Yesterday was a lovely, sunny day in Toronto. We had set the whole day aside for delicious Dim Sum brunch and chilling out at home for a bit, but we found ourselves looking for something fun to do with the kids for an hour or two.

What to do? Around here we turn to our Summer Fun List.

Since we moved in to our new home in January, our books have been sitting in boxes. Not the kid’s books, but all of our adult books. Wait! Not “adult” adult books! Just the books owned by grown-ups. Ack! You know what I mean!!

Anyways, one day the other weekend I unpacked all of our books, purged a couple more boxes beyond what we got rid of before we moved, and spent a day organizing the bookshelf in our home office.

The result…
 

The other day my husband took my 4-year old out to the park. They went to a park with a very steep hill and took the scooter. It was warm so they were in t-shirts and shorts. The Kid refused to wear knee or elbow pads and his father did not insist. (FYI – helmet is not optional.) The result…all knees and elbows completely scraped up. (But head intact!)
 

We have a small house. A semi with an unfinished basement.

That means that we spend a lot of our family time on our main floor, mostly in our little living room. Playing games. Building Lego. Racing Hot Wheels. Watching movies. Relaxing.

But the room is only big enough for a few pieces of furniture and can get cluttered with toys and stuff really quickly. So we’ve maximized storage everywhere we can in this room, tucking it in any available space. Here’s where we put it all:

It has been a long winter.

Even though spring technically started weeks ago, it sure hasn’t felt like it. Whenever we had a warmish day it was gone as quickly as it arrived. It felt like a mirage. The next day snow was flying again. Or at least a bitter wind was blowing.

Since I started working with YMC in September, I’ve been managing our programs via emails and a fairly simple production calendar. Over the past half a year, the number of projects we take on at a given time has grown and grown and well… it has become hard to control it all with our existing set-up. It’s been driving me just a little bit nuts and giving me more and more grey hairs each and every week. Not exactly what this gal needs!

Yesterday was April Fools Day. From the moment the Kid awoke, he had many pranks played on him. Green milk in his Rice Krispies. All the underwear in his drawer pinned together. The arms of his coat stuffed with paper. Hot Wheels in his boots. I even gave him a raw egg as he helped me peel “boiled” eggs for the egg salad sandwiches for our lunch - it burst in his hands.

He loved it! With each prank he howled and asked “Can you play another joke on me?” He kept looking around the house for the “jokes.” He wanted more and more.

We all have them.

The little food storage containers to hold leftovers in the fridge or to take lunches to go.

Whether you use glass or plastic, figuring out how and where to keep them in our kitchens can be a challenge. Now I know that you can buy sets where the lids snap on the bottoms or ones that collapse down for easy storage. But at our house we have quite a large and random collection that has been gathered over time.

We love road trips. With a 4 year old who is vehicle CRAZY, travelling by car is the best way for us to get away. Most parents need to figure out what to do to keep their children entertained on the road. We have that built-in to the mode of transportation. The Kid will spend hours spotting different makes and models of cars as they pass by and enjoying the spectacle of every road construction site we encounter.

Mr. Organized and I are pretty predictable and like routine. We have a good list of “Go To” meals in our repertoire and once a week or so we throw all caution to the wind and have take out for dinner. We work away each evening on our laptops side by side on the couch organizing things for both home and work. And we have a standard roster of shows we watch together on our PVR while we work.

Have piles and piles of artwork coming home from daycare or school? We do.

Since the Kid has been in daycare since he turned one, he has been bringing home artwork from “school” for a few years now. Add to that the craft fun we have at home and it can quickly start to pile up.

As someone who has a couple of art degrees, I waited for many years to have a little one who would create his own little masterpieces. I love the unbridled creativity and seeing the evolution of his artistic ability and interest. Love it.

It is January, there’s snow everywhere and we have landed in our new house with a completely empty freezer. Time to make some hearty meals for wintry nights and stock up again.

If you make a few meals this week that can easily be double batched and that freeze well, you can tuck away some extra dinners for those crazy days when you just don’t have time to cook.

Looking for something to organize this week? I suggest going through some of your clothes and find things that can be tossed or donated. But keep it simple…

Choose one dresser drawer. Or one shelf in a closet. Whether it be your clothes or your kid’s, just take 5-10 minutes to go through that drawer or shelf and pull out items that:

1. Don’t fit anymore
2. Aren’t worn anymore
3. Are worn out

Here's a classic first organizing task of the year...pack up all the Christmas decorations. Now that the holiday season is over, it is time to tuck it all away safely and neatly, ready for next year.

Here are some things that I do when packing up:

•  Wrap small ornaments individually but keep them together in Ziploc baggies

•  Use decorative cookie tins that have been given to us, to hold lights or larger ornaments

The countdown has begun.

Two more sleeps till Santa comes? Nope. That’s not what I’m talking about.

21 days until we move into our new home! So between the last minute stocking stuffer shopping and the wrapping, we have begun to pack up our home and prepare for our big move.

We eat a lot of eggs at our house. They are a great source of protein and help keep meal prep simple and quick, which gives me time for other things on my To Do list or (heaven forbid) doing something fun!

It’s official.

I have fallen off the wagon.

My nice, comfortable, uber-organized wagon.

Fairly early on in our relationship, my husband did a very sweet thing for me… he planned a surprise weekend getaway. He wouldn’t tell me a thing about where we were going. But Friday morning, while I was at work and getting excited about leaving that night, a courier arrived at my office with an envelope for me. Inside was a detailed agenda of the weekend ahead. So charming and so organized! I was hooked.