Right now...

I'm listening to my kids teach each other how to do their jobs. They rotate tomorrow.

Rule number one before washing the dishes? Roll up your sleeves. LOL
I will post later this week about how we do chores around here.
My kids do the basic day to day jobs that need to be done and I pick up projects or heavy duty cleaning.

A little help, please.

How do you clean your floors? I have spent a good hour this morning googling and you tubing this subject with not much luck. My floors never seem clean. I am talking mainly my kitchen and bathrooms. Any advice would be appreciated!

Be Blessed!

How do you say thank you?

I am blessed to have a lot of great friends. I am even more blessed to have four different ladies that I know are my dearest friends. I have three here, that I picked up at different times in my life and one in North Carolina. Today I want to talk about my friend Michelle.
Here is a picture of us together..... OK it's not really us, but it could be. :) I don't have any pictures of us together uploaded. I have a few from high school. Especially prom night, remember, Michelle?
I have known Michelle since about 7th grade so that would be... about 1991. I did not get to know her until our Senior year. Up until then we were in different groups. I was friends with some of the people in her group she was friends with some of the people in my group so we knew each other slightly.
Our senior year was the BEST! To tell you about it I have to tell you a little about my past. I had lots of different friends in high school, but the group I was with the most were the... well, easy girls...for lack of a better word. I WAS NOT! I was a good little church girl scared to do much more than hold hands with a boy. But these were my friends. By my Senior year I was pretty tired of the boyfriend swapping and the drama that accompanied it. I'd met another girl the year before who was a good Christian girl, Jessica, and we started hanging out more.
I really think one of the reasons Michelle and I became friends is because we had a crush on the same guy! Michelle and Jessica had also become friends at the time. There is a whole story behind the guy, but that's for another post. :)
So the last few months of our Senior year we spent a lot of time together. That summer was awesome. I loved the group I was hanging out with. There was no boyfriend swapping, no TMI, no drama. It was wonderful.

Eventually one of our friends got married, then another, then me, then Michelle. The other two couples moved away but Michelle and her DH and me and my DH became "couple friends". How fun was that! Trying to get together every week and have dinner or do something fun. Once DH and I hijacked their trip to Tampa and went along to see one of the above mentioned couples. It was fun.
Then the babies started coming. I was there in the delivery room four years ago to witness the birth of her first baby. Two months later my 13m old was delivered to my door! We were mommies together. Going through all that mommy stuff. She went back to work while her husband stayed home to finish school, but we still tried to get together as much as possible.

Things got busy and we did not see each other as much. Though we never lost contact. In January of 2006 my baby was born in a hospital to another woman. But he was already mine. A week later her baby was born. At her house. Did I mention I love the fact that she tries things for me? LOL Our boys are all great friends. It's a good thing she has boys because most of my friends have girls. :) She stayed home and Dh finished school. Now we were stay at home mommies together with zoo passes! Yes, we go to the zoo together. She homeschools and I homeschool so we are always passing information back and forth.

She thinks I am super woman! I love her for that. She knows all my flaws and still loves me. I think she is the greatest mom ever! Her little boy calls my kids "his friends" and gets so excited when he gets to see "his friends"!! My little boy calls her little boy, Keif! He says it like this, "Keif! Keif! Keif!" Not just once but three times!

She always makes me laugh. She always has an idea for me. She says great things about me. She wins things for me. How do you thank someone like that? How do you tell them how much they mean to you? She is so patient and kind. Never getting mad at me for ignoring her. She knows, accepts, and understands that busy households can get the best of you. I love having friends you don't have to explain that to.

Well, I will do my best with this blog post. I love you girl!! :)

Did I mention she wins things for me??? :)

Be Blessed!!

I did not need it..

I was at the store the other day and saw this cute little smoothie book. We are big smoothie drinkers here and I am always looking for new recipes.
I had a little extra money so I grabbed the book and plunked it into my cart. As we made our way to the cash register I started thinking about what was in my cart that I might not need.
As I looked at the Smoothie book I could not help but think of the wonderful tool we have now called the Internet. I can google smoothies and come up with thousands of recipes. Did I need a $10 cookbook with only about 50? Out that went. So before you pick up a cookbook or any book figure out if its something you can find for free online.

Don't get me wrong if I find a good cookbook I will buy it, but I did not see the need for a smoothie book! :)

For more frugal tips visit Crystal's blog!

Be Blessed!

Again...

Here I go again...

Families Against Feminism is giving away these videos. Go for a visit to enter to win. Stay and browse. I love this blog.

Crash day...

I am tired, worn out and cranky today. There I said it. Hows that for keeping it real?

So far I have broken the laundry basket. Yelled at my children. Said words that ladies should not say. And sent 1 almost 2 out of 5 children to bed. *Sigh*
I know all the triggers. I usually get this way when I spend too much time away from home. When chores and projects pile up. When the kids get tired and act like...well, like kids.
When every dish I pull from the dishwasher is dirty, because dish girl gets lazy sometimes and does not rinse them well. When I have to call someone back to sweep the floor after three tries. When the baby gets into everything. When the laundry pile gets bigger and not smaller. When we run out of trash bags and the child in charge of the garbage says, "I did not know I used the last one!" When the vacuum cleaner smells like you vacuumed up a whole family of plastic Lego people when you turn it on.... Do you get the picture?

I probably sound extremely whiny right now. That's not my intent. I promise. I want other struggling moms and homemakers out there to know that YOU ARE NOT ALONE! Most of us have days like this.

Find your triggers. Try to notice when you are most crabby. Like I said before, this has been a very busy week for us. I have not been home a lot. The times I have been home have not been productive times. I know I can avoid becoming like this by, having a routine in place, staying home more, making most of my days productive, not being afraid to take a day and rest during the week. Rest meaning simple chores, reading, crafting..., letting go of my perfection, training my children in their jobs better and then checking up on them, consistently.

I am willing to bet that a lot of my feelings today are centered around a cluttered house. A home that does not feel safe and secure. Whats the remedy? Get off my blessed assurance and get rid of some of the clutter! :) I really need to accomplish something today around the house to get out of my funk. It always works. I am still plugging away at the laundry. Discouraged because its such a big chore and it does not seem to be going away. That's the beauty of before and after pics. I can look back at the beginning and see the progress.
I have been reading through Psalms the past few weeks. Its beautiful. Here is the perfect Psalm for today:

Psalms 4:1-8, "Hear me when I call, O God of my righteousness: thou hast enlarged me when I was in distress; have mercy upon me, and hear my prayer. O ye sons of men, how long will ye turn my glory into shame? how long will ye love vanity, and seek after leasing? Selah. But know that the LORD hath set apart him that is godly for himself: the LORD will hear when I call unto him. Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. Selah. Offer the sacrifices of righteousness, and put your trust in the LORD. There be many that say, Who will shew us any good? LORD, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon us. Thou hast put gladness in my heart, more than in the time that their corn and their wine increased. I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep: for thou, LORD, only makest me dwell in safety."

Be Blessed!

Maiden Karly Week 2

WOW! We have been busy this week. Here is Karly's week.

We are still working through the Future Christian Homemakers book. I completely forgot to take pictures of Karly making Blueberry muffins this week. She made them twice. They were wonderful. Click on the book above for more information.
This week we worked on chapter 2 of Raising Maidens of Virtue. It was all about purity and being a Maiden. We had a great discussion. Click on the picture above for information about the book.
Karly was instructed to draw a "Maiden Scene". This was a scene of a lovely young lady in a peaceful setting.

Here is my young maiden's picture.

We discussed the differences between being tough and strong. Maiden's should be strong. There is grace and wisdom in strength. They can be called on to stand up for their beliefs and be strong in the Lord. They can be strong in a crisis when their family needs them. When we hear the word tough though we think of a young lady trying to prove something. Dressing like men, acting like men... tough was not a pretty picture. :)
Karly and I discussed what it means to be pure and how she can be pure. One of the main things was keeping our focus on Christ. Here is her purity statement.

We discussed what would a maiden look like. What traits and virtues would she have. Here is her list.


These are the verses Karly is going to focus on this week.

We did not work on her sewing, though I have finally gotten past the part I was stuck on, so we will resume that soon. I think I will keep our sewing adventures for a separate post. LOL

I know today is officially Wednesday. I had some errands to do today that threw off the week so I am planning to do our Home Ec day tomorrow.

Be Blessed!

Gracious Kelsie and Tamara Week 2

We completed a second week. Our little friend was not able to join us again, but she will be here one day. I promise she is not imaginary. LOL

Click on the pictures of the books and you should go to a link for more information.



Later on this week I will talk a little bit about how I come up with some of the extra stuff to go with this wonderful book by Emilie Barnes.

This week we learned about telephone manners. Here the girls are coloring a picture with some of the rules of telephone manners.

Tamara is definitely my out of the box child. Look at those teethe she colored. LOL
Here is a picture of a little girl smiling. The caption on the bottom says, "Smiling on the phone makes your voice sound friendlier! SMILE!"

Once again check out Tamara's colors. Kelsie is much more practical. LOL
Here we are talking about the heart of phone manners. Scroll down for a full picture with the caption.


Getting ready to cook. These aprons are some I got on sale at Vision Forum's 50% off sale earlier this year. I was saving them for Christmas, but thought now would be a good time to pull them out.

I totally missed getting pictures of them peeling the carrots. That's what the lesson was this week. Here they are cutting the carrots. I had to help a lot because carrots are not easy to cut. It was hard to take pictures and try to make sure no one was going to chop off a finger.



Arranging the carrots on the plate.


I had a picture here of the final product but erased it accidentally. I will post it later. :)

Here we are drawing and decorating our own veggie tray. Our motto is, "Pretty makes it taste better!" LOL

Beautiful veggie trays!
Here is our verse for the week from our book. They love decorating with stickers.

Be Blessed!