First Day of 1st Grade!

We started school on September 2 and to my wonderful delight, Victoria was ecstatic!!!  Yeah!  To be honest, I was equally excited!  Yeah!  :)

 We started a tradition last year of Mark taking Victoria out to breakfast at Chick-fil-a on her first day of school. She was so excited this year, but also insisted that Kaleigh join them...it kind of made my heart melt... :)

First Day Pictures!!!

Something new we are trying this year, a Morning Board--so far she loves it!

 

Trying to keep Kaleigh occupied, that will be the challenge this year!

Off to The Little Gym for a Back to School Party and some exercise!

Ending the day with ice cream!

By the look on her face, I think her first day was a success!

Victoria's Kindergarten Graduation

Obviously from the lack of posts, things got a little crazy in the Stonis home over the last couple of months!  One of the great events of the last month was Victoria's Kindergarten Graduation!  Yes, I know, I have become one of those corny moms that makes a big deal out of these things--but my children are only small for such a short time, that I am determined to enjoy this time with them and make these days as memorable as I can!  So...we planned a little ceremony and celebration party for our little graduate.  She was soooo excited and talked about it for so long, she couldn't wait to graduate!  Unfortunately for her, she woke up on Saturday morning not feeling well :(  But she was a trooper and she says she loved everything about her party :)  Here is a little video...enjoy!

***Don't forget to turn off the blog music***

A Girl and Her Horse...

I captured these pictures of Victoria and one of her horses, her new love...

Project: Simplify #2--Paper Clutter

The second hot spot on Simple Mom's Project: Simplify was paper clutter.  This is something that I try to keep up with regularly, so you wouldn't think it would have taken me soooo long to accomplish.  My problem was that I got started on cleaning out the paper and that led to the desk (not the paper on the desk, the WHOLE desk configuration, which led to the bookshelves, to the guest room closet, to the hall closet, to my coupon system, and eventually I found myself digging out the pantry!  Yes, the PANTRY!  Not an ounce of paper clutter in my pantry, so I am not sure how I ended up there, but alas that is usually what happens to me :)  Anyway, back to the paper clutter :)...Here are the before pics:

I gathered all the paper into one place to work through it all.

I had already filled a trash bag when I remembered to snap a picture.

Coupons

Here is the gist of what I did with the paper clutter:

• Pulled out the files and took out all the bills--I do this every January so there wasn't much there.
• Signed up for as many Billpay payments as I could to cut down on paper coming into my home.
• Went through my warranty and misc. file box and cleaned out all the warranties for things we no longer own.
• Purged the receipts
• Cleaned out the expired coupons.
• Threw out old fliers.
• Re-organized/changed my coupon system

This is what it looked like after I was done, I won't show you the rest of the house that I tore through in the process :)

The file drawer--I'm loving the extra space!

Warranty and Misc. File box

New coupon system

Part of the new coupon system

***

 And my favorite part of decluttering paper...

"The Burning of the Bills"

Aahhhh....  :)

Garden Advice...Anyone????

I am pondering starting a small garden this summer and I need some advice, desperately!!!  I know absolutely NOTHING about gardening and pretty much have a black thumb! :)  Here are some of my thoughts, obstacles, and/or reasons for wanting to tackle this project:

• We are trying to eat more healthy and organically, so I would love to eat a lot more salads this summer.
• Speaking of salad, the kind of vegetables we enjoy the most are tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, peppers, cucumbers.  Are any of these easy to plant and grow?
• I am thinking of either container gardening or a raised bed--pros and cons to either???
• We have very limited funds to get this started, any frugal tips?
• Are any seeds better than others?  Can you buy the seeds at the dollar store or is it better to buy more expensive seeds?
• I would like to also use this as a school project for Victoria.
• I have no idea what I need to get started, how much to expect it to cost, how many plants to plant--advice???

Well, that is all I can think of at the moment--if you have any advice would you be willing to share it with me?  Any websites that explain all of this in simple, gardening-for-dummies terms?

Project Simplify #1--The Master Closet

For the last few weeks I have been working on decluttering, which I confess is one of my favorite things to do!  I was excited to discover Simple Mom's, "Project: Simplify."  This has been a great way to keep me from going on the warpath throughout the whole house, which is usually what happens when I get the urge to declutter :)  She is taking 5 weeks and focussing on one hot-spot a week.      The first hot spot was the master closet--this happens to be the worst place in my home.  It seems that everything gets thrown in there.  The problem is compounded by the fact that all of our closets are also are storage areas and we don't have a dresser in our room. So, here are my "before" pictures--I am physically cringing as I reveal this... I know it's bad--ugh!!! So anyway, I was standing there staring at all of this stuff, trying to figure out what needed to be in my closet and what would be better in the other closets in the house, and my mind was getting all frazzled...so, I made a little chart to help me sort it all out...This actually helped me quite a bit! :) Then I went through all of our clothes to see if there was anything that we are not wearing and can get rid of--I was fortunate that the weather is already changing and winter is pretty much over so anything we didn't wear this winter didn't make the cut :) Here are the end results: We each have one shelf for our jeans and pants.  Mark's dress pants are also hanging next to his dress shirts on the right.  The hanging shoe bad contains the "out of season shoes" and the regularly worn shoes hang on the door rack. Yes, my husband does have more shoes than me! :) The other shelves contain: sewing supplies and jewelry, baby gifts (we have A LOT of babies being born in our church :), and other gifts we find and pick up along the way. All of our shirts are hanging:  white hangers for me, black for Mark :) Maternity and my Fat clothes--Ha ha :) We each have one box of clothes that contain the next season and the Misc. box contains gifts we pick up for the girls--shhh... :) I know it's not all pretty and coordinated, like I would loooove, but it is organized.  I will work on "prettying" it up slowly, as the budget allows :)

100th Day!!

Victoria has completed her first 100 days of school!  And I guess I have too, as a teacher :)  That is cause for a celebration of course! :)  She has been looking forward to this day since she first started her little chart, writing the number of each day.  It is amazing to think that 100 days ago she couldn't count to 100 or count by tens and now she can do both so quickly--it has been such a great process watching her learn and grow these past 100 days.  I am so happy to discover how much I enjoy teaching her; I remember so clearly how terrified I was to begin this journey.  So, anyway, back to our celebration...

We started off the day with 100 kisses, and of course Kaleigh wanted to join in too :)  Here are some of our other activities:

• Decorating a 100 sign using 100 stickers
• Worksheet counting by tens to 100
• Making a snack mix with 10 sets of 10 different items, we used cashews, almonds, raisins, Kashi hearts, marshmallows, chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, granola clusters, cheerios, and chocolate fish.
• Writing 100 words that she can read and write--I was amazed at how well she did this!
• 100 exercises: 10 sets of 10 pushups, situps, jumping jacks, long jumps, stair jumps, slides, one-foot hopping, hand stands, ronds de jambe's, and scissor kicks.
• Eating pancakes shaped like 100
• Making a necklace with 100 fruiti-os in a pattern
• Watching a book on dvd about Emily's First 100 Days of School
• Started a food drive, collecting 100 cans to donate to the Food Bank--we were not able to complete this one, but we are just going to keep it going until we collect all 100.
• Reading books about the 100th day of school:
• Emily's First 100 Days of School
• Fancy Nancy:  The 100th Day of School
• One Hundred Hungry Ants
• Miss Bindergarten Celebrates the 100th day of Kindergarten

I ended the day by giving her a small gift for all her hard work this far:  A Strawberry Shortcake 100th day of school sticker book :)

Congratulations Victoria!  

We are so proud of you!