Are you gelish?

Gelish not of my man-hands (thanks, Dad), but of my day 5 DIY gel manicure?  Yes!  Happy early birthday to me!  One of the things my Grandma Ruth always said was "Keep your nails looking nice, girls!".  Ugh!  Any woman without mucho domestic assistance--we're talking maid, cook & laundry wench--knows the impracticality of a nice manicure on natural nails lasting more than 1 day.

So for the last year or so, whenever the time came for me to be a lady of leisure...aka vacation...I went to the salon and plunked down some change for a gel mani.  Since that practice is also not practical for everyday-life, I was excited when my friend told me about the DIY kits.  I saved up some fun money and treated myself last week with a trip to Sally's sans kiddos.

The only option they had was the Gelish Basix Kit, so that made my decision easy.  I also purchased the mini UV light and one color:  Exhale.  The color is significantly lighter/more neutral than it looks below, and I'm very pleased with it.  Looks like there are several other colors available online that my Sally's didn't have in stock.  They run about $13/bottle, so if you just happen to want to buy me something...

On Monday, after using my sister as a guinea pig, I stayed up another hour to do my own and then fell into bed around midnight.  Yes, you can go to bed as soon as it's done and not worry about hair and sheet imprints in your polish...I used to try to sleep with my hands gently folded hanging them over the side of the bed...not practical and didn't work either!  Anyway, my quest for consistently lovely nails is over for now.  I guess we'll chalk that up to one more thing technology has helped check off my bucket list!  And I hereby give you permission to give me much grief if you see me with bad nails.

My Home-Clean-Home Plan

This is it! What I should be doing (bare minimum) each week to keep this home going. I'm guessing that those of you who were born organized never have to think this hard about keeping up the house, but for us scatterbrains...well, it's like trying to cram a square through a round hole. (And there's gotta be a better metaphor but it's all I've got right now).

Morning Chores
-Everyone gets dressed, makes their bed, brushes teeth & puts away their pj's BEFORE coming downstairs.
-Breakfast together (7:30)
-Unload the Dishwasher (possibly the most important daily chore...the whole kitchen falls apart if it doesn't happen!)
-Put away breakfast dishes
-8:00 School starts!

Monday
Laundry Day: Wash, dry and put away all clothes
Cooking: Prepare snacks for the week (boil eggs, make granola bars etc.)
Kids: Vacuum their rooms, Fold & put away their laundry, bathroom wipe-down

Tuesday
Errand Day: Groceries, appointments etc.
Cooking: Crock Pot dinner
Cleaning: Wash Towels & Put away any leftover laundry
Kids: Fold Towels, Take out Trash

Wednesday
Kitchen Day: Baking, clean out fridge, mop, wipe down appliances & backsplash
Kids: Clean Glass Doors & Mirrors, Strip & make beds

Thursday
Cleaning Day: Dust, vacuum, bathrooms
Laundry: Wash Sheets
Kids: Dust rooms, Tidy Playroom

Friday
Planning Day: Shopping lists, menus, weekend prep, next week's activities
Kids: Tidy Entry, Tidy Schoolroom

Now I just need to find several hours to embroider all that onto daily tea-towels! Ha.

The chores assigned to the kids help out more than I imagined. They are not hard by any means, and purposely do not take a long time to do...giving them a sense of accomplishment and hopefully teaching them to keep up on work at home to avoid a huge, un-tameable mess! They get a little bit of a reward for helping...I think I need to come up with something to reward myself if I check everything off my list too! Hmmmm...well, gotta go switch the laundry!

The Mommy Schedule

In the spirit of back-to-school week, today I'm sharing my personal "back-to-household order" plan for this year. Eric says I'm always looking for the next best thing. Yup, I'm still in search of the magic wand that makes homemaking happen with out hard work. (Actually, I KNOW what it is...a maid & cook...but doesn't Eric already work hard enough without taking on the three extra jobs it might take to employ them?) So I'm sticking with hard work on my part...and going to tweak methods until I finally find one that works for me!

I've shared before some of my favorite homemaking resources...from FlyLady to Inspired to Action to the books Large Family Logistics and anything by Don Aslett. My favorite resource is, however, my friends!! And although I may never achieve the seemingly effortless efficiency of MJ, I have high hopes that this time I've found something doable and easy to implement for the whole family. Jodi (my sis) started me on this plan by making one for herself...printed out nicely and just a few basic chores for herself & the girls per day. Brilliant.

This is our family chore chart (tweaked from Erica's @ Confessions of a Homeschooler)...the kiddos earn tickets for each chore they do and get a prize when they have 25 tickets. I have assigned chores for each day for myself and them and wrote them on the daily cards across the top. Before, I was just picking some things that sounded good and sticking them in their slots...now that there is a plan, the system is much more efficient.



So take Tuesday for instance:


It's my errand day, so I need to put dinner in the crock pot before we leave in the morning, plus start a load of towels. Once we're back home, I have to finish putting laundry away from Monday (that's the day I wash all the clothing) and the kids take out the trash and fold the now clean towels. That doesn't sound too bad, does it? I think we can do this! And I might even mop my kitchen every week--fabulous!

So adding in the essentials like a daily schedule, house rules and a reminder about what obedience is and looks like:


And we have a happy crew in a semi-tidy and clean home! (Please pay no attention to the pile of stuff on the entry bench in the background :) !)

The boys doing school on Tuesday...Zane likes to wear his goggles while playing...go figure.

Next time I'll share exactly what makes up my chores each day. That is, if I'm done doing them and can sit down to blog. Naaah, I'll probably write before I do them, it's more fun.

A new wardrobe!

So here it is...my wardrobe for the next 30 days. The 33 chosen few!

I have tweaked Project 333 to fit me a bit better, as it is not supposed to be a hardship...so I'm not counting jewelry or most accessories in my 33 items. I'm still waffling on shoes...for now you can see my three pairs on the shelf above the clothes.

So from yesterday's starting list, I have decided not to count the scarf, sunglasses, and earrings. I replaced them with a tan glitter tee, a purple & black beaded top and a pair of brown capris. This is a shot of all the empty hangers...and now even most of the shelves are cleared as I put out-of-season items in a large tub. Ah, the peace that decluttering brings!


Since Elena is in this with me I've given Kai the job of taking our daily outfit pictures. I was trying to stop Elena's silly face in this one...goofy girl!


Really, there are a lot of outfits I can make from my selections and today I didn't feel limited at all--ha! I often think about gals like the pioneers who had two, maybe three dresses to wear year round...it makes the excess of my shelves seem overwhelming. I think next up will be my 50+ cake pan collection. Oh, dear.

Project 333 - Why not?!

I'm starting to think maybe Jodi has a conspiracy going...she perhaps knows I need to do something, mentions some ideas and then sits back and giggles as I take off with some new hair-brained project! Now, really, I know this isn't true (is it?), it just so happens that we are traveling a similar road in life and overcoming similar tendencies embedded in our beings from childhood.

Anywhoo...Today Jo tweeted about Project 333...that it might be something she is considering. So I did it. Today. With both my closet and Elena-bug's closet. Now the two girls under this roof each have only 33 items in their wardrobe. It's a tad scary for me...Elena's was pretty painless since she lives in soccer tees & I didn't make her count accessories. (This is the "before" shot of our closet...note that the top left rod all belongs to Eric--my stuff is on the bottom, the shelves, and the right...conveniently not in the picture...duh!)


Here's the project in a nutshell--in order to live a life less focused on "stuff", purge your wardrobe every three months down to 33 seasonally appropriate items. This includes goodies like accessories (aack! my bags!) and shoes but does not include pj's, workout clothing, under-things etc.

So, since I didn't have anything better to do this afternoon (ha) here was my bed during the sorting progress. I had bags for consignment clothing, donations, summer items and various other wack-o categories, but it all got cleared. I now have 93 empty hangers in my closet!


Here is my starting list. I'm pretty sure this will just be a wardrobe for May as spring wraps up and then will have to swap things out for the heat. If you think there is something I could go without, by all means, let me know as I really want to add in more accessories!!

TOPS
1. Black tank
2. Black v-neck tee
3. Grey v-neck sweater
4. White scoop neck top
5. Coral printed tank
6. Coral l/s tee
7. Aqua 3/4 sleeve athletic tee
8. Aqua cable-knit cardi
9. Lt. blue tee
10. Periwinkle cable knit cardi
11. Navy slinky top
12. Brown knit shirt
13. Black l/s v-neck top
14. White slub tee

BOTTOMS
15. Worn Jeans
16. AE Jeans
17. Denim shorts
18. Black athletic capris
19. Brown a-line knit skirt
20. Black slinky skirt
21. Denim skirt (below knee)
22. Camo pants

DRESS
23. LBD jersey knit

OUTERWEAR
24. Jean jacket
25. Navy hooded jacket

ACCESSORIES
26. Scarf-multi
27. Purse
28. Tote
29. Shades (yup, sunglasses count!)
30. Earrings

SHOES
31. Tennies-athletic
32. Casual tennies
33. Ballerina flats-animal print

Tomorrow I will take a picture of my items all hung nice and neat in one teeny part of our closet. Then I suppose I will start posting about what in the world I am wearing or not wearing to prove (as others have done and are doing) that it can be done! Thanks for the inspiration Jodi...now I just have to cruise around and look for construction sites.

Make Up...Will it Kill Ya?

Does anyone else have a creeping sense of dread when smearing substances of unknown nature across their skin day after day? I mean, really, can you pronounce anything listed in the ingredients from your favorite designer's make-up line? And I know everyone is going to die anyway...BUT now 20 years *or more* into the daily barrage of making myself up with cosmetics, I thought it might be time to change my ways.

A couple years ago I stumbled across the idea from an old friend's natural living blog and stopped using a few questionable items. More recently I purchased some Arbonne skin care and mineral foundation from my mother-in-law. Now I'm ready to add on even more or change some brands etc. and have been shopping around trying to figure out what in the world to use....ya know, reading reviews and comments etc. A great site is the Environmental Working Group's Skin Deep Cosmetic Safety Database. There, you can search almost any chemically based household product and see what safety rating it has been assigned based on its ingredients.

So we'll see...I placed an order with Real Purity for some of their mascara and a couple samples of their mineral cream foundation. I don't think I'm going back to the Estee Lauder counter though...the gal who helped me this week was, well, very helpful, but I'm guessing their ingredients fall along the same line as most mainstream cosmetic companies'...with hazard scores off the charts! Ugh, and I'll have to try and break my Avon habit. Hmmm...that will be a challenge.

Wish me luck and comment if you have any tips or ideas about going more natural with face & body products!

Snow Much Fun!

We are in the midst of our second snowstorm of the winter...yea! 5"-7" are expected to fall here in the next 24 hours and we are hunkered down here at our nice and cozy warm home. Actually, yesterday we had a brand-spankin' new furnace installed...complete with a whole-house humidifier.

Our poor snowman (from our first storm) evidently needs some "HELP!" This is from the creative minds of children who read too much Calvin & Hobbes!


The laundry room relocation is coming along. Eric is taking a day of vacation tomorrow in order to work mudding and taping the drywall. I have paint colors picked out and am ready for action!

I purchased all the tile yesterday and will be ready to stick it down as soon as the drywall mess is finished. We're kind of on borrowed time as our washer has been unhooked since Saturday...just 4 days, but in an almost all-cloth household the timer is seemingly ticking loudly. I keep telling the kids to use extra fast-food napkins instead of our normal cloth ones...they don't get it. Zane, on the other hand, likes his paper diapers with pictures of "Minna-minna Mouche" (Mickey & Minnie) on the front.

Speaking of laundry, my new book came in the mail yesterday! I'm so excited to delve into it...Large Family Logistics is the title. Although I don't have a "large" family per se, I figure anything I can glean from a momma with nine children can help me out with my household of 5 plus two frogs. I've already read a little and it's great...the first chapter was about becoming a wise woman (a Proverbs 31 woman, no less) and can't we all use a little more wisdom? Her writing style is friendly, readable and practical. I have great expectations!

It seems most gals out here in blog-land are adopting theme words or mottos for 2011. I've yet to come up with just the right one to fit moi, but I'm leaning towards "work". Yup. Work. My sister Jodi is very encouraging and has found some great online resources geared toward helping us be better women, wives and mommas.

Our favorite so far is Kat over at Inspired to Action. Her whole site is dedicated to giving moms practical, Godly advice, and believe me, I need it! The first thing she recommends? Getting up early. Oh, boy, here it goes again! I had the best several weeks of motherhood EVER when I did that last year. But I am lazy. (See why that theme word might be the winner?) Anyway, I've been up around 6:30 a.m. everyday since Sunday--Jo and I are giving each other a gentle wake up call. Of course, God has had both of us laying in bed awake waiting for the alarm every morning since we started...I love it when He gets funny.

I'm so thankful for all the women who take the time to keep a blog like Kat's. Full of mission and ideas to share. I really have learned so much from people around the world for everything from homeschooling to tips for vacations to what to cook for dinner to how to color my hair. And it makes me laugh at my own mish-mash of topics. I almost want to start a revolution with some grand and wonderful blog...but then it just wouldn't be little bits of my life would it? Blessings! Resa

Meal Plan Monday...on Tuesday

So I've been using Plan to Eat the last few months for the task that ranks way up at the top of my dreaded household responsibilities: planning meals, shopping and cooking. Ugh! It's been a bit of work getting it all set up. Actually they even list my stats on my account page:

Since I signed up on September 15 (here's how I decided to try it out) I have:

• Spent 6.8 hours using Plan to Eat
• Added 102 recipes to my recipe book
• Meal planned 256 recipes and items

Most of that 6.8 hours was spent adding recipes and figuring out efficient ways to group items for meals. Today was the first day I feel like it really is getting to be a great tool at our house. I had a 20 minute window to get a grocery list ready for the next 7 days. In 15 minutes I had planned out--meaning put recipes on a calendar, printed a grocery list with every item (less those already in my kitchen) and printed a dated menu to post--breakfast, lunch, dinner and a snack for the whole week~including a couple special items for a family Christmas dinner. Fabulous! Do you know how long that used to take?? Seriously, like 2-3 hours between interruptions!


Elena really loves the posted menu! She no longer whines around wondering what she should have for snack...just looks at the menu and pulls it out. No more *hard* decisions, phew!

The recipes not already in my PTE cookbook I imported from a website, taking about 30 seconds each (in this case from Taste of Home), including the picture. Each ingredient on the recipes I add to my planner go straight to my shopping list. The grocery list was sorted by aisle with little check boxes next to each item~love~! So after my lunch date I spent about an hour at Price Chopper breezing through the isles (well, kind of...I didn't have any children with me so it's all relative) and spent a measly $150 and some change. I'm not buying "just in case" items or guessing at what I need for snacks anymore, saving the moo-lah. Nice.

I've started a binder with all my PTE recipes, each in it's own page protector, that I'm planning on making my main cookbook. No more digging through multiple books and magazines every night--whoo-hoo! I added some tabbed dividers so I can file the recipes in the same manner as I keep them online, in ABC order of course. Right now I have to print them as I'm ready to use them...I probably just need to print as I add them...hmmm. Anyway, it's then simple to look at the posted menu, flip to the right section of the binder and pull the desired recipes out. The page protector keeps them clean and I set them up in my kitchen window while I cook.

Once I get really in the groove, I'm going to go back and add the approximate cost of each recipe. This, in turn, will give me an estimate for my grocery shopping as I add items to the list. Wow. That may actually be too much control-freak for even me!

So if you're still running around like a chicken with her head cut off every night for supper (or maybe breakfast and snack time too, like me), you might click over and give Plan to Eat a try with their free 30-day trial. It is a bit of time and work to get it going just your way, but way worth it in my opinion! Happy Homemaking!

Momma VS. Toys

So the playroom (i.e. basement) and I finally battled it out. Ya know, I was just DONE wading through toys and dress-up clothes strewn all over. Are you up on your Berenstain Bears reading? Well, I about had the same meltdown that Mama Bear had over the kids' room...big box ready to clear it all out and pitch it!

Instead, I've opted to try and sell it! During my hemming and hawing over exactly what to do with all the piles of plastic, I ran into my friend Jennifer at the park. Just so happens she bought the Here We Grow Again kid's consignment sale franchise and was gearing up for their first sale (details will follow). And so began the clearing and the organizing like never before...we've even packed up all the baby things now that we're done (Lord willing) with newborns!

Our van is loaded and ready to roll to drop off approximately 275 items tomorrow morning!!! Clothes and books and toys and baby equipment out the wazoo!


I really think everyone is happier with our nice and livable playroom now...see all their pretty smiles sitting on my side-of-the-road-find loveseat? (BTW I'm going to slipcover it for my bedroom one of these days).

Zane is discovering all kinds of new fun toys that were before hidden in the masses...here's his first look at a yo-yo. Hmmmm....

All the toys are sorted in to baskets, boxes or fabric cubes and I had a ball making laminated labels with clip art to tie on--with pretty ribbons, of course! (Yeeeee....don't you just LOVE the hum of a laminator?) I think the best part is that I actually had all the containers, just repurposed some things to make them work.

When we refinished our basement 7 years ago, I had Eric turn the space under the stairs into a playroom. My mom's best friend's house had one of these and I have some of my favorite childhood memories playing under there.

This would be the alternate entrance....

And here are all the nice neat toys...believe it or not, it still looks about like this three weeks later. And we've played down there a lot! (Oh, that shelf just happens to be another side of the road find!--a waterbed headboard that I panted white.)

I suppose there is still a lot of play equipment, but someday we'll be ready to set up the ping-pong table again!

Well, hopefully this was a little inspiration to clean out your toys before the Christmas reboot OR I've talked you into heading out to the Here We Grow Again sale this week to buy more fun stuff for your kiddos! It's actually a great place to get a head start on Christmas shopping!! The sale opens to the public at 7 a.m. this Thursday at the Crystal Ballroom/Roadway Inn just off 71 Highway and 155th Street. Saturday is the half-price day and you can shop from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. Happy Shopping...or Organizing!

Meal Planning Simplified

In the spirit of occasional overwhelment (hmmm, I've used that word a lot...but I still claim it to be occasional), I starting thinking about what I spend the most time doing. Laundry? School? Cooking? Playing? Shopping? The winner?...It's all about the food. Planning, purchasing, preparing, experimenting and cleaning up.

So my next step was to figure out how to do all of the above in a more efficient manner, short of hiring a cook, which of course would be my preference! For some reason meal planning and execution is one of my most dreaded tasks of homemaking. Maybe because it is so constant...three meals and two, sometimes three snacks a day for the five of us plus Eric doesn't like to go out (what is wrong with that man?).

Over the years I have tried different methods like once-a-month-cooking, online planning services like e-mealz (Dave Ramsey recommends that one), my own two-week or monthly plans, and various other ideas from other bloggers or mommas. A few weeks ago I got hooked on Erica's blog over at Confessions of a Homeschooler and she makes a fantastic monthly plan with many of her recipes linked to a printable menu. I had never considered planning for more than just dinner and side dishes and really feel like a dunce for never writing down different meals to try for breakfast, lunch and snacks.

So here's my wish list:

• Customizable & printable menu for 1 week up to 1 month or more
• Aisle-ordered grocery list auto generated from menu
• Ability to add/import recipes from the web or text files
• Mac-compatible program/service, an OLD Mac at that.
• Pleasing user interface...I'm going to be doing this a lot and don't want to feel like I'm working on the guts of my computer sorting files or something!

That doesn't sound too hard does it? I was going to do it myself by creating some sort of calendar/database/worksheet system but I knew there had to be something out there right up my alley. Enter the obsessive researching side of my personality...even dreamed about it for a couple nights. Here are the results:

Shop'NCook Menu
All good except the interface...too plain jane for me and the demo I downloaded seemed a little bogged down...dragging and dropping recipes to the correct menu was confusing and sometimes took multiple tries.
MacGourmet Meal Plan
This I really like! But being on my old Mac (for just a few more months...we're upgrading soon) I could only download an older version that didn't allow demo-ing of the meal plan add-on. Looks good on all other accounts from the site description though it might be too nuts and bolts for me.
Kitchen Monki
Hot dog, this one is free! And is everything I was looking for! Ahhh...but again the older puter is going to bite me in the butt...scripts on the pages keep me from using it seamlessly. Pages taking a while to load. Maybe a little too recipe-sharing focused. Can even sign-in through Facebook. I think this would be a good fit for a lot of people.
Plan To Eat
And the best is saved for last. The user interface is the first thing that grabbed me...clean, neat and pretty! I started my free 30-day trial, uploaded a couple recipes and used some of their samples to make a pretend 2-week menu and printed out a custom grocery list all in a few minutes. You can even make multiple lists for separate stores!!! The list also combined same ingreds from recipes A & B (i.e. 11 chicken breasts [A][B]) with a separate printed list with a recipe key. I can drag and drop the recipes onto the calendar which has 4 meal slots per day...multiple recipes can go in each slot. Oh, and when I finally catch up with the times and get a smart phone, I can send my list to my phone. To be fair, I believe all of the above programs will do that.

So Plan To Eat it is! I'm really excited to utilize it and hoping after the initial loading of my recipes it's going to save loads of time. My idea is to plan at least a month in advance, but to break up the shopping into weekly short trips. Their program allows you to print the grocery lists for just a day up to whatever. Combining all this with the planning of ALL our food may make me the best kitchen manager I've ever been! Oh, and a year subscription is only $39 or you can pay $4.95/month...the time saving capabilities should make it pay for itself. If I convince enough of my friends to use it I can get my subscription free...that'd be sweet...so link to them through my blog peeps! And Happy Homemaking to ya...

Day 15...And DYING for one bite...

One bite of ANY kind of baked good, that is. After an agonizing evening at a seminar where I calmly sat munching on raw pistachios watching a roomful of comrades devour towers of gourmet, filled and frosted cupcakes, I woke up this morning desperate to create some kind of goodie to enjoy.

This is the 15 day mark of my new venture into life lived with a dairy-free, gluten-free, egg-free, soy-free, yeast-free, sugar-free diet. Aaack! On top of that, I must rotate the foods I CAN eat on a 4 day schedule.

So my grains for today seemed promising: millet, rice, corn and teff. I searched through some of my newly-checked-out cookbooks and found it! A recipe of Millet or Teff Apple Cookies. I can have apples today too...so all I was missing was the correct flour. After a quick trip to two stores, I was still missing the correct flour so I had to get resourceful. I had a bit of millet, so I ground it up with my blender, but was still short 1 cup...dang! In the back of my freezer I found some (old) brown rice flour so I tried adding it...and...drum roll....I just consumed at least a dozen little, golden-brown num-nums!!!!

They are certainly not "sweet"...applesauce and apple juice concentrate are the only sweeteners, but I cannot describe how heavenly it was to bite into that soft but crisp little goodie laced with chopped pecans.

I guess that's all I have to say for now...my business of trying to feed myself and the rest of my family without going crazy in the meantime is certainly reducing my blog-flow....which is typically my outlet for fun ;) . Ah, oh well. Enjoy the summertime friends and blessings to you!

Little House-Laundry EMERGENCY!

I'm not a laundry fan. And I'm not too picky about the process either...though I do hate wrinkled sheets. Anyway, I ran out of detergent one night 6 weeks or so ago and didn't want to run to the store (this is not the emergency btw). My friend Sara and I had recently been talking about experimenting with homemade recipes...I had bought some of the ingreds so I tried out making my own! I think it worked great and was cheap as all get out so on round two I took some pictures for blogging :) ! Here are the ingredients:

The first time around, I used Zote bar-soap instead of Fels-Naptha, but it made me cough and sneeze when I grated it and every time I opened the tub to use it...that can't be good! The Fels-Naptha is MUCH better!

I used my food processor to first grate the bar soap, then switched blades and minced it until it was fine and grainy. Mixed with the Borax and Washing Soda (NOT baking soda) it looks just like your typical powdered detergent.

Each load takes just two tablespoons...just the size of a recycled Oxy-Clean scoop. So far, I've been happy with it though I'd like to try adding some essential oils for fragrance. Maybe I'll get a round tuit sometime.



Now for the emergency! I opened the dryer yesterday afternoon to get Kai's T-Ball uniform out for his last game. First I pulled out his pillowcase and thought, "huh? that's weird. where'd all these stains come from?" Then I pulled out a shirt smeared with brown and purple streaks, then his baseball pants, COVERED with multi-colored mushy marks. "Oh, dear! A wacky crayon!!!" Yes, the wacky crayons have come back to bite me in the butt. Kai's been coloring with them and must have had one in a pocket. The entire load of all his laundry was marred by melted, multi-colored, non-washable crayons. Of course this happens when we need to be out the door in 18 minutes...so...

I googled the issue and found a method that worked for some others. I didn't have all the right detergents etc. (because of my homemade experiment above :) ). So I threw it all in (except the uniform of course) to soak with some detergent, all the Oxy-Clean I had left and some Grandma's spot remover. All the marks were still there at 10 p.m. when I got back from a Target run with the correct ingredients:

• Tide Powder


• Spray'n'Wash (now Resolve)


• Oxy Clean


• Borax

I mixed about a Tide scoop amount of each into the washer filled with hot water and ran it on the Heavy-Duty cycle. Double rinsed. And....drum roll....I'd say 85% of it came out!! Woot! The casualties were the 100% cotton items like the pillow case and a couple t-shirts. Most of Kai's clothes are in the "comfort" line of things...athletic shorts/pants/shirts etc. and the marks are completely gone from that kind of fabric. I really thought they whole load was toast, so cheers to whoever it was (I'm not sure now) who figured this formula out!

The Frozen Assets Experiment

I'm always on the lookout for a way to do things better when it comes to homemaking. This weekend it was "how to be in the kitchen less often", though I spent the whole weekend IN said kitchen to make it work.

During my quest to either
a. convince Eric to expand our grocery budget
OR
b. figure out how to spend less on groceries
I once again ran across the once-a-month-cooking phenom and decided to give it another whirl. It's been about 4 years since the last time I did it...and that time was with a friend so I didn't have as much flexibility for recipe selection etc. Frozen Assets Lite and Easy by Deborah Taylor-Hough was available at the library so that's the cookbook I used.

The book is broke down into mini-sessions with 4-6 recipes each. I chose one chicken, the ground beef and a pasta mini-session to make up a total of fourteen main dishes. I combined the grocery lists into one master and hit the stores this week...once on Tuesday to catch some sales and again on Friday to get the weekend specials and produce.

Now, because I don't keep my kitchen in "ready-to-cook" mode at all times, I ended up spending over an hour Saturday morning just rearranging the table & island, washing pots and pans and unloading the dishwasher. Once I had a clean slate though, bam! there was some major cooking going on. Not really. It was more like lots of chopping, grating, running to a quick garage sale, more chopping, boiling chickens, thawing meat etc. Not to mention keeping three little ones occupied. I grated my thumb, which was special too!

By late Saturday night I had finished the pasta and all but one of the beef recipes and had the kitchen cleaned and ready to go again today. I got another meal in the freezer before church and now, at 7:23 p.m., just need to bag some soup that is cooling and mix up the last recipe which is pretty easy.

My piggies are tired, I'm a little grouchy and I have a deep slice on one finger from some heavy-duty foil. Ouch! BUT--I have (okay, almost have) 14 meals ready to thaw, heat and eat in my freezer!!! Some of the meals are so large that I'm sure they'll stretch to two full meals while others should yield some leftovers. Woot! Woot!

I think from now on I'll just do one mini-session at a time. Or else adapt some of my own recipes and do the cook more than one at a time deal. One thing I really liked about using the recipes from Frozen Assets was that they all contained a lot of veggies...something I know I need to use more of in my cooking. The kids will probably balk at some of the meals (beans! aaack! zucchini ugh!) but it will do them good! And guess who isn't going to be cooking for the next several weeks....me!!!!!!!

Little House Ain't Working

A month or so ago I had one of those days. Ya know, one of those "this AIN'T working" kind of days and I found myself smack dab in the middle of a pity party. Laundry everywhere, dishes piled, my heart all mucky, kids driving me crazy, etc. etc. Let's just say that some weeds needed pulled...in my heart, not to mention my garden!

So our good and gracious God got me alone...on a drive out in the country, no less. (I was going to get milk from the farm on a Saturday morning...no kids!) He reminded me that lamenting about life, or situations, really does nothing to change the situation...and that HE would provide for me whatever I needed: strength, stamina, a label maker...whatever! (I already have a label maker so not sure why that popped into my head?)

I drove and thought and mused and prayed and then came home to write it all out. It's amazing how putting those thoughts to paper makes all the difference:

1. Arise early. 6ish.
2. Get ready.
3. Spend some time with God.
4. Work on some FlyBaby steps.
5. Quit stressing about $ by going to all cash. (Thanks, Dave. Again.)
6. Lights out at 10:30. I need my beauty sleep! (uh-oh it's 10:15 now so I'm on the clock)

That's it. Pretty simple. And ya know what? They are helping! I mean, it's not like I was starting out with a TOTAL disaster of a life/house. But sometimes rearranging what's already there is a necessity.

Here are a few things that I actually already had in place before all this...but now am using them again. Ahh, I really DO love organized chaos!

Our menu:

Our rules about speaking:
Our definition of obedience:

Elena & Kai's morning routine chart:

My laundry routine chart:

My morning prayer for Eric:
Our Homeschool daily schedule:

Can you tell I like to make lists? Yay! Anyway, there are some other stories that have come as a result of this "new leaf" I've turned over...and I'll save them for later...it's 10:25 now and you know what that means!

Little House on Sandpiper Street

Yay! A beginning to my summer series has, what else? Begun! I've been mulling around a bunch of bloggerish ideas for awhile and have decided it's time to delve in. My motivation for a "Little House" post is coming from a diverse group of events from the past several months. A couple of those are that we, like any book-loving family of elementary aged children, are reading through the Laura Ingalls Wilder series and I went to a funeral. Yup, that's weird (explanation to follow).

Topics?

• Gardening (I know, surprise, surprise)
• More on Going Green
• Childhood Enjoyed
• Developing a Quiet & Peaceful spirit
• Lifetime Learning
• Homemaking Simplified

So come along with me and maybe you can help me figure some of this stuff out! Especially the simplification of homemaking (I think I even made that description more complicated than needed). How about "Simple Living". I think that's one of my sister's catch-phrases.

Ooohh, you want an explanation about the funeral motivation? Okay. Eric's Great-Grandma, Lorraine, passed away last month at the age of 89. She was a dear. I did not know her well, but she was always a quiet presence sitting to the side of the room at the Dunlop family gatherings. Her service was beautiful, the weather fittingly rainy, yet the mood was one of peace as she now is with her Lord Jesus. I learned more about her life from the remarks from her long-time pastor in the short service than I had in the 16 years around the family. But of her time as a mother of young children, I still know little. Her obituary said that her marriage was blessed with three children and then described many of the servant-like occupations she endeavored as a faithful homemaker. I love all that! I love that her children were able to rise up and call her blessed! But I want to know her story! How in the world did she take in extra laundry, sewing and raise puppies AND children??

So for this, I am writing. Not so much for you, dear reader, but for my own kiddos and theirs. My grand plan is still to turn this blog into a scrapbook...(I wrote about that last year)! And since I'm in goal-making mode right now, it's going to happen. Then someday, maybe one of them will actually take the time to crack it open...maybe after I croak...but then they'll have PLENTY of fuel for writing up this phase of my life, because brief as it may be, the days are long and full and I want them to know all about it (and hopefully learn from all my mistakes)!!

Oh the joy of cooking!

I LOVE homemade chicken noodle soup! I cannot seem to make it like Mom. Believe it or not, this is one dish that she has a knack for cooking up...it's even usual fare along with more traditional Thanksgiving or Christmas goodies.

Also, I HATE chopping veggies, cooking & deboning chicken, making noodles (ya, right)...all that stuff. So years ago I started using Reames frozen noodles....mmmmmm. Today I hit the jackpot as I was craving chicken noodle soup so bad I was planning on doing all the above mentioned hated tasks...and then, there it was, calling out to me from the HyVee freezer...Reames Chicken Noodle Soup Kit!!!!! (That's it in the box below)

Oh, I am soooo excited! It is simmering on the stove right now...it took a whole 45 seconds to add the three packages (noodles, chicken & veggies, seasonings) to the boiling water (I CAN do that!). Oh, and there goes the buzzer. I may have to add a can of cream of chicken soup to ATTEMPT the creaminess of Mom's...but I have a feeling this is gonna be good.

UPDATE: Weelll, not as good as I had hoped, but certainly comforting. If you go for trying it, #1 DON'T ADD ANY SALT (I didn't and was sure glad) #2 maybe skip the cream of chicken addition too. It was a souper salty...when I checked the sodium levels on the labels...the chicken noodle kit had over 1000mgs and the cream of chicken, 800+mgs PER SERVING. Holy Cow, or Holy Salt Mine...whatever.

Encouragement for Homemakers!

One of the other blogs I frequent is girltalk by the Mahaney women...they have been doing a series on homemaking and I thought I would share it with you for some encouragement in the midst of many of our lives! If homemaking is your life, or even just part of your life...go! read! enjoy!

The Laundry Monster...

...Is DEAD. Just another plug for FlyLady.net...I've been following her advice and doing a load of laundry a day since about August. The loads are smaller, I can catch up on one day by doing two small loads and not get overwhelmed, and the kids don't mind emptying their cube of clean clothes when there are just a few to put away. If you have preschoolers or are just about to get devoured by YOUR laundry monster, I highly recommend following this plan! Here's the poem that helps me each day:

Monday...Morning Blues (that's the dark stuff)
Tuesday...Towels
Wednesday...Whites
Thursday...Brights
Friday...Lights
Saturday...Khaki-day

Of course, you've got to fit in the extra load of sheets or random stuff here and there...but it gives you a plan, so when you're staring down overflowing hampers you know where to start!

FLYing Lessons

So I'm learning to FLY. I've always wanted to be a butterfly and flit around then soar on the wind...okay, somedays an eagle would be nice so I could get an even better view. But...this is flying of a different sort.


I'm a tad bit of a scattered kind of gal. One thing to the next, project to project to project, little bit o'this, little bit o'that...ya know (in flyland they call us SHE's--Sidetracked Home Executives)! Anywhoo, this causes piles of things not done to magically appear around my abode and those little piles have a tendency to turn into the dreaded CLUTTER! Yuk! I just hate it. So one of my little projects is always trying out new methods to get my picking up and cleaning in line.



Enter the FLYLady.


I had heard about her off and on over the years and actually joined her group back in '99 when she was just starting out...but back then I was a working girl w/no kiddos at home so it didn't stick...though I should have tried. Good grief...would you please get to your point, Reese? Sometime in June, Jodi (that's my sis) said she was trying the FLYLady stuff so I decided to give it another whirl. Let me tell ya...I'm a new woman! And my home is a new place! Not perfect mind you, but the FLYLady methods help scattered gals like myself learn to build routines that keep things neat and tidy w/out overwhelming us with guilt or a ton of work.


You'll have to go to FLYLady.net to check it out for yourself, but here are some of the things now built into the routine of life around our place:


1. That clean and shiny kitchen sink!
2. No more yucky bathroom to clean thanks to the swish & swipe!
3. A load of laundry a day keeps CHAOS (can't have anyone over syndrome) away!
4. I get dressed & ready usually before 8 a.m. everyday (this is a biggie since I LOVE PJ's!)
5. Clutter is starting to get up and leave.


It's certainly a Martha Stewart "Good Thing". I could ramble on and on about all this...as I love finding something that works in my pursuit of my profession...but tis late so will leave it at that!