Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #132

Messy Messy Fail - Note to self - bring more than one cover-up on a beach vacation next time.  I felt fun and glamorous for a couple of days, but then my beach cover-up became just plain old beachy and gross.

Tidy Victory - I had planned on making a few dinners and eating out a few times on our recent family vacation.  I ALWAYS bring a crockpot so I can put dinner in before we leave in the morning and have it ready after our day's activities.  I happened to run across this recipe I had on my Pinterest for Mississippi Roast, grabbed the 5 ingredients I needed from the local Stop & Shop and VOILA - a DELICIOUS dinner was served.  

How to Create an Image Map for Your Blog

Messy Messy Fail - My husband and I still have our water shoes that we purchased from our honeymoon trip to Jamaica.  I knew we would need them again, so I kept them safely tucked away in storage in the basement.  Fast forward to now, going on our first family vacation to Cape Cod - perfect time to use our water shoes!  I managed to bring both of mine, but only one of my poor husband's.  No good.

Tidy Victory - In a desperate last minute attempt to find a bathing suit 12 hours before we were set to leave for our vacation, I ran into TJ Maxx to see what was available.  Definitely a disappointingly small selection, although it is the end of July so I shouldn't have been surprised.  There was a pretty heinous looking suit in my size - black with a multi-color flower pattern - that I figured it couldn't hurt to try it on.  It was a long shot, but low and behold I was pleasantly surprised!  Excellent shopping lesson - you can't judge clothing on the hanger!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #131

Messy Messy Fail - Upon arriving at our vacation destination, I proceeded to unpack the clean sheets I brought and started making the beds.  Our vacation house rooms had fans above the beds - something I am not used to.  So with a flick of my wrists and a flourish of the linens, I threw the sheet over the bed only to have it get stuck in the fan.  It only made a few trips around before I was able to safely retrieve it.  Nothing like a simple household ceiling fan to make things a little more interesting.  

Tidy Victory - Holy cow - our kids were beyond excellent on our nine hour car ride!  I did bring a few sticker books and some movies to keep them occupied, but they didn't even really need them.  Minimal complaining, a few questions but lots of laughs and even a little nap!  Who knew we had nothing to worry about!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #130

Messy Messy Fail - Perhaps you weren't up early enough to notice that I definitely forgot to set up this party post at the appointed time of 3 AM est.  If I missed you I am so sorry - if I didn't and you had no idea I forgot, pretend like you didn't just read this and link up below :)

Tidy Victory - I finally went through and reogranized both of the kids' clothing drawers.  It's amazing how fast they go through clothing.  The UPKer, soon to be kindergartener, shot up over the winter a whole size that I had not anticipated.  It's nice to have all their clothes put away - I kept having to make piles of clothes on the floor because they wouldn't fit in the drawer!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #129

Messy Messy Fail - Do you remember this game?  Perhaps you had this in your household like I did - "Let's Go Fishin'" is what it's called.  You have to catch fish with little plastic fishing poles.  But that's hard to do when the UPKer snaps off all the ends of the little plastic fishing poles.

Tidy Victory - Talk about amazing customer service - I called Pressman (the manufacturer) and they immediately sent me four brand new fishing poles.  We can play the game again, hooray!  The boys are NOT allowed to play the game without an adult, no more pole snapping for those two!

Homemade Pancake and Waffle Mix

Messy Messy Fail - I have now successfully killed 3 Rheingold arborvitae bushes.  The first was because I accidentally fed it fertilizer - my bad.  The second I'm not quite sure why, it just seemed to die off on its own.  The last was a replant between my large rhododendron and burning bush.  The arborvitae was fine over the winter when the foliage was gone and the bush got plenty of sun, but as soon as the leaves of the surrounded plants grew in - bye bye.  I planted a chunk of hosta where the arborvitae breathed its last breath - rest in peace my dear arborvitae.

Tidy Victory - I fixed Creaky Cranky!!!!!!  Creaky Cranky is the cranky crane on the island of Sodor with Thomas the Train.  He is a key character on the Thomas the Train show of which we watch daily.  He is also a key feature of our Thomas the Train collection in our home.  When Creaky doesn't crank, my CHILDREN are cranky.  So when Creaky no longer cranked one day, I researched on YouTube quickly and found an amazing person who posted a how-to video for fixing Creaky.  It wasn't exactly the same situation, but it gave me enough information to complete the surgery (with a special screwdriver I had to purchase!) and my children were no longer cranky.  Just an FYI - I can't fix much so this was a miracle!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #128

Messy Messy Fail - I have now successfully killed three arborvitae rheingold bushes.  First time I fed one fertilizer and you are not supposed to do that with evergreens (you learn something new every day!).  The second one I'm not quite sure, it just died.  The third was because I transplanted it to a different part of the front yard (looked dumb where I originally planted it) but it did not get enough sunlight when the rhododendron and burning bush on either side of it grew in for the summer.  My kind neighbor always reminds me that gardening is about trial and error.  I seem to be having many errors lately.

Tidy Victory - I figured out what to do with all of the black bananas I have frozen in my freezer - smoothies!  If I buy them and my boys just aren't feeling them, they just go brown and I hate to throw them away.  I do like making banana bread with them, but you can only make so much of it.  All you need is a handful of ice cubes, a cup of OJ, a brown banana and some strawberries in the blender - a cold, healthy option that helps eliminate waste (or at least in my house!).

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #127

Messy Messy Fail - I have found the nearly half of the videos on our Sony camcorder will not be uploaded to IMovie - you can upload but when you disconnect the camera it disappears.  

Tidy Victory - A quick Google search helped me find the answer - for whatever reason the camera only recognized the video clips' source as the camera.  Solution - download the clips AGAIN from the camera to my desktop and import again to IMovie.  This may take a little bit of time to go through this process for the videos that won't upload directly into IMovie, but I am just thrilled they aren't gone for good!  I can work weekends GeekSquad, let me know......

Great Ideas for the 4th of July Roundup with the Blog Friends

Messy Messy Fail - I had concerts right up until the last week of school, which meant my classrooms definitely did not get cleaned up in time.  

Tidy Victory - Therefore, I spent my first day of summer vacation in my classroom purging, recycle and clearing everything so that the custodians could do a thorough deep cleaning over the summer.  And it only took 3.5 hours - #winning!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #126

Messy Messy Fail - So I tweeted about this today, but it finally happened - out of my four years of taking the boys to swim lessons at our local YMCA, I finally forgot to bring a swimsuit.  Therefore on the toddler's last swim lesson of the session, he swam in a diaper and the shorts he happened to be wearing.  Best thing was no one was the wiser.  Good thing he doesn't know any better.

Tidy Victory - My summer has finally begun!  I have finished proctoring, grading, teaching and concerts.  I had a really terrific year with some awesome students, but now it's time to start my summer with the most amazing kids - the toddler and the UPKer!

Happiness Is Homemade Link Party #125

Messy Messy Fail - If you know me, you know I'm a sucker for carnival food, especially those darn bloomin' onions.  Those things get me EVERY time.  Even when they are $10.  So when the UPKer and I ran over to a local Rib Festival, I had to get my bloomin' onion (and his cinnamon pretzel) to go.  Not only did it turn to mush from being covered up in foil, I had no idea that the grease from it was running down the front of my cute LuLaRoe Randy and my Old Navy boyfriend jeans while I was holding the UPKer's hand going back to the car.  

Now that is one soggy bloomin' onion.  More like a wilted onion.

Tidy Victory - Thank goodness for Tide - directly into the wash with just one dose of that magic stuff and the grease came out of everything.  I swear by Tide for getting out stains - no more generic laundry detergent in this house!

Let's Get Grilling - Father's Day Roundup with the Blog Friends

Messy Messy Fail - I thought I could trust the UPKer to go to the bathroom on his own.  Two bathtub toys buried in the pipes of the toilet later, I realized that I cannot.  

Tidy Victory - If you need to know how to get two bathtub toys out of the plumbing of your toilet, just drop me an email or a PM - did you know you could take a toilet off of the floor and flip it over?   Needless to say we got the toys out - we really shocked yourselves with this extraction!  Two unwound hangers, multiple towels and a bucket later the culprits were removed.  What a way to spend a Friday night!

Toilet toy bleaching in my LuLaRoe's.  The boat and the odd shaped upside bunny head were the culprits.  Unbelievable.