September | 2011 | Revolution of Love

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

{pretty}

Where does the time go?? From her first birthday to her tenth birthday! Happy birthday my precious, Bella! You’ll always be my baby. 😉

{happy}

I don’t know what makes Brian happier – that his Packer football is back or that he has a new Packer fan to cheer with him.

{funny}

Matthew could only take so much football cheering and then he conked out.

{real}

It’s been a busy, busy week! Here are some things we’ve been working on. Besides getting ready for Bella’s Angry Bird birthday party (which I’ll post about next week) we also had two school fundraisers. Here is Brian working at the Mission Fiesta for Bella’s school. Andrew was having fun throwing the ring.

Here are two gift baskets I put together for the Fall Festival/Auction for Andrew’s school. I did a baby shower basket and a family movie night basket. I like the way they came out. It was fun to get creative.

Lastly, I’ve been baking for the Fall Festival bake sale. I made Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies. They are sooo yummy I hope they make it to the sale!

Okay, back to decorating. Have a great weekend!

**Taming the procrastinating, ADD, mess cat within me.**

It’s been hard working on my organizing project since things have been so busy lately! This time of year will only get busier so if I don’t post on this topic that often, you’ll know why. However, I have been able to work a little bit on my pantry. My kitchen is on the small side, and technically, there is no pantry. I have the usual cupboards for dishes, plastics and pots and pans. Anything left over, I can use for food storage.
The one cupboard that gives me the most trouble is a tall and narrow cabinet on the side of the fridge and behind the swinging door that leads into the family room. The shelving is weird – the top has short shelves and there is a huge empty section on the bottom. I could try to redo the shelving but time is short and I needed a quick fix that I can live with right now.
The cabinet is mostly used for snack foods, lunch box items and taller bottles (oils, vinegars, cooking wine, etc) that don’t fit in the other cupboards.

I went to Target and purchase six stacking containers and one mini-drawer container. (Unfortunately the two stores I went to had only four white stacking boxes left but I found two black ones on clearance for 75 cents. I can live with two tones.)

I put all the lunch box items in the containers and labeled them.

The smaller items like boxes of raisins and fruit chew and the items the kids don’t eat (protein bars) are put in the mini-drawer container.

On the door of the cabinet I keep my pantry inventory list for food in my fridge and freezer.

For my labels, I printed on Avery Labels #8163 and stuck it to a colored index cards and trimmed the edges. For this door label, instead of an index card, I used a blank stationary card with a pretty pattern and cut it down to size. (I picked up a box of the cards at Target in the $1 section.)

I ordered the personalized pantry lists from Jen at iheartorganizing.blogspot.com. They are available through her etsy shop.

Large size: View image
Then I placed them in sheet protectors and attached them to the door with blue painters tape. That way I can easily remove and update a list.

The last problem I had with this cabinet is that there was no way to keep the door locked so John-Paul wouldn’t dump out all the containers and snacks on the floor (after he sampled a few.) I finally figured out a solution. I purchased a package of Command Mini-Hooks.

I placed one next to the cabinet handle then I took a large rubber band and looped it through the handle and hung it on the hook. Now JP can’t get his little fingers into the cabinet and open it up. Problem solved!

Well, that’s all I have time for today. In the next weeks I’ll be finishing organizing the food cabinets in the kitchen and organizing the garage pantry. In the meantime, feel free to share your own thoughts and ideas! Enjoy your day. 🙂

Hosted by Jen at Conversion Diary.

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It’s

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crazy

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busy!

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I’ll

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post

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week.

(But have a great weekend!!)

Hosted by Jen at Conversion Diary.

– 1 –

First I want to start with an exciting take. I am going to be an aunt again. Yay! My little sis EML is expecting baby # 4 in April. Wow, she’ll have four children under the age of four. That scares the beejeebies out of me! But if anyone can do it, (and with with amazing results) my sister can!

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Okay, and to put a smile on your face, here is a photo of my little niece Greta announcing the upcoming arrival of her sibling. How cute is she? I love the expression on her face. LOL!

– 3 –

My own little guy turned five months old this week. We’ve nicknamed him Mr. Smiley because he lights up whenever you talk to him. He’s a happy kid!

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For the last five months I’ve been working to lose weight and get healthier. The good news is that I’ve lost all the baby weight and weight the same as when I got pregnant. Yay! The bad news is that I way the same as when I got pregnant. Boo. Now on Phase 2, I want to continue losing and get to a healthy weight. It’s a lot more than a few pounds. I hear other moms in a size 12 or 14 saying how fat they are blah, blah, blah. Save it, honey. Size 14 is my goal weight! Just saying…. 😉

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I’ve been doing Weight Watchers and have been averaging a pound a week with just the food changes. I do better when I add in exercise but I’m still slacking on getting into an exercise routine. But I’m working on it.

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You know, if I was to blow my diet I think this would be my weapon of choice – these chocolate and peanut butter brownies. Excuse me while I wipe the drool off my keyboard…

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Okay, got a busy day ahead of me so I better get to work. Have a great weekend!

I loved Gillian Anderson’s portrayal of Lady Dedlock in Charles Dicken’s Bleak House. I eagerly await her upcoming role as Miss Havisham in Dicken’s Great Expectations, which is coming to Masterpiece Theatre.

Gillian Anderson To Play Miss Havisham In New Great Expectations On Masterpiece

Gillian Anderson will star in the iconic role of Miss Havisham in a bold new adaptation of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations. The cast of the star-studded Masterpiece on PBS/BBC coproduction also includes David Suchet (Poirot) and Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast).
“I can’t wait to see Gillian delicately sink her teeth into the role of the beautiful, mysterious and manipulative Miss Havisham. She’s one of the most intriguing female characters in literature,” says Masterpiece executive producer Rebecca Eaton. “Gillian’s hypnotic portrayal of Lady Dedlock in Bleak House showed that she and Dickens are a perfect match.”
Ms. Anderson’s 2006 performance in Bleak House — her first television role after rising to stardom as Agent Dana Scully in The X-Files — earned her rave reviews and Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
The Masterpiece broadcast of Great Expectations will air in April 2012, during the bicentennial of Dickens’ birth. Including Bleak House, Masterpiece — celebrating its 40th anniversary on PBS in 2011 — has aired nine Dickens adaptations equaling nearly sixty hours of television to date, including Little Dorrit, the winner of seven Emmy awards in 2009, and David Copperfield, which introduced Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) to American audiences.
As part of the Dickens bicentennial, Masterpiece will also partner with the BBC on The Mystery of Edwin Drood, an unfinished work that will be given a new ending by writer Gwyneth Hughes (Five Days, Miss Austen Regrets).
Widely considered one of Dickens’ greatest novels, Great Expectations tells the story of Pip the battered orphan boy, who rises from blacksmith’s apprentice to gentleman under the patronage of a mysterious benefactor, who assures him of “great expectations.” As Pip grows up, he befriends Magwitch, a convict, becomes the pet to Miss Havisham, an insane heiress, and falls in love with Estella, her cold-hearted ward. A series of shocking setbacks teaches Pip the true source of moral worth.
David Suchet, who will play Jaggers, and Ray Winstone (Magwitch), are well known to Masterpiece audiences. Suchet is renowned as the Belgian supersleuth in the popular Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot series, and Winstone’s portrayal of Henry VIII on Masterpiece was called “a brilliant tour de force” by the Hollywood Reporter.
Great Expectations begins filming in London in July.

UPDATE: Great Expectations will be playing in the USA on Masterpiece Classic on April 1, 2012.

Revolution of Love

Do small things with great love.

Monthly Archives: September 2011

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – vol 14

Operation Clean and Organize: Vol 4 – The Cupboards/Pantry (Part 1)

7 Quick Takes: Quickie Edition

7 Quick Takes – 9/16/11

Masterpiece Theatre – Great Expectations