Summer, Summer, Summertime!

Hard to believe my baby girl is 2. Here she is with her first broom and dust pan. My little homemaker!

Well, I am here to tell you that I have added blogging to my to do list every week in August. Hopefully I can get in here at least once a week. I enjoy blogging because it's like an online journal and a fun place to share whats going on here.
Lots of fun stuff happening around here: cleaning, organizing, rearranging... happiness and peacefulness are the catchwords this year. I strive every day to make them happen. Sure there are discouraging days/weeks. Last week for instance I was sick and nothing got done. I also find myself depressed at a certain time of the month. I think it's because of my empty womb, but God will bless us again. I am finding it's taking me at least a week to recover my get up and go during this time.
But I'm back up and running this week. Trying to beat the heat and love up on the blessings I have here!
How is your summer going?
Be blessed!!

Encourage those around you!

 I am working on a hurricane/other disaster prep post and should have it ready soon! There is so much out there. It's been kind of fun getting all this information together and starting to implement it a little at a time!

 Right now I just have to share something I am very excited about. God has truly done a good work in me! I have had the most productive couple of days. Remember when I reformatted this blog and was looking for my passion for homemaking and mothering again?? Well, it's back! I am just enjoying puttering around in the kitchen. I even made bread!! I have not done that since before Lily was born. She will be two next week. Yes, it's been that long. I have a ton of meals in my freezer. My room is not just getting cleaned (it's been clean since I wrote about it last!) but now I am reorganizing and decluttering. It's really looking better than clean. It's looking beautiful.

Today on a whim I invited some friends over. I was not running around like crazy trying to clean. The house was fairly clean just a little swiping here and there. I lit a pretty smelling candle and it was a great time with friends. I'm getting ready to rearrange the house again. Yeah, it's about a quarterly thing now. LOL Much of my inspiration has come from a wonderful older lady lately. Not much older though, her youngest daughter is the same age as my Kelsie. She has just been so encouraging to me lately. She also brought me a whole bunch of her old Keeper At Home magazines! WOW! Just WOW! The wisdom in those pages has brought me a whole new level of excitement. I am excited to try to share some of the lessons I am learning that are bringing me back to the heart of my mission. My home and family. Blogging is sporadic right now, because I am busy at home, but I am hoping to get the prep. post up and at least one other this week.

Be blessed and look for a young woman to encourage in her role as homemaker this week!

Oh the weather outside is frightful...

Well, it has been a long few weeks. I spent one week being sick, one week catching up after being sick, and now we are at the end of a tropical storm. Fun times. :)
I am happy to say we only lost power once for about 2 hours when a transformer blew. It was around 2 a.m. so we did not really even notice it, well except for when it came back on around 4ish our house alarm went off. Noticed that.
I live in a place with a lot of hurricane watches and warnings. About 99% of the time the storm blows the other way and we miss it completely. Because of this I'm afraid some of us get a little lazy with our storm prep. I try to make sure we have some stock during the season, but I'm not really diligent.
I'm going to work on a list this week and then start making sure we have all we need for a storm. I'll share it later on this week and hopefully next time I won't be laying in bed wondering if we have enough water, or if the flashlights work. How far will that jar of peanut butter actually go? How are 8 people going to use the bathroom without water? Ya see, these are important things!! :)
Dh and I have always been interested in disaster prep stuff, but we have not really worked through implementing it to actual disaster prep. Seeing as how the first storm of the season came before the season even started and we got a direct hit I think we'll be a little more active in preparing for the coming season.
What are some ways you prepare for a disaster?

Our organization corner

I guess I should have prettied it up a bit before taking a pic, but hey, I'm all about keeping it real. :)
This is the little wasted space alcove to our bedroom. One day I decided to hang up a white board and the little letter organizer thing. Underneath that is a small round table.
The white board has had many uses. I used to put the kids chores on there, then I put Bible verses and little quotes. Now it's the perfect place for our to-do list! The one you see is Dh's list (that he wrote for himself). I only have two on my right now. Yeah, before you get too impressed one is finish the closet and the other is finish my garden project. Neither one is a small deal. LOL
The letter organizer holds papers for the kids, magazines we want to read and netflix movies to send back.
The table underneath holds my purse, the diaper bag, and whatever needs to walk out the door with us the next day.
Also, something you can't see is a key holder. It also has a small white board and that has some phone numbers on it so I could not show it. We put all of our keys there.
It can also be a serious hotspot. Looking at the picture I see stuff that needs to come out of the letter organizer. Stuff I cropped out of the picture (I don't want to be too real!) needs to be put away.
Overall though, this is a great little organization nook.
Look around your house. See if there is a little nook you can use to help yourself. :)

Is it over yet??

Just having one of those days! :) Not to worry though, I wrote a little bit about it at my homeschooling blog. Want to take a peek?

Do all for God's glory

The whole life of a Christian should be nothing but praises and thanks to God; we should neither eat nor sleep, but eat to God and sleep to God and work to God and talk to God, do all to His glory and praise.               Richard Sibbes                                                                               

                                       

 I've been trying to explain this to my kids for some time now. We talk about everything we do should be for God's glory. We talk about setting a good example for those around us and showing them Christ through our work. I still seem to have the same problems. They don't do their best. They forget. They purposely overlook something. I get frustrated, but then I realize, it's my job to train them.

What does MY attitude towards work look like? Would I rather sit around and read all day? Do I complain? Do I slack off or rush through something missing the little details? My children are looking to me to be the example. They need to be doing everything with praise to God. Bringing him glory when I clean up that mess one. more. time.
For example: My bedroom is still not done. I spent this weekend doing everything but finishing it up. Things pile up. In order to put together a sewing/craft nook for my little future homemakers I HAVE to finish my room. My middle daughter has waited and waited to pull out the sewing machine she got for her birthday... last September.
Everyone is waiting for me to move forward. I realize when I am sitting still not working (I'm not talking about my Be Still time with God) that I am setting the example for my children that my pleasure comes before the peace I should be bringing to my home. Why should I expect them to work for God and not self, when they don't see me model that?
Oops! I pray that I will be a better example moving forward!

When hubby is home..

Long ago picture! :) When hubby is home the computer is his. I'll be back tomorrow.

My menu plan system

Sigh, blogger is acting all crazy and typing in weird places. LOL I'll keep going though and just hope that it looks ok on the actual blog. 

When I plan my menu I plan for the whole month. I usually pull out my super cool calendar with big boxes. This way I can see what we have going on that day or week. I like to jot down meal ideas at the bottom of the box for that day. Yes, Mother's Day does say, "I better not be cooking!" LOL

 After I jot it down on my calendar I put each week's menu plan on a index card. This index card goes in my recipe box in front of all the recipes for the meals I have planned that week. When I'm done I just scoot it to the back. Easy peasy. GF means the recipe is actually in my green folder and has not been put on an index card yet.

Then I make up four weeks of grocery lists. On shopping day I grab the list, add anything I need and head to the store!

It's really made cooking a lot easier. We did this through April and it worked great. Another advantage I just discovered tonight is I can hand one of the girls a recipe card and have them make the meal. I am right by the kitchen so they can ask questions. I ask if they want me to help and sometimes they do but mostly they just let me go off and do something else. :) Great practice for them. Probably in the fall I will assign them a week to plan meals. Something I am definitely thinking about.

My day went well. I met my mom and my great aunt and had lunch with them and Miss Lily. We then headed to the Farmer's Market, but I did not have any cash so I have to go back Friday. My mom had some and she bought her some stuff. She kept offering to buy me some stuff, but I told her I would just wait. She's sweet like that. :)
I got my glasses fixed and then headed home. I worked in my garden a bit and watched the kids play outside. Then Karly made dinner. Now we are just relaxing until bed time. Lily conked out early. I hope that does not mean she'll wake up all rested in the middle of the night. She had a busy, busy day.

Hope you all had a great day!

Just realized it's homemaking link up day on Raising Homemakers. I think I will post this over there. If you have not taken advantage of this great resource please do!

In the home.

Face meet asphalt! :) Poor kid he fell off of his scooter the day before the party. He's still one of the cutest kids I know!!

Yesterday, I shared this blog post with my girls. They immediately ran to their room and began cleaning it again.  It looks so nice now. :)
Today, I plan to share this one. As I said before I want to share something about homemaking every day. I am also going to help out in a room today. Right now the kids are getting breakfast and finishing up room chores so I have a couple of minutes.
I also took some time to post to my homeschooling blog here. Today is the sixth anniversary of starting our homeschooling journey. I look back and I'm amazed at how far we've come, but also at how far we still need to go.
I will leave you with a quote about family. It is supposed to be by Winston Churchill, one of my favorite people in history. I'd never heard this attributed to him before so I can't promise for sure he said this, but I do love the quote!

“There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained”

Be blessed today as you work around your home!

Cleaning Lists

 What a fun and busy weekend we had! Saturday marked our six year anniversary of adopting our kids. We spent a fun day at the beach with family and friends! The baby was having a melt down when this picture was taken so she was not allowed to join! :) Anyway, this is the reason I did not get to list some of the articles I found that I will be sharing with my girls this week. I will see if I can get to that a little later today.
For now I just wanted to share some of the things that are going to help me teach my girls about being homemakers.

In our home I came up with a list for every room of the house. Each child has a room they are responsible for and it rotates every month.  These lists tell the kids which chore needs to be done and when. Daily is everyday, of course. Saturday chores can be an extra hour to two hours on Friday or Saturday. It's a deeper cleaning. Then I listed monthly chores that can be done each Saturday. For instance in the bathroom on the first Saturday of the month we take the cat box outside and hose it out and scrub it clean. Some rooms have 4-5 monthly projects some rooms have 1-2. In the kitchen on the fifth Saturday of the month (if there is one) we pull out the stove and fridge and clean behind it. Because there are only a few fifth Saturdays this does not get done very often, but it is also not a neglected chore.

I'm sorry that the pictures are blurry. I was rushing around taking them last week. I just downloaded them this morning so I did not know how blurry they were. :)
We've been using these lists for about 2 months now and it's working out well. I have seen some things that I need to tweak so I'll probably work on that this month.
Starting this week I will be working one on one with the kids in the rooms they are responsible for. I'll probably work with a different kid every day and keep doing that until I feel they can work more independently. Then I will make sure to check their work. While the jobs are being done around here they are not being done well. I want my kids to do everything they do for God's glory. Yes, even cleaning the bathroom. :) I think if my attitude were better about keeping our home up I would do a better job at it. I'm hoping that working with my kids in the coming weeks will help all of our attitudes improve.

I hope that you all are having a blessed day in your homes!

Secret Weapon

Disclaimer: These pics are not of my home... yet. :)

 I made an amazing discovery today. I was reading through my copy of Large Family Logistics (love this book by the way!), anyway I was reading and taking notes and realized that I was getting restless. You see, the same thing happens when I'm reading a good encouraging blog. I can't just sit on my blessed assurance while reading of someone else's productivity.

 I need to get up and clean something, cook something, teach something, make something.. I think I might have found a secret weapon. :) Mother's day is coming up and I think I will make a list of homemaking books that I've had my eye on, unless I get my real wish and hubby is able to take a day off to take me to the state homesechool convention at the end of the month.

I have been making lists and notes and coming up with all sorts of ideas to share with my family next week as we launch our new Giving My Girls the Advantage project. I'm so very excited! I've been praying and asking God to strengthen us and give us grace for next week. To really bless our week and give me wisdom. I've been led to many blog articles that I'm looking forward to sharing with my girls.I'll try to list some this weekend!

Giving my girls the advantage!

I remember a blog post I did not too long before Lily was born. I linked to this post from Lady Lydia (who I adore by the way!) The one line I took from that post that has stayed with me even until today is this:
"A woman with more than one daughter ought to have the nicest, cleanest, prettiest house. "
Here is the blog post I wrote way back then... :)
I need to get back on that wagon! I'm cheating my girls out of so much with my lackadaisical approach. They need me to teach them, to mentor them, to guide them. I am so grateful for ladies who have the gumption to put it out there and tell it like it is. For ladies who are willing to mentor and guide younger women.
Next week I will spend some time talking about what I am doing to give my girls more guidance. I'm excited. I also want to share Mrs. Lydia's writings with my girls so I think every morning I will pick one of her articles to share with them. This one will probably be the first one. :)
What are some ways you are training your young ladies to be keepers of their homes?

Share time

I had visions of blogging every day this week. I almost did not make it today. We are having a sprinkler system put in and our wifi provider marked the wrong spot and our wire got cut. They came out and fixed it this afternoon. This also means I have not had a lot of time to play with the new blogger format. Once again no pictures.
Hmm, we'll just use our imaginations again! Picture kids standing around laughing and surrounded by bubbles and flowers. :)

I really just wanted to share one of my favorite blogs with you today. This lady is so encouraging and I've learned a lot from her. She lives a simple life in Australia along with her husband. She is an older lady full of wisdom!
Down To Earth

I hope you all enjoy her blog as much as I do!

Do it with your own hands

Pretend like there is a lovely picture right here. It is a big garden with flowers and vegetables. In the background you can see a small grove of fruit trees and bushes. We might be using our imagination a lot if I can't figure out how to get my pictures to upload here. Of course at the rate I'm blogging I might be the only one using my imagination on this blog anymore. LOL


Just wanted to share a quote about gardens with you having just come in from the cool beautiful morning tending my little garden.


When I go into the garden with a spade, and dig a bed, I feel such an exhilaration and health that I discover that I have been defrauding myself all this time in letting others do for me what I should have done with my own hands.  ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gardening Chores

Yeah, this is supposed to have pics of my garden not our totally awesome trip to Legoland. We are still working in the garden. I'm on the hunt for some mulch right now. Free, preferably. I have been checking Craig's List and some other sites daily. I'm hoping to find some by this weekend, because I really want this project to be done THIS WEEKEND!
I figured out what I'm going to do to the front of the house to make it look all homey as well. But that's a project that might have to wait until the end of the month. We have two birthdays this month and our adoption day. We might actually have a beach party for adoption day. We usually just do some stuff together as a family, but the kids have not had birthday parties in a few years so this would give them a chance to hang out with friends.

Back to gardening chores.

I need to:
Mulch around my beds.

Plant my butterfly bushes and lantanas. (To attract the pollinators)

Finish getting the seeds or plants in.

It'll be a busy weekend if I get to it all! I have before pics, but I refuse to show them until I also have after pics. :)

So happy to be getting back in the groove!

Be blessed!

Oh glorious day!

It is Palm Sunday. Most of my house is very quiet. I'm going to be doing a few chores soon and listening to some praise music. It is a wonderful day. We went to the lake with some friends and had a cookout. Lily found some palm fronds and we talked a little about what Palm Sunday was. Our church is looking forward to a wonderful Holy week. Thursday night we will have the Seder supper and Sunday morning a wonderful Sunrise service followed by breakfast for Resurrection Sunday! I'm so looking forward to the Seder as we've never participated in one before.

Can you believe I forgot to take pictures of our meals this week? Well, I did. I don't even remember what we ate. LOL I am going to work on a menu and a budget for the month in a little bit so I should have some stuff to share next week. We have a yearly budget, but Roy and I decided to do a monthly one for a little while to see where we can make some more changes. I'm afraid since he stared working again my trying to be frugal has hit a snag. Something about not having money for so long and then having a little extra, well.. let's just say I was not a good home manager. :( But our God is a kind and forgiving God. Much as we discipline our children when they've done wrong so that the next time they can make different choices God has revealed to me my wrongs. I'm trying to make better choices now. :)

Well, I better sign off. This week I would like to blog about my garden, our meals, my new book of the week/month, and my goals journal. I am also trying to get my homeschooling blog going. If I do, I'll make sure to link to it here. I hope you all have a blessed week!

Fresh Bounty

Stopped by the farmer's market last week. YUM! So many good things. Came home with cantaloupes, watermelons, oranges, a few apples, tomatoes, cucumbers and a pineapple. I love, love, love that we have a bunch of farmer's markets in this area. The one I went to is not my favorite, but it is by far the biggest around here.

I have not gotten my garden in yet, and it's really sad, because spring is early and I'm missing a lot of good growing time. I never have a big bounty, but I learn something new every year. Good enough. :)

I'm going to try to remember to take pictures of our dinner this week so I can do another "What we ate this week" post. Lots of pretty fruits and veggies are on the menu for sure!

What's your favorite fruit or veggie?

Back to the Bible

Here we see the many faces of Miss Lily. :) I was trying to get a cute picture of her dress and she just kept making faces. LOL

So I am working on getting back into daily Bible reading. The other day in the shower I was praying (where else would you pray with 6 kids??) and I said that I missed my Bible time. I remembered all the joy I got out of Psalms and decided that's where I needed to start.
I started back in Psalms a couple of days ago. I read about 3 at a time and then have my prayer time. The chapters are usually short and are full of great stuff. It's so refreshing to remember that God is truly with me through it all.
This week has been hard for me. My due date was April 7, Easter weekend. The closer it gets the harder it is for me to just get out of bed in the morning. I should be anticipating a new little blessing this Easter and instead I am trying to make it through the days leading up to it. I so, hoped, I'd be expecting again by now, but so far nothing. I know God has another baby planned for me. I feel it in every fiber of my being.

Getting into Psalms again has been a good thing for me. It's like feeling God's arms around me every morning.

I hope ya'll are being blessed in some way! What book of the Bible leads you to your place of comfort the most?

Spring has sprung!

Here we can look at Springs of ole. The first picture is Easter of last year. The second picture is Spring 2008. So, many years ago! I'm thinking I need to duplicate picture number 2 with baby number 6 added in! How cute would Lily look at the top of that dog pile?? :) Yeah, I tried to resize it, but well.. here you have the extent of my computer expertise!
The weather outside today is lovely. DH and I were just talking about some yard projects we need to get done. One being a new sprinkler system. We also need to resod parts of our yard. The HOA is breathing down our necks. We don't really have the extra money, but we are finding it here and there. We don't use credit cards so it all has to come out of our pocket. Instead of resodding the whole yard we are planning to work in native plant areas here and there.

I am hoping to get out soon and pressure wash the front of our home. It needs a good spring cleaning.

My garden boxes are getting cleaned out and I just need to go get the new soil. I wanted to try composting this year, but I may have to wait. We are hoping to actually, really and truly put our house on the market sometime this year. We'll stay in town so hubby can finish up his schooling, but we would like to find a place with a bigger yard and maybe a little more room for our family.

It doesn't look like my prayers of adding to our family this year are going to happen, but who knows about next year!

We want to plant some flowering bushes around the house this spring as well. The kids are wild about butterflies and hummingbirds and we decided to check with our zoological garden people and they gave us some great ideas for growing native bushes to attract these guys. Last years wild flower experiment brought some bees and a few butterflies to the garden. This year we are hoping for more.

So many plans and such a small budget, but we'll do what we can with what we have! We only have a couple of short months to get the yard work done before the summer heat hits and we are trapped in our houses. In FL we get the fun of heat and humidity. It's downright stifling outside starting in June through about October.

Happy Spring, ya'll!!

Remember Christmas?

So, very, very long ago! LOL, I downloaded these pictures and when I decided I had time to blog tonight I thought you all would enjoy them! This is my husband and I on Christmas night. We are going to visit my mom in the hospital and I bought all of us Christmas shirts. This is the only one they had in his size. He's such a good sport. :)
Lily's Christmas dress. Isn't it sweet? She is growing up so much. She now brings me a paper and pen while we are doing school and starts yelling at me, "Schooo, schoo!" I have to write some letters or numbers that she colors or pretends to write. I'm not sure which one. :)
My girls in their sweater dresses. Karly got hers on our Sunday dress shopping expedition and the other girls wanted one as well. I was finished Christmas shopping, but then I saw these adorable dresses at Walmart and asked DH if they could have one more thing. He said sure. They were so excited!
Red and green flannel! You just can't go wrong. :) Look how much they are growing up. My favorite thing right now is watching Adrian, my older boy, with Lily. He is so compassionate and protective of her. He was probably one of my more self centered kids. Lily has shown us a new side to my little boy.
Kelsie is my little mama. She loves helping take care of Lily. She will be 12 in just a few short days. I still can't believe she was 4 when she showed up on my doorstep. This girl is a real blessing. She helped out so much while my mom was in the hospital. Some of you know that my oldest has some issues that mean we can't always trust her with responsibility. Kelsie stepped up and really filled a needed role in our home while I was away so much. A few weeks ago I rewarded her with a shopping trip. It was hard to get her to pick out stuff for herself. I just love her!

Well, that's a little bit about how we spent our Christmas and what the kids are up to! How are you all doing??

Happy New Year

Ya'll what a mess these past few months have been. A lot of personal stuff has gone on and we ended the year with my mom being very, very sick. She almost died twice. She went into the hospital on December 5 and stayed there until we transferred her to rehab on the 29th. She's on the mend now, but it was a terrifying time. October and November carried their own challenges. That's why I have not been around a lot.

I want to say I'll be back on more now, but with the way my life is going, there is really no telling. :) I do have a New Year's resolution that includes a heck of a lot less drama in my life this year. We'll have to see how that goes.

I do feel in my gut that there will be a lot of big changes this year. I have this twitchy excited feeling so hopefully they are good changes.

I'll be back for a little while tomorrow to talk about some changes around here. I do miss blogging even though I don't have a whole lot to say. I hope ya'll have a WONDERFUL New Year!