Limitless Learners Contest

Win $500 for college plus $1000 for a school or library.

When you love learning, there's no limit to what you can achieve! Apply to the Limitless Learners Contest to win money for college, plus a donation for your elementary school or local library.

Prize - Six (6) students will be selected to win the following:

• $500 to contribute to future education expenses.

• $1000 donation for their school or local library.

• Premium lifetime membership to Education.com for their educator.

Who qualifies - Applicants for the Limitless Learners Contest must:

• Be students in kindergarten to 5th grade as of the 2019–2020 school year.

• Have the written consent of a parent or legal guardian (see form here).

• Be legal residents of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia.

How to apply- Students will need to do the following by October 31, 2019 to apply:

• Obtain a completed consent form signed by the applicant's parent or legal guardian.

• Respond to the following prompt in the appropriate format (listed below): Describe a time when you were having so much fun, you didn't realize you were learning something new:

• Kindergarten students: Create a piece of art (e.g. draw or paint a picture) and write about what is happening, or ask an adult to write a sentence or two describing your picture.

• 1st grade students: Create a piece of art (e.g. draw or paint a picture) and write 1–3 sentences about it.

• 2nd grade students: Write a short story (5–8 sentences) and create at least one picture to illustrate it.

• 3rd grade: Write a short story, journal entry, or comic strip.

• 4th grade: Write a short story, journal entry, poem, or comic strip.

• 5th grade: Write a personal narrative, short story, poem, or comic strip.

• Submit the above to our judges - Via email to contest@education.com.

Holiday Worksheets

It is no secret that I love things holiday themed. I decorate for each and every holiday every year. I also love a good holiday craft or really anything holiday themed. Also as someone who works in education, I love pulling in the theme to anything educational for the kids. We try to make sure some of our activities are educational as well as fun during the holidays. The great people at Education.com have shared this fun tracing activity with me.

Grab a pencil and practice your handwriting and spelling with this fun St. Paddy's day word tracer. Check out Education.com for other fun spelling resources!

I love any sites that provides us additional resources for our kids and educational ones too! Be sure to check them out for lots of fun holiday themed activities. 

Child Hunger Efforts Today!

Did you know that 1 in 6 children in the United States face hunger?

That’s why Sarah Michelle Gellar teamed up with Mott’s and No Kid Hungry to design a one-of-a-kind lunch bag now available for auction on eBay to raise money and awareness for No Kid Hungry, a campaign to

end childhood hunger in America by national

nonprofit Share Our Strength.

From now until September 29, you can head over to ebay.com/usr/nokidhungry to place a bid on this unique masterpiece, 100 percent of the proceeds will go directly to No Kid Hungry!

Other celebrities that have personalized a Mott’s lunch bag include:  

• Landry Bender – actress
• Jordana Brewster – actress
• Gia Lopez – 8-year-old daughter of Mario and Courtney Lopez
• Danielle Monaro – Elvis Duran and the Morning Show
• Janice Dean – Fox News TV host and author

**** This information has been provided by Mott’s.

Basement Renovation 2018

I have posted before that when we bought our house a few years ago, we did so knowing that we wanted to finish the basement. It was a huge space, and we bought the house because the staircase was on the side and made the space appear bigger, this is different then 95% of the houses in our neighborhood....

We got a few prices to have all the work done last year, and Hubby was not impressed with the labor costs when he knew he could do the job himself. A few meetings with the township building office last Fall, and in February we were cleared to start building!

I posted here about our large delivery orders and progress, but now the final product!

Please excuse the mess, the kids moved in as soon as the carpet was installed:)

We made the space with a few distinctive areas, a TV space back by the stairs, a large open space for toys.....

 My workout area

A kitchen/craft area without carpet

 A full bathroom

I am more them impressed that Hubby completed this all in about 5 months while only doing it on weekends and nights and still working full time, going to all the kids events and games, and not missing any family functions. It was a labor of love and we are so happy with the way it came out.

Back to School Shopping Time

I love this time of year. I feel like the start of the new school year is like a chance to reset, almost better then New Year's. Maybe I am just in the mood to reset since we have accomplished all our DIY goals for the year! (More on that another day).

Back to school shopping has always been fun, but before my daughter was in Elementary School it was just not the same. I love looking for kids fashion clothes . My daughter is all about her "style" lately so we can't just go with what you find in the stores. But seriously how cute are these clothes from Popreal?

Also don't forget to pick up toddler girl jackets when you are on the Popreal site, I ALWAYS forget coats for my kids! We might try these this year....

Let me know what you pick up for your little ones!

Philadelphia Soul Phitness Expo

I wanted to take the time to share this fun event with all my local friends

You can get your tickets here: http://www.philadelphiasoul.com/index.cfm?go=tickets&show=expotix

Tickets also include admission to the Philadelphia Soul's game that night!

Seventh Generation Free & Clear Laundry Detergent Pods

I love the easy use of laundry pods, but have you noticed the over whelming scents of some of them? We have a huge issue with scents and dyes in our house, so we need to use only Free and Clear detergent products. So when Seventh Generation came out with laundry pods, I was all in to try them.

Here is some info about them:

Seventh Generation biobased Laundry Packs use quadruple-enzyme power to remove stains and leave your clothes looking as good as new! Plus, the toss-and-wash single-dose pods make laundry day simple and mess-free.

A clean you can trust! EPA Safer Choice certification means that every ingredient in our laundry packs has been reviewed by the EPA to ensure it meets their stringent human health & environmental criteria. You can relax, knowing that you have made a good choice.

The Free & Clear option, without any added fragrances, is made for sensitive skin.

- Quadruple-Enzyme Formula Removes Tough Stains

- EPA Safer Choice Certified Product

- USDA Certified Biobased Product - 94%

- All-temperature laundry packs work in hot and cold water.

- Effective in HE & standard washers.

- 0% dyes, synthetic fragrances, and artificial brighteners.


You have to check out your store for these pods, they are great.

** I received 2 sample packs to try for free, but all opinions are my own.

Basement Renovation

When we bought our house a few years back, we knew it needed a few things done. Mostly all cosmetic changes and nothing too big....well except the basement....

Yup that was the basement, a giant unfinished space. When we first moved in, we turned the office right off the kitchen into the girls playroom. It was perfect, they were close, but it had doors to close off the mess. It worked, but we always knew we wanted the office back, one day. We decided 2018 would be the year of the basement renovation. It took us a few weeks and a few trips to the Town office, but the plans were all approved and permits issued!

Next was a huge delivery from Lowe's

Yes that is a forklift at my house and that is only 1/4 of the wood pile....

Next the first wall went up...

And less then a month later....we had all the walls up.

More to come on this one......

Hello, Hello Fresh

I was sent a coupon code from a friend to try Hello Fresh (PS this link has a discount code too!) and I figured why not. We had been in a little bit of a food rut so why not. I went with the Classic Plan for Two because the meals looked better to us anyway and was excited to pick our first meals.

Veggie Loaded Orzo with Sausage was up first, ingredients laid out

First of all, I love that is comes all in a bag together so you just grab it and go. The meals are shown in about 6 steps so they move pretty fast and you are ready to eat in no time.

Plated and ready to eat (this meal feed Hubby and I dinner and me for lunch the next day)

Next up was Orange and Cashew Chicken Stir Fry, I got my little helper involved in cooking this one.

She loved being able to help me make dinner and even ate this one as well

This was my favorite meal the flavors were on point and so fun.

Finally we had Steak Tagliata, my helper again

The kids ate the arugula salad and sweet potatoes with this one (they are not steak fans...yet....)

Hubby loved the sweet potatoes from this recipe, so easy to do, and it was a nice change of pace for us and the kids.

We have decided to try another week of Hello Fresh because it gave us some fun ideas and was a great experience for the whole family. Any meal suggestions we should try?

Living Room Reno

This will be the year of projects in our house. We have a HUGE project coming up, but wanted to start with a smaller one, mainly to get a bunch of the stuff out of the basement.

This post will be very picture heavy, but we decided to put the built in bar in the living room before we did the basement reno to get a bunch of stuff out of the basement.

Here's goes....we started with prepping the wall, moving an air vent and adding a recess lighting.

Then it was time to paint

And put the beverage centers in place (my favorite part!)

Lower Cabinets in place

Counter top finished and installed and upper cabinets in place

And finally here it is!

I am so happy with who this came out. On to project #2!

Cutting the Cord

Does anyone else feel like changes come in waves around their house? I feel that our house is like that all the time. I feel like things are all status quo or we makes loads of changes, no middle ground at all. When we started renovating our living room (into a bar space, more to come later), the conversation went back to cutting the cord on cable.

This conversation started last fall, when I did all my research and showed the Hubby how much we could save. He did not really buy into, it so we continued on with cable. Fast forward 3 months and we are running new electrical in the living room and talking about putting the tv on the wall. When this conversation comes up, he says we really should look into cutting the cord, it would save on running more cable lines for this project and the big basement renovation that is on the block next.

I am sure you can guess my reaction, but trying to be smart and know that I could get my way, I remember the new tv sitting in a box in the basement.

*** Side note.... there was a brand new smart tv in a box in the basement just waiting for a home. Because on a snowy day in December, when apparently I needed a new car (my lease is not up until March) we got an SUV and a tv because the guy really wanted to sell a car that day.

So I went down stairs to finally look at this tv and see it is Roku equipped already. We plugged the tv in and set it up in the Living Room with a week trial of Sling TV. My Hubby was able to still see all his shows and watch Sports, he was sold (finally!!).

I called the cable company and actually upped our internet speeds and cut the cable off for good and was still saving money.

So there is a little bit of start up cost with cutting the cord, we are going with the Roku and Sling TV  route so we needed a few Roku products to make the switch (1 new tv check!) Our Sling TV sign up gave us this Roku Ultra as a bonus

This went on our main tv in the Family Room, then for the Master Bedroom we went with the cheaper Roku Express, because that would do the job fine for that room.

Finally, I wanted a Roku Streaming Stick to use for the tv that will go in the basement (currently out of the living room and waiting for walls to go up) that could also be used in the Guest Room. I was happy to see at the same time this one was on sale!

We were all set with our  Roku and Sling TV at this point. I will say so far so good. I actually think we are watching less tv and being more intentional about what we do watch, and I am paying less. There is a little start up cost involved with the Roku equipment, but for just over $100 I was set and ready to go.

Any advise on favorite Roku channels we might not have found?

Shaving Tips from Harry's

I will be the first to tell you that I actually buy men's razors because I think they work better, and have you noticed they are cheaper! Harry's razors were created after realizing that people are spending too much money and decided to create high-quality razors and sell them directly to the customer straight from their factor in Germany. I wanted to share with you all the great products you can get from them for the man in your life (or maybe yourself!).

You can check out this page for some awesome starter kits like this one:

Do you know how to get the best shave? Here are some handy tips for both men and women in order to help achieve your skin care goals for 2018:

So I know I need to keep my razors out of the shower now....

Also, you can click here for your FREE trial! Sounds like a great Valentine's Day present for the special man in your life:)

Starting the year off healthy

I think the new year makes everyone stop and thinking about being more healthy. Sometimes it lasts all year (Yay to me for last year) sometimes it does not (most years!). I always like to make all our family Doctor's appointments at the start of the year (or try to anyway). I thought this graphic was super helpful to remind people what appointments they need as they get a little older.

Family Command Center

So if you are like me, and a little Pinterest addicted, I am sure you have seen the many options for "Family Command Centers." When we moved into our house last year, I bought this from Ikea to hang by the door we come in the house all the time. It worked well at first, then became cluttered looking, although it was still good for calendars and notes and such.

After seeing all the "Family Command Centers" and making my chore charts for the girls, I knew we needed to do something a little more. So I mapped out my space with painters tape and got to work!

I knew I wanted to hang the chore charts above a hook for each of the girls to put their bookbags. (Putting them on the bar stools in the kitchen was driving me nuts) So I had Hubby pick up these at Lowe's and I got plan document frames for the chore charts.

I also knew that I wanted to have a "cubby" for each family member to store papers and such to keep them off the counter. Again the paper on the counter = driving me nuts. After TONS of looking, I found this on Amazon:

I loved the shelf at the bottom for the dry erase markers for the chore charts and there was room for us each to have a folder. Arriving in 2 days (thank you Prime!) and I was all set to go.

So here is our final product and I am in LOVE! My counters and stools are clear and EVERYONE is using the system (fingers crossed it keeps up!)