Weddings, Birthdays and Kindergarten, Oh My!

Ok, so for about 6-8 weeks now I haven't had time to blink, let alone get any sleep, keep up on my couponing/shopping or blog. Thank the Lord for my stockpile, because without it we might have starved! In June we had 5 bridal showers to attend, 3 Family birthdays (Me, My sister and Olivia) and Fathers Day. And now, as of Saturday, July 9th, my sister is officially married and my duties as the sister of the bride/matron of honor/mother of two flower girls is OVER! While I enjoyed the events and loved helping with it all, I'm glad to be back to a more normal place in my life. A place filled with coupon clipping, meal planning, kid raising and finding new creative ways to use my label maker (I love my label maker more than I like to even admit!) Yes, this is where I'm comfortable at in life!

So how is it possible that I was so wrapped up with it all that I glanced at my calendar yesterday, only to notice that there is only 5 weeks left until school starts...that's right, 5 weeks! I admit, there is a tiny piece of me that has been ignoring the back to school sales because for once it actually applies to me. My baby, my first born little girl is going to be in kindergarten. I can't believe it. It's a bittersweet feeling...while I'm so excited for her (and for afternoons to myself everyday) I just can't believe we've gotten to this point so quickly. As I watched her coming down the aisle fulfilling her flower girl duty I got teary eyed...because I'm so proud of her, I'm so amazed at how much she's grown and because I can't believe she's so big. Any last bit of baby that was left in her is gone. She has these long legs, slim body and a personality that I can't keep up with at times. As I was standing there watching her walk down the aisle to come stand with me, I realized how little time we get with her. Yes, she's only 5...but I guarantee my dad was thinking "how did we get here?" as he was getting ready to walk his last baby down the aisle. He blinked and we were grown. I know it won't be long before I'll be standing there as the mother of the bride, rather than the mother of the flower girl.

So yesterday we did what we needed to do...we started our back to school shopping. First on the list: the Pottery Barn Backpack that Mia wanted so badly. They finally went on sale (with FREE SHIPPING!) so we ordered the pink polk-a-dot monogrammed backpack with matching lunch box. No, she won't need the lunchbox this year, but my hope is that we'll get a few years out of a nicer (much more expensive) backpack and next year she will need the lunch box. So Pottery Barn Kids is having a huge summer sale on lots of things including their backpacks and luggage. If you are a PB fan, this is the best way to buy their stuff if on a budget. The free shipping is always a plus as well!

Another great sale that I was super excited about came at Dillons...their 24 count Crayola Crayon Boxes are marked down to $.25 per box! These normally retail for $1.99 each. So I stocked up! We bought 20 boxes. This might seem like a lot, but at that price it's a great stock up item...at $.25 each I paid $5 for $40 worth of crayons. I use them to put with birthday gifts for friends throughout the year, Easter baskets, backpacks for car rides with new coloring books, stockings at Christmas etc. You can never have too many crayons! Along with the crayons I bought a bunch of single subject wire notebooks. Mia will color for hours on a blank notebook and at $.15 each, you can't beat it! I have always done this and it has cut down tremendously on birthday gifts for classmates of Mia's throughout the year. I have a storage tub that I keep it all in down in the basement so I can pull them out as needed.

Other good deals on school items were their markers and colored pencils, normally $3.15/box, marked down to $1.50.

I've also pledged to myself to do one major organizing project each week. This past week was rounding up and organizing all of the different chargers we have for our various electronics. I was shocked at how many phone chargers I found for phones we don't even have any more! I took one bin on my shelves and designated it as my charger/electronic accessories bin. I put different stuff in different labeled zip locks in the bin so it's easy to find what I'm looking for, and even easier to put them back after we are done! This was a project inspired by the 3 days we spent looking for the charger to the video camera. So now we have a bag for video camera charger/accessories/information booklet, as well as bags for ipod stuff, blackberry stuff, camera stuff, portable DVD player stuff, and a random bag for random chargers that go to other various things. It took me a while to round up most of these items, but having them all in one place and labeled is already making a HUGE difference!

My next project: Sorting mail and keeping up with it! I'll let you know when I find a good method for this :)

Now I'm off to finish dinner and work on next weeks meal plan. I will attempt to be better with my blogging and keep you posted on deals, coupons, meal plans etc so you can continue to stay organized!!

My goal and challenge to myself is to get back to my pre-pregnancy/pre-illness weight by January. If we decide to have more kids, I'd like to be at a healthy weight and feeling better about myself prior to another gruelling pregnancy...because lets face it, more kids = more chaos and less mommy time. Better to do it now than later on down the road. What I'm realizing more and more is that I can't get my body into shape unless my life and schedule are "in shape" too. It's sort of a domino effect...if one area of my life is chaos (ie messy house, no meal plan, budget is off etc) then nothing flows. So I think the key to my life is to get everything in it organized so my life can flow smoothly and I can reach these goals I have set for myself and my family.

Happy Wednesday!

Erica