Author: Laura

Lifestyle

Our New Home: Construction Update

Laura

It’s been a minute! We have had a busy few weeks. My husband is just starting the last bit of paternity leave he has from our fourth child and we are busy preparing for vacation and homeschool. To top it all off we have appointments every day this week ranging from the dentist to the vet and our youngest just came down with hand, foot and mouth. Overwhelmed is an understatement. But the show must go on or so they say.

After years of planning, in December(?) of last year, we were finally able to start construction on our new home! It has been an adventure that neither myself nor my husband ever really imagined we would be having, yet here we are. Full of ups and downs, stupid questions and weird requests, we have tried to take every step gratefully (and gracefully!) and we can finally see it all start coming together.

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Homeschool

Homeschool Record Keeping Part One: Binders

Laura

It’s beginning to look a lot like…back to school?!

Well, maybe for the rest of the country but we don’t actually start school in our house until mid September (after we get back from the beach). With two ADHD school aged kids gearing up and starting homeschool just to turn around and go on vacation for two weeks just sets us up for failure when we get home. It’s much less headache for everyone if we just push it back until our heads are in the game…or…books. Whatever.

However, that doesn’t mean our household is totally school free right now. Yes, I’ve been hitting the back to school sales, planning unit studies and creating worksheets. But I’ve also been trying very hard to get our record keeping organized. It was so much easier with one school aged kid to just download some stuff to the computer, send it to a specific folder and forget about it until next year. This year, my anxiety is getting the best of me and I would just feel so much better if I had a better system since I’ll be in charge of TWO school aged kids this time around.

Enter: the binder.

I love binders. I love the way the crisp, clean pages look and smell and feel. I love hole punching and lining up pages. It makes me feel like I’m doing something productive. For this project, binders hit all my marks. Now onto the details.

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Lifestyle

August Monthly Meal Plan

Laura

August is here and I can feel fall in the air! We have a few rollovers from last month that I didn’t quite get around to, but they’re just too good to just ditch for a whole new plan! We’ve been getting take out (and gas station food😬) way more than I like this past month so here’s to a fresh start! I keep everything organized in my monthly meal plan printable (50% off until 8/22/26) and I enter it all on my Cozyla calendar.

Here’s what we’re having at our house this month!

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Lifestyle

Non Toxic Home: Switches I’ve Made This Month

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When I went through my first huge purge of toxic household items I bought SO MUCH STUFF. Luckily, I also had a lot of stuff that didn’t need switching – I’m looking at you my beloved Pyrex storage containers – and I found a good bit more at thrift stores. But every month there’s this constant creeping feeling of something else needs to go. Here’s what I have replaced this month:

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Uncategorized

I’m On Etsy!

Laura

UPDATE: I am currently running a “Set Up Sale” – everything 50% off until 8/22/26 – while I continue to add new items and get my shop off the ground.

That’s right! Go check out The No Fun House on Etsy!

What are you selling?
I sell instant digital downloads of printables I designed and use in my own house!

What kind of printables?
Homeschool worksheets, meal planners, packing lists, holiday stationary, invitations, etc.

Do you do custom orders?
Unfortunately, no. As a stay at home mom of four with a house currently under construction I don’t have have the time available for custom work. I am, however, planning to add more editable printable items in the near future.

What inspired you to start a printables Etsy shop?
I have spent HOURS designing printables for my own use. 9 times out of 10, I am the only one who enjoys them so I figured instead of them sitting on my computer it was time to share them with others…and maybe make a little money on the side from it.

I’m working on adding new items every week so be sure to check back often! Use coupon code BLOG15 for 15% off your purchase (limit one coupon code use per customer).

Uncategorized

July Monthly Meal Plan

Laura

At the beginning of every month, I sit down, think about what we want to eat and compile it into a monthly meal plan. Being a family of six, four of whom are kids, I try not to overcomplicate or over plan and I always keep a few emergency meal ideas for just such days. I keep it all organized in my monthly meal plan printable; I check meals off as we have them and that way it’s easy for me to see if I need to roll anything over to the following month to utilize ingredients I already bought. Super simple.

Here’s what we’re having at our house this month!

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Lifestyle

“Have You Seen My Menstrual Cup?”: A Crash Course on Reusable Period Products

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“Have you seen my menstrual cup?”

As parents, we have all said sentences that we never thought we would. This sentence was not even on my remotest possibility radar until I was desperately asking my husband those exact words when my first postpartum period after baby number four popped up out of nowhere earlier this week.

I remember boiling it the last time I used it. (Yes, it is funny popping a menstrual cup into a pot on the stove like you’re whipping up a batch of Thai tea, but we have to STERILIZE [using my Sgt. Doakes voice, of course].) Then we had some unexpected company and I threw it in the bread cabinet. And forgot about it….until my two year old decided that the bread cabinet is now where he hides his toys.

I have a vague memory of him carrying off my menstrual cup like a little bell and that’s about where I lose track. Did he put it back in the bread cabinet? Maybe. But then he must have taken it again because it’s not there. Did he put it in a toy basket and some unwitting grandparent looked at it sideways and said “what the …. ” and toss it back in there? Did he manage to flush it down the toilet when he was going through that phase? No clue. It’s probably somewhere in our house that we’re preparing to move out of at the end of the year, squeezed into some random tiny space that we will never find until we have a house full of movers and it just drops out of a piece of furniture in front of them, staring up at me like “why, Spongebob, why?!” But, hey, it’s whatever.

Luckily, I am PREPARED. I have pads, tampons, incontinence undies and a backup menstrual cup. If you’ve ever seen Turning Red, it’s like that scene where Ming whips out that huge box of pads and goes off down the list, “regular, overnight, unscented, scented, thin, ultra-thin, ultra-thin with wings…” That. Is. Me.

Or was, when I was an extreme couponer. Yes, I still have the basics stocked mostly for when I have company and they’re in need of some product they forgot at home but I mostly now just use my menstrual cup and period panties.

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Activities · Kids

Regal Summer Movies: Money Saving Tips + Sanity Saving Tricks

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Regal summer movies have always held a special place in my heart.

I have vivid memories of my grandma taking me with my siblings and adopted aunt and uncle since something like middle school. She would always bring blankets for everyone because it was always freezing, she’d always buy the huge bucket of popcorn (and divvy it up into bowls she brought from home) and afterwards there would always be a Domino’s guy selling pizzas in the parking lot for $5 – we’d take one home for lunch, then spend the rest of the day in her pool. What I wouldn’t give to spend another day like that.

Unfortunately, we stopped going as much as we all grew older, my grandma’s pool fell into disrepair, she has since passed away and her home was sold this past year. But the memory is still there and it’s something I enjoy sharing with my kids now; I don’t think there’s a year that goes by without them having to muscle through me reminiscing about those long gone summer days.

So imagine my excitement when I learned that Regal still does summer kids movies! I guess it had always remained in the back of my mind in the form of those memories with Grandma but since I didn’t have kids that were old enough to really go to the movies it just got lost somewhere in the back of my brain. But ever since my oldest, Elias, turned four we have tried to hit the movies every week during the summer.

All that to say I have acquired four (mom) years worth of summer movie experience and have put together a list of my favorite tips for saving money and tricks to make it easier on the moms and dads braving the theater with their brood!

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Uncategorized

The No Fun House

LauraLeave a comment

Hello!

Welcome!

Bueller?…

Clearly, there’s nothing here yet.

I, mean, I am. And you are. Presumably.

I started blogging seven years ago and, quite frankly, I put so much effort into it that I started hating it. Turns out that saying is true. “If you love what you do, you never work a day in your life.” I didn’t love it and it was WORK.

It was difficult to come up with content that resonated with me, hard to find time as a new mom to accomplish it all and I started to pretend that it just didn’t exist – it was so much easier that way. I was stressed and anxious all the time because I was so wrapped up in this idea of me that was disingenuious. Not entirely, but enough that I had had…enough.

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