Bedtime Routine Printable

After I made the Morning Routine and Low-Tech Toys print outs, Max asked  if I can make Bedtime Routine Printable as well. Of course I can't say no to such a wonderful idea.
Full resolution can be download HERE

How to plan a bathroom renovation

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We are almost finished with our bathroom renovation. Cannot believe that we are able to pull this together in such a short amount of time. I guess we learned something from our kitchen remodeling experience. 

Here are the steps we took to plan our bathroom renovation:
1. Ask, ask, ask
Instead of going to the stores directly and being bombarded with so many choices, we contacted a few friends who had done bathroom renovation and asked for their inputs.

Some useful advises I got:
a. For the floor, use the tile that is made of porcelain,  not ceramic. Porcelain is harder than ceramic, which is better for the floor,  and it is not easy to crack
b. Check out high end tile store (such as Porcelanosa) for ideas and reference then get similar stuffs from other high rated stores on yelp.
c. Check the local water district to see if you can get any rebate for old toilet before you start the work.
d. Make sure to use a trustworthy contractor; ask friends for referral and check yelp reviews.
e. Check out Costco for Vanity. They may offer cheaper and better quality product than the store: 

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2. Find a reliable contractor. This is the key to any renovation project so we interviewed some contractors and their clients, checked out their work and asked for their quotes and timetable.

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Some blog cleaning and organizing

I have been working on some blog cleaning and organizing lately:

a. Max's Blog
Once in a while I like to read what I write here to Max. Lately, he has been asking me to write about his pets, books, toys, and so on. So I  told him why don't he write at his own blog. After a few minutes of tinkering...then voila here it is: Max's Blog. :) He cannot type yet so he narrates the stories for me to type but he can read already so I can't just write in my own words. He would correct me if I do. 

Home Tour: Sewing Corner

We live in a two bed rooms condo so our space is pretty limited and we make use every corner in our house in order to make it work for us. I love small space though and don't mind living in smaller one especially after seeing this lovely 665 ft. cottage:

How we live during kitchen renovation

I used to wonder how people live when part of their house is being renovated. Well, I no longer wonder now that we went through it ourselves. Thankfully, our kitchen renovation only lasted for 8 days {the heavy duty part}. Except during demolition, when the dust and noise was too much to bear, we managed to cook and stay happily in the house. We will share the "after" picture later. Meanwhile enjoy these "during" pictures:

What we did before and during the renovation:

1. Pack most of the food in the pantry and non essential kitchen tools and store them in the garage. It's perfect time to clean up/ purge the old stuff in our cabinet too.

Planning a Kitchen Renovation

Ever since we bought our place more than five years ago, Chris and I knew we want to do a kitchen makeover to make it work better for us. Thankfully, before we decided to go further, we read a personal finance article in which the author suggested for a new homeowner to move in their home for a while before doing any home renovation.

God blessed us with Max a little under a year after we moved in. We knew that our kitchen project got to wait until the kids are big enough to follow instruction. To motivate us and make it more fun, we set a goal: to pay off certain percentage of our house before we can begin our kitchen project. By God's grace we reached that goal beginning of this year and by now our youngest is old enough to follow instruction so the planning, communicating, and working can now begin. :)

Steps we took before we begin our kitchen renovation:

1. Identify the current problem: what can be saved, what need to be changed or update to improve the way we live and work. The above cabinet is an example of what we want to change: the opening on this lower kitchen cabinet is too small that the corner space is practically unused because we can't reach it.

Our Summer Bucket List

1. Read and summarize Summer Reading List

2. Go camping

3. Finish our kitchen makeover {will share more about it later on}

Other Good Packing Tips

I love finding ways to make my life easier. Planning always makes everything easier especially when it comes to traveling. So thankful I found these useful posts on packing & traveling:

• Essential Travel Gear by Simple Mom
• How to Pack Light by Travelista
• Packing Tips from Professional Travel Pros
• Before The Trip Checklist
• Organized Trip Packing for Kids
• Tips for Traveling with Small Children

Simple Recipe Binders

I learned a little while ago that I don't really cook from recipe books that we own so I donated most of them. From time to time, I would borrow recipe books from the library or look over the internet {mostly Pinterest or The Pioneer Woman} for inspiration, if we like food then I would type the recipe, put the paper inside a plastic sheet protectors {to protect them from stain} then put it into a binder:

Montessori Inspired Learning Space

A few years ago, my dear friend, Carolina introduce me to Montessori. I like the education concept and philosophy a lot. Some of them are:

• Help the kids to do things themselves: Encourage independence
• Establish orderly environment and keep clutter at minimum. Teach them to do one things at a time.
• Patiently teach children new skills in simple ways they can understand.
• Let them practice without interruption or correction
• Encourage children to appreciate and explore nature
• Do Practical Life at home: involved him/ her in everything you do: baking, cooking, cleaning, fixing things and so on to encourage him to be helpful.
• Respect their choice and encourage interest in learning
• Create a loving climate: use encouragement, model kindness, courtesy, and compassion

Montessori classroom is different from other schools because the children are engaged in self-initiated activities with a degree of autonomy and independence that is unique to an educational setting..



I keep those things in mind as I organize our home, which continuously evolves as our family grows.
Today, I'm giving you a tour of our family room/ living room/ learning space/ playroom.
We got this big oh-so-useful shelves from Ikea. The upper part hold our stuffs: pictures, reference books, books that I currently read, camera; anything that we don't want the kids to touch.

Love equals to

It's our mantel turn to get a little face lift. Somehow knickknacks ended up on top of it. Below is the before picture:

And here is the after:

Annie & Acel gave Wes this Letter Blocks on his 1st birthday earlier this year. I thought it's good to use some of them as a daily reminder for me. I chose this phrase: "Love = Grace". As God has been so gracious to me; may I also be gracious to those around me.

 "Be kind and compassionate to one another, 

forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you." 

Ephesians 4:32

Bit by Bit: Max' Creative Space

I was inspired to make a Creative Corner for Max when I read this post. We used to put the desk in the living room but by moving it on the landing space, we { by 'we' I meant me giving the idea, and hubby doing the hard work *ahem*} can add the shelves on the top:

Max's Creative Space - Before:

Noticed: I took the before picture during daylight. The organizing process took quite sometimes actually 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there, another 5 minutes here and there before it turned into this:

Bit by Bit: Sewing Corner

My Sewing Corner - Before:

We bought the white shelves from Ikea then Chris mounted them on wall for me. {Thank you, dear!} I got most of the colorful threads from a friend and the thread racks from Walmart.

Bit by Bit: Kitchen Corner

Project #2: Kitchen Corner
Before: it wasn't too bad just a little cluttered. I want to keep those coffee bins, oatmeal, honey, and vitamin away from the counter.


However, in order to do that I have to make some space for them, which means  I have to re-organized the cabinet above the corner:

Bit by Bit Projects

Introducing the latest topic on this blog: *drum roll please*

I used to long for the time when I can deep clean and organize my house from top to bottom. One day I realized that the time won't come: there's always laundry to be done, dishes to wash, lovely kids to care for, clutter to clean up, and so on. What I can do is just like I did with sewing and blogging, stop waiting for perfect time and take 5 minutes at a time to clean/ organize a spot or corner of my home, eventually I'll get the rest of the house organized, true? :) So feel free to join me and share your post on the comment. 

Useful Packing Tip: Packing Cubes

I first learned about packing cubes from SmallNotebook.org. We have been traveling lately and found them to be very useful.

I bought my packing cubes from Container Store for $10 each. I thought of ordering from Amazon.com but so glad I didn't because after comparing the different sizes and shapes, I decided to go with these cubes below { they were supposed  to be for shoes, at least that's what the label says, but I found them to be perfect for Max and Wes' clothes}. So I got two of them that way their clothes don't get lost in the big luggage. When we arrive at the hotel, I just put those cubes in the dresser.


I use the same idea: using small compartments for my underwear and other small stuffs:

House Cleaning List

Grandma is here. Yay!!!! The boys and I did a lot of house cleaning before she arrived. I made this House Cleaning list for future reference.

Hanging picture frames

We just finished hanging our picture frames. Finally Wesley pictures is up on the wall :)

Got the inspiration from here.

First, lay out the frames on the floor {this is the only thing I did, my handy hubby did the rest of the work}:

Trader Joe's 99 cents wine bag

I saw my super creative friend, Syeffy brought this wine bag to a gathering one day. However, instead of filling it with wine bottles she put her kiddos' stuffs: bottles, toys, etc. She told me she got the bag from Trader Joe's for less than a dollar so off I go to get one for myself.

Here are the stuffs that we usually bring when we go out: our water bottle, Max's water bottle, Max & Wes' snacks, Thermos, Baby bottle, baby food container:

All fit and well organized in one bag:

How We Eliminate Paper Clutter

I'm not an organized person by nature. Thank God I marry one. I remember the first big fight we had after we got married was over a messy desk. Chris can't function when the place is not in order while I didn't see the need to clean up when I was still working on something. I came a long way since then. Throughout the years of our marriage, I learn how to plan and organize my life, time, and resources.  The one book that I found to be very helpful is 

 Order from Chaos: A Six-Step Plan for Organizing Yourself, Your Office, and Your Life. I wrote a review/ summary about the book a little while ago here.

Anyway, last week The Simplemom Project Simplify Hot Spot#2 was Paper Clutter (junk mails, books, magazine, documents, etc...)  so I look around the house and below are the result. 

We had these two (one for Chris and one for me) Dumping Bins: filled with paper docs that need to be put away: 

I decided it's time to tackle the piles and eliminate one bin since I'm the one who handle paper filing anyway.