Pinterest projects

Woaaaah! It's been a super long time since I've blogged. Especially on this blog!

With my recent transition back into full time mommyhood/wifehood I've found I have A LOT of time on my hands. Time on my hands + Pinterest = crazy projects and a uber organized house.

I also decided that I'm going to update our blog more often. What a better way to update our blog than to post the projects I've been working on from Pinterest.

Right now I have two projects I'm working on:
1. Potty train my very independent 28 month old
2. 21 day organization for my home

The first is obviously going to be an ongoing project...at least until he gets the hang of things. The first day was REALLY rough. I think we went through 5 pairs of underwear and pants before 10am. That's when I hopped on Pinterest and found THIS:

Source: themoesfamilyintexas.blogspot.com via Kim on Pinterest

So I'm not really sure I buy the whole POTTY TRAIN IN ONE DAY thing. I mean... maybe they'll be going when you take them....but really...by the end of day one I was ready to give up!

I took this lady's tips and started implementing them and they work great, BUT we still have a long way to go. He still doesn't understand that he needs to tell me when he needs to go, and he still has some accidents when he's not reminded to go. What has worked for us:
1. LOTS of juice
2. Setting a timer to go off every 15 minutes (for the first two days, now we set it for about every 30 - 45 minutes)
3. Treats - we used M&Ms and I gave him two or three the first time he sat down and actually went pee pee. We did this consistently until he stopped asking for the treat. Now I use the treats for BIG accomplishments like going all the way through nap with no accidents and telling me when he has to go or going in to use the potty by himself.
4. LOTS of praise. He loves to be told he's a big boy!

Problems we've ran into:
1. Synchronizing when he had to go. It took him about 10 big accidents before I was able to get our timed trips to the potty to line up with when he really had to go. It seemed like would just get him off the potty with NO results and he would pee in his undies. I just kept taking him to the potty every 10 to 15 minutes until he finally went. We've had minimal accidents since then.
2. Treating the undies like a diaper. At first it seemed like he didn't care if he was wet in his undies. It was just a diaper to him... so I ditched them for the first two days. I slipped him in a pair of soft cotton pants with no undies. He REALLY doesn't like the pee dripping down his leg so he's more willing to hold it until he gets to the potty.
3. Not being able to open his potty or reach the light. Tanner has a potty that's pretty simple. It was like 10 dollars at WalMart with no bells or whistles. The lid snaps down and becomes a stool. This became a problem. After we would dump the potty into the toilet we would close the lid. It's pretty hard for little hands to open the lid when we're in a hurry to make it to the potty. We had to make it a point to keep the lid open so the potty was ready to go. We also have to leave the light on so that he's more willing to run in and use the potty on his own if he's playing.

Like I said... we still have a long way to go but he is making HUGE strides and I'm only using diapers overnight. (Letting him have accidents over nap time but he's doing really good staying dry).

NOW! Onto Project number 2:
I found this post on Pinterest and thought "I could SO do that." So I decided to take on the 21 day challenge for an organized home. THIS is the post I saw:

Source: amazon.com via Kim on Pinterest

I know it says that day 1 you should organize your junk drawers but my pantry door fell off the hinges today so I figured I would start there and maybe skip around depending on what I felt like doing. I should have taken a before/after picture.... maybe for future posts! But it really only took me about 20 minutes and it looks SOOO much better. I'll post an AFTER picture maybe in a few days.

So that's what I'm working on lately... for those who say that Pinterest is a total waste of time: not in this house!