April 2: Cleaning Challenge, Day 2

Day 2's Task:  Clean the Bathrooms

Easy enough.  I did clean both of our bathrooms today.  But the before and after pictures didn't look much different, so I'm not bothering to post them.  The bathrooms are cleaner though.

Even though it wasn't a huge task to clean the bathrooms, it does make me feel good to have a goal and get it accomplished!

April 1: 30 Day House Cleaning Challenge

I am going to try to play along with Money Saving Mom's 30 Day House Cleaning Challenge in the month of April.  I don't have a lot of confidence in myself when it comes to cleaning on a schedule.  But I always like to try!  We'll see how much I keep up with the challenge and whether or not I blog about it.

Our house is not in horrible shape.  Just over a week ago it was spotlessly clean with every single thing in its place as we were in house showing mode.  But it is impossible (at least for me) to live that way on a daily basis.  Since we are going to be moving out in less than two months, it would be nice to keep the house in good shape, so we have less cleaning to do when it is time to move out.

Today's challenge was:  surface clean the living room and kitchen. 

I started tonight after the girls were in bed.  Our kitchen wasn't in too bad of shape.  I did a few dishes, put away some things left out on the counters from our Easter dinner yesterday, and wiped down the counters.

The living room was not a complete disaster.  I try to have the living room picked up every day before my piano students arrive.  So all the mess you see here happened between 4:00 and 9:00 tonight.  I just did a quick pick up and put everything back in its place, and put the laundry in a basket to take upstairs and put away.

Looking at the clock in this before and after picture, it only took me about 20 minutes from start to finish to complete these tasks.  It is nice to go to bed with everything picked up and looking nice!

March 31: Easter

 Happy Easter!!!

March 30: Dyeing Easter Eggs

This was the girls first time to dye Easter eggs.

 I assumed Audrey would like it, as she always likes crafty types of things, and she did think it was a lot of fun.  In fact, she said it was her favorite thing to do and that she wanted to dye eggs every day. 

I was surprised by how much Isla liked it.  I assumed that she wouldn't be interested, but I was very wrong.  She loved dropping the eggs into the cup.  She loved watching us pull the eggs out of the cup and seeing the different color.  She just had a huge smile on her face the whole time!

March 29: Painting

The girls wanted to paint this morning.  I don't always let them paint when they want to paint, because it is just a hassle and makes a mess and I am lazy.  But, today seemed like a good painting day.  Isla has painted a few times with my help, but I haven't let her do it totally on her own yet.  Until today.  Wow, she loved it so much!  She painted for the longest time and probably would have gone for longer if I would have let her.  She made a little mess, but it wasn't bad at all.  (Note to self:  let the girls paint more often!)

They started painting pictures out of coloring books.

 Notice that Isla favors her left hand.  She pretty consistently uses her left hand for everything.  We think she is going to be a lefty!

 I love pictures of the two of them playing nicely together.  Look at them sharing the paints!  It doesn't always happen, but when it does...I love it!

 

After they started painting, a thought came to mind that we should be painting some sort of Easter craft, since it is Easter weekend and all.  So I drew some Easter eggs on cardstock for the girls to paint. 

Here are their finished eggs.  Isla's on the left and Audrey's on the right.  Maybe we will be festive and cut them out and hang them up in our window.

March 25: Sold!!

We accepted an offer on our house tonight!  Over the past five days, we bought a house and sold our house.  That is pretty exciting.  Of course, it is not a done deal yet.  There are inspections and appraisals to be done on both houses still.  We won't close until May/June, so we still have a lot of time before all of this is finalized.  But we are off to a very, very good start.

In less exciting news, we ended up with 18.5 inches of snow with this snow storm.  That is the most snow that has ever been recorded here in all time.  Crazy!  Fortunately, the weather is supposed to warm up considerably over the next couple of days, so the snow shouldn't stick around for too long. 

March 24: Pinkalicious!

Audrey and I went on a date this afternoon.  We braved the blizzard like conditions to go see Pinkalicious the musical at a local theater.  It really was nasty outside this afternoon, it was snowing and blowing like crazy.  I do not like being out in the snow or driving in snow, but I was willing to put up with it for the sake of spending an afternoon with my daughter (and also for the sake of the expensive tickets that I didn't want to waste!).  I think we have about 12 inches of snow on the ground right now.  It is ridiculous considering that it is supposed to be SPRING now!

Anyway, back to our day, I let Audrey pick where we went to lunch after church.  Of course, she picked McDonalds, which is her favorite but most definitely not my favorite.

 Before the show started, they had a pink party with pink crafts (basically just coloring) for the kids to complete.  After making the crafts, Audrey and I got some pink lemonade and Skittles to enjoy while we waited for the show to start.  Audrey really wanted to take a picture of me with my pink lemonade, so here it is.

The show was cute; Audrey (who is a big fan of the books) thought it was great.  After the show, she got to get autographs from the cast and get a picture with Pinkalicious.

Audrey was so much fun today.  She just had a great attitude and a good time.  She couldn't stop smiling or laughing.  We had to walk about a block through all the cold, wet, blowing snow...but she didn't complain or cry at all.  (I wanted to do both!)  Great memories!!