Best $10 ever spent!

The master bathroom is often neglected as far as cleaning goes, yes I shamelessy admit. Especially the shower. We have lived in this house for a little over 9 years and the master bathroom shower has always been difficult to keep clean. One of my Sunday rituals is to clean the shower, but I can never get it clean like I would like for it to be clean. Well after today it is on its way to being clean like it should be.

When at the grocery store Monday night I came across a new product that was on sale. It looked very promising for my shower, this is what it said..."The Ultimate Powered Cleaning Tool!" I started to walk away from it and ended up going back thinking maybe it would work. I have tried other cleaning solutions that I thought were promising but they never did the trick.

So this morning I decided to give this tool a try. I put some Soft Scrub w/ Bleach on the shower wall and gave this new tool a try. Oh my goodness the immediate results were amazing! Now in the past I have put the cleaner on and scrubbed until my arms hurt and it never looked this good.

I am going to do a shower wall a day until the shower walls are shining again back like it was in 1983.

I will share my results with you along with a picture of the "Sonic Scrubber," my new favorite cleaning too.

Blog Challenge #22

In honour of Father's Day and since mine has been on my mind of late: tell me, what is the greatest lesson you ever learned from your father?

I have to say one of the greatest lessons my father has taught me is to stand up for myself.

The weekend before Father's Day I flew back to my hometown in Maryland so that I could attend my nephew's high school graduation. It was a great trip and I went kidless, even though it was a quick trip, one night stay I really enjoyed it and it was a much needed break away from normal life days. As we were remembering things about my oldest nephew's childhood and funny things that he said or did as a little one. I started talking about things that I remembered from my childhood.

Now my father is a man that most people choose not to mess with, because he is one that is always right. When I was a preteen someone decided to cross the line with my father and I happened to be the only other person with him.

My dad is a volunteer fireman and was very active when I was growing up so a lot of our time was spent at the fire station whether it was helping out at a banquet or a supper serving food or just being the kid who gets left behind while dad goes on a fire call. Yes, that did happen a number of times in my life. I would be left in the radio room at the fire station until dad returned from a call.

Well on one particular Saturday there was a supper going on at the fire hall and my family was there helping I had a softball game and dad was the one who was going to take me to the game. As we were trying to back out of the parking space someone in another car said something to my father and my dad said something back, don't remember the words that were exchanged, but I do remember what happened next. As we were driving next to the guy, the guy gave my dad the finger. The emergency break was pulled and the car was put into neutral and out went my dad. I immediately locked all the doors in the car, I was so scared and didn't know what was going to happen. My dad and this man got into a fight and then he got back in the car and took me to my softball game like nothing had happened, except that it did. Not a word was spoken on the way to my game and nothing until just recently had been spoken in my earshot of this event. But from that day forward I knew that I needed to stand up for what I believed in.

As we talked about this event just a couple of weekends ago. I found out that my dad was so mad that this guy gave him the finger in front of me and went out and got into a fight about it and stood up for his little girl.

New lesson learned from dad, when someone does something inappropriate in front of your kids don't let them get away with it. Of course I already know this, but the reminder didn't hurt.

Blog Challenge #12 Getting to Know You

1) Right now I want: to enjoy the week with my family while I am on Spring Break.

2) I wish I knew how to: digital scrapbook. I think that if I did I would be caught up in no time. Of course dh tells me I already spend too much time on the computer.

3) When I want to indulge myself, I: get a big scoop of peanut butter, but I have been trying to stay away from the PB jar. So I will read a magazine, read a book, or go get a pedicure with a friend.

4) You’ll never see me: skydiving

5) A childhood memory that I love: my family along with my aunts and uncles and grandmother would spend Sundays at my great-grandmothers. It was always so much fun playing with my cousin. My great-grandmother made the best sugar cookies and they were soft not the hard ones. I so need to get that recipe and figure out how to make them like she did. Not living near family I so miss those moments of being together with the extended family, something that my own children only get to experience about once a year instead of weekly.

6) 2 things I do every single day: Read email and Scrapshare and talk to my friends on the phone.

7) Happiest moment of 2008, so far: just everyday family times with the 4 of us when we are laughing and the kids are doing something funny you can't help but to laugh. We have been trying very hard to do things together as a family. It is a goal for 2008 for us. The best day we have had together was Good Friday. DH took the day off work and we spent the day at the Miami Metrozoo, it was just a great day spending time and making memories with the family.

8) Describe yourself in 3 words: honest, caring, loving

9) 2 scrap related goals for this year: to get current in my albums and attend 3 retreats

10) You have $40 that you MUST spend on yourself – what do you do with it? If I had it this week I would be going to Micheal's and purchasing a new Cricut cartridge any other week I would be treating myself to a new outfit.

Second part of the challenge: a picture of me at the computer...

Not the most flattering picture but 6 year old ds took it.

Pen in the laundry

My oldest son has a soccer game this morning and his uniform hasn't been washed so I get up early this morning and put the uniform in the wash along with other random dirty clothes. After the washing machine is done running I go and put the clothes into the dryer. As I am transferring the clothes from washer to dryer I am finding random lite brite pieces that I am pulling out. Get everything set in the dryer come back in from garage (that is where washer/dryer are located) and go into kitchen make myself breakfast, clean up the kitchen, put some other random clutter away and later go out to see if dryer is done. DH is working on packing the trailer so we can go to the races today and as I am talking to him the dryer finishes. Go over to take the clothes out of the dryer and start to notice some marks on clothes and the inside of the dryer. Notice there had to be a pen left somewhere in the dryer, so I thank my dh for making this lovely mess and ruining some clothes. He does apologize, but I still am not happy about this mess. I try to rub off all the pen marks on the inside of the dryer and they are not coming off. I just hope that it doesn't come off on my next load of laundry that I dry.

The one good thing about this is thankfully when my clothes come off they are typically inside out. So a nice white polo shirt that I have now has black ink spots all over the inside of it but it is not noticable on the outside.

3/16/08 Blog Challenge #9

This week, my challenge to you is to blog one thing, each day, that has brought a smile to your face. Could be something as simple as the first bloom of spring, a silly comment from a child, or a blessing you've received. As I read through the prayer requests on ScrapShare, many of us are facing what seem to be insurmountable odds. I've had a hard time recently focusing on the joys in my life and have been letting our problems bring me down. I'm not suggesting we ignore issues; rather, let's find a piece of joy in each day.

This morning we got up as a family and went to church. Something that we haven't done in over a year. We went to the 9:30 a.m. service while ds #1 was in his sunday school class. Our 2 year old had no interest in making new friends this morning and ran out of his sunday school class. So he went to church with dh and I. I really enjoying doing things together as a family. Today being Palm Sunday was a great day to rejoice together.

yearly

Today is the day I have my yearly check-up for me this is one of the most nerve wracking days for me. Oh well it will be done and over with this afternoon and another year will go by until I see the doc again.

Clean House

One thing that makes me happy is a clean house. It is tough to keep it clean though living with 3 males. You know the kind that like to leave stuff laying around and laying around and laying around. It is the mama who finally gets fed up and puts it away and cleans up.

So I had Bunco at my house last night and that means the house required a cleaning. I got off work at 1, picked up oldest ds from dh, went to Target picked up the dinner I was making for tonight and came home to begin cleaning which at this point means organizing the clutter first. I worked on that until around 4 and then had to pick up youngest ds from daycare. Get home and continue with the organization and cleaning. DH gets home from work around 5:30 and can't figure out what I have been doing all day. UHHHH...organizing cleaning. But it worked out perfectly because by the time he got home I was ready to scrub down the bathroom, dust, and vacuum. Hate to say it but our Christmas tree was still up so the ornaments came off and got put away and then the tree was dragged into the garage, thankfully it is an artificial tree. Now dh has to make a bag to store it in and take it to work for storage until next year.

The girls arrived at 7 and I was just finishing up dinner and could finally relax and enjoy the evening of fun!

Now to only keep it clean! I have my other Bunco group here next month and I am almost certain I will be repeating my organizing cleaning actions then too, but it sure would be nice if I didn't have to.