mom
Life as a mom of 4
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Pantry organization
I have seen beautiful pantries on Pinterest and on some bloggers posts, beautiful shelves, beautiful containers and labels. You won’t see anything extraordinary in my pantry but I thought it would be nice to share my pantry with all of you so that you could see that you do not have to spend a lot of money to have an organized and happy pantry. Over the past year or so I have purchased a few Room Essentials containers from Target and I ordered a few more in the past couple of weeks since I had not seen the color in stores and was worrried I wouldn’t be able to find…
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February favorites
This month my favorites are different as in they are not purchases. I did buy a few new skirts from Shein, a pair of leggings from Go 2 (which I will review and compare with my Zella leggings next month) but my favorites are moments and things I made! Homemade yogurt After at least a year of not making yogurts, I am back at it. My 9 year old kept asking when I would be making some yogurt and while the boys do love the whole milk vanilla 32 oz yogurt tubs from Kroger, we do go through them fairly quickly. If you have a favorite yogurt recipe, please share.…
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Mom’s French Crepes
When I mentioned making crêpes in my last Friday’s post several people mentioned how they enjoyed crêpes so today, I am sharing the recipe my mom gave me. I am not sure whether she found this recipe in France but she probably did since there is where I grew up eating crêpes. Instead of an American breakfast for dinner as I sometimes make me, we would have crêpes for dinner and usually sweet and not savory crêpes. Having crêpes for dinner was a special treat. I do not make crêpes very often for the simple reason that with a family of 6, we go through a batch pretty quickly. While…
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Weekend routines
I strive on routines. I love the school year because I know when the children need to get up, go to school, when I can work on my blog and visit friends. I also do like summers and school breaks and for the long breaks I usually create some routines such as when snacks and meals are, some outings and when we go to the pool for example. That still allows for some freedom and some impulsivity too. Now surprisingly, Saturday can be my least favorite day of the week! Why is that? Here is what I came up with: lack of schedule lack of plans To battle my dislikes…
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January favorites
Well, I am refraining from mindlessly clicking add to cart on Amazon and thinking through before making any clothing purchases but this past week, I did add 2 things to my closet. # 1 Tommy HIllfiger black puffer jacket My puffer jacket is a hand me down from my mother in law and while I do like the white color of it with its crispness, it is a little large and not always practical. After putting some thought into it, I decided that I wanted a black puffer jacket with a hood for the end of this winter and for the future. Such a jacket would be practical if we…
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Teaching children to behave in restaurants
While we typically don’t eat at restaurants with the children when we are home, we do eat out often when we are on vacation. We usually get compliments on our children’s behavior even though we sometimes wince if we think they get too loud. They do usually behave fairly well and do not disturb others much. I travel often times alone with them in the summer and take them all out to eat on our roadtrips and usually do not have to deal with meltdowns. Today I decided to share some tips on how to teach children to behave in an appropriate manner at restaurants. Practice: even if it is…
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My closet: then and now
In the past month, I have been in a purging mode even more than usual. In an attempt to curb my shopping, I am shopping my closet. I have realized over the past year that less is oftentimes more. Having an organized, uncluttered closet allows you to see what you have. I am very lucky to have a large walk in closet that I do not have to share. It is large enough that I do not use all of the hanging space. I wanted to share some pictures of what my closet looked like in March of last year in an earlier post called Finding Inspiration for Outfits. My…
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Share a recipe: Boston Butt
This is one of those recipes that is so simple but yet so delicious. Before getting married, I had never had Boston Butt and when my father in law lived with us for 6 month early on, he shared a couple of his simple but oh so tasty recipes. This is the Boston Butt at its best. Ingredients: boston butt worcheshire sauce garlic salt tabasco sauce BBQ sauce I usually buy my Boston Butts when they are on sale for 99c/lb at Kroger but sometimes Aldi sells boneless ones for $1.49 and it is sure worth getting a few then too for the ease of not having to take the…
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2020 Budget Goals
Each year, at the start of the year I revisit our budget, make adjustments and outline some goals. This year, with a new tool in hand (my Budget by Paycheck workbook, see this post and this post) and a somewhat of a new budget, here are my adjustments and goals. Food budget These 4 boys of mine can eat! While my husband travels out of town 4 days of week, I still go through groceries quickly. Yogurts and snacks disappear quickly and sometimes meals don’t leave any leftovers. So I adjusted my grocery/household budget from $600 to $700. I will still strive from $600 but I will not beat myself…
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Orthodox Nativity
Since we celebrate Nativity, Christ’s birth (Christmas) on January 7th, I wanted to share a peek into our celebration. Since we follow the old church calendar, we are on the same calendar as the Orthodox church in Russia and in the Republic of Georgia. We actually spoke to my father in law on the 25th who is in the Republic of Georgia right now and he was saying the kids were just returning from school. Their school break lasts about a month and starts this week I think. Other Orthodox do follow the new calendar and celebrate on the 25th such as my parents’ church. On a practical side I…