New things for the new year! (Juicing & Trofast)

First blog entry of 2014 and more to come!  I'm blogging on my 30 minute lunch break right now, I don't know how many other full time working mom bloggers can relate.  I wanted to write a couple separate blogs, but because I never do it on time I decided to lump it all together!  Today I'm going to write about new things I'm doing for the new year.

First off, I started juicing for the family!  Okay, maybe not family just me and the kids.  My fiance is not a fan, so he can kick rocks :)  This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time and I recall blogging about it.  A friend of mine told me she got the Nutribullet and juices for her and her bf every morning and they noticed a big difference in their energy throughout the day.  I've been wanting one for a long time and never forked out the money for it.  Originally, I put it on my Christmas list for my fiance.  Instead, his boss's family actually bought it for us!  I started juicing a little bit before the new year, but Trent got this stomach bug and had the worst diarrhea several times a day and the worst diaper rash I've ever seen.  This was 4 days into juicing and I was not sure if maybe his body was not use to vegetables, so I stopped.  See, Trent my littlest one does not like vegetables.  He is strictly carbs and meat.  If it looks like a vegetable, he's probably not eating it.  So I thought making "healthy juice" (that's what I tell my kids) every morning was a great idea.  That way I don't have to worry about their vegetable and fruit intake for the day.  For those that follows my blog, I try not to give my kids any sugar and that includes juice.  So I have to make sure I tell them the difference between the one I make them and "apple juice."  To my surprise, THEY LOVE IT!  Trent starts clapping and spinning in circles when he sees me make it.  I don't really know if what I make is enough to meet their daily intake, but hey, it's better than what he was having before.  This also triggered another thing, my new love for Trader Joe's.  There are people that goes there religiously, but I just didn't get hooked.  I liked it, but I didn't like that I couldn't get EVERYTHING I needed there.  I still need to go to Stater Brothers for meat.  I decided to go to Trader Joe's because they have this amazing raw almond butter I wanted to use for my juice.

As you can tell from the size of it, it's pretty freaking big compared to my hand.  What I've been putting in it is organic tuscan Kale.  They sell it packaged at Trader Joe's with the Salads.  They also have a mix bag of baby kale, baby chard and baby spinach.  I also add a variation of; carrots, blueberries, banana, pineapple, blackberries, strawberries, greek yogurt, honey, raw crunch almond butter and coconut "beverage/milk".  All of these items I find at Trader Joe's at a decent price!  I don't usually put ALL of those things in there, I try to change it a bit everyday.  The main ingredients that I always use are the veggies, banana, pineapple, raw almost butter and coconut milk/beverage.

I started juicing again last week and have been very consistent with it.  I'm actually rather proud of myself for keeping it up.  I just know how good it is for the kids and that keeps me motivated.

Getting organized....

So one of my NY resolutions this year was to get more organized.  I've been on this kick for the last year, to make our house into a home.  We live in a pretty small upstairs two bedroom condo.  The boys share a room and at first we really wanted to move into a bigger place but we've got a pretty sweet deal right now.  I figured, if we just organized and planned things out better, we could definitely stay here a while longer!

One of my top priorities, is to make the boys room more practical.  Chase is getting older now and as the years go by, the toys triples in size.  Their room really was just a place for them to sleep, now I'm trying to make it their space to hang out.  First thing I did was move their toys into their room.  I was very hesitant to do that but, we had to because the toys were in the space where the Christmas tree went.  Then I realized how we have outgrown their old toy storage and we need something more.  I also think they don't actually play with their toys because they can't see it!

This is what it looked like right when I moved the toys into their room.  All of their toys are in the tires and they rarely ever take the toys out to play with it.

At first I really wanted to move Chase into a loft bed, so I can slide the crib underneath it.  After measuring some things out, that didn't work.  So I thought about getting the IKEA Kura bed and leaving Trent in the crib for now and making a little library underneath the KURA.  After measuring, that didn't work.  I've faced the fact that maybe a new bed is not going to happen right now.  That rained on my parade pretty hard because I was so excited.  So I decided right now let's just get the toys organized and we can work on the bed situation later.  I've been browsing for a long time and decided to go with the TROFAST from IKEA. Something affordable, organized and kid friendly.  I did lots of measuring and when I finally setup everything, I realized 1) I SUCK AT MEASURING 2) it didn't turn out the way I had hoped.  But, we made it work and I still love it.  We took the changing table off the crib.  It was an attachment that we didn't realize we could remove.  Since we don't use it anymore and it took up about 2 feet of space, it had to go.  Also, since the last time I've blogged, I finally hung up the curtain to cover the closet area so it's not exposed.  It really made it look a lot tidier.

 It's still a work in progress but I think it will all come together once we get the kids into a bunk bed.  Overall, I'm pretty happy about it I must say.  Moving the crib against the other wall really opened it up and gave them more play room!

Alright, my lunch is over.  I'll post soon!