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. 

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.

Reasons to love Aaptiv

Scale and Freshness: More than 2,500 classes are available on the platform. There are 20 active trainers who create new classes each week. More than 50 classes are added to the Aaptiv platform every week. Each class is individually produced in a professional recording space, with state-of-the-art sound mixing technology powered by a talented sound engineering team.

Affordability: For $14.99 a month or $99.99 for the year, members get unlimited, on-demand access to classes in running, cycling, elliptical, strength training, stair climbing, and more. Access to exceptional personal training has never been easier, coming at a fraction of the cost of hiring a personal trainer, purchasing expensive equipment, or being confined to one fitness location.

Convenience: Wherever individuals prefer to work out -- at the gym, at home, on the road for business -- Aaptiv goes along with its members. This factor has helped Aaptiv scale much more quickly than services that are confined to particular equipment or studio locations. Aaptiv classes can be taken anywhere, at any time.

Empathy: Most fitness solutions expect people to change their programs and routines. Aaptiv lets people choose the workout types and locations they prefer, and “meets” each member on their own fitness journey. Trainers conceive of and produce workout classes that suit the needs of people at every stage of fitness: novice, beginner, intermediate, or advanced. A Facebook community of more than 22,000 devoted Aaptiv members interact regularly with trainers to learn about how they can get even more out of their workouts.

Differentiators: Aaptiv is the only fitness company that focuses exclusively on audio content. Audio as a means is also underappreciated. It’s the most natural fashion for consuming content because it’s how people already communicate. The success of the medium is reflected in the growth of Audible, podcasts, and products like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Now, and Siri. Aaptiv’s all-you-can-eat model provides accessibility that has never existed in fitness before.

You should check it out here! 

Aaptiv On Sale this Summer

I wanted to re-share information about a great workout program I have found. If you are busy like me and joining a gym is just not something that will work in your schedule you need to check out Aaptiv

The app has TONS of workout that are geared towards anything that you might like. There is music and a trainer to help you stay motivated the whole time and really push you to do more. I have really found this to be a great app to help me fitting in those workouts in the summer time. Check it out for free for 30 days, and for the summer they are also running a 30% of sale after that!

Let me know what you think:)

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?

Old Becomes New Again

We love projects in our house, and reusing things, and not throwing away things that can be useful. Can you see where this might be going? My mom was selling the house that I grew up in and we had this table in the basement (for years and years)

My grandfather and his brother hand built the whole thing. It is huge and heavy and been in the family for decades. I did not really have room for it as a table, but I did still need a headboard.

The amazing hubby cut it down to size, stripped all the old stain off, and used the backing to make legs for it.

Then he white (well gray) washed it, after we tried a few colors of paint on the pieces that came off. Finally it was time to bring it in the house and here it is!

Commercial Palm Trees

The generous people at Commercial Palm Trees contacted me right before the holidays to try out some of the great residential products they offer. Talk about having great timing, I was just removing all the annuals from the large pot by the front of our house and trying to figure out what I was going to do with it. (Way to heavy to move anywhere for the winter months). A quick peak around the website and I found this (now sold out):

It comes in a 12 pack so I figured it would be enough to fill my pot. A few weeks later the package arrived, it did not look like a lot in the box..... (I was a little nervous at this point).

But the product looks great so I took the girls outside to put them in the pot. All finished, and I still have extras too!

I love how realistic and festive they look, the best part they are made to be outdoors so they are really surviving well, as winter has finally come to visit us. Check out all the things that the Commercial Palm Trees people have to offer.

***No compensation was received for this post. I received the product to review but all opinions are my own.

Chore Charts

We, and by we I really mean me, decided that we needed to have chore charts at the house. I felt that the girls were not taking on any responsibility and just expected me to do everything for them (can my Mommas out there agree?) So to Pinterest I went, and came up with there:

For my non-reader:

For my reader:

I laminated the charts and we are using dry-erase markers on them to check off the chores.

The idea is they get to check the box each day when they do the activity and on Sunday morning they count the checks and get a quarter for each one. So far we are a few days in and it has been working well. They love helping out and I feel like there is a lot less on my plate.

Any ideas for more chores to add for a almost 4 and 6 year old?

Vinyl Disorder Review

We have had a little bit of an issue in the new house...lots more walls that need something on them. I am not sure how, but I feel like we have TONS of extra wall space now. The dining room was already painted in colors that mostly worked with our furnishing from the old house so we just started decorating in there.

The pictures worked, but we had one wall that our current picture would not look right on and just needed something. I searched EVERYWHERE but could not find something that would fit the theme or work on such a dark color. Hubby came up with the idea of going with a fun quote on the wall.

We looked around and finally found this:

I loved the quote and it was perfect for the dining room, but I wanted it a different way on the way. I emailed the super responsive company and they told me I could cut the quote into as many pieces as I needed. I was sold I ordered right away. We got the quote at 60'' and in a dark grey.

When it arrived I was so eager to put it up. Here it is after being cut into 3 sections:

Then here is hubby putting it up on the way.

This went up super easy. We did use a play dough rolling pin to help get all the letters securely on the wall. Other than that it went on super easy. I loved that this is just the letters on the wall no other materials. Here is the final product (picture is not great, but we love it):

*** No compensation was received for this post, but they did provide a discount code for trying their product. All opinions are my own.