Randomness of our Home

On any given day when you enter the Mackeson house hold...

 there is no telling what you will find where. 

Enter our home today and you will find:

un opened battery pack in the bathroom

kids cup in a vase

Spatula in the entryway

and who doesn't have a head lamp in the living room?

what would we find if we entered your home?

DIY Ghetto Style

Black Out Shades in 5 easy steps

What you will need:

- Bright sunny mornings

- A 1 yr old that is waking up anywhere between 5 & 5:30am

- Current curtains

- 2 large black garbage bag 

- Scissors 

1. Start by cutting the garbage bag down the seems on both sides

2. Remove curtains from rod and lay curtain right side down

3. Take black garbage bag that you cut, and attach at the top seem of the curtain with the straight pins

4. Repeat on second curtain panel

5. Hang back up 

 Can't even see the ghettoness 

 This picture was taken during the day!

Blake is now sleeping till 7-7:30... mission accomplished and it didn't cost me a dime!! 

Ghetto lovin, 

Cleaning... my nemisis

I have had a lot of people ask me my cleaning routine lately.... I guess they think my house is clean or something!!  I guess I got them tricked! 

Actually I am a creature of routine and I do love a clean/picked up house, who doesn't? 

I have found that for me and my life it doesn't work to pick one day and clean the whole house.  When Cade was my only child it worked really well to do upstairs one day and down stairs another day.  After several attempts to do that after Blake was born I finally gave up and realized it wasn't going to work.  So here is usually how I go about cleaning.  I do this "deep clean" every other week.  

MONDAY:  Showers

TUESDAY: Toilets & sinks/counters 

WEDNESDAY: Dust/vacuum upstairs

THURSDAY: Mop kitchen & entry

FRIDAY: Dust/vacuum downstairs

On my off week I obviously still vacuum several times and spot mop the kitchen but I also try (emphasis on the try) to pick a room or an area that needs some extra attention and work on organizing and de-cluttering it.

This just seems to work for me.  Doing the deeper cleaning every other week helps me not feel like I'm a slave to house cleaning and it also gives us a chance to live in and dirty up the house!  This week is my cleaning week and now that the boys are playing together it has made it SO much nicer.  I actually found myself cleaning while they were both awake. This is a whole new thing for me!  I could get used to it!

Happy cleaning,

Boys will be boys (oh ya and I girl)

One Tues a month our community group meets at our home. 

This Tues was our week.  It's such a blessing to get together, we always have an amazing dinner, lots of fellowship, worship, and laughs.  

As the adults were inside we sent the kiddoz to the back yard to play.  Good idea right?!  

As the evening was coming to a close I went out to check on the kids and this is what I found:

Apparently mud soup was on the kids menu and as they were diligently cooking it up the hose got left on a little too long.  

This was one of those moments that could go 1 of 2 ways.  I could freak out because my patio was flooded and had a river of mud and bark running through it.  Or I could let go and let it go.  

After all the kids were

1. quiet

2. playing nicely together

3. un-harmed

4. having fun

What do you need to work on letting go of?

Letting go more,

Nothing to Something

We have a corner in our living room that to put it bluntly, SUCKS!

It has a weird pop out for the bathroom that resides on the other side of it and is just super choppy.

I have always hated it and we usually have our armoire possitioned in the corner to mask/hid the weirdness. But with our growing family, toys & soon to be baby things ie. bouncy seat, jumparoo, and car seat, we decided to move the armoire and open up this corner. Doing so made the living room seem way more spacious but it opened up the weird corner and it's even wirder walls.

So without spending money I went searching around the house for something to "help" the walls out.

Here is what I came up with...

I don't have a good before picture so the one with our Christmas tree will have to do.

Before:

After: