Breaking Dawn Part 2

I've been absent, sorry, not that I think the few of you who *might* look at this care. 

I'm using my disaster preparedness training to pack a super bag for the marathon movie day.  Tomorrow I'm meeting a few friends, like usual, and we're going to see the new Twilight movie at midnight.  What's different this time is we're going to watch all 5 in a row...beginning at 11:30am!!!  That's means I'll be at the theatre for about 15 hours tomorrow.  In an effort to not eat 3 meals of popcorn, chocolate, soda, and nachos I'm packing a backpack and taking it in :)

I was hoping to have my new Thrive food shipment in time, but since I won't I made do with substitutes from Wal-Mart.  Sweet potato chips, dried fruit, nuts, and some candy.  Not to mention the other essentials like tissues, chapstick, toothpaste/toothbrush, a few books, and contact solution.

Wish me luck!!!

My 4 year old daughter helped me arrange this picture, she said "It looks beautiful Mama!"

baskets and bows

Hummm...I didn't accomplish as much today as I wanted to. 

After getting home from a school field trip I loaded up my 4 year old for grocery shopping.  This was the payday grocery trip so it involved 4 stores: Price Chopper, Aldis's, Hy-Vee, and Wal-Mart.  This was the first shopping trip in our new van and it was amazing!  Here's a look at what we got:

 

 

21 boxes of cereal!!!  This will last my three kids and husband about 2 months (if I'm lucky!). 

 

 

After my husband went to work tonight, I took my two youngest to get all the items for our craft tonight.  It only took 2 additional trips to Wal-Mart to get the right amount of material to cover 5 baskets.  I opted fora no-sew option using safety pins, which I ran out of after 4 baskets.  More Wal-Mart tomorrow!

 

 

 

So I cut 5 pieces of fabric that allowed for 1 1/2 to 2 inch of overlap inside then i used clothespins to hold the material in place.

 





 

 

I found the first one turned out great, but by the 4th one I needed almost double the safety pins.  I've decided that on a day when I have more time I'm going to go around with buttons and attach the fabric at each opening in the basket weave, but first I want to make sure these will last more than a week.  (My kids are very rough on things)

 

Finished result in my food closet! looks so much better.  One holds all the Halloween candy, another fruit snacks, one canned cat food, and the 4th has those bags/boxes of noodle and rice sides dishes.

 

I did get distracted today with 2 other projects.  One was the field trip and another was for my daughters closet. 

 

 

Where to put the stuff???

Well today I am making a trip to Deals (the closest thing to a Dollar Store on my end of town) to purchase some small plastic baskets.  Then it's off to Wal-Mart and Jo-Ann's to see if they have any clearance fabric.  I'm going to line the baskets with fabric and then attach labels with a safety pin.  So I guess I need to add a fabric marker to my list.  My hope is this will make my husband less annoyed with my food closet.  My food closet is a disaster area.

We moved into our house 7 months ago. 

Our house is amazing and nice and has 4 bedrooms (thank the Lord!), but it is significantly smaller inside. Sure I have  sewing room, each kid has their own bedroom, and there's a large walk-in closet; but those features took away from the rest of the house.  I'm really missing the wonderful walk in pantry and 6 cabinets in my kitchen that our duplex had. 

So immediately I took over our awkward hall closet.  I mean really, who builds a closet with a close rod when you can't hang a hanger up.  Seriously, the closet is so shallow that a hanger won't fit. 

As you can see my makeshift organization is a little frustrating. I can only stack my #10 cans on certain shelves and it's impossible to know how many packages of Mac and Cheese or Mashed Potatoes are there without removing everything from the shelf. 

Not to mention the pool bag, abundance of lunchboxes, and broom.  I try not to think of my broom and dust pan being so close to my family's food. 

Wish me luck!  I'm taking my 5 and 4 year old with me :/

 

 

 

 

 

the first day

did you know the average person would have to drive to the store, load a cart with basic items, wait in a line for over and hour, then drive home again.  all of this would have to be done before the superstorm hits your home.  with a hurricane you have notice, but where i live in the midwest we don't have warning for tornados or earthquakes.  imagine if you had all the necessary items on hand.  you could grab a backpack and survive for 3 days.  a duffel bag will get you through at least 5.  what about an basement 'stockpile' that could last you for weeks when the power is out. 

i'm not talking about a stockpile like on extreme couponers (although that would help you out also), i'm talking about a stockpile of basics you could easily survive on for 1 year without electricity, water, or gas.

today i'm starting a life long journey of being prepared.  prepared for when my husband loses his job, or if one of us gets too sick to work, or if gas/electric/food prices keep going up and up and up!  but more importatly, to have a sense of security so that if a tornado knocks out my power and takes off my roof we would be okay.