Do you remember when you were a kid and your parents said, “Time sure flies as you get older!”? Do you also remember thinking, “Old people are so dramatic.” I do. It seems I have officially become one of those old people, because I can’t believe how quickly the months fly by! Anyone else with me? So on that note, it’s time for another Monthly Miscellanea wrap up post. 🙂 Here’s what my August looked like…

Another School Year Begins

My kiddos started school on the 20th! I wish we had a couple more weeks of summer, but so far their school year has been great. And can we talk about the fact that they are in FIRST and FOURTH grade?! I seriously can’t get over how old my babies are. I’m sure every mom feels this way, but I just want to slow time down…

If you’re a mama, how do you feel each time the new school year starts?

This post contains affiliate links, which means if you make a purchase after clicking on a link, I may receive a commission, but at no additional cost to you. See my full disclosure here.

The Best Cooking Appliance You’ll Ever Buy

Have I mentioned how much I hate cooking? Of all the domestic skills I don’t enjoy, cooking is at the top of the list. Maybe because you have to do it every day. It’s not like you can say, “Sorry kids, sorry hubs, we aren’t eating dinner tonight.” Trust me, I’ve tried that. Thankfully I have a super understanding husband who literally never gets mad at me for my lack of meal prep, but you can only feed your family cereal so many nights in a row before “mom guilt” sets in and you realize you have to step up your game. So for all of you who are totally tracking with me on this one, I am about to blow your mind!

Did you know that there is an appliance that can take frozen chicken boobs (this is how we refer to them in our house; our kids are going to be so confused) from rock hard frozen to tender and shreddable in 30 minutes or less?! “What is this magical appliance?” you ask. Enter The. Instant. Pot.

Before I discovered the wonder that is the Instant Pot, I relied heavily on my slow cooker in my attempts to feed my family a decent home cooked meal. But what happens on those days when you forget to put the ingredients in at a reasonable time and said meal won’t be ready until 9pm?! Been there, done that. More times than I care to admit! Now, I can throw most of my slow cooker meals in the Instant Pot around 4:30-5pm and they are ready by 6. The Instant Pot is seriously my best kitchen friend. 

Basically, it is an electronic pressure cooker, which sounded sort of scary to me, and seemed even scarier when I started reading through the user manual (yes, I’m the girl who reads the manual – nothing in the kitchen is intuitive for me!). There are all sorts of warnings about “extreme pressure” and “may cause fire,” which nearly gave me a heart attack the first time I used it, but this appliance is seriously the EASIEST thing to operate. I’m actually considering getting rid of my slow cooker because I’ve only used it once in the two and a half years I’ve owned my Instant Pot, when I made a double batch of enchilada soup… One for us, and one for a friend. So if you are like me and want to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible, do your self a favor and order up one of these bad boys as soon as possible!

Various models of the Instant Pot are available. This is the one I have, although newer and fancier options are now being made. This thing can also double as a steamer, a rice cooker, a yogurt maker, all sorts of things! I haven’t used any of the other options, because like I said, my goal is to be in the kitchen for the shortest length of time possible, but for people who are a bit more domestically ambitious, I’m sure the fancy bells and whistles are great too. I have the 6 quart model, but for bigger families, I can see how the 8 quart would be better.

Music

Are your kids anything like mine, where they find a favorite song and want to listen to it over and over? Insert eye roll here. Well, this month, the tables turned, and I tortured my kids by listening to my favorite song on repeat. I am seriously obsessed with the Post Malone song “Better Now.” For the record, we listen to the edited version. Even though the words are sad, the beat and melody are so fun, and it just makes me want to dance. So, picture me riding along in Flexie (what Arabella calls our Ford Flex) trying to convince my kids to have a dance party with me. Somehow I was more persuasive when they were a bit younger. Either I’m losing my touch, or Kaden, my nine year old, has decided dance parties aren’t cool anymore. Insert sad little yellow man face here (if you didn’t catch it, that was a reference to Schmidt on New Girl – the emoticon scene is one of my favorites ever!).

Arabella’s favorite song of the moment is Ferrari by Bebe Rexha. I will never get tired of driving around listening to her sing at the top of her lungs. Her life goals are to be a singer and a vet, so it’s a good thing she’s practicing! 😉

With the start of school, we’re getting back into the habit of listening to praise and worship music every morning. Our current fave is the Caleb and Kelsey “Worship” album – so good!

Never Ending Office Project

“You win some, you lose some,” my sister commiserated with me when I told her about the disastrous results of my office shelves DIY. “This one kicked my booty,” I responded. And it did. Boy did it ever! There is something so heartbreaking about investing hours and hours of blood and sweat (no tears, at least not this time) into a DIY project that ends up a total failure.

I know better than to paint laminate without a primer, as it’s one of the top DIY mistakes you can make, but when I went to test the paint color last summer, it really seemed to be sticking, so I went crazy and started painting. And then the peeling began. 🙁 And I lost all motivation and left the garage in my shelves for a year, which Adam was super fired up about. 😉

I am getting antsy to get my office fully functional now that the dalmatian walls are done, so I bought the stuff to strip the paint and got to work. This is a two step process, starting with using Citristrip stripping gel, and initially it seemed to be working. But then I realized that in certain areas (primarily the laminate/MDF/not true wood areas), the paint wouldn’t come off at all, no matter how many layers of gel I used, and the harder I scraped, I started damaging the MDF. I pulled out my mineral spirits (the second step – removes the Citristrip residue), hopeful that would help, but alas, it did not.

After HOURS of scraping, reapplying, more scraping, reapplying, and more scraping, I came to the conclusion that it just wasn’t going to happen. EVEN if I could get all of the paint off, which was very questionable, parts of the cabinet unit were getting too damaged to take the primer and paint well. I finally decided to cut my losses and move on.

I’m hopeful that this will end up being a “happy accident” and I’ll find something better! The only thing I didn’t like about this original plan was that there wasn’t a lot of closed/covered storage, so when I hunt now, I’m looking for something where I can hide a bunch of my stuff! I’ll keep you posted, of course.