What kind of cook am I?

Is this telling of the kind of cook I am (or apparent failure of a cook)?

I was wiping down the kitchen the other day when my 3-year-old daughter came into the room. She loves to help and wanted to know what she could do. So I gave her a dishrag and told her to wipe down the front of the dishwasher, which she did. Then I told her to wipe down her and her brother's chairs. Which she happily did. Then I told her to wipe down the front of the stove. She looked at me, perplexed, and asked, "What's the stove?" I said, "It's that that big white square thing where Mommy stands and does her cooking." So my daughter turns and starts wiping down the microwave.

Kids...gotta love 'em.

For more Friday Fails, please visit Myra's blog My Blessed Life.

Friday Fail - My kids' diet this week

Anyone who glanced at my menu plan for this week read that my wonderful husband was going to be traveling out of town for work Monday through Thursday (yeah!! he finally arrived home last night!). So my plans for supper this past week were pretty fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants. I have found that my key to losing baby weight was to not eat much during the evening meal, so I decided I was just going to have a little of what the kids were having this week and not cook anything too "special" for me. Well, my definition of "nothing too special" really took a turn. Normally, my goal for this family is to try to eat as little processed foods as possible. We aren't completely processed-food-free (my kids adore Goldfish crackers, Dum Dum lollipops and the like) but I'd say, as a whole, we are eating healthy and unprocessed foods about 80% of the time. I consider that a victory.

Except for this week.

On Monday evening, I made grilled ham and cheese sandwiches with canned tomato soup for supper. Tomato soup (a.k.a. "red soup", as my daughter calls it) is a favorite of my children's, so they were thrilled. Hey, doesn't tomato soup (even out of a can) count as a vegetable? Or is it a fruit? Either way, this didn't seem to be too bad of a start.

While grocery shopping on Tuesday, my daughter spotted a can of Dora Spaghettios (without meatballs, so no recall concerns there!) and begged to try them. Why not? At only 79 cents a can, Daddy being out of town, and Mommy too tired to cook... let's go for it. So on Tuesday evening my kids dined on Dora Spaghettios, crackers and fruit. (Yes, I snuck some fruit in there).

And Wednesday? Why, it was time to break out the box of Kraft Mac'n'Cheese I had in the pantry along with a can of green beans.

My poor children are probably suffering from sodium overload, but...they were THRILLED. My daughter has proclaimed this to be the best week ever of mom's cooking. It was a nutritional fail on my part, but it led to very happy kiddos.

For more "Friday Fails", please visit Myra at My Blessed Life.

Friday Fail - Out of Control Closet

I am a closet failure. In our very tiny house, you would think that I would organize (and keep organized) our precious few small closets to make for a comfy, tidy, clean home. Well, here it is. My biggest continual closet failure in my house...take a deep breath...no matter how embarrassing it may be....I give you (drumroll please...) - our entryway/dining room closet:



About once a year, I clean this horrendous thing out and organize it a little bit. Throw out old shoes and mismatched gloves. Give away coats that no longer fit or are not being used. But then, inevitably, after a month or so, it looks like this again. A total "stuff it away for later day" hellhole. Yes, those are not only my daughter's snowboots, but also the kids' trick-or-treating pumpkins and kites all shoved into the bottom of the closet. (Apparently I like to cover all seasons). And I literally mean "shove." That is how I store stuff in this closet - by throwing it in the bottom and shoving the door closed until the doorknob clicks. Awesome, right? Well, I'm all about honesty today.

This is my failure that I hope to turn into an organizational triumph this month. I was completely inspired by this post at Virtually Organized. While I don't have the space or the budget to do everything she did in her closet, I hope to utilize some of the same concepts in my upcoming closet makeover.

Stay tuned! I hope to have some successful "after" photos posted in a couple of weeks.

For more "Friday Fails", please visit Myra's awesome site at My Blessed Life.

Friday Fail - Netflix Addiction

Oh, dear Netflix - how you lured me in with your constant online pop-up ads and siren song of "2 week free trial."

I caved. I decided I needed some "me time"..."mommy time"..."down time"...call it what you will, but my goal was to take a little snippet (notice I said "little") out of each naptime and watch a few minutes of a movie or TV series I've been wanting to see. Because by the time 8:30 rolls around each night and the kids are finally in bed, I am way too exhausted to even think about watching a movie and I just know that I would fall asleep. (Think that getting up at 5 am every day to help dear hubby get out the door in the morning has anything to do with that? But I do it with joy and love. And I digress...)

So I joined Netflix. And let me say that for the past week, I have gotten ABSOLUTELY NOTHING done around the house. Naptimes whiz by with my backside firmly planted on the couch, staring at the TV as if we've been long-lost friends separated for 20 years. I've become addicted to Big Love, an HBO series I've been dying to watch for the past couple of years. And here it comes, all neatly packaged in its friendly little red envelope, delivered right to my door. (I also got Cinderella III for my dear daughter, and I have a feeling that this DVD won't be returned for a while).

Due to my FAILURE of not getting anything done around the house, I know I have to ease back a bit on the ol' Netflix habit. Maybe just one per week. Or two? Okay, three wouldn't really hurt anybody, would it?

For more fun with Friday Fails, please visit Myra's awesome blog at My Blessed Life.

Friday Fails - lots of little things

Where is my energy? I think my lack of energy these days counts for most of my "fails" this past week. I can't blame it on being too busy or distracted. Just plain ol' tired, which is odd because we've had such gorgeous spring-like weather here in Minnesota the past few days and I'm only one week off of a recharging 2-day getaway with my husband.

Here are a few of my "fails" from this past week:

1. I let my daughter watch 2.5 straight hours of TV yesterday morning without even worrying about it. Granted, we followed it up with 1.5 hours of play at the park, but still...that's a lot of TV in one morning.

2. I haven't mopped my kitchen/dining/entryway floor in over two weeks. This may not seem too bad to some, but given the current state of MN weather that guarantees muddy and dirty shoes, my floor is hideous. The bottoms of my kids' socks are turning brown. I sweep every day, telling myself that's getting it "clean enough."

3. I started out the month of March with the goal of following the $200 Challenge spearheaded by Sarah last month at Clay In His Hands. I had the awesome goal of spending only $200 this month on groceries for our family of four. I started out great, only spending $67 through March 10th. And then my mini "vacation" hit, stocked up on unexpected items for babysitters Nana and Papa and treats for the kids, and completely blew my budget and completely lost track of how much I spent. Okay, it was my failure to start this in March knowing I had all of this going on, but here it is - only March 19th - and I'm pretty sure I've already blown way past $200 for groceries. Maybe next month...

4. Speaking of money, I have totally failed my frugal ways and shopped way too much this past week. I have spent more on clothes this past week for myself and the kiddos then I have spent in the last eight months. And these are new, retail clothes - no consignment or thrift store shopping for this lady lately. What's going on??

To bond with more bloggers over their failures, please visit My Blessed Life.

Friday Fails - Unexpected Hair Ornamentation

Getting out of the house quickly with two toddlers is always a struggle, as any mom knows. Even just packing up the kids to head to Target, for which there is no real time frame and no "must there by a certain time" pressure seems to take forever. My two year old running around the house playing an impromptu game of hide and seek by herself without any pants on. My one-year-old standing in the corner and finally dirtying his diaper with the poo that he has been working on for two days. The list goes on and on.

Well, last week I put my daughter on the toilet to get her to do her business quickly before we left for Target. She has this habit lately of taking bits of toilet paper from the roll and wadding them up or rolling them up while working on her "business". She finds it incredibly fun. I left with her with a couple books on the potty while I ran around the house trying to find my one-year-old. I wrangled him in their bedroom, and then back to the bathroom to finish up with my daughter. She still needs help wiping and pulling her pants and underwear up afterwards, so as I'm tending to these "needs" with her I notice she's playing with my hair. She's telling me I'm pretty and that she likes my hair. Cute, right? Well...

After a nice, suprisingly well-behaved and tantrum-free trip to Target, I unpack the groceries. I seriously have to go to the bathroom now because I forgot to do this before I left. While washing my hands in the bathroom I glance up in the mirror, and what do I see...but little bits of wadded up white toilet paper stuck in the sides in my hair. While my daughter was "playing" with my hair, little did I know that she was adding some extra ornamentation, as well.

Seriously, why didn't anyone tell me? Why didn't any other mom struggling with a brood of crazy kids in Target give me a little heads up, like "Ahem...just thought I'd let you know that you have some TP in your hair." Or the checkout woman, who was doting so sweetly over my two children, all the while failing to tell me that my head was covered in toilet paper?

No, I cannot blame others for failing to tell me. It's my own failure. My own failure on two counts: (1) No matter how busy or frazzled, always take a quick glance in the mirror before you head out the door. You never know what you'll find. And (2) I obviously use way too much hairspray for bits of toilet paper to stick in my hair for over an hour (on a windy day, nonetheless.)

Lessons learned.

For more Friday Fails, please check out My Blessed Life.