Simply Clean Living Back Up and Running!

I am recommitting myself to my cleaning and organization blog, Simply Clean Living. I mostly want it to be home organization and cleaning tips, but also easy recipes, baby/toddler product reviews, etc. Just general helpful mom stuff.

I am bringing on more authors, and hope to have about 8-10 contributing weekly. I have a few people lined up, but we're looking for a few more! E-mail me at simplycleanliving@gmail.com if you're interested. Or, if you don't want to commit to posting weekly but have some good cleaning/cooking/organzing ideas, please e-mail them over as well and I'll post them for you as a guest author. Or just come on over, take a look, comment, and support! See you soon!

How to Party Like a Princess

Because Kenley's birthday will be just a month after having the baby, I need to get an early start planning and getting stuff for her party. So last night I sat down with her to start the big plans. I wrote down all her ideas because they were so cute and funny. Our theme is going to be Princesses and Pirates, and here are her requests:

Time:
*In the morning. And a LONG party - five and five hours.

Activities:
*Balloon Fight

Menu:
*Princess Pizza
*Princess Goldfish crackers
*Princess muffins with princesses on the little papers
*Pink and white princess animal cookies with sprinkles
*Strawberry milk with Cinderella, Jasmine, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, and Mulan on the milk carton
*Princess Strawberry punch flavored ice cream
*Pink Princess Castle Cake, with pink, hot pink, hot purple, and hot red

Favors:
*Princess pancakes for each friend to take home in a baggie (because it's a morning party, she explains)

I'm hoping she forgets the pancake idea but at this point she's quite adamant. At other parties you may get a gift bag with toys, prizes, and candy. At ours you will go home with a ziplock baggie full of soggy pancakes. Perfect.

Probably just funny to me

So with working full-time I miss a lot of the funny stuff my kids say during the day. But I'm sure everyone misses hearing about what I find entertaining in my life. The latest:

*The new Goldfish box, labeled, "New packaging! Same amount of crackers." It cracks me up every time. I'm sure what they were going for was having their consumers not think a smaller box meant less fish, but to me it reads very, "We changed our packaging but we're not giving you even ONE more fishie cracker, suckers!" Seriously I laugh out loud every time I get Goldfish.

*So I work out in the countryside, and drive along this lovely dirt road to get out to my school (I know, weird, right?). They do quite a bit of work to keep the dirt road nice. Several times a week they're out there laying more dirt, smoothing it, spraying it with water to pack it down, whatever. I remarked to another teacher that they should just pave the darn road if they're going to do so much work on it. But she told me that apparently it was part of an old path the stagecoaches used to take, and those crazy history lovers out there have been fighting to keep it authentic and dirty and bumpy and inconvenient. But guys, I think it's a FAKE dirt road! The other day I was driving to work and it was like someone had swept off 89% of the dirt and there is a PAVED road underneath! I swear to you! It's not like they managed to pave the road overnight and then dumped the dirt remnants back on it, it is pavement that has been there a while and they were just faking us out all along! FRAUDS! Do you think I should sue them to reimburse me for the cost of getting my car washed weekly while I've had this job?

I'm still not sure either of those stories are actually funny or if I am getting boring. But they seemed crucial to my family history, so there you go.

Language Arts

Having a very verbal three year old has to be one of the most hilarious experiences life has to offer. People are constantly telling me to write down all the funny stuff Kenley says, but I would seriously be writing all day long. But here are some of my recent faves:

*While I was talking to James about my carpool, Kenley asks me what a carpool is. After I explain, she announces, "Carpool? That not a good name! You not call it that anymore, Mommy. Now you call it a car-MOVE. That be way better." And you know what, how could I argue with that?

*Bringing my attention to the fact that we may frequent fast-food establishments more than I realize, Kenley told me the other night that she was excited to go eat at "Arbio's." (A mix of Arby's and Rubio's, for those who sadly are not familiar with Rubio's.)

*Aaaaaand, my favorite. A few weeks ago Kenley pointed out an American flag while we were driving and I was quizzing her on her US Trivia. "And who is our President?" "Um... what his name? Chewbama?" SUCH a better choice for President than John McCain. Way better-looking, and his name lends itself to hilarious combinations with hairy Star Wars creatures. Even if you're not a liberal, you can't be mad at that.

We're great, thanks.

Every time I start to write about this it just sounds whiny, but our life is completely different now, and I figure I owe it to my diligent blog-stalkers who may not know the whole story and are wondering why I rarely update the blog these days. So, what have we been up to, you ask? Well, I've been working full-time teaching middle school Special Ed., taking classes for my Masters, serving as Primary President, and I'm coming up on seven months pregnant. Oh yes, and in my abundance of spare time I've been raising my two toddlers. After being at the babysitter's all day they come home starving and crying while I try to get dinner ready. Every once in a while we even get to see James. Pretty much our life looks like this right now:



Thanks to everyone that has been checking in and helping out. I'm horribly lonely for my friends and can't wait for life to calm down a little. Eight more days of work... I'll edit this to add, for all the many who are wondering, that we do not know what we are having. We had one ultrasound and the baby was being shy. We'll probably have one more near the end but at this point we may opt to go for the big surprise!