Learning Patience during PTT

What is PTT you ask? Potting Training Time!!

The last 4 weeks have been consumed with a lot of me asking the same question over and over. "Do you need to go tinkle?"

Amber is 2 and half almost 3. She will be 3 beginning of August. So it was time. I am glad I waited this long though because I think if we had started sooner I would have been very frustrated. The first week was sort of rough. Not gonna lie. On the third day of trying she begged to wear diapers again and honestly I wanted to just say, "Ok, it will be easier on all of us!" However, we all put our big girl panties on :) and persevered. And of course I'm glad we did. She has come a long way since that first week. Now we have had accidents here and there but I'm proud of my little girl and wowie are we saving money with out having to buy diapers all the time!!!

Crabs and Eagles...

Amber said the day before we left for our vacation to the beach that she was going to see crabs and eagles. Which we later realized she was saying seagulls but that doesn't make for a cute story :)


We went to Watercolor/Seaside Florida. It was wonderful! It was Ambers first time to see the beach and ocean and she loved it. We spent one day pretty much all day out there and she played in the sand the whole time! I thought that she would eventually get tired of it but it kept her attention. We put her floaties on and got in the ocean with her, of course Ricky held her the whole time. We weren't about to let her go. The waves weren't bad at all just perfect for a 2 year old and she would giggle and scream when one would come. It was a great week and I wish I could live there!!

We rode bikes a lot on the trip and she took a lot of her naps in her bike carrier :)

Did you know...

...that you can regrow your green onions. Of I course saw this on Pinterest and I tried it and it worked. When you are cutting your green onions just cut about an inch of the end where the white part and roots are off. Sit them in a little bit of water and watch them grow! It has only taken about a week and a half for mine! Awesome! It has been fun for Amber too watching them get taller and taller each day.

After two days of growing. 

After a little more than a week of growing!

Organizing

I have really gotten into organizing and trying to keep the house "clean" or at least straight.

Awhile back we replaced our horrible sliding closet doors in our bedroom with nice folding ones. It made such a difference. For once I could see all of my clothes at once instead of sliding doors back and forth trying to get my clothes. Well it inspired me to get my closet organized after that. I have never really thought about using boxes to store things but I didn't really see the purpose but I decided to try them out and I'm hooked. I bought some to keep our sheets and pillow cases in. We have always stored our bed linens in our closets instead of a linen closet in the hall. Makes more sense to have your sheets right where your bed is. Anyway, I bought those and it makes it look so much cleaner and its just not a pile of sheets anymore. I also bought a shoe holder that just lays on my closet floor. Its clear and holds about 20 pairs of shoes. This way the pairs are kept together and not just thrown in a pile like they were.


Here is a picture of my closet before:

And now after: 

I have started working in my laundry room now. I have bought a big plastic tub and put all of our towels that we use for cleaning and our beach towels in. I bought another container and put some cleaning supplies that I might use once or twice a year all in there. It just looks neater instead of having bottles everywhere. I'm also adding a little decor and a shelf as well. Hopefully I will have a before and after picture to show of that as well. 

Some tips to keeping your house "straight" that I use on a daily basis:

Never leave the room empty handed. Something is always not in the right room or spot. 

When I leave the room I see if anything needs to go somewhere else and I take it with me. I didn't start doing this until we moved into the house we are now and boy does it really make a difference and my house is normally always ready for a visitor to pop in. If you know my floor plan there are two sides to my house and when I"m in the kitchen area of my house stuff that doesn't belong over there gets put on my kitchen counter closest to the exit to the other side of the house. Whenever I leave that side I gather all the stuff and take it with me. And same thing when I'm on the other side of the house. But in any way your house is set up just try to always leave with something in your hand that needs to go elsewhere. 

Clean everyday.

I know that sounds crazy. But I do some sort of cleaning everyday. I don't have a chart that I go by like Mondays clean bathroom etc. But I do something everyday. It helps out in that you don't have to do tons of cleaning on just one day. Just keeping it up everyday helps. So one day I might do the floors, like vacuum and mop. The next day I clean bathrooms. The next I dust. I just like doing that because I used to just let everything pile up and I would take a Sat. and would be cleaning for hours and I would hate it!! This way I feel more free to get out and do things and not be cleaning for hours. 

Write on the calendar your meals.

I am not talking planning your meals for the week. I'm talking after you eat your meal for that night write it on the calendar. I just recently started doing it this way because I don't like planning for a weeks worth of meals in one day. I'm just not that organized to sit down and figure it out and what I need to get at the grocery. It works better for me if I just plan on that day what we are having but then by writing it on the calendar allows me to see when I served it and to not repeat it again for a couple of weeks. It also helps me with leftovers. "Oh, we had that last Monday and it's Sunday we need to throw that out."

That's all I can think of for now!!