Making Our Home a Haven - the fresh start

I surprised myself last week by being able to accomplish more than I thought I would. It was a busy week and I'm proud of myself for getting it all done, even adding a few things in. But I'm really feeling it now...that worn-thin feeling. And with more busyness ahead - there's already too much ink on my calendar! - I know I need to spend some time focused on Home. So, even though I usually preach babysteps, this week I have several good-sized goals.

• early to bed, early to rise...


• clean out the storage room to sort kids' clothes in preparation for the consignment sale coming up


• clean all the windows to let in the sunshine!


• eating breakfast as a family


• keeping the kitchen sparkly and shiny all week

How funny, before I had kids this would've been a good daily list!

Monica has a really good assignment this week - I hope to do a little work outside, too!

Making my home...a haven?

My home has been anything but a haven these last few weeks. With Casey working overtime, he needs the haven more than ever. Meanwhile, I'm thinking cloning doesn't sound so bad after all.

I plan to be back on track by Friday.

Hope everyone had a happy Valentine's Day

Casey bought me these beautiful tulips...my beautiful girl helped pick them out.

Why I can't get anything done...

He's smiling at me like this all day long:)

Making Our Home a Haven, week 3

I didn't do nearly the planning I wanted to do. I plan my day every morning, but this week was just too crazy to get beyond that. I did plan Brenna's tea party (sort of at the last minute, but still) and we're planning one for this Sunday, too.
Monica's challenge for this week is chores and that's definitely something I need to work on. Now that the kids have a working schedule for getting theirs done, it's time for me to get a schedule for mine.
In the morning before school...

• start laundry - load #1
• put folded clothes away if I didn't get to it the night before
• clean kitchen after breakfast
• check the kids chores

After morning school...

• switch laundry, start load #2
• fix lunch
• clean kitchen after lunch, sweep (teach Levi to sweep!)
• start supper

After afternoon school...

• laundry! - bring load #1 upstairs and fold (Brenna helps), put load #2 in the dryer
• finish supper

After supper...

• clean kitchen
• bring up load #2 to fold, then put away

I usually do a big cleanup on Friday morning, but all too often it gets pushed back until Saturday when there are lots of better things to do with our weekend. I think I'll move it to Thursday afternoons and see if that helps.

Now I'm off to catch up on the planning from last week...and the laundry.

Tea Party

I was so excited when Brenna asked to have a tea party - dressing up, making little snacks together, shopping for the perfect tea, doing a craft together, decorating a hat, beautiful invitations... I had soooo may lovely ideas. This was going to be the ultimate mommy-daughter tea party. Only it was never going to happen - when would I find time? But my little girl is growing up and I was tired of saying "maybe tomorrow, baby."
So now we're committed to a tea party every Sunday. This week I made the quickie snacks...on another week Brenna can help. One week we'll make the invitations...another we'll do a craft. For this week we drank some peach/mango tea I still had samples of. Some weeks we may heat up some lipton or have lemonade. The pickiness has got to go!

The important things are the time together and the tradition. My mother made the special little tea set for me in 1983. My granny gave Brenna the pink dishes. My grandmother and I had tea parties all the time when I was little. Funny, those were a highlight of my childhood, but I don't remember them being very fussy. Just a special little bit of girl time.