Annoyingly Cute

Luis and I love Freckles. He is sweet, friendly and down right adorable...almost too much so.
Every moringing when I put on my shoes for work, this is what I struggle through. Of course when I tell him to get off my foot, he pulls one of these looks. Makes it nearly impossible to be mad.

He also likes to steal my spot on the bed

This is RIGHT after Luis vaccumed. To be fair, that rope was his to destroy, but really? Oh, then even teased me about it.

So cute and mean.

While the kitty does not really get personal space, Freckles is much worse.

Though, like I said, he is adorable. I wouldnt trade him for anything. Love ya puppy dog.

pumpkin and polka-dots

A bit ago I discovered something called pumpkin crunch cake. Were did I find it? Pintrest of course

http://www.thepickyapple.com/blog/2008/11/22/pumpkin-crunch-cake/

Well I tried it one night for FHE and it was AMAZING! Think of it like pumpkin filling topped with cake mix, nuts and butter. Sooooooo good.

Then I tried Polka dot cake with my new cake pop maker(also from pintrest)
http://snowybliss.blogspot.com/2011/09/polka-dot-cake.htmlI still have not figured out how to make cake pops without making a mess. The cake pops were made of strawberry cake then I baked the cake balls into white cake mix.

Frosted it with strawberry frosting.

When you cut it open, ta-dah! polka-dot cake. Though next time I think I will put more cake balls in there.

My New Homemaking System

As some of you might know, I am not the most organized person in the world. I also dislike cleaning. I dislike the smell of cleaners. I dislike all that time it takes to clean. I dislike that there is so much to do when it is time to clean.

Well a while ago my mom gave me a book titled "Sidetracked Home Executives." It is a book wrote by two sisters who sound just like me. VERY sidetracked. (and as Luis is finding out more and more, VERY forgetful...My poor Husband) It is funny and helpful. They came up with a system of cleaning that makes things a bit easier. Though it takes Some time to set up.

Here is what you need:

Index cards: white and colored

Index card dividers:alphabet, number, and Month and blank ones.

Pencil

and a card box

I used sharpies and crayons because I made my own dividers (thank you mom with lots of die cuts)

I actually don't have alphabet dividers. Those ones are for contacts. I should do alphabet ones, because, while most people have everything on their phones, I don't always know where my phone is, AND last time I switched phones, I still never switched all my contacts...

I would get the book. It helps a lot. It has a sample list of all the different jobs you could need. You will want to write down all of your jobs and separate them into how often you do them (daily weakly, monthly, etc) and then determine if it is a mini job(under 10 min) I have my jobs charted on my ipad. Then you write them down on the colored cards.

Daily -Yellow

Weekly-Blue

Monthly White

And then There are the "personal jobs." For me I have ones like, "Update blog" and "exercise." Where Luis has his personal ones like "practice typing" and "Mountain biking." These ones, no matter when they are to be done, are your personal color.

Then they all get filed neatly according to when they are supposed to be done and what day you want to do them (for the weekly and monthly ones)

File them neatly in the little box in front of the number that is the date. Mine is on 20 because I started mine on the twentieth. and every day you just switch the number into the back of the rest. At the end of the month, you you switch which month is in the front of that section. It is really nifty because it spreads all the chores out. It also helps me remember what I'm supposed to do that day and gets me to clean certain things more frequently. And it makes it easy to delegate things to kids or husbands. You just give them the card. Though you have to make sure that if you delegate cards to kids, make sure that it is appropriate for their age. My mom used to make special ones JUST for us kids. When my sister was a baby, we had the "Haleigh Helper" for us younger ones that couldn't really do much other than make a baby giggle.

I also have some sections that have special titles. Titles like "Special Projects" and "Family Home Evening." In the book, one of the sisters had a section called "Compliments." The special sections are just that. Special to you. Whatever you want them to be. You can always come over and see how mine is done. Though,

I really recommend getting "Sidetracked Home Executives" It was a great book.

Left over Christmas 2011

Finally pictures of our cutsy Chritmas tree...that I just took down two days ago.

It looked even better without the flash.
Some people would say "Christmas has been over for over a month." Well you know what? I love Christmas so there. I really was not me being too lazy to take it down this time. Luis and I decided to keep it up. since we are some of the few that dont put our decorations up till the day after Thanksgiving(when I say Luis and I wont, it means I wont let him) we wanted to keep it up a bit longer. I was even thinking of keeping it up year round. I was planning on just putting up different ornaments for different holidays, but decided not to for reasons I hope to be hearing positive news about soon!

"and its only 8 in the morning"

I feel like Flynn Ryder this morning. Its only 8 and I have gotten so much done! We went to bed a little earlier than usual last night, which means I was wide awake earlier...about 4 and a half hours earlier. I tried to go to sleep for about half an hour but couldn't. So 1 load of dishes, 2 loads of laundry, some cleaned off surfaces, breakfast with the hubby, cleaned up christmas stuff and 1 blog post later, here I am. Writing another blog post.

I have decided I like this feeling of getting up early and getting stuff done. When I usally wake up (around now actually) I dont really feel like I have time to do much. So I don't do any of it. Now, though, no matter what else I do today, I still accomplished something.

...Although, 4 in the morning is WAY too early. But my new goal IS to be up by 6, make breakfast, get dressed and then at least 3 chores before work. We shall see how it goes.

Taking Freckles for a Drive

We have been having lots of fun over here. Luis had some friends from San Diego down, so we loaded Freckles in the car and headed out. On the way back Freckles somehow snuck into my lap. I know I should have made him get back in the back seat, especially since he tried to do it multiple times the next time we were in the car, but he is so darn cute I cant help it sometimes.

Oh, and yes, That is a watermark at th bottom of the picture. Just on of the other things I have been working on digital wise. What do you think? Someone is probably not going to steal my pictures, but I thought, why not?

So at the Jelly belly factory, there is a little dog walk (by little, I mean little.) and they have this little fire hydrant with sign that says "not a real fire hydrant. for your dogs pleasure only." We thought it was funny

So I still dont know which signature to use, so I am going to try both of them. hopefully I will be abl to figure it out soon.

(I think I fixed my color problem with the white. Just not how I wanted too.)