CrAzY Working Mom

Friday, March 09, 2012

Stunning!

Yesterday brought a day full of rain to most of the state. We have lots of standing water around our place. Fortunately, this posed a great opportunity to snap a few pics of nature this evening. There were 4 beautiful geese honking at a couple of dogs that were getting a bit too close to them across from my house. When I saw them I grabbed my zoom lens and headed out to see if I could get a good shot. Since it was dusk, I couldn't get a very good shot of them.


The Geese liked all of the rain!!

As I traipsed through the water and got the bottom of my pants legs wet as well as a new pair of my favorite Toms, I noticed a stunning sight in the horizon...

Stunning Sky!

Thursday, March 01, 2012

It's Time Again For Rhea Lana's of Searcy

It is getting close to my favorite time of the year. I LOVE spring! Although generally I suffer through the first few weeks when things begin to bloom, I love the thought of renewal of all things! Spring weather is beautiful, minus the tornadoes that often spring up around here during Springtime.

Another one of my favorite parts of Spring is Rhea Lana!! If you don't know about Rhea Lana and you spend ANYTHING on kids clothing, or will in the near future, you are going to want to read this post! Rhea Lana's as we know it today began modestly in 1997 with 11 consignors and 3 racks of clothes in the living room of Mrs. Rhea Lana Riner. She wrote all the tags by hand and even rewashed and ironed many of the clothes! In 2011, they had 47 locations in 16 states. Now being a consignor is so easy. Everything is computerized. As a consignor you choose your prices!!

We've all organized yard sales. They are a quick way to put our belongings out in the yard and let the neighbors pilfer through them and offer dirt cheap prices for name brand clothing that cost us a lot of hard earned money! In the end, we might make a dollar or two, but it is also a lot of work, and then if things don't sell we're left trying to bag it all up and take it to a local charity. If you've found yourself in this situation, then may I suggest Rhea Lana's as an alternative?

Now let me tell you first off, it is a bit of work getting all of your things on hangers and putting string tags on them. There will also be some items that you won't be able to consign. They won't take anything that is out of date, stained, torn, missing zippers, etc. But, those things you can feel okay about selling for a quarter in your yard sale, right? The name brand, like new clothes are consignor worthy. Those are the things that you want to get back a portion of what you paid for it in order to buy new clothes for your kiddos that have outgrown last spring's clothes!!!

Tyler's consignor worthy clothes.

When the seasons change, we have to go through our kiddos' closets and clear out all of the things that they can no longer wear, most of the time they are already going to be on hangers, so in this case all you have to do is add a string tag. Grouping things by size makes things a lot easier. You just go to the Rhea Lana website and get a consignor number and begin entering your items. YOU choose the price you want for the item! The items are guaranteed, so if something is lost, they will make good on the items. Having three kids means that I have a LOT of consignor worthy clothes. Last year, I used the money I made at Rhea Lana's to SPEND at Rhea Lana's restocking the kids' empty closets!!!

A closet full of consignable clothes!!

It is almost time for the sale here in my town, drop off begins on Saturday, and I am still entering items. I have over 200 items to enter between all three of my kiddos!! If you have the opportunity to consign with Rhea Lana's I would strongly encourage you to do so.

Here are a few things to remember if you are consigning or trying to decide if consigning is right for you:

- You make 70% of the price that YOU choose for your item. Keep this in mind when pricing. Also, remember that when you are pricing things, that other moms on a budget will be shopping this sale. My general rule of thumb is to price things for what I would be willing to give for it. Rhea Lana's suggest you set the price at 30% of the retail value. Baby Equipment, Furniture and Large Indoor/Outdoor Toys usually sell for more and are in high demand. There is generally an abundance of 0-6 month sizes, so they must be priced competitively in order to sell. Maternity and Junior clothing are not shopped as heavily, so price these competitively, also.

- You can work at the sale and have your (small) consignor fee waived, and even shop early BEFORE the general public and even other consignors. There are lots of options available for volunteering. You can check those out here for the Searcy sale.

- Moms to be can shop early as well. Click here to find out how.

- Following Rhea Lana's on Facebook can be beneficial to you. They often have giveaways where you can win early shopping passes or gift certificates. For my local readers, the SEARCY RHEA LANA'S FB page is here.

- You can choose to donate your clothes to charity at the end of the sale to save you from having to bring home your unsold items (but if you're like me, you won't have too many unsold items!!). All that is left is getting your check!!

There is still time to gather and enter items for the Searcy, Arkansas sale!! If you have any questions, feel free to message, comment, e-mail, text, or call me. If I can't answer them, I can get you to someone who can!! Now, I've gotta get busy entering the rest of my items!

The sale information for Searcy which will be located at the White County Fairgrounds (802 Davis Dr- Searcy, AR):
Drop Off Days:
Saturday, March 3rd 10:00 AM to 8:00 PM
Sunday, March 4th 11:00 AM to 2:30 PM
Last Day to Enter Items Online Saturday, March 3rd {11:59 PM}
Early Worker's Pre-Sale PASS REQUIRED! Monday, March 5th 3:00 PM to 10:00
PM Worker's Pre-Sale PASS REQUIRED! Monday, March 5th 4:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Consignor's Pre-Sale PASS REQUIRED! Monday, March 5th 5:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Moms-to-Be Pre-Sale PASS REQUIRED! Monday, March 5th 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM
Guest Pre-Sale PASS REQUIRED! Monday, March 5th 7:30 PM to 10:00 PM

SALE DAYS:
Tuesday: March 6th 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM
Wednesday: March 7th 10:00 AM to 6:00 PM
Thursday: March 8th 10:00 AM to 3:00

PM WORKER'S HALF PRICE SALE PASS REQUIRED! Thursday, March 8th 5:30 PM to 10:00 PM CONSIGNOR HALF PRICE SALE PASS REQUIRED! Thursday, March 8th 6:30 PM to 10:00 PM GUEST HALF PRICE SALE MOMS-TO-BE MAY ALSO ATTEND PASS REQUIRED! Thursday, March 8th 7:30 PM to 10:00
PM HALF PRICE SALE: Friday, March 9th 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM Saturday, March 10th 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM
Pick-up Day: Sunday, March 11th 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Valentine's Day Crafts

I promised photos of the Valentine's Day crafts we did at the house of craziness...but as usual, things were so crazy I have yet to post them! I guess it's better late than never, though so here goes!

Shelby's box is a couple of posts down, but just in case you missed it I will post it here so they will all be in one spot for those of you who are exploring from other websites.

Zebra Print Valentine's Day Box with Pink Feather Boa Trim.

We got the idea of a "monster box" from Pintrest for Tyler (who is in Kindergarten). The blogger in this tutorial used yarn to cover the box. I knew that it would take me years to complete the task using yarn, so I opted for a much easier alternative, and since I had already covered Shelby's in fabric, I was a pro by this time! ;) We used some black faux fur fabric from our local fabric store to cover a shoe box with a removable lid. Keep in mind that you have to make these boxes where the children can retrieve their Valentine's Day cards after the party. There were many children in both classes who had to tear, rip, or otherwise disassemble their box in order to get to the goods! The great thing about both boxes is that they will be reusable! Shelby is actually housing hers in her room to hold her lip gloss, jewelry, and miscellaneous items.

Tyler's Monster Box was a HIT! He loved it and so did his classmates.

Since Little Emily is in daycare, she didn't make a box at home. They made bags at school to carry home their Valentine's Day treats. We made home made Valentines this year instead of opting for the pre-boxed kind we normally do. The kids were allowed to browse the options from Pintrest that I knew were doable for our family (mainly me!!!) and this is what they chose:

Shelby chose a Pop Rock Valentine Treat.

Tyler chose superhero suckers.

Emily opted for Pixy Stix

Teacher Gift

The photos were taken via my cell phone. I had every intention of taking blog worthy photos of each item, but I was just lucky that I got them all completed on time. What in the world was I thinking trying to tackle all of this!?! All three of the kiddos took their teachers the chocolate roses in the bottom photo. They were surrounded by Dove chocolate hearts and Hershey's Kisses and Hugs in a Valentine themed cup wrapped in one of those pink party gift bags tied with some of the ribbon used for Tyler's super hero capes for his suckers. We made heart shaped gift tags on them so we'd know which teacher they belonged to. It was a cute, inexpensive gift that we enjoyed making for each teacher.

Friday, February 10, 2012

Social Media Explained

Heh...love this!!!

*photo source

Find me on these Social Networking Sites:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/crazyworkingmom
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/CrAzY-Working-Mom/116728100618
You Tube: http://www.youtube.com/crazyworkingmom
Pintrest: http://pinterest.com/crazyworkingmom

Monday, February 06, 2012

Valentine's Day Craft

This week leading up to Valentine's Day I am going to show you how crafty my family has decided to be this week with our Valentine's Day projects for school! Today we are going to start with Shelby's Valentine's Day box. She is super excited about this one as it can be used in the future for jewelry, etc.

My 3rd grader had to create a collection box for her Valentines from her classmates. She was very excited to come up with a "design" she liked. We had a hard time finding a box that was appropriate for such a task! We have a lot of shoe boxes that don't have removable lids. I dug in the bottom of my closet and finally found one. While a bit large, it will serve it's purpose, and as mentioned above can be used after the party for whatever she chooses in her bedroom.

We started with a plain old shoe box...

Ready to bling this box out!!

After careful consideration, Shelby narrowed down her design to either owls, peace signs, or zebra print. We decided to visit the local fabric store in town and see what sort of fabrics they had that we could possibly cover the box with. This was in lieu of spray painting the box as we've done in the past.

She found some awesome fur like zebra print material that she fell in love with. So, we got enough to cover the box and lid separately so that she can remove the top to retrieve those Valentines from her classmates. She also found a pink feather boa to make it even more awesome!!

After covering the box with the fabric and trimming it with the pink feather boa, this is what we had. I also added her name since her classmates will need to be able to see that easily so they know who the box belongs to.

We had also bought some "bling" for the box when we were at the fabric store. I allowed Shelby to decide the placement of the rest of the decoration. The final product looked as follows:

Shelby is very proud of her design. It fits her personality to perfection.

View of the back.

View of the front.

*Note, clicking on the photos will make them larger.

Check back tomorrow where I will show you Shelby's home made Valentines. We decided to forgo the store bought boxed cards this year and make our own! We found some cute ideas on pintrest. The kids are super excited!!!

Thursday, February 02, 2012

Are you a co-sleeping house?

Here's another funny demonstration for all of you co-sleeping families out there.

Click photo to enlarge.

"Snow Angels" and "H is for Hell" are the two most popular when little Emily makes her way to our bed in the night. Although "Jazz Hands" is common, most of the time she'll sling her arm over your face giving you a good slap most of the time! All three of our kids start out in their own beds during the night, but every so often one (or more) of them will end up in our bed and I must say that more often than not, when they do I am just like the illustration in the photo, "The Dog House". The couch is usually the most comfortable place to be when the bed gets overcrowded!

Thanks to Andy from How to Be A Dad for allowing me to post this here at CrAzY Working Mom! Go check out his blog for a dose of "dadology", although he doesn't claim to be an expert, the posts I read are spot on from this Mommy's perspective!

Image Credit

Wednesday, February 01, 2012

Motherhood

Wow, this is spot on!!!

Multiply this by three and you've got my life!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Prayer Board

Last week I posted about adding a prayer board to our home decor.

I am happy to report that it has been a very big hit in our home with the entire family.

As you see here, 3 year old Emily Grace is adding someone to the board.
Of course since she can only write her name, that's who she was adding.
When I asked why she told me it was for her lips.

They are "bewy" chapped. ;)

Monday, January 30, 2012

From Clothes Hangers To Chip Clips

If you're like me, you've probably got lots of these store hangers around your home,

the kind with the clips on the end for hanging pants.

I got a wonderful idea from Pintrest on how to turn those old clothes hangers into something useful!

You start out by taking some wire cutters and snapping off the "clip" ends of the plastic hanger.

Taking you from this:

to this:

Chip Clips!!! Inexpensive, multi-use, brilliant!!!

I ♥ Pintrest!

Friday, January 27, 2012

Slow Cookin' - Creamy Italian Chicken

My family loves Italian Chicken. I love the fact that it's made in the slow cooker!! Prep time is a breeze and the outcome is amazing! It's a recipe we've used for a while now and it's a perfect meal for those nights where you're on the go, or a Sunday after church meal. Prep is easy, and you can serve it over just about ANYTHING. Rice, Bow-tie Pasta, Angel Hair Pasta...you get my drift here I'm sure. My family prefers the angel hair pasta version. But, you can use whatever you have in your cabinet. There are variations on the cooking method of this recipe, this is the way I make it.

Creamy Italian Chicken

Ingredients:

4 Large Chicken Breasts

1/2 Stick Butter - Melted

1 pkg dry Zezty Italian Dressing Mix

1 pkg Cream Cheese (softened)

1 can *cream of chicken soup

(*You can add more if you like a creamier consistency
or you can add a bit of chicken broth)

1. Add Chicken Breasts to slow cooker.

2. Cover with melted butter.

3. Sprinkle with Italian Dressing.

4. Cook on Low for 4 hours.

(cook time may vary depending on chicken size and whether or not you're using thawed or frozen breasts)

You can do these steps before you go to work, school, church, etc. When you return home in the afternoon, you can do the remaining:

5. Fold in cream of chicken with cream cheese in bowl, set aside.

6. Remove chicken from crock pot and shred/cut, to your liking.

7. Add liquid from crock pot to cream cheese mixture. Mix well.

8. Add liquid and chicken back to slow cooker.

9. Cook on High for 1 hour.

Serve over rice or your choice of pasta!
It is pictured here with angel hair pasta served with carrots and green beans.
ENJOY!!!

CrAzY Working Mom

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