Here’s a sample page (and you can download a free sample here):

With a newborn in the house, I’m currently focusing on the Daily Tasks on the right side of the page (laundry, load the dishwasher, etc).  If I get through those and still feel like doing a bit more, I start working through the tasks on the left side of the page, broken down by the day.  The first week of January before Slingshot was born, I completed ALL of the tasks each day, and my house was sparkling clean.  It was amazing how just a few things each day made such a big difference!  The other thing I LOVE about this planner is that I can leave it out for my husband, and he can see exactly what needs to be done each day.  This type of planner makes it easy to delegate tasks to your husband and kids (assuming they’re old enough to help out).

You can also choose to have a Scripture Reading Plan included.  I opted to included it in mine, though I’m doing good if I get the New Testament scriptures read.

This planner is available for download for only $9.  You can print all the weeks out and create your own binder, take them to a copy place and have them spiral bound, or simply print one week at a time.  So flexible!  Definitely worth the $9!

Disclosure: I have not been asked to write this review, nor am I being compensated for it.  This is just a great planner that I’m currently using, and I thought you might like it too!

Slingshot,

(you know his real name, but this is his blog “handle” from now on! )

I can’t believe you are 2 weeks old already!  We’re still adjusting to having you at home with us and to being a family of four.  At 2 weeks old:

• You weigh 6 pounds 1 ounce (3%).  You still haven’t reached your birth weight of 6 pounds 5 ounces again, but we’re getting close!
• You are 20 inches long (27%).
• You look EXACTLY like your big brother (see photo below).  We hear that from just about everyone, and it’s absolutely true!  I can’t wait to see how your personality develops.

The Little Apple, about 10 days old.  Doesn’t Slingshot look just like him?!

• You’ve finally figured out how to latch on properly and enjoy nursing (particularly those all night marathons!).  I am so thankful that I don’t have to pump anymore and that we don’t have to feed you with a syringe.
• You sleep ALL the time during the day!  Your big brother was on the other end of the sleeping spectrum, so we don’t quite know what to do with you (answer: embrace it!  take a nap!  be productive! ).
• You still keep me up quite a bit at night.  When you’re awake, you want to be nursing.  So we’ve had quite a few nights with 2 or 3 hour long nursing marathons.  Not very fun for mommy, but I’m hoping this will pass soon.  You’re a growing boy!
• You still see me exclusively as The Milk Lady.  If I’m holding you, you are rooting around trying to eat (even if you just ate).  I can only really cuddle with you when you’re asleep.  Daddy is much better at calming you down than I am.
• We think you may have a bit of reflux.  Hopefully not as severe as big brother’s, but we’ll see.  At least we know what to do about it.
• You make the cutest faces!  You’ve mastered the confused look (see photo above), the angry look, the pouty face, and the excited face.  We can’t wait to see you smile!
• You are already holding your head up really well when we put you on your tummy, and you look SO close to rolling from front to back.  You hate tummy time though.

Love,

Mommy

Shepherd Asher Apple
(nn Shep, Slingshot)
Born Thursday, January 5, 2012 at 1:59pm
6 pounds, 5 ounces.  18 1/2 inches

Home at last!

Thoughts on Shepherd’s birth, his name, and our first few days….

• Shepherd: We wanted another slightly unusual name.  One that was distinctly masculine, one with a good nickname (in this case, “Shep”).  Shepherd is not a family name, just one we like.
• Asher:   As for the middle name, we didn’t pick that until the night before he was born!  Asher means: “fortunate, blessed, happy one” and we certainly feel blessed to have Shepherd after all we’ve been through the last few years.  We wanted something he could fall back on that was a bit more common, and Asher was #139 in 2010.  We love that it’s got the “sh” like Shepherd and the  ”a” like Apple, uniting the first and last name.
• It was SUCH a different c-section experience this time around walking in to the operating room and being fully aware of what was happening the entire time.  And having my husband there with me this time too!  I think my recovery this time is going a little quicker as well.
• Breastfeeding is not going particularly well, but I’m determined to stick with it.  The first two nights (at the hospital) were rough, and by the end of the second day, Shepherd was down to 5 pounds 8 ounces.  Most babies lose weight at birth, but he lost over 10% of his birth weight.  After several meetings with a lactation consultant, I started pumping and feeding him via syringe (all this after I attempt to nurse him for 20-30 mins).  Doing that over and over again every 2-3 hours has been draining, but our third night at the hospital was much better, and when we left the hospital he was up to 5 pounds 10 ounces. (Thank goodness I saved some of Finn’s preemie clothes!)
• Coming home was/is a HUGE adjustment.  Last night was rough all over again, and I feel like we took 10 steps backwards in the breastfeeding department.  I’m feeling more pain at the site of my incision because I’ve got a 2 story house to move around instead of a tiny hospital room, and I’ve been moving around MUCH more.  We’ve also got a VERY energetic and noisy 4 year old who is a little too excited to “play” with his baby brother.  We’re a little overwhelmed at the moment, but I know we’ll get used to our new family of four!
• I’m amazed at how much Shepherd resembles Finley when he was a baby.  They’ve got the same lips, nose, hairline, tiny little bodies.  They make the same faces, and they have similar fussiness!

Things may be a little quiet around here for the next few days as we settle in at home, but rest assured, I’ll be back with some new posts soon!  Thanks for all of your well wishes on Facebook!

HOWEVER, since I was already planning on putting together some goodies for The Picky Apple to have at the hospital (after seeing this on Pinterest), I thought I’d make it a two-fer and give it as an anniversary gift.

I included several things he asked to have for snacks (almonds, peanut butter, apples, Goldfish) and several things I know he likes (Reeses Pieces, Snickers, string cheese, Diet Dr. Pepper, peanut butter and cheese crackers).  The Picky Apple has already seen the snacks because he unloaded my groceries from the car after I got home from the grocery store yesterday.  (See what I mean?!  He’s great!)  I spent about 5 minutes throwing this basket together.  Since my focus the last couple days has been on deep cleaning the house, I decided my time was better spent cleaning than making the “perfect” little tags for the gift basket with scrapbook paper and fun scissors.  I’m sure The Picky Apple understands.  In fact, I think he’d much rather have a gunk-free, science-experiment-free refrigerator than adorable gift tags on his hospital snacks.  So he got random, but oh-so-colorful paint chips instead.

I tried to incorporate the snack title in as many of the labels as possible: for the nuts, “I’m NUTS for you!”, for the goldfish, “There are lots of FISH in the sea, but you’re the only one for me!”.  You get the idea.  But for several, I just wrote a sweet note.  The Diet Dr. Pepper note says “You’ve been such a great dad to Finley and I can’t wait to see you hold our new baby boy!”

Happy Anniversary, Nathan!  I love you!

So all that being said, here’s Slingshot’s room….

We LOVE that giant window and all the light it lets in, but it sure does make it hard to photograph this room!  The photo below shows the little attic door on the left (there is another door on the opposite wall).  We used those as a guide for how tall to make the board and batten, and I’m so glad that we did.  I feel like those little doors are much less of an eyesore and really blend in now.  I am SO pleased with how the board and batten turned out.  The Picky Apple did a fantastic job, don’t you think?

Here’s the other side of the room, that is definitely in need of some wall art….

We bought that train table for The Littlest Apple’s second birthday.  He never really enjoyed playing with it.  His favorite part of playing with it is taking it apart and throwing the tracks on the ground.  We love it too much to get rid of it, but don’t have another place to store it at the moment.  So we’re hoping that Slingshot enjoys it a little more than his big brother!  Luckily, this bedroom is second in size only to our master bedroom, so there is plenty of space for a ginormous train table.

The curtains are my personal favorite, because I made them.  I’ll share more on that in another post!

And here’s the rug I ordered….

The wall art is a big sticking point right now.  We can’t make up our minds, so we decided not to rush it just so we have something up before Slingshot’s arrival (though it IS driving me a little crazy to not have room “finished”).  We want a series of 5 or 6 framed somethings on one wall (prints?  fun fabrics?  art that my husband and I create?), framed in IKEA Ribba frames like these:

I like these Alphabet Prints from Finny & Zook (and I’m keen on these letters later in the alphabet, which might be weird):

We could also use these Pattern Pieces (in lots of different colors) available for free from Sprik Space.

But for now we’re happy with the nursery, and it’s time to move on to cleaning the rest of the house like a crazy woman.  I have SO much to do in the next few days!!

One special thing we did this year was the Family Thumbprint Christmas Tree Ornament (you can see 2 pictured above).  I wanted a way to document our last year as a family of 3, and I thought this would be a cute way to do it.  We pressed our thumbprints into the dough before baking, and then I colored them each a different color and added some details and our name with a black fine-tip Sharpie.  Next year, we’re going to need a bigger tree ornament to fit all 4 of our thumbprints!  This was actually the only salt dough ornament that went on the tree.

The rest were used for gift tags!  Part necessity because we ran out of gift tags, part “okay, what do we do with all of the ornaments now that we made them?”  Aside from their slightly delicate nature (I did accidentally break one when I stacked a few presents on top of each other), I LOVE the way the salt dough ornaments look as gift tags.  I wrote on them with a fine tip sharpie.

One batch of dough made plenty for us!

Salt Dough Ornaments

recipe from The Happy Housewife

Ingredients:

• 2 cups flour
• 1 cup salt
• 1 cup warm water

Mix together flour and salt.  Then mix in the warm water.  Mix until you have a dough that is similar in consistency to pie crust.  Take the dough and place it on a floured surface.  Roll out the dough until it is about 1/4 inch thick.  Use cookie cutters to cut out shapes. If you don’t have cookie cutters you could use a glass to cut circles.  Put the shapes on a cookie sheet.  Then take a sharp object (I used a meat thermometer) to put a small hole in each shape where you will insert the ribbon. Make sure the hole goes all the way through the dough, because it will close up slightly while baking.  Bake the salt dough ornaments for 4 to 6 hours at 200 degrees or until hardened.  Paint and decorate as desired!

Now that The Littlest Apple is out of school for the Christmas break, I can share this great Foot Soak I made for his preschool teachers.  I’ve created homemade scrubs before (for Mother’s Day), but this gift idea caught my eye on Pinterest because it was a foot soak, not a scrub, and included peppermint tea.  Also, it wasn’t super oily like lots of other scrubs.  Teachers who are on their feet all day herding preschoolers deserve something luxurious and refreshing to soak their tired feet in at the end of the day, don’t you think?!  (Not a bad idea for pregnant women either, so I made myself a batch too!)  This soak was amazingly easy to make, and The Littlest Apple enjoyed helping me stir together the ingredients.  I packaged it in these jars that I just love (I bought some of mine at Garden Ridge Pottery and some at Hobby Lobby), and kept my labeling and ribboning to a minimum (mostly because I made about 10 of these and got burnt out by the ribboning stage).

I paired the foot soak with a Rice Heat Therapy Pack containing eucalyptus essential oils, also hand sewn by me.  Yes, 10 of them.  I’m glad to have that marked off my To Do list!  I found a super cute fabric on sale at Hobby Lobby, and I’m already itching to use it for myself somehow.

I’m kicking myself for not getting any better pictures of this stuff for you.  The pictures I do have were taken at night and are pretty awful.

Peppermint and Lemon Foot Soak

recipe from Or So She Says…

Ingredients:

• 1 cup sea salt (a great alternative would be Kosher salt)
• 1 cup Epsom salt (usually found in the personal care/pharmacy aisle)
• 2 Tbsp peppermint tea (Be careful not to confuse this with “peppermint flavored” tea: the tea should be 100% peppermint leaves. Tip: if you can’t find it in bulk, buy a box of tea-bags, cut them open and measure!)
• 4 tsp pure peppermint extract
• 3 tsp pure lemon extract
• 1 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp cornstarch
• 1 tsp baking soda

Combine the sea salt and Epsom salt in your mixing bowl. When the two salts are completely blended, add olive oil, peppermint extract and lemon extract. Stir each time you add an ingredient, making sure to break apart any large chunks of salt with your spoon. Once these liquid ingredients have been fully incorporated, your salt mixture will look like moist sand (and it will smell pretty good too!). Now it’s time to add the cornstarch and baking soda. Again, blend thoroughly, breaking apart any large clumps of baking soda or salt.  Almost done! Now add the final ingredient – the peppermint leaves. (I add this last, because I’ve found that adding them early in the process causes the leaves to bruise and give off their green color to the salt.) Stir the leaves in until they are fully blended with the salt mixture. Go ahead and take a deep breath while you’re at it – it should have a very refreshing scent!

At this point, if you’re planning on keeping the foot soak for yourself, store it in an air-tight container so it stays fresh. If the container is not air-tight, the beautiful aroma of the extracts and the peppermint leaves will fade. (The soak will still be useful, just not as charming!)

Instructions for Use: Fill a small basin with warm water and stir in ¼ to ½ cup of foot soak. Stir it to dissolve the salts, and soak your feet for 10-15 minutes. Ahhhh…

We used plastic hammers and real nails to hammer buttons onto a styrofoam cone to make a button Christmas tree.  The Littlest Apple stuck with this for longer than expected, but did get a little frustrated with some of our buttons that had extra-large holes (because they kept falling off the nails).  I went with a white cone because a) that’s all I could find and b) I thought it would make a pretty snow-covered backdrop for our green and red buttons since I knew we wouldn’t be completely covering the tree.  If you want it to look more like a Christmas tree, you could use a green styrofoam cone.

What activities do you have planned to keep your kids busy while they’re out of school for the Christmas break?