When you decide to start a series on your blog it really is a good idea to keep it up.  However, I’m not going to be able to this week.

I’m having a garage sale and for some reason this 7 hour event is taking over my entire life right now.  I’ve been pricing stuff, sorting, hanging, trying to find creative ways to display things with no tables, and using my friendly neighbor and her cute 2 month old baby girl as an excuse to take too many breaks.

Oh, and I just remembered I still have to get money together for change.

Speaking of money, I’d better make a lot of it.

Kait did make hot chocolate last night using a delicious recipe our friend Becky gave us.  I didn’t get a video so we’ll have to make another batch and review it.  However, she did get a picture of the event.

He liked it.

Sam(3) has just recently proclaimed that his sister, Kait(15) is the coolest.

Then he said, “Yeah.  Kaity, you’re the coolest and I’m the awesomest.  Yeah.”

So, I asked Sam, “What am I then?”

He was silent for a minute, thinking this one over.  I was sure he was coming up with some really nice adjective to describe me.

Then he exclaimed as though he’d just thought of a bright idea, “Mom!  You’re the second awesomest!”

Kait just about had hot chocolate come out her nose.

It’s not so bad really.  I can think of a lot worser things than being second awesomest.

And, yes, worser is a word.  Just ask Sam.

I have just about every room decluttered and am ready for the garage sale.  I finished the master closet today and the master bedroom didn’t need much work.

I’ll post pictures in a bit.

Anyway, I’m sitting here all happy that I’m done and can now get ready for the actual garage sale.  It wasn’t until this moment that I actually realized that I still have to get ready for a garage sale.

Yuck.

I had totally forgotten about pricing, organizing all the junk, wiping things down, and finding creative ideas for makeshift tables.

I’d forgotten about making signs.  Counting change.  Hanging clothes.

I’d forgotten that I was way too tired and too whiny for all this.

This is by far my biggest garage sale ever.  I’ve never gotten rid of so much stuff at once before and when I walked into the garage to get started pricing I immediately turned around and walked back into the house again.

I can’t imagine the work ahead of me. 
And I’d much rather be eating chocolate covered bacon right now.

It’s 10:30 PM. Ryan and I are sitting in the living room finishing up watching a show on the computer.  
What transpires in the next few moments is nothing short of bewildering, and a little more than mildly humorous. 

Ryan: What is that sound?  Do you hear that?
The sound is that of water spraying. Like a dog peeing.

Me: Yeah, I hear it.

Gabe(10) emerges from the laundry room.

Me: Oh, it’s just Gabe.

[Confusion is setting in]

Ryan: Hey dude.  Whatcha doing?

Gabe: Oh, just going to the bathroom.

[confusion turns to snickers]

Ryan: Okay buddy.  Goodnight.  Love you.

Gabe: Goodnight.  Love you too.
He replied, walking his sleepy self back to bed.

Ryan and I both now jump up to check out the laundry room, realizing what had just happened.
Gabe had peed somewhere in that room, mistaking it for the bathroom.

Turns out he confused the hamper for a toilet.  My vacuum cleaner is right beside it, so I realize how bad this could have turned out and am thankful that my vacuum remains urine free. 

We told Gabe about the incident in this morning.  He doesn’t remember any of it but thinks it’s terribly funny and was quite agreeable when I asked him if I could post it on my blog. 

My 10 year old sleep-walked into the laundry room last night and peed in the dirty clothes hamper

Let us hope this isn’t a defining moment in his life.

This is not what we would call ’pretty food’. 

Really. Not. Pretty.

In fact, if I had to name it I would call it Flat-Blob.

But…

Oh. My. Goodness.

This is the best, most flavorful melt-in-your-mouth tortilla I have ever tasted in my life.

Gabe and I made tortillas today using this recipe.  He’s learning how to make these for our family so he can take it over as a weekly job. 

However, I think there is no denying that we’d greatly benefit from having a tortilla press.

*Note to Becky – Tried the pie plate method.  Great for baking pies, not so great for flattening tortillas.  Bummer.

I thought the kitchen would take me several days.  I thought it would be a more difficult undertaking.  However, I found myself finishing cupboard after cupboard in little time.  So, I got almost the entire kitchen done today in just a couple of hours. 

This is what my kitchen is supposed to look like when the boys finish doing the dishes after each meal.  They’re getting better at it but Kait and I usually have to go behind them and finish up.
It is usually clean to my liking at least once a day.

I started with the coffee mug cupboard.  I was sure it would be the worst one to do because it was in serious disarray and I do love my coffee mugs. 
As it turned out, it wasn’t all that difficult to make those serious what-to-keep decisions.  I think I could have gotten rid of all of it, actually.  But what would I drink my coffee in?

Kait has her favorite mugs and I just wasn’t going to throw them out.  Plus, she collects tea cups and saucers and has built up quite the cute collection.  My great grandmother gave me her collection to save for Kait about 10 years ago.  And my mom-in-law buys them for her here and there.  I love that Kait actually uses them.  So, the top shelf is Kait’s for her to add to her collection.

We also keep our loose teas, coffee, sugar bowl, etc… in this cupboard.

Next I moved onto the dish cupboard. 

I CLRed all the glasses because our water is gross and leaves a disgusting film on our glassware no matter how we wash them, or how we rinse them.  I have to CLR them every few weeks or they get uber gross looking.

I also prefer glass to plastic.  We have a few plastic cups for the kids to use in there rooms on occasion, but for the most part everybody but Jesse uses glass.  We’re also phasing out our other plastic dishware.  I’m in the market for all clear glass bowls and plates – just waiting for an awesome deal.

And the appliance cupboard.

Had to get rid of a few things, and managed to get my awesome mixer to fit down there.  Now all my small appliances are in one place, except my giant roaster – which only fits in the garage.

And that left me with an empty cupboard.  My mixer used to take up this space, but now it’s empty.

I heart empty cupboards.

The cupboard under the sink looked pretty bad, but really only took about 10 minutes to clean out.

We have a tall, skinny cupboard with cookie sheets and such in it.  That didn’t really need any work.

And the pots and pans cupboard just needed a little touch up.

I really like my German pots.  A lady who had lived in Germany for a while like 30 years ago purchased them there.  She decided she had too many pots and pans and gave them to me.

I think they’re totally sweet.

I prefer my pots and pans cupboard to not require any stacking.  This cupboard is nice and big and fits everything very well.

I also got through the mixing bowls, pie plates, cooking utensils, etc…  I’ll post about them tomorrow though.  Forgot before pictures, too.  Bummer.

So that’s what I got through today.  Quite a bit, but it didn’t take much effort.  I’m kinda on a roll – it’s getting easier and easier to make quick decisions on what not to keep.
I only have 2 cupboards left – the plastic containers and the cookbooks.  Oh, and the drawer under the range.  Will update tomorrow!

Man, my garage sale pile is totally taking over my husbands favorite place.  I better hurry up and finish up my minimizing project and have my garage sale so he can have his man-space back.

We had fresh corn on the cob and I thought it would be cool to make dolls out of the left over corn husks.  We did this project when I was 9 or 10 and I remember the dolls turning out so very cute.

My friend, Becky is visiting so we thought we’d take on the project together, looked up some directions, and got started.

I found instructions to make a simple girl doll that looks like one of these:

It didn’t take me long to begin wondering how on earth adults expected 9 and 10 year old girls to create such dolls.  There must have been a crafty mom in my Girl Scout troop because the dolls I remember sitting on my mom’s window sill were much more perfect looking than what Becky and I came up with…

When we followed the directions both of our dolls turned out looking like the small one.  Becky finished hers up and the doll is sturdy and cute, just way smaller than we expected.  I think her doll would make a very adorable Christmas ornament.  
I don’t have as nice a things to say about my corn husk doll, however.  I was desperate to give you some kind of Christmas project to ooh and awe at. Adding piece by piece, twisting, tying, etc… I worked hard to transform my mini doll into the bell of the ball.  And while mine might look nice and big, she falls apart every time I move her.  And her head is a bit on the shrunken side.

It’s very sad.

While I wouldn’t call our dolls epic fails, they definitely didn’t turn out like the dolls in the first picture. I was hoping to be able to color her dress red with a sharpie or something, make little earmuffs and other warm things for her, and have her holding a page like she was caroling.
I am going to be honest and say that I just don’t think that’s going to happen.

I won’t be posting directions on how to make one because I’m just not sure you should be wasting 30 minutes of your precious time on a doll that is self concious about her abnormal head size and may or may not fall apart if you look at her cross eyed.

However, if you feel so inclined there are instructions for making corn husk dolls here.  You’ll likely have better luck than Becky and I did.

My original idea was making stockings.  Not out of corn husks though. 
I think this is what I’m going to try to accomplish this week.   

I’ll take pictures.

I was going to start in the kitchen if I had the chance today but the laundry room was calling me.  Quite loudly. I had gotten really good at ignoring all the stuff in there.  The thought of going through it all was just a bit much for me.

It was bad.

We had a junk box, an emergency box that had become a second junk box.  We keep all our meds up on a shelf in there, as well as our cleaning supplies.  And behind and beside the hamper we had stuffed the broom, mop, and vacuum.

The whole place was an unbelievably disorganized mess.

I started with the bottom shelf.  It didn’t take but about a half hour to go through it all.  Most of it was trash.  How on earth I still had medicines that expired in 2005 is beyond me.  I clean the meds basket out often.  Not sure how I always miss so much.

The junk box was full of junk.  So was the emergency box.  I managed to get both pared down enough to fit in two small, cute baskets my neighbor gave me.  Much of the other stuff went in the garage sale pile or the trash.

Then there was the dish set that came with the house.  Not sure what I should do with that stuff – it isn’t high quality china or anything.  I put it all in a box and stuck in the garage.  I’m going to have to think on where it should go because we are already storing a plethora of things for the landlord – something we didn’t agree to when we moved in – and I just don’t have a place for any more of their stuff.  Maybe I could keep some of it in the dryer or broken washer we’re storing for them in the garage?

Can I charge them a storage fee?

Anyway, I pared down the cleaning supplies.  We had way more up there than I use on a regular basis, and made a place for the extra dish towels we normally just toss up there wherever they fit.

Then there was the deep fryer we’d had forever but never use.  I asked Ryan if we had to keep it and he said absolutely not.  So, in the garage sale pile it went.
The red box has extra kitchen utensils in it.  Utensils we do use, but not that often.
And the tackle box in the picture is our Geo Caching box.  I opened it up to do inventory and toss anything that needed trashing and found a travel bug.  A travel bug we’vd found in a cache about 5 years ago.
If you know anything about Geo Caching you’re probably aware that you aren’t supposed to forget to re-plant travel bugs.  That’s a big no-no.

We’re going to take care of that error in the next day or two.

I cleaned the floor, wiped down the washer and dryer, and made nice the area beside the washer that you can’t see well in the pictures. 

The place looks pretty good now.  Much less stuff and more space.

And I thought it was going to be a two day job.

I’m super glad the laundry room is done and am almost excited to get started decluttering the kitchen on Monday. 
I’m almost ready to have a garage sale!  I’m thinking next Saturday I should be more than ready.

Today’s hot chocolate is about as simple as you can get.

Because -

1) I forgot I was supposed to make hot chocolate today
and
2) I have run out of many of the ingredients I needed to make

However, today’s super simple and super fast hot chocolate recipe is nothing to frown at.

What you’ll need:

1 cup dark melting chocolate at room temperature
1 cup very hot water
Half and half or cream if desired

Mix the chocolate and hot water in a large bowl.

The chocolate should melt fast. Once it’s melted add a tablespoon or two of your cream.
Mix well and serve.

This recipe makes enough for only two people – it’s not the cheapest hot chocolate I’ve made. However, it was quick, dark, easy, and made a nice, thick, chocolaty drink.

And my two oldest really liked it.

(i know the video is down – working on some technical issues)

And Jesse liked it too.

Jesse loves music.  And he is really into dancing.  As soon as Ryan pulls up the media player on the computer Jesse gets excited, starts pointing, and waiting for the music to begin playing.  
The 22 month old especially likes that loud, heathen music from the 80′s that my husband and I were so fond of all those decades ago.  This song by AC/DC is actually a 90′s song but Jesse didn’t seem to know the difference and took to it like it was old 80′s heavy metal.

So, without further ado I give you…

Jesse…
Thunder Struck

[my boy's got skills]