to get there in a timely manner.  They're still worth trying.  We get most of our stuff for free from friends and family members.  In our church, every family is assigned a few people to visit and help them if needed.  When these people (known as visiting teachers and home teachers) visit, they often ask if there's any way they can help the family.  So whenever we've been asked this question, we try to think of things we really do need.  Like when we had one dresser for our family of 5, which was occupied by little kids who want to pick their clothes and dress themselves, we put the word out that if anyone was getting rid of a dresser, we could use one.  A little over a week later there was a knock at our door and when we opened it there was a four drawer dresser there with no note or anyone around.  I peeked my head out the door to look around and didn't see anyone, so I yelled out "Thank you!" to the darkness, in hopes that my springtime Santa would hear me.  A lot of out kids clothes have either been presents from family for their birthday or Christmas (when family asks, mention this first) and people we've gone to church with who have kids a little older than ours that pass on the still wearable clothes to our kids when they wear out.  Our baby most wears clothes his older brother didn't ruin at that age, plus whatever hand me downs others send our way.
Furniture is an interesting thing.  I promise we help others out of the sincerity of our hearts because we care, but it seems like we always get way more back than we give, and I mean literally.  We helped my husbands boss move (into a bigger place) and they decided to get new furniture right after moving in so they sent a lot of they "old" but still perfectly good, stuff our way.  We got a couch, kitchen table and chairs (before that we'd been using a card table and folding chairs, that we'd also gotten from someone who didn't use them), a shower curtain, lamps ( the bedrooms in our place don't have overhead lights so lamps were a need), plus more dishes than we could use (we donated what we couldn't use to charity).  Our high chair was from when we were helping a friend of our deal with no longer having small children at home (through tragic separation) and he asked us to take everything to the dumpster and keep what we could use.  The high chair was about the only thing we could use.  Our beds we bought new with our tax return, but before that we had a mattress on the floor from some people at church who never really used it, and before that it was an air mattress.  If you go back far enough, we had a new bed that we got for a wedding gift, but had to sell it to some friends to make an interstate move in our car.
We've gotten a few miscellaneous things from family members and friends who didn't need it or someone offered it to them and they were kind enough to keep us in mind.  We've also tried to keep others in mind when we have stuff we can't use.
One other thing we learned is to own less stuff, and want to own less stuff.  The less you own, the less you have to clean, the more room for your kids to run around the house, and he easier it is to find what you're looking for.
I'm long winded I know, I guess I just seem to have a lot of experience with second hand things.  Which is great because I don't end up with buys remorse afterword!

It really IS a magic eraser!

I just had to share this! 
Today I bought a canister set from Walmart because I was tired of storing open bags of baking products in the fridge (air-tight containment is a must anywhere, but down here it's even more so to avoid attracting unwanted visitors!)  So I'm jazzed about that, but the sticker on the outside of the largest canister would not come off.  Only parts of it pealed off by hand, so I soaked it, only a little bit more of that paper part came off, but none of the sticky residue.  So I tried scrubbing it with hot, soapy water, that got a little more paper off, and maybe a tiny bit of the sticky stuff, but it was not working how I wanted it to work.  So I got online and did a search on swagbucks to find an alternative.  I found this website, which had many suggestions, but one of them was one of those magic erasers.  I always keep some of the Walmart knock offs on hand because I have a 3 year old who takes the phrase "the world is your canvas" literally, and they work wonders in getting crayon off the wall.  I even got some still somewhat wet nail polish off the wall with them once!  So I gave it a try and it worked BEAUTIFULLY!  I was again amazed!  When I first saw these advertised I thought it was another ho-hum product that wouldn't do much more than any other cleaner.  But WOW!!  They're amazing.  Another cool thing for those of us who are tree huggers (or at least try to be sometimes) is that the Walmart brand (I don't know about the name brand because I'm too cheap to buy it) makes the boxed completely from recycled cardboard, and it's of coarse recycle-able.  Plus, the magic erasers don't have any extra packaging around them, and when they wear out they just dissolve so nothing goes into a landfill!  I never realized Walmart was so green!

What have you found to be your magic cleaning product?

I love my job!

Just a quick note to say that I love my job!

Job?  You might think, I've never mentioned being employed before.  Well, I'm talking about the role of mother in my home.  I was thinking about people who say that motherhood doesn't define them, and that got me to thinking.  Why wouldn't you want to be defined as someone who cares for others, teaches others, helps people work through their problems as well as making a nice place for people to come home to?  Sounds like a glorious job to me!  And it is, it's called....wait for it.....being a HOMEMAKER!  I know you'd never think to read anything like that on a homemaking blog! ;)  I so love seeing my kids cute little faces every day and hearing the creative and sometimes off the wall things they think of.  I laugh at their perception of the world sometimes, I marvel at how forgiving and trusting they are.  I'm happy to know that my husband works everyday so he is happy to see food when he walks in the door (I'm also happy that we even have an income at all!  We've gone through way too many times when we haven't).  Although I'm not a huge fan of housework, I'm happy that we have cleaning products, I'm happy that we have food to make dirty dishes, I'm happy we have a washer and drying so we can have clean clothes to wear, and I'm happy that my baby is learning to feed himself so the mess in the high chair and on the floor doesn't get to me.
I think being defined as a woman who serves others and learns to be a better person in the process is wonderful!