Spring Cleaning Time!

Happy Leap Year!

Here is an update on my Spring cleaning and decluttering my home. I started in the laundry room, dining room and my office. I still have some more work to do in the office, but I need to make a trip to IKEA or some yard sales to find what I want. I am happy with how far I've come and I can't wait to finish up the other three closets and the living room. 


Here are the before:

Here is the after:

Here are some helpful tips on keeping your house tidy:

1) Love fabric baskets: great storage
2) Don't just spring clean and purge once a year or twice. Do this throughout the year.
3) Clean your ceiling fans, window stills, blinds, wipe down doors and baseboards every month. I added this to my regular weekly cleaning.
4) Every three months clean out your closets. Every week do one closet to not feel overwhelmed. This is a great way to get the older kids involved. ** If you have older children(10 and up) have them help clean out their closet/drawers. If there are any items that can be sold in a yard sale let them keep the money from the sell. But, they should also help with the yard sale as well.**
5) Have a container where you simply use for yard sales and another container for consignment or Good Will. I store my yard sales container in the garage and the consignment in the laundry room closet.
6) This may help for some people, but I write two lists. One list is what I want to accomplish during the week and the other list is what I want to get done in the next few months. If I don't accomplish everything on my list I don't sweat it.

I will share my progresses and hopefully share some more tips.  I know for some this my be a bit too much especially if you are a blogger and writing every week, but if one of my tips helps you that would be awesome. I am so grateful you stop by and I LOVE your KIND comments. Have a great week.

Hugs,

Vanessa

Valentine's Day Special Guest Host - Janny from Que Linda

In keeping with my theme for Valentine's day, I have today Janny from Que Linda. I always LOVE stopping by her blog and seeing her latest creations. Janny is either sewing, crafting, cooking or creating beautiful decor for her home. You need to check out her lovely blog. 

I'm so grateful that Vanessa asked me to be a guest today!  I always love stopping by to see what she has up her sleeve.  I usually craft to my heart's content over at Que Linda, but today I want to share with you a couple printables I made for Valentine's Day.

Cupcake toppers are a fun way to dress things up- especially since I don't have frosting skills.  They're simple and sweet.  Sometimes it's all about the details, right?

Right click on the image below and save the image.  Then you can print.  All you need are a few toothpicks.

I also made some gift tags below.  Enjoy~

Thanks for inviting me to be a guest today, Vanessa!

&

Happy Valentine's Day!

I love these cupcake toppers and gift tags and just in time for those Valentine's Day parties at school, church or just for our personal use! Thank you Janny, for being apart of my Valentine's theme party. We LOVE your Kind comments, so drop us a line. Have a great weekend.

Hugs,

Vanessa

Scrumptious Treats!

Can you believe Valentine's Day is just 7 days away? It just seems like yesterday we celebrated New Year's. Crazy but never the less, it's just around the corner and I wanted to share these easy and yummy treats. I have many different recipes for cake batters, but today, I am going to show you the filling and frosting part today. 

For this first recipe you will need a piping bag, round tip, marshmallow fluff and Nutella. These lovelies are very taste and not too sweet. Oh, did I forget to mention they are not on the skinny side? 

Fill your piping bag or tube with fluff and insert inside your cupcakes.

Next spread Nutella on top of cupcake and a doll up of fluff in the middle. Voila!

Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting. This recipe is light, fluffy and delicious. 

Whipped Cream Cheese Frosting

8 ounces + 4 ounces of Softened cream cheese (can use reduce fat or non-fat too)

1 1/4 cup of Powered sugar

1/4 teaspoon of Salt

1 1/4 teaspoon Vanilla extract

1 1/2 heavy whipped cream

1/4 teaspoon of lemon zests (optional)

In a medium bowl beat on medium speed the cream cheese, sugar, salt, (lemon zests) and vanilla till smooth. Next gradually add heavy cream and beat until is fluffy and light. 

This frosting is great to pipe and is not runny. You can also take a small bowl and add some of the frosting with crushed up cookies (you favorite cookies of course). Then add it in between the cakes layers or frost all over your cake.  

This is a side note - I made pumpkin, banana and flex seeds pancakes and added two sunny side up eggs for my honey! I also drizzled maple syrup. Just yummy!

I can go on and on about fillings and frosting, but I will leave you with these for today! Let me know if you try these out and if you have a recipe you would like to share with me. Love to try new things. LOVE your KIND words, so leave me a comment. 

Hugs, 

Vanessa