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This wonderful place teaches so many of the lost arts of homemaking in a beautiful, gracious way. Subscribe for a month, a year, or just get the classes that you need. Either way....you are gonna love this!
Today I downloaded 3 of their resources:
Laundry Tips and Tricks (FREE!!)
I don't know about you, but I'm almost always up for some fresh inspiration and ideas. These downloadable lessons are very nicely done. I am quite impressed and really looking forward to digging into these soon!
I know that money is on most minds these days. For us, we've been thrilled to see gas drop to $2.69 at some gas stations around here, but with property taxes coming due and Christmas around the corner, it seems like there is still plenty of belt-tightening needed.
I read a couple of good articles today that I wanted to share with you guys. The first one talks about what to do NOW to prepare for even tougher economic times ahead. The short version is to trim right now anything that you would trim if things got really desperate. That makes a lot of sense to me, and my wheels are already turning about how we might do that. We don't have a lot of extras in the monthly expenditures department, but there are a few things that I don't think we would even miss.
This one talks about a "buy nothing" month. While this might not be the best time of year to do that, maybe you could plan for it in January or February or something. I don't consider myself to be much of a spender. I've very conservative on purchases most of the time. But, I think that I could probably manage to trim *something* somehow.
Other things I am working on to save money:
Trying to get the hang of coupon and rebate shopping. Money Saving Mom is my favorite resource for this. Check out her right sidebar for the Start Here articles. They will give you tips on coupon savings, CVS and Walgreens programs that can help you get tons of free stuff, and more. Lots of really helpful stuff there!
I have been using up all of our apples and pears and grapes from the back yard. In years past I either didn't have the energy or the time to do a lot with those, but this year I have been determined to use what we have. I haven't needed to purchase juice from the grocery store for probably two months or more, I've made homemade apple sauce and apple butter, etc.
In the same vein, I am planning on having a garden next year. This year we just had a dink-o-rama garden space that gave us tomatoes and peppers. Next year we're going to go big. Tending to the garden is going to be part of the kids chores and school. I'm planning now for where stuff will go, adding compost to the garden spaces, and have some more things to work on so that when March gets here we can be ready to make it happen.
I plan to buy heirloom seeds so that we can save the seeds for future years. Educational and thrifty.
There are more things, but those are just a few ideas. Hopefully those will work as a jumping off point for you. :)
While growing up, my mom always cooked big. There was always enough dinner for seconds, thirds, and friends to be invited to dinner at the last minute. (consequently we also always had plenty of leftovers, which I still think ROCKS)
When my mom would bake, she didn't just bake two dozen cookies or one pan of brownies. Instead, she had what we called Bake-a-Thons. She would make several different varieties of cookies, and lots of 'em. Our big chest freezer in the basement was always stocked up with baked goods.
You might think that we had a super large family or something. We didn't. 3 kids, 2 parents. (Disclaimer: Nobody was fat, either.) But my mom always knew how to be prepared, and do it up big.
She hasn't lost her knack for it, either.
While visiting my mom earlier this summer I decided that I simply had to document the comedic sizes of her bulk-store purchases. You will soon see why it is that, if there is a total economic breakdown, I will be heading straight to my mom's house, because I know that my whole family could survive there for a good, long time, based only on the items she has on hand right now.
Behold: Big Bags of Brown Sugar. I think these were five pounds each.
Four-and-a-half pound bags of chocolate chips!
Cooking oil by the gallon!
(Looks like you're gettin' low, Mom. Add Canola oil to the shopping list, please.)
Looks like we could make a decent amount of chocolate chip cookies with what we've got available. Right?
Now, if condiments are near and dear to your heart, you shant be disappointed, my pretties!
A gallon of soy sauce might be a lifetime supply for me, but at my mom's house, not so much.
Ditto on the five quarts of Worcestershire sauce.
Ketchup was available in these large sizes, in a six pack,
and in more regular sizes--they aim to please down there at my mom's. Southern hospitality and all, I guess.
Since my family of eight, plus my brother, sister, and other family members were visiting at the same time, we used a lot of disposable plates and utensils. This pack of 360 pieces of cutlery got us through the week in style, plus there will be plenty more for the next 4 or 5 visits!
At one point during the visit I was putting away leftovers and used up the last gallon ziploc bag in the drawer. For a moment I feared that we might not have any more, but then I remembered where I was, so I went a-hunting through the various pantry areas and...jackpot! There were just a few more ziploc bags available.
Like, only 152 gallon sized, and 216 quart size. Phew! Nothing to worry about here.
When all of the cooking, cleaning up, and fun is done, things are similarly worry-free in the laundry room. Jumbo jugs of laundry detergent promise to do 210 loads.
And the fabric softener has about 174 loads per container. She has no fear of scratchy clothing or towels there. No sirree!
Sadly, I did not get photo documentation of the contents of the extra fridge or the large upright freezer. I assure you that there are meals a-plenty in both.
The only thing that worries me.....Mom, do you have a generator?
The food pantry work went much better this past week, mainly thanks to me bringing The Long Arm of The Law. (also known as my husband) We got a whole bunch of boxes filled, plus my daughter and I were able to do some badly-needed reorganizing that seemed to make the food pantry director very happy. I also set the kids up with the potential to earn a chip for good work, good attitude, and observance of the safety rules. (they earned 'em, too!)
What are the chips, you say?
I have a set of poker chips. I started out with the super cheap ones that are white, red, and blue. (found them at Walmart by the playing cards and games) Now that I have five kids at home full time I got the heavier, more expensive set that has five different colored chips. Each of my at-home kids has a color for their school stuff. (more about that later) The kids have opportunities to earn a chip for things like getting their chores done properly and on time, getting their school work done without fussing, and so on. Pretty much any time I need to dangle a carrot or want to give a reward, I use the chips.
Later on the chips can be used a currency with me for things they want. I have not worked out the full plan yet, since the school year hasn't officially begun. But, my plan is for them to use their chips to purchase being able to watch a movie, time to play video games, picking something out of my Treasure Box, and so on. I am also having a group chip available for each school day. If all five kids earn chips for their chores and their schoolwork on a day, then a group chip will be earned which can be turned in for a Family Fun Night which might include a special movie and dessert, pizza, or something like that.
I'm hoping that the positive peer pressure will work to my advantage.
Last week I told you about the bad case of Painter's Remorse I was having, after trying out an orangey color on the walls. Since then the creamsicle color has been on one wall, and the green on another.
Recently I found one of those color sample brochures at Walmart with a yellow that looked like exactly what I wanted. Warm and friendly. Yeah.
So I went to WM yesterday to buy a gallon of it to try out.
And there was nobody at the paint center.
So I walked over to the photo area and asked them to call somebody for me.
Which they did.
Twice.
And nobody came.
So I walked out of Walmart with my paint sample
and promptly drove to Lowe's where I asked them to find a match for me. Easy-peasy.
So last night my husband put some of the yellow up.
And know what?
We don't like it!
For whatever reason, it's just not the right thing. It's a really light yellow. More like a baby's room pastel yellow. I was looking for a deeper yellow than leans a *little bit* toward orange or gold.
Alas, it was not to be.
But, heck--we bought a gallon of it. Might as well put it to use!
Today I have single-handedly painted most of the walls in our upstairs, simply to cover up all of the dirt and smudges and dried boogers and dents and dings. A very good use for a stray can of yellow paint, methinks.
We'll call it the base coat, ok?
So at least things can feel fresh while we continue our quest for The Perfect Yellow.
Our entire house (interior) was painted 8.5 years ago when we moved in. In the years since then we've had a plethora of youngsters in the house, thereby causing the walls to get looking mighty trashed. (this phemonenon was made worse by the fact that for some reason flat paint was selected for some of the rooms. Flat paint just doesn't clean nicely.)
So for quite some time now I've been thinking about repainting the house. The painting we did way-back-when is a nice medium pale yellow on the walls, with white trim. It's very peaceful and subtly cheerful, which was the look I was going for. We have dark red loveseats in our living room, and those look great with the yellow walls.
Well, I've been thinking about a bolder look. The other day we bought some paint and got to work. One large wall was painted a dark red, and it is looking really pretty good, although it is quite a change! I had this idea to use a variety of autumny colors on various walls in the living room and into the kitchen, which are open to each other.
So today I decided to paint a swatch on one wall of an orangey-yellow. And on another wall I did a swatch of a fairly dark sage green.
And now I am having painter's remorse.
The orange--it makes me feel like crying.
Seriously. Certain things about colors or placement of things in my home can bring me to tears. Probably because it's seriously bad feng shui or something, right? :)
The green isn't that bad, but it feels so dark.
My daughter mentioned that she was feeling overpowered with the colors, and like we were losing our peaceful, cheery living room. Which put to words pretty much exactly what I was thinking.
So, back to the drawing board.
I think that the red wall can stay, and that maybe a very small wall behind some cabinets could use the red in the kitchen. But I think that I need to go find a yellow that is light and cheery, while being able to hold it's own next to the red. Yellow has my heart. What can I say?
I've been working on decluttering various areas of my home and life--cabinets, business inventory, and now my email inbox is getting a clean sweep. I've been concerned about my inboxes for awhile. My main email address had well over 500 UNREAD emails in it this morning, plus 69 pages of emails in the main inbox (not counting folders). This means that I had about 1700 emails just sitting around for whatever reason. I like to think that I delete emails appropriately, so to me that meant that I must have a lot of items in the old inbox that needed some sort of attention. I get lots of business-related emails at that address, so those sometimes sit and wait while I need to make some decisions. Once something goes off of my first page, it's as good as gone. I'm very much a visual organizer. If I see it, I can take care of it. (usually) Once I don't see it, it's as if it never existed in the first place.
Well today I managed to get my inbox down to just 300 remaining messages (there's only so much time in the day for these things....) and less than 50 unread messages. I found that I had A LOT to delete (mostly stuff that I like to read, but only do read if I have time to, which is not often), and some stuff to file or take action on. Now I have an ACTION NEEDED file, which may or may not help me, depending on whether or not I remember that such a place exists. (reminds me of my former URGENT file in the kitchen which I rediscovered months after I had started using it. amazingly, all of the urgent things had survived just fine without my attention...)
Hopefully someday soon I will get my inbox down to just the current messages, and get it down to zero by the end of each day. It would be really nice to get rid of that visual and mental clutter.
And once I get through that.....I guess I'll start doing the same thing on my other two email addresses......
Tuesday was the last day of school here. I spent my morning at my son's kindergarten graduation, and then my afternoon at my first grade son's awards assembly. Lots of smiles and fun that day, although I was also a little emotional. I just love and appreciate the teachers my children have had. They have really been wonderful, and I can't help but get a little misty-eyed to say goodbye to them, knowing that we won't be back at school in the fall.
Here I am with my kindy son, and the next photo is my first grader is showing off one of the certificates he received.
The next day, guess what arrived? Our Sonlight order!
My kids were so excited and wanted to get right down to school. :) Well, I managed to put them off, but only until today.
My grand plan had been to take the rest of this week plus some of next week to cement our chore system. Having some kids at home and some kids at school has made it hard for me to get everybody consistently doing chores every day, and it is one thing that is important to me to get under control.
My three youngest boys are 5, 6, and 8, and haven't really had chore areas like the older kids have had. I've tried the buddy system for chores (pairing up an older and a younger child for an area) but it always ends up causing more trouble than it's worth. ("He isn't helping!" "I'm doing all the work and he's just sitting there!!") So I knew the younger boys needed areas of their own. And I finally figured out what those would be.
One son (my Power Ranger) will vacuum the stairs and landing every day.
The other two kiddos are my "Floor Men" which means that they will be cleaning the upstairs floors on hands and knees daily.
All the younger boys are excited about their new jobs and did them happily. In fact, they were so excited about both job options that they had a hard time choosing which one they wanted. The good news is that I might just have managed to work myself out of needing to mop, which would be absolutely wonderful, wouldn't it?!
Another thing we did today was to get out a large jar of coins that we have been adding to for years. We first started it as our "Disney fund" because the kids said they wanted to go to Disney World. Today I got the kids gathered around the table and we sorted, stacked, and counted all the money, and then put it into coin wrappers.
Now we plan to take a trip over to the bank to open a special savings account for our Disney trip. $82 down and thousands to go......
My daughter has been using Horizons math this year, and although she is able to do it, she does not enjoy it. When we found out about Teaching Textbooks this year, we were very interested. This math curriculum comes with computer CDs that feature a human voice speaking and teaching the lesson, with graphics and words to teach the student. All of the lesson problems can be entered right into the computer program (which is great because the consumable text is quite large), and the student gets immediate feedback about whether or not their answer was correct. The student can also choose to get an explanation of the problem if they did not understand it, and can get hints if they need help.
At the end of each lesson there is a cute little celebratory animation, such as penguins doing the limbo, or animal characters dancing in a conga line. Very cute and entertaining.
The best part of all was that my daughter LOVES the program. She was so excited about it, squealing "I just LOOOOVE this! It's so fun! I want to do math like this all the time!" She did 7 lessons in a row. :)
It was really easy to install, and best of all, it works on our older laptop, which is a major plus since she won't have to get onto one of the computers that is in use more often.
Somewhere along the way a few of my younger boys wanted to get into their new workbooks. Who cares if it's the second day of summer break? I let 'em.
Here is my now-kindergartener, and new second-grader, enjoying their books.
Who knew handwriting workbooks could be so much fun?
We also made a treat...
Went to the library to get a bunch of books....
And somewhere in there I managed to get dinner into the crock pot. Potato Corn Chowder..yummy and kid-pleasin'! (easy and cheap, too)
And now it's time to eat!
What did you do today?
Every now and then I have a little flare up where I realize that it is really not ok for me to let so many things slide around the house. Yes, I have six kids. Yes, I homeschool some of them. Yes, I run some businesses. But, you know, so many things that need to be done only take a short period of time, and yet I seem to regularly lack the ability to overcome inertia to get this stuff done.
Now that I have my camera, I have been thinking about starting my True Confessions series, where I will take a painfully honest photo of some area of my home as a "before" photo, and then force myself (and at least a few kids) to clean it up and then take an "after" picture.
Every time I have walked past my laundry room since I got my camera I have told myself that THIS room needs my True Confessions treatment right away. So today, we made it happen.
My friend Alana once came over to my house (several years ago) and commented on how much she would like to have a laundry room of her own, but then she saw the condition mine was in, and promptly changed her mind. :) So, all of that to say that I do not exactly have a good track record with my laundry room.
It had been doing fine until I changed seasonal clothing back in the fall. The thing is, in Kentucky, when the seasons change, you really need about half winter and half summer clothes at any given time. It's so gradual and back-and-forth that you can't get away with a clean sweep. So that meant that as the months went on, I started a pile on a clear surface for clothes that needed to get put away in our out-of-season/to-grow-into clothing closet. The pile grew, but I didn't get around to taking it to the closet.
Then someone gave us a bunch of hand-me-downs and I didn't have time to go through them. So they joined the pile.
Then we must have had some "oh no! People are coming over! Here! Quick! Throw all that junk into this laundry basket and we'll hide it in the laundry room!" moments, because we had a whole basket of miscellaneous junk in there.
And on and on it goes.
So, for quite some time now, my laundry room was looking like this:
And this:
So I motivated three of my kids to join me on *not only* folding and putting away all of the current laundry in process, but also switching out some seasonal clothes, and sifting through all of the junk on the surfaces and putting every bit of it away.
We went through all of the hand-me-down clothes, and I even managed to be ruthless is sending 90% of it on to the local thrift store because I just don't want to deal with any more clothing right now. Much of it was in sizes that are big enough that they are too big for 5 of my kids, and into the range where most kids do not want to wear hand me downs at all. Gone, gone, gone!
And now, here are the AFTER pictures:
(notice the top of my washer is now all clear of all the sticky, gloopy drips of laundry detergent, too!)
I took my little workers out to lunch to celebrate our victory. :)
Tune in next time for True Confessions #2. (I have so many areas to choose from, it will be hard to decide which one should be next....)
In a breathtaking display of accomplishment, I actually finished all five of the chairs today! (If you knew how rare it is that a project get all the way completed at my house, you would better appreciate my comment.) Like I said, I'm not in love with the fabric. It looked so fun at the fabric store, but once I got it home it looked kind of old fashioned, in a dowdy kind of way. And adding that plastic over it just totally smacks of grandma's houses that still have the plastic covers over the couches and chairs. But, hey--that's the price you pay for having no less than six mess-makers at your dinner table at any given meal.
In another exciting news story, I bought myself a new digital camera tonite. My mom got me my first one quite a few years ago, but it died somewhere along the line. Then my husband bought a digital video camera which supposedly takes photos, but so far I find it less than user friendly, and the photo quality totally stinks. So now I have a handy dandy pink Kodak Easy Share, which is by no means a fancy camera, but at least I can make it go without any trouble at all. Yay me!
(now that I have a camera handy, maybe I will start taking horrible, embarrassing photos of the worst parts of my house, and then maybe motivate myself to clean those up so that I can take a great AFTER picture..... You know--if I even got marginally inspired to do some of that, it would be well worth the price of the camera.....)
Our dining chairs have been in need of being recovered for quite awhile, and about a week ago I purchased some new fabric for that. I also got some clear plastic to go over the fabric so that it's kid-proof and can be wiped off. After some ado this morning trying to get set up, I've now completed two of the seats, with three to go. I don't like the fabric as much as I did in the store, but at least it's clean and fresh. That counts for a lot around here. :)
Too often lately I've not had a real dinner plan. Around 4 or 5 o'clock I start thinking that I better come up with something to feed these people....
Well, today I took a few minutes and put a simple soup into the crock pot that my kids love. Here's the recipe:
Crockpot Potato and Corn Chowder
6 potatoes-cubed
1 can of corn undrained, or the equivalent in frozen corn plus a little water
1 can creamed corn
1.5 cups milk
1 medium onion, chopped
some chopped up cooked ham or bacon (maybe a cup or two of this)
half teaspoon worcestershire sauce
salt and pepper to taste
Throw it all in the crock pot and cook on low 6-8 hours.
My husband says this doesn't have enough flavor if you leave out the ham or bacon, but my kids like it either way. And THAT, my friends, is golden.
Flylady is all into the 15 minute thing. You know--spend just 15 minutes picking up an area or your room or whatever. Well, my bedroom has turned into a cyclone recently, so this morning I decided to spend *just 15 minutes* on it. and...wow! I'm always amazed at how much can be done in that amount of time. No, the room isn't perfect yet, but it looks a whole lot better than it did. And if I can manage to do 15 minutes on it two more times, I bet the whole thing will look perfect.
Here's a challenge for today: Pick the part of your home that is bothering you the most because of the mess or need for attention. Take 15 minutes and see what you can accomplish. I bet you'll be surprised!
Hey all--this week you can get a free ebook called Organizing 101 by going here. I know that a lot of us love organizing projects, or at least we love reading, planning, and making lists about organizing. ;) With this ebook, you won't even have the clutter of a physical book out on your table....
I was thinking about my post about toys and decided to share a little more about what toys we've found to be worthwhile for our kids. In no particular order, here you go:
Legos. Fun, interesting, educational. Boys or girls, when they're old enough to not try to eat them, start buying them.
Lincoln Logs. You can get a good deal on these classics here.
Wooden Train. Again, boys and girls both will love these. Brio ones are highly recommended. They are nicer and don't break as easily as some of the others. However, we got our kids a very large wooden train set from Mellissa and Doug last year and they have enjoyed it. Yes, some of the pieces have broken, but we have so many now that we would rather save the money on the original purchase than worry about keeping every single item safe and sound.
Wooden Blocks. Plain or colors, it doesn't matter. We have both. Lots of good, fun play with these. And of course you can use all your blocks, trains, and lincoln logs together to make great towns for your trains to drive through. :)
Dress Up Clothes. Imaginative play is so fun and good for kids. You can start a little collection in a large Rubbermaid container or laundry basket. Add stuff that you're about to part with in the Goodwill bag, like jewelry, hats, scarves, old tote bags or purses, etc. At yard sales you can often find groovy suit coats, silky dresses or shirts, shoes, etc. Many thrift stores have bag sales where you can pack a zillion things into a bag and just pay $1. That's your day to go and get lots of fun things for dress up, plus if you or your children like to cut things up and sew their own costumes, this is a great way to get cool fabric. Once my daughter and I stopped at a local thrift store on a whim. We walked in and found out it was bag day, and that we only had 15 minutes before they were closing. Ha! The bags they were handing out were huge black garbage bags! We took one and just went crazy going through the hangers, tossing in anything that looked like it would provide good material, trim, or buttons for doll clothes, costumes, and other projects. We paid our dollar and giggled all the way home. Later after we had more time to sort through our finds, we did return some of those items to the thrift store in the form of a donation, and kept what things we could use. My kids love to use the sewing machine, plus they hand sew pretty well. They make lots of fun things. (You can make many costumes out of pillow cases, so grab those when you see them at yard sales too!)
My one complaint about dress up clothes is that they make a mess. Kids will change into and out of costumes all day long, so you can end up with items from the dress up box all over the house. Every now and then I confiscate the entire box and hide it for awhile to give the house and my sanity a break.
Play Kitchen. When my kids were younger they loved having a play kitchen, little plates and cups, play foods, shopping carts, etc. Those were a lot of fun and I highly recommend them. It's kind of sad that my kids are too old to appreciate those now. :)
As we've had more children, we realized that getting more and more toys for gifts and Christmas would end up with a mountain of toys in our house. So now we are very strategic about what we ask for. This year the five younger children agreed to ask their grandparents for a group gift of money for a new swingset. That works out good for the gift givers and the giftees, and there's no clutter from a gift like that!
We have received a lot of outdoor fun items over the years, such as our Easy Set Pool, sandbox, wagons, Big Wheels, bikes, etc. All of those keep the kids happy and playing, but don't add anything to the house.
Not that our house is perfect in this regard, but a long time ago we realized that the kids rooms got way too messy if they kept their toys in their rooms. We have some cabinets where all of our blocks, puzzles, games, and art supplies go. There are very few items that the kids keep in their own rooms. It helps keep things a little more under control. (This is the same reason why our kids don't keep their clothes in their bedrooms. We have all of their clothes in our laundry room.)
