Mission:Organization [Kitchen-Part 2]

Messy countertops are always my downfall when I try to keep our place clean and organized. They just seem like the perfect place to put all of our paper clutter, dirty dishes, mail, food, etc. Ugh! It can be so frustrating. I decided to tackle this problem by first organizing the desk area that I posted yesterday to eliminate the paper and mail clutter. That has helped tremendously! Then I decided to clear off my countertops of all the appliances and things that I rarely use. They were taking up valuable counter space and kept everything looking so junked up. Now I have lots of room for meal prep. I love this!! Now we just have to get a curtain and paint the walls. After that, I will get some decorations to go on top of the cabinets. Yee haw, I can't wait! :)

BTW-Hubby and I were discussing the canisters on the window sill and we are going to get rid of them. We are also going to trade out the matching utensil holder and get a bigger one to replace it. I am thinking maybe a chrome one?

This is my newly organized oven area. I put things that I rarely use on the top shelves (pasta machine, electric knife, and glass bread pans) because I can't easily access them. Using a step ladder from time to time is no big deal but heck if I am going to use one to get things that I need daily. I would like to note that my cabinets are really deep but I choose to only store things in the front part of them. I am blessed with more storage areas than I could ever need in this house so I don't push things back to where I cannot see them. Anytime that I ever did that in the past, I ended up forgetting what was in my cabinets and the stored items never got used. What a waste. Anyhow, the middle shelf over the ovens is used to store glass/porcelin bakeware and the bottom shelf stores all of my metal bakeware (and a few small glass bowls). The drawer below my ovens contains all of our baking sheets.

In the cabinet on the upper right, I have all of my nice baking/serving dishes that my Grandmother gave me on the top 3 shelves. The bottom shelf contains everything that Clayton needs to make his morning coffee.

The drawer on the right contains all of my aprons, hand towels, and pot holders. The cabinet below holds baking supplies. I keep a round Tupperware cake taker (not shown), a lazy susan that rotates my cake taker base (to aid in decorating) and cupcake liners on the upper shelf. That shelf pulls out for ease. The bottom shelf contains 2 Tupperware cupcake/sheet cake takers and a cupcake stand that I use for parties.

Wanna see how I organize my island and bento stuff? That will be my next topic so stay tuned!

Mission:Organization [Kitchen-Part 1]

I have been a busy little bee lately. Organizing the kitchen has been my recent project and now I have some progress to show ya'll. This is my desk area in the eat-in dining section of the kitchen. It was a total disaster before I began this project. We could never find anything and mail was constantly getting misplaced. Now we have a great system where everything is properly labeled and no more paper is cluttering the tops of the counters. Here's the scheme:

Left Cabinet
Top-4 empty bins waiting for me to put something in them (I am sure it won't take me long, lol)
Bottom-Cookbooks for planning meals

Middle Cabinet
Top-1)Video Camera bin, 2)iPod bin, 3)Software bin, 4)Paint Chip bin
Bottom-More cookbooks and our candy dish (this keeps little hands from stealing candy when no one is looking)

Right Cabinet
Top-1)Votives/Tealights bin, 2)Yankee Candle Tart bin
Second Shelf-1)Dymo Labelmaker bin, 2)Battery bin
Third Shelf-1)Checkbook bin, 2)Notecard bin
Bottom-1)Envelopes (orange box), 2)Postage Stamps/Address Labels (small orange box), 3)Receipt box (open bin)

Built-in Slots (you can't see it but each one is properly labeled with clear labels)
Top Paper Slot-Notebooks/Notepads, Clipboard
Bottom Paper Slot-Meal Planning Paperwork (weekly plan worksheets, Schwan's catalogs, milkman order forms, etc.)
Left Mail Slot-Clayton's Inbox
Middle Mail Slot-My Inbox
Right Mail Slot-Outgoing Mail

Desk Area
Back Wall-Magnetic/Dry Erase Board with 1 clip for each of us and also some days of the week ones
Left Wall-Corkboard (not shown-I just taped up the weekly food plan until I bought the board)
Desktop-Old Coffee Tin (holds loose change), Monthly Calendar, iPod Docking Station, Pen Holder, Paper Shredder (I have got to get a prettier trash bin for it)

Under Desk
File Box-This contains pretty much all of our stray paperwork (vacation stuff, medical forms, insurance, 401K, decorating ideas, school info., landscaping plans, etc.). Almost everything goes in here for safekeeping with the exception of store/restaurant coupons, take-out menus, tax returns and owner manuals (I will explain how I organized those later).

Main Drawer-Phone Books, Directories, Small Notepads, Tape, Glue, Paperclips, Business Cards, Bon Jovi Tickets (Ha, just had to point that one out, lol), etc.

Top Drawer-Haven't figured that one out just yet.

Middle Drawer-Grocery Coupon Inserts

Bottom Drawer-Kid Stuff (crayons, markers, coloring books, etc.)

Watch for Part 2 tomorrow. ;)

Wacky Day

Today is wacky day for Hayden's class. I sent him to school with his shirt backward, his hair mohawked and 2 different shoes. I sure hope that's "wacky" enough, lol.

Hayden's mismatched shoes

Emerson could stand for me to only take pics of Hayden so I obliged. That Big Rig shirt is so appropriate for my stout lil' guy, lol.

Playing in the Street (more pics from Wednesday)

Hayden

Big E

Hayden showing off his mad biking skills, lol

Snow Shovelin' (from yesterday)

Big E being silly

Shoveling snow with a sand shovel, lol

Dumping snow into the road so that it will melt faster (the road gets sunshine but our yard unfortunately does not-this snow has been in our yard since 12/8/07)

Who couldn't love these sweet faces?

Don't ya just love Hayden's dimple? He's such a cutie. Note to self-buy a new helmet that isn't falling apart, lol.

Emerson's face is always dirty but yet he is completely kissable. :)

Bento Snacks for 4

These are the 4 snack bentos that I made for our trip to Wyoming. Clayton doesn't have a box of his own so I put his in my new Keroppi box. He felt soooo manly, lol. We had: onigiri (shaped sticky rice-bear, heart, star), pepperoni, cheese cubes, grapes, strawberries, cucumbers, carrots, yogurt pretzels, yo-gos fruit snack, strawberry fruit snacks, and organic chocolate chip bunnies. It was the perfect snack solution for the road.

Updates

Hey all, I have been a slack blogger and I am so sorry. I just have so much going on right now and yet I don't have much to say. Here's an update as to what has been going on in the Logan household:

-We took off to Wyoming this past weekend to see Christie and Jack (Clayton's Mom and her hubby). It was a boring 6 hour drive to get there but at least the kiddos were good. I made us all a bento box full of snacks for the trip. They were a big hit and Hubby even liked it. I will try to post a pic later of them. My memory card is still in the camera and Lord only knows where it is right now, lol.

Anyhow, the visit was wonderful. We got to see their beautiful brand new home that they had just purchased last year. The lot behind them is an open field with over 25 llamas and tons of pheasants. It was so cool to watch them.

-I have decided to quit pumping milk as of this past Monday to help preserve my sanity. My life right now feels like it is in a state of chaos so I quit donating. Now I can focus on myself and my family without having to pump my boobs every few hours, lol. After 2 months of pumping, I have donated over 265 bags of milk (that is a whopping 2120 ounces of breastmilk!). I am amazed at how well I did. My initial goal was to fill 50 bags. I had no idea that I would be able to pump so much more than that. The recipient of all this milk has been very appreciative and I heard that her son doesn't want anything to do with formula because of me, lol. That makes me feel good. He is a healthy little bub that just started walking not to long ago so he is well on his way to becoming a toddler now. I wish them the best of luck for the future! :)

-Clayton got most of our new surround sound system hooked up and it is so cool. The house came pre-wired for it so we thankfully didn't have to wire anything ourselves. The front speakers are up and the back speakers will arrive today. We should be all set after that. Unfortunately, the XBox 360 decided to give Clayton the red ring of death (red lights came on around the power button) so now he has to send it off to be repaired. He is soooo upset.

-I have a lunch scheduled today with a bunch of pre-k Moms at Hayden's school. We all chat when we drop-off or pick-up but we never hang out. I decided to take the bull by the horns and organize something. I sent out little notes to the gals I chat with regulary and invited them to Panera. Several gals RSVP'ed so I am expecting at least 5 of us to be there. It will be fun getting to know them without standing in the school hallway.

My new bento stuff

Whoo hoo! My Keroppi stuff took forever to get here from Hong Kong but it finally arrived today. I just love that cute little frog. The box on the left is a double tier bento box with the coordinating Keroppi belt to hold it securely. The box on the right is a single tier one. I normally wouldn't buy a single tier box but I couldn't resist it. He is so dang cute! The lunch bag is perfectly sized to carry my bento lunch should I ever need to eat somewhere other than the kitchen table.

Little Stinker, lol

I took these photos forever ago but I just now found them. They were taken in the model home of my development. I took pics because I needed ideas for how they arranged the furniture for our particular model. Well, Big E just couldn't stand not being a part of the action so he jumped into a couple of my shots. Considering that Emerson is my mild-mannered one, it was weird for him to be such a camera ham. At least I have proof, lol.

Decorating V-Day Cookies (The next 3 posts are a bit delayed)

More pics from V-Day

These were our V-Day treats for the kiddos. The crocodiles have balloons attached to them and the little mail boxes have candy inside.

I gave hubby the Destination Anywhere CD from Jon Bon Jovi, some homemade chocolate-covered cherries and pretzel rods from a gal who makes the best candy, a bag of his favorite Sweettart hearts and some valentine boxers. Hubby surprised me and took us all out to Bonefish Grill to celebrate the occasion. It was fabulous as always. :)

Fondue Fun

We ended up eating our traditional Valentine's Day chocolate fondue this past Friday night rather than on V-Day. Yummy!!

Friday's Bento Lunches

These were the kids' boxes. They both had pretty much the same things with the exception of the pepperoni and the mozzarella clovers (H doesn't like cheese and E doesn't care for pepperoni). They had: dog/bear onigiri (rice ball), pepperoni or mozzarella, cucumber slices, carrots, heart-shaped peanut butter sandwiches, bananas, strawberry fruit snacks and grapes.

I had: bunny onigiri, pepperoni, moon-shaped mozzarella, carrots, bananas, grapes, bunny-shaped boiled egg, strawberry fruit snacks and peanut butter sandwich hearts.

My Bento from Wednesday

Isn't my bento box adorable? I love all these cute Japanese things that I have been buying lately. This is definitely my new addiction. The items in my box are: grapes, strawberry flavored marshmallows, mozzarella stars, a hard-boiled egg shaped like a fish, carrots, broccoli, ranch dressing (in the blue sauce cup), edamame and cucumber flowers. Yummy!

Bento Lunches-The Newest Lunchtime Craze

I just recently got turned onto bento lunches from the message boards at 2 Peas. After spending a ton of money on eBay to get supplies shipped from Japan, here's what I came up with today:

The yellow monkey bento box is Emerson's and the blue bear box is Hayden's. I have a pink box with a bunny character that matches theirs.

The boxes contain the same stuff for each kid: 2 triangles of bologna/cheese sandwiches, grapes, goldfish crackers, pretzel goldfish, yo-gos, carrot sticks, cucumbers shaped like flowers and a sauce cup with ranch dressing.

The kids loved their bentos! I will try my hand at using some rice molds and egg molds later this week. Everything comes in cute shapes like fish, cars and animals. Oh, and I have these cute hot dog shapers that can make a hot dog look like a penguin, crab or octopus. I can't wait to play with everything. Who says that you can't play with your food? lol

Surrogacy News/Disney World

After having such a wonderful experience with my previous surrogacy journey, I have decided to move forward with another lovely couple. The last pregnancy was hard but the end made it all worth it. I want to experience that high again. There is nothing more rewarding than seeing your IPs hold their baby for the first time. Hubby is supportive of this new endeavor so we are now in the process of making everything happen. My new IPs are ecstatic and I just know that we are a good fit. :)

You may have noticed the ticker has returned to the top of my blog. We are booked to go to the Polynesian Resort at Disney World again this September. I can't wait!! We had such a good trip in 2007 and it will be fun to do it all again this year. Since we booked with a bounceback offer (we had to book while staying there last year), we will be getting the dining plan for free this time. Whoo hoo!!

February Layouts for The ScrapRoom

These pics were taken back when we lived in the mountains of NC. The top pic is of the Blue Ridge Parkway and the bottom one was taken from our last house. The views were definitely different than here in CO. Now instead of seeing millions of trees everywhere, we see jagged snowy mountains.

This was Thanksgiving back in 2005. We always hosted my parents and grandparents in our home. I will sooooo miss that tradition. We had them there for 8 Thanksgivings in a row.

Emerson had just discovered how to clap his hands in this pic. Don't ya just love those chunky thighs? lol

Ahhhh, Sweet Slumber...

Anytime that Emerson has a puffy Winter coat and rides in the car, he ends up falling asleep. It's pretty much always a guarantee, lol. Today he fell asleep on the 5 min. ride home and I had to carry him in. It never even phased him. I just laid him down on top of the kiddos' animal chairs and he never even woke up. That was at about 3:45 and it has been almost an hour since. He hasn't moved an inch. :P

BTW-I know that the pants look weird but Emerson dressed himself before I even realized that he had Hayden's pants on. They were a bit too big and since I didn't want H's new Gymborees to get messed up in the snow, I had to roll them up a couple times.