Adventure in Blog giveaways!

So I'm starting to get into entering blog giveaways in the hopes I win stuff!!! yay!!! One day maybe I can do my own but at least I can start listing some here for others to maybe find and win too!!! So if you stumble on this post check back for lists of giveaways!! To start I'm linking to the giveaway bandit blog ... LOTS of great stuff there !! http://giveawaybandit.com/category/giveaways/and here's a funny pic by my fave Zooey Deschanel :) makes me smile... because I really dont like waking up sometimes :)

New Projects

So now that summer is about to begin, I've begun the organization of the house in preperation of having all 3 kids home 3 months straight!! And since we live in the oven of Texas (San Antonio) with 100+ temps pretty much all summer, we dont get out much, hardly even the back yard as its just too much for the little ones! Of course we do have SeaWorld San Antonio 15 min away so we certainly take advantage of their water park as often as possible.

So with that in mind I started thinking of ways to declutter and make summer easier to have all 3 kids fully entertained at the same time. Last summer was easier since Isabella was an infant and basically ate slept and pooped, as infants do.

My first project was to purge the plastic toys which I kinda did, about 50% anyway, then I organized them all and gave Chance all the bigger toys in his room. Then I decided to use all the left over diaper boxes I had to build a toy bookshelf out of them!

Cut tops off and laid them out

Poked holes with a screwdriver and attached the boxes to each other with zip ties

Lots of tape to support it up, could use duct tape

final product except I will be adding contact paper on the insides and cover in fabric on the outside

Mommy's day!

I love this day, the day to celebrate my lifes purpose. Being a mommy!! I've always known I was going to be a mom, I know its not for everyone, and everyone does it differently. I L O V E love it!! Some days are crazy hectic (well every day is really!) My kids are everything to me and I am so lucky to have them all 3 in my life :)

Trying to parent naturally

So I've always been interested in being eco-friendly and especially with the kids. It is so hard and sometimes I feel completely failed at this attempt as I clean with all purpose cleaner, and laundry detergent. But I keep trying and I usually remember to make my own all natural cleaners half the time... better than none of the time (right??). So in the past year I've come to realize the kids toys that are full of plastic and electronics may not be the best for them, learning wise or toxicity wise. Now this seems to be my biggest challenge because all natural toys are soo hard to come by! ToysRus has very little selection ... and dont even bother with Walmart, Target has introduced some more lately and I'm pretty excited about that. But I already LOVE Target!!! so I'm not surprised :) Well I managed to get rid of a ton of small plastic toys that have accumulated Since Chance was a baby, so that is progress. But I've recently discovered a ton of fun shops on Etsy that sell beautiful handmade toys! Now I just need to money to get them all! So I've started my collection with some handmade playsilks that I won in a contest with BeneathTheRowanTree!!!

 And I've found several others doing giveaways like this blog http://naturalsuburbia.blogspot.com. I hope I win some more of these fabulous toys for my babies!! As of right now I'll continue to purge the plastic and look for the more natural toys, but I am sure its all in balance since we still got Daniella a cute pink/purple keyboard for her birthday because she has gotten in to performing songs for us! We love this passion in her and will hopefully continue to find more things she will love! I'm going to continue to look for more natural ways of parenting and living too, and hopefully at some point the natural stuff will take over the chemical stuff but until then I will just keep trying!

Still trying homeschooling

I'm still plugging away at trying to homeschool  but she is definitely a challenge, I am having my own challenges of getting organized for it too, plus MIL has been here 5 weeks and totally thrown us off what little rythym we had, now D is watching way more TV than I'd like, and Isabella is not quite walking yet so its hard to handle her physically while trying to do stuff with Daniella so I'm kinda failing at it for now, I have 7 more weeks of MIL and I need to get something figured out soon. MIL has been great though, she does all our dishes and keeps the kitchen clean, so you'd think I have tons more time to do fun learning stuff with the girls, C has just started to get in to a good space neurologically so I think it will get better soon, hopefully before summer because all 3 littles home with me for 3 months we have to get more creative or I will lose my mind !! Last summer was great, although we were pretty much with out a vehicle I got through it. I think it will get better if we can move to a better neighborhood, and have a better living space for kids. We just ordered a subscription to a monthly kids craft box. So hopefully that will help jumpstart ideas! I am also hoping I start blogging more, I think this helps get my crazy thoughts more organized LOL ... I guess we will see!