I'm a bit nostalgic writing this post… over 2 years ago, I started this blog to capture our adventures at Walt Disney World when Bella (my little Cupcake, for those that only read the blog and don't follow our YouTube Channel, beingmommywithstyle) was only 9 months old! It was her first trip to WDW and I was excited to share it with her. At the time, I was not on YouTube full-time yet, and only took limited video of the trip. Oh how I wish now I had the camera out more during that time, and caught all those precious moments on film… but alas, at least I have pictures and a few videos.
And I'm back now, after a short blog hiatus - to share a Disney trip once again. This time with BOTH girls (Natalie, "aka Peanut" was "on" the last trip… but no one knew it yet, ha!), Natalie's first visit to Walt Disney World and the first vacation there that Bella would remember. I knew this would be an exciting time, and I was so thankful that I would now have more extensive videos to look back on in years to come.
We ventured to Disney World in Orlando the first week in April 2014, and the trip went marvelous… I will be sharing a separate blog recap post for each of the "Day in the Life" YouTube videos. These will be videos that I will look back and treasure for some time, and I'm excited to be able to share them with you. I will also be doing a blog recap of my YouTube Travel Prep series and traveling with toddlers. It was an adventure, but an extremely fun one at that!
I challenged myself to try some new meals this past week, and came across some great crock pot meal options on the blog Mommy's Fabulous Finds! I was trepidatious at first, to try something new. We started out with Pork Carnitas, which went great - then onto Teriyaki Porkchops which were also really good, and finally ended the week up with Honey Bourbon Chicken - which also turned out… you guessed it, great!
Watch on YouTube to see how quick and easy these meals were - as well as the final outcome!
Pork Carnitas:
Teriyaki Porkchops:
Honey Bourbon Chicken:
All in all, it was a great experiment - and I'm looking forward to trying some new meals next week as well!
Tah dah! Everyone at our house is now a princess... due to our wonderful new dress up organization for the girls' dresses and accessories! It works as great storage when the items are not in use and gives them easy access to use things during play time!
We had originally seen a dress up station on Wayfair.com, but my husband thought it was something he could tackle and do himself. We came across blogger Jess, that had that same thought on "Craftiness is not Optional", which even contained a link to another site by Ana White that had some plans for similar designs! He went to work on ours and came up with a design that would work great in our play room.
My husband put it together over a few weekends, with some additional work time being added on it by using a router on all of the edges to give them a rounded finish - so there were no sharp corners in the girls' play area. We picked out paint at Lowe's (Valspar "Plum Burst" 4002- 10B, in case you're looking for it!) - and made our own stencils on some card stock using a font in the word processing program on our computer. I think it turned out beautifully!
The top shelf has storage space for tiaras, cowboy hats, and the pirate hat... if it was ever not in use!
Lots of room to hold the ever important dresses & tutus!
The bottom has a bin that is a great little cubby for purses, shoes, and jewelry:
It has been a great addition to the play room! I will do an updated playroom organization video soon!
Here's the reveal of the dress up station to the girls for the first time - and a mini tour of their dress up items (so far, ha!) in their collection:
The girls loved it, as you can see here!
Cupcake looking all grown up in her Rapunzel costume!
Peanut enjoying the dress up selections!
Great job to Daddy and Grandad - and a very special thanks to Craftiness is Not Optional who was a great help in giving us inspiration for ours, and the plans by Ana White that she linked on her page that gave Daddy a great place to start for ours!
For Week 15 we talked about "Growing Grammar" and the letter 'G'!
We had a special play date planned that worked perfectly with our theme, where we painted some garden pots to plant flowers and vegetables in to watch them grow this summer.
Also, we completed some worksheets on the letter 'G', nouns (the part of grammar we were focusing on for the week), and did a 'G is for Giraffe' craft! Since giraffes are a particular weak spot of mine, I had a slight obsession with them while I was pregnant with Cupcake - and decorated the nursery with a jungle animal theme centering around giraffes - we did a "Mommy & baby" giraffe theme craft. I colored the spots on the mommy giraffe and had Cupcake help me glue it together, she colored the spots on the baby giraffe.
Week 14 of Preschool at Home was 'Fantastic Feelings!' week, where we talked about different feelings and emotions, since Cupcake has started to show interest in talking more about feelings. I had recently found a number of books to add to our collection on feelings, so we focused on those over the week and also did some feelings worksheets as well.
The letter of the week was 'F' and we did an 'F is for Fox' craft project!
I also incorporated feelings in an upcoming busy bag exchange that we are taking part in, and I will share that project in a future post - but the exchange happened to be the following week so it didn't line up exactly timing-wise with feelings week. We will continue to talk about feelings off and on in the future though, since Cupcake more interested in understanding what different feelings mean.
It was requested on my YouTube channel 'Being Mommy with Style' to tackle the subject of family budgeting when you are a stay at home mom.
This is such a complex topic, I'm planning on it being a multi-part series and I would love an answer any questions you have about budgeting or how to get started. We've had a family budget since my husband and I were newly married, without children, and both working. Our budget has evolved over the years as our needs changed, we were able to gather more data to figure out what we spent on average in certain categories, and we learned what categories were "trouble" categories for us.
We keep all of our data in an Excel spreadsheet, and while it has a number of formulas linking pages together and the like, the idea is quite simple. Track where we are spending money, make sure we are using it to the most of our advantage, and stay within budget.
I've offered to share a "blank" template of our budget with my YouTube viewers, and I will do so in this post.
I have had people ask me to share our specific budgeting numbers, and my take on this is: budgets are an individual thing. You really have to work within your own parameters, your location, your situation, and honestly not worry about comparing your budget numbers to other people that may be in different financial situations. Some people will need to alocate money towards commutes (tolls, higher amounts of fuel, more vehicle expenses), other people may have short commutes, but have a job that requires going out to lunch more often. If you have two incomes, you may need to account for different things such as daycare and additional doctor visits.
So I have opted to not share specific numbers and instead share a framework. I'm hoping that will be helpful to those that had questions and please let me know any additional questions you have about budgeting, getting started with a family budget, or saving. I would be happy to help give opinions from our perspective since we have budgeted for a number of years. (Keeping in mind I'm not a financial planner, ha!)
Here is the template of the budget that can be used in Excel:
While working on our "Pre-School at Home" project, I started coming up with a number of theme ideas to have for each week. Some weeks, like "Perfectly Polar", I came up with a fun word pair that started with the same letter - and others it is just a fun play on the letter. We are not going through them in A through Z order and have opted for a random order for the themes to be introduced instead, but it would be a fun idea to share our theme ideas in order.
A - Amazing Alphabet B - Bold Bears C - Captivating Colors D - Dashing Dinosaurs - Dramatic Dress-up E - Enormous Elephants - Excellent Earth Week F - Friendly Farm Animals - Fun with Frogs - Fabulous Fairy Tales G - Great Grammar H - Happy at Home I - Incredible Imagination (Fits with Dr. Seuss week) J - Jungle Animals K - Kaleidoscopic of Kindness L - Lots of Love (Valentine's Day week theme) M - Marvelous Music N - All about Numbers O - Outstanding Opposites P - Perfectly Polar Q - Quirky questions R - Ready to Read - Realistic Reading S - Super Shapes T - Terrific Trains U - Under the Sea V - Vegetables W - Wonderful Weather - Winter Fun (S) X - eXtra special, eXtraordinary week Y - Yo ho, it's a Pirates life for me! (Pirates week) Z - Zany Zebras Some weeks we are also planning on having a focus on some of our favorite authors, including Dr. Suess and Eric Carle. ** Weekly Themes in purple signify themes we have already completed as a part of the pre-school at home program.
Independent play time is an important part of our schedule that we've worked on since the girls were around 6 months old. It starts in the play pen (or play yard) with a few toys and for a minimal amount of time - a great chance to clear out dishes from the sink or Swiffer the kitchen floor. Slowly the time amount builds and what started out as 10 or 15 minutes can grow to 30 minutes or even longer.
When they are younger, I found that I could be in an adjacent room where I could still see the play yard and my daughter would still play independently. This was important to me to not only let her gain the independence, but also get more comfortable with the idea myself. As she lengthened the time where she could play in the play yard, I could continue to add to chores that I could get done during the time that she was playing independently - and eventually it could even turn into a long enough period of time that you could get something essential done like take a shower.
For us, starting independent play time (IPT) early on really helped, because it eased the transition into the next phase of IPT once your child becomes a toddler... room time. Room time is a challenge all its own, as your child grows, they begin to explore their surroundings and want to expand their boundaries. Making sure their room is child proofed and a safe surrounding to have your toddler in for short periods of time independently is the foundation, once that is completed... you can begin your transition from IPT in the play yard, to independent play time in your child's room - or as we call it around our house, "room time".
Room time for us started early, before Cupcake's 2nd birthday actually... she was well adept at keeping herself entertained for up to a 45 minute period for IPT and was ready to drop her first nap. (When I had been taking my shower.) At this point, we decided to transition to toddler room time during her original first nap time and it has worked out great as far as time of day for us.
We started the transition over Christmas break while my husband was here to help with it. Once you begin the transition, it is like "starting all over again" - starting out with a short amount of time and slowly adding to it. We started out sitting in the room with her for the first week, then trialed room time for a short 5-10 minute period in the beginning - with one of us sitting outside of the door. That went well, so we slowly started adding to it and could move to other areas in the house on the second level. (Her baby monitor would be left on in the room of course, to hear the activity that was going on... and you could also use a video monitor during this time if you had one as well.)
Eventually, room time turned into the time on our schedule when Mommy was able to go take a shower, and also conveniently lines up with Peanut's morning nap time. (See my post on daily schedules for more about lining up a baby and toddler schedule together.
I'm very glad to have found out about the concept of independent play time and room time through our Babywise groups... these have worked out great for us and are an important part of our schedule each day. Do you do IPT or room time at your house?
Here's the link to the SAHM September video on Independent Play Time:
Stay at home mom September continues... with my thoughts on a weekly cleaning schedule and when to fit it in a day. What cleaning chores do you find yourself doing daily? And do you like to do certain cleaning chores on particular days of the week?
I started a new video series on beingmommywithstyle called "Stay at Home Mom September" to address a number of SAHM issue videos that I had been thinking of doing for a while now! I'm excited for this new series, because I think it will be a great way to start dialogue on different SAHM issues and also help me develop on these topics as well.
Some ideas I'm planning on addressing in the series are SAHM cleaning routines, daytime schedules, independent play time, activities with babies & toddlers (at home or outside of the house), and more! Please let me know if you have any specific questions you'd like me to address during this September video series! I hope to have a new video posted every few days during the month of September, depending on what time allows me to film.
Here is the introduction video to the series, on SAHM daytime schedules around the house:
I've found that schedules really help us to stay focused and happy throughout the day. Both the kids and myself know what is coming up next in the schedule and it keeps our day moving.
Well, technically she's 7 months old today! (Happy 7 months, Peanut!) However I posted this video last week when she was still 6 months old, a quick mini vlog - afternoon in the life, if you will - following us throughout the middle of the day. Day in the life videos are always so fun!
We were just around the house this day... we went out to sign up for swim class and then played outside later in the day. So it was a fairly low key day in the life!
Well, it has been a hectic week and getting near a computer with a moment to write anything sane has proved to be harder than usual.
I participated in my first "Pink Nail Polish Wednesdays" for On Wednesdays We Wear Pink... and was so busy I couldn't get pictures until today. I was wearing Zoya's Anaka at the beginning of the week, which is a gorgeous fuchsia pink... but decided to tone it down a little bit on Wednesday because I was going to tour a day care I'm looking at having the girls go to a few days a week. So I thought I would go with something a bit more subtle.
I put on Zoya's Reece... I just love this color! It is a gorgeous shimmer pink, that has gold highlights throughout. It's a truly unique polish and just one of those colors that makes you happy when you look at it! I did a little touch up today to take a picture, so it is still on my nails.
Zoya Reece
In other news, as I mentioned above - I'm looking into child care for the girls a few mornings a week so that I can take Cupcake to classes again while Peanut is at day care, and then have Cupcake get some socialization time with kids her same age a few mornings as well. It is a truly nerve-racking experience. I've been a SAHM since the start, so looking into part-time day care has been a big decision for us... but a necessary one. Not only do I think my sanity will benefit from having some 1 child mornings (and one glorious child free morning on Fridays!) - but to get Cupcake into swimming and gymnastics classes that I have to participate in... I have to have some sort of care worked out for Peanut. So it just seemed like the right way to go to work out a combo situation of days that they are both going.
I will keep you posted on how it goes... This SAHM is nervous about putting the girls into someone else's care, and also a bit miffed that I could get a new Speedy every month for the price of day care. I just need to keep repeating to myself: Sanity, sanity, sanity. Sanity is priceless.
I finally chose my favorite three handbags in my closet to use as a busy Mom on the go. I think they would work great for a stay-at-home mom or working mom as well! These three bags specifically were chosen because they all have a zippered closure, can be carried on the shoulder, and are a great size for every day use.
I would have preferred a new handbag... but you know, potatoe, pahtatoe.
Our carpet that we ordered from Home Depot arrived yesterday and what can I say... it's not concrete floors! I have a feeling I'll have a much better opinion of it once our furniture is all moved back in, but for now I'm just happy that it's not concrete.
It has a slight square design to it and the walking scuffs don't show up as much in real life as they do in my pictures. I tried to get a color of carpet that would compliment the wall colors down there and also go with our couch color. (Plus something a bit more stain resistant than what was down there before, since we have 2 cats + 1 kid.)
I ended up ordering a 100% nylon carpet that was made by Martha Stewart from Home Depot. (Not because it was by Martha Stewart mind you... but because it was 100% nylon and on sale.) Apparently, nylon is supposed to be better for carpeting than the polyester type, and wear better in the long-term as well. (And if anyone knows to the contrary... do not tell me!! We just spent the equivalent of a really nice handbag, some cute shoes, the start of a Spring wardrobe, and possibly a wedding band upgrade on this stuff!)
So without further ado... the before - yucky concrete (after the old carpet was pulled up), bare wood on the stairs, and an unusable room:
And the after:
Please tell me it was worth it. That's all I want to hear... even if it maybe wasn't... just tell me it's fabulous regardless.
So after I became a stay-at-home Mom, I did a fun thing in Polyvore where I put together some fun looks (with a generous helping of Louis Vuitton cameos) just to help think up some fresh ways to pair things already in my closet.
And while I wish that I could go out daily looking something like this:
This look, is probably a tad more realistic representation of what I actually look like:
(With a cardigan over this... I love my cardigans.)
Maybe someday I can get to a point where I can primarily go out dressed like Outfit #1, but the shoes alone in the first outfit nix that as a realistic option for me. As hot as they are... I couldn't imagine schlepping a baby, diaper bag, purse, and staying upright while walking down my stairs in them. And in all honesty, at this point my main goal for my "when I go out in the world" daily attire is to always stay a step above the Juicy Couture velour sweat pants I wear around the house.
So for now, I'll have fun pairing mix & match basics like dark jeans from the Gap (I love their Curvy jeans, great for gals with hips!), blouses from Banana Republic, Anthropologie, and the Gap, put together with cardigans over them... and topped off by a cute ballerina flat or sandal.
And just for fun... because you know I couldn't put together some Polyvore looks without incorporating cupcakes somehow... here's some cupcake wear for you:
And yes I realize that I'm too old to go out looking that that, but it doesn't stop me from imagining what a cute cupcake outfit could look like, does it?
(For full list of products used in the Polyvore looks, visit my Polyvore page HERE.)
