Menu Planning 1-7-13 to 1-13-13

Jan 7 (Hubby home, I'm at work)
B - quick shake
L - at work
S - Beef Stroganoff

Jan 8 (Hubby home)
B - quick shake
L - leftovers
S - Baked Swiss Chicken

Jan 9 (I'm at work, Scouts night)
B - quick shake
L -leftovers
S - Pork Teriyaki

Jan 10 (Scouts night)
B - quick shake
L - leftovers
S - Raspberry Chicken

Jan 11
B - quick shake
L - leftovers
S - homemade pizza

Jan 12
B - cold cereal
L - grilled cheese and tomato soup
S - Vegetarian Penne

Jan 13
B - ham egg and cheese bake
L - bean and cheese burritos
S - Herbed Slow Cooker Chicken

Exciting News!!!

Okay, so I have told you all about Calla, my best friend's daughter, who is like a niece to me. Well, she was over to our house yesterday while her dad was at work and I got some SUPER exciting news!

About a week ago or so, my best friend's dad posted a picture on his facebook page of his new granddaughter. He has three children. My best friend is the oldest, then there's little sister and baby brother. Little Sister isn't THAT little - she's almost 25 and Baby Brother is like 20 or 21. Well, anyhow, the picture was posted of a new granddaughter and I knew it wasn't Little Sister's baby, so I assumed it was Baby Brother's baby. This "new" granddaughter is six months old. As it turns out, even Little Sister initially thought that the new baby was Baby Brother's. But it's not. It's my best friend's newest baby. Squeal!!!

Okay, I know it sounds crazy to be THIS excited over my friend finding out that he has a baby that he didn't know about. But, he and the baby's mom get along really well and he has seen the baby every week since he found out that she was indeed his. He has a great girlfriend and a stable life (the most stable that I've seen him have in probably 13 years or so) and I'm just so excited for him!

Not to mention, that also means that I have a new baby "niece" to dote on and I cannot wait to meet her! She is such a beautiful baby and Calla tells me that her new little sister looks a lot like she did when she was a baby. I don't know what Calla looked like when she was a baby so I'm taking her word for it. Calla is like exactly 50% like her mom and 50% like her dad.

So that is my exciting news! I told best friend today that once he works out his visitations with the new baby, if the need should arise, I would totally be willing to babysit for him. Now to plan for things to make for this new wee one. Swoon! I'm thinking blankets and hats and sweaters and all kinds of fun stuff and then for this next Christmas, when she will be almost a year and a half, I'll make her lots of other fun stuff too. I think it's time to learn to knit or needle felt toys for a toddler! I have nearly a year to do it! And of course, there is her birthday as well. Oh, I'm just so far beyond excited! I love babies anyhow, but I love this particular one even more because she is the daughter of my best friend.

Small Things

Rachel Anne Ridge from Home Sanctuary is starting her daily Small Things again. Today's Small Thing is super easy. All that I needed to do was to print off a Tally Blank Sheet for 40 points. This month the prize on top of bringing Sanctuary into my home is the possibility of also winning a Kindle e-reader. Not a bad prize for just doing a few extra things around the house.

Today's total: 40 points
This month's total: 40 points

Menu Planning 1-1-13 to 1-6-13

Okay, so here's what we came up with last night for our monthly meal plan:

Jan 1
B - cold cereal and milk
L - leftovers
S - Slow Cooker Mac 'N Cheese (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)

Jan 2
B - Sausage Egg Bake (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)
L - Beef Tenderloin with Potatoes (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)
S - Asparagus Swiss Quiche (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)

Jan 3
B - Best Banana Pancakes
L - Cranberry Waldorf Salad (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)
S - Pineapple Mustard Ham (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)

Jan 4
B - cold cereal
L - Beef and Noodles (link coming later)
S - leftovers

Jan 5
B - Start Your Engine Fruit Shake
L - Mile-High Shredded Beef, Glorified Hash Browns and Hoagie Buns (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)
S - bean and cheese burritos

Jan 6 (Fast Sunday - nothing for breakfast for me, Cephas or Koren)
B - cold cereal and milk
L - Beef Stew for a Crowd (Taste of Home Annual Recipes 2003)
S - leftover stew

Not Resolutions, per se...

But there are changes that I'm wanting to make, ones that I have been contemplating for a little while and that I would have been implementing regardless of the date, so here they are:

My best friend, Bree, and I are planning to do Scripture study together and separately. We plan to do Seminary reading assignments and then meet up together once a week and discuss them. We're hoping to get a couple more friends involved in it as well. It should be quite a bit of fun and teach us a lot.

I rearranged my house this past week. Partially to accommodate a few Christmas gifts and partially to change things up and get areas neat, straightened and organized. I plan to continue to purge (a MAJOR part of what I did this past week) and to continue organizing as well. I plan to tackle a particular area of the house each week. I think the first week will be the den, as that is where Hubby and I spend most of our time. We got the furniture rearranged in here, but now there are some items sitting around in piles that are now, well, homeless. And they need homes. They deserve homes. I'll post more about this tomorrow, complete with pictures.

I also plan to start doing meal planning again. It works out so well but lately I have really dropped the ball when it comes to doing it. I mentioned in my post from the early morning hours today that I plan to have the family sit around and pick out recipes that they'd like to try and we will incorporate them into a monthly meal plan. This way, I can set a meal plan for the whole month. We can always tweak it a little bit based on changes for that day, but even still, it's much more helpful to have an actual plan in place.

And I have been working hard to set aside some money for savings. I have a goal this year to save up $1200, which isn't so bad. That's a mere $100 per month. I know that I can do it! And the idea is to not dip into it for any reason at all. So far, I have $300 saved up, which really isn't much. But this new goal to save $1200 would put us at a savings amount of $1500, which would be wonderful to have on hand just in case we should need it.

Our chore system is going well. I have tweaked it here and there and may need to slightly tweak it again here soon, but it will be after some additional thought and evaluation and a discussion with the Hubby to see what we like about it and what we want to change about it. But overall, the kids have done extremely well with it.

We have skipped the gym and all associated activities with our membership since, oh, I don't know, July maybe? Something horrible like that. We fully intend to use our membership at least once a week starting this week now. I would seriously like to lose 40% of my body weight, but probably it wouldn't be practical nor safe to lose that much in a year's time, so I'd settle for losing 2% per month, each month from now until I am at that 40% lost mark. That's a goal that will take 26 months to accomplish. Just over two years. I'm okay with that. I have to be. It took me awhile to get to the point where I am now and it will take me awhile to get back to where I was. At the end of this year, I should have lost (according to my goal) around 12% of my body weight. Regular gym activities, eating more meals prepared at home and as a family and cutting out soda (even diet soda) should help these things out tremendously.

So that's my New Year's "Not Resolutions, per se" post. Tonight, we are going to have dinner, pick out some recipes, maybe bake some banana bread, then curl up on the couch with our pajamas on, watch a movie, eat some popcorn (none for me, thanks, I'm not a fan) and just spend time together as a family. Sounds like a wonderful way to start a new year!

Happy New Year

Yet again, another unintended hiatus from blogging. You know, I plan to blog regularly and I do really well with it for awhile and then something comes up and I miss a day. Or two. Or a week. And the longer that I break from it, the harder it is for me to come back from it. I wait for the perfect project or the right theme to come back to or whatever. And that frustrates me. I don't need a theme or a project to blog. I just need to take a few minutes whenever I want to and just sit down and write something. Funny, I shouldn't have to give myself permission to skip a day without feeling guilty. Yet, that's the way that I feel. I'll work on it though. :)

Well, I have lots to tell you all about to catch you up with life as we know it. Cephas is now a full-ranked Boy Scout. He has had his Court of Honor and received his ranks and is ready to begin working on his Merit Badges. Way to go Cephas! He has also developed a major passion for photography, film-making, production and videos.

Koren's birthday was October 6th (the day AFTER my last post here) and my brother-in-law married his fiancee that day. They had an absolutely beautiful wedding and a great reception - during which all the guests sang Happy Birthday to Koren. He also received his own personal birthday cake (made by the caterer). It was wonderful! He was embarrassed but he loved the attention too. And sweet boy that he is, he maintained that the best birthday gift this year was his newly acquired Aunt.

Oralee. Wow, she was all sassy and spice the last time I blogged about her and she has now settled down quite a bit into a very sweet and mostly compliant, helpful and caring person. She has also gone very girly girl in a not-so-little girl way. Not that she's six going on sixteen or anything like that. But she's honing in on her own personality more and her own sense of style. She prefers her hair long and curly (and she has very straight hair!) and she prefers leggings and wearing long layers that can mix and match to the little girl cutesie matching outfits. I hope that makes sense. She's just so much older in some ways than she was just a few months ago.

And then there is Jeriah. He is excelling wonderfully at school. It is just amazing how much he has changed and how far he has gone academically. No matter how much we questioned whether we were doing the right thing with him in regards to enrolling him in Kindergarten a year early, I am absolutely certain that we made the best choice for him. He loves it! He's reading on a mid-first grade level or maybe slightly higher. His math skills are around the same level. He has even done his sister's homework for her. (I thought it was an extra, skipped over on purpose lesson from school but apparently, it was Oralee's current homework assignment and she was VERY offended that Jeriah had done her homework!) His social skills are coming along quite nicely as well. We have all noticed some instances of him "scripting" some behaviors of other children. But as long as we can nip that one in the bud, we should be fine. Thankfully, he has an amazingly wonderful teacher and he'd had an amazing practicum student from the university working with him as well (she is gone now, though, and he misses her.)

Hubby's job is going well and all that. I'm still babysitting for his co-workers, although not nearly as frequently as I had been. Angel's mom and dad have gotten back together and now her dad is working at the same place as Angel's mom. Their schedules are mostly opposite, so they haven't needed me to babysit and the best part is that Angel spends her time with at least one of her parents.

I have an interview set up to meet with someone about taking care of her son part-time in her home while she is working. It's a great set-up. She lives close to me, the hours she needs me are while my children are in school and she has another provider as well for the opposite days who is able to be flexible and switch with me for days that my kids don't have school. I'm excited to meet both the mom and her son later this week. Hopefully, it's as good of a fit as it seems to have been so far via messages and such.

But for the most part, I'm really digging this stay-at-home mom thing. I'm getting better about keeping up with all of the daily tasks. The biggest thing has been consistency with the kids' chores and bedrooms and for me doing my daily and weekly tasks. I still struggle (constantly!) with laundry, but I'm pretty sure that I can overcome that issue soon.

I also had a huge lightbulb moment the other day while looking at some newly-acquired cookbooks to have the family sit down together once a month - most likely the last Monday of the month - to have each person look through and pick out at least two main dishes and two side dishes and one dessert to try out that month. I figure that would provide us with at least twelve full meals, so that would also alleviate the pain of trying to menu plan. Plus, if it is something that they pick out and choose for the family to eat, the kids are going to be more willing to try new foods and new recipes. Then, at the end of the new meal, we'll determine if we liked the recipe. If it was a hit, it will get written into my recipe book that contains all of our favorite recipes. If it wasn't so hot, I'll put a sticky note in the book that we tried it, when we tried it and note who didn't like it. Or something like that. Because our kids' tastes change so quickly, six months down the road, whatever ingredient they didn't like in the dish may be something that they now just LOVE. For instance, in the past few months, Jeriah has decided that he doesn't like ketchup, but that he loves mustard. A lot. His cheeseburgers? Mustard only. 100% of the time. No ketchup, no pickles, no onion. Just mustard only.

Okay, well that was a really random hodgepodge post about nothing and everything all at once. But hopefully, I'll get back to a more rhythmic timing on my posts. Until next time!

31 Days...Day 5...Chores for Mom

The theme behind my 31 Days of... posts will be "31 Days of Homemaking". It will be 31 posts about anything related to homemaking, you know, making a home. Whether it has to do with parenting, housework, organization, crafts, whatever. As long as it falls under the definition of making a home, it counts.

Day 5 - 

Today is Friday, October 5th, 2012. Today's topic is "Chores for Mom."

Yesterday, we discussed the concept behind my kids' chores. As such, you may be wondering what my chores are. My chores go into much deeper cleaning than the kids' chores. Their chores call for them to simply pick up a room (or areas of multiple rooms), but does not actually require any cleaning.

That's where my chores come in. And trust me when I say that the kids' chores are going to start incorporating some of this stuff as well. I just want them to get to a mastery point with their current chores, if that makes sense. You know, the point where they can look around the room and know for certain that it is done, as opposed to coming up to me or Hubby and asking, "Is this done enough?" or some similar question.

So today, we are going to talk about MY chores and for a little bit of time management, we'll also talk about when I do these chores.

 

Now, with the above list being my Daily Checklist, it is the list that I refer to when I am at home, working on tidying everything up. This is what another blogger I know, Rachel Anne refers to as Minimum Maintenance in a home. It's the least amount of work you can do in your home to just keep it maintained and looking neat and welcoming. Ideally, by the end of each day, every single item would have been done on this list. You notice that I say "ideally." Let's face it, life happens and there are days that I don't even go into certain rooms to do any work. It happens. I don't stress over it (too much) and make an effort to make the skipped room my top priority for the next day. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. 

 

This next list is my Weekly Checklist. I also have a Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Checklist (all on the same page) but I'm not going to get into those right now. Similar to the Daily Checklist, in an ideal world, I would hit on each and every item each and every week from this list. But when life happens and something comes up, I just suck it up and try to get the missed items done first the following week.

For the weekly schedule, I generally try to get the items accomplished one of three ways. Everyone has a process that works best for them.

Way numero uno is the way that I was taught to clean when I was growing up, going room by room.

Option numero dos is the way that I was taught to clean by my grandma when I was growing up, doing all of a certain chore type throughout the house.

The third option is to just attack everything on the list in a particular room that is either in the most need or the one that is about the be in the most use. I learned this method on the fly as an adult when the other two methods didn't work (or rather, when I didn't use either of the other two methods!)

Actually, now that I think about it, there is a fourth option. It's actually a combination of options one and two and to be honest, one of my more favorite approaches to cleaning. First of all, it requires the minimum maintenance to be complete. Next, you do all of the dry work throughout the house. Dusting high and low, dusting surfaces, vacuuming furniture and carpets, organizing areas, emptying trash cans, etc. All the so-called "dry work" throughout the house. Then, you move on to the "wet work", cleaning and disinfecting in the kitchen and eating areas, the bathroom and the laundry, then sweeping and mopping the floors.

Things like washing windows and cleaning mirrors are negotiable. They can be done as dry work or as wet work. I personally would be doing them as wet work, but that's just because the cleaner itself is also wet. Oh - and carpet cleaning. My Hubby does that chore (which is why it isn't on my list) would be considered wet work to me.

And even though, the fourth option is my favorite, most of the time, I use option one. I feel like it doesn't all get done nearly as quickly though if I use this method. Using the fourth method, I can clean and disinfect my 1300 square foot home from top to bottom in just under four hours by myself. That being said, usually the minimum maintenance isn't done enough to be able to do it in that time frame. And I get stopped by kids or activities or appointments or whatever. 

The one piece of equipment that I highly recommend for cleaning is actually not a cleaning tool or supply and you might be surprised to learn what it is. I think the number one product that helps me get the most done around my house is my bluetooth. I can leave my phone on the top of the armoire in my den. It's the most central location in my home and from that spot, I can walk throughout my home and talk on the phone, hands free, while cleaning. The only thing that I can't do with it on is go around to the far side of my bed in my bedroom. I can go up to the far edge of the bed, but if I stand up on that far side of the bed, I lose the ability to have people hear me speak. Highly, highly recommend it! (I got this idea from Bree as well)

Let me know if this has helped you at all or if there is anything you are wondering about that I might be able to answer. Til tomorrow....