Under The Sink
In my house, the cabinet under the kitchen sink is the most opened and closed cabinet in my whole kitchen.
It’s not where I store my garbage can, but it’s where I keep my recycling, dish cleaning agents, clorox wipes and garbage bags. I have a use for most of these multiple times a day. My messes don’t usually happen overnight.
This morning, I finally realized it was time to re-organize this cabinet.
BEFORE:
I know! It was crazy looking. Over time, we just ended up tossing our bags in there after grocery shopping because we were in a hurry to put stuff away and tend to the kids. We keep the bags though. We reuse the plastic ones for those stinky diapers and reuse the paper ones for our recycling.
Anyway… I put some order to our chaos.
AFTER:
Everything in it’s place… just as I’m sure God intended from the beginning of time.
There’s so much more storage space behind this stuff now for my “not-so-toddler-friendly” household cleaners.
Ok… your turn.
What’s the cabinet under YOUR kitchen sink look like?
Re-Arranging
Brian and I had decided to re-arrange our living room and office a while back.
We finally got it done today in less than two hours.
Here’s the BEFORE:
And now… the AFTER:
We just swapped the rooms. Before, when you came in the house, the first thing you saw was our home office. Not all that welcoming. Now, the first thing you see when you come in is the living room… comfort. HOME.
It’s just a little change for us. A small change… but it was change we decided on together. Every little thing like this feels good now… because Brian and I are doing it TOGETHER.
Sometimes you just gotta re-arrange stuff to make it YOURS.
Chance’s 4th Birthday Party
We celebrated Chance’s 4th Birthday on Saturday.
Stephanie Baker helped me plan the WHOLE event. We thought up the Safari theme and ran with it. She even translated all the kids games into “Safari/Animal” games. She and Zena TOTALLY helped facilitate all the kid stuff so I could focus on the food, cake, photos, parents portion of it. They helped make it SO fun for the kids that they didn’t even notice the bi-polar weather (in the 2 hrs we were at the park, it was sunny, it rained, was sunny hot again, and then rainy again as we were cleaning up). Chance had a BLAST!!! I am SO thankful for these girls!
Here are some photos I took from that day.
These are the vegan cupcakes we (Crystal and I) made. A couple of Chance’s friends have some allergies so we thought we’d make it more friendly to everyone. Well… the frosting wasn’t vegan, but it didn’t have anything they were allergic to in it, so we were good. They were actually quite good!!!
We wanted to conserve a bit, so we got these cute cups they could use AT the party as well as hold all their party favors to take home. Of course, I had to write their names on the cups… swine flu and all, right?
The skies… threatening to rain on our safari… THEN actually raining on it for a few minutes.
The kids lining up in prep to attack Stephanie with their water balloons. This was Chance’s FAVORITE game.
Janet and Paxton… REAL FRIENDS come to 4 year old birthday parties… even if they don’t have 4 year olds. Man, I LOVE this woman! Isn’t she beautiful?
Blowing out the candle. I think I forgot to tell him to make a wish. I’ll make it up tomorrow… for his REAL birthday!
Chance has been waiting for this ALL year!
I’ve decided that kid’s parties are EXHAUSTING!!! But it was really fun being creative on how to make this event memorable for Chance, yet cost effective. We spent a fraction of what we spent last year… and I think it was more fun for the kids. That’s success!
Thank you to all the grown ups that hung in there with us during the sunny, now raining, now sunny, now STORMING weather! You really helped make Chance’s day.
What have YOU done for your kids’ parties?
OR
What was your favorite party memory as a kid?
I’m taking notes here!!!
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UPDATE: Cupcake Recipe as requested:
Fluffy White Cupcakes: makes 22 cupcakes
1 TB apple cider vinegar
1 ½ scant cups plain soymilk
2 1/8 cups flour
2 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
½ tsp. kosher salt
1 1/8 cups sugar
½ cup oil
1 ¼ tsp. vanilla extract
½ tsp. coconut extract
Preheat the oven to 350º. Spray 22 muffin cups with nonstick spray or line with paper cupcake liners (I like to spray the inside of the muffin papers with nonstick spray to help the cupcakes release). Set aside.
Place the apple cider vinegar in the bottom of a liquid measuring cup and fill the cup with soymilk to equal 1 ½ cups. Stir well and set aside (the mixture will curdle).
In a large mixing bowl, stir together the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In another mixing bowl whisk together the soymilk mixture, canola oil, vanilla, and coconut extract. Add the wet to the dry ingredients and beat until smooth using a hand-held mixer, stopping once to scrape down the sides of the bowl.
Fill each muffin cup with ¼ cup of batter. Bake for 15 to 20 minutes, until a cake tester inserted in the middle of a cupcake comes out clean.
Let cool in the pans for 5 minutes, then remove cupcakes from the pan and place on a wire rack. Let the cupcakes cool completely before frosting.
Our New Home
Finally… I took pictures of our new home. Here’s your virtual tour. Welcome to our home!
The house is at the end of a cul-de-sac. Perfect for our kiddos:
What you see when you first open the front door. We made the “dining room” into our home office. Paxton is a nice decoration in the photo… it’s like “Where’s Waldo”:
When you walk into the office and turn 180* to your right, you see the “formal living room”:
But if you walk straight back, you enter into our kitchen and family room:
Chance was jumping all over the couch when I took that last picture. Seriously… not only are you getting a tour of my home, but you’re seeing my family life too! Hahaha!
Ok… moving upstairs… Master Bedroom:
Chance’s room (with the new quilt I got from Laura just yesterday. You gotta love hand-me-downs):
Paxton’s room:
Guest room (it’s pretty much the flip-flop of Chance’s room, but we haven’t painted it yet) where all our AWESOME guests stay:
And there you have it.
Come visit us soon 
Chance & Paxton’s Rooms
I know I’m a bit behind. I’ve always been pretty quick at taking pictures of our new home and stuff.
What’s weird is we’ve been pretty settled for the last few weeks now. The garage was really the last thing we’ve worked on. I’ve taken pictures of the kids’ rooms, but I haven’t taken pictures of the rest of the house yet. Instead of waiting till I got around to all of that, I thought I’d post pictures of their rooms first… so here they are:
Chance’s Room:
Yeah… that’s the LARGEST humidifier I’ve ever seen too. It was a gift from my Mom a few years ago. The good news is you don’t have to refill it everyday. The bad news is we have no idea where to store it when our kiddos aren’t sick.
That comforter on Chance’s bed was the comforter I grew up with. The one I originally bought for Chance shrunk in the wash and I haven’t found the “perfect” new quilt for him yet. That’s why the walls don’t match with anything else. The paint was originally chosen to go with the old comforter. *sigh* Oh well… Chance really likes my comforter, so it works for now.
Oh, and Chance is pretty good at keeping his room looking like this pretty often. If it gets messy for too long, he says, “My room is a mess… I think it’s time to pick up.” Looks like I transferred over the good genes!
Paxton’s Room:
I LOVE Paxton’s room. I think the green on the walls is soothing. I finally got to nest. Better late than never, right?
By the way… for those of you who are questioning why in the world I would take pictures of every room in the house, I say this: it’s ALWAYS a good idea to take pictures of every room of your house. If not for memory sake, it’s good in case anything ever happens to your house (theft, fire, etc) and you need proof of what was actually in your house. That’s my $.02.
Go ahead and tell me how cute their rooms are!
Our Garage
As I’m sure you’re aware by now, we moved 1.5 months ago.
We haven’t been able to use the garages in our last 3 homes because the Durango has been too huge of a beast or the garages were too small. That along with not being in one home long enough to really unpack and get settled.
Well… this time… I wasn’t about to wait. Brian and I made it a top priority to get our home settled as soon as humanly possible so we could feel like we were finally “home”. Our kids deserve that. WE deserve that.
Here’s pictures of the garage as Brian was building our first set of shelves:
Here’s how it is now… FINALLY!!!
And here’s our sweet Durango, nestled nicely into it’s new home.
We obviously can’t park the Volvo in here due to Chance’s drum kit… but who cares. We’re totally unpacked and settled.
I Love Closets
About a month ago, Alli and I did THIS.
Apparently, that made Holly happy cuz she’s letting us go through the rest of the closets in her house. Today, Alli and I got to organize Holly’s upstairs hall closet.
Again, I’m not posting “before” pictures, because I would lose this gig (and believe you me, I would suffer… this is how much I LOVE organizing...), but when I tell you this closet was jam packed full of linens and shoes, I’m not over-exaggerating. Holly picked through all of it with us and we donated almost half of it’s contents to Goodwill.
Here’s the empty closet:
Alli and I went to Target and got a few organizational bins and doodads and went to work.
When I say “work”, I mean “shopping in Holly’s closet”. Alli was cracking me up. She’d put on a pair of Holly’s shoes, walk another pair to the closet to put away, put the one’s she was wearing away, walk back to “the pile”, try on another pair, pick up another pair, walk back to the closet… so on and so forth.
I seriously LOVE this girl.
Here’s our finished closet:
Now, Holly has more space to buy more shoes.
Alli and I are thinking about taking this gig on the road. We think it’s “normal” to love to organize… but we know there are a lot of ABnormal people out there. In this economy, it wouldn’t hurt if we made a little bit of extra money here and there either. So… if you would like to hire us to organize YOUR space, we are game.
We’ll make your space work for YOU!!!
Newest Family Member
We moved to our new house this past weekend.
We’ve moved a LOT the last two years. I’m DONE. We’ve signed a 3 year lease to the most AWESOME 4 bedroom/3 bath house that sits RIGHT next to the VanderGiessen’s. How awesome is that???
However, in our move, though we have a pretty amazing kitchen… we found that we don’t actually have a pantry here. We didn’t have enough space for all our kitchen stuff and food… so off to IKEA I went.
LOOK AT WHAT I FOUND!?!?!?!
This buffet came DISASSEMBLED in two boxes. I’m not kidding when I say there were a BAJILLION little pieces. Brian put this all together BY HIMSELF (ok… Nick Lind helped a little) with very little leftover pieces. That, my friends, is a success.
The best part was this piece was originally $329. But I got it yesterday ON SALE for $189.
I’ve lovingly named her “Buffy Clayville”. You can come over and see her if you’d like… and me too, I guess. That’s just added incentive.
I, now, have my WHOLE kitchen unpacked. Now… for the rest of the house.
A place for everything and everything in it’s place.
Basketball and OCD
Brian finally went over to Holly’s with me yesterday. We’ve been pretty busy prepping for our move this weekend (it’s our last one for three years… don’t worry) and trying to keep things somewhat normal for our two babies at home, so Brian had been holding the fort down at home while I was helping tend to Holly, Erin and the kiddos.
Brian played basketball with Reilly and Ireland all morning, while Chance played with Kiel and Kelton.
Alli and I went to help organize Holly’s downstairs closet so she… well… more her current house guests, could easily navigate around in there, as well as have more storage space. It also gave us… well… more me, a good excuse to finally get in there and exercise my OCD skills. Holly knows I’ve been just WAITING to get my hands on that closet for years. In normal circumstances, she would NEVER have let me touch that closet… but since we didn’t ask her permission… all’s well that ends well. Or something like that.
I will not post “before” pictures, but here are some afters of Allison and my handiwork.
We did this just in time for Kelton’s Birthday party today. Erin said she found the streamers for decorating quite easily. SCORE!!! Seriously, that just about made my day.
After Alli’s eye surgery… I’m thinking we should start a business doing this together. Special thanks to Brian & Kiel for going to Target to get that large plastic storage unit and the little blue containers on the shelf. As Chance would sing: ”What’s gonna work… TEAM WORK!”
Holly did come down for a bit to give us some snuggles. She’s so amazingly strong, and I know it’s because of everyone’s unceasing prayers.
Please keep praying… this is not so much a sprint, but a marathon.
Here We Go Again…
Yes friends… we’re MOVING again.
As you may know, our most recent move to our current house was a temporary move. Our current landlords are AMAZING people and have been so caring and generous to our family, I have no idea how we will ever repay them. The only thing we can do is pay it forward to others around us.
May will be our last month in this beautiful LARGE home.
But don’t cry for us yet!!!
We are signing a multiple year lease to a 4 bedroom 2.5 bath home this weekend. It’s in a quiet, cul-de-sac neighborhood close by the Streets of Tanasbourne (5 minutes away from here). It’s got a fair size backyard and an awesome floor plan. The people renting to us???…
AH-MAYZ-ING!!!
Get this… these guys don’t cut corners. They function in way that shows they have other people’s best interest in mind.
They just put in ALL new carpet, took all the blinds down to wash THOROUGHLY, vacuumed out all the vents, put in new air filters, replaced all the older looking lights and hardware, deep cleaned every possible surface and because we are agreeing to a multi-year lease, they are putting down brand new 12-inch porcelain tile in the kitchen for us. I FREAKIN’ LOVE THEM!!!
I’m so ready to settle down for a bit and just LOVE on my family by making a house our HOME.
But that’s not the best part… you ready for this. Guess who my next door neighbor will be???
My good friend, LAURA freakin’ VANDERGIESSEN!!!
She’s actually the one who told me about the house IMMEDIATELY after the old neighbor moved out. Hello!!! I am so happy, I could just… do… something… I dunno!
We’re planning on taking May 30th to physically move. We’ll need some serious man power. Is it too much for me to ask for help again so soon?
So… (if you’re in the area) are you free to help us move that weekend?
Accidental Blogatical
This past week has been somewhat crazy. I’m not sure how it happened since I live my life as planned out as possible, but, my week just got away from me.
Let’s see… what did I do?
Monday: Cleaned the house in the morning. Then, our family went to lunch with the Conforth’s at The Cheesecake Factory. An hour lunch ended up being, like, a three hour extravaganza. At least it was with Mandy and Ross so all was well worth it! Their girls are SOOOOO cute! Then, I came home and cleaned some more.
Tuesday: Took Chance to Pre-School and hung out with Paxton. Then went to Alli’s house for lunch and a playdate. Came home, made dinner then Worship Band Practice! Wow… that day was packed!
Wednesday: Um… I’m not sure what happened that day. It’s all a blur. All I know is I worked on future worship services. I’m past Easter now, but that’s not saying much because back in my “hay-day” I would be almost 5 months out right now on schedule and sets. This is what we get as a part-time Worship Pastor, I guess. Then, I set up our April budget worksheet. Yay, Dave Ramsey! I also dove into the life of coupon websites and clipping. Then, LifeGroup Online.
Thursday: Took Chance to Pre-School and went on an awesome morning walk with Brian with Paxton packed on me. It’s time to get back into shape people. I’m back to my pre-pregnancy weight, but I’m not feeling 100% yet. And I cleaned, did laundry, caught up on all the housework I neglected from Wednesday. Grocery shopping Part ONE at Winco (for bulk items, dry and canned goods).
Friday: Started my day Grocery Shopping Part TWO at Safeway (for all the COUPON’d stuff we could stock up on) and Whole Foods (meats and fresh produce). I saved 53% at Safeway with my clipped coupons. That was RAD!!! Then more laundry. In fact, I did laundry all day. I’m not sure where all this laundry comes from but I’m pretty sure that I deserve a raise as the CEO of my household.
Saturday: That’s today! We’re gonna go for a hike with the whole family. I’ll probably also do Grocery Shopping Part THREE at QFC cuz they have a buy one get one free sale!
See… boring, right? But I’ve been super busy. I should be back into normal blog life this next week.
How has YOUR week been? I’ve been outta touch!
Coupons Schmoupons
I am NOT a coupon clipper.
It’s not that I don’t want to be… it’s just that I LITERALLY don’t know how. Other than Costco coupons, I’m pretty much clueless.
You see… Costco SENDS me their coupons nicely organized in a booklet. I then go through and cut out what our family uses MOST. I always save money doing that. However… groceries are TOTALLY different. We don’t get the paper (who does anymore) so I can’t get coupons that way. I can’t honestly say I look very hard either. Apparently, I’m LAZY when it comes to bargain hunting.
This is what I usually do: I get all my canned & generic stuff at Winco. Winco is awesome because they sell Red Mill and other organic brands of baking needs and cereal in bulk. I then get all my fresh fruits, veggies & meat at New Seasons or Whole Foods. When it’s NOT Winter, I get all my veggies at the Farmer’s Market which is SO much cheaper!!!
I saw that Heather Whittaker saved over $110 the other day using Southern Savers. Do we have something like that in the Northwest?
I have a friend who drives to 6 stores in one day to get the best price. Um… I don’t have time to drive from store to store. In my rig… by the time I DRIVE to 6 stores, I’ve spent the money in gas that I would have saved on groceries. Also, my boys just about lose it when I drag them to any more than TWO stores… but I’m ready to save $100 every time I get groceries.
I need help friends!!! What do you do?
My scissors are ready to clip… lead the way!
Where Are You Shaving?
Seems we’re ALL dealing with the economic crisis together.
So many of my friends have found ways to save money. Clipping coupons, downsizing, box color instead of salon love, cutting out Starbucks…
For those who don’t know, I actually consider it my JOB as the CEO of my household to help every dollar my sweet husband & I bring in stretch to it’s fullest potential. We’ve had a bit of an adventure this past month shaving more wasteful dollars off the frivolous list and getting them into savings.
I figured this would be a GREAT time to share what we all do to save money. Many of you are WAY more brilliant than me so I would love to glean new ideas off of you. First, let me share what the Clayville’s have done:
10 AVENUES OF “SHAVING”:
- Envelope System. We basically only take out cash for our weekly/monthly budget and steer clear from using debit cards (we got rid of credit cards a LONG time ago).
- Unbundled our home internet/cable/phone. We now only have internet and a cheap homeline ($9.95 per month). We got rid of cable. No TV at all.
- Cut out our daily coffee runs. But let’s be serious… we still grab a drink maybe a couple of times a week.
- Buy store brand. We still shop at New Seasons & Whole Foods because we are committed to eating mostly organic (we, as a family, have decided we will cut other things before this), but sticking to store brands brings the cost WAY down while still getting great quality, which leads me to…
- Eat at home 95% of the time. Again, if you know me, you know I LOVE to eat. I really appreciate different tastes. We used to eat out maybe 75% of the time. It’s has definitely scaled back to 5% now though. That has now manifested itself into my kitchen skills. Hubs says he likes my cooking better anyway
- Box Color is my friend. No more salon visits every 3-4 months.
- Craigslist. We’re selling EVERYTHING we don’t use. Makes room in my garage too. This is probably easier for me to do since I’m an organizational nazi who is DEFINITELY NOT a hoarder.
- Walking. The weather has been a lot nicer, so we walk with the kids a lot more. Saves a lot of gas money driving to…
- The Library. We get almost all our DVD movies from there right now. We actually don’t borrow books because we LOVE books and mark and write all over them. Pretty sure the library wouldn’t be so happy about that.
- No mani/pedi’s. No spa treatments at all. This is awfully painful for me. I keep my nails and toes clean and polished myself.
So… I wanna know…
Paxton’s Nursery
Oh Saturday… how you’ve kept me busy all day long.
Our main goal yesterday and today was to get Paxton all settled in his new nursery. He was camping out in our room in a cradle, but the cradle was getting way too small… or he’s way too big. He’d roll over and get his legs caught in between the rails, therefore waking himself up.
We have two guest rooms so we decided to turn one of them into HIS room. Here’s the before:
And here’s how it looks now (click on the picture to enlarge):
So… I figured while I was moving Pax into his new room, I’d “upsize” and re-organize both boys’ dressers and closets. That was a pretty big project. It involved lots of plastic bins, folding of laundry, separating for Goodwill and packing Chance’s “outgrown” clothes away.
In the process, Chance decided to pack himself away:
I’m TOTALLY done now… and spent. But at least now, I can fall asleep in my own room ALONE with Brian.
The Garage Project
So by now, most of you know we were up in Seattle on Friday and Saturday to help my Mom clean out her garage.
Brian & I build her shelves (mostly Brian) and I went through as much of her stuff as possible within our allotted 24 hours to help her decide what to keep and what to throw out. Poor Mom… Renee & Helen had really helped clutter up.
Let me show you pictures:
Let me tell you what this is compiled of:
- 1/2 is my Mom’s stuff. Half of HER boxes in here have moved with her from house to house the last 25 years (6 large boxes of unused yarn, 4 boxes of unused fabric, an unopened, unused record player… seriously!). The other half were EMPTY boxes she was keeping for who knows what. She said she thought she would NEED them for something.
- 3/8 is Renee’s stuff. Renee pretty much moved her WHOLE apartment into my Mom’s house about 8 years ago and hasn’t come back to sort since. It’s difficult though… she lives in L.A., so how is she supposed to do clean? However… in the times she DOES visit, she doesn’t sort either. She’s a bit of a hoarder, like my Mom. Fortunately, Nae gave me permission to go through her stuff and dump/donate/recycle according to my discretion.
- 1/8 is Helen’s stuff. Helen has actually MOSTLY cleaned out her room and sorts through her stuff every time she come home
Brian hung shelves with chain, plywood and screws. We hung off the ends of them to make sure they were strong enough. It held 200 lbs. PER chain, so I think we’re good.
While Brian was building… and taking 14 million trips to Home Depot (seriously… WHY CAN’T YOU PLAN ACCORDINGLY SO YOU ONLY MAKE ONE TRIP???)… I went through my mom’s stuff. Here are SOME of the goodies I found:
400 pairs of shoes (this was only ONE shoe rack). There were MANY more shoe racks around the garage. A Coleman camp stove. Mom doesn’t camp.
WHAT THE??? This one made me scream out loud. I looked in the bag and saw this decapitated doll with blinky eyes, and another baby doll wrapped up in plastic to the right. Admit it… you screamed when you saw this pic too!
These pictures are of ALL the boxes and bags we found in the garage. We broke them down so we could FINALLY dispose of it all. My mom has multiple weeks of loading up her recycling bin. Oh… and there’s a barbeque grill to the left of all this. Mom doesn’t barbeque.
We arrived Friday afternoon and left on Saturday night. Here’s how we left in on Saturday night:
Look!!! You can see the garage floor
This is the RIGHT side of the garage. Shelves are up. Everything you see in the RIGHT half of the picture are things that need to be donated or given to family members. Hopefully, that will all be cleared out the next time I’m up there.
This whole side of the garage could LITERALLY be filed in 4 catagories: (1) Recycling. (2) Renee’s stuff (3) Helen’s Stuff (4) Things that still need sorting. I couldn’t get through all of it in time.
Here’s another picture:
Far LEFT is recycling. Shelf #1 on the left is ALL Renee’s stuff. The dresser is Nae’s too… and it’s placed in front of MORE of Renee’s boxes. Shelf #2 – top half is Helen’s stuff. Bottom half is Mom’s gardening stuff. Mom doesn’t have a garden. Shelf #3 is stuff that still needs to be sorted. Shelf #4 – Household items (lightbulbs, paintcans, etc.) and a couple of boxes full of my Dad’s old stuff. Yes… that’s a rocking chair and TWIN fertilizing thing-a-ma-jiggies. Mom has no lawn.
I wasn’t totally faultless either. Here’s a picture of the stuff I left at my Mom’s house:
Yeah… ONE POINT FIVE boxes were mine. I shared one with Renee.
I write all of this with a light heart. It was actually sort of fun to do… though tiring. I LOVE my Mom and want to help her with things like this. Things that help her live easier. She deserves to sit back and enjoy life a bit now.
After I was done though, I DID write my sisters an email titled, “You Guys Owe Me!” and ended the email with, “You Guys SUCK!” Both returned emails to me with LAUGHTER in the body of the text.
Nice.
I’ll head back up in a few weeks to help sort the remaining boxes. I’m pretty sure that even though my Mom said she would sort through stuff, she probably won’t. I DID donate a few things my Mom had a difficult time parting with. One whole car trip was full of bags and boxes I didn’t ask permission to donate. Sorry, Mom… I’m sure you won’t miss it. And if you do… I’ll buy you a new one.
Jenni on Skype: jclayville 
