Priceless Moments by Melia

My Monday Morning Madness Minutes - Week 12

A Typical Afternoon -  Picking up my kids from school.  Asking my son to start his homework about a dozen times.  Finding little hands in the pantry.  Starting to think about dinner.  So, I open the frig and stare at what's inside hoping that something would just pop out at me and say "eat me!"  Okay, well, can I just say that cooking dinner doesn't make my Top 10 things that I enjoy during my everyday life.  I don't think it actually makes any list. I don't know how many times I go to start making something that I think might work at the moment and not finding all the ingredients.  One day I had to change the recipe 5 times until I found a recipe that had ingredients that I had in my pantry.  Hence, the need for a little planning and organizing.  So, I thought I'd use that for my week 12 organization project, tackle dinner time. 

I am not sure about you, but just around the time I need to prepare dinner the kids are going nuts which then drives me nuts.  Maybe if I can just plan ahead my evening time might go smoother.  I don't mind throwing together something in the crock pot in the morning when I have energy and just let the dinner cook all day.  In fact, one day it was "that time" again and I just didn't know what I would make when I started to smell something good.  I had forgotten that I had started dinner that morning.  Wow!  What a nice surprise!  I guess you can say us moms have a little bit on our plates if we forgot what we did just a few hours ago.

So, here is the task.  I would like to have my whole month planned out for meals.  Each day of the month have something different.  I thought instead of giving you all my ideas this time, I'd ask for your help.  Just one more thing for you to do in your busy day.  Here goes...

I need you to post on this site your favorite recipe.  Here is what I am looking for: something simple, not a ton of ingredients, kid friendly, not too time consuming... well I think you get the point. 

As a thank you for all of your fantastic recipes, I will put together a fun cookbook with all the recipes that are submitted.  You will be able to print it out right from this site.

Oh... one more thing of course we must giveaway something!  Who doesn't like to get something free and since we are talking about food (don't get me wrong, I love to EAT just not to COOK, I know I should read the story "The Little Red Hen.") here are the prizes...

Best Recipe Winner will receive - Tastefully Simple Nana's Apple Cake Mix, Creamy Wild Rice Soup Mix and Corn, Black Bean Salsa

 

Most Liked Recipe on Facebook will receive -Tastefully Simple Key Lime Cheese Ball Mix and Seasoned Salt

 
Here's what you need to do: 

FIRST: Post your Complete Recipe here.  Keep in mind that I will be including your recipe into my book to post again as explained above.  I will, of course, credit you or your Great Aunt Sue. Ü

SECOND: **MOST IMPORTANT** Post on Priceless Moments Fan Page Wall the title of your recipe with a brief description, picture or whatever else that will entice fans to vote for you!  Then Share the comment on your Wall and let your friends know to Vote for you by commenting or "Like" your post.

BONUS: EARN 1 EXTRA VOTE when you Become a "Follower" of this blog.

NOTE: (1) The winner of Best Recipe will be chosen by ME.  I plan to cook each meal for dinner during the month of February and I will pick my favorite based not only on what it taste-like but also what I (mentioned above). (2) Most Liked Recipe will be chosen by you and your facebook friends, whoever gets the most likes WINS!! (3) You must be a Fan of Priceless Moments Facebook Page in order to qualify to enter contest. (4) Post your Recipe between Now and next Monday the 31st of January 2011 and Vote until February 7th at 10pm EST.

P.S. Just a fun reminder of why it is we do what we do... Images of my munchkins at about the same age enjoying their dinner.  Can you tell who is who?

 

My Monday Morning Madness Minutes - Week 9

This past week, I have done nothing but organizing and cleaning since my sister and her family will be visiting.  I think I'll skip the update and save it for next time and share with you a fun video that my kids made.  My sister from California wanted to surprise their kids with a trip to Philly.  They just told them on Sunday and I sent them this video announcing the surprise.  I hope you enjoy it, we had fun making it.  I LOVE it, but they are my cute munchkins!  Enjoy!

My Monday Morning Madness Minutes - Week 8

How hard is it to keep a playroom clean?  Near impossible?  Well, that's what I use to think.  I am still digging to see if I can find the before pictures of the mess, but I can imagine that you might of seen a destroyed playroom before. Ü  I had shelves on the floor that I thought were pretty cool so the kids could reach everything and have a place to put it after.  Well, that didn't go over too well.  They would just pull the drawers open and dumb everything out and then sit on top and read a book.  (Hyrum was famous for that)  My friend suggested that I put up a high shelf so the kids couldn't reach the toys.  I jumped on that idea the very same day and came up with what you see here.  This was a cheap and quick install.  I went through my house to look for some tupperware that I could use so that I wouldn't have to buy any.  I was excited to purge out stuff and was able to find all the tupperware that you see in the picture from my home.  I labeled them and the shelf is pretty high that I even (at 5'10") have to reach to get them down.  Perfect!!  Now they can play with one or two boxes and then clean up the mess and exchange it for another one.  It also leaves room on the floor for more space to play.  Even if you do not have an entire room for the toys you can still use the same concept to keep the toys in control, or at least make a pretty good attempt at it.  With Christmas next week, it is a good time to organize, purge and deglutter this room, space or corner. 

Did you notice the beautiful mural on the walls and ceiling?  I wish I could take credit for that talent, but I can't.  My stick figures from grad school are really not that much better today.  My fabulous muralist who paints all of my backdrops for the studio, painted this room.  She is fantastic!  Her name is Carrie Kingsbury owner of Promiseland Murals.  It only took her 6 hours to do the whole room and she free-handed the whole thing!  Wow, I wish I had her talent, she is AMAZING.  Check her website out here.

My Monday Morning Madness Minutes - Week 7

Well, the only thing I worked on this week was tying ribbon on my kids hand towels and large towels.  Since making my Mudroom, I had the kids choose their own color of baskets and that color has become what I have coordinated throughout the rooms.  The laundry basket that each child belongs to has its own ribbon tied to the side.  The towels now are color coordinated and I made a hook board with their names on it for their hand and body towels.  I am hoping this will cut down on the amount of towel washing I do a week.  Keep organizing.  I know with the holidays life gets a little hectic, but keep it up even if it is just organizing your towels! 

Off to the kids room...

My Monday Morning Madness Minutes - Week 6

To the bathrooms...

Can I just so "so not my favorite part of the house for many reasons."  With two boys you can just imagine what my bathrooms must look like.  This seems to be the room that is the hardest to keep clean.  I went shopping last week for all the essentials that I needed in each bathroom so that I could keep everything in it together instead of what usually happens... me hunting the house over trying to find the toilet bowl cleaner etc.  I picked up this cool cleaning caddy from Target for $6.  I put in paper towels, glass cleaner, toilet bowl brush, clorox wipes, scrub brush, soft scrub, and toliet bowl cleaner.  My friend gave me the idea of the clorox wipes where she has her kids wipe down the toilet bowl everyday!  Great idea.  We'll see how that goes.  I definitely didn't want to show you a before picture of the bathroom since that would not be pretty so here is the after.  Just throw all your cleaning products under the sink, in the linen closet or a closet near by and then put a child safety lock on it so the little ones don't get to it.  The only thing I need to do is put up some hooks for my kids towels so that I don't have to wash so many of them.  I will post that up this week as well.  Keep up the great work on organizing your own home and post your ideas on how to maintain a clean bathroom.  We are at 7 weeks now!!  Yahoo!!!

Get Organized Mom!!

Okay, so I am currently on an ORGANIZING kick and I am loving it!!  Who would of thought?  As a mother of three and owner of Priceless Moments, my life tends to be a little hectic.  How many times have I wasted time running around the house looking for my son's shoes, backpack, socks, coat, etc. and it's 8:03am with the Bus coming in 3 minutes.  Time for serious stress.  Of course, it is really my fault since I probably slept in too late.  Well, it's not just the "Getting the kids to school" that has me in a spin, but where-oh-where has that darn cell phone gone? or that paper that I need right now, and on and on... 

So, I stumbled upon a website called "Get Organized Mom" it was calling my NAME.

I thought I'd use my work blog to share my journey to get my life under control and a little less stress free with more time to spend with my little ones.  This might be a little scary and embarrassing at times, but I thought it might be a great way to get a little behind the scenes on what goes on in my life and hopefully inspire and help other moms and dads find more peace in their everyday living.

Check back every Monday for "MY MONDAY MORNING MADNESS MINUTES" with updates, tricks, and tips of my journey to get ORGANIZED. 

On your mark, get set, GO...