At Home, At Work, At Play.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

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

Monday, December 31, 2012

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!

Friday, October 5, 2012

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

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....

Thursday, October 4, 2012

31 Days...Day 4...Chores for Kids

Clear off side table

Clear off TV stand

Clear off cedar chest

Clear off couch

Clean under couch cushions

Clean under couch

Clear off entry table

Straighten entry area

Pick up floor area

Straighten shoe area

Tidy the front porch

* * * * * * * * * * *

Tidy bed

Clear off bookshelf

Clear off dresser

Pick up bedroom floor

Take dirty laundry to bathroom

I'm sure you can guess, but the five chores at the bottom are the ones for his room.

You may be asking yourself why I have such a laid out and detailed (when it is a no-brainer) list of what to do to merely pick up a room. But you see, this is where the ADHD comes in for Cephas. It is where the Aspergers comes in for Jeriah. And the possible Aspergers for Cephas. And the slight OCD tendencies that Koren shows. For Cephas, it helps keep him on track and keeps him from asking me very couple of minutes, "Is this good now?" I can simply redirect him to the list and ask him to look at the list, then look at the room. If there is something that is not neat and tidy, it still needs to be done. He is eleven. By all means, he should be able to look at a room and tell what needs to be done to it on his own. But he doesn't., because he can't.

For Koren, this kind of list helps him to reduce his OCD tendencies. He needs some kind of guideline to know that okay, this is enough. He doesn't have to continue working on it indefinitely. He doesn't have to get it all perfect. As long as the items on his list are neat and tidy, even if the vacuuming isn't done, the windows aren't washed, the frames aren't all dusted, the books on the bookshelf aren't perfectly lined up, it is still okay. He needs this. Jeriah needs the list as a visual idea of what he has to do. It's a motivational thing for him. For Oralee, it keeps her on track most of the time. Which she needs, because her chores are spread out. She has two in the kitchen, three in the dining room and one in the hallway. She can easily lose her place. This is a tool to help her.

I will post later on "Motivating Kids" and tell how we use these current sets of chores to motivate our children.

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

31 Days...Day 3...Time Management

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 3 -

Today is Wednesday, October 3rd, 2012. Today's topic is "Time Management."

As a work-at-home mom, I find my time to be a difficult area to, well, manage. I think the biggest issue with this is simply in the fact that I have a hard time with "at home" portion of my role. I feel like I am gone more than I am at home, and some weeks, that is definitely the case. Other weeks, it may not be the case, but the house still suffers due to lack of time management while I am here.

So, this is what I have done to combat that issue. It has worked for me, it may or may not work for you. I'm sharing so that if there is something in this that might work (or that might work with some tweaking of what I do) that it could help you.

One of my issues lies in the fact that during the week, I have a number of places that I need to go. In the morning, I need to take my children to school, three mornings a week, I pick up the little girl that I take care of from her mom. And on a fourth day, I drop her off at the same time in the morning. This does not line up with the time my children go to school, however. It happens two hours later. So I have a two hour window where I can either run errands alone or come home and work on the house. My problem was that I often would run a few errands and then waste a little bit of time, just sitting in the lot at her mother's work, waiting for them to show up.

Instead, I have changed that to coming home and cleaning up what I call "the four outer rooms", which would be our living room, our den, our kitchen and our dining room. They are all open to one another, but don't exactly have the whole "great room" thing going on. They are very separate rooms, except for the den and the living room. My goal most mornings is to come home and do a quick pick up in these rooms. Doing things like, clearing off flat surfaces, unloading/reloading the dishwasher, picking up the floor areas (somehow, they end up with random things on them during our morning routine that don't get picked up before we leave - I know, I'm still working on that), starting a load of laundry, wiping down the table and counters, sweeping and vacuuming. Things that are quick and easy and that don't take much effort but make a huge difference.

On Thursdays, though, I often meet my best friend, Bree, at the grocery store in that time frame to do our weekly shopping. It's a stolen moment during the week that we have together. But there will be more on that in another post (Friendships).

After I pick up the little girl, two days of the week, I have to run her to school. This also happens to occur almost two hours after that point in time. So on those days, between the time I get her to my house from her mom's work and the time we have to leave to take her to school, I have about an hour and a half. I have been using that time to do baking projects with her. She enjoys it, I enjoy it. The kids have afterschool snacks that way and it also gives her some valuable lessons on working in the kitchen. Plus, it's just plain ol' fun.

In the afternoons, if I have used my mornings well, I have very little that I need to do and can spend that time on projects around the house, handiwork, craft work, planning, blogging, reading, or even occasionally, taking a nap (on the days the little girl isn't here in the afternoon). And once a week, having lunch with Bree (another stolen moment - also in "Friendships")

After school, Hubby is usually the one to pick the kids up from school. They come home and we spend time on homework, snack, chores, dinner, then our evening activities (of which until next week, has been mostly sporting and scouting - this is our last week of sporting for about a month) then getting ready for the next day. Some of this will be touched on later as well, in posts entitled "Chores for Kids," "Chores for Mom," "Meals and Menus" and "Family Activities."

So our basic daily routine runs like this:

Get up and get myself ready
Get kids up and get them ready
Take kids to school and drop them off
Go home and do some quick, light housework (or Thursday grocery shopping with Bree)
Pick up or drop off the little girl (Angel)
Go home, work on baking or housework
Make lunch, eat and clean up
Take Angel to school
Come home, continue to work on housework or home projects or personal projects (once a week, have lunch with Bree)
Hubby gets off work, spend some time with him
Hubby gets kids from school
Homework, snack, chores
Make, eat and clean up dinner
Evening/family activities
Kids' bedtime routines (also a separate post "Bedtime Routines")
Personal time

So hopefully, that will give you some idea of the importance of planning and making the most of the time you have available. Right now, I have four kids, I take care of six additional children throughout the week. All four of my kids are in sports. We have two different sports at three different fields and life is just busy. I also Visit Teach once a month (or twice, depending on how scheduling works out with everyone) and I am Primary teacher in church. Needless to say, my plate is full. But it is all do-able and every so often, I find that something isn't working and that I have to adjust it a bit. So I do and it works again until it doesn't and then I readjust again.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

31 Days...Day 2...Friendships

This is a picture of my Grandma K (on the right) with her best friend, Granny T (on the left, looking at something going on in another area). Granny T is the Great-Grandmother of my best-friend, Bree. These two ladies were incredible on their own and their friendship was awesome! They were great role models for Bree and myself.

These two ladies were a huge support to each others and to their families and to each other's families as well. As such, Bree and I learned a lot from them about doing this as well. At the point in time when these two fine ladies were best friends, their grandkids were having kids, so they weren't at the same stage in life that Bree and I are but the same principles apply.

You see, my Grandma K would call Granny T every morning and they would chat for a few minutes before starting their day. Granny T would call my Grandma K and they would chat for a few minutes every evening before calling it a night. No day was started or ended without this phone call. Now, Bree and I aren't quite like that, but rare is a day that goes by without us talking on the phone. (And I don't even like to talk on the phone.)

Our grandmas would have lunch together 2-3 times a week at one of the local senior centers. My Grandma K would stop by Granny T's house and pick her up and off they'd go to the senior center, where they'd enjoy their meal and good conversation, cards and (on Fridays) Bingo for prizes. It was just what they did.

Bree and I don't have the opportunity (most weeks) to get together 2-3 times, but we are also in a completely different season of life than our Grandmas were. However, we do make it a point to get together once a week for a lunch. We rotate weekly where we eat. One week we eat at my house, one week at her house, one week, we eat out at a restaurant. (Rinse and repeat all year long.)

My Grandma K would also pick up Granny T and together they'd "get along to town to do their trading" aka go grocery shopping. And just for the record, we live in a sizable city. There was no "getting to town" involved. They lived one mile from the grocery store. Actually, one mile from multiple grocery stores, just saying.

Bree and I often meet up and do our shopping together. Most of the time it is after we drop our kids off at school and we will each drive to the grocery store and do our shopping. We visit while we shop and it is wonderfully zen time for us. No kids, no husbands, just us. And I suppose there are other shoppers there as well, but for all that we notice, we are the only ones around.

We also have our kids in some similar activities and we see each other there as well (though we usually have kids we are busy corralling or trying to keep quiet or something similar) and that is a total bonus. As is the fact that her seven year old and my six year old are becoming quiet the pair of best friends themselves.

But the nice thing about all of this - and how it relates to homemaking - is that we have the chance and opportunity to share our lives with each other. We share the good and the bad. We comfort and are comforted by the other, we bounce ideas off each other, we meal plan, we share cleaning tips and tricks, budgeting ideas, parenting helps, marriage stuff. It all works together to help mold us into better wives, mothers and homemakers. I think everyone should have someone like this. My Grandma K had Granny T, I have Bree, Oralee has S (Bree's daughter). It's great.

Who is your best friend? Do they help you to become a better wife, mother, homemaker or person? How?

At Home, At Work, At Play.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

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

Monday, December 31, 2012

Not Resolutions, per se...

Happy New Year

Friday, October 5, 2012

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

Thursday, October 4, 2012

31 Days...Day 4...Chores for Kids

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

31 Days...Day 3...Time Management

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

31 Days...Day 2...Friendships

My Blog List

Monday - Menu Planning

Tuesday - Clean Home Challenge

Tuesday - Tackle It Tuesday

Friday - Company Girl!

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