30 days to clean!

(This is not my house...let us be clear!)

I am coming up with a plan to clean and organize my house. I hate the clutter. I envy people whose houses are spic and span at any given moment. When the space around me is clean and organized I have inner peace and tranquility. I feel happy and I can breathe easier. I have never been a good cleaner. Even as a child, my room was always a mess, I think I was born to be disorganized. I know that spending time with my kids and my husband is the most important thing so usually I forgo cleaning to spend time with them. In my mind this plan is going to let me do both, clean house / quality time with my family. So I figured I would blog about my journey to organization.

My plan is this: each day spend an hour (after the kids go to bed during the week) cleaning one room of the house. I have already commissioned my husband to do the dishes every day for me so that I will not have to bother with that every day.

Saturday I start. Why, you may ask? because it is the first of the month and it seemed like a good day to start. Of course, since Saturday is my day off I may try to spend more than just one hour cleaning, besides, I am planning on cleaning Zoe and Henry's rooms on Saturday which is going to be a task!

Poor Zoe's bedroom is full of boxes of baby clothes that are either too big or too small for her and I need to put them somewhere else. I want her bedroom to be her space, not a storage room with a crib! I worked so hard painting her mural and decorating in there and I can't even enjoy it because boxes are everywhere!

I will post before and after pics each day (this is going to be very humbling). Keep your fingers crossed for me that I can pull this off! Maybe I'll inspire someone else to clean along with me!

Kids Activity - Ice Trap

A friend of mine showed me this activity on a blog and I thought it would be an activity that Henry would enjoy. He did, but not really in the way he was supposed to! I wish I could remember what blog I got the idea from so that I could give them credit!

This is an activity that needs to be premeditated because it involves freezing a bowl of water. Gather some of your child's toys from around the house and put them in a plastic bowl (for some reason I think that glass might break in the freezer but I don't know if that's true or if it's my crazy brain playing tricks on me).

Fill the bowl with water and put it in the freezer for a day or until the water is completely frozen. I found that some of his toys floated so I only filled the bowl half way with water then when it froze I added more water to the top so that the toys would be in the middle of the ice.

When the ice is frozen wait for a hot day and take the bowl outside.



Dump the ice out of the bowl and arm your child with several tools to try to get the toys out.

Henry tried a spray bottle to try to melt the ice....very slow moving...



Then we tried a garden spade. After that we tried

a hammer. Any chance Henry gets to use a hammer he is all over it.

At this point he started to get frustrated so I suggested to him that we put the ice back in the bowl and drop it. He loved that! After a couple drops on the concrete, Success!

After this, Henry proceeded to pick up the chunks of ice and throw them as hard as he could onto the concrete until the toys broke free. I did not take pictures of this part of the activity.

I'm no expert, in fact far from it, but I have to believe that this activity is not only fun but helps you child learn cause and effect and problem solving.

New Photo Project! Work in progress

Click Here to see my new photo project, "The ABC's of Henry"

Haven't blogged in a while

Hello to all my blog followers. Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. I was at the beach all last week with a very low wifi signal. We had to sit in a specific chair with one leg propped over the arm and your head cocked to the right and a paper clip in your nose in order to have any luck getting on the wide wide world of webs*.

I've got plans to share vacation photos and a new photo project I'm working on. I also want to do a blog giveaway. I haven't figured out what my prize is gonna be yet though! Stay tuned for these and other exciting blog posts in the coming days.

I just wanna tell y'all that I'm happier than I've been in a long time. I'm in a good place emotionally and although life is far from perfect it doesn't matter. I have an overwhelming sense of happiness and contentment. I have a wonderful husband, beautiful, cute, funny, healthy children. A job, a roof over my head, food in the pantry, money in the bank, indoor plumbing and electricity. God is good!! All the time!!

*I may have been exagerating a bit here.

Senior portaits - Olivia part 2

Here is part 2 of my photoshoot with the lovely Olivia.
see them here

First Senior session Part 1

Last night I took pics for my first Senior session. Here is a preview. More to come later!
http://hawklady-selfportrait.blogspot.com/2009/07/olivia-senior-portraits-part-1.html

How to motivate yourself?

Sometimes I feel like I wanna give up. I get discouraged and want to quit. I took pictures last night of the kids and there were a bunch that were so good, except for the fact that they were out of focus! I don't know what happened. I tried editing them but I just hate that I have to do that, I want them to be great straight out of the camera. I tried working on my focus this morning before coming to work because I have a photoshoot tonight and I DON'T want those to be blurry too.

Last night was proof too me of why I need to keep practicing and honing my photography skills. I just have the type of personality that wants to be perfect the first time I do something. This probably explains why I am constantly picking up new hobbies and then moving on to something else. I get bummed out when I am not as great as someone who has been doing it for years. If I would just practice, practice, practice I would be able to play the piano, guitar, cello, and violin, I would be a great sewer, cook, photographer. I would weigh 30 lbs less and know how to dance ballet and tap. I am NOT giving up on photography. I still love it tremendously and I know that I can and will get better at it. I just need to keep finding models and practice, practice, practice!

Thank you for reading my motivational speech to myself :-p