Are we there yet??

• Etch-a-Setch, Doodle pads, or Magnet pads
• A cookie sheet with letter magnets from the fridge 
• Pipe cleanersor Bend-a-roos to make fun creations 
• Small chalk boards 
• Bubbles
• Water ring games
• Melissa & Doug’s Memory Gamehas several changeable versions
• Pieces of tinfoil to make crowns, necklaces, or animals
• Crayola Window Markers

- Helping you achieve your Domestic Success!

Spring is here – Easter is around the corner!  I have been getting inspiration online looking for decorating tips.  Easter is such a fun holiday to decorate your table for.  Look at these cute bunny holders for the colored eggs!  I already have white plates – wouldn’t these cute baskets with chicks from Pfaltzgraff be such a cute way to decorate?

I am a pink girly girl so this holiday with the pink and pastels is right up my alley.  I don’t decorate my house with these colors or dress this way, but they are so sweet and spring like! 

If you are hosting a buffet for Easter or any other gathering check out this adorable flatwear caddy from Pfaltzgraff.  I have always been a huge fan of them – they make great quality  and reasonably priced tablewear and flatwear.

And of course now when I am shopping on line I am always sure to check with www.savings.comto make sure I get the best coupons and savings available.  I’d say that I pay full price for items only less than 10 % of the time – yes – 90 % of my shopping for clothes, food, restaurants, housewears I try to buy on sale or have a coupon.  Why pay full price when you don’t have too? 

What is your favorite Easter decorating idea?  My kids want to put Easter eggs in the tree out front…..I am not voting for that one – but if it makes them happy…..

Happy decorating everyone!

- Helping you achieve your Domestic Success!

Mess #1

I couldn’t take it anymore – it was taking forever to find anything in my messy drawers.  When we moved in, we had boxes everywhere and I just threw stuff in.   And for no good reason did I just dealt with it, until I had a good case of PMS and decided to organize it!!

#1 Organized

Right away I felt so much better.  And the best part?  It only took a few minutes to go through it – pitch the junk and organize the rest of it!

Mess #2

Even my husband was getting annoyed at not being able to find a spoon or thermometer…..it looked like the mess my kids leave in their playroom.  I knew I could do better than that!

Organized #2

 

Kitchen Drawer Organizer from organize.com

 - Helping you achieve your Domestic Success!

Here on my blog I like to share things that I wished pepole had told me sooner.  Well this one, someone had actually told me sooner – many, many times, many people told me.    You’ve all heard it, but just in case you are like me and didn’t think it’d really happen to you…..backup your computer!

I see you grimacing – you haven’t done it either right? 

We had a BRAND NEW computer – only 5 months old and it died – dead, dead, dead.  The hard drive needed to be replaced and while I was on the phone with the nice man in India – he diagnosed the problem –“it is dead” – really?  And he asked if I had backed-up.  I cringed.  “Uh – no” I quietly muttered into the phone.  I was ashamed, embarrassed and upset that I not actually done something so easy.  Thankfully we still had our old computer which still had all of the files on it – we would just need to transfer them all over again.  I guess I figured since it was brand new we didn’t need to worry.  Our old computer was 7 years old – we never backed up – not once!  And we had been fortunate to never have lost anything.  Who knew – well I guess everyone that had warned me did!

You have many choices in this whole backing up thing.  Either with an external hard drive or an online backup system.  The point is don’t wait – don’t put it off any longer.  Backup and often! 

- Helping you achive your Domestic Success!

Not long after I got married I soon realized my family just doubled – almost tripled because Derek’s family was bigger than mine.  Then I realized wow – that’s a lot of birthday cards to do!  Well I enjoy sending cards just as I love getting them. Then I started to feel bad because I was having trouble keeping up with the birthdays – I always felt I was sending “belated” ones out.  My mother-in-law, whom I love so much, one day said “cards, cards, cards – always cards” she was right – not only family birthdays, but new baby, get well, condolences, mother’s day, father’s day, etc….  Well I was determined to not be late anymore!

Fist I took a marker and wrote down all the immediate family members’ birthdays on my kitchen calendar.  Then I made a binder with folders, and each folder has a pocket for every month.  On the outside of each pocket it had the month and lists all the birthdays of that month.  Then I went to the Dollar Store and purchased the next six months worth of b-day cards, along with some thank you’s and get well ones. 

Then when I flip the calendar for a new month I scan for any birthdays and pull the cards out of the folder and off they go!  Am I late anymore with birthday cards?  Sure – but not nearly as often as I used to be! 

- Helping  you achive your Domestic Success!

You’ve done it before – bought something that was a great price – only to find out that it was made cheaply and doesn’t work now.  If you had only bought the good quality one, you wouldn’t be replacing the cheap one!

My Grandmother was a true believer in you get what you pay for.  She always made sure to save up to get good quality cookware like the Cusinart Food Processor, which is expensive, but they last forever.  You could get one when you first get married and I bet it would last till your 25^thAnniversary.  I was so happy the Christmas when my dad bought me my Cusinart.  I use it all the time – for chopping, shredding, and pureeing.  And it even helps me save money!   How you say?  Because I do my own food shredding – and it only takes a minute.  Cheese for example when purchase pre-shredded is marked up a lot because you are paying for them to shred it for you.  I buy blocks of cheese at the wholesale club and shred it myself – so I am also saving money by buying in bulk.  Yes, some recipes say you can use a blender to puree the ingredients – but it takes twice as long and doesn’t come out in the right consistency.

My next love in the kitchen is my Kitchen Aid Mixer – yes, again expensive, but will also last a very long time.  Mine just turned 10 years old and purrs like a kitten and mixes like a pro.  Two reasons I love the mixer – you can put your ingredients in and have the freedom to walk away – continue cooking, bring dishes to the sink and it still is mixing, unlike the hand held kind that you are stuck holding.  Second are the attachments – a mixing paddle (which I use most of the time), a whipping whisk and a dough hook.   Don’t even get me started on the extra ones you can get – juicer attachment, sausage maker, and even a pasta roller!

So if you have been considering one, save up for one – in the long run you will save money.  You won’t be replacing either of these products any time soon.  My mixer 10 years ago was about $250, which is only $25 a year to own it!  See my logic!  And it will probably run about another 10-15 years!  Wow – only $10 a year by then!

I have written this post without any endorsement from these companies. 

-Helping you achieve your Domestic Success!

Christmas and New Year’s can be the most exciting, eventful and stressful times of the year.  The whole month of December can rush by in a whirl leaving you freaked out by January 1^st – if you aren’t careful with your holiday plans.  Here I’ll share some of my Christmas tips on creating traditions, staying true to yourself and keeping it simple. 

The notion of our society for things to be better and bigger, and have more stuff plays to the nth degree at Christmas time.  Your neighbor has an icicle lined roof – you want an icicle roof.  Your friend gets a new necklace for the holiday party – you want a new necklace.  The kids have a mile long list of specific things they want – you run crazily from store to store looking for them.  The Christmas dinner – oysters, a roast and a 10 layer cake – not to mention the parties in the weeks leading up to Christmas and all the cookies, cakes and chocolate treats.  Somehow Christmas has lead to overindulgence in every area of our lives. 

Now don’t get me wrong I am not pooh-poohing on Christmas – just the ever increasingly materialist nature of it.

For years I got caught up in it too.  The presents, the decorations, the cookies… and for a long time I didn’t even know what I was celebrating.  Was I celebrating my family and how much I loved them?  Yes, but if I didn’t know the meaning behind all the celebration why didn’t I just do all this craziness in July?  Until I started to learn more about God and Jesus – Christmas was nothing more than a commercial celebration of overindulgence to me.  Now that I am actually celebrating the birth of Jesus it is so much easier to set limits on Christmas.  I don’t need to have it all – I don’t need a million lights in my front yard, I don’t need to buy the most expensive gifts, and I don’t even need to make a million cookies.  I have limits.  I have a budget.  And I keep the real meaning of Christmas in the forefront of my mind – as it is so easy to get swept up into the craziness of it all.

Somehow at the turn of the millennium everyone got PC – not a computer – but politically correct.  When I was growing up in the 80’s everyone said Merry Christmas and wrote it on their cards – today you hear Happy Holidays!  Ugh!  The fact is people are fearful – afraid to rock the boat.  Do you really think a riot will start if you said Merry Christmas to a Jewish family by mistake?  No – hopeful they would kindly say “we’re Jewish” and you would say “well then, Happy Hanukah” – you all smile and everyone would be fine!

Our country was founded “One Nation Under God” and now God has been taken out of so many things – by the way, are they still trying to take Him off our currency?  Even where I live in the Bible Belt, I still sense that people live in the PC world, not wanting to talk about their faith. 

Well Christian, Catholic, Baptist, Evangelical – what have you – you’ll find a bunch of people that believe in God, and what God stands for, including the good rules of life as stated in the commandments.  Simple rules to protect us all.  But in our PC world where people want to take God out of everything, and not follow His rules we end up hurt and lost. 

So if more of us believers in God could come out of our shells a little more and speak up for what we believe in we might be a lot more happy and at peace.

Have courage, be yourself, don’t’ be afraid to say Merry Christmas – if you mean it then say it! 

Some of my friends ask if we do the whole Santa thing.  In some religious communities Santa is controversial.  But my thought is Santa is a representation of the Spirit of Christmas.  So yes, we absolutely do the Santa thing!  Growing up my dad always had my sister and I sit on his lap and read us ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas.  Then we could barely contain ourselves for the rest of the night – waking up every hour to see if Santa came yet!  It was the best to finally get up in the morning and see the tree with presents.  That type of Christmas spirit is what I want my family to experience, through simple fun and family traditions.

To keep myself less stressed during Christmas season I start planning early, by making lists– a budget list for gifts, decorations and food, a Christmas card list and a To-Do list to make sure I am not over planning and things don’t get left out. 

After that I keep it simple.  I use a little creativity and ingenuity. A few lights out front, a few decorations (my front yard does not look like a store threw up all over it), a couple of batches of cookies – made with the boys of course.   Making sugar cookies is part of a family tradition I did with my mom.  The dough can be made in advance and put in the freezer, rolling out the dough and pressing down the tree shaped cookie cutters and then slathering them with frosting and sprinkles.  They taste like my childhood.  I hope my boys will remember the taste of their Christmas!

The Christmas tree is probably my favorite tradition.  For my entire life I have been fortunate enough to be able to go to a tree farm to cut down a tree.  Many years the snow was crunchy and deep, and we trekked our way through the farm to find just the right Christmas tree.  After my dad brought the tree to the car we’d stop in for hot cider and cookies in the little hut with a wood burning stove.  It was so special!  And I love that we have carried that tradition on with our boys.

Tradition keeps families together, bonds them.  Tradition holds their memoires tight.  Traditions are important – so pick a few simple ones you’d like to do with your family, and those memories will last a lifetime! 

- Helping you achive your Domestic Success!

At our household we have pitch pile day. All of those piles of papers, magazines, junk drawers – well if they don’t get taken care of year after year, what a mess you’d be in – think Pigpen’s house! 

Twice a year (at the least) in the Spring and Fall we pitch the piles.  We get out a big trash bag and get to it.  It is the best feeling afterward – so nice and organized.

The piles get sorted 3 ways.  A Keep Pile - to be filed, A Move Pile – moved to an appropriate room/place, and my favorite the Trash Pile!

Some of us are born organizers.  Some are not.  When I was little my mom was working and she put my sister and I in daycare.  Part of her job was working with other children – so she felt terribly guilty for spending time with other kids.  Me?  I didn’t mind at all.  I have great memories of the fun I had there.  So once a week when she’d pick us up we got a new Matchbox car – it was great!  I’d even gotten to the point where I had a carrying collection box.  My favorite thing to do with the Matchbox Cars was to organize them by color in the box.

A born organizer I guess!  My sister was not.  Growing up her room was Pigpen’s house – you couldn’t see anything, there were piles and unorganized clutter everywhere.  But the good news is as a wife and mother now in charge of her own household she is organized and uncluttered! My point being that it’s our duty as both husband and wife to keep a tidy house – now it doesn’t need to be Martha Clean, but organized enough to be able to find things you need. 

In order to make your pitch pile day effective, you just need some organization tools.  You’ll need some filing drawers, shelving, and large & small rubber containers, which can be found inexpensively at your local Target or Walmart.  And the large heavy duty black trash bags are great for the Trash pile. 

To get Pitch Pile Day going, pick the room you are going to start in.  Say the office.  If there are piles and papers everywhere, just start sorting.  Just three piles – Keep, Move, Trash.  If it ends up in the keep pile use the organization tools to store it in the office.  Put the Move pile things into the appropriate rooms in your house.  And then dump that hopefully large Trash pile out!  I find that when you really sit down to organize you will be surprised at how much of it really is trash.  Yes, this project will take you longer than the usual tidying up, but it will be worth it.  And if you are consistent about doing it at least twice a year it will be easy to maintain! 

- Wendy

Helping you achieve your Domestic Success!