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Im blogging again!  Modern Florida House Wife

This is where I am sharing life tibits, the adoption process, baking, house diys.  Homeschooling will still be here on blogger for the moment.  I am working on keeping at least 1 new blog post up a week on either the school blog or my more personal blog page.

Please come on over and check whats been happening over there on the new blog page

Organizing January - Holiday Decor Part 3

Happily a Housewife put out the challenge of spending the month of January getting things in our life organized.  I'm taking that challenge with my own spin on it that fits my families life.  Basically not going to do all of the days as I just don't have time to do them all and school our son and put in inquiries on kiddos.

How I organize our holiday decor after the new year!

 On the 1st of the year I pull out all our holiday bins and line them up along the wall in our dining room.  Not that I actually take things down and put right into the bins.
Nope I pile things on the table first and something's stay up until I'm ready to  take them down. I still have a couple things up just waiting for me to head to the store to buy two more bins.  The day after Christmas I always wake up early to get Christmas décor for the next year.

So once I have bins out and I've added some caffeine to the system to keep going since now my house looks naked.  I start putting things away and labeling bins of what's in them.  I try to keep things together as best as I can.  I seem to have found my niche for how I like to decorate our home for the holidays.  This is only our 2nd Christmas in our home.

 

 This is how I label our bins.  Good ol'washi tape.  I have a label maker but I love how I can make them somewhat festive as we are slowly moving all our holiday décor to the same bins.  I do try to get color lids to go with the holiday but as you can see from picture above we have some white lids in there.

Christmas secret has things that are to be hidden from kids who believe still.  I speak of Kids as more than 1 but we only have 1 kid as of now (we are in the adoption process though).  I keep our family Santa bag/Elf/Elf reindeer and special things that I bought after Christmas to be used with Elf's return next year.   Basically once everything has its place and the bin is labeled we haul everything into the garage and store on the shelves.

 Nothing fancy but practical and things are easy to find when we're I mean I, am ready to decorate for Christmas.  So that is how we keep our Holiday décor organized and easy to find year after year.

Hope you have enjoyed this post.  Click over on the side bar to subscribe

See you for my next Organizing tip

Merry Christmas from our family to yours

Merry Christmas

This is late but we had to wait until everyone received our card before posting it on the blog.

It was a great November day when we got the best news ever.  I got word and shared it with our K who just melted in my arms crying.  He was so excited that he cried happy tears which made me cry.  K than called his dad and told him the news.

We have also been busy sending out our homestudy on kiddos.  cant wait to expand our family

Weekly grocery haul - Lots of different stores this week

This week was a wild one.  Son got Strep throat for the first time in his 10 years of life.  He wasn't a happy camper.  So basically Tuesday we had our last homestudy visit before our homestudy is written.  About an hour later we went to grab some food and K said his throat was hurting.  As the night went on it was only getting worst.  He tried to sleep but he was struggling with that and told me he needed to go to the ER.  I calmed him down finally about 2 AM.  I was online seeing if we had a walk in open for him and found nothing.  I knew it wasn't ER important.  Finally got him to sleep around 3 AM and I laid with him.  Waking up every hour checking on him.  At 8 I was up and calling the ped's office to get him in.  Yup, what I thought it was.  STREP THROAT!  Got him on medicine ASAP and loaded up on soft foods and drinks. 

 

As you can see in the first photo there are LOTS of soft types of foods.  Think we only got 2 things in this first haul that actually goes with meals on the weekly menu.

So Wednesday and Thursday when K didn't feel like eating much hubs and I just ate subs and salads.

Friday we went to Disney so we ate in Orlando.  - 21 burgers and K was feeling much better and apparently very hungry for burgers as he downed the whole burger and fries.  That's odd for him we almost always need to take the rest to go.  Maybe the burgers we're just AMAZING.

 

 

First Photo is from Publix $12.76, Wal-Mart $30.16 and Target $29.13 <-- got storage bins and dish soap as well.
What we got
T-Raviolis
P- Cheetos puffs
P- 2 lemonades
T - Pumpkin spice bagels
W - banana's
T - 2 Gatorade
T- Snap pea crisp -YUM!
W - Motts apple juice
W - Cadbury Chocolate
W- Feta Cheese
T - Kerry Gold Butter
T- Ice cream topper (Just ran out so getting a replacement)
P - Triscuits
W- pop tarts
W- cheese blocks (Colby and Mozzy)
W- String cheese
P and W - Yogurt
W- sleepy time tea
W- Pizza
W-Gogurt
T- Kid zone protein bars
P- Pudding
T-Leachable treat trays (For Halloween week)
T- 4 Mac and Cheese
T- 2 Plastic containers
T- 2 Dish Soaps

Publix Savings $4.63, Wal-Mart savings $0.00 Target Savings $3.74

After Disney we headed to Dinner and some grocery shopping at Wholefoods.  Ok mainly there to get honest Lemonade.  Its my favorite so when we're in Orlando I get a couple.  We also like to stock up on Kid z bars.  Yeah we could buy them in boxes at target but we like to have a variety and for $.69 a bar at wholefoods we actually save money. 
Saturday errands included a trip to SAMS for a couple of things we were running low on.

Wholefoods $33.45
Cat food (No wheat, byproducts or corn cat food) Not in photo
Cheap bottle of water for ride home.  Not in photo I drank it :o)
2 Blackberry water -YUM!
4 Lemonade
Pumpkin pie spice.
8 kid Z bars

SAMS $43.42
Ground Beef
Nutella
Raspberries
Romaine Lettuce
Block of cheese not pictured
Halloween Book.  This was impulse but we really enjoyed the Christmas book last year so when I saw this one we wanted it.


                                       This weeks Grocery/household TOTAL $148.92

                                                    See you next week!

Weekly Grocery/household Haul - Target

 

Target (non-super center)

9/30

 

Things were just off for me as I was breaking routine and going a day early.  Didn't think much about it but you could just feel the change in routine.  K was with me as his dad happened to work over time and couldn't watch K.  The reason I went a day early was that we were having our 2nd homestudy visit the next day.  That ended up getting changed as well.  That's just another story when I write about our adoption process.

 

So K and I went shopping and found almost everything we need to complete dinners on the menu for the week.  We ended up with lots of fall treats as well.

 

Here is our Weekly shopping haul

 

Motts juice- the deal was really good this week.

Garlic pwd -Got to keep the vampires away ;o)

Milk

Apple cider -This just screams FALL

Fun size candy and M&Ms for all the fall baskets around the house

Hotdog buns

Triscuits - you'll see these almost week.  A staple for son and I

Pop-tarts

Brats - planned meal

Tilapia - another planned meal

2 trail mixes - Snack drawer

Pumpkin bagels - YUM!

Chili

Yogurt

Dish tabs - because we ran out

Kandoo - great for kids bathrooms

Baby wipes - For the van for the sticky fingers or messy faces

My little treasures

Cute pencils for my desk, note cards to send (RAKS and selling old school books) <-- blog about later. Cute PINK polkadot socks.

 

                                                Total = $74.92 (before Cartwheel)

                                                            Paid = $49.42

Don't know about you but that's $25.50 that we can spend on other things for the family

We did grab produce else were which came to be another $15 (Asparagus, Sweet potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, raspberries)

Total spent on grocery's this week $65

                                                        See you next week with our grocery haul!

New Fridge review

Introducing our brand new fridge.  So excited to have our first brand spanking new fridge.  Something about having that shinny thing in the kitchen.  Since our family cooks most of our meals from scratch we needed more room for our growing family.  We did have to make the wall next to the fridge larger to get the old fridge out and this one in.  Now just need hubs to finish a small part of the wall.  He wants to do that when we update the kitchen.  We'll see, just depends on when that project starts.  We've had the fridge for 5 months now and we are still in love with the room we have.

Come with me as I show you in side this GEM

Door has filtered water, ice, door alarm if door is left open, and best thing is a measuring feature.  Son uses that feature a lot.  He loves going in and getting so many ounces to drink.  I love it because it encourages son to drink more water.
                                                   

The top of our French door fridge is the fridge.  No bending down or cramming things into a side by side.

Can I hear the Angels sing when you just look at this fridge.  I am blessed to have such a nice energy saving fridge.  Produce actually last longer.  Old fridge if a produce wasn't used within 3 days it was wilting or turning colors.  Not in this fridge!  We can take advantage of the salads from Sams now and not worry about them going bad so quick.  Best of all we have enough room in our fridge that we can grocery shop once a week and see what we have.  That last part is the best thing "SEE WHAT WE HAVE" We now reach for those left overs and everything else. We even have a deli drawer and we use that A LOT.  No wasted space in this fridge.
 

 The 2nd best part of this fridge is coming next.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wait for it!

 

 

 

 

 

Wait for it!

 

 

 

 

 

Ta da!

 

The Snack Drawer

I fill this weekly where its lacking.  Yes, I did just fill the drawer!  I try to keep somewhat healthy options for us to grab quickly.  This was a major selling point for us.  Some of you may know that we are in the adoption process and we wanted to have a drawer that the kids can open and grab what they need.  The rule for this drawer is that "if your hungry you can grab something from the snack drawer"  As you can see we do have Soda in there but that can change if that gets out of hand.  Love the fact that son can grab something to eat when he's hungry and its leaving the main part of the fridge still closed.  Energy saving drawer.

 

The freezer

We don't keep the meat and frozen veggies in here.  We keep quick breakfast meals, fries, corn dogs etc. in the drawers.  Pizzas in the pizza slot in the door.  Ice cream, popsicles, frozen fruit, smoothie packs etc. in the bottom drawer.  We keep our meats, veggies, freezer meals in another freezer that we only open maybe once a day to take something out.  This helps keep the kids out from leaving the freezer door open searching for a treat.

I wouldn't change a thing.  If you don't have a 2nd freezer than the drawers might be a little shallow if your like us and cook a lot.
 

Weekly grocery Haul -Target

Target Grocery shopping

9/24

 

This week we are trying to clear out the meats we already have so only needed a few staples this week to complete meals.  Most of this will be used in the next couple of weeks not just this weeks menu.

What we got

6 Frozen veggies

Cheese ravioli

Tatar tots - for Tatar tot casserole

Hash browns - Breakfast burritos for the hubs to take to work

yogurt for my yogurt loving child

Pumpkin yogurt - because I am in love with pumpkin

shredded cheese

ground beef

box of sugar. Oh I mean Trix

Pumpkin spice bagels - Umm these are AMAZING!

tortillas in two different sizes

trail mix - I divide this up into snack bags and throw into the snack drawer (future post)

Pesto - We love our pesto chicken

salsa

plain bread crumbs

pumpkin pie pop tarts

Mac and cheese - not planned but a nice staple in the pantry for THOSE days you don't feel like cooking much.

Black beans - Staple

Red beans - Staple

Gatorade and some chews we got for free

Cute clipboard needed for school (me)

 

                                                Total -$75.92 before using cartwheel App

                                                                         Paid - $67.59