Sing a Happy Working Song

All right everyone, time to tidy things up

Come my little friends
As we all sing a happy little working song
Merry little voices clear and strong
Come and roll your sleeves up
So that we can pitch in
Cleaning crud up in the kitchen
As we sing along

And you’ll trill a cheery tune in the tub
As we scrub a stubborn mildew stain
Lug a hairball from the shower drain
To the gay refrain
Of a happy working song

We’ll keep singing without fail
Otherwise we’d spoil it
Hosing down the garbage pail
And scrubbing up the toilet
Ooh!

How we all enjoy letting loose with a little
La-da-da-dum-dum
While we’re emptying the vacu-um
It’s such fun to hum
A happy working song
Oo-ooh
A happy working song...............

Today I set about cleaning the apartment as we prepare to move out next week. I am sure you are wondering if I wore a beautiful ball gown as I scrubbed the tub and vacuumed the floors. Well, sorry to disappoint but, no, just a knock-around dress. Did wild animals come to assist me in the chores? No, but my birds carried on pretty tunes while I worked :) If you haven't seen Enchanted I would recommend it as a cute, fun movie that leaves you feeling happy and wanting to sing. My happy working song today was singing along to whatever came across the radio... And to make cleaning even more interesting, or should I say to give me some motivation, I decided to create my own cleaning supplies using vinegar, hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, soap and oils. I have a small assortment of cleaning supplies already, but decided to step away from the chemicals for our sake and the birds, as well as instill a new, positive habit of using something more natural and less harmful for cleaning (not too mention it's pretty cheap and versatile!). Here's a photo of my new stock of supplies...

Like the gloves? I thought I'd treat myself to something pretty for cleaning. I now have carpet stain remover, bathroom tile/tub spray, and an all purpose spray that I'll use in the kitchen. The vinegar left over can be used most anywhere, as well as the baking soda. Our tub is sparkly and the kitchen smells fresh. I plan on giving the rest of our old cleaning supplies to someone who could always use extra items for a downtown organization she manages. I'm looking forward to making more items like this in the future!

*If you'd like to know how to make your own household cleaning supplies, you can go to this link below. I've recently become quite the avid reader over at Young House Love (very inspiring) and I can bet you will be one too if you aren't already :)

Young House Love: All Natural Homemade Cleaners

Happy Cleaning!

Carolina Bound

A suburban, one trailer, and 15 hours later my husband and I arrived at our destination in North Carolina on Wednesday. We were blessed to borrow a trailer from a friend at church and spent ALL day Tuesday loading the thing. It was SO incredibly hot and humid - as in over 100 degrees. Of course, this is expected in Florida, but a little break would've been nice. We managed to move all our furniture ourselves and leave behind a small portion of what will be needed when we go back for two last weeks of Florida living. Here's a photo of the accumulation of boxes in our family room with the exception of furniture already loaded in the trailer. It'll be crazy to go back and hardly have anything left! Matthew said it'll make our next trip seem like a breeze.

Oh, I can't forget to mention the little fact that this trip is really only supposed to take 10 hours... with a trailer we drive slower of course, but with a broken alternat0r which leads to a dead battery means no driving at all. Yes, we were stuck at a rest area 2 1/2 hours away from my parents' house for an hour(thank goodness it was there and not on 95!), then managed to get the car jump started and drove on little to no battery for another hour before deciding that it was too dark to not turn on our headlights... which we were avoiding using because we didn't want to suck all the life out of the battery. We managed to exit to a gas station, as the lights on the car were slowly dimming and waited another hour for AAA to bring the tow truck. Thankfully, my dad was in a very late meeting only 15 minutes away and happened to have a hitch on his truck so he could take the trailer, and the birds, and us home. What would a girl do without her dad? Needless to say, my dear husband fixed the car himself the next day and it appears to be working well. I am quite proud :) Guess the true test will be tomorrow when we drive it 650 miles back to our apartment... God has us in His hands that day as it could've been a whole lot worse!
The night before we left we added a new feathered friend to the family. Meet Monte (pronounced monty) - at least we think that'll be his name. We had several ideas, but Monte makes the most sense given that Altamonte is the city of our first "home" together and Sunny is already named after the Sunshine state. He is a blue parrotlet, which is the smallest parrot in the world. We had discussed getting one before to keep Sunny company during the day while we're at work, but didn't have easy access to any. I just happened to be at the pet store dropping off the last of the gerbils (thank goodness they are ALL gone!) and they had just weaned parrotlets in sky blue and then the darker blue. Our family may think we're crazy for getting another bird, but we didn't feel like it was a bad idea and having a friend for Sunny will be good. I guess that makes us bird people? We hope one day the birds will like each other, but for now we have to keep them supervised at all times when they're both out of the cage. Our Monte has a lot of character already and is much more active than our Quaker. He's a big bird in a tiny body! And he was quite a trooper as his first full day with us was spent on the road to NC. Our birds will have some miles on them!

Isn't he cute?

Vacation Home

This past Christmas, my parents bought us a vacation home. It's not just any vacation home... it fits in a large bag, is portable, allows my 6'5 1/2" husband to stand inside, and takes approximately 24 minutes to construct. Check it out:



Isn't our tent lovely? The bag it is toted in made us laugh when we saw the words Vacation Home and the cottage style windows in the front. We were thrilled to have a tent of our own - which meant no more borrowing or sleeping in our suburban when we felt like camping. Each month we looked ahead at weekends that might be available for camping so we could use our new tent, but none worked out until Memorial weekend. I had given up even trying to go camping until after we moved to NC because available weekends had diminished and the FL weather is steadily creeping up to unbearable. I came home one evening last week and my husband had all the camping gear out with a note saying, "How about camping this weekend?" I couldn't resist - even if it was for just one night.

We chose to camp at Anastasia State Park in St. Augustine (no, not the picture above ;). It was one of the state parks I had on my list of places to go and it just happened to have Sunday night open! We left right after church with our bird and all to begin the hour and a half drive. It was definitely worth it! The campsites are great and the opportunities at the park are numerous. We set up our tent in record time, explored the beach, cooked dinner over the fire and stayed up late in the tent playing card games. Sunny didn't seem to mind camping much. He didn't squawk incessantly which led us to believe he was content - even with the incredibly loud insects surrounding us. And guess what? I didn't forget the pillows this time! See first camping post here.

Sleeping through the night wasn't too pleasant as a rain storm approached and seemed to last the ENTIRE time I was supposed to be sleeping. I was lying on the air mattress (which we have yet to make it comfortable) praying no thunder and lightning would approach or else I'd have to sleep in the car. Thankfully, we had only rain, and lots of it. In the morning we were pleased to find just a small puddle in a little corner as opposed to a wet mess - it's fixable.

We awoke to a very warm morning, ate our muffins, and headed to the park shop to rent us some bicycles. It was fun riding around observing others' tents and RVs, soaking in good ideas for our next trip. I hadn't ridden a bike in a while, or with my husband for that matter, and I thoroughly enjoyed the activity. We forgot to take a picture though. Oh well. Guess we'll have to do it again!

Here are a couple pictures from our 24 hour visit to the park. I'm glad we got to go and I recommend the park to anyone in or visiting the Florida area. It's definitely worthy of a long weekend stay.

see our kite up in the sky? :)