I am sure you know how difficult travelling with kids can be. However, I truly feel that it is worth all of the stress and hard work and science backs me up on this. According to this article, taking your kids on vacation can enhance their executive functions and overall intelligence, help support their exploratory urge and can essentially refuel your family's affection for one another! 

So, now that we've discussed how it can benefit your kids, let's talk about ways to make it not be a total shit show for you! Because, let's face it, going anywhere with kids can be a nightmare. 

When I begin to plan a trip the biggest thing I can recommend is RESEARCH! Go to the internet and ask it some questions. Here are a few of the ones I always check on.
-What restaurants are kid friendly, offer kid discounts or even have a play area?
-What activities should you do? How much do they cost? What are the operating hours? Are there discount days?
-What is the driving distance from your hotel to the various activities you plan on doing? 

After doing some preliminary research I begin to form my plan. First, I plan the trip there. We have not taken a trip requiring a flight with ours yet (mostly due to the extreme cost that involves) so, I have to do a good amount of planning for the drive.

Kids can't sit in the car for too long without a stop for play or pee or whatever. I usually use this site to find the halfway point between my start and end locations. Once I've found it, I will try to pick a good spot for us to stop somewhere around that spot, preferably a place that gives kids the opportunity to play.

For example, we recently went on a quick weekend trip to Huntsville, AL to visit the Space and Rocket Center. We live in Jonesboro, AR so halfway was a pretty small town. I started looking at a larger area not too far off and found a great indoor play center with a Red Robin close by! Winning! So, we ate and then played for a few hours. The play place was super cute AND offered free coffee for parents. They even had a giant ball pit that ALL of us enjoyed. 

I hope that my tips are helpful and give you the tools you need to plan an awesome family trip! Let me know how it goes and if you have any tips for me! I'm always eager to learn something new!

​Thanks for visiting!

For the first time ever I have a pantry! Now that we've been in our new house for about a month, I finally have time to start doing some more detail oriented organization and decorating. The pantry was in desperate need of organization so I decided to tackle that first. Plus, with the new baby about to be here I want to have spaces where people might try to be helpful by cooking and/or taking care of kid needs be more functional. The pantry was definitely not functional and was more of a "toss it in and quickly shut the door so everything doesn't fall out" kind of situation. See...

So, to begin I of course went to Pinterest for some inspiration. There were tons of free printables but not many that had my exact requirements or looked how I wanted them to look. So, I created my own! You can get them for free below! After creating them I laminated them and cut them out. I could have used my silhouette machine and done vinyl but in all honesty, I was feeling lazy and it takes so much longer. 

For the containers I hit Target and picked some lovely tubs that were very chic but cost $8 each. When I saw some less designer styled tubs for $1.97 in the dish washing supply isle I decided they were the better choice. I mean, the labels will make them look nice, they function exactly the same way and $6 x 7 tubs is a savings of $42. That's money I can definitely put to use somewhere else without effecting the overall outcome of the pantry. It was a no-brainer. So, I grabbed the tubs, a few extra risers and an expandable 3-tier can shelf and headed home. It only took about 30 minutes to re-organize and now I'm happy to say, there's no more "shut the door quickly" game and the kids can easily access snacks when they want. Plus, I'm now aware of the overwhelming amount of pasta and quinoa we have.

I know it doesn't look like the dreamy, highly organized and designer container pantry's that I was dreaming about on Pinterest but, I know it is something I can maintain. It's reasonable and down-to-earth like me. Everything has somewhere to go and is easy to access. That's the goal right? 

Hopefully you find it helpful and the free printable labels can be found below. 

​Enjoy!

For Christmas, I got a gigantic stack of various books covering topics from child psychology, crafting, sociology and even how to make Kombucha. Last week I finally got around to picking up a small and unassuming book called, "the life-changing magic of tidying up" by Marie Kondo, and I am in love. There are so many nuggets of wisdom and entertainment as well as a lovely perspective on life found within this book that I find myself smiling while reading it and feeling very at peace.

​The book is a #1 New York Times best seller and has sold over 3 million copies and I fully understand why. Even though the content can sometimes sound crazy. As you read you realize that her perspective on viewing your items and how to keep your space clean is beautiful. The main tenants of the book are that you should first go through all of the items in your house and only keep items that "spark joy" the author states that doing this will allow you to truly appreciate the items that you keep and will contribute to an overall feeling of contentedness and peace. I have to admit that while reading I have found myself feeling so excited and eager to clean that I have had to put it down and stop reading to calm myself. I generally read before bed and tearing into my belongings at 10:30pm is not a great idea. 

So, my husband and I are planning on attacking the house this weekend while the children are at their grandparents house and I can't wait! I am so excited about having a space that feels calm and collected and getting rid of all of the unnecessary things cluttering my life sounds exhilarating. I'll keep you updated and will make a post as soon as we finish! I hope you have a productive and fun weekend too and if you haven't read the book you should definitely check it out. I mean, she says things like this:

This week we were out of school for THREE WHOLE DAYS in a row because of "snow"! Not much as you can see above, we ended up with mostly ice and lost our power a few times. So, I not only organized a few cabinets but, I also made labels for Lilly's room! They turned out really cute and are exactly what I wanted.  

I used my silhouette machine, royalty free images and a free font download to create them along with turquoise vinyl I ordered online. The project only took about 30 minutes and the results are great! I've included my cut file so you can create your own! YAY!

You can download the file below and see what you'll be getting above. Good luck and Happy Crafting!