Decluttering

I've been quiet lately. I've been busy lately, and I've been tired lately. I finished my night class a month or so ago and I was completely burned out. Being a single mother, working full time, maintaining the house and yard, cooking, cleaning, groceries....it's all on my plate. Would you believe it if I said sometimes I wish I had a little more help and a lot more relaxation?

I chose the name for my blog because I was inspired by another blog Blissful and Domestic, and from that website I realized I could do a lot more with what I had. Maybe I had lacked the creativity or determination I needed, and I would read and see Danielle's posts about how she makes the most of things and I felt inspired. I thought I need to build on my own bliss. I have a wonderful little boy, two furchildren, a great house, a great job, and some great friends. Things are pretty good for me, I just have to choose to see them that way. 

Something that creeps up on me however is clutter, and the more it builds the less I like addressing it. Last week I decided to thoroughly clean one thing a day or night. Last weekend I went through my son's closets where we keep toys, books, VHS tapes, and DVD's. There were some books that weren't donation worthy and some toys that were broken, those landed in the garbage or recycling bin. Some he has grown out of with age those are in a bag for me to bring to a coworker with a younger child. The rest are neatly organized. The DVD's however were a real problem. There were so many there was no way I could really fit them in the bookshelf with the other media, they had to be on top in large piles, unorganized and just waiting to fall over and make a mess. 

I read an article once that explained it's unfair for parents to clutter a child's room with hand me downs, too many gifts, too many clothes, too many things, and then expect the child to keep it meticulously organized and clean when it really appears less like a child's room and more like a hoard of junk shoved in a clown car. I'm fairly sure my son's closets were heading to the circus. We had 100+ DVD's. It was just too much. I bought a binder and got to work!

My oldest child was on the scene to help. <3

This picture doesn't even show the entirety of the collection. Some boxes had two or three DVD's. It was insane. As much as I love the cover art. The collection needed to take up lass space physically. 

There were still a few more cases I emptied after I took this picture. It's strange parting with them all. But the amount of space we've regained in my son's room is amazing and worth it. Why cling to containers when the good stuff takes up so little space?

The final product. A binder with a capacity for 97 discs. It had three and a half pages of space left, this means I put 91 DVD's in this thing. Talk about a space saver. I left some Disney movies in their cases....because well, Disney. LOL. I'm not perfect. But in the last week I feel better for making out living space more livable and getting rid of things that clutter instead of enhance our space.

This week I have successfully built on bliss.

Banana Nutella Muffins

I was reading through the new issue of All You Magazine and came upon an interesting twist on banana bread, a banana Nutella nut muffin. I had some ripe bananas and I knew it was a good time to give this recipe a whirl. 

BEFORE

AFTER

I couldn't find the recipe on the website, so I've typed it out. But to get more recipes from the magazine just take a look! All You Magazine

Banana Nutella Muffins, Recipe from All You Magazine

Ingredients: 
1 cup all purpose flower
1 cup whole wheat flower (if you dont have use all purpose flower)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
8 tbsp (1 stick) butter softened
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
3 ripe bananas (~1 1/2 cups)
1 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)
1/4 cup Nutella

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Line 12 cup muffin tin with paper liners, or coat pan with cooking spray.
2. In a bowl, combine flours, baking powder and sale.
3. In another bowl, mix butter and sugar lightly for about 3 minutes. Beat in eggs, mashed bananas, and vanilla until smooth. Gradually stir in flour mixture. Fold in nuts
4. Divide batter among muffin cups. Spoon 1 teaspoon Nutella on top of each muffin. Swirl together Nutella and batter with a knife or tooth pick.
5. Bake until muggins are golden, about 22 minutes. Let cool in pan for 5 minutes, invert on to wire rack, turn muffins right side up and let cool completely.

Nutrition: 350 calories per serving, 15 grams fat (6g saturated), 52mg cholesterol, 3 grams fiber, 5 grams protein, 40 grams carb, 173 mg sodium. 

Shrinking Our Foot Print

I've posted about water harvesting, changing and updating water related fixtures to stop leaks, taking Navy showers, and reusing brown water in my yard. Well....what's it all add up to?

This is my water bill. If you look on the right hand side you'll see the water usage every month. 1 unit is equal to 1,000 gallons used. This past month we scored a 2, about 2,000 gallons. The month before 1,000 gallons. If you look back to about a year ago you can see the bill was 8 and 10,000 gallons of water. I bought the house in May of 2013. So in the last year, we've been able to reduce our water usage footprint by 1/10th to 1/5th of what the previous occupants were using.

Some months were higher, you'll see an uptick in November and December when family visited and stayed with us. But overall my son and I use about 1 to 3,000 gallons of water a month. Very small considering only two people lived in the same house and used about 10,000 gallons of water in one months time. And no, they weren't watering the lawn. The lawn was watered, but using the old well which isn't counted in to the water bill.

Water is about 25 dollars for every 1,000 gallons used. My bill this month was about 50 dollars. The previous people for a month using 10,000 gallons would have paid roughly 250 dollars. That's a car payment in water.

Some of my friends think I'm extreme. But I see it as taking a shorter shower over the course of a month can lead to an extra 250 dollars in your wallet. I can't ignore those kinds of savings. What would you do with an extra 250 a month? 

Tie Dye Easter Eggs

All week long I've been seeing tie dyed Easter eggs in my news feed on Facebook and decided to give it a try. I finally had an excuse to buy food dye and while it was on sale! Being a couponer we already had plenty of shaving foam. I also read that you can use whip cream instead. So whatever is handy in your pantry. To start we boiled and cooled the eggs a few days ago. Then tonight we got to dying them. 

First, I put shaving foam on the plate and let Trevor twirl it until it was frothy. Once that was done I let him add a drop or two of dye and mix it with a butter knife. If we do this again I would mix less. When the colors thin out you dont get as many unique stripes on the eggs. Instead if the dye is over mixed you get a very pale shade of color. We redyed some of the pale eggs a second time. 

Next we put the egg gently in the foam and slowly and softly rolled it where the dye was thickest. Then placed them on a paper towel to rest and let the dye soak in for a few minutes, try three or four minutes. The longer it sits the more it soaks in and you get deeper colors. 

Then wash off with water and presto! You've got colored Easter eggs!! We'll be doing this again in the future =)

Shower Head

I was showering one morning when I went to move the shower head and...it fell off the wall. 

Never fear....I have a good friend who told me that it's essentially a screwed on fixture, to remove, and replace. Go buy one for 20 bucks at the store she said. Well, I did. It worked and I liked it so much I bought a matching one for the other shower. 

Upgrading my house one fixture at a time! No plumber required!

Retouching Frogs

I found these guys in my front yard when I first moved in. They were scrap metal worthy but I wasn't going to give them up that easily. The first thing I did was look around the house to see what we already had. We had gem stones for a different project perfect for the eyes, pink paint perfect for those cute little tongues, and plenty of masking tape. I bought a primer based spray paint for about 5 bucks and me and my little man got to it.

We covered all spots we didn't want spray painted green with masking tape. We spray painted one side at a time and after one of the frogs fell...I realized using a stone to anchor the lily pad feet would have avoided that issue.

Next time!! 

The pink paint was from a spray can, to make sure that the whole mouth wasn't plastered with paint I used a cup cutting it to fit around the tongue, then went at it. Any pink paint that went off the tongue I brushed up with a grey/off white paint that I also used to give a more textured feel to the instruments. 

Old eyes out. 

New eyes in.

And this is the final result! I plan on re-purposing them in the front garden area once it's done.

BEFORE

AFTER

Choices...paint choices

I knew I wanted grey walls. I thought classy....stylish, the new modern version of the super light hot chocolate that's become a little too popular in my opinion. Yes, I wanted grey and thought I'd know it when I see it. Except.....well ten paint choices later and I have no clue. Meeting with the painter on Tuesday. lol

I've consulted a few friends most of them are leaning toward C and D. A few have said A and B. 

The outside colors I'm pretty set on. This should be interesting.