My Juicing Journey - Getting Ready

I am actually really excited about this post. It's for betterment of body and mind. Maybe not while it's hapening because it's going to be difficult, but after for sure. I have a friend who decided to do a juicing fast. I have been inspired by his results to do one of my own. He says he's lost weight and feels better than ever, and since both of those things appeal to me I'm doing it. I'm going to shoot for 5 days. I'm going to put each day into a post and put what I drank, how it tasted, and how I feel. I will also be putting in my mom's thoughts since she is amazing and decided to do this with me even though we're in different states. Here's me being excited to start with my mini.

She's excited too because she wants to try all my drinks.

In preparation, I had to get a juicer since it's essential for juicing. I decided on a Breville Juice Fountain Plus. 

My mom is using a Dash. 

I also looked up recipes. My buddy Adrian recommended Juice Recipes as a good recipe source. He was right. They have their recipes broken into categories, including one that focuses on weight loss. These are the recipes we're using because we both want to lose a few extra pounds while we cleanse. I made a Word document and sent it to my mom so we could both print it. You can get it here. All recipes are copied straight from the website.

I also made a shopping list on the Anylist app for iPhone and shared it with my mom. It's a nice feature. We bought fruits and veggies and got ready. We decided to start on a Sunday since the detox can make people feel sick. We didn't want to be feeling crummy at work on the 1st day. Especially her since she can't have her coffee! Lucky for me I don't drink it. 

I tried my juicer out Saturday night just to see what I should be expecting. I made the Fresh Start drink off the website. My hubby tried it and didn't hate it, but I DESPISE the taste of celery which has an even stronger taste when juiced. I will be cutting down celery in most recipes if I use it at all and adding lime to cut the rest of the taste since just the taste made me sick. The process of using the juicer was easy. 

I had gotten a tip off a video somewhere that said to put a plastic bag in the pulp catcher so that you can just pull the bag out and not have to wash the catcher every time. GREAT tip. Even though if you rinse as soon as you're done it cleans easily anyway, using a bag makes it even easier. You'll be washing it a lot so every little bit helps.

I'm all set up for tomorrow and plan on doing a fruit juice for breakfast since the celery made me sick. I'll do a green juice for lunch.

Cleaning Cabinet Revamp

Before I put my cleaning stuff in my cleaning cabinet under the kitchen sink I decided I was not going to be removing 10 things to get to the 1 thing I needed way in the back because in my old house that"s exactly what always happened. Like almost everything else I do, I got inspiration for this organizing project from some genius person. It's such a great idea. Before I could do anything I had to buy a tension rod long enough and clean my new cabinet out. Cleaning the cleaning cabinet... I feel like there's something wrong with that. Anyway, I left the piece of linoleum in there so it would save the wood if things got spilled. That piece is easily replaceable, the wood is not.

This was after I wiped it down. No dust or gunk in it anywhere.

 Then I put my tension rod in. I tightened and tightened and tightened and then I tightened some more. When I felt like it was stable I started putting my stuff in.

Doesn't look like much at this point.

 I happen to have 2 side shelves in my cabinet so I put things on them first. Right side has pet shampoo, flea spray, bug spray (no spiders for me thank you), and mosquito spray because we have a ton here. The left side has furniture cleaner because we got a lot of really good stuff when we bought our furniture 3 years ago. It still looks new so it was worth it. Everything else except for spray bottles went in the bottom. I keep my sponges in a basket because I use them all the time and they tend to fall everywhere after you open the pack. The items I use the most are in the front for obvious reasons. Then I hung up my spray bottles. Let me just say my tension rod was not nearly as stable as I thought. Putting the weight on it made it move. So I went back to tightening. It does have a little curve to it but it is holding up nicely. It's been there for about a week now and hasn't moved at all.

 The hubs did say since he liked it he was going to install a wooden rod so there was no curvature. We'll see how that goes. He's busy too. If he does I'll post an updated pic. For now I have lots more space. It's always best to go up when you can because most vertical space just gets wasted. I've been wasting my vertical space for years, I'm just not doing it anymore. If anyone has any suggestions let me know. I'm always up for better ways to do things.

Supplies:
1 - 32"-48" tension rod - $2.17

How to Make a Dryer Vent Pumpkin

As most of you know, we have been getting our new house set up. Excitement is running rampant around our house right now. We should be moved in by the beginning of October. This weekend we got a lot of things accomplished. I made at least 10 trips to stores because I kept thinking of more things that I needed. I made 2 trips to get laundry detergent. I finally remembered it on the 3rd trip. I'm telling you, moving is exhausting. My mind has been in a million different places lately. When I realized I still forgot laundry detergent on the 2nd trip, I decided I needed a break from unpacking... organizing... making a bigger mess... whatever you want to call it. So I made one more trip out to get some supplies for a craft which always cheers me up. When I got back home I got out (ha. Got out... who am I kidding? It's been sitting on top of the dryer since we hooked it up 3 weeks ago.) the part of the dryer vent we cut off when we moved our dryer in and headed to the garage.

I got set up on my piece of newspaper with the garage doors open. I used orange Rust-O-Leum paint since it was going on metal. 

I just sprayed as evenly as I could. The paint stuck great. I made sure to spray the ends well and got under the vent as much as possible from this side.

Coming along nicely.

I left it there to dry on that side and turned it over once it completely dried. I waited a couple of hours and went back to unpacking since I felt a little better about my wasted trips to the store. After the first side was completely dry and no longer felt tacky I flipped it over to paint the other side,

The paint went on great. It's still wet here after painting the 2nd side.

I left it there another couple of hours so that the paint would be totally dry so I could connect the ends. For my purposes, I just held the two ends together and wrapped Gorilla tape around them and painted it orange as well. The back side of mine will be completely hidden so it didn't matter if it had tape on it. Originally I thought it had been going somewhere that would show off the entire thing. If that's your issue I would use a wire wrap method. Just hold the ends together, wrap thin wire around them like you would tape from one side to the next, and then wrap a small loop of wire around itself to hold in place. Since the vent is notched it will be barely noticeable. Then you could just throw a leaf over the top and it would be even less noticeable.

After I taped and painted it and brought it inside.

I bought apple cinnamon scented oil and dark reeds which I held together with rubber bands to make my stem. It's cute and gives off a nice smell. Two of my favorite things: Good looks and good smells. I stuck some fake leaves inside the rubber bands as well and just let them branch out.

My supplies. Just stick it all together and sit in the bottle of scented oil.

My finished product turned out great and was really simple. Other than drying time for the paint it took me less than 30 minutes. My total cost was under $15. Now I'm excited about making more fall and Halloween stuff, especially when it gives me an excuse not to unpack for a few minutes. 

Maybe it's just because I made it, but I think it turned out great. It's perfect for my mantle.

Supplies:

Dryer vent - $0 (already had it)

Orange Rust-O-Leum paint - $5

Apple Cinnamon Oil - $1
Decorative Reeds - $3
Fake leaves - $2
Rubber bands - $0 (already had it)

Until next time.

Enter: The Lilac Zone.

We're making progress with our move. Right now it seems like with every move there's always at least one room that needs painting. In our new house that room was the one going to our 4 year old daughter. Let's just say that she disliked hated burgundy. Not even an option to leave it. Let's also say that I was not a fan of the flowered burgundy and hunter green border. It was old school home interior style. Uh, no thank you.

This border was NOT happening in Bacon's room.

And then there were the curtains. I'm sure they matched whatever was in the room and it looked fine, but they were not for us at all. 

Curtains, valances... too much of this color everywhere.

Since Bacon was saying no way to the room color and I was saying the same to the border, hubs and I decided to paint. Picking a color was the easy part. It went like this: "Bacon, what color do you want your room?" "Purple." "Do you want to think about it to make sure that's what you want?" "Sure... okay, I thought about it. I want purple." She did want dark purple (her last room was magenta) but we talked her into light purple. Mainly because later on we don't want to get stuck painting over another dark color. We took her to pick out her color and get it mixed. We bought primer and had it tinted as well. It was a little more expensive but well worth it.

Before we could paint we had to get that border off. It was the worst part by far. We looked up all kinds of information on removing wallpaper since we had never done it and found that there's a spray you can use to break the glue down. You also have to buy a scoring tool to use before the spray so that it can penetrate the wallpaper. There were also lots of people who said that didn't work and they wound up scraping the glue off anyway. We tried a different method and it worked well for us. I have a Shark Portable Steam Pocket that I love. The hubby did a great job using it. We just put the direct steam nozzle on it and steamed the border off. It wasn't the quickest process because it's made to clean with so it doesn't get super hot, but it worked and that's what we were going for.

He's so helpful. Anything for his girls. =]

We did have to scrape it, but not a lot. We just bought a paper scraper and used it. It was easier on the hands than a regular blade. This is what it looked like after we scraped it. You can see one wall still has the under layer of the border attached while the other doesn't so you can tell the difference.

The little bit of glue was just smearing at this point so it was flat. We didn't want to saturate the sheet rock with water, so we left it.

We scraped all 4 walls until they just had the little glue remnants on them. We left it just like that and put tinted primer on top of it. You can't even tell there was a little glue left. 

We did one wall at a time. It was easier for us that way because it was hard  on the arms to continue scraping all 4 in a row.

After adding tape and 2 coats of tinted primer it looked like this. We didn't originally tape because we thought pulling the tape off might damage the popcorn ceilings. (Only the rooms we want to paint have these ceilings of course.) Our bad edging due to the popcorn was damage enough, so we taped. You can't even tell it was taped since we pulled it off.

Taping saved tons of time and painstaking edging work.

And after 1 coat of paint it looked like this. As you can see our little one is very happy with the end result. 

She loves that closet.

TJ finished painting while I was at work so when I got home I started unpacking, cleaning, and rearranging.

Her little bed will be gone on Christmas. Getting too big so a new one is coming.

"Mom, this looks AWESOME!"

This white furniture will be gone soon. I think she wants black.

I still need to empty the closet. It's got some boxes in it. I plan on putting an actual closet organization system in it but that won't be happening right now. We've got to get moved in first. Hopefully I can get it started by the beginning of next year. It's going to take some planning for sure, but it should eradicate the need for most of her furniture. That's what we're ultimately going for so that they have more room to play. We still have some art to hang on the walls and her tv will be hanging also. Other than that we're finished with her room. This took us about 4 days to paint because we only worked on it at night after work. We could've done it in a day because the primer and paint dried surprisingly fast.

We will be working on B's room next. We're not sure if we're even going to paint it. He hasn't decided what he wants as of right now. I guess we'll see.

- jFree <3

Paperwork Chaos Undone.

My kids started back to school earlier this month. They are loving it. My 4 year old, Bacon, seems to love everything about Pre-K but she especially loves the bus. I never let my 8 year old, B, ride the bus before, but since his sister wanted to this year we decided to try letting them ride it home. My anxiety level was through the roof for the first week but I've gotten over it now. They enjoy it and honestly it saves us some time and hassle. It comes by much too early in the morning for them to ride it to school. Thankfully B is liking the 3rd grade. He changed schools this year to a MUCH better district and it seems to have done him well. A huge difference is this school actually sends home paperwork. Looots of paperwork. Mix that with the mail that has been coming in and I've got a mess. Staying at the MILs is helpful money wise but we don't have a lot of space. One bedroom for us, one for the kids to share.

The kids have a good setup and have done surprisingly well in the same room.

Our pit bull, Roscoe, LOVES to photobomb. You'll probably see a lot of him.

Here he is again. At least he takes some of the attention off the mess.

I can't seem to break the hubby's habit of dropping everything right beside the bed, including his horde of Girl Scout cookies. (He's a Thin Mint junkie.)

Our YorkiePoo, Baylor. She does not sleep with us. Our dogs are inside but aren't allowed on the furniture. As you can see, she got an opportunity and sneaked right into Dad's spot.

As you can see we've done well with the space provided. Other than the t-shirts my husband refuses to throw anywhere but everywhere and the desk. Oh, the desk. It has been the bane of my existence for the past month and I have been ignoring hoping it would just clean itself. Didn't happen. So I took all the papers off and got them in a pile.

This is just part of them. They're everywhere.

That is what I got. That doesn't include all the papers I've been storing at work and in my purse. Papers everywhere. I also have refund checks from every bill we had. This is good news for us. My system of paying every 4 weeks instead of once a month has paid off. Woohoo! Maybe a post on budgeting sometime... Anyway, then I went shopping for supplies. Let me tell you, I'm a cheap shopper. If I can find a deal, that's what I'm doing. 

My steps were this: 

1. I got 2 plastic milk crates (1green, 1pink)! from Walmart for $3.97 each. I also "borrowed" some recycled file folders and tabs from my office. (My boss is great.) 

2. Decided to make one file for each grade per kid. 

3. I make binder covers every year, so I printed off an extra copy to put in the front of each file in case the tab pops off.

Bacon's binder cover this year. She loves
purple and stars.

B's binder cover this year. He loves
green and skulls.

4. I made tabs for the folders.

5. I put a couple of folders in each crate with tabs on them labeled with their current grade.

6. I put an extra folder in one crate so that we can put our paperwork in it while we're at the MILs. I'll move it to my normal filing spot when we get settled. 

My baby's first tag from school ever. *tear* We picked them up every day for the 1st week. 

The crates look empty but at the moment  they both only have one month of one grade in them. I figure that by 12th grade they'll be full.I thought about getting a box with a lid but for now it's more convenient to just drop stuff in. I may change later on. If so, I'm sure I'll still be able to find a use for these crates. I'm much happier with this than the method of "throw it on the desk and hope you can find it later".

Look at these little almost empty crates. B's will be half full by the time I put his paperwork from the past 4 years in it.

One big HUGE upcoming project for me is to create a homework command center. The kids aren't big enough yet to worry with a family command center. I know where they are at all times no matter what and I keep track of all appointments on my phone. But the homework command center will be a big help I think. Bacon brings home a monthly homework calendar and B has a weekly one in conjunction with the daily assignments he has to write down in his planner. They also have different lunch menus and memos from their schools, so I think one place to keep all of it central will be great. We'll see I guess.

**Afterthought: Isn't it CRAZY how much homework kids have these days? He has as much in 3rd grade as I did when I was in high school. Sometimes I just feel like they don't get to be kids anymore.**

-jFree

Dinner is about to get easier.

I'm done! I'm finally done! Okay, I know that sounds like some dreadful task is over but it's not the "I'm done!" of relief, it's the "I'm done!" of excitement. Seriously. I know I'm a little sad for looking at my new menu planner and being super excited, more so than any other time in the past month almost, but oh well. It's awesome and I'm happy. I won't drag it out. Here's how it went down...

I saw the original post on Pinterest. I thought that it was an exceptional idea from The Thinking Closet. Hers looked so good, but I needed to make it my own because hers didn't match my style. I talked to the hubs and we decided the idea would probably work for us, so I started on a menu list. Nothing spectacular, just jotting down meals we like (and that I'm capable of cooking since I'm a novice) on a piece of paper when we happened to think of something. I've got almost 40 items on it so far and I'm still adding to it. Then we bought this stuff.

Magnetic whiteboard. I liked the sharp corners. Made for very clean lines on the finished product.

Card stock, medium clothespins, larger and smaller wooden letters that were paintable, acrylic paints, and some cheap paintbrushes. We also bought black fabric, patterned fabric, 3/4 inch ribbon, spray adhesive, and index card holders since all of our stuff is packed up for now.

After we bought that stuff, I sat on my bed and painted each one of these different colors. The OP had all the letters nice and uniform and a patterned background. My background is solid so I went with bright letters and decorations. 

I was a little disappointed when I realized that all the bigger letters weren't uniform in size even though they came from the same pack, but in the end they looked fine. Also, my smaller pack only had 1 "T". I had to make the other from different letters. Hopefully you can't tell which.

By the way, I don't know if I've ever mentioned but my hubs is top notch. No doubt. He helps me with anything I need help with. You'll see pics of him often. Here he is helping hot glue the fabric I got to the magnetic whiteboard. I didn't do like the OP and spray adhesive all over. I thought one day I may not want the menu planner anymore (doubtful but you never know) but the calendar would still be useful. 

Look at him go! He said "Don't post pictures of me doing this. I like my man card." haha... oops.

Here it is with its nice tucked in corners and tight sides.

I think we make a great team.

Then we added a border. We went with a solid color since our letters were different colors and we didn't want it to be too busy. We weaved it over and under for a nice pattern. There is hot glue under the 4 ends that are on the bottom of the weave so it can't be seen and around the back where the ribbon attaches to the whiteboard.

After that we hot glued our 4 larger letters to spell out M-E-N-U and one of each of the smaller painted letter to 7 clothespins for our days of the week. Here we are putting magnets on the back of our clothespins after we hot glued the letters to them. I know it looks like I'm not doing a thing but I promise I am! =] We bought a roll of adhesive magnets and cut our magnets to size so that they would fit on the clothespins without being seen.

The magnets cut down really easily. I cut them with a pair of my kids school scissors.

This was the result after all that.

Our next to last step was to put boxes on our board. I bought 3 index card holders and cut off the flaps that close them (I was going to make boxes from cardboard and have a layout if anyone would rather do that but these were easier and perfect size for my board), then cut my fabric to fit. I left about an inch hanging out all the way around the top and enough on the sides so I could fold the sides like I was wrapping a present. I sprayed adhesive all over the outside and stuck my fabric down. Once it was glued down I cut lines down the edges of the extra fabric at the top, sprayed the fabric with adhesive, then pushed it inside so that it covered the boxes completely. Then I stuck magnets to the backs instead of gluing the boxes down so I could take them down since anything open winds up getting dirty inside. At least I can shake them out this way. Or change fabric if I ever want to. I wanted 3 boxes so I could have one just for desserts. I like to make one or two a week. The 2 other than the dessert box are for menu cards. One for new recipes and one for recipes we've used. When the "new" box gets empty we just take the cards out of the "old" box and start our rotation over. As it looks right now we won't be eating the same thing for about 6 weeks unless we just want to. This was my almost finished result.

Then the time came for the menu cards. These were my least favorite part of the whole project. They weren't fun. Just typing. OP had already made a layout in Microsoft Word which I downloaded from her original post so I didn't have to worry with that. I just had to fill in the names of meals and ingredients. I covered them with packing tape and cut to size after I had them all printed.

Maybe one day I can add better quality pictures when i get my good camera unpacked. :/
The names of the recipes are on the front and the ingredients are on the back. Make sure you know how your printer prints and do left to right on the front, but right to left on the back so that they line up correctly.

I will eventually redo all of these cards because I plan on making my own recipe binder. Once I get that made, I'll reprint all the cards with a page number on them so I can easily find it. I don't have recipe books. All mine are from family, friends, or Pinterest. Now all I have to do for my weekly grocery shopping trip is pick out 7 cards, flip them over, and add my list of ingredients to my Weekly Menu Planner List which is printable and fillable in Word. I can choose sides to go with the entrees and get it all written down together. I also made a printable shopping list to go with it because I think the sectioned list works best for me while I'm actually in the store. So my end result turned out like this. Also, my menu cards are color coded. I have a different color for Easy, Red Meat, Chicken, Pork, Seafood, and Soups so far.

I'm 110% happy with it. If anyone decides to make one, send me pictures. I love different ideas. My supply list is below in case anyone was wondering. The whole project cost about $35 but could have been much less. Since we're moving all my craft stuff is packed up so I had to buy everything new. I also bought a more expensive whiteboard because I liked the bigger size and square edges. You can find them for around $9 all the time.

Supplies:
1 - 16X20 magnetic whiteboard
hot glue gun and glue
1 - yard black fabric
1 - 18in X 21in piece of patterned fabric
80 inches of 3/4 in grosgrain ribbon
wooden letters (large and small)
7 - medium clothespins
3 - plastic index card holders
spray adhesive
cardstock in different colors
packing tape

Good luck making your own!

-jFree <3

**UPDATE: I got my menu planner hung up in the new house and I love it.**

This thing is great!

Seeing Noah's Ark.

We got to take a trip to Noah's Ark yesterday. It's an animal sanctuary in Locust Grove, GA. They don't charge an entry fee but the sanctuary is fully funded through donations so we still took some cash with us. We had never been before and it was hot. The heat did not ruin our trip though. There were lots of benches and plenty of shade. We carried sweet tea and the rescue had a Nathan's hotdog and lemonade stand, so of course we had to have some yummy lemonade.

I put together some photos of our trip so that I didn't post so many individuals. I'm not sure how good the resolution is on the computer after putting them in the collage maker. I also didn't think to take the good camera (I ALWAYS forget it) so all the pictures were taken on my iPhone. Luckily it has a pretty decent camera.

The turtle under the tree was twice the size of the other. A peacock, pretty yellow bird
(no idea what it is), and a duck nesting. The duck was well hidden. 

The BLT section. A bear, lion, and tiger all live here together. They were raised together as cubs
and quit eating when they tried to separate them. The tiger stayed in the house.

 The kids loved the animals, especially the ones outside the fences they could get close to.

The rooster wasn't scared at all, and the ducks swimming under our feet were adorable. Bacon also found an inchworm she wanted.

The tigers were lazing around all over the place. We got to see them throw the ducks some snacks, and I was especially intrigued by this mushroom growing out of the tree.

It was a fun trip that didn't cost an arm and a leg and we got some great memories and exercise. We also learned a few things which is always a perk. If you're ever in the area I would recommend going.

-jFree