Just Between Friends (i.e. Consignment Heaven)

These were my cool finds for this year's sale. Blogger messed me up, photo-wise, but at least I got the photos in! Man, this dress and shirt were cool!

This weekend was one of the biannual Utah County JBF Sales. It is a consignment sale that I love! Twice a year I can buy and sell great stuff for the kids. I am sure that it saves me a lot of money on clothes, and I find some of the cutest things. I am excited enough that I even took pictures of my last two hauls!
The first three pictures are of my pick-up at the fall JBF. The red and blue dress is waiting for the 4th of July - hooray! Maddie has already outgrown the green dress, but I loved it while it lasted! I definitely do the best with Maddie clothes at these sales, but Calvin gets some good stuff too. I really loved the pink outfit here, the top is easily wrinkled, but it is still cute.
Here is everything from the sale on Friday. I got a lot of PJs for Maddie to wear in the fall and winter and a couple of sweaters too. I got a set of bibs for Maddie too. She finally has girl-flavored bibs! Calvin did pretty well too. I loved the little button-up shirts for summer.
Calvin picked out this Little People's Amusement Park that fits well with our Little People toy collection ($3!). I loved watching the animals from Noah's Ark playing on the slide with Mary and the Wisemen (Calvin said the baby couldn't go down the slide - that saves us from sacrilege, right?!) Maybe the religious figures weren't meant to mix in with the other characters = ).
I thought this book was so cool. I splurged $5 on it. It is nice to have all of these stories in one place.

For my beloved Mother

I am writing this because my mom did not like that my last post was titled "Slacker" and then never updated. I need to explain that. My camera broke and I like to post around pictures. However, I should give an update on Project Simplify. I actually did not get into it as I had hoped because the projects were actually, with the exception of the first day, the things that I had been working on around the house. Who new they had such good taste?! So, I took some pictures of my horrendously messy closet and someday I will replace the camera and post pictures of my immaculate closet (it hasn't arrived yet.)

So, for my own version of Project Simplify I have chosen to make a larger effort to remove extraneous junk around the house and garage and further build, organize and create solutions for a better functioning home. That sounded kind of stupendous, huh? So, here is what that means. First, today we had a garage sale that really cleared the house out. Most of the leftovers went to charity or neighbors. The few other pieces will be sold in the classifieds. I used the money from the garage sale to purchase shelves for the garage. That is where I will be working next. The garage needs a mass reorganization and probably further purging. Yay next week! I think the shelves will largely do the trick, but I will probably have to put in some hanging devices for the strollers and so forth. Once the garage functions for us I will begin to move some of our supplies out there so that I can better utilize our indoor storage. Once things are located where I want them I plan to upgrade some of my systems inside. Since some of these things will cost money it will take a little bit of time and shopping.

That was probably not very exciting to read, but I am excited to say that after three years in this house things are coming together. I am excited for the day when it is just upkeep. Okay, so I like change too much to expect that time to come any soon!

Now, just because I love some good pics, I am posting some randomness from before the camera's fateful fall.

Slacker

Last week was challenging at our house. I actually got a fair amount done, but not what was planned. I hardly touched my closet, and that was the trouble spot for Project Simplify. Hopefully I can handle two trouble spots next week!

Lyrics

The other day I asked Calvin to sing to Maddie. He started by singing that he didn't want to sing, but he was soon into his song and he really got into it. Chris and I busted up when we realized that what he was crooning (with a lot of passion) was, "game ooooooverrrrrrr!" - over and over = ). Time to cut back on the video games.

Project Simplify

I have decided to try to keep up with Project Simplify on SimpleMom. They will be posting a trouble spot every Monday for people to work on during the week. On Friday Before and After pictures are to be posted. We'll give it a try. I am raring to organize and reorganize (did I ever stop nesting?), and the upcoming spring and this challenge are a good excuse. It doesn't start until March 7, so, I will see what I can get done on my own before then = ).

Hale Freezes Over

Here we are after the Hale Freezes over 5k. It was a lot of fun. We aren't very fast, but we are happy to be out enjoying the race. It reminds us how much we want to be in shape!

Monkey Island!

For our preschool activity this month we went to Monkey Island and I have to say - it was awesome! Especially for only $5! This place is a little kid's playplace full of fun blow up toys for the kids to play on. Look how strong Calvin is = ). He was having a blast!

These things made me want to jump in and play too!