scenes from a winter morning at home

We're just finishing the first week of Sam's winter break, and we have absolutely nothing to show for it.

Part of this has been our glorious laziness: apparently since our schedule is different, I've given up on being productive at all. We sit around and play. We walk to the park. We use restaurant gift cards we've accumulated over the past few years when we don't want to actually make dinner. We snuggle on the couch and watch Netflix when the kids have gone to bed. This slowing down and setting our own pace has been so drastically different from this past semester and I love it.

We're also nursing colds over here though, so that's never fun. And we did have plans to try out new outdoor trails and get together with friends that we've had to put on hold due to excessive coughing and low fevers. Hopefully we'll all be feeling better in the next few days when we travel for Christmas.

Here are a few glimpses of what's been happening around the house this week. Not shown: Zupas takeout for dinner, and finally sending out our Christmas cards, the one thing I've accomplished since Monday.

We've been dragging all the toys to the living room and rotating through them in the mornings.

The twins love to look at each other and chatter back and forth these days. It's so cute. And look at them trying to hold hands during tummy time in the picture below. 

Claire loves to decorate and redecorate this Christmas tree I made for her.

The tree is made from half a yard of the least fluffy fleece in the store, and the ornaments are all cut out from felt. This project took me 25 minutes and $4, so I consider it a major win.

Short sleeves and bare baby legs. Welcome to December in Arizona. :)

I just want to give a quick shout-out to these hand and face wipes (and the all-over wipes that we use all the time too). We use them every time we're out and about, and we love them. I first got them in partnership with JOHNSON’S®, who has been generous enough to sponsor my blog for the entire year.

In fact, there are lots of JOHNSON’S® products we use every single day around here. I'm not contractually obligated to say any of this specifically. I just wanted to give a shout out because we genuinely love these products. This detangler spray is light and clean and doesn't leave your toddler's hair greasy or stringy. This bedtime bubble bath smells unbelievably delicious and has been an all-time favorite, and this moisturizing cream is on daily use here at our house too (in fact, we bought a second bottle so we wouldn't have to keep moving the lotion back and forth between the kids' rooms).

She put her shoes on "all by self!" that day. Haha

You guys, I have got to do more arm exercises. My arms get tired after only a few minutes of carrying both these kiddos.

And now that we've had our down time, we're ready to kick these colds to the curb and party with family and friends for the holidays.

I’m sharing #JOHNSONS in my life as part of a JOHNSON'S® sponsored series for Socialstars.™Learn more by visiting their Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Thank you for supporting the brands that support my family!

4 ways I'm simplifying this holiday season

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #MyWayToVeg #CollectiveBias

I got way ahead of myself this year.

First, it's the busy season for my blog. Everyone wants to get in their holiday advertising, and I can't say no to a chance to work with my favorite brands + earn extra holiday income. Then things got busy with the end of Sam's semester (read: I never see him). Then we have parties with friends and playdates with toddlers and trying to remember everyone I should buy a Christmas gift for. Then there's traveling for the holidays, which is stressful at any time of year when you have three kids in tow. Then, before I knew it, I had volunteered to host a baby shower and hike with my friend and make a display for church. I was suddenly ultra stressed and the laundry was still not done and the twins still wake up at night and I was convinced everything would be better if I just got ONE NIGHT of solid sleep.

All this caught up to me last week and I ended up sobbing on the phone to my husband because it seemed like I just couldn't. do. it all. Luckily some of my fabulous friends came to the rescue and watched Fixer Upper with me over a huge bowl of popcorn.

So now (belatedly) I'm trying to take a step back and just breathe. The holidays are supposed to be fun, not stressful. And I know I'm beyond lucky to have all these very good things in my life. I just need to simplify.

Here are four ways I'm cutting down, cutting back, and focusing on what's important this holiday season:

1. SIMPLIFYING FAMILY TIME

At this stage in our lives, our kids feel just as loved if we spend hundreds of dollars taking them to Disneyland or if we spend an afternoon at the park down the street. They don't need grand gestures, complex crafts, or fancy breakfasts with Santa to get into the holiday mood. Honestly, all Claire wants is someone to ride her bike with, and the twins are happy if they're holding something they can drool on. We're taking advantage of these easy-to-please years while we still can.

This holiday season, it means our biggest craft is decorating wrapping paper (tutorials coming next week) and our entertainment is mostly in the form of holiday picture books checked out from the library.

2. SIMPLIFYING MEALS

We are all about simplifying what we eat these days (remember these salted caramel cookies and my mini-series about easy weeknight dinners?). We tried these MorningStar Farms Veggie Bowls for dinner the other night, and I have to say it was so nice to have a complete healthier dinner done in a few minutes. I like that they're a convenient "as-is" meal solution - and I'm pretty sure I ate every bite of those Japanese Soba noodles.

^^I sure wish I could tell you how this naan from the Chik'n Tikka Masala tasted, but as it turns out I have a very sneaky toddler who is a champion naan gobbler. It's a good thing she's so cute. ;)

3. SIMPLIFYING GIFTS

When it comes to presents for each other and for the kids, we're following the rhyme that says:

Something you want,
Something you need,
Something to wear,
Something to read.

Maybe this won't work every year, but it's been really great for us this year. It makes presents for our kids (and for each other) much easier and simpler. For the first time ever, we'll have all our Christmas shopping done by the end of Thanksgiving break (we're just waiting for Black Friday sales for the last few things on our list). It also helps that we're traveling for Christmas, so we don't have a lot of room for presents anyway.

4. SIMPLIFYING COMMITMENTS

Over the weekend, my friend and I planned a fun evening at the park with our local friends who weren't traveling for Thanksgiving. Everyone was supposed to bring a pie or other Thanksgiving side to share. I had all these plans to make a yummy chocolate pie. Well, the weekend kept going and going and time was ticking down. Finally, it was the night before, and I knew I could have a much-needed in-home date night with my husband or else I could make a pie. I chose to spend time with my husband and brought a new container of vanilla ice cream to the party instead. Guess what? Nobody cared that I didn't make a homemade pie! Nobody even noticed!

It's only been a few days since I became determined to simplify, and it's already made such a big difference. I'm happier, and actually excited for upcoming events. And now I'm off to pull Christmas decor from our storage closet, because as it turns out I don't think I can wait any longer. :)

How are you simplifying this holiday season?

little mess makers

Five years ago, when I was a newlywed in my little basement apartment, I remember looking at a stack of my husband's school papers mixed in with my textbooks and work papers that was taking up a good portion of the kitchen table and thinking, "Wow, it sure is easy to make a mess when two people live in the same small place."

Then, a few years later, when Jason was living with us, I remember looking at all of the stuff for his astronomy merit badge strewn across the floor, along with the stack of my various papers and my husband's textbooks and thinking, "Wow, it sure is easy to make a mess when three people live in the same small place."

When we had our first child, I remember sitting on the floor of the living room, mopping up spit up from the carpet while observing Jason's backpack, Sam's shoes, my laptop, and Claire's teething toys, which were all on the floor with me, and thinking, "Will our house ever be clean again? It's hard NOT to have a mess when four people live in the same small place."

And now that we have the twins, all bets are off. I'm getting better at keeping our main living spaces clean, but nobody better go in my bedroom, which has become the repository for all the random stacks of stuff I haven't sorted through yet. And when it comes to real messes? The carpet is our biggest victim.

I can't even tell you how many hours a day I spend on the floor. I feed the twins on their twin pillow on the floor. I read books to Claire on the floor. We do tummy time and craft time and diaper changing time and laundry folding time on the floor. We spend LOTS of time on the floor, and since it's our most well-loved space, it's also our most well-messed space. (Well-messed? Definitely not a word. Let's go with it anyway.)

When you spend all day on the floor with three tiny messy children, a good carpet cleaning system is a must-have. We've been trying out the new STAINMASTER™ Carpet Care products for about a month now, and we use our bottle of Carpet Stain Remover so often it's almost gone. It begins cleaning on contact, and doesn't leave a sticky residue like other carpet cleaning products do. 

And the best part? It's preventative as well, leaving an invisible shield that repels dirt and protects the carpet against future stains. With three kids under three, you can be certain there will be future stains within a week. Or a day. Or an hour.

Between the Carpet Stain Remover, Rug Stain Remover, and Carpet High Traffic Cleaner, keeping our carpets clean and preventing future resoiling is easy and effective, leaving us more time to focus on the fun stuff. Like doing the same puzzle a million times a day (we seriously need more than two puzzles in this house). ;)

Thank you to STAINMASTER™ for sponsoring this post, and for being the reason our carpets and rugs stay clean and ready for lots and lots of play time.