Making things

I've been making a lot of things lately. It feels good to make things. Something kicked into gear in my brain and I was able to let go of some of the laziness inhibiting my housekeeping skills. The house, laundry, finances and other things are all organized currently. This is the longest streak I've been able to keep up so far. It feels great though. I love being able to do just minimal house work and have a neat house and spend time with my most precious possessions: Evie and Asa.

Asa turned 5 last week. We had a small family party. Small is subjective however, it was just family, but still around 15 people. I made an ice cream cake:

24 Ice cream sandwiches
1 container of cool whip
1 Jar of Hot Fudge

cost me 6.50 and it tastes GREAT

I just layered the Ice Cream sandwiches with fudge and cool whip twice, then sprinkled sprinkles on top and froze it. I let it thaw out a bit before serving. Everyone seemed to really enjoy it! Love easy, tasty, inexpensive things like that!

I had a hard time on Asa's birthday. I don't see the changes he goes through unless I step back and realize how much he's grown in the past 5 years. I still have the new mom mindset. My heart was really aching realizing how quickly time goes and precious that time is. I hope I am growing up at the same time as him, getting wiser and such. When he was really little I was pretty young still, him being my first, I was adjusting to not being so self centered and I had a really hard time getting used to the changes in my body. While I remember loving that time, I also remember getting really down and feeling sorry for myself a lot. I also though I was in control of motherhood and knew exactly what I was doing. So foolish! With Evie I was better because I tried to enjoy even the hard times with her since I knew how quickly the hard days of new baby-hood go. I feel like I was just telling myself I have a lot of time before he goes to school. Now he is being home schooled..something I was sure I wouldn't do. I love this little boy beyond words. He is an interesting little character. He is beautiful to me and I love his brain. I wish he didn't have asthma, allergies and eczema, but it has given me extra time with him that I wouldn't have in the administration of medication :) He is very VERY strong willed, and I feel I will have a hard time with adolescence but I am praying and trying to develop a healthy parent-child relationship with him so that it will go a smoothly as possible. I want the best for him. I feel so bad for him when I see him get jealous of his little sister and bewildered when his cool big brother chooses her side. I know he'll be OK though. I love being his mom. I love all the important lessons I would never have learned without him. I love his beautiful eye color and his amazing ability to beat me in Castle Crashers and other video games. I love how he is starting to read even though he tries not to very hard ;) I love his love for animals and bugs. His love for building legos and drawing with chalk. His crazy obsession with certain songs until another takes it's place. Much more too..

On a completely different note:

Recently I was thinking about trash. About how it sits outside--or inside(if you only have a bit) and SMELLS in the summer. Especially meat containers, wrapper and papers. YUCK! I was thinking of ways to get rid of it. Could I leave the chicken pads and papers and foam out on a table to bake in the sun? Then it won't rot in the trashcan? haha I was also thinking about grinding up scrap foods from meals and flushing them? Am I crazy? It's so hard to eliminate waste!

I have been shopping at a grocery clearance outlet and reduced my food by 25%+. The only problem is there aren't as many choices when deciding what to get based on packaging.

I recommend checking out:
Green Genius trash bags
New Dress a day

I really want to try these:
UncommonGoods Garden Bon Bons
and these:
(from REI)