Come on in...

Monday, how did you get here so fast? I hope the weekend treated you all very well! We have been busy, busy, busy but also very happy! Our weekend was full of fun but busy activities. We spent Saturday morning painting doors in our house. The front door got the RED treatment! The frame will eventually be painted black, but one thing at a time right now! Hahaha!!! The hardware is going to be spray painted black ASAP...well ASAP for me and for my husband it's pretty low priority! I also want to completely re-do this front porch. Planters, new mail box and hopefully a new screen door is on the list!

The other exterior doors were painted black and we plan on doing the same with the interior doors! This was definitely a time consuming project but let me tell you, the price of a couple cans of paint made a HUGE HUGE difference in this house!!! I love, love, love how the black looks!

We have begun our family hikes again. We plan on trying out different forest preserves and parks in the area and this is proving to be so fun! We are aiming to do at least 2 a week after dinner. Here the kids are learning how a water pump works and it got everyone pretty excited! It's a good thing we came across this AFTER our hike or this could have easily taken up the entire evening.

We trekked down into swampy areas to see if there were any signs of different animals around. Roman took a water sample here to check out under the microscope and YIIIKKEESSS!!!

The kids followed dog tracks down to the beach, but they suddenly stopped! It was fun watching all the different things they encountered and what they chose to take small samples of.

The first mini golf of the season was AWESOME and quite interesting! We were all incredibly rusty but it was sooo fun! (Pssst....I came in second place!). The interesting part came when we turned our clubs in and the skies opened up and suddenly a lightning storm began with pouring rain! It was incredible to watch from our car.

We spent much of the weekend at Home Depot and Lowes just picking up things for around the house. The kids love riding on these flat bed cars whether it is at Sam's Club or a home store, if it's on wheels, they are trying to hop on!

I spent the entire weekend fueling on this fantastic Iced Mint Green Tea that I made myself at home with MINT FROM OUR GARDEN!!! Even the kids absolutely fell in love with it!!
How to:

1. Boil 4 cups of water in a pan
2. After water is boiling, turn off and add 20 fresh mint leaves and 1 bag of green tea if desired.
3. Let steep for 6 minutes.
4. Remove leaves and Bag
5. Serve over ice! 

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Around the House...

Happy Friday! As many of you know, we just bought a house in August. We are slowly trying to make it our own, as time and money allow. Our work on the house usually begins on the weekends and that is only if my husband doesn't have to work OT and we don't have other family plans or things to drive our children to. Soooo you pretty much see how it's a painstaking process!

Here is one of my favorite places in the house. During a rain storm, my husband and I love to turn the couch around and just sit and watch it all come down. It's amazing and so calming. This week, I will be changing the ribbon around the 'S' to an all black color so that I can just leave it at that all year, instead of constantly changing it out based on the season. 

Our Family Command Center is SLOWLY getting started. I have a Dry Erase Calendar up along with a cork board and some file boxes. I would like to spell out LOVE in between those and then Family at the top. It is just a matter of finding what we need. I plan on adding another thinner and skinnier cork board to use as a menu board or maybe even a chalkboard. Still haven't found what I want yet. This space is ever evolving but I am glad that it is finally in it's beginning stages. 

Welcome to my livingroom coffee table. This is a giant magnet, is yours? It's a clutter magnet that I have to clean every.single.evening. Add in that it's glass and I have to clean it twice a day! LOL! How does it manage to constantly attract everything?? I should have taken this photo last night, so you could see how it looks at the end of a day! LOL!!

This is a picture of my evenings. No lie. Once the kids go to bed, my husband and I can be found in front of the fireplace playing games and drinking tea. We discuss the kids, our day, his work. It's the perfect way to unwind after a long and often tiring day.

I shared our classroom desk last week with you all and have just recently started adding various things to the space. Our latest addition is the low shelf that I knew I wanted in the space. Next thing that I need will be some frames in order to frame some artwork that I want to display under the shelf. It looked to naked under there. What's going on around your house?

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Thrifty and Easy Sand Box on the Go!

 Roman and I were dying to get out and play in this perfect weather, yet it was too chilly to be at the water table and I didn't want to start on the garden without the big kids there. We put our thinking caps on while sitting on the grass waiting for Gabriel to get out of school and came up with a fantastic idea, SAND!!

 Let's backtrack and talk about the big sandbox that the kids could fit in from last year (Step2) it was nice and luxurious, but the kids were always all sandy when they came in and it was a pain when they wanted to play quick and we had places to go. I wanted something EASY and Portable that could come with us when we went to grandparents homes and other visits where they get bored or antsy after 10 minutes of sitting there staring at eachother!

First, I had a large under bed storage container that was just sitting around empty. (Sal got it at the Salvation Army when he went and donated items, a man asked if he wanted to trade bins with him! haha) Next, a trip to Menards got us 2 bags of sand and random pieces that I found while strolling up and down the aisles! (toys can be made from ANYTHING!!) Finally I poured in the sand and tossed in the toys and we were ready to party!! I like this, because we can only use 1 half if that's all we want to play in OR the entire lid comes off! It's also on the wheels to make it easier for the kids to wheel around the back patio if they want to move it out of the way.