bobbi | Revolution of Love

Congrats to Lisa Hendey for the release of her new book A Book of Saints for Catholic Moms: 52 Companions for Your Heart, Mind, Body and Soul. I’ll be ordering it this week. Hope you’ll do the same!

I posted a few weeks back about CFCA (Christian Foundation for Children and Aging) our sponsored child Abi. Yesterday I received an email from Paula K. who recently visited Guatemala. She is trying to find a CFCA sponsor for a little girl named Carla who lives in Guatemala. Please read her story and see if God is asking you to open your heart to bettering her life and the life of her family.
UPDATE: Here is a comment from Paula:

Bobbi, I can’t thank you enough for sharing this on your blog. In sharing Carla’s story, I have found it challenging to convey that feeling I got in Guatemala among the sponsored children and families, and getting a very true sense of how an expenditure that to a U.S. family can be relatively small (a trip for 5 to Mcdonald’s, say), can truly transform the most basic elements of a whole family’s life. If any of your readers have questions, please feel free to contact me directly! Although my sign in has my daughter’s email address, the best is opuswsk@aol.com. Thanks everyone!!!

Love him or hate him, the man was a genius. Here is an interesting article from LifeSiteNews.com that was posted a week before his death. Some great lessons in there.
Flashback: Steve Jobs Is a Genius Alright, But Even Geniuses Need to Be Born

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

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

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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.

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

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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. 🙂