Twins (Gemelos)

How cool am I that I know the Spanish word for "twin"? Okay, so, you probably already know that my dear husband is an identical twin. Yes, it's weird sometimes. Yes, I get them mixed up on the phone sometimes. Yes, I am married to the cuter twin. When Aron realized he and Sam had matchy-matchy shirts and could look like little twins, he got them dressed all by hisself and had me take this picture. I miss him so much when he's gone! Okay, they may DRESS alike, but I like to think that Samuel (our 5th child) looks like me. I FINALLY got me a child that looks like me! My mom says Aron and I look like brother and sister anyway (creepy!), so our kids look like both of us, but whatever. I think they should have sewed a little blue/white checked shirt for the baby doll Sam is holding, too, but they must have been feeling lazy that day :-)

Thankful Thursday: My Top 3 Beauty Products

Today I'm gonna share my top 3 beauty products with you. That is to say, if my house were on fire and I could only take 3 things from my bathroom, these would be it.

Voluminous mascara ROCKS MY WORLD. If you love my lashes, this is why.

Looks like I'm a L'oreal nut because their day/night Youth Code is great for summer or winter, day or night.

Their Youth Code eye cream is why I look 21 :-)

Most days these 3 things are all I wear out of the house, and I'm good to go!

What are your favorite things?

Don't forget to enter the SUMMER SIZZLE GIVEAWAY ... this is a rockin' blog hop with 70 bloggers participating. And these aren't just kid-and-mommy prizes ... there are also things like an iTunes gift card, Amazon.com gift card, PayPal cash and one year of RedBox (twice a week). And that's just the first dozen entries I've gotten through! If you enter 10 per day, you've entered them all by the end of the hop! 

Oh, Yeah. I Went There. 50 Shades of Grey

Yes, I finally dove into this gem, Fifty Shades of Grey. Can't resist a banned book, you know. Ordered the second and third books of the series for my mom today. I'm on page 68 right now and feel like I'm just about at the top of the roller coaster and then will be on quite the ride until the book is over. Do like my red devil eyes? If you've read this, let me know what you think.

Updated July 2: now I'm somewhere in the 200s and am still going strong. Interesting read and not for everyone, that's for sure, but it doesn't bug me.

Baby Falls Asleep on Floor Clutching Drumstick

Tackle-It Tuesday: Puzzles

Every Tuesday, I tackle a different project around my home that's been bugging all of us!

If your kids' puzzles are all organized perfectly, then this post is not for you because you will judge me harshly. You see, I used to have mine all organized. I would take them from their cardboard box and put them in a plastic sandwich baggie. I would cut out the small picture of the completed puzzle and include it in the baggie. I even used to write on the back of each puzzle piece so I knew which puzzles went together if they were ever, say, all tossed up in the air at once.

What a mess!

Fast forward a few years and a few kids and the puzzle pieces DID end up everywhere. And I finally just tossed every piece I could find into a box like you see below (used commonly for scrapbooking or holding fabric in my family). For Tackle-It Tuesday I decided to tackle this project and trash all the puzzles that were not complete. This was hard because I am a very nostalgic person and tossing incomplete Dora puzzles was like tossing one of my children into the trash. I got over it when my daughter reminded me they are only puzzles and we have a few left that are complete AND we can always get more if someone gets a puzzle hankering. Here's my progress:

Putting puzzles together with my kids.

This is the kind of box I use for such things.

This is how they look now. Only a few puzzles, but they have all the pieces at least. Kids 3, 4 and 5 weren't as into puzzles as my first two kids.

What are your household projects you want to tackle? I have lots to come during upcoming Tackle-It Tuesday posts ... painting a kitchen wall, tackling a junk drawer in my bathroom, tackling a file cabinet full of paper ideas for writing, my bedroom closet.