October It is.....

What a beautiful fall day :)

My kids are inside watching a movie. Yep. Well, for what it's worth I had intended for them to be outside today. And they were outside until lunchtime. They played in the yard, and Ardyn played outside at preschool. But after lunch, they both wanted to watch the Winnie the Pooh movie, and although I thought about pushing them back out the door, I realized that the movie might be a good wind down to naptime, and violin practice, and it would also allow me to dump the 4000 photos and videos that are on my iPhone and making it full. And switch the laundry and such. I spent the whole beautiful day yesterday inside (although the windows were open) because I am really trying to get caught up on regular housework and get some serious clutter under control. I have been working on our bedroom for several days now. I have cleared out my bookshelf, and Evan's dresser, and my jewelry armoire, and 94% of the floor and a good portion of laundry baskets and hampers of clean clothes. I still have two that need to be packed away (too small clothes of the kids) and one of kid clothes that needs put in their dressers yet. But even those need to be reorganized. Oy. I have been trying to sell pants and jeans of mine that are too small, I have sold all but seven of 17 pair of pants. I bought myself one new pair to replace them :)

My sock drawer needs gone through again, and my underwear drawer. So little time!

Fall weather gets me in the cleaning mode, plus the fact that I am hosting Bunco next week means that I need to find some horizontal surfaces to have room for everyone in this little place. I still need to go buy the food ingredients and also the prizes, which I think I might get this weekend while I am on the Spoon River Scenic Drive with my mom. I am so looking forward to that. But first I must get through this week, which includes getting the house picked up before the cleaning ladies come on Friday. There is also a PJWC meeting Thursday night, but I don't know if I am going yet or not. There just seems to be a TON going on.

Today I finished painting a footed bowl for my friend EA. She is part of a Race for the Cure team and is doing a large fundraiser in a couple of weeks, and asked if I would hand paint a piece of pottery that could be auctioned off at the fundraiser. I worked on it last week and finished it today, while Ardyn was in school. It was fun for me because I didn't have to pay for it, and she watched Marek so I could go while Ardyn was in school. It was like "me time" in most regards. I can't wait to see it finished, it's hard to tell what it is going to look like when it is unfired. If you have never painted pottery before, the paint colors are dull and chalky looking and most of them don't even look like the finished color, so that leaves a lot to the imagination. I sure hope it's pretty.

After school the kids and and I came home and collected a BUNCH of eggs. I think Gloria might be laying again, and now I think BOTH pullets (young hens) are laying. There were 5 eggs in the last 30 hours or so, and we were lucky enough to see ONE of them being laid first hand. One of the younger hens was pacing around the bunny hutch, and you may know that we have recently found an egg on two separate occasions, inside the bunny's nest box. The chickens fly into the attached run on the front of the bunny hutch (which has an open top) and then they settle in the bunny hutch to lay in the nest box. it's so much like theirs, and lined with the same pine bedding, they just feel at home. The bunny is not terribly fond of it. She doesn't seem to mind the chickens themselves, even when they are in the hutch with her. It's the foreign oval object in her nest box that terrifies her. She won't even go IN the hutch if there is an egg in there.

So today we watched the hen fly over the top and go right into the bunny nest box and start to make herself a nest. Then I even caught the laying off the egg on video, and the kids saw it, which was pretty cool.

While we were watching the hen in the nest box, Briar Bunny was in the other side of her hutch watching, and Licorice (the wild bunny that escaped) hopped inside the fence to check out what all the fuss was about. Talk about crazy!

Although it's a beautiful day and I have a ton to accomplish, I am seriously thinking about taking a nap with the kids today. Partially because I know Ardyn won't take one because she will be busy peeking out her windows (and if she lays down with me I can prevent that) and partially because I am tired. I stayed up late last night working in my room on the dressers. It takes forever because they seem to be landing place for all kinds of confiscated items, and all kinds of things the kids lay up there. Like hair clips. There must be 5000 hair clips around this place. Ardyn takes them off wherever and hands them to me or sits them on the dresser, and then I find them as I uncover the layers of crap that get stacked there.

I also went through all my DVD's and put them into a DVD organizer (a binder style one just like this one) that I have had for exactly EIGHT MONTHS but have yet to take out of the package and take the time to organize the DVDs. Yep. That's how my life is. So I finally say down yesterday and took all the DVDs out of their cases and put them into the binder. I really like it. It is a pretty THICK binder, but it does take up less space than all the DVDs did. I decided that I do need a few more movies, I only have the first two Harry Potter movies, which the kids started watching, and I also only have the first Pirates of the Caribbean. Plus the Bourne movies are some of my favorites and I love to watch them over again, and would love to have all of them on DVD. I keep the kids DVDs in a separate binder that is smaller and doesn't hold liner notes. I just keep the cases in the same cabinet that holds all the VHS tapes. But with mine, I didn't have room or the desire to keep the cases.

I went to JoAnn this past weekend to grab the plastic for the dining room table. About once a year I use a 50% or 40% off coupon to buy the heavy 16-18 gauge plastic to cover my tablecloths. If I don't cover them, the kids have them destroyed in no time. the last piece of plastic I bought cost me about $14 and lasted me almost a whole year. it would have lasted the whole year had Ardyn not decided to stick foam gingerbread stickers onto it. Those foam things are EVIL. They do NOT come off. So anyway, I had a cool fabric halloween tablecloth that I had bought on clearance last fall, and I wanted to use it but didn't DARE until I got more plastic. When I was there they also had a tie-dye fleece print that I hadn't seen on sale for about 3.5 years. I was super excited and it was 40% off so I got 2 yards to make a blanket with. Of course, they were out of the coordinating orange anti-pill so I have to go back another time to get that other side of the blanket. I was frustrated because they had ELEVEN bolts of Orange Blizzard fleece, but no anti-pill. Sounds like an ordering mishap if you ask me.

They had their paper stacks (like DCWV) on sale for $9.99 instead of $19.99 and I was excited because I wanted to see the "performance stack," which is new, in person. It has lots of musical and violin papers, but they were almost all GOLD and I was kinda like eeeew. the paperstack wasn't as impressive as I wanted to be, and the few papers that I really did like can be purchased separately on scrapbook.com, so when the time comes I will just do that instead.

I have more I could say, but my wrists are bugging me (ala carpal tunnel) and the iPhone still has 97 videos to upload, so I will just call it quits here for now. Look out for the egg laying video, which I will try to get posted today, hopefully here, but at least on facebook if I can.