We're tidying up!

 At the end of December, I read The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo and got very excited.  There are some crazy parts of this book, for sure, but I loved Kondo's thorough methods for going through your stuff and paring down to what sparks joy.  The amount of stuff in our house had really started to bother me - it was hard to clean and hard to put things away.  We have only sporadically decluttered after moving here, and we still had stuff like we lived in a much bigger house.

She recommends going through each category of item in your home and looking at them all together and touching each one.  So, that's all my shoes.  (Clearly, I owned two many pairs of shoes.)  It seems like a simple thing, but gathering all the things makes it much easier to see what sparks joy and what's just a duplicate and what I actually forgot I had in my closet.

This is all our cups on the kitchen table.  There are 4 people in this house.  I don't believe we've ever had more than 8 people eat a meal here.  I had no idea we had so many until I pulled them out of the cabinets.

13 bags/boxes have left our house so far.  Matt and I have done clothes, books, and papers, and started slowly on the miscellaneous stuff, like DVDs and cups.  We haven't even started on the rest of the kitchen cabinets or the girls' massive wardrobes and toy collections!

{this moment}

First Snow 2016

This is just the first taste...it's still coming down!

Merry Christmas!

Here's a bunch of pictures from our Christmas celebrations this year.  Actually, this is just pictures of the opening presents part.  We DID, in fact, eat several nice family meals and read the Christmas story and light candles and listen to music and many things that had nothing to do with stuff.

Piper got a giant stuffed horse!

{this moment}

What We're Loving Now {October 2015}

*Downtown Greenville.  We got to go for a few hours a couple weeks ago and loved it.  Clean, and pretty, and there was a free trolley.

Cadence on the trolley

Piper on the trolley

At Falls Park - so lovely

*Fixer Upper and Jane the Virgin on Netflix!

*Visits from Aunt Pami and Nana while Matt was SUPER busy with work

*Speaking of Matt, he made a cameo appearance as Doctor Who (Matt Smith) in the school Cirque show this year, and was charming and hilarious

Matt in costume, in profile
"I wear a fez now. Fezzes are cool."

Happy Halloween!

This year, Cadence was Felicity, the discontinued American girl doll.  (Basically, a colonial girl).  I made her whole costume, which I came to regret a little bit, because while it turned out great - it took a lot of my precious free time this month.

Piper was a unicorn.  This was a super easy costume.  I made a felt horn and attached it to a headband, then made a mane and tail with ribbon and yarn attached to felt.

what we're loving now {September 2015}

*The American Girl movies.  We've watched Kit Kitteridge, Samantha: An American Girl Holiday, and Molly: An American Girl on the Homefront, and Felicity, thanks to a 4 DVD collection from the local library.  They are a little complicated for Piper, but the history is appealing and not too scary.  Also, they prompted some interesting questions about serious issues.  And, Cadence decided she wants to be Felicity for Halloween.

*Cinnamon apples.  Piper will eat apples that aren't cut, but ever since her first loose tooth, Cadence won't.  I'm finally able to send them in her lunch due to this super easy trick - simply cut an apple and sprinkle the slices with cinnamon.  They are delicious and any browning is unnoticeable.  I got the idea from Foodlets here.

*The bus that takes the girls and their friends to school.   Honestly, I don't know that the girls are so excited about the bus, but they haven't complained.  Mainly, I LOVE having extra time, especially in the mornings.  I can drop the girls off, eat breakfast in the dining hall if I want, or head home and get some chores done.

Piper on the bus!

*Pumpkin spice Oreos.  We bought a pack last weekend and we all loved them.  Thankfully it was a small pack; we polished them off quickly and now they are out of our system.  Maybe. Let's hope.

*For the Love by Jen Hatmaker.  It's making me laugh out loud, it's making me think.  There's just nothing like grace.

Cadence is 7! An interview

Favorite color: "All the colors except orange."
Favorite book: Fancy Nancy or Magic Treehouse
Favorite food: I don't know
Favorite dessert: I don't know
Favorite song: Let it go and Tomorrow
Favorite subject at school: math and listening to reading
Favorite place to go: "I think the dining hall because I can see my friends."
Favorite toy: all of them
What do you want to be when you grow up?: "I'm going to keep that a secret...I have a lot of ideas."
How many teeth have you lost?: "Let me count...6!"

What we are loving now {august 2015}

Here's what we were loving this August:

1. Duplos. Piper became straight up obsessed with these this month. She has always been a builder, now she loves making homes for all her little animals.

2. Stacy's Pita Chips - Simply Naked. Listen, August is hard. Everyone goes back to school; there are a slew of meetings; we all get used to new routines.  I Big-puffy-heart LOVE pita chips. Like, I can't buy the big bags anymore because I will eat the whole thing in 2 days. So I got the 24 pack of individual bags. And their crunchy saltiness carried me through.

3. Gilmore Girls. This is my favorite show of all time. And, because August is so exhausting, I hit good old GG hard this month. It's familiar, fast-paced, funny, full of feeling. 

4. Nancy Clancy, Super Sleuth.  Cadence has been a long-time fan of the Fancy Nancy books.  It's become a full-on franchise with picture books, beginning readers and chapter books.  She's not ready to read these chapter books on her own, so we usually read one chapter each night.