The Sensible Mom

Food, DIY, Chicago Mom Blogger

Archives for October 2010

Tackle It Tuesday: Computer Desk

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In an effort to do a little something special for my husband while he was away watching Monday Night football last week (we don’t have cable), I decided to clean up our desk area.  He likes for that area to be as clutter-free as possible which is hard with five people using the same space (six if you count David who likes to climb up on the chair to grab anything that writes).  It took me about 20 minutes to declutter it and find new homes for things that didn’t belong there.

Take a look at the BEFORE pics:

Left Side

Right Side

Whole View

And now for the AFTERS:

Left Side AFTER

Left Side AFTER

right side after

Right Side AFTER

whole view after

Whole View AFTER

And there you have it!  A clean desk.  When my husband got home and saw it, his exact words were, “I feel like I’m in the Twilight Zone.”

Did you tackle anything this week?  I’d love to hear about it! :0)

To see what everyone else is tackling this week, please visit 5 Minutes for Mom!


Not Me! Monday

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Hello!  It’s time for Not Me! Monday!  If you are not familiar with it, Not Me! Monday is a blog carnival hosted by MckMama at My Charming Kids.net. It’s all about sharing things that we “didn’t” do–but REALLY DID. Here goes:

I did not start a new “diet” last week or should I call it a lifestyle change?  Anyway, for some time now, I’ve been slowly getting our family to eat more fruits and vegetables.  I’ve even gone so far as to throw out my candy and ice cream coupons!  Crazy, I know.  But I didn’t want to be tempted when I was in the store.  A good sale paired with a coupon is hard for me to resist!  Back to the diet, though, I just happened to be flipping through All You magazine (looking for coupons and waiting for my three year old to finish his bath) and I stumbled upon a page that had to do with a study where people who had eaten a larger, yet healthier breakfast in the morning lost seven pounds in one month and they kept it OFF compared to those who only ate a low calorie diet.  And they continued to lose weight and keep it off.

I looked over what they had to eat, 1 cup cottage, two slices of whole wheat toast with natural peanut butter, egg whites, and fruit.  I thought that looked doable so I ripped out the page and put in on our fridge.  I picked up the items I didn’t have in my kitchen at the grocery store, and it’s been going well.  The only thing I’m really missing every day is the egg whites…just not into having to cook these every morning.  Instead, I’ll have an extra piece of toast or more cottage cheese or fruit.

Oh, and instead of the natual peanut butter, I’m using Nutella which is healthier (I think?  …less calories and fat).  And we most certainly did NOT find out that the kids absolutely LOVE Nutella.  We went through a whole jar last week!  Amazing.  They’ve been having it for breakfast along with me.  If you’ve never tried Nutella, it tastes chocolatey.  It’s hazelnut with cocoa and skim milk, and it’s spreadable just like peanut butter would be (actually easier to spread than peanut butter) and delicious.

David did not pick the “spacebar” key off of my computer last week.  I was able to get it back on, thankfully, without tape.

Isaac started a 6-week “Count with Me” class on Saturday through the park district.  He does not love it!  I’m glad.  I wanted to sign him up for something a little more educational and this works.

Just when I started thinking about finally getting David’s pictures taken professionally (he’s 19 months old and never had it done), he climbs on a chair and hits his head on the wall on the way off.  This did not result in a bump and a bruise on his forehead.  The pictures will have to wait again…. 

Happy Monday!


Busy week….

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kids are the zoo

Hi Everyone!

I know it’s been just over a week since I last posted so I thought I’d just do a random post on what’s been going on.  For starters, this past week has involved late NIGHTS which I am not fond of because those late nights result in me getting up around the same time as the kids in the morning instead of well before them.  When that happens, there isn’t much time to blog unless I want to do it with wildness going on in the background. 

The late nights have been as a result of either homework or kids who weren’t tired at bedtime because they’d had (late) naps earlier in the day.  I get a little impatient when kids are up past there bedtime so at least with one child (Isaac), whether he takes a nap or not, is going to have to lay in bed until sleep hits him.  David is another story.  When he naps past 3:00pm, it’s hard to get him to sleep by 9:00pm.  He’ll usually go to bed around 10:00pm and that’s okay with me.

We went to the zoo on Friday after Ruben got home from school to get in one last visit before the weather gets really cold.  It was a lot of fun except for the part where geese surrounded our table while we ate lunch and scared the kids.  We had purposely chosen a table far away from the geese who were hanging around everyone else trying to eat lunch, but they migrated over to us anyway!  Have you noticed how “healthy” looking those geese at the zoo look?  Or their thick necks?  They’re WELL fed so I’m sure they really didn’t need any of our scraps!

On the school front, we’ve had about the same amount of homework we’ve been having only it’s been more challenging.  We’ve been learning CSS (cascading style sheets) for web design, and the homework has been a little frustating for me.  If you miss one little character, that can throw your code completely off.  For example, for the homework I forgot to put an ending “ (quotation mark) on a word and that resulted in me getting a 50% because it caused two main parts of the homework assignment NOT to display.  No worries.  I was able to fix my mistake and resubmit my homework for full credit, but I’m going to start using a better version of Notepad (Notepad++) that will help me catch those small errors from now on.  In class, we use the plainest of plain text editors, which is Notepad.  The problem with that is when you make a mistake, nothing highlights to let you know to recheck your code because something is wrong.  I was having trouble in class getting something to display because I had written “test” instead of “text.”  That took about 7 minutes to find.

Ruben and I were able to take about 2 hours and go to a local coffee shop to work on an important web project.  The grandparents watched the kids while we tried to start writing some HTML and CSS for our individual projects.  It was very refreshing to get away!  We rarely go out alone without the kids, but this is an important project that will result in failure of the class if we don’t get it done so we made the effort to leave and think about what we are going to do and what it’s going to take to create our individual web sites.  The first draft is due at the end of the month so we are going to TRY to get away on Saturday afternoons until then.  I’m looking forward to it.  Next time, though, we are picking a different location.  We went to Starbucks this time and spent nearly $10 on two drinks and a donut!  That’s crazy.  I think we are going to try McDonalds next time for their free wifi and cheaper (better, in my opinion) frappes. 🙂

I’m off to get ready for church.  I hope you have a great day!