How did I do?

 Last week I had a big list of things I needed to do.  Let's see how I did!

1.Last week I talked about how I needed to do some major organizing in our basement.  That didn't happen.  👎

2.  I wanted to get more shelving for our basement organization and for our pantry.  I thought about it and the husband and I talked about it while we were at Costco.  We even looked at the shelving, but decided not to get it right now.  👎

3.  I wanted to put the "general store" back together and organize it.  That didn't happen. 👎

4. I needed to stock up on a few things we were getting low on.  I got everything on my list except sugar and flour. 👍👎

5.  I made my bed every single day. 👍

6.  We ate at home each night (which is a big deal for us), because I had menu planned.  One meal we didn't like at all and opted for leftovers instead. 👍

I pretty much failed last week, but I have to say, that was a pretty big list.  However, it got me thinking about what needs to happen and how it needs to happen.  And that is a big start.  

This week the weather looks yucky.  So I am thinking that I will be able to get some of the organizing done in the basement while it is rainy outside. That is the plan.  We will see how much I get done. 👍

Plans for week of 6/12

 We got some news yesterday and we will be having our son and his fiance moving back in with us temporarily while they save for a house and wedding.  Soooo......that means a whole household of stuff will be moving in with them too.  This means I need to get on my basement organization.  I have a lot of things that are just laying around down there that I don't need or want and I just need to get that stuff gone.  I also have a bunch of my daughter's stuff that has been just sitting in piles from when she moved home from college a few months ago.  That needs to get put away finally and organized as she will be moving overseas in a couple months and won't be needing any of that stuff for a while.

We also just was gifted a TON of emergency gear from a "prepper" who prepped for his family of 12 for 3 years.  He is active military but moving and can't take this with him.  So he gifted it to us.  We have 4 to 5 pick up truck loads of stuff that I need to go though and organize as well. 

I am thinking I need more shelving at this point. Shelves on wheels so I can move them around too.  I a thinking 4 will help. I plan to double my pantry storage in the basement, reorganize our "general store" with some smaller totes and organizational boxes. 

This is going to be a big undertaking but I think I can at least start on it this week.  

Also this week I need to stock up on a few items. We are running low on sugar and flour, salt, pepper, and spaghetti sauce.

I will be, as always, making my bed.  I meal prepped and grocery shopped yesterday for this week until Thursday or Friday.  I am hoping we will have enough leftovers to carry over to the next night once or twice too.  

Meal Planning 101

Grilled pork chops are a
quick and easy meal.

Being prepared takes time and the more time you put up front the better the week will be. This means that you have to put in some planning time before the week begins to plan out your week.  Grab your calendar, let's do this!

Looking at my calendar I add anything I don't already have on it.  Then I look over each day and see where I will be and what I will be doing.  This helps with the next step.  I look to see if there are days I am going to be out for dinner or lunch.  Then I look to see if my last appointment buts up to a meal where I won't have time to cook or make it. I don't have a job where I am in an office.  If I did, then lunches would be easy.  When I did have a job in an office, I packed my lunch every day.  I usually packed leftovers from last night's dinner.  I planned dinners where I would have leftovers for my lunches. If I didn't have leftovers then I packed a frozen meal or a sandwich. 

Now, let's talk dinners.  On my calendar where an appointment buts up to dinner time, I try to plan a meal that cooks all day in the crock pot with minimal additional prep.  I plan those first. Next I look at what I have in our freezers or what needs to be eaten soon.  I make sure those items are on the menu somewhere. We are a "meat and potatoes" family so I plan the meat first then add in the sides.  This whole process so far takes me about 5 minutes.  If I know we are tight on money then I make sure I shop my pantry (this is where a well-stocked pantry comes in handy). 

One of our favorite dinners is
crockpot spaghetti sauce. 
See below for the recipe.

Once I have a menu planned.  I start my grocery list. 

Truly it is that easy.  That little bit of time will save you from my life right now.  It is 5:43 and I didn't plan dinner.  I have no meat thawed and have nothing that can be quickly cooked.  We tend to be an "ingredients" house.  We don't do prepared foods because 1. it isn't good for you and 2. it isn't that good. So whatever we eat we have to make, like actually make. Tonight might become "Pizza Friday" and that is okay.  Tomorrow I will meal plan for next week and grocery shop.  

A big part of being prepared is forgiving yourself when you have dropped the ball.  I see my mistakes and I see the results when I don't menu plan. When I fail I forgive myself and jump back on that wagon. So tomorrow I menu plan.

Quick Crock Pot Spaghetti Sauce

Ingredients:

1 lb ground beef or (our favorite) ground Sweet Italian pork sausage

2 16 oz. jars your favorite spaghetti sauce.

Brown the meat in a saute pan. Drain any fat. 

Mix the two jars of spaghetti sauce and the browned meat in a crock pot.  Turn on low and let cook 4 to 6 hours stirring occasionally.  

Serve over pasta noodles with warm, crusty bread and a salad. 

Why put this in a crock pot and cook all day when you can quickly mix, heat and serve immediately?  Because the flavors meld together and take a mediocre jarred spaghetti sauce to the next level.  It tastes homemade and amazing!!  Give it a try!!

How I do laundry.

I know you have been wondering....... so today I will tell you how I do laundry.  Ha ha ha.

I have learned a lot over the past 20 years on what works and what doesn't work for us as a family.  We are a family of 5, with 3 teenagers.  We have big clothes.  Oh to have the days of tiny clothes again when you can do all your kids clothes in one or two loads.  Now we average about 10 loads a week and that doesn't include sheets or towels.  Towels will often take 3 loads a week.  So if we are doing sheets and towels (we do towels every week) it is a total of 15-17 loads a week!  That is a lot of laundry.

I am a bit of the busy type of mom. I work, I teach the kids, and I do housework.  I do get help from the kids.  That is a bonus.  My son actually likes doing laundry!  I tend to save laundry and do it all in one or two days.

In the past, I would wash and dry the clothes and then dump them on the couch to fold.  The folding never got done and the kids would push the clothes off the couch so they could sit.  The clean clothes would end up on the floor.  That method didn't work for us.

I eventually moved to putting the clean clothes back in the laundry baskets straight from the dryer.  The baskets never got folded and we would just root through the baskets to find the clothes we wanted to wear.  The clothes were wrinkled and not very attractive.  This method didn't work for us.

Then I would fold the clothes straight from the dryer and put the folded clothes back in the baskets to take up to the bedrooms to put away.  Inevitably the clothes never got put away.  They just stayed in the baskets and we rooted through the basket to find the clothes we wanted to wear, wrinkling all the others in the process. {sigh} This method didn't work for us.

Finally, I figured I would fold the laundry right out of the dryer and by this time the kids were old enough to put their own clothes away (5-8 years old in my house).  I would sort the clothes in piles of whose items it was along with sorting for the type of clothing it was.  All the pants went together, all the shirts together, all the underwear together, etc.  I would stack the piles in order of their drawers too.  Then the kids would get their piles (the 5 year old would get two types of items at a time) and take them up to put them away.  I would hang any hanging items and take them up myself. (we don't hang much of the kids items).  Finally a method that works!

This method allows us to have folded clothes that are put away.  If we don't get to the "put away" part, the pile sits neatly folded on top of the dryer.  All our socks go in a "sock bin" and I sort and match the socks while doing laundry but the singles go in the bin until a match can be found.  With socks I try to make it as easy as possible.  Most all socks are white and all the girls including me share socks.  All the boys also share socks.  Since we are all in "adult" sized shoes we all use the same sized socks.  There are a few fashion socks for the girls but not many.

Currently, we are living in a rental.  It is a "townhouse" style home and the laundry is in the basement.  We collect dirty clothes in laundry baskets in the bathrooms and in the bedrooms.  On laundry day we gather all the baskets and take them down to the laundry room to wash.  We have only one washer and one dryer.  Laundry never gets completely done.  When we were living in our own home with a large laundry room we had one washer and two dryers.  This was ideal on laundry day.  I could plow through the laundry quickly.  It takes twice as long to dry as it does to wash so the two dryers were so helpful!  I long for a second dryer now.  When the baskets are emptied they go back to the bedrooms and bathrooms empty. We have a hanging rack down in the laundry room too where we hang the hang up items immediately after drying to eliminate as much ironing as possible.

I would love to hang my laundry outside to air dry and get that fresh smells but we have allergies in the family and particularly during the spring and fall this would "kill" some of the members of our family if pollens and other allergens got into our clothes. So we don't hang outside.

When we traveled I loved using the laundromat when the clothes piled up.  While it was expensive, I could get 10 loads of laundry done in just a few hours!   So efficient having so many washers and dryers at once!  We did have a small washer/dryer unit in our travel trailer but it only took small loads and took 2 1/2 hours to wash and dry small loads.  It was great for underwear and socks and light weight items but not for jeans and towels.

I don't love laundry.  I save mine up for a marathon day or two.  I had a friend who did laundry every day of the week for her family.  She had three children as I do and she assigned each child a day.  On their assigned day she did their laundry and sheets.  At the end of 5 days she have everyone's laundry done and on Saturdays she did the towels and extras.  This method worked for her.  When she pulled the laundry out of the dryer she folded it and it went back in the baskets and back up to that person's room.  Done.  I can't get into that method because I don't want to be doing laundry everyday.  But this worked for her.

Everyone has a different method of tackling the neverending piles.  Each person will find their own way that works for them.  When tackling your piles look at what you have been doing and identify what works and what doesn't.  Then change the parts that don't work for you.  Keep the parts that do.

Planned Grocery Shopping

I have shopped for groceries in many ways.  I have shopped weekly. I have shopped every other week.  I have shopped twice a month, and I have shopped once a month.  I have also shopped every couple days when we need something.

Over the many years usually my shopping habits change when my income changes.  If we only get paid once a month then I do a big shopping trip when I get paid and then just a few little ones to pick up fresh produce, milk, eggs, and bread later in the month when we need them.  If we are getting paid every week then I find I shop just for that week until the next payday.  If I am getting paid twice a month ..... well you get the idea.

Over the many years I have found that I can save money if I shop sales and stock up. This is the most ideal way to shop for our family.  This also requires a nice sized storage area for dry foods as well as a large freezer to stock up on freezer foods.  When I have to shop weekly it becomes harder to shop the sales, particularly if the weekly ad for the grocery stores don't coincide with my shopping day.  For example the grocery store I shop mostly in runs their sales Wednesday through the following Tuesday.  If I am shopping on Wednesday I can't get a flyer until Wednesday making my planning hard.

Recently with our diminished income and extremely tight budget we have found ourselves in need of financial assistance.  This is temporary, but necessary for us.  We applied and have been receiving assistance from our state in the form of "food stamps".  It is a debit card nowadays and easy to use.  I was extremely embarrassed about it in the beginning because we had never accepted or applied for assistance in the past even though I am pretty sure we qualified for it.  I look at it as an "insurance" that I paid into for years and years through my taxes and now am in need and using it. When we are no longer in need we won't use it any longer. Anyway, this benefit comes once a month.  My card gets loaded with our food benefits on the 5th of every month.  The first couple months we continued to shop weekly as we had in months before but I found that I wasn't saving as much money that way.  I then switched to making a couple bigger trips to the grocery store when they had a sale but I would run out of things we needed later.

Last month I set out to make our benefits stretch as far as I could.  March would be a long month so I needed it to go further.  I was also getting bored with our regular meals.  I wanted to get creative again.

In the days leading up to my big shopping trip I planned out menus for the next three weeks.  The kids helped add their favorite dishes to our meal plan.  I began making a list of the things we would need to make the meals on the plan.  The list became longer and longer. I scanned the ads at two major grocery stores and split my list up between the stores to maximize our savings.  I clipped a few coupons, but not many.  I am not a coupon clipper as we tend to not eat what the coupons are.

On the day of our big shopping trip I did the unthinkable!  I cancelled school for that day.  We all went out shopping!  Armed with three kids to help with the shopping, lists for three places, and our grocery bags we were off.

The first stop was Sam's Club.  I find that they have the best, freshest meats for the most reasonable prices.  The hamburger is fresher. The chicken I can get in bulk already frozen, and this time I picked up a pork shoulder.  BBQ was on our menu.  The pork shoulder came in a "two pack" and was the same price as what I would have spent in the regular grocery store buying only one shoulder.  We also bought produce, butter, cheese, and some frozen foods there.  A big bag of pancake mix will last us the month as well as a two pack of syrup.  Actually a majority of our shopping was done at Sam's Club.

Next stops were at the regular grocery stores buying their sales items, deli meats, and other produce.  We eat mainly frozen veggies so we stocked up on those as well.

When the day was all said and done, I had spent nearly all but about $65 of our benefits. Scary.  Now to see how long it would all last.  With three teenagers in the house all the time eating three meals a day, food can disappear in a flash!

Each day we would look at our menu and choose what we would make for dinner.  It was fun making new and different meals.  Some we will have again.  Others we will wait a while.  I also got creative with our leftovers. Our menu was not set in stone.  It was more a list of meals that we had all the ingredients for.  We crossed off the ones we made and chose from those left of the menu.

Yesterday, I scanned our freezer.  I still have half a pork shoulder, three chicken breasts, some chicken patties, and some pork chops left.  This will actually make 4 hearty meals with left overs for lunches the next day.  I have spaghetti sauce and pasta in the pantry for a meat-free meal and we can always do "breakfast for dinner" (or as we call it in our house, backwards night).  This will make 6 more meals.

We did eat out once or twice this month but most all our meals came from this big shopping trip.  Throughout the month we ran to the grocery for this or that, mainly eggs, breads, milk, etc.  No more big shopping trips though.

A few things I learned this month:
1.  While we have always meal planned in the past, making a list of dinners and creating variety has helped us stay excited to eat at home.

2.  I am so glad I planned a couple crock pot meals.  These are so easy to throw in the crock pot in the morning and not think about it again until dinner.

3.  I hit some good sales this month and felt excited that I could stock up on some things for later.  (I have 10 cans of chicken stock and beef stock that I grabbed for 29 cents last week!)

4.  Getting the meats bought early in the month helped tremendously in my budget.  I didn't have to buy them later in the month when we didn't have as much money.

5.  We need to budget for more fresh produce as the summer arrives.  We love fresh veggies in our house and I will need to work on setting aside more money to buy fresh produce throughout the month.

6.  Big box Warehouses like Sam's Club and Costco will save you money if you know what to buy and how to store it before it goes bad.  I stick with items I know we will eat within its freshness time.  But honestly, rarely anything goes bad in this house!

7. I shopped the sales in the grocery stores and did well.  I also held back a bit of money for staples that need replenishing during the month and when a great sale pops up.

For April, I am already compiling a list of meals for our menu and adding items that we have run out of.  Next I will go back through the list of meals and add ingredients for those meals to our list.  I will then use the weekly flyers from our grocery stores to begin to sort out the list, add sale items and organize our shopping trip. I may not cancel school again, but do the shopping over two days.

What to do with your kids on a snow day???

Most families who live in a region where there is a possibility of snow should come to expect a day or two or more SNOW DAYS where school and offices are closed.  My most unfavorite Facebook posts are those where moms complain that their "kids are home yet again from school" or "I think I will go crazy if they are  home again tomorrow" sort of comments.  First, I have no patience for these moms.  These are YOUR kids, you shouldn't be complaining that you were blessed with whole day with your children.  Second, prepare for these days.  Have something up your sleeve for some fun activities that you all can do together during these days that you are snowed in.  Make some memories and enjoy the time you have with your kids.  They are only kids for short time. You WILL miss these days when they are no longer living in your home.

Prepared Mom Tips:

1.  Scan Pinterest for fun, easy activities to do with the kids. You can do this the morning of. I mean you are already awake from the 5 am phone call notifying you school was closed.  Hop on the computer right then and start planning your day while the kids are still asleep.

2. Bake something with them.  Make it easy like a box cake mix and then decorate with snowflakes and celebrate the snow. Or make cookies with snowflake cookie cutters or whatever you have on hand. Better yet, just make the "drop and bake" cookies.  Mixes last a long time in your pantry so stock up on a few cakes and cookies mixes when they are on sale.  Nothing better than a cup of hot cocoa and a warm cookie.

3. Play board games, card games, or even I Spy with them.

4. If you can, go out and play in the snow with the kids. Build a snow man or even a snow family in your yard.

5. Hike to a local convenience store and buy some hot chocolate or hike to a friends house and visit with them for a bit.

6. Pop popcorn and have a movie marathon of everyone's favorite movies. Have them write the title on a slip of paper and then draw the strips out of a hat for fairness and random selections. If you have a sofa bed in the living room, open it up and everyone lay on the bed to watch TV.

7. Create a scavenger hunt in the house for random objects or for things you have been looking for.

8. If you want to get overly ambitious, use the snow days for a major cleaning in their rooms.  Sort and organize toys, make piles for donation, and maybe even rearrange the furniture.

9. Sit together and go through old photo albums and tell stories of when the kids were really little.

10.  Get out those cookbooks and cook up a great big dinner with everyone helping. Don't worry about the mess, you are making memories!  Take a few pictures while you are at it.

11. Pull out old wrapping paper or butcher paper and the crayons and markers and make huge wall murals.

12. Pull a book off the shelf and read it out loud to your kids.  My teens still love to be read to. I will bet that yours will too.

13. Have a family competition using your Wii, XBox, or Playstation games. Get everyone involved.

Nothing frustrates me more than a mom who says, snow days are an unplanned day "so we have nothing to do".  Plan for these days. Tuck some activities in a box in your closet and pull out the "fun box" on these days. Don't be frustrated because you have to spend yet another day with your kids.  Make those days fun and make some memories.

I hope these suggestions get your creative juices running and you are able to make the best of these snow days.

Great Household Tips

I found this link on Facebook and loved so many of the ideas.  Since we will be moving into a new house soon I wanted to keep this link somewhere I could find it later.  I figured you might want to see it too.  Great stuff here.

I particularly like the low hanging coat rack for shoes and the large muffin liners for flower pots.  I am wondering if I can use coffee filters instead. Hmmm....

http://www.glamumous.co.uk/2013/03/101-household-tips-for-every-room-in.html?m=1

Six Boxes Down to Two Binders

Yes, you read that right!  I took six boxes worth of music CDs and fit them all into two binders set up for storing CDs.

How did I do it?  Simple, I allowed myself to get rid of the plastic cases and toss the paper covers and lyrics.  It took a bit of a hard swallow to do that.  I mean I like looking at Sting when I search for his covers and I like the ease of having the lyrics right there if I want to sing along and don't know the words.  However, in our techo age we can Google the lyrics to the songs and bring them up on our phones, ipods, and laptops.  I no longer need the paper version.

So we bought these Case Logic CD storage binders and started putting our CDs in them.  We had over 350 CDs and we didn't weed out a single one.  We have over 100 Christmas music CDs!  Wow!  That is a LOT of Christmas music.

I love that they have a zipper that closes all the way around the binder.  That way CDs won't fall out when we are traveling or moving it from one place to another.

We had 6 boxes full of these music CDs and were able to get every single CD into two of these awesome cases.

By the way, we did this about two years ago with our movie DVDs and loved that we could take our movies everywhere with us easily.

Now with three of these binders we have all our movies and our music CDs with us where ever we go.  Perfect for traveling and in our RV.  Now how cool is THAT!

Preparing to Move - Mom Style

Ba ha ha ha ha...

This moving stuff is for the birds!

We have 13 years of "baggage" here in this house and let me tell you, it is seeping out of the walls it seems.  Moving for us is inevitable.  Our plan is to put everything in storage and move to our summer/weekend home for the summer and possibly into the fall.  Until the house is actually sold (we have a contract on it but no settlement date yet) we will keep furniture here and some basic items.  There will be times we will be back here and spending the night or two.  Other than that our plan is to get all the rest of the stuff packed and out.

I posted a couple weeks ago that I was unmotivated.  I am motivated now and looking at all our STUFF is overwhelming.  Most of the time I just say "pitch it".

To date we have had three yard sales each earning us a bit over $300. The most recent one we made $450! We have also sold another $200 on Craigslist. But we still have a ways to go.  We have another room full of stuff for another yard sale which will be in a couple weeks.  That will/should be our last one.

In packing my goal is to sort, group, and pack.  I want to sort out the stuff we don't want to keep/no longer need/can't use and put that in one pile.  Then I group all like objects together and pack them away in boxes.

We have collected all our plastic storage containers and are using them as much as we can.  They stack well and can be moved easily as most have handles.  The other boxes we get from the liquor store because they are sturdy but smallish so we can handle the size and weight easily.  The big boxes are easy to pack but get heavy quickly.

At this point my house looks like a bomb blew up the inside or like it was burglarized.

We have some accomplishments at this point.  
1.  The attic has been cleaned out.  It is all over my living room right now but there is nothing in the attic anymore.
2.  My husband and I have cleaned out our closet and sorted through our clothes.  We have gotten rid of 13 trash bags full of clothing. And YES we still have clothes to wear. And YES a lot of those bags were my clothes. LOL
3.  We have moved three loads of boxes and furniture into storage.
4.  We also have sorted through all our stuff already in storage and got rid of almost half of it to go to a yards sale or Goodwill. (That is amazing! To think we were storing stuff we could have gotten rid of a long time ago....)

Things I can't deal with right now:
1. my scrapbook stuff - I have a ton of it and I just can't go through it and sort and get rid of it.
2. a final sort of our homeschool supplies - again I just can't go through it and weed out stuff.  I just don't know what I will need because I am not planning next year yet other than basic subjects.

Our move out date is the end of May.  That is putting our stuff in storage and moving to our summer place.  The house and basic stuff will stay here in our house until it is sold.  But by the end of May we should be living more time at our summer place than here in town. (fingers crossed)

Purging the binges...

LOL  This post title makes me laugh!!!

We have a contract on our house.  It is virtually sold.  We are awaiting a settlement date from the banks and we will be moving out of our house.

At this point I have begun to pack and purge.  Purge our binges, that is.

We decided to have a yard sale last week and we did a pretty good job of getting rid of a bunch of stuff.  We sold a lot but at the end of the sale we didn't really want to pack it all back up and put it all back in the house for another sale later this month.  So we did the inevitable.  We packed it all up in two car loads and dumped it off at the Goodwill.  I will take that tax deduction and not have to store the stuff again for a few more weeks.  That wave is done.

Now on to the second wave.  Ugh!  The more I look at the stuff in our house the more I just want to get rid of it.  Just back up a big dumpster and throw it all out the window into the dumpster.  Part of it is my laziness in dealing with everything.  The other part is that if I haven't seen it in a while then I probably won't miss it anyway.  What makes me not get a big dumpster??? I am greedy.  LOL  I want to make a bit of money on the stuff I have spent my hard earned money on. I know a majority of it will end up getting donated anyway, but the last yard sale we had earned us $245.  And that went a nice little way in paying for other things we needed, (food, gas, etc).

What I have found recently in sorting through my stuff is that we have "binged" on things.  We decide we like something and then we have to have all of that something.  For example I decided that I was going to collect Santas with pipes years ago.  My first ornament given to me by my grandfather was a hand blown ornament of a santa with a pipe.  So this collection began to evolve from there.  When others in the family found out that I was collecting these my collection grew exponentially.  I received them every year for my birthday and Christmas (which are close together).  Any that we saw we seemed to buy.  When our kids got old enough to start pulling things from the shelves, I packed them up in four large Rubbermaid boxes and put them in the attic.  Each year I left them up there, not wanting to get them out and take the time to display every single one.  Last week I pulled these boxes down from the attic and unwrapped each Santa.  They all sat all over the kitchen table (who am I kidding, they are still sitting there.)  I looked that them and realized a good majority of them I don't love.  If I don't love them then I shouldn't keep them, right???  I played the "I can whittle this collection down to 10 Santas" game with my husband.  Who gladly played along.  He wrapped up the ones I picked and those are the ones I am keeping.  It was a difficult decision with some because I know my husband went out of his way to get some of them, but I didn't love them.  I had to talk to him about it and take the emotion of loving him out of my decision on some of the Santa's.  Once we talked and I explained that I loved that he went out of his way and searched high and low to get me some, I just didn't love the Santa.  He agreed that they should then go.  And they did.  I have two huge boxes of Santa's awaiting a yard sale and have put some of the vintage ones up on etsy to sell. I feel so much better with the ones I truly love and not have all the rest of them that I don't love just taking up space.

Speaking of space.  For the next 6 months we will be living, a family of 5, in less than 400 square feet of space.  We can't take our stuff with us.  We must put it in storage. My ideal is to keep the minimum for setting up a house again and getting rid of the rest.  I struggle with this though and I ask myself, "is this worth the expense of storage?"  Lots of times the answer in the beginning is "yes" but later the answer becomes "no". This means that I am going through my stuff twice, getting rid of many things on the first wave and then having to make the hard decisions on the second wave.  Ugh.  This is an arduous and emotional process.

I am SO not Motivated

We straightened up our house for showings.  We have cleaned walls of fingerprints, wiped down numerous counters and sinks, swept, vacuumed, and mopped floors.  We have made beds and picked up piles of junk.  But I am so NOT motivated to start getting more things packed.  I look at my craft area in particular and all the unfinished projects and say "I can do that in 10 minutes." or "I am going to sit down and do this instead of packing it up".  Ugh!!!  The packing is not getting done.

How do you motivate yourself to pack?

I need to sort, organize, separate stuff we need to keep from stuff we can yardsale or give away (or toss).  I need to begin to tackle this soon.  We have had some real interest in our house recently so I know we will be getting offers in soon.  This means that we WILL be moving.  At this point we will be moving into our trailer for the summer.  We will put all our stuff in boxes and in storage until we make the big, more permanent move.  UGH! It just all seems too overwhelming right now.

I also have a cold and that may be some reason to my "whining".  I don't know.  I really need to tackle something.

Selling our House

In January we spent a lot of time on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  We love the beach, walking everyday, the ocean waves, the calmness.  Now this is a vacation to us and we are well aware that when you talk about moving to a "vacation" area the vacation feel goes away.  But the beach is still there, the calmness when you walk on the sand and hear the ocean waves are still there.

In February we were given a great gift from a friend of ours.  She couldn't use her time share in Daytona Beach and offered it to us.  While we were there we fell in love with the area, the beach, the people, the architecture, and the fact that it is so inexpensive to live there compared to living where we do.  We knew we needed to move anyway and sell our house so when we returned we wasted no time and put our house on the market.

Our house is for sale. Notice I didn't say our HOME is for sale.  It isn't our home anymore, it is someone else's home.  Right now it is just our house and we live here for a bit longer. Our HOME is wherever we are, it isn't a place or a building.

We have been madly decluttering and working to get the house packed up and tidied up for people to come see it.  We have had 3 showings so far and no offers but it is early yet and we are hopeful. It will sell. I know it will.

I mean, who doesn't want a bedroom this big???

Yes, that is a KING size bed in there flanked by two three drawer dressers for night stands! There is one on each side.

Selling our house means that we are trying to eat down our food storage, organize our belongings and work to pack up only the items we LOVE.  I will be posting more on the sale and packing and moving in future posts.

Planning for the Christmas Holidays

I am SOOOO not an organized person.  I always feel like I have a zillion balls in the air and that they are all going to come crashing down at the same time at any moment. I feel like I have ADHD but I know that I don't.  I just have too much going on.

So this year, this season, we are doing things a bit differently.  There are a few different factors that make this holiday season a bit different.

First, we are NOT going to Disney World.  Since 2007 we have gone to Disney for a week or so just before Christmas.  This meant that I had to be super organized because I would have to have everything ready for Christmas prior to us leaving for Disney as we would often be returning on Christmas Eve or on Dec 23rd.  So it ALL had to be done.  Not this year.

Second, we have like NO money for extra things.  We have enough to buy some gifts but we are not doing extravagant things and have no extra money to do other stuff that we wish we were able to do if we weren't going to Disney.  We aren't buying new decorations or more lights for the front of the house, or anything we don't NEED.  Not this year.

Third, because we are homeschooling we actually have a bit of extra time on our hands and we tend to sit around "wishing" that we could go here or do this.

Extra time + NOT going to Disney + NO extra money = Mom has to be creative.

So this is what I did.  I took an inventory of the things I wanted to do and then I surveyed the kids and asked them to give me their top 5 things they wanted to do this holiday season. Next I crossed off everything on their lists that would cost a lot of money or that included "going to Disney World".  I ended up with a nice list of things.

Some of the things the kids said were:
go Christmas caroling
go look at Christmas lights
have a party for our friends
bake cookies
go Christmas shopping for each other


Some of the items on my list were:
go look at Christmas lights
string popcorn and cranberries
do some baking
read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas" together
read "The Christmas Carol" together

Then I looked at the calendar and printed out a December calendar and started to add things on it.  This way we will have some things to look forward to each week.

We have an extra week this year and with us not going out of town we have a lot of extra time we usually don't have. I hope that this year we will be able to make some great memories just the 5 of us that won't cost a lot of money.

What do you do to plan for the holidays?  Do you have any fun things you like to do each year that doesn't cost a lot of money?

Taking a Big Trip? How I Plan and Pack

This past week we took a trip to the ocean.  We have a family home there and so there is no rent.  It is a rental property though so we don't keep "normal" supplies down there.  We have to bring everything from our food to towels and sheets.  Since we are trying to take this trip "on the cheap" I needed to make sure I planned everything that I could and take everything with me that we would need.  I didn't want to have to run out to the store and replace things we left. (However that did still happen and I will get to that).

So here was what I did.  I made lists.

1.  Menu plan for the days we would be down there including planned eating out.  We planned to eat out one meal on the way down and one on the way back and one while we were there.  For the meal we picked while we were there we chose a pizza place, a favorite of ours for lunch one day.  While the menu wasn't strict it did include everything we would eat, all meals (maybe not in the order I listed them) and all snacks.  I also included all spices and regular pantry items such as flour, salt and pepper, and sugar.  I have nothing down there so I have to take it all with me.

2.  Clothing.  This was a bit more relaxed.  I didn't stress if we didn't have enough clothing to get us through the week as we have a washer and dryer there in the house.  We can do laundry.  I did list out weather related items such as winter coats and socks. Shoes and sweatshirts.  An umbrella.

3.  Household linens.  We had to take take bath towels, wash cloths, sheets, blankets, kitchen towels, and pot holders. (I forgot kitchen towels and pot holders so we had to go to the Dollar Store and buy these items.  They are now down there in the owner's closet waiting for us to return.)

4.  Cleaning supplies.  Clorox wipes, laundry detergent and dryer sheets, dishwasher detergent and dish soap, hand soap, paper towels and toilet paper.

5.  Toiletries. Shampoos and conditioners, toothbrush and toothpaste, soaps, deodorant, etc.

6.  Activities and supplies.  We had some science activities we wanted to do while there and we made sure we had all the supplies we needed.  I also made sure each child brought two books with them to read and other activities they wanted to do or toys they wanted to pack (within reason).

7.  Kitchen pots and pans.  I like to cook on cast iron so I tend to bring my pans with me.  So I packed them also.

I began packing and planning a week in advance of our departure.  Most of the planning was done in list form and the scheduling was done in my head.  I made one last trip to the grocery store two days prior to our departure.

I began to pack our food stuffs the day before and the kids packed their clothes the day before.  The linens and towels were packed a few days before our departure.  On the day of our departure our daughter was sick and we delayed leaving for a day.  So instead of leaving on Tuesday evening we left Wednesday about mid-day.

The day of our departure I packed the rest of our food stuff and our cold food in the cooler.  Everything else was packed and in the car the night before.

Once we arrived and unpacked I knew there were a few things I did need from the store.  I did not pack eggs because they tend to not travel well.  I did not pack milk and I wanted to get some ice cream and knew that wouldn't travel well in the cooler.  We ended up spending about $50 with other fresh items like fruits we purchased.  We also spent $14 at the Dollar Store where I purchased a disposable turkey pan, a Reynolds Roasting bag and kitchen towels and pot holders.

We stayed at the ocean for 6 days and 6 nights and brought all our food from home and enjoyed the time we spent down there tremendously.

We think the off season is the best time to be at the beach.  We enjoy having the beach almost to ourselves and the weather usually isn't too bad in the fall and spring times.  Winters can be a bit windy and chilly but the views are still awesome.

If you plan, make lists, and follow your lists then you won't have any emergency trips to the store with added expense.

Getting Organized for the Holidays

Is it just me or you too?  I am surprised that the radio stations are playing Christmas music 24/7 already.  I love turning on the radio the day after Thanksgiving and hearing the Christmas music for the first time.  It is such a special time and a nice treat!  But NOW???  It just doesn't make sense.  We already have almost an extra week between Thanksgiving and Christmas this year.  To play Christmas music already seems like a bit of an overkill to me.

However, I do like to start planning my Thanksgiving and Christmas around this time of year anyway.  Actually I usually begin thinking about the holidays just after Halloween.  I try to brainstorm and list all the things I want to do for the holidays first.  Then sort through that list and cross off anything that seems out of the question or seems unreasonable.  Then I like to get things scheduled on the calendar - go see Santa, our Christmas party, any other parties or dinners we are invited to goes on the calendar.  Then I like to categorize things in to weeks.  These would be like getting Christmas cards signed and addressed, mailing Christmas cards, baking cookies, shopping, getting the Christmas tree, outside decorations going up, shopping for Christmas dinner and baking.  Then I like to get the gift list ready.  I list out everyone I would like to give gifts too and begin to brainstorm ideas for each person on my list.  I set a budget and then adjust the list as necessary.  I try to make as many gifts as I can if possible.  I love homemade gifts.  Not all my recipients do but I love to give them so they get them.

Visualizing the calendar works so well for me.  I can see the things I need to get done.

Because we are homeschooling this year, I am hoping that I will have just a bit more time to do the things we really want to do each holiday season but don't seem to have the time.  These would include driving around and looking at Christmas lights, baking more than usual, creating some nice gifts for my family and friends.

What do you do to get organized for the holidays?  What tips do you have for busy families?  What is your favorite tradition leading up to Christmas?

Weekly Menu Planning (and Freebie)

With all the changes that has happened in our household the past month one thing that we have had to be extra careful of is our money.  We don't have a lot of it right now and we have been going through some transitions with that.

One thing that we haven't been doing much is going out to eat.  The kids have felt the brunt of this.  In the past we have gone out to eat at least once a week if not more often.  Now we eat every meal at home.  We have to plan when we go out that we won't be out during a meal time where we will be tempted to eat out.  This also means that we must plan our meals more carefully so that I have all the ingredients I need to cook supper.  I also have to be ever present to make sure that I take out anything that needs thawing in the morning so it is ready to cook in the afternoon.

This afternoon I decided to whip up a form that I can fill out for a weekly meal plan.  I have covered this subject before but tonight I thought I would share my form with you all.  It is yours for free to print as many as you want.  What I love about this form is that it has room to write your menu items for all three meals a day and you have a column for your shopping list.  You can create your menu and add any items you need to your shopping list immediately.  When you are done you can simply cut or tear off the shopping list and head off to the store.

I have two links for you.  The first is the Weekly Menu Plan with all three meals and the shopping list.  The second is the Weekly Menu Plan with a "snack" line for each day.  I also plan a snack.  It just makes it easy for us to know what is available to eat for snacks.  If you are like me, then there are teenagers in the house who seem to be ravenous all day long!



Weekly Menu Plan

Weekly Menu Plan w/ Snack

These files are in .ODT form, this is an Open Office file.  I don't have MS Word on my computer but you can convert these over to a Word doc pretty easily I think.  Let me know if you have any problems with the files.

Enjoy and I hope that you will get good use out of them.  I pray that they save you money, time and effort in your busy days.

Homeschooling 101, part 2 (and Freebie)

This is a 2 part article on my homeschooling panic and return to reality.  To read part 1 find it here.

In my struggle to figure out what I was doing wrong I went back to my sources.  Clearly other people were not having the same troubles as me.  Why was I struggling so?

I went back to the internet to look at other families and what they were doing and what I was doing wrong.  I searched for a plan book that would help me organize my thoughts and my ideas.  I found a few things, but nothing that I loved.

I decided on these things.  I went from year calendars to month calendars and then all the way down to weekly schedules.

This one is from donnayoung.org

Find these awesome month calendars at freehomeschooldeals.com

I also printed out Book Lists.

I can't wait to fill them in with all the books we have read.  I plan to have the kids each fill one out with the books they read through the year and then I will fill one in with all the books we read together as a family.

You can find the Book List forms at freehomeschooldeals.com.









Then I moved on to a Semester Planner.  I like that each semester is on one sheet of paper.  You can see that I have already begun filling it in.

Now I am beginning to see where we are going this year academically.












I made my own weekly scheduling pages since I didn't find any that I loved.  I used Open Office to create this and I have the file right here for you if you want to use it too.


I made the pages colorful by adding color to the text.


Now I am finally beginning to see where we are going and what we are doing each day.  I may not plan every week and I won't be planning our math for the older kids as their math program goes along in lessons and they do a lesson a day pretty much.  I don't have to plan for that.


It may also be a good idea to use these as an historical record of what we did each day.  I will be adding the books we read, the topics we study, the activities we do and the field trips we go on.

I am finding that most homeschool families teach a skill to mastery.  My kids didn't always master all the math, spelling, and reading skills they needed and I will be spending some good time with them on these skills so they master them.  I truly believe that this sets homeschooled kids apart from public schooled kids.  It is the level of mastery.

In the process I realized that the state only requires me to provide math and reading scores.  Realized probably isn't the word, remembered is more like what I am trying to say here.  I remembered.  Then I rationalized.  "If I am only to turn in reading and math scores and that is all we get done this year then I am okay by the eyes of the state."  If we get other stuff done too then I am better than the minimum, right?  We will read and we will do math.  We will learn lots more stuff in the process too.  We will read these books I have spent a TON of money on and we will learn from them too. Bonus right???

A bit more organization for us are these great buckets.  Each child has their own bucket with their name on it.  They keep all their notebooks, workbooks, and projects in it.  Inside they also keep their pencil and crayon case.  Everything is in the bucket.






These are our flash cards.  Most came from Target and are so useful for memory practice.

Homeschooling 101

Boy do I feel like I am in the midst of a college level class and I am struggling to figure out what the professor is really trying to say.  I sit in class, I listen, I take notes, I read the textbook, but they say one thing, I read about something completely different and then when I go to take the test none of the questions are anything about what the professor said or what I read and studied.  Sheesh!

Homeschooling 101: 

Here are things I have read.  Everyone does it differently.  All families are different. Teach what the kids are interested in. Most families teach skills to mastery.  

Here are things I have heard from others.  Everyone does it differently.  All families are different. Teach in units. Explore your world.

Here are things I learned from the homeschooling convention last June.  You need to pick a curriculum.  Get stuff for all subjects and don't forget handwriting, grammar, Bible, and all the extras. Everyone does it differently.  All curriculums are expensive.

Here is what I have learned from being a teacher in public and private schools for the past 19 years.  Curriculum must be well rounded.  Cover as much as you can in a year.  Electives are important.  Social Studies and Science are VERY important subjects to learn.

Here is what I learned from the homeschool laws of Virginia (where we live).  You must turn in a list of subjects you plan to cover over the course of the year.  At the end of the year you must turn in standardized test scores for reading and math for each child. Period!

So in my effort to be prepared I have scoured the internet looking for homeschooling families and reading their daily schedules, lists of subjects they are learning, and the curriculum they use.  I went to the Homeschool convention here in town (our state convention) and I listened to the speakers, I talked to the people in the vendor's hall and listened and looked at all the curriculum out there.  I thought about where my kids were in school (public school) and figured their grade levels were correct since they were all making decent grades in school.  I brought home all the catalogs and literature that they gave us.  I read homeschooling magazines,  and I talked to any other homeschooling moms I could.

I read more.  I surfed the internet more.

I emailed other homeschooling moms.

I chose a curriculum.  I paid a TON of money for it.  I opened the boxes when they arrived and was excited to see the wonderful books I paid a TON of money for.  I was happy.  I took the instructors guide to bed with me that night.  I pulled the books we would begin with. We started the next day.  I read to not let the curriculum guide you but for you to guide the curriculum.  I WANTED to check off the boxes when we finished with each thing.  I WANTED the curriculum to guide us.

In regular school (public or private) the teacher stands in the front of the classroom and the kids sit in the desks, eyes open and pencils sharpened and ready to learn.  The teacher teaches.  The students learn.  This is what my kids did on the first day with our new things.  They sat around the kitchen table and looked at me.  I started to "teach".  But it didn't go well.  We didn't know where we were going.  We didn't understand how this curriculum was set up.  There were no textbooks so we didn't know the sequence of things.  We didn't understand what we were to get from this reading.  I went back to the instructors guide for guidance.  It didn't answer my questions.  We continued hoping we would figure it out.  We kept going for two weeks.  I became frustrated because we weren't getting anywhere.  There was too much to do, not enough writing for the kids, not enough time in our day to get all the stuff done they wanted us to do.  We never even got to science!  NEVER!

This week I have had a panic attack about this.  My husband asked me if this was all going to work.  He questioned if we should send the kids back to school (public school).  I immediately said NO!  I just needed a plan, a sequence of things, a scope.  I needed to revamp.

Part 2 of this post is here.

Organized??? Are you???

I want to be organized.  I love the boxes, bins, containers, drawers.  I want everything to be labeled and everything to have its place.  I want everything to be put away.

I love these:

and these:

and this:

and this:

(no that is not me)

One of my problems though is that I like to have my things out where I can see them.  I have a problem with "out of sight, out of mind".  I forget I have things and then I buy the same thing over again.  Then, of course, I find that I already have that item.  I think I am organization disabled. Ha ha. 

We May Have a Buyer/Renter

I hate to even post this because I don't want to jinx myself.  You all know we have wanted to sell our house for a long time.  So I won't go into the background story again.

A month ago we buried a St. Joseph medal in our yard.  He will help us sell our home.  That very same day we ran into an old friend of ours and found out that he and his wife are divorcing.  So sad. (Yes, I am going into the back story, sorry)  He said he was looking for a new home for he and his boys.  He will most likely have custody of them.  We mentioned our home to him and he said he would get back to us.  Three weeks later he called and came over and said he was interested in our house.  He toured through the whole house and I think the house "showed" well.  He liked it and as he was leaving he said he was going on vacation with his boys this past week and he would call us when he got back.  We are now waiting on that phone call.  He also asked how quickly we could move out.  We told him we could move out any time.  He said he wanted to get moved in and settled before his boys start school.  That is in only two weeks now. ACK!!!

So this prepared mom is beginning to panic a bit.  I don't want to pack up any more of our house to prepare for a move that may not happen.  I also don't want to be freaked out and be a freaky woman trying to move in three days time either. So what to do???

I am preparing for the move in my mind right now.  I am planning what I will need to pack and going through it all in my head.  We have a place to move to which will be fine temporarily but we will need no furniture as it is already furnished.  It is our summer home on a river close by.  We come down on weekends and such.  We will commute from the river house until we find something that we will either rent or buy in town.  So the lists begin.  The items we need for every day, extra cooking utensils and such, our school books, clothes, etc.  Not much really.  Everything else will go into storage for the time being.  EVERYTHING!

Visualizing helps me to prepare and plan.  I can walk through my house, pick up items I will want at our river house (the electric hand mixer) and list them on my list.  I can pack the house and visually place it in the storage unit.  I can visualize commuting an hour and half each way to work.  I feel better.  I am not a freaky woman running around throwing things into boxes and yelling at everyone. (well, that isn't unrealistic though)  I am calm, cool, and collected.

************************
I write this today as I sit at our river home looking out the window on a dreary day.  In my tiny oven  I am baking a cake for my daughter's birthday which was last week and we haven't been able to "celebrate" with cake.  I have to bake it in two shifts as the oven is too small to bake both layers at once.  The oven is funny because the back lets things rise better than the front so the cake is completely lopsided. LOL

I suppose the moral to this story is: even though your cake is lopsided and doesn't come out as you expect it to, it is still CAKE!  Have a great day everyone!