Whew!

I have had a day already, and it's only 11:30.

First, I made my first-ever batch of baked doughnuts with chocolate glaze to go on top. They were well received by the boys. Erik had already left for work by the time they were done - he went in very early this morning.

(I took quite a few photos for today, but Blogger is still rejecting my right to add more pictures, even though I have been deleting old photos from the blog. Grrrrr. I'll try again tomorrow.)

I've been shirking some of the Money Saving Mom 4 Weeks challenge in the last two days and I knew I had those tasks in front of me. I took the first good excuse to put Nick in independent playtime and did school with Xander. We finished all of that except for the playing outside and the recorder practicing.

I found a good idea for showing the value of different coins on Pinterest, and we made our version with Trio blocks. This worked well for Xander.

At some point, I got into my outfit for the day and put on makeup. My daily goals list was made. I did one of the extra tasks for today, which was to thoroughly clean out the miscellaneous utensil drawer. I use two handmade mugs for our dinner prep utensils: one for things that are used to open cans and stir and make things up, and one for things that are used to help serve the food up. The utensil drawer holds baking tools, twist-ties, candles, ice cream scoop, meat thermometers, chopsticks. You know. That stuff.

I am happy to report that all those places are now very clean. I even rinsed and dried my cookbook stand because it is easier to do that than to dust it.

Nick came out and the kids played with Sandy (who gobbled up red bell pepper meanwhile) and I started working in the kitchen. I had a lot of work to do on the stove and oven, which is the main reason I shirked the Money Saving Mom stuff when it was appliance day. They are now as clean as they get without an hour-long scrubbing.

I cleaned the top of the refrigerator. I found on top: a large red cookie tray, our chocolate advent calendar for this year, a child safety identity kit, and a bag of Alexander the Great warriors from Hobby Lobby. In my humble opinion, most of this is fair game for top-of-the-refrigerator territory. The large red cookie tray won't fit anywhere else and it will be used this season. The chocolate advent calendar has to be kept up somewhere high, I'm sure you'll understand, and I wanted it near our quilted advent activity calendar which is just outside the kitchen. The bag of warriors is waiting for Xander to make it one more school day without complaining about school at all. Then he earns the right to keep and play with them. I do need to use that child identity kit, so sometime today I will take Xander's fingerprints with it. We already have a sample of Nick's DNA (in the freezer) that the hospital gave to us when he was born.

I did do the vacuuming that was called for yesterday. What is left from previous days is a quick clean of the hall bathroom and a wipe-down of all the kitchen cupboards. I should really clean the inside of the microwave, but we'll see. I'm a bit exhausted from tackling that oven and stove. What is left of today's assignment is to clean all the glass doors and tables and such. If I don't get to that, I'm sure Nick or Xander will happily do it for me. :)

Off to post some photos on Facebook, since Blogger is not my photo friend right now.