Home.

Wow.  It's been a while.  What have you all been up to?
We've had Winter Break. (Because evidently students these days can't be bothered to go to school an ENTIRE month except for March...but that's just me thinking crazy stuff...)

Ever since our week off, I've been trying to play catch up and have been failing miserably.

Let's review and get an apology out of the way because these pictures were all taken on my iPhone.

The Beach and my feet.  At this point I'm not feeling behind at all.  I'm listening to the waves, enjoying the 70 degree weather and relishing the fact that I did NOT have to wear a bathing suit on this trip to the beach.
It's the little things that make me happiest.

I saw this over my pink toenails.  Yes, I make the kids run sprints on the beach.  I'm a drill sergeant.
That is a joke, people.   

I'm still pretty good, but in the back of my mind I've got all sorts of things starting to spin.

Back me up, all moms out there....we're pretty much always thinking of what we need to be doing or planning for in the next days/weeks/months.

We get home and my daughter's birthday is quickly approaching.  Our sweet friend wants to make and decorate cookies with her to take to school for a special treat.  So we do the cookies...

And since I'm a perfectionist, I want them to be packaged neatly.  This means I stay up and get the cookies packaged like this...

This whole time I'm solely focused on getting the cookies done because then I'll get to check it off my To Do list.  My laundry is not getting done.  The dishes are not getting done.  I don't even think I'd been to the grocery store at this point.
That last one meant that we were eating out or eating whatever we could find in the cabinets.  Cereal for dinner, anyone?

I'm still thinking of my daughter's birthday party, she wants a marble cake with chocolate icing, the 3 kids we've invited over have NOT responded yes or no so I'm wondering if and when I should call them to find out what the hold up is, my laundry is not doing itself and we've finally run out of milk.

On top of it all, I had read about making your own laundry detergent and how it can save lots of money. I had all the ingredients...one of which was Ivory soap.  I grated the soap, added the other stuff and was pretty proud of myself.

I put the dishes and bowls I used in the dishwasher and headed to the laundry to tackle the mountain that was growing daily.

Now, there is no picture of this part (because I was mortified) but stay with me.......

Imagine your dishwasher.

Got it?

Now imagine your dishwasher vomiting up bubbles.  Lots and lots of bubbles and suds and bubbles.  All over your kitchen.  And they smell surprisingly like Ivory soap.  Got that image in your head?

That was my kitchen.  In my effort to save money, I was sure I'd just ruined my dishwasher by putting in the bowls and graters I'd used without first washing off the excess soap that was stuck to them.  That meant that there was double or triple soap in the dishwasher  when you add the actual dish washing liquid.

It took 3 extra runs of the dishwasher to get rid of the bubbles and the soap smell.  Perfect.

Let's move to the laundry, shall we?  That was the reason for this exercise in futility anyway, right?  To save money?

Yours truly didn't grate the soap finely enough because I ended up with clothes in my washer that had big clumps of Ivory soap on them.  It took two extra washes to get those off.  Real money saver.  Let me tell you.

So here we are.  Dishwasher finally working normally, thanks to the LACK of extra Ivory soap residue. My bottle of Tide sitting proudly on my washer, waiting patiently for me to use it.  The mountain of laundry is now a mole hill.  And my daughter's birthday celebration with my family went off pretty well.

I'm still behind, but now at least I can check off more stuff from The List in my head.
And that along with an ice cold Coca Cola makes me very happy.