Christmas at Home 2010

Here's just a few pictures from Christmas morning at home.

Coming Inside

It's time to come inside... I've been 'out there' on the Net for many years now and I've decided to listen to the thing inside me that's telling me it's time to come inside, get warm, reflect, and grow.  I'm not able to do that with my life still open for all to see.  So, for now, I'm taking this blog and making it private.

Brave Girls Club Soul RESToration Class

Thanks to my friend Dena, who is a brave girl herself, I was introduced to the Brave Girls Club a few weeks ago.  I am truly inspired by their daily "a little bird told me..." emails and by the wonderful posts on their blog.  See, I have had this longing inside of me for some time now.  This intense NEED to know what I'm here for... what the pure and true meaning of life is... what my purpose is.  I'm 35 and still saying that I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

I've made so many life changes.  I've forgiven huge wrongdoings.  I've overcome so many life challenges and I feel like I'm on the verge of another breakthrough...  and yet... I feel stuck.

I really want to enroll in the BGC Soul Restoration class coming up in January.  It's a 6 week course designed to inspire and restore.  I do not feel in a place, financially, to enroll so I'm entering in every giveaway that I've seen offered for a spot in the class.

So, I'm posting about the giveaway being offered at Where Women Create in hopes of being one of the lucky winners of a spot in this awesome class offered by the Brave Girls Club. WWC is a wonderful place where you can be inspired to let your creative juices flow, no matter what form they take.

If you follow me on Facebook, you probably have already seen me post about BGC. If you haven't heard about them then you must check them out. I dare to you to open yourself up to what they are sharing.  I dare you to be yourself in spite of all of the obstacles in your way.  I dare you to learn to fly!

7 Happy Rituals for the Shorter Days of Winter

by Christine Kane

Each year, when we turn the clocks back, I am torn.

On the one hand, I’m elated to get some extra sleep and “gain” an hour. On the other hand, it’s a little sad to know that winter is coming, and the days are getting shorter.

A few years ago, I noticed that I was rolling with the change of season much more gracefully - and without the same dread I had often felt. It was around that time I learned to create rituals in my days. Seasons, after all, show us what our lives are meant to be: dark times, light times, expansion, contraction, and of course… change!

If you are experiencing anxiety or sadness as winter approaches and the days get shorter, I invite you to try one or two of these rituals. Maybe you’ll start to look forward to the earlier evenings as you see the mystery and magic of this beautiful season…

1 - Create a Glow

The great thing about darker evenings is that they allow for the perfect candle lighting ritual. Create a sacred space in your home and light candles at dusk or when you get home from work.

Some of my favorite candles are antique medicine bottles I’ve picked up at various antique stores over the years. I fill them with candle oil and wicks. The glass reflects the flame for even more glow! I’m always on the look out for simple candles and holders.

2 - Start a Gratitude Journal

It’s the season of Thanksgiving, so why not begin the habit of gratitude now, rather than waiting til the end of the month?

Get a beautiful journal and commit to completing your day with gratitude. Start with a list of five things. Write in as much detail as you can.

We live in such lavish abundance, yet it’s so easy to speed through the days without noticing. A gratitude journal will change your life!

3 - Feed the Birds

Wake up to bird song!

One of my favorite rituals is to make sure that the bird feeders are chock full of the best seed possible. Our feeders always have visitors, so we keep a guide to birds near our back door so we can grab it any time we spot a new species. We have regular visits from nuthatches, chickadees, flickers, titmouse, all kinds of woodpeckers, Carolina wrens, bluejays – we’ve even seen rare birds, like the hooded warbler. Spend some blissful time witnessing the pure joy of our feathered friends! (A great resource for bird-feeders is Wild Birds Unlimited.)

4 - Catch Up on Movies

Winter is a great time to catch up on those movies you missed in the theaters. I keep a list in my iPhone, and any time someone recommends a movie, I take note. That way, when I get to the video store, I have a reference. You can also get great television show season re-runs on Netflix.

5 - Morning Work-Outs

When the clocks turn back, the mornings get lighter. Why not take advantage and wake up earlier to hit the gym? Start a fitness ritual. Exercise has been proven – over and over again! – to remedy everything from disease to depression. Hire a trainer for a month and learn some new exercises! The fitness habit will lift your mood like nothing else!

6 - Complete a Project

Remember that idea you had for a scrapbook? Or that language learning series you’ve been meaning to plunge into? Well, now’s the time!

Winter is a perfect time to learn a new craft, create something meaningful, and get lost in the joy of a new project. Winter is also the time to go inward and lose yourself in creating. What have you been meaning to create?

7 - Get Out!

Any dog will tell you: Winter is a fabulous time to hike! It’s cold. It’s crisp. You bundle up in layers of polar fleece. And you get to experience the hidden treasures of a season that most people avoid.

Make it a point to find some trails or paths near your home. Then, commit to bundling up and spending time outdoors each weekend. There’s rarely anyone else out – so you get to have acres and acres to yourself. (Though you might bump into me and my dog! It’s our favorite hiking season!)

Note: Here’s a link to an article I wrote about one more of my favorite winter rituals.
Click below to read it -->
http://www.christinekane.com/blog/banish-sugar-cravings-with-a-new-ritual

........................................

Christine Kane is the Mentor to Women Who are Changing the World. She helps women uplevel their lives, their businesses and their success. Her weekly LiveCreative eZine goes out to over 12,000 subscribers. If you are ready to take your life and your world to the next level, you can sign up for a F.R.E.E. subscription at http://christinekane.com.

Un-Inspired

After so many years of dealing with the down-shift of the coming winter season, I've begun to wonder if it's a completely natural occurrence. Are we supposed to feel this slowing down, the lack of motivation, and the intense inner need to hibernate (much like the bears)? I'm starting to think so. The society we live in doesn't like slowing down. We are constantly being bombarded with things we "need" to do or "should" do. You know, the Energizer bunny just keeps going... and going... and going. We are expected to do the same. Yet, I feel something deep inside that is screaming STOP!

I've been contemplating my blogging. I'm feeling very uninspired to blog about anything at all on any of my blogs.  During this time of year, I feel very unbalanced.  I swear that true balance doesn't exist.  I'm beginning to think that balance is a lie.  Maybe we're supposed to fly.

Halloween Hoodlums

Look at this band of Halloween Hoodlums.  Why is Dancer the only once not acting like a nut?

Living Off-Line

I have really been working on my off-line life lately.  Over the past 10 years or so, I've spent way too much time online.  I've developed some really great online friendships but I think there must be a balance and I wasn't finding that balance.  I hate to admit it but when I get sucked into the screen, I'm ignoring my family.  This isn't something I want for myself or for them.  So, I decided that along with the other minimalist things I'm working towards that I also needed to work on getting that balance between off-line and online.

On Saturday, Oct 23, I decided that I was going cold-turkey for the day.  I stayed off of the computer the entire day.  It was tough!  Thank goodness I had some books that needed to be read and finished up for two book discussion groups, so that helped me focus on keeping my mind occupied so that I didn't completely lose it and give in.  Since then, I have been limiting my computer time to, at most, 1 hour a day.  I have so much wrapped up into my online life that some things have had to be put on hold.  I'm only making an exception this evening so that I can blog here.

I'm seriously considering giving up my pet project, Free K-12 Education.  If I don't give it up, it will definitely stay as a hobby.  I'm just not willing to spend so much time on it anymore.  I thought I wanted to build it into something that could pay me back for the effort, but I'm not so sure anymore.  I have so many other wonderful things that I want to do and I just don't see how I can balance that plus pursue all of these other things.

I really think that a quote I posted on my mini blog last week changed something in me.  It flipped a switch.  I had an enlightening.  Here it is, in case you don't regularly read my mini blog...

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” - Mahatma Gandhi

I have so much living to do.  I have so much learning to do.  I am no longer willing to settle for so much of my time being sucked into the black hole of so many of my former online activities.  I can't get that time back.  I have to decide what's really important in life and focus my time and energies there.

The Start of My Minimalist Journey

Yesterday I started reading "The Simple Guide to a Minimalist Life" by Leo Babauta.  Mr. Babauta starts off talking about why he's a minimalist, the benefits of being a minimalist, discussing what true necessities are and simplifying what we do with our time.  Then he jumps right into tackling clutter, part of which is the clutter on our computer.  So, last night started to follow his suggestions on cleaning up my computer's desktop.  I started with condensing files and then I hid the icons from my desktop and added a beautiful desktop background.  I didn't take a screenshot of my before but here is what my desktop looks like now.  I have a rotating background and here are two shots of my desktop...

Today I took it a step further and cleaned up my News Feed on Facebook.  I now have only the most important updates from friends, family, and pages on my News Feed.  Facebook can be a time-suck and I think this will make it easier and quicker for me to keep up with the people and pages that are most important to me.

I have also started on moving files and pictures to my Google Docs and to Picasa for storage, at the suggestion of Mr. Babauta.  [I already use both of those services but I will be making a point to use them for nearly everything.]  They will be easier for me to have access to all of my files no matter what computer I am at.  They will also free up space on my hard-drive, which is in short supply on my laptop.

Mr. Babauta has also gone completely paperless.  I'm not sure exactly how I could make that work in my life yet but I will certainly look for more ways to cut down on my paper clutter.  I already pay nearly all of my bills online and don't receive paper bills.  Just looking around my room, I can see paper-sourced items like books and magazines that I could go paperless with.

I have lots more work to do on this journey but I think if I work at this everyday, always looking for more ways to reduce and release, then I could really make some serious progress over the next few months.

Ooey Gooey Slimy Fun

Today, Dancer and I did a chemistry experiment.  We made glowing slime.  We were supposed to be doing it with a live online class but the instructor never showed.  One of the moms who was waiting online with us found the link to the video and instructions, so we ended up doing it on our own.

the supplies

our mess after making our slime

"I'm melting, I'm melting."

flat as a pancake

frozen slime looks cool!

There are some other questions that are with the instructions that we still need to answer.  We still have to heat this up in the microwave to see what it does, see if it picks up the print off of a newspaper, and change a few ingredients to see how the results change.

It was really cool to do this.  I was almost giddy.  I love science, always have.

Blogging... My Take on the Do's and Don'ts

I have been consistently blogging since August 2005 and over that time I have developed my own likes and dislikes about the blogging world and what makes a good blog.  Here is my take on the whole thing...

Do...

• have a unique voice!  We all have one.  Don't blog about what you think your readers want.  That's like an author writing for their fans or an artist basing their creativity on what they think someone will buy.  Yuck!   I don't want to read a blog where I can't see a blogger's unique voice.   I want to really be able to tell who that person is and what they stand for by the way they express themselves.

• use Feedburner!   For goodness sakes, if you're going to blog burn your feed!   I've run across so many great blogs lately that either haven't burned their feed or don't have all of their available subscribe settings turned on within Feedburner.  When I find a really great blog, one that's worth having delivered to my email inbox, and can't find an option to subscribe via email, I get a little frustrated.  Sometimes I'll ask the author to make that option available and sometimes I'll just burn their feed myself and subscribe to it that way.  Make it easy on your readers to keep up with you!

• make your blog pleasing to the eye.   Clean up your sidebars... using pleasing colors... post pictures... make it easy to navigate.   I hope those things are self-explanatory, if not, leave me a comment and I'll elaborate.   Let's just say that you can have the best content in the world but if your blog hurts my eyes and I see that you don't care enough to organize your sidebars, then I won't be back!


Don't...

• follow the crowd!  Ok, so the mommy bloggers are all the rage now.   There's a million and one blogs all about couponing and weekly deals.   If you seen one, you've pretty much seen them all.   I have a few that I follow... why?... because I can see their unique voice!

• compare your blog to others.  This comes back to that unique voice.  Your blog, it's look and content, should reflect you.   One of my all time favorite bloggers, TidyMom, has a blog that reflects who she is.  She bakes, she cooks, she's tidy... and I don't do any of those things well!  Which is why I love her soooo much.  I get to peek into a life that is totally opposite of mine.   I get inspiration from her to be my unique self, here on my blog and out in the world.

• blog just to make money.   Blech.  I don't know about you but I can tell which blogs are only out there to make some cash.   There's nothing wrong with getting paid for your work on your blog but there's a fine line that needs to be walked with this.

So be creative, express yourself, blog about who you are and what you stand for.... just be you and be real... and make it easy for those of us who like your blog to follow you.

I Am Not The Mom...

I am not the mom...

who has it all together
who's house is always clean
who's yard is mowed and garden is trimmed
who cooks dinner every night... I don't even like to cook!
who's bed is made
who's laundry is done

I am the mom...

who hangs out with her teenager
who doesn't mind being the chauffeur to all of her daughter's activities
who is mindful to nurture the relationship I have with her father
who's teen still wants to hold hands with her
who enjoys her teen's company

Relationships are more important than things.
Time is more important than money.
Love, nurture, and respect are the most important things in life.

Library Tour

Wednesday, along with some fellow homeschoolers, we went to an informative talk and took a tour of the city library.  We learned all about the Dewey Decimal System, then had an extensive tour of the children's and young adult departments.  We also learned all about the online databases and the best way to search the library system's catalog of holdings.

I thought I knew nearly everything about our library but I ended up learning some new things that will be very helpful to us.  I didn't know that our library had access to the EBSCO Database.  The librarians showed us how to use the microfilm and while we were touring the children's department, I found out where all of the folklore was shelved.  I ended up checking out about 10 books of Japanese folklore from that section.

We updated Dancer's library card so that she can now check out anything from the library.  Their age for an adult card is 13 and Dancer is 14 now.  I had them set-up online access for her and while we were checking out, I also found out that the library baskets can be checked out, too.  That made it a whole lot easier to carry all of those books home.

The morning started out pretty rough, since Dancer really didn't want to get up so early.  We did the apple orchard trip the day before, so that made an early morning two days in a row.  But she got to see and hang-out with some friends and she learned some new things about our library.  She was fine and was glad we went by the time it was all over.

Apple Orchard Trip

Tuesday we joined some fellow homeschoolers on a field trip to the Okaw Valley Apple Orchard. We learned how their family owned orchard operates, got to pick our own apples, and learned how their apple cider is made.  We had a great time.  The weather was perfect and we got to see some of our friends.

picking our own apples

honey bees are vital to apple production.  did you know you can rent honey bees?

apples are dumped onto a belt where they are washed...

and sorted.  the apples that are too small go into the bins for apple sauce and cider.  the apples on the platform are bagged and weighed and then sold in their country store.

this is their cider press.  this machine presses the apples into mush that is then pressed to get the cider.

the tank behind this holds the cider that is then pumped into gallon jugs through these nozzles.

after the tour we had apple crisp donuts and apple cider slushies and then it was time to play with friends.

Before we headed home, we bought some more apple crisp donuts to share with Dodger and I got some homemade jalapeño mustard and fresh ground horseradish sauce.  I haven't tried the mustard but the horseradish is the best I've ever tasted.  I'll never go back to the store-bought, processed stuff.

Wasting Time

Do you ever find yourself completely lost in the web, unable to free yourself from it's lure. You get up to "do something" only to find yourself back in-front of the screen moments later unsure of how your plan to "do something" got off-track once again.  I did that all day today.  I spent nearly half of my day reading and answering emails, reading Facebook, reading blogs, and just wasting time.  The few times that I did manage to pry myself away from the computer to get some housework done, I always ended up back in the computer chair without having accomplished much.

I wonder, though, what is wasted time?  Is it spending too much time online or in front of the TV?  How much is too much?  Who draws that line?

I still struggle with answers to that.  Conventional culture says that too much "screen time" is bad for us and wasteful.  But I always question conventional culture's ideas.  Was the housework that I didn't get done today more important than the great blogs I read and discovered today?  Was it more important than replying to important discussions on my favorite Yahoo Group?

What other things should we be accomplishing instead of "wasting time"?  What about these things are important?  What's our motivation behind accomplishing these things?

I have so many questions and the answers aren't quite clear to me yet.

Teenagers are Awesome

Ok, so that's not a popular thought among parents but it's my perspective.

Depression, Schedules, and Balance

Tuesday night Dancer told me that she thinks she's depressed. She said she feels lethargic most of the time and is only truly happy when she's dancing. She expressed some other concerns to me, too. I told her that most of her concerns and feelings were normal that there were many other people who felt the same way about things. I think it made her feel better to hear that. I told her that I felt her excessive computer time was contributing to her feelings of depression. I let her know that there was nothing wrong with spending time on the computer but that it's best used in balance with other things in her life. She has goals and dreams for herself and she needs to be conscious of where her energies are being spent.

{and just so you know... I have expressed all of this to her in the past... the only thing different now is that it's self-directed from her and not top-down from me. I am here as her facilitator, mentor, and friend. she was not given to my care to boss her around but to be here to guide her as she figures out who she is and what she wants.}

We tossed around ideas and she made up a daily tasks schedule that she wants to follow. She also asked me to start getting her up earlier in the morning and that she will start working on trying to get to bed earlier so that getting up at the time she wants to get up won't be so hard on her. She wants to get up early enough in the day so that she can attend to the things that will get her closer to pursuing her dreams so that by the afternoon she'll be free to spend time RPing (Roll Playing) and Facebooking with her friends.

So for the past 3 days I have gone to bed by 1:30am so that I could be up in time to get her up at 10am, the time she's chosen to have me wake her up. She has jumped into her daily tasks without anything from me but a "What do you want to do next?" Today she felt worn out from her week and decided to sleep lightly till noon after I woke her up. After that needed rest, she was up and at it.

I also makes sure she takes her vitamins daily and I'm having her take Mustard Flower Essence to help with the lethargy and depression. I read up on depression (as if I didn't already know enough about it from my own struggles with it) and I'm going to make sure that her diet promotes well-being, too. Today I suggested that we take a short walk everyday while the weather is still nice to get some sunlight and fresh air.

It feels good to once again be motivated to be a better mom and a better person over-all for the benefit of my daughter. From the very beginnings of her physical existence, she's been my motivation for all that I've done to be better and do better. I am so grateful that this parenting style promotes her openness and honesty with me. I know when I was her age, I would have never felt comfortable going to my mom and telling her I was depressed. I suffered through depression all through my teen years and half-way through my 20s. It was a terrible, dark time for me. And yet, without that struggle, I wouldn't be able to empathize and certainly wouldn't know the causes and the cures for it. Nothing we experience is in vain.

So, before I start to cry, I will end this blog post. I will plead with you to come along-side your kids and be their best friend. I ask of you to please be the parent you wish you had had. Treat your kids like the whole human beings that they are. They are not empty vessels waiting to be filled. They are already whole beings, they just need guidance from someone who's got more life experience. They need LOVE and understanding!

Measuring the Distance Around the Earth

On Friday, we met with a few friends to do a math experiment to measure the distance around the Earth. Denise led the experiment. We just brought along a few supplies.

The explanation of the experiment & what we're measuring. 

Denise explaining the graphing. 

Marking and measuring the shadow. 

Preparing their graph paper. 

Marking the points. 

Marking the points. 

Marking the points. 

Marking the points. 

Time to calculate.

After the experiment we compared our totals to the actual distance and found out that our margin of error was less than 2%.

Last Day of Summer

I stuck my head out the door for a brief moment this afternoon and welcomed the warm breeze on my face. I, for a moment, thought it might be nice to hang out on the porch on our last day of truly summer temperatures. So, I got changed out of my PJ's and went outside. I grabbed my camera on the way out.

Once outside I swept the porch of the few dried leaves it's been collecting all week and cobwebs that have been left behind. I took a few shots of the one lone flower left on our property. Totally fitting that it should be a flower from a weed growing out of our junk pile. All of the other flowers have long since bloomed and gone.

I took a picture of the end-of-summer flower garden. It's Dancer's project and it always starts out the season well weeded and trimmed but by the end it's wild and over-grown. I really like the natural progression of it every year. Human's go through the same cycle's of being "well-weeded" and "trimmed" to wild and "over-grown." Why do we fight this cycle?

After all of that, I thought better of my desire to spend any more time outside. Even though it's quite breezy out today, it's still hot and I have too much housework to do inside.

Wild summer breeze
warms my core.
It is fleeting,
I know.
Seasons change,
time moves on.
I won't hold on too tightly,
I might miss all the new.
- L. J. Lowe

Autumnal Equinox, More on Balance

So I have learned that nothing is by chance. So it shouldn't surprise me that just yesterday I blogged about balance and that tomorrow is the autumnal equinox, the celebration of Mabon, a time of celestial balance of equal balance of darkness and light.

Here are two prayers to meditate on through this time of celestial balance as we move into this new fall season.

Equal hours of light and darkness
we celebrate the balance of Mabon,
and ask the gods to bless us.
For all that is bad, there is good.
For that which is despair, there is hope.
For the moments of pain, there are moments of love.
For all that falls, there is the chance to rise again.
May we find balance in our lives
as we find it in our hearts.

A balance of night and day, a balance of light and dark
Tonight I seek balance in my life
as it is found in the Universe.
A black candle for darkness and pain
and things I can eliminate from my life.
A white candle for the light, and for joy
and all the abundance I wish to bring forth.
At Mabon, the time of the equinox,
there is harmony and balance in the Universe,
and so there shall be in my life.

No matter what your religious or spiritual path.  I can see ways to change these prayers to fit where you are or you could always just make up your own.  There is much to be grateful for.  Count your blessings every day.

Maintaining Balance

"People with great gifts are easy to find, but symmetrical and balanced ones never."

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

I have struggled, for as long as I can remember, with maintaining balance in my daily life. I start out really gung-ho on a new project or a new lifestyle choice and then over time I get off-track. Usually something will happen to disrupt my new routine for a few weeks and I never can find my way back to the path I was on. This is very frustrating to me because I rarely finish anything that I start.

Yet, as I sit here typing this, I wonder if balance is ever attainable or even desirable. What is the driving force behind my desire for balance? I know I'd like to finish what I start, but why? Is it necessary to finish everything that we start? Maybe I'm not supposed to find my way back to that path I was on. Maybe I'm supposed to pick up and move on from where I find myself after life's disruptions.

I still haven't figured this out yet. Do you have any thoughts?

Are There Moral Absolutes?

Last month Dodger and I fell in-love with Dexter. It's a Showtime series about a serial killer who kills serial killers. We blew through all 4 past seasons in about 3 weeks time. One night in between shows we got to discussing moral absolutes. Is what Dexter is doing wrong? He hunts down serial killers and then kills them. Many of them are people that the justice system let slip away to kill again.

I don't think what he's doing is wrong. He is permanently removing people from society who do nothing but hurt innocent people. Dodger seemed a little conflicted and only had to say that what he was doing was against the law. I don't think that just because something is against the law that it is immoral. The law and morality are two different things.

According to Wikipedia, Moral Absolutism is the ethical view that certain actions are absolutely right or wrong, regardless of other contexts such as their consequences or the intentions behind them.

I don't really agree with that. I see things more from a Consequentialist viewpoint which Wikipedia explains as those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (or create a structure for judgment, see rule consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence. This view is often expressed as the aphorism "The ends justify the means".

Like the case of Robin Hood who stole from the rich to give to the poor. His reasons for stealing were valid.

My dad seems to carry my same viewpoint. I was having dinner with him one evening and mentioned Dexter and what the show was about. He said, "So, he's one of the good guys, like [the main character in the movie] Law Abiding Citizen?"

What do you think?

Silly Kitty

Sometime in the early afternoon today, I decided to open the blinds in the kitchen to be able to see when Dodger pulled into the driveway.  This is what I saw when I looked outside...

What a silly kitty!  She doesn't even belong to us but she's been hanging around our yard a lot lately.  She's sweet enough, although she won't come up to us.  I usually find her sprawled out in the back driveway but she must have thought the trash guttering looked comfy today.

Wii and Phase 10

We had a lovely evening at my dad's tonight ... dinner ... the Wii ... and Phase 10. :D

I Married a Painter

Right about now, I'm wishing I was married to a chiropractor.

Brown Gravy

I just spilled brown gravy all over my kitchen floor.

Dancer came out and said "why'd you do that?"  lol!

Snow Cone Man

Ran into old memories from my past driving the snow cone truck in my dad's small town this evening. Very weird.

Dancer's 14th Bday Party

We had a party at my mom's house today for Dancer's 14th birthday, which is this Friday, the 23rd.  Lot's of friends and family came.  Her cousin, Michaela, was also up visiting her dad, so she got to attend, too.

Here are a few pictures...

Smile!

Ready to light the candles.

Blowing out the candles.

Dodger and Michaela

It's so unsettling

Do you ever feel like something is wrong even where there's nothing wrong?  I can't seem to shake that feeling today.  It's so unsettling. 

I think it could be that my daily schedule is so out of whack because of family visits and sickness and there's some family addiction issues going on that I'm concerned about.

Quote on Discipline

"When a child hits a child, we call it aggression. When a child hits an adult, we call it hostility. When an adult hits an adult, we call it assault. When an adult hits a child, we call it discipline." -Haim G. Ginott

SHE-Fly Organizational Card System

A few months ago I decided that I needed to get some sort of daily organizational system in place for myself because I don't always remember everything I want to do each day. I've done FlyLady in the past and I like the focus on the Zones each week but I'm not a fan of lists. Lists have to be rewritten when something doesn't get done. I know that FlyLady talks a lot about the S.H.E. (Sidetracked Home Executives) system on her site. I had that book at one time and actually started to get the index cards set-up for myself but I never followed through with it.

Over the years I have learned what works for me and what doesn't. I don't like lists but I do like the idea of having each individual list item broken down onto individual index cards (a la the SHE system). I like FlyLady's Zones but I've reworked them to fit my house layout. So I've taken what I like from both systems and worked them into one.

I followed the SHE instructions pretty much exactly as they are set up in the book but I added a section for Zones. I will only work on Zone items in the week that they show up on the calendar. For instance, this week is Zone 3. Zone 3 is the Kitchen on my rotation. I have taken FlyLady's Detailed Cleaning Lists and put each item on its own index card and filed them in my card box under their zones. When the week comes to focus on each zone, I take those cards out of the Zone section and file them under the dates that I'm going to work on them. I have two "cleaning days", Monday and Thursday.




Like I mentioned, I've tweaked my Zones to match my house layout, so my Zones don't match FlyLady's.

Here are my Zones:

• Zone 1: First few days of the month: Porch, Laundry Room, Truck, Garden
• Zone 2: First full week of the month: Living Room
• Zone 3: Second full week of the month: Kitchen
• Zone 4: Third full week of the month: Bedroom
• Zone 5: Last few days of the month: Bathroom

I may end up tweaking that again because Zone 1 is loaded and I could probably put one of those items in Zone 5.

Here is my Basic Week plan, this tells me what I should be focusing on each day.

• Monday: Moderate Cleaning Day (2-4 hours)
• Tuesday: Bill Pay/Quiet Day
• Wednesday: Free Day
• Thursday: Heavy Cleaning Day (4-6 hours)
• Friday: Grocery/Errand Day
• Saturday: Laundry Day
• Sunday: Free Day

Another tweak I made was to color-code my Monthly Tasks. The SHE system has Monthly on white index cards along with Seasonal and Yearly. But I wanted more of a variation. I didn't like having so many white cards with different times. So I now have Pink, Yellow, Blue and Orange cards in addition to the White cards.

I made my own color-coded cards by taking white index cards and using highlighters that I have and coloring a strip across the tops of the cards. White index cards are super cheap (like 50 cents for a 100 pack at Big Lots) and I already had those at home. I also made my own dividers by tracing some I already had onto different colored construction paper and then cutting them out. To make them all nicely printed, I used a stencil I have and added the details to the dividers. I used my word-processing software to type up the individual index cards and then printed them onto my cards.




I also put together the cute picture on the top of my box by finding a homemaker icon on the web and then adding the words with Picnik.




I'm planning to add other items to my index card system. I think recipes and study notes would be a good start. Index cards are great for so many things and easily organized to fit different lifestyles and interests. I'm going to need to invest in a larger index card box.

I am working on putting together a downloadable file of all of the work that I've put into making my card system so that anyone wanting to make one for themselves can do so without all of the extra work that I had to do. I still highly recommend getting the book, Sidetracked Home Executives(TM): From Pigpen to Paradise because it gives you the background to how and why the system was developed. I have an older edition of the book but I still enjoyed it a lot and it's all marked up with my own information and tweaks to their system to make it work for me.

4H Talent Show

Choreographed and Performed by Dancer.

This was her first ever choreography.

Dancer w/ Lacey and Molly E.

Where do you find your coupons?

While shopping at Walgreens last night, I ran into a fellow coupon shopper.  She was almost giddy seeing that someone else was there using coupons like she was.  She wondered where I found my B1G1 FREE coupons on the Off Clip-On Starter Kits.  I told her that I printed them online.  I think I found the coupons through the BuzzAgent.com email newsletter.  She was telling me that she had some $2 off coupons for them from the Sunday paper from a few weeks ago.  I told her that I don't get the Sunday paper yet but that I thought I was going to have to start.  She highly recommended that I get the Chicago paper for them because there were so many more in that paper than in our local paper.  She said sometimes the coupons were a hit and miss but it was definitely worth it.

I've gotten quite a few coupons through all of the freebie samples that I request through brand websites.  There are lots of coupons available to print online from either the brand websites or coupon sites.  I've signed up for email newsletters from various places and quite often they contain links to different coupons.  I also get this "newspaper insert" like thing in my mailbox about once a month called Smart Market.  There are mostly restaurant coupons inside, like Steak n Shake and pizza places, but it also has at least 1 page of manufacturer coupons.

I'll be looking through all of the magazines that I get, sometimes there are coupons inside.

Where do you get your coupons?

What I've been up to lately...

It's obvious I make very little time to blog regularly even though I think daily about all of the cool stuff that I want to share.  So here's a small update...

Dancer got her first pair of pointe shoes a few weeks ago.  She's an incredible dancer but I made her wait a bit longer than most girls do to go on pointe {she'll be 14 in July}.  I wanted to be sure that she had the proper strength to do pointe and because I wanted her feet to be done growing so that I wouldn't be spending $50 on a pair of shoes that she would outgrow in a few months.  Actually, she's not as excited about pointe as lots of girls are.  I think she's just doing this because it's the next step that her teachers want her to take.  We've dodged the pointe questions for a few years now, so now it's time to have her try it and see it it's something she wants to pursue.

Just days ago I finished sewing the ribbons and the elastics on her shoes.  I watched a few YouTube videos on the correct placement of the ribbons and different ways of attaching them and then picked the one I felt best about.  Her ribbons have elastic sewn into them, so the placement of them was a little bit more work than regular ribbons.  The elastic on the ribbons has to hit her Achilles tendon when the ribbons are tied.  I've also been working on breaking in her shoes for her, too.  There also seems to be a few different ways of tying the ribbons, so she's been practicing and seeing which way works best for her.  Her first pointe class starts this Wednesday, wish her luck.

Now on to something a little more fun ('cause trust me, there was nothing fun about sewing on those ribbons and elastics).  A few weeks ago a received a package in the mail.  I hadn't ordered anything, so of course I wondered what it was before I had a chance to open it.  As it turns out, I had won a cookbook sweepstakes from Kashi.  I don't think I even remember entering it.    The cookbook I won is called, "Get Cooking:  150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen" by Mollie Katzen (author of Moosewood Cookbook {which at some point in my past, I owned}.  Winning stuff is so cool and this cookbook is perfect for me because I am stooooooopid when it comes to using my kitchen. 

Most of my time lately has been spent working my volunteer job.  I'm on the Board of our area homeschool support group and cooperative.  I've been working on getting our new website(s) up and running.  We have our main webpage, our BigTent group (which our membership will be moving to shortly as our way of communicating with each other), and because I want our members to be able to make the most out of BigTent and not get lost having to learn a new platform, I've been creating this a website for them, too.

So there's a bit of what I've been up to lately.  I'm heading down to Walgreens in a bit to try my hand at this couponing craze that has hit the blog-o-sphere.  You've been living under a rock if you aren't aware of it.  I have a few coupons saved up from various places, as well as, having printed a few of the internet.  Some of them are going to be stacked on top of the store coupons and sales that Walgreens has going.  I also think I'm prepared to try out their Register Rewards program, too.  With the stacking, sales, and RR's I should be able to get some really great stuff for a fraction of their normal price.  I'll post an update on how it all turned out, sometime this week.