Wednesday, June 12, 2013

8th grade promotion ceremony


each grad received a cute personalized chalkboard pennant.
love love love these group of girlies!
she walked in to the "Star Wars" theme song
(each grad picked their fave song).
wearing yellow checked sunglasses.
(each grad walked in wearing shades...cool kids.) 
the co-op teacher gave each grad a special word & a special gift that defined them.
her word was empowered & her gift was a Spock figurine. both abs perfect!
dress & converse...yes!
these two crazy best friendsies...peas in a pod {heart}
yummy gluten free 'stache cakes made by my sweet hubby!
{such a good daddy!}
me & my beautiful amazing girl
 
our oldest brownsugar's 8th grade promotion ceremony was Saturday. a little windy, but an absolutely BEAUTIFUL day for a country club celebration!
 
the promotion ceremony events were planned by the 8th graders themselves & our wonderful homeschooling co-op families did such a fantastic job with the party planning, decorating, etc...! these 8th graders were such an awesome group of smarties, they more than deserved it all.
extremely proud!
 
wait.
it's just sinking in that 8th grade promotion means she is done with 8th grade forever & will officially be a high schooler next year!
WAAAAAH! NO! NO! NOOOOOO!!!& why?!?
{only 4 more years left in the nest}
it all happened so fast...sadness.

Monday, June 10, 2013

summer project: becoming minimalist



only the beginning
 
this summer we decided to SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY SERIOUSLY purge, downsize, organize & drastically simplify our lives. finally a dream come true for me! I HAAATE having extra junk & purge often, yet our fam of 5 seems to still always have tons of STUFF. I never seemed to be able to get rid of enough & have never been able to do so on such a large scale. using this becoming minimalist post & many others around the web, as a catalyst I got busy before summer break officially began.
 
I started with the books (& the school supplies that belonged to our charter). we have books in every single room of our house (yes including all 3 bathrooms). i'm not a huge collector, overly sentimental about things, & have no problem letting things go, but OMG our books were hard to go thru & hard let go of. we LOVE LOVE LOVE our books! each & every book has been gone thru, I maaaay have even gone so far as to catalog each title in my ipad & they are pretty much done. but they were only the beginning.
 
after much avoidance & anxiety I've tackled the craft closet supplies. of which the contents took over my entire kitchen & sat there for days (& NOPE no pix...no way!). I completely avoided the storage container mountains full of fabric (I barely even know how to sew...& HATE it), yarn & knitting/crocheting tools (I barely even know how to knit or crochet), scrapbooking & paper crafting supplies (no time...nor any desire anymore)& ALL the other STUFF. for days I seriously ignored the big mass of stuff like it didn't even exist: stress eating junk, taking naps, leaving the house, avoiding eye contact with it by not looking directly at it, etc...
 
BUT this weekend I hit the coffee & the crafting purging pretty hard & got most of it cleaned out & organized. the yarn ball tangles seriously almost killed me. the girls were bummed because I dismantled the little houses they made inside the mountain of stuff (like with different rooms & walls & furniture & cubbies & stuff...that how much extra STUFF we had). 
ok, in my defense (kinda), i'm more artsy, but the girls are pretty crafty they do sew & knit & actually use those supplies for projects, but we did not need it ALL.
 
we have a HUGE yard sale planned with the neighbs at the end of the month. for the next few weeks of the simplifying process (& our summer vacay), my house will be complete chaos & I will be obsessively putting in the time & focus required to achieve this goal. purging & organizing have become one of my all time fave things to do so i'm trying to be ok with it all & bite it off in small chunks as this huge of a project is equally as exhilarating as it is overwhelming.
 
it will all be for the best & i'm sooo super excited for the final outcome. EVERYTHING MUST GO & I cannot wait ...I just hope I don't gain too much stress eating weight in the process!