May The Force Be With You

Yesterday I mentioned that I've been busy working on organising and preparing for Caelan's eighth birthday party at the end of the month. Now there are a few things you'd learn about Caelan within minutes of meeting him. One is that he is madly in LOVE with anything 'Star Wars' and he'll talk your ear's off if you let him. The other fun facts you'll learn is that he loves LEGO, he's made about technology and if he's not reading he'll be search YouTube for new video's take feature anything Star Wars or Lego related.

So I knew straight away that if we asked if he'd want a birthday party he'd immediately want a Star Wars themed party. So once I had the go ahead, I started searching Pinterest to see what ideas I could steal borrow for his upcoming birthday party. It was during my search that I came across the fabulous party printables made by the lovely Simone she runs an online party business called Simone Made It. The first thing I did was to make sure that I'd use the majority of the printables that are included in the pdf file especially as I'd have to wait another eight years for Quinlan to hopefully want to use the same theme.

I'm using the invitation in the top left hand corner.

All the text on these particular invitations was changeable so this allowed me to enter all of our party details and make up individual invitations for each child. I printed out each invitation using our printer and I set them aside for twenty-four hours so that the ink would set before cutting them. Now in my part of Brisbane we've been dealing with a heap of rain so I quickly came to the realisation that handing out printed invitations wouldn't be ideal.

To make the invitations a bit stronger I framed the invitation with two layers of card stock. I decided to use three different coloured card stock just because that's what I had on hand in my stash, now I went with silver glitter card, purple glitter card and a blue shimmering card stock. Now as I've been listening intently to Caelan during the last two weeks I knew that I had to add some shimmer and/or glitter to the invitation so that it resembled the starry galaxy that goes hand and hand with a Star Wars theme.

So I cut out the paper image, placed double sided tape on the back and stuck it onto the glitter card stock. I wanted some of the glitter to show through so I allowed 0.5 centimetres to create a boarder around the printed image. I then struck the glitter card stock onto black card stock so that the entire invitation was more solid. Again I created a 0.5 centimetre perimeter around the glitter card just to tie it all together. After all that I placed the invitations under some heavy telephone books just to make sure that everything stuck together properly. So after hours of cutting, measuring and gluing both Caelan and I were extremely happy with the way his invitations turned out.

The invitation at the front has a purple
 glitter boarder BUT it photographs blue.

So tell me what do you think? Do you think that the glitter worked? I'm very happy with the way the invitations turned out my only disappointment is that the blue shimmer card stock (invitation that has Luke on it) isn't the wasn't the correct colour but it was the closest I could get at the time. Caelan was really, really happy with the way the invitation looked and he couldn't wait for school to start today so that he could hand them out to all his Star Wars made friends.

Megan

It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

Today's my thirty-eighth birthday and I'm not really feeling it. Ask the children my age they'll tell you I'm really old, hundred's of years ago I would have been considered 'old' but today 38 is just a number. I'm reminded everyday that there's women just starting their families at my age, some people are travelling for the first time, others are starting new careers and some are watching there children move onto adulthood. If you'd asked me when I was in my 20's what I'd be doing at this age, being at home full-time with children wouldn't have been my only answer.

I always wanted children and I wanted to raise them but I also wanted to have the ability to work from home while I raised the children. I've come to realise in the last few years that I probably should have planned my life out a little more, planned more holidays, taken more trips with the children just so we could explore things, learnt to dance, taken up knitting, done a short course, searched out beautiful antiques and started doing more crafty hobbies. One thing I've come to realise is that I'm my happiest when I'm helping others, so coming up with an endless list of things to cross off a bucket list before my next birthday won't make me any happier.

My focus is my children, our family and as a twenty-five year old I wasn't mature enough to know what I'd need to be doing as a mother or a wife. I now know that I need to focus on showing my children how I love them, playing games with them, making them laugh or smile but most importantly doing things with them or for them to show them that I'm here. I want to be present in their lives, I want to share things with them and enjoy their joy, their loves and their sorrow. I want to more than just their mum I want their love, understanding and respect. This year I'm going to try and make them smile more, laugh more and I'm going to cuddle them more.

Speaking of children I'm in the process of planning my son's eighth birthday party. This year we are inviting a few children over to the house for a STAR WARS party and I can tell you that Caelan is beyond excited. He can't wait. The best part so far has been listening to him talk endlessly about all the characters he likes, he's helped me name the food we'll be having, he's helping think up things to do while the kid's are here and he's counting down the day's until the invitations get handed out.

I'm not showing him everything, I want to have a few surprises on the day so that he has to smile even wider. Tomorrow I'll show you the finished birthday invitations, were I found all my supplies and what other things I need to cross off my list.

May the force be with you....

Megan 

When Clutter Own's You Part 2

During the last six months I've shared a few posts about my issues with clutter, (find them here, here and here) how I've tried to declutter our house and how I've signed on to various 'organising your houses' programs that other bloggers host in an attempt to make an impact on the mess clutter that we having been living with. So I've taken some time away from blogging and I've been working on finally unpacking all those boxes that I'd dumped all over the house.

In Queensland, we have been inundated with rain during the last two months so it was an easy decision as to were I was going to start. The first area that I needed to address was getting the our KIA Carnival into our double garage especially with the heavier rain falls happening during school drop-off and school pick-up times. Having to time it so that I could run each child out to the car with an umbrella means that by the time I get to the car I am very wet and as the return trip home is done with twenty minutes I usually have to take my clothes off and try to dry them over the clothes horse. So with this in mind I set about clearing the garage out so I could get the car into the garage and the kids in and out without having to deal with the rain.

Before.

Before.

As you can see there is a heap of things in the garage that just shouldn't be there and these pictures were taken after I'd previously spent six hours clearing out things. The majority of the work I'd already done was to remove all the clothing out and install a storage box that I'd purchased from Ikea months and months earlier. One of the reason why I only spent six hours in there was because we had so many large and small items that there wasn't really anywhere to put them.

I started off by removing all the boxes, containers, toys etc and I worked through these sorting them into various piles so that I could put them in there correct position later. I knew that we had a few heavy items like a refrigerator, unused tiles, an old wardrobe and a metal shelving unit that stored poisons, petrol and other items that need to be stored in a shed (which we don't own). With the amount of heavy items I had Mr Opoes work with me so that I could focus my time on going through the stuff I'd moved into the house. It wasn't an easy job, with all the things we had in there it's often difficult to find places for them in other rooms without first looking through a box and only keeping the things we need.

I still have a number of boxes to go through and I know that the majority of the boxes are filled with toys so one of the next jobs I have to accomplish is to organise the storage area in the kid's room which is next on my ever growing to-do list. Clearing the garage in order to get the people mover in took nearly six hours, at least half that time was spent re-positioning things like tiles, an old wardrobe and household items e.g. wooden ladders, art canvas and wooden dolls items. So in total we have probably spent twelve hours so far and there's probably another four to five hours just finalising things once we get a shed organised. It will also mean that I can move the four kid's bikes out of the living room and into the shed.

So if you're still reading you probably want to see same after pictures. Unfortunately I wasn't able to get the same angles as the before pictures but I was able to capture a more detailed photograph so that you could see how we went about fitting everything in.

The Garage (80% completed)

After.

Done:

▪ moved all the tiles into an area so that it would be easy to sell them.

▪ stored wooden ladders out of the way.

▪ placed items needing to go into the shed in one area.

▪ put shoes in pink box in the shoe storage area.

▪ swept floor so that the area was clean before the car came in.

To Do:
▪ remove all the shed related items into the shed.

▪ sell the tiles, wardrobe and any baby related stuff that I don't want.

▪ move the refrigerator, clean it and plug it in. 

▪ work on setting up an organisation station.

▪ set up zones so that the room is more functional.

As you can see there are still items that need to be rehoused but for now we are all very happy to have the car in the garage. The other thing that we've noticed is that the garage might not be a true double garage size especially when you take the brick work into account, we would struggle to fit a small car into the space that's left. The fun now is learning how to get down the driveway without damaging the new garden beds. Hope you have some fun de-cluttering just like we did!!

Megan

Weight Watchers Journey

Source

I came to the realisation last night that I've known My Opoes for a little over eleven years, we'll celebrate nine years of marriage in July and I've also been a full-time mummy for eight years. Early on in our relationship I spent time organising what I was going to wear out, what shoes would work best and should I wear a little bit of make up or nothing at all. We got engaged a year after our first date and from that moment on my focus shifted to other more important things e.g. organising a wedding, babies, kindy, planning holidays, school, errands etc I have spent the last ten years putting myself last, getting on with things so that everyone else is taken care of. Now I know I'm not alone in thinking like this (putting myself last) but I've decided 2013 is going to be the year I start taking care of myself.

It's funny but when you write it down, saying that you are going to start looking after yourself sounds selfish. I believe that if I don't start looking after myself then the outcome could become dire. There are a few reasons for wanting to look after myself and at the end of the day the longer mummy is around the better it is for my family. Some of the things I do regularly is always eating last, I put off going places especially if one of the children are tired, I tend to fit in a shower when I get a chance instead of first thing in the morning, I can't remember the last time I went to the hairdresser on my own let alone to have something done others than a quick trim, I tend to grab clothes or shoes at the shop and bring them home to see if they fit because it's just too difficult to drag three kids and a pram into the change room with me and if I do purchase something it's always on the cheap.

Some of the things I do are easy to change but my weight is something that I can't magically change over night. Although it's not an excuse I've had three babies in thirty-eight months and I never really took the time to start loosing the weight after number two or three were born. So I've decided that the first thing I'm going to concentrate on is loosing weight and I've decided that I'm going to get a little bit of help. This isn't a sponsored post, all the opinions expressed are hundred percent mine and I'm only sharing this with you so that I can hold myself accountable while I'm on this weight loss journey.

Source

When deciding I wanted to loose weight I was shocked to discover that I had more than twenty kilograms (more than 50 lbs) that I had to shift from my frame. This twenty plus kilograms seemed huge, very scary and to loose this amount of weight wasn't just going to happen overnight. Being a Celiac (Coeliac) means that I can't do most of the meal replacement diets, Jenny Craig is out of my price range, joining a gym involved daily child minding fees for each child and the weekly membership fee and having meals delivered to our house would have to be added to our weekly grocery bill. So when you added it all up joining Weight Watchers was the best decision for me and our families budget.

At my first meeting I had to sit up front so that the leader could find me after the meeting to get my weight recorded, to give me all the items I'd need to start and then to talk me through the additionally items that I could need to start the program successfully. I enjoyed being out of the house on my own for that hour so much that I don't think I focused to much on what was being said. One thing I took away from the meeting was that 'any loss, small or large was better than a gain'. Being told this on my first visit was really helpful especially when a new member lost 2.4 kilograms (5.29 lbs) and I only managed to lose 0.4 grams (0.88 lbs).



Source

So at this stage I'm looking at doing Weight Watchers for a minimum of a year at the rate I'm travelling BUT at least I'm losing weight safely and not to dramatically as I don't think I could afford having any surgery to fit me up after the weight has disappeared. One thing I'm learning is that I need to be better prepared. Meal  planning needs to be done for the entire day instead of just planning dinner, having snacks prepared and in my bag will make my life easier and having my weight watchers 'eating out' book on hand will allow me to make healthier options when eating out.

I am still learning and making mistakes BUT I'm getting there very slowly and hopefully I'll reach my first goal of losing 4.2 kilograms (9.25 lbs) which is 5 percent of the weight I need to lose. Now I'm off to have my breakfast and to organise some more snacks. Hopefully I'll get better at working the program into my daily life, I'll find a way to introduce exercise into my routine and soon the benefits will start playing off with a wardrobe that fits better. I hope to share my progress with you as I progress and maybe soon I'll be able to announce that I've reached my 5 percent goal.

Megan

Happy Birthday to you..

 

As a stay at home mother I've come to the realisation that I haven't noticed how my children have changed while they're growing up. I was talking to a school mum last week and she commented on how tall Quinlan was for a 10 month old. I corrected her about his ages, as he's nearly 16 months old but I also didn't think he was tall. So over the weekend I pulled out various photography's of Viveca and I was reminded of what she looked like as a baby. Being my third baby I remember being a little surprised that she was my biggest baby, she weighed in at just under 8 pounds 1oz (3650 grams) and she was 49 centimetres long which also means that she was the shortest. Yet when I see new babies now I can't remember my babies ever been that small so it's not surprising that I don't notice things about them as easily as other people do. So I thought I'd write a letter to you for your birthday.

Ready for her first night in hospital.

 

Dear Viveca,

Today is your birthday and it's hard to believe that our baby girl is turning three. In the short time you've been with us you've experienced a few changes to your environment, your routine and you're family. At no stage have you complained, you've been a good sleeper and because of your lovely nature you haven't made it difficult for mummy to do all the day-to-day things that I needed to do. As a little sister you adore Caelan and Mackenna, following them around and wanting to be involved in everything that they do. As Quinlan's big sister, you're always there to help him, grab him and to protect him. At times Quinlan gets frustrated when you pick him up under the arm's but I can always count on you to have him laughing by the time he's back in front of mummy.  So Viveca, I thought I'd write down a few things that I wanted to share with you, so that you knew how loved you are.

1. You had lived in four different house by the time you were 2 and a half.

2. You love to say 'hello' to people when we're out and if they don't respond you'll just say 'hello' to another person .

3. When you're tired you twist your hair while either sucking a dummy or your finger.

4. You are the only one who as used a dummy and a bottle and this makes you special.

5. You are scared of animals e.g. cats, dogs, ants, spiders

6. When eating you have to have the same as Mackenna and you will often get upset if she has something you don't.

7. You love having peanut butter and strawberry jam on Raisin Toast.

8. You enjoy sharing the bath with Quinlan and Mackenna BUT if you're offered a shower you think all your Christmas's have come at once.

9. You don't enjoy having your hair washed and at times you can get quiet upset.

10. You're not afraid to tell me when you're scared and at times you'll miss doing things because they are scary.

6 months old and ready to be baptised.

 

11. You don't like eating pea's or corn.

12. You love going to Kindy with Mackenna and being part of the class even though you're not quiet old enough.

13. You tend to fall over or walk into things when you get really tired.

14. Your favourite colour is PINK but you sometimes get it confused with purple.

15. You love changing your clothes two or three times a day.

16. It's extremely difficult to get you to put your clothes in the wash or away in your drawers.

17. You often tell everyone that you love them BUT at bedtime you'll give me a big cuddle and you're also let me know how much you love me.

18. You love watching Peppa Pig on television at 5pm every night.

19. When Mackenna gets up and dances you will copy her and the two of you will put on a show.

20. I sometime think that you and Mackenna were twins, you just decided to stay an additional 18 months because you enjoyed being in my womb.

Look who's 1.

21. You are still having at least a 90 minute daytime sleep every day.

22. You have asked to wear underpants to bed and we are going to start that tonight.

23. You would much prefer to sleep on the floor than in your bed BUT you also love sleeping in mummy and daddy's bed. So if you had to list your sleeping preferences they would be:

 

* on the floor with your head out in the hallway.

* in mummy and daddy's bedroom on either the floor or on our bed.

* on your bed

 

24. You are loved by Caelan, Mackenna, Quinlan, Daddy and Mummy and we are happy to have you with us in our family.

Enjoying her 2nd birthday dinner.

 

As a family we're so blessed to have you in our lives and I thank God every day for giving you to us. I cherish the relationship I have with you as it can be challenging, fun, loud while also been rewarding. I love how you let me tickle you and you'll laugh so hard and long even after I've finished tickling you. People have asked me if our family is finished and I think it is because I already have the most fabulous children and they bring such joy, happiness and delight into our lives.

 

So Viveca I hope you enjoy your 3rd birthday and that you enjoy your star birthday cake. I'm looking forward to watching you grow, starting school, making friends but most of all I'm going to enjoy the time I have with you as time has passed so quickly.

Happy 3rd Birthday Beautiful Girl.

Lots of hugs and kisses to my beautiful girl from your brothers, sister, Daddy and Mummy we all hope that you have a great birthday with us.

 

Megan

Can I Ask

 

  

Does This Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat?

 

I talked late last year about my clutter and unfortunately I never reduced the amount of stuff we had enough that you'd notice. Honestly, do you think clutter and been disorganised weighs you down? I think we've reached breaking point in most areas of our house and I'm tired of spending so much of my time looking for things. I know I'm not alone in feeling tied by the state of my house, many blogs have developed special series in order to help us start organising and decluttering our homes during January so that we can get on top of thing. I know that when I become overwhelmed with the clutter in my home I'll eat more often especially if I'm procrastinating about what to do and where to start.

So, as part of my goals for 2013, I'm going to be taking charge of the clutter and I'm going to win the battle. Starting on Valentine's Day I'm going to be joined by the lovely Donna from 'Organize It' who is going to help me clean up my entire house. We are going to be focusing getting rid of the stuff we don't need, reducing the amount of clothing that we have, putting away all the stuff that's still sitting in moving boxes and setting things up so that they run more efficiently. This is going to be a really

 BIG JOB

in that Donna and I will be working a minimum of four hours a day over the course of four days. This means that I'll be spending a minimum of sixteen hours working on this house in the hope that we'll be able to drive the car into the garage, that I'll know were to look for the notices that come home from school, the kid's will know were to put their toy's and that the kitchen will finally be organised so that the pots and pans are away in the correct space instead of sitting in a moving box waiting to be placed in there correct spot.

 

Media room that is housing some
 of our clothes.

 



Our Kitchen Bench.



The garage were I hope to FINALLY PUT THE CAR.

 

Donna has said that some area's may require more time and the beauty of working with Donna is that she's able to tack more time on so that you can finish off the spaces your working with. I'm going to be giving this task my full attention because it's affecting me in more ways than one.

 

I have come to the realisation that the clutter doesn't make me happy and because of this I don't make friends easily as I tend to be a negative person. The clutter has lead to feeling depressed and this in turn has helped me gain weight over the years. However, I believe that the number one problem all the clutter and un-organisation has achieved is that it's ruined my relationships. My family have been very judgemental about the clutter, I can become annoyed really easily at the children because of the clutter and it's also played a role in ruining my marriage.

 

At the end of the day though this is my fault, I'm the one person who allowed all these things to be bought into our house. I'm the person who made it impossible for the children to invite people over and I'm the one who didn't say 'NO THANK-YOU' when things were given to us. I've spent so much time watching the clutter grow that I never got around to putting the clutter on a diet.

 

So the house is going on a diet and a major one at that. At the end of these four days I'm hoping that I can give things to charity, get rid of all the boxes, broken toys etc at the rubbish dump and that maybe I'll even be able to have a garage sale to sell all the clothing that the children have out grown.  Most of all I just want to walk into any room and see that everything is clean, tidy and put away. The next job will be to teach the children to put things away after they have finished using them. I hope that I will be able to have the kid's join in on learning how to keep our house clutter free.

 

Well I'm off now to get ready for a very special day tomorrow.

 

Megan

 



Dressing up a Storage Cube.

 

While been away from my blog I've had the opportunity to watch other blogs and to see what all the other talented ladies are doing. What I discovered is that January is the month to start organising.  Many people organise their homes, some their health, others set challenges and others make changes to their blog, business etc. Organisation is a swear word in our house, it's something that I struggle with everyday and unfortunately I'm modelling this behaviour, potentially making my children lives difficult. As there mother I want a better life for them, I don't want to be running around like a mad thing looking for the permission slip, Caelan's sports socks or trying to figure out when Mackenna starts kindy for the term.

 

So during January, I decided that I was going to get on top of some of the clutter that has infected our new house and I was going to make a start on one little project. We're lucky enough to live within a 10 kilometre radius of two major hardware stores, so when it comes to wanting supplies it's never too difficult getting them. Masters is running a 'Australia Day Pledge' campaign in which you have until Australia Day (January 26th) to complete a DIY project around your home. Upon seeing the copious number of advertisements promoting the campaign I decided that I would pledge to sort Mr Opoes and my shoes.

I had read about the Closetmaid storage cubes a some months ago here, I decided 8 cubes would work best in my walk-in robe and I went off to Masters to make my purchase. While there I remembered that Masters offers free wallpaper samples so I grabbed 4 designs I liked and I bought them home with me. As this is the first project in our bedroom (walk-in robe) I knew I wanted to introduce some colour so I went with purple, black and silver. This is what I started with.

Light purple fabric cube

Black fabric cube

8 cube storage box
source

 



I was able to do this project for a little over $75, however if I'd given myself time I'm sure I could of reduced the overall price. Now I was able to save a little bit of money, taking samples meant that I didn't have to buy 4 different rolls of wallpaper which meant I saved $179. Now for a project this size I would never have spent that much money, I'm just keeping it real. Like most furniture these days I did experience problems when it came to putting it together. Firstly, the instructions were difficult for me to understand, this was because the diagram was difficult to interpret. Now I'm very familiar with Ikea flat pack furniture so I was pleasantly surprised to see that I needed a hammer and phillips screw driver to construct my storage cube.

 

Putting the unit together wasn't difficult once I'd returned to Masters to ask a few questions regarding the extra screws I had. What caused a huge headache for me was hammering the backing boards (pre cut cardboard) into place as shown in the picture above. I messed the first cube up on the last bang of the hammer, it went in crocked thus splitting the chipboard. I was so annoyed with myself that I put everything away and decided to work on finishing it off the next day. I haven't included a picture because it wouldn't photograph for me. When I downloaded my pictures I had two black images so I've had to leave this picture out. It won't be too much of an issue as it'll be hidden from view so there's nothing to worry about.



So this is what my storage cube looked like when I'd finished it. Now to find all over Mr Opoes size 13 shoes and place them correctly in the fabric cubes. I've got the cubes with the wallpaper for me to use but I have a funny feeling Mr Opoes will find a few more shoes to put in there.

This is the finished cube all dressed.

 

 

Close up of top four cubes.



Close up of bottom four cubes.







 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The best thing about my storage cube is that it so practical, if I want to move the shoes I can always use the cubes to hide away our swimmers, socks, hats, small presents etc. So I'm really happy to have finished my very first DIY project in our new house. I'm hoping that it's the start of a beautiful relationship and that I get to complete more DIY projects in 2013.

Megan