When Living Naturally Doesn't Come So Naturally

I have two posts in my drafts right now that I have yet to post because this has been on my heart lately. It's confession time. I am a perfectionist and it's proably one of my greatest character flaws at times. I always feel like I have to do it all and I start getting a proud heart and God is always the first one to humble me when that happens. I am thankful for that because sometimes I get so caught up in being "perfect" that I forget what's important. 

When I was little my mom asked me what I was doing and I said, "I'm teaching them (probably my dolls and stuffed animals) to be perfect!" That's apparently always been my goal in life is to be "perfect", but the Bible says there are none that are good, no not one. Talk about a piece of humble pie. Maddox has gotten on a kick lately of fixing something and saying, "There! Perfect!" Poor child has inherited my need to have everything perfect.

 My daily expectations for myself are so high they are literally unattainable and secretly I know that, but once again I think I can do it all. I feel like if I can't cook three natural/organic meals a day from scratch, have a solid daily devotion time, exercise, drink 100oz. of water a day, cloth diaper 100%, use essential oils instead of conventional medicines (and heaven forbid you use essential oils not from one specific brand), keep up a blog, keep up with that plethora of vitamins I give myself and my children daily, have a home that looks like it came out of Better Homes and Garden magazine,use only natural cleaning and bath and beauty products, have Pinterest worthy activities for my son to do, do Baby Led Weaning with my daughter, and be a good wife that isn't on the brink of snapping like a twig then I am not good enough. That is my expectation for myself people and the list could go on like bathing at some point during the week! lol 

What has happened is I see these moms say, "My child has never used a disposable a day in their life. I never see a need to use one." And these other moms say, "I never feed my child anything that isn't organic. Do you know how bad that other stuff is for them?" And some more moms saying your not going to produce enough milk if you aren't getting at least 100oz. of water a day. And so what happens is I take snippets of what this mom is "perfect" at and snippets of what another mom is "perfect" at and so on and so on. I put all that together in my mind and think I need to be perfect at all those things.So one mom may seem perfect at only eating natural/organic cooked from scratch meals, but she may not cloth diaper or exercise. Another mom may be perfect at exercising and drinking water,but she may not have a beautiful clean home, but I think I should be able to do all of that in one day!

I love the online community, but sometimes I need to back away because let's be honest we usually put the highlights of our lives on the internet and sometimes as a mom who spends her day in her pajamas covered in baby spit up and constantly cleaning up spills and things my two year old has destroyed it can be a little discouraging to read about or see these moms with make up on, a spotless house, and their Pinterest worthy organic dinner on the table. 

I have a chalk board on my mantle that says "It is finished" from John 19:30. Every time I walk by it and I'm franticking about my to-do list I just take a deep sigh of relief. IT IS FINISHED! Nothing more I need to do. Jesus has taken care of everything and continues to take care of everything. 

"But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me." 2 Corinthians 12:9


Paul said I will boast about my weaknesses! Verse 10 goes on to say, "For when I am weak then I am strong"! 
I can't do it all and that's ok. I am going to focus on what's important and quit worrying so much about processed foods and GMOs and the like! Don't get me wrong I love natural living and there are areas of my life I've went natural and I have no plans to go back , but I am going to allow more of God's grace that he so freely gives to all that are willing. I just need to quit worrying and feeling guilty every time I don't measure up to my own unattainable expectations and start enjoying life more and spending more time where it matters.

With all that being said I plan to continue growing in natural living, but at a much slower pace and with alot more grace! :)

Happy Easter!! :)

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E-Cloth Review

I am so glad I can across this product thanks to Stacy at Stacy Makes Cents! Two of these e-cloths have replaced 90% or more of my cleaning products. I bought two of the general purpose cloths and two of the glass/polishing cloths around Christmas time when they were buy one get one free from Milk Allergy Mom. I gave one of each to my mom as part of her Christmas gift and kept the other two for myself.

General Purpose Cloth

The general purpose cloth feels similar to a microfiber towel but there is something special about the fibers in it that allows it to kill 99.9% of germs and bacteria when just wet with hot or cold water! I use this to clean my counters, stainless steel appliances, kitchen table, bath tub/shower, and toilet so it has replaced my multi surface cleaner spray and my bathroom cleaner spray! I will use it through the week in my kitchen and then on Monday I detail clean my bathrooms with it and wash it directly after that so that way no bathroom germs end up in the kitchen. :) After each day of use you just rinse it out really well with hot water and hang to dry. Then once a week you wash it with just a small amount of detergent on a hot wash cycle with no fabric softener or dryer sheets, similar to washing cloth diapers. When the cloth is dry, it works as an amazing dusting cloth, so that replaces dusting spray! This is a very inexpensive and natural way to get rid of most of your harmful spray cleaners!

Glass/Polishing Cloth

The glass/polishing cloth is literally the best glass cloth I have ever used! To clean mirrors, windows, etc. you just wipe them down first with the wet general purpose cloth and then immediately go over it with the glass polishing cloth and it leaves them streak free! And I literally mean streak free! You can look at it from any angle and you won't see any streaks! You are literally cleaning your glass with water and a cloth! It goes against everything in me to put water on my mirrors, but the glass/polishing cloth is incredible. So I have replaced my glass cleaning spray and paper towels!

So if you can't tell I really love these products and if you are looking to declutter all those cleaning bottles and sprays in your cabinets this to me is the best way!

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*Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with any links or products in this post. It is just my personal opinion on products I use! :)

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Kitchen Spring Cleaning

Thursday I spent the majority of the day spring cleaning my kitchen. I only got done about 3/4 of what I wanted to get done, but I already feel so much better! We had alot of clutter in our cabinets and they were not very functional so that is where we spent most of the day.
One of the first things I did was clean out our cabinet where we had been storing our plastic grocery bags. I literally had a whole cabinets of nothing but plastic bags. Thanks to Pinterest I found the idea of storing them in an empty wipe container. I put about 50 grocery bags in the wipe container and saved the rest of the bags in the attic for when we have yard sales this summer.

After

Before

Now I had freed up an entire cabinet for more storage! We decided to put our microwave in our largest cabinet and run the cord through the bottom to the nearest outlet because it was taking up a ton of counter space and we don't use the microwave alot. It's not the most convenient place, but for as much as we use it it will be just fine. I am trying to declutter as much as possible while also deep cleaning because I like things to be simple and functional. I like to know that everything has a place and if I can't find a place for it chances are it needs to go!

Before: Everything out of our cabinets!

After

Then, kitchen spring cleaning turned into kitchen reno! I've been wanting to tear down the wallpaper in our kitchen for a long time because it was just not my style. Minus the new dishwasher we hadn't made any changes to our kitchen since we moved in two years ago. So, yesterday I was at the point of either washing down the wallpaper walls or just tearing the wallpaper off. I decided on the latter because it was already starting to peel off in spots. As I began to tear it off I realized that the wallpaper had been put in before the cabinets were even installed so it had been up for about 13-14 years! 

Wallpaper gone! 

Once I got that wallpaper down my gears started turning. I could look at my kitchen now as a blank slate. I sent a picture of my now bare kitchen to Leah at Grace Lee Cottage because she has an amazing eye for home renovations and decor! We also have the same taste in that area so I knew she would have good ideas. After talking with her I have decided to paint the cabinets white and change out the hardware, add beadboard wallpaper under the cabinets (I will probably paint above the cabinets with a light gray I have left over from when we painted our bedroom), take down the beam going across in front of the sink and add shelves instead, and paint the countertops a darker color and replace the sink faucet. This will definitely take time because I rarely have a full day to devote to something, but I'm just keeping the end goal in mind! Eventually, I would like to replace our fridge and range with stainless steel and replace our laminate floor with something else, but I think with just a little paint and wallpaper this kitchen will get a major face lift! :)

Under Construction:
Top cabinet doors removed, taped, sanded, and ready to be primed
 and beam removed above sink
. I still have to remove some wallpaper scraps up top,
 but just focusing on cabinets right now!

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DIY Wednesday:Family/Household Binder

I have been wanting to make a family/household binder for a while, but I could never remember to pick up a binder when I was out, but today I remembered! I've seen some very detailed binders out there with every checklist you could imagine, but I wanted to keep it simple and only pick out the ones I know I would use regularly. So I'm going to give you a tutorial on the simple family binder I made.

The supplies you will need is:

-1" binder

-page protectors

-free printables which I'll link below

-pencils/pens (I prefer pencils because I change my mind a lot)

-optional:mini calendar planner

1" binder. I thought I would go with a fun color!

I found those cute mechanical pencils and the mini 2 year planner in the dollar section of Target! Thanks to the gracious and definitely crafty ladies of I Heart Organizing and Thirty Handmade Days I was able to get some really cute (and free) printables.Unfortunately we only have black ink in our printer right now, but usually these would have amazing color on them.

Here is how I organized my binder:
-Year At A Glance Calendar
-A Peek At The Week
-Meals For This Month
-Grocery List
-Our Family Home Projects
-My Fabulous Blog Ideas
I stuck my mini planner in the front inside pocket for easy access and clipped the pencil to the top ring on the inside of the binder so it will always be handy. If you have a hole punch handy you can leave out the page protctors, but I wanted to try to keep the pages clean and hopefully protected from little hands! :)

These ladies have a ton more free printables on their site, but I just stuck with the basics for now. I figured I needed to do this now more than ever because I missed my dentist appointment last week because I did not write it down! With two small children my brain feels like scrambled eggs most of the time and it seems like I cannot remember anything anymore, so to have a centralized location where I can write down everything I need to remember should do wonders for me!

I'm sure I'll add more to it later, but I'm excited to try this out!

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The Honest Company "Health and Wellness" Bundle

After signing up for the Honest Company's Essentials bundle and literally loving every product I received, I decided to try their Health and Wellness bundle for our vitamins which is also $35.95. I was getting ready to run out of my prenatal vitamins and Natalie was coming up on 6 months which is the age they can start taking their baby and toddler powder vitamin so I thought it would be a good time. Plus, if you have two bundles going on at one time you get free shipping on both bundles, but they dont have to ship on the same date! In my first bundle I received the Honest Co. Prenatal Complete One A Day and the Honest Co. Baby and Toddler Multipowder. 
What drew me to those prenatal vitamins was the fact that they contain probiotics and iron. Before I was taking a prental, an iron supplement, and a probiotic, so it was nice that all of that was combined into one. Also, the ingredients in the prenatal vitamin are excellent. I had been taking a gummy prenatal vitamin because I am not good at swallowing pills and every prenatal I had taken before had iron in it which would make me very nauseous, but I did not like that they had high fructose corn syrup as a main ingredient.

The Honest Co. Prenatal

So to make it simple I'll make a pros and cons list of my personal opinion on the Honest Co. Prenatal.

PRO:

• Mostly everything I need in one pill
• Only have to take one a day
• Vanilla coated so it doesnt leave a bad taste in your mouth
• Great ingredients
• Come in a glass container

CON:

• They are big pills, so if your like me and have a hard time swallowing pills they may not be the best choice
• The iron in them still made me nauseous even though they also contain ginger and B6, but not as bad as normal prenatals
• They do not contain DHA/Omega 3 like most prenatals do, so I had to buy a separate bottle of that
• A little on the pricey side

So my overall consensus is that I am going to use up the bottle I have, but I don't think I will repurchase just because I am soooo sensitive to iron and taking pills that just that combination makes me feel nauseous every time. I will probably go back to my old regimine of the gummy prenatals even though I do not like their ingredients that much, but at least I know they don't make me sick!

Today was our first day of trying out the baby multipowder because Natalie is 6 months old today! I just mixed her rice cereal as normal and then mixed the packet of powder in with it. She at almost the whole bowl so I'm hoping she got enough of the vitamins in her! She seems to like it so I think we've found a winner there. I love the fact that it is a whole foods blend and also contains probiotics! I also love that are already individually packaged in the cute little packets!

My next Health and Wellnes bundle I have set to ship with 2 boxes of the Honest Co. Baby and Toddler Multipowder because each box contains 30 packets so that way we can make it through 2 months before having to order again!

If you would like to get $10 off your first Honest Co. bundle CLICK HERE!

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The Honest Company Review

A major step I have taken to more natural living is that I have cleaned out all of my toxic household cleaners and replaced them with either my e-cloth (which I will review a little later) or products from The Honest Company. I signed up with the Honest Company because they had sent me an awesome coupon code in an e-mail. I decided it was now or never if I was going to take the plunge! I had been reluctant to sign up with The Honest Co. because they work on a subscription system. The subscription bundles offer a great discount on their products, but I was afraid that I would be obligated to get a bundle every single month. After further research into it I realized it is not like that at all! You can schedule your bundle to ship whenever you want and they do not charge you until your bundle ships! So, I went with the "Essentials" bundle which allows you to pick form 5 of their cleaning or bath and body products for $35.95. If you use someone's referral code you can get $10 off your first bundle making it only $25.95! I'll leave my referral link at the bottom of this post if you would like get $10 off your first bundle! Considering most of their products retail for $10 or more at Target this is a great deal. Now I usually set my next bundle to ship about 6 weeks from the last bundle, but if I need products sooner or later I can always go in and adjust the date.Their shipping is fast too so I can wait to ship until 2-3 days before I need something. Also, if you have two bundles going even if they ship at totally different times you get free shipping on both! So far the "Essential" bundle products I have tried are:

-Stain Remover
-Dish Soap
-Hand Soap
-Hand Sanitizer
-Soothing Bottom Wash
-Shampoo
-Organic Healing Balm
-Face and Body Lotion
-Fruit and Veggie Wash
-Organic Breathe Easy Rub
-Wipes
-Suds Up Dish Brush and Dish
-Diapers
-Oxyboost Tabs
-Dishwasher Tabs
-Dryer Cloths
-Multipurpose Spray

I also have the shave oil and spray sunscreen, but haven't gotten to try them yet. I also have the new deodarant and air freshner spray on the way! I have loved every product I have tried of theirs! We use cloth diapers so I just used the Honest Co. diapers I got with my free trial, but if I did not use cloth I would definitely go with the Honest Co. diapers. if you would like a more extensive review on any of these products let me know, but overall consensus of their company is they are wonderful! Their customer service is awesome and in my December bundle I received a pack of organic sugar cookie mix with a cute snowflake cookie cutter free!

 I have also signed up for their "Health and Wellness" bundle for my prenatal vitamins and Natalie's vitamins. I will do another review for their "Health and Wellness" bundle too. :)

If you would like to get $10 off your first bundle($10 off is good for any 4 of their bundles) or a free trial of 3 of their bundles (only pay $5.95 shipping) CLICK HERE

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