July favorite things

I am linking up with Ashley again to do July's favorite things. Check out her blog, it is adorable.


My favorite things from July are...

1. Bright pillows for the sofa

You can find them at Milk and Cookies

2. Fresh Vegetables.We enjoy going to the Farmer's Market every week and stocking up on a weeks worth of goodies. I have also discovered that if I let Hudson pick out his own vegetables, he is more likely to try them when we get home.

3. Squash Fritters. Recipe found here, Hudson loved them

4. Taco Tuesday. It is a tradition in our house. My very favorite night of the week. Hudson sometimes eats 3!!!  Eating Mexican every day during pregnancy definitely rubbed off on him. (I use turkey meat instead of red meat)

5. Teaching Sunday School. It is such a joy and so fun to observe all the little 3 year olds learn about Jesus.

6. Davidson, NC This sweet, little town is my happy place. Also where my sister lives. I love visiting.

This is Main Street and seriously the cutest place.

Plus we get to see these sweet faces. I loved our trip last weekend.

                                                     

7. Having a morning helper. I get so much done when someone else is watching Hudson! I have known this sweet little girl since the day she was born, I was her nanny!

8. Naptime. My 2 children. Best friends.

9. The Olympics..... Oh wait, I have not watched any.  But I do enjoy Good Morning America's coverage of Prince Harry

July was a fun month. I am looking forward to August!

Organization

It is no shocker that I love organizing. I like for every toy, every crayon, every little item to have a little box to call home. I like my house to be clean. I like for everything to be categorized.

Insert my love for the Dollar Tree. No, seriously. One opened by our house and after hearing some friends rave about it a few months ago I took a trip. I fell in love. I have also turned Jonathan onto the store. We get so much there. Zip lock bags, trash bags, cleaning supplies, tape, tupperware. They have coloring books, guns, cars and play doh (well, it's called something else) for Hudson (some of it is real junk but it's just $1).......They also have organizational baskets......


Our linen closet has been driving me bananas for months. I stumbled across this organizational blog on Pinterest

Drool seriously started coming out of my mouth.

So I took a trip to my new favorite store for some baskets and voila.....

I still have some cleaning up to do. The closet is actually bigger than shown but I could not get a good photo because of the place it is located.

Everything has a basket. Makeup, nail polish, toilet paper, wash cloths, hairdryer, our medicine, Hudson's medicine, sunscreen, random things.....

I showed it to Jonathan last night and he said, "You get way to excited about this stuff."

I also grabbed a few cute polka dot bins for the toy bookcase that we just put in the 3rd bedroom.

How sad that Hudson has an entire playroom but still needs another shelf for toys.......

I highly recommend visiting the Dollar Tree if you want to start organizing!!!

Mother's Helper

For summer help I recruited the sweetest little girl that I used to nanny for. While she was playing with Hudson today I sent Jonathan a quick email. His response made me laugh so hard.




To Jonathan-
Just FYI. I want to adopt a 12 year old daughter. Having a mothers helper is amazing.



 Reply



Problem is… the 12 year old daughter will turn 16 in 4 years, and I think the negative of having a 16 year old daughter will completely outweigh the positive of having some help now.

But it is a good idea in theory.




That is my giggle for the day...................

My sweet boy

The other night I was snuggling with Hudson in his bed singing his favorite song, "Jesus Loves Me" when he grabbed my face and said. "Oh ick. You need to brush your teeth. Phew!"I laughed really hard. He was right! Poor guy.

He is so honest. He makes me laugh everyday with his little comments. He remembers everything. He says what he thinks..... even when it is pointing to a work van and yelling, "you drive a creepy van ." Um, yeah, that actually happened.

He is growing up so fast!

To buy or not to buy

I stopped into Home Goods the other day and started drooling immediately. They had a set of bedroom mirror dressers. I have been lusting for some for a while but Jonathan always says no. They also had this mirror table that would be perfect for our family room.

I have these great chairs already that can go around it

As you can see they need something bigger between them. So.... to buy or not to buy?? Maybe the blog fairies will just drop it off on my porch.

Happy Friday to all my mom friends

Cute, cheap find

I pop into Old Navy a few times a month just to see what they have and to stock up on basic white tees. I was so excited to find these cute shorts a few weeks ago.

The orange sailboats are my favorite. They are really good quality and super fun for summer. Now on sale for $18.

Refreshed

I feel great today! Better than I have in weeks. The reason..... Hudson slept until 10am. Um yeah, you read that right. 10 AM!!! 14 hours of sleep for the little guy. I rolled over, looked at the clock and jumped out of bed at 9:15. I have not slept that late in 3 years. I immediately went to check on him because he is my little rooster who wakes up at 6am everyday. The only problem is now it is after 2 and he is refusing a nap. Even after 4 hours at the pool.

My new obsessions are these 2 pieces of jewelry

The past few weeks I have recorded every episode of Laguna Beach and the Hills off MTV. I am totally obsessed again. Woobs and I never missed an episode in College. We got the nickname Woobs from The Hills. I really miss Heidi's old face. Lauren styled Lady Gaga before she was super famous and Taylor Armstrong from Real Housewives Beverly Hills appears as Brody's moms best friend..... ah, the things you realize 5 years later.

We began teaching Sunday School this past Sunday and it was so cute and fun. Hudson thought it was so cool that we stayed with him and were his teachers. I think it is something we are really going to enjoy and get a lot out of.

Holy diet

I made a change last week that will help both my husband and I. I committed to eating healthy. I stocked up on all healthy, non processed food at the store, Hudson and I did a HUGE farmer's market run and we cleaned out the cabinets for good. We ate grilled chicken & shrimp along with fresh vegetables or a salad every night last week. Jonathan took leftover for lunches while I ate carrots, salad or yogurt. He has been making eggs for breakfast and I have been drinking smoothies, eating fruit or Special K. I am only drinking water. Goodbye to my 1 Coke a day. I will miss you so much.

We both feel great! It is amazing how much better you feel when you are eating better. We are also both exercising every day.

*We did not eat terrible before, but we did have a lot of room for improvements.

I did cheat this weekend and had a cinnamon roll. I had too. I saw it at the Bakery and almost cried walking away from it. A much needed treat.

And Jonathan had Char- Grill with his mom, he was so excited!

So what are your healthy eating recipes? * I do not eat red meat.

Discipline

Hudson knows his boundaries. He often does something and then before I can say it, he will put himself in time out. Last night while we were reading bedtime books, he hit Jonathan. So we put him in the corner of his room. Jonathan and I were sitting on his bed talking about our days when we heard snickering. We looked over and Sissy had gone to comfort her brother.

This is the face of a child(ren) caught playing in timeout.

The two of them..... good gracious. They each think the other one hung the moon. Hudson sure knows how to get himself out of trouble quickly with that cute face and Sissy sure knows how to get some attention.

Big Boy room

Hudson's big boy room is almost complete, I just need curtains! He loves his truck room!

Love the picture of Hudson and his girlfriend on his dresser.

These cute paintings were a gift from a friend on his 2nd birthday. It is a painting of his birthday invitation.

He is so proud of his room and loves going in there.

Monday brain dump

One word to describe our weekend was.... organizing.

I am so OCD. I could organize something new everyday. Things get so messy, so fast around here!

I finally got our front porch looking the way I want it. I just need pillows for my chairs. (Preferably yellow & white Chevron with monogram)

I did a Home Goods run to get new pillows to spruce up our bedroom. Hudson got blackout shades for his room.... amazing... his room is so incredibly dark. I want them in our room next. He was a really good helper putting them up.

Everything in our pantry is now in tupperware. The linen closet is sorted, folded perfectly & organized. The shed is clean. The yard is landscaped.

All the laundry is in the foyer awaiting for me to wash & fold. How does it pile up so fast? And, am I the only person who only uses a shower towel once before putting it in the laundry? Or changes sheets every 3-4 days? OCD much?

It was so hot this weekend, so our evenings looked like this.

Hudson thinks cleaning the shed is hilarious.

I think I got my little desk the way I want it in the kitchen.

Now off to fold laundry and snuggle with my little guy who has a summer cold. 102 temps are not fun.

Patience

"Patience is a virtue".......... said no toddler.... EVER!

I am always surprised at Hudson's patience level.

 Really?! You are going to scream because it is taking me 20 seconds to cut the strawberries you asked for?

Is the 5 minute breakdown in the Target cart worth it because I have not sprinted across the store fast enough to grab all of the things on my list? I mean, should I go ahead and book your therapist appointment because this errand  is going to ruin your life?

Do you really feel the need to throw yourself down on the ground because I want to take a  shower? Can't a mama get a minute?

Are you being emotionally harmed because I want you to sit still for 2 seconds for a picture?

I love being the mom of a toddler. I really do. But I swear, sometimes I find myself about to explode.
I find that I see this face a lot.....

Luckily, it is the cutest face on the planet.

Tidbits of our weekend

- Saturday we took Hudson to the Museum of Natural Sciences. He loved it. The renovations were really neat and he loved playing interactive games.

On the way home we rode past the fire station and saw a boom truck outside. We had to stop.

I have naturally curly hair..... not just curly, lion like, frizzy, out of control hair. The heat makes it so hard to spend 1 hour drying and straightening it. I found this at Target yesterday. It was supposed to give me surfer waves.

Not awful but not the best.


We took Hudson to Toys R Us yesterday to pick out any toy he wanted. I had my eye on a grill, Jonathan wanted him to get a baseball pitching kit...... he looked at every single thing in the store (literally walked the aisles for an hour) and only wanted a box of 30 cars. That's all. All the toys in the world and that is all he wanted. Sweet boy. He may be cheap like his father.