Gone Viral...

I'm not on Pinterest a lot.  I go there when I'm looking for inspiration or for a recipe.  I have posted thing on the site that I've made or done, and I have a board of things my Daddy has made.  I have about 10 boards on there nothing fancy.  I know people who spend hours on there.  More power to them, not for me.

But...I posted a picture of our Minnie Mouse bathroom and it's gone viral.  Almost everyday I get an email telling me someone else re-pinned my post.  I'll open the email and it's always our Minnie Mouse bathroom.

I don't have Pinterest connected to this blog because I don't take the time to explain step by step how I built things so I'm very surprised it went viral.  I have like 80 something re-pins.  Crazy!

I'm a celebrity!  But I promise to take level headed and not act like the total snob I could be...

Checking One, Two...

On of my friends at work has an 8 year old and a 4 year old.  The little boy is a handful like Erin.  Sharon and I share stories all the time.  I harbor no illusions that Erin is perfect.  Overall she is a good girl, but she has her moments so we need a punishment and reward system.

Sharon was telling me she bought a spiral notebook and came up with a check mark system for her kids.  Not sure where she got the idea, but I thought it was pure genius.  Like any good thief, I stole the idea and made it my own.

I took to the computer because I wanted something I could post on the fridge in the kitchen.  I wanted it visible to Erin at all times.  I sat her down and explained it to her.  She had a hard time understanding it at first, but now she's on board.  Tommy was the one that took a little convincing.  He picked on me about how "hard to hold" it was but now I think he sees how it's working.  I've even heard him tell her he was going to take away a check mark.

It's working like a charm.  She has about about 9 "chores" and tasks on her list.  They range from going poop on the potty with no accidents to giving the dogs a treat every day.  There is also a misc column.  I added it in the second week so we could reward her good behavior.  She also has to be on green at school and she has to say please and thank you to get a check.  I can tell her I'll give her a check or that I'm going to take a check away and she pops into line.  She gets so worried that I'll take one away.

At the end of the week we'll give her a treat of some kind.  Last Friday Tommy got her a little something from the dollar bin and you would have thought it was a diamond.  This week I think she'll get a shake from Sonic.  She loves them.  (Like mother like daughter)

Of course when I made the list I had to add a little bling to it so it has a chain of flowers at the bottom.  I wanted her to like it and get on board.  I'm always willing to try new things with Erin.  It's all part of the Jedi Mind Tricks we use on her.

Grating on My Nerves...

Okay, I can admit it...my plan to have Scooby slap some sense into Mae may not be going completely as planned.  While they play non-stop and he has calmed her down a lot, she has converted him to the dark side with more than one bad habit.

Mae loves to get food off the kitchen counter.  I once caught her eating a loaf of bread she had snagged.  She was eating it plastic wrap and all and I had to practically wrestle it away from her.  Well, Scooby doesn't get things off the counter (yet), but I have noticed that occasionally he'll pop his head up there to see what looks good.

She has also taught him to stand on Erin's little table outside.  They can stand on the table and see into the living room because I have the blinds at half mast.  They scope things out all the time.  They aren't hurting the table so I really don't mind.  But, it is a little weird to have one of them looking at me thru the door and the other standing on the table eyeballing me.

The fireplace, the fireplace, the fireplace...I cannot keep them out of the fireplace.  They both love to eat the lava rock that we have in the bottom of the gas fireplace!!  It's crazy.  I'll be sitting here on the computer at the kitchen island in the mornings and I'll hear the loudest crunching.  Both of them will be standing there munching on lava rock.  It's the craziest thing I've ever seen.  Tommy gets so mad.  It happens before he gets up but they are messy eaters.  We'll find little pieces of lava all over the living room and bottom of the stairs. (Mainly you find them with your feet.)  So, Tom complains that they are tearing the house up.  Just one more strike against poor Mae in Tommy's eyes.

We had been meaning to buy a fireplace screen for a while but just haven't gotten around to it.  I didn't want one when Erin was little because I was afraid she would pull up on it and it would fall over on her.  Now that she's bigger and the dogs are eating us out of rock and home, I bought one.  They were surprisingly hard to find and pretty expensive.  Amazon had a bunch of them but none that I liked.  On a whim I checked Home Depot and liked one of them immediately.  I was worried about the shipping cost but I ended up spending more than $50 so I got it shipped for free.

This morning is the first morning with the grate, so I'm sure the dogs will be ticked.  I wanted to see it with the fire going, so I've got it blazing now.  I think it looks good.

Here's a pic... now my little scoundrels will have to eat dog food and Milk Bones instead!

Another Collaboration...

I was talking to a friend at work about bookshelves in our kid's rooms.  The ones we have are built in to her dresser and don't allow Erin to see the front of the books, only the spines.  The Little Golden books that she loves don't have writing on the spine.  So, every night we dig through a pile of books looking for the prefect one.

My friend Sharon found an idea on Pinterest and I was interested.  It was rain gutter book shelves.  You cut off the rain gutters, put on the end caps and hang them on the wall.  From there you put the books in so the front faces out.  The kids can see the front and you have no more digging.  Sharon said they did the project but didn't hang them on a stud so they sagged and came off the wall.  It would have been a easy fix, but I wanted to see if there was something I liked better...

I took to Pinterest and no shock at all...I found the perfect ones.  These are made of wood, so I had to recruit Pawpaw for the project.  It was on a blog written by a girl who makes all her own things.  The blog gave step by step instructions and I could have done it by myself if I had the time.  I could have had the people at Home Depot cut the wood for me and I already know how to use the nail gun but I know how Pawpaw loves a good project.

Pawpaw has been laying low this winter.  He's like a groundhog.  He will only come out to work on projects when the sun is out and it's over 60 degrees!  It was "too cold" on Friday so he waited until yesterday to make the shelves.  He brought them over yesterday afternoon and told me it took him like 45 minutes to build and sand the entire project!!!  Pawpaw rocks!

I bought the paint and last night at 9:00 pm I was in the garage painting boards!  I think they came out fabulous!  I'm putting one set in her playroom and the other set upstairs in her room.  The shorter ones will go behind the door in her playroom and there are only going to be 2 of those.  He built 3 longer ones to go in her room upstairs.  We do most of our reading at night in bed, so we needed more and bigger shelves in there.

Poor Men...

Never put a link to a news story on my blog before but I heard this on the news and looked it up.

Women whose husbands work 50 hours a week are happy and healthier then those that have husbands that don't.  But... women who work OT have less happy and healthy husbands.  Duh!  I could have told them that w/o the 30 year study.

http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/health&id=9409763

Common sense around here tells me that when Momma ain't home as much the wheels fall off the wagon!