Teacher Gifts!

Wow, these last few weeks of May are flying by! I have so much going on with the kiddos before they get out of school. Just a few weeks ago it was teacher appreciation day. The kids always give their teachers something small to just let their teachers know they are appreciated.

I found the cute printable tags on one of my favorite blogs eighteen25! I love, love their ideas. You can find the printable here on their blog.

For the end of the year gift for the teachers I like to do a bit more to give them a BIG thank you for all that they do. Here is what I pulled together for the teachers last year.

You can find my post about it here. I got wonderful feed back from the teacher on how much they loved them. This year my boys gave me the best Mother's Day present created by my Mom. I loved them so much I decided to make them and give them to the boy's teachers.

Aren't they so stinking cute??? They were so easy to make. All you need is a pair of rain boots, rocks or gravel, dirt, and herb plant of your choice. I also added the colorful duct tape for more color but it is not easy to put on with out any kinks! My husband drilled holes in the bottom of the boots for drainage. I filled the bottom of the boots with rocks to weight them down and then filled with dirt. Planted the herb, gave it some water and attached a to/from tag to it. My son who was in preschool is finished now and his teachers absolutely loved them!

What are you giving the teachers for the last day of school? I would love to see.

Mommy Got a Mini Vacation - Vegas Style!

Hi all! Sorry about the lack of post this week but I had an opportunity to sneak away with the husband to Vegas! We have not been away, without kids, for almost 5 years so it was way overdue!

I have never been to Vegas! It was wonderful! I loved all the lights at night,and the fountain at the Bellagio! We stayed at the Mandaley Bay Hotel and had a wonderful strip view. It was so nice to have some adult time with my husband. It was also wonderful not to have to cook, clean, care for kids, do laundry, and the other bazillion things I do. As a stay at home mom there are no vacation days unless I get away like this.  It was nice to just relax (something else I am not good at doing and really need to get better at doing).

I am very lucky and blessed to have wonderful family to care for my boys who allowed me to sneak away with my husband. A huge, heartfelt thank you to my mother who ended up taking care of both my boys who came down with the stomach flu while I was in Vegas. I am sure that is was way more than she bargained for but I knew my boys were in good hands as she was the best nurse to me when I was sick! Thank you Mom - I love you! 

Well it's back to the grind stone and I have already been doing laundry and disinfecting my home to make sure the nasty bug is gone from our home! This week we will be getting back to our organizing challenge and organizing the laundry room!

Organizing the Boys Closets - Reveal

I'm so excited to show you how the boys closets turned out! If you saw my before pictures here you know I was working with a mess of items, and in a sea of un-organization! Knowing that I did not have a budget to get my dream organizers for both closets I worked with what I had on hand. I once again used dollar store storage to tidy up both closets.

I created, using some old Ikea wicker baskets I had laying around, a basket for clothes that are too big and one for clothes that are two small.

I love the tags I made. Green for one son and Red for the other! I printed out the paper, and text. Trimmed and inked the edges of the text paper just to make it pop out a bit. Then matted and laminated. Then tied it off with some matching ribbon.

I had some left over dollars on my Office Depot gift card so I picked up two green file bins as I knew they would be the perfect size to house all the boys friends. When do boys out grow stuffed animals? The boys stood their ground about not wanting to give away their friends!

My younger son gets all the hand-me-downs including shoes. 13 is too big for him right now so I keep them in the buckets for when he will fit into them. They were previously in a diaper box and I had no idea what type of shoes or size were in there. Now I can easily see I have a few pairs for him when his feet grow.

Since our house is brand new and we are waiting to paint after our year patching is done by the builder, I created a decor bin. Our younger son continued with his train room theme that he had in his old house, so the items in his bin are ones that will go up after we paint. My older son wants a lego room, so as I find items for his theme I have been placing them in his decor bin. I also put baseball pants, shirts and socks in their hats for an easy grab at game time.

Both boys closets are now color coded which makes it easy for them to pick out a shirt that matches their pants or shorts.

Now when I am hanging up their laundry I am happy to do so. Before I would go into their closets to hang up their laundry and want to quickly shut the door again. Now I can't help but have a smile on my face when I open the door. Silly how the simple things like an organized closet make me happy!!