Sick Days Are Made Of. . .

This cold season has been vicious on our family. Mostly the kids but each of us has had our turn. Thankfully my Beloved and I have managed to stay on top of this most recent bought by taking pureed ginger mixed with lemon juice daily. I'm tired of being cooped up in this house.

I want OUT!!!!

So I thought today should be a fun day.

After some searching on pinterest I found a few inspirations. Although nothing really came together until I was in the shower (anyone else find this happening to them often?). You see the other night at dinner my youngest was asked if mommy is fun. She responded with a chuckle and a no. However when asked if daddy is fun she quickly answered yes. The difference? Mommy is all business all the time, bath time? get in, get clean, get out. How does daddy do bath time? There are plots and story lines with twists, splashing and all the things that mommy says 'stop it' to.

So back to my shower I thought what would be fun for the kids? And as I stared at the shower curtain I remember a pin I had seen that morning of a fort made from a hula hoop and a shower curtain. Perfect! I have an extra shower curtain sitting in the entry bench, a hula hoop behind Beloise' bed. Now how to hang it from the ceiling? I don't have extra curtain rings. . . Zip ties! and I'm pretty sure we don't have rope so . . . I'll just have to explore and see what I can find.

Out in daddy's garage. . . I finally found the zip ties and some white ribbon like thing with DURA-LINE BULL-LINE printed on it. (my Beloved referred to it as mule tape when I asked him if I could use some, after I already had :]).

The girls were ecstatic by the time I had my supplies gathered. I hadn't told them what I was up to, just in case it didn't work out. But once I started zipping those zip ties Ballerina figured things out pretty quickly.

I didn't require them to clean the play room too much so please don't look around, for some reason they have been stacking my extra paper towels into pyramids and placing bottled water on top. I think perhaps they were playing store.

So we read through most of their library books and then it was time for me to make lunch. After lunch is movie hour and then mom's favorite time of the day quiet hour. I am horrible at quiet hour, I spend most of the time in their room telling them to be quiet. Daddy achieves quiet no problem, but hopefully with more practice I will get better at it. Today I think they are both asleep. I know Beloise is because the poor thing has been sick the past week.

While the kids are quiet, and a little while they weren't, I have been re-ordering my household binder. It contains our schedules, bills to pay, coupons, take-out menus, and commonly referenced manuals. Really this is just a small way for me to keep down on the paper clutter in our house.

My first inspiration came from a blog post at iHeart Organizing where she showed her finance binder, yes she too is a lover of all things contained in binders. I loved her finance checklist but sadly it was one of the few things that were not free, you had to buy it from her etsy store. That's fine but being pressed for time and cash I just recreated it in excel. 

The only thing I really changed were the colors and some of the fancy I didn't have time to figure out how to create. But for me it works. I'm excited to have a one stop check point for how our bills change throughout the year. It's really more of a curiosity thing than a necessity.

Then I searched for a pretty printable calendar because time is running out on quiet time and I had to come up with something quick. I found this and LOVE it! Free printable on Scribd by TomKat Studio.

And another shot because she's just so pretty. Although I probably would have done a different font on the days of the week but perhaps next time.

Then I needed to organize my coupons a bit so I thought of some categories for the coupons that sit on my counter the most and went with it. I'm sure this will change as the year progresses since I have already thought that perhaps clothes should be one and maybe I want to use the shorter tabs instead of direct labeling on the page protectors but we'll see how it goes.

So that is how we are spending our sick day in. Perhaps now that my binder is pretty I will finish my taxes. Or perhaps I should just figure out what's for dinner. . .

Ahhhh take-out menus, how convenient.

~And So That's What She Did.