Quinnisms

Quinn has a set of "Days of the Week" socks. And no matter what day of the week it is, that will always be the 7th pair I dig out as I search through for the right day. So sometimes I just grab whatever's on top.

So Matt wakes her up one morning to get her dressed for school:
Q: Daddy, what day is it?
Matt: Thursday, you go to school today.
Q: Then WHY do my socks say Friday???????
Busted.

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Yesterday we were doing a marathon weed-picking in the backyard. Quinn was using the wagon to deliver the weeds I picked to Matt, who had the trash bucket. She started calling him "Young Gentleman" and me "Old Lady," which she explained by saying, "Mom, you're the old lady because you have long hair and long knees."

Dirty-faced boy

Having a swing after rolling around in the grass a little bit. He is a big fan of outside time!

more outside....

Some of our veggies....and below is a little planter of flowers Quinn and I planted to put outside our kitchen window. It makes me happy to look outside and see flowers when I am working in the kitchen!

Quinnisms

Yesterday Quinn had a little friend over playing with her. They were outside and pretending it was the friend's birthday party. They asked me if I wanted to come, and I said, "Sure, where's the party?" "Oh, up in Heaven," Quinn replied, pointing at the sky. So they had a pretend birthday party in Heaven....And yes, Jesus did make an appearance. I asked Q and she confirmed.
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We were listening to the radio in the truck and a song came on and Q asked me to turn it down. I replied that I would after the song was over, cause it was a good song. Q said, "oh, is it James Taylor?" No idea how she even knows who James Taylor is....But it wasn't. :)

Mudsoup

The girl has caught on to the concept of mudpies.....and what fun she has cooking away in her outside kitchen!

Outside

Whenever I work in the garden I put Beck on a quilt. Except now he wants to roll off and eat whatever he can find in the grass...including the grass. So we've started surrounding him with a variety of stuff from the garden to munch on. Cabbage, lettuce, parsley, cilantro.....Keeps him occupied for a little while!

And here's Quinn munching a ginormous carrot that she chose for her snack today. Not from the garden. Our garden carrots are still teeny.

Just playing

Who is that cute baby in the mirror?

He was having a grand time with himself in the mirror tonight! He just couldn't understand why it wasn't working out for him to crawl over and get that baby!

At the country house

Tire swinging, campfire, a little gun shooting.....

Sleepy Boy

Our dark grey sheets really bring out the grey in his eyes. I snapped a couple pictures before I put him down for a nap today. These are his "tired eyes." :)

When he is really tired and we give him his paci his eyes roll back as he takes the first suck.

Eating Bread

We have started tearing it up in little pieces for him to feed himself. He's about 50/50 with his accuracy. You can see Alie in the left side of the photo. She doesn't mind taking care of any mouth-misses.

The joy of kitchen utensils

I remember Quinn's fascination with kitchen utensils around the same age. Beck has discovered them and LOVES to have a play session with my crock of kitchen tools. They are good for banging:
(Opa, we have another banger....)

And for chewing:

And dropping on the floor to watch Mama pick them up!

The Biting Jalopeno Story

The latest edition of our writings.....
Quinn came up with the biting jalopeno character. Silly girl! I love her creative ideas!

Beck sitting video

It's kinda dark but you can get the idea. I'll try to record a little better one soon. :)

Quinn goes to California

Here is a video of Quinn playing in the living room.....talking the whole while. :)
I was laying on the couch with an awful sinus headache, hence the poor videoing skills. But funny to listen to her discussion as she was playing.

enough said.....

Pantry Makeover

Over the summer (in a spurt of nesting, I am sure....) I started a makeover on my pantry. When we moved into this house it was so yucky and ugly and nasty and it had been on my to-do list for a long time. So over the summer I started by painting it. I just used some leftover limey-green paint from the bathroom upstairs. It made the pantry so much brighter and fresher and I love the non-whiteness of it!

Then I organized food into types in baskets I already had and grouped them on shelves according to type. I also set up some of those plastic stairs for holding cans of food and staples behind our snack food.

For the snack foods I purchased some inexpensive plastic jars. I love these so much more than the food containers stuff comes in. They are uniform size, allow me to see at a glance what is getting low, and keep food fresher because of the screw-on top. I learned the hard way that these containers don't survive the dishwasher, though. :)

We purchased this over-the-door rack at our little rent house when we were first married because the pantry was ridicuously small. It's from container store and I love it! Notice at the bottom I store "kid friendly" snacks such as dried fruit and applesauce for times when Q needs to help herself to something to eat.

I also hate all the different boxes/bags of beans and rice and grains that can add up. So I saved some glass jars (pasta sauce, salsa, etc.) for a while. I spray painted all the lids white for uniformity and they hold my grains, popcorn, beans, rices, etc. Once again this helps me see what I am getting low on and also encourages me to cook with them because they are in plain sight. Of course an entire bag of the grains doesn't fit in the jars, so I store the extras in a ziploc in the brown baskets below.

A little quote I put at the top of the pantry. Just cut it out of scrapbook paper and gluesticked it on.

I organized my spices by size and type.

The majority of my herbs and spices are actually in zip-top baggies. I got this tip from a great cook at a cooking class I went to. She recommended it because it reduces the number of jars you have to store, it allows you to fit measuring spoons in the baggies (or take out a pinch), lets you see how much you have left, and uses far less space up. I clip them with a binder clip in alphabetical order.

Once again I raided my china cabinet for some dishes to use--this glass pie plate corrals peanut butters:A glass plate holds all my canning jars of nuts. We use a ton of nuts for snacking and meals, so I buy them in bulk at HEB and then transfer them to canning jars. All of the jars are corralled on this glass plate. Also our K-cups are stored in a big glass bowl. Matt got the deal of the century just after Christmas--he found a couple HUGE boxes of K-cups on clearance for $5! We also keep a few k-cups for easy access in the drawer right under the coffee maker in the kitchen.

Square baskets hold all other items grouped together. I have one for mixes (dips, seasoning packets, gravies, etc.), one for rice/beans, one for pasta, one for oatmeal (we make it from scratch), and one for teas. I made the little signs by painting pieces of wood with chalkboard paint and gluing some twine on the back for hanging. That way I can change them to say whatever I need.

I totally weeded out my cookbooks--only kept my very favorites. I keep them to the side with a book holder.
White dish tubs (because I happened to already have them) store baking items and baggies/foil/parchment, etc.

Matt put up some little hooks for holding our aprons!

So it's nothing amazing, but it does look prettier than when I started, and seeing some beautiful dishes inside my pantry makes me happy! Also, we've had it organized this way for about 6 months now and I know the systems work pretty well because it stays well-organized. My family knows where things go and there seems to be good flow of items in and out.

We also store extra items in the back of all the baking items when we do a mega-grocery store stock up (extra crackers, pb, etc.)