Work Life Balance Hacks for You Homeschool Mom

I am a paper calendar kinda gal. This is so cool! I love this idea, I do not like to program my phone or add events to program my calendar. Can't wait to try this.

Homeschool Mom's need to be constantly watching that calendar because things can get out of control!
What do you think? Anyone know what HACK means? lol...sometimes I'm slow  :O)

What a great suggestion from an M.D.

Ahhhh...A Day Of Rest...

Winter blahs got you down? 

Surprise the kids today on Valentines Day!!

Shut those school books,

Let that laundry pile grow higher,

Grab some pillows and blankets,

Head to the living room and camp out for the day!

Some days you just need to chill out and this is one of those!

Enjoy those little ones while they are still yet little,

Play games with your junior high kids,

Hang with your teenagers...

Let them all have cookies and hot cocoa for lunch,

If you have the fixin's create some fun treats like the guy below.

Homeschool Mom, you are doing great! Create memories that last a lifetime with your kids and 

crack the school books open tomorrow...

Moe

p.s. It's Valentines Day, grab a nice hot shower before hubby comes home and have the kids do a quick 15 minute pick up of the living room before dad gets home.

Amazing Craft Room Transformation and a Huge Weight Lifted!

Life can really get in the way of our hobbies and relaxing down time! In the midst of a crazy whole house remodel, being a 24/7/365 caregiver to my sweet Mother before her passing and being a  homeschooling Mom can really create havoc. After my Mother passed away we had 48 hours to clear out her apartment before the end of the month came, so pretty much we just boxed up everything and brought it into my craft room/blogging office. 

 We just kept piling (boxed & unboxed stuff) in more and more of my Mother's belongings into the craft room/blogging office. And even more and more got shoved in there, the furniture went into a storage unit. We had taken moving boxes and just emptied drawers, kitchen cabinets, nightstands, closets etc. With no time to waste we got it all done (rent of $2,500 was due in 48 hours!). I am not sure that I would exactly call it "done" because now the hard part comes, sorting, purging, bill paying, donating, cleaning, crying, aching, sorrow...yes, all those things came about and allowed for healing. 

I was thankful that the homeschool young man spent some time with me over Christmas break digging through things and sorting piles (Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Mom's Friends). I guess the more honest thing was the homeschool young man was my emotional support dog (hahaha, as I lovingly referred to him). He was my pack mule, hauling 30 gallon black trash bags out to the garbage, putting the 30 gallon white trash bags full of keep stuff to another room, hauling the XL moving boxes from U-Haul (BTW those are AWESOME an only cost around .30¢ each!) full of donation items out to a waiting truck and most importantly hugging Mom (me) when I found something that was special to my Mom and I would start crying. Below is a picture of my Mom with her favorite stuffed animal and buddy CHEEZE HEAD.

We got rid of the Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Give to Mom's Friends, and Trash in short time. It was the tedious sorting that became an exhausting process: what to keep, what else to purge, how long to keep important documents etc. Fast forward to life happening, my dear father-in-law became ill on again and off again and he passed away several months after my Mother did. So again began the process of Keep, Not Sure, Donate, Giveaway, Send to Siblings, Trash, Give to Dad's Friends. My mess in the craft room/blogging office sort of got put on hold for emotional reasons and life happening. 

With this death there was a farm and farm house that we had spent every Christmas of our dating/married life (all but one in which we went to my parents home in Texas that year with our newly adopted baby), we spent every Easter and every Thanksgiving in that house, my husband and all his siblings grew up there, all the grand kids and great-grand kids played there. Here is a photo of the homeschooled young man with his dear Grandpa teaching him about gardening. (sorry it's an old faded picture from a wall calendar that I made for all the grandparents many moons ago).

We enjoyed the beautiful views of the property from the swing, hubby and I spent hours of our dating years and early years of marriage in the machine shed working on Dune Buggy's. There was all that to clean out too, a huge farm machine shed, two car garage and a full basement, not to mention the 5 bedroom house. The siblings all worked together so well to get things under control, purged and sorted. The Lord blessed with the home and property selling very quickly, fast enough to shock everyone in a down housing market!

Moving on into the next phase of my craft room/blogging office clean up, it was daunting to dig through and sort everything. I would start sorting for a few hours and feel like I had made ZERO progress and just made more of a mess of things. I would stop for a few days/weeks and then start again, only to do a few hours, again more of a mess and feeling as though nothing was getting accomplished. Construction dust was all over from our recent remodeling project. It was just a mess and it was mixed in with all my blogging work piles and craft supplies. Something had to be done!

I truly felt that this was just a lost cause. While surfing the Internet the next day I came across a local professional organizing company. This was not just Jane Doe who likes to organize, this was the real deal!!! These people deal with true hoarding situations, situational clutter, bug infested properties,  death clean-outs, real estate staging, they help busy Mom's and kids with tons of toy clutter, and just general home and office organizing. I kept their number for a month or so, thinking, I can do this myself, why pay someone; that is so silly and frivolous to do!

Well, I finally made the call and hired the company for 5 hours, the Lord blessed my efforts of giving in to asking for help and I got 2 organizers for the price of 1. They were training a new gal and she came as a free apprentice. What a blessing! They were so down to earth and non-judgmental. We laughed and had a really good time! It was like having my girlfriends over for a decluttering party. 

You would not believe what we got done in that amount of time. It was scary though, they had a totally different game plan and approach than I was using in my past attempts at getting this mess under control. We started by emptying out the ENTIRE ROOM into my dining room!! So, you could not walk in my dining room, I kept thinking hubby is going to come home for dinner and freak out because the other room had exploded out into the dining room! 

Deep breath here, we then wiped down all the surfaces in the room, walls, windows, floors, baseboards etc. Then decided what furniture would go back in, wiped it all down, placed it back in the room. Then we went item by item and decided if it was TRASH, KEEP, DONATE, NOT SURE. They brought these huge black construction size trash bags and they even had cute shopping bags with handles for the donate items. We also utilized one of my all time favorite things; the curb side FREE pile (everything disappeared within 30 minutes of being drug out of the house!)

See how the room is really shaping up? I'm tellin' ya, call a professional, don't be embarrassed, do it NOW!!! CALL NOW OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! CALL NOW! 

I have a clean, empty, uncluttered surface to craft on, to scrapbook on, to do whatever I want on!

Really, you must look past the Bob The Builder blue & yellow paint, the homeschooled young man used this room when he was a little boy and hubby has yet to get around to painting this...LOL. So I just go with it! 

We incorporated a bunch of my late Mother's craft bins and craft items in along with my scrapbooking items. Plus, I had a ton of stuff leftover from teaching crafting classes and that all fit into these bins and the organizers labeled all my bins. They gave me ideas on how to store things more effectively. They hauled out all the trash bags for me and they hauled away all the donation items too! I was just left with this....

All my goodies had a home, the remaining items that I decided to keep from my Mother's stuff were put into a tote for me to go through when I was ready at a later date. The organizers found a lamp I was not using and they set it up, with an outlet strip (that was found in a drawer) for easy access to plug in my crafting toys, they organized all the bins, drawers and cabinets. They put together a display tower that I had in storage and got everything set up and ready for use! I did not need to buy anything, we just repurposed things that we came across around my house and/or in my Mom's stash.

All my cardstock, scrapbooking papers, rubber stamps, inks and ink pads, embossing folders, ribbon, glue, scissors and all that stuff was all organized into these bins (from my Mom and my stash). THEN THEY LABELED IT ALL!!!!!

In less than 5 hours....that is right, we were not even finished with the 5 hours yet! I know, totally unbelievable. So, they asked me if there was anything else that I wanted organized since we still had time left. I was just numb, I could not believe that we had done all this work already, after I had tried and tried to do it myself and just would give up after a few hours.

Onward we moved to some cabinets in my dining room and they straightened up our homeschool supplies, books, my junk cabinet (the one with hammers, screwdrivers, light bulbs, etc), then moved to the living room (which had been filled with boxes of my Mom's stuff and my craft stuff that I had started sorting and failed at). Now that the living room was uncluttered and the former items that were in the boxes were now beautifully organized into the above photos, the organizers then staged my living room furniture and rehung my drapes so they looked nice and fancy with crisp folds (like in a magazine!)

And then, just like that, it was time for us to say our goodbyes, we hugged and they left. With all the trash gone, no need for me to worry about dragging the donations somewhere; they were gone too. All that I was left with were a few cute bags with handles that were going to friends (homeschool blessings I passed on to some friends) and a small box containing gifts that needed wrapped for Christmas.

Praise the Lord! It was sure hard to make that call for help, that first step is always a killer one! However, my family is so blessed and so am I.

I left to get myself the best gluten free pizza in town and waited for my husband to arrive home. I got a text right away saying "Great job!" The homeschooled young man came home and told me that the house looked really great! So I would say it was a win-win situation and well worth the money!

Below I have included a few links (I received nothing in return for posting these links) for you to get the help you need. My clutter was deemed as "Situational Clutter" due to the deaths and home remodel that contributed to my clutter.

National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals
The Institute for Challenging Disorganization
Find My Organizer

This has been so freeing and such a burden has been lifted. God is a God of order and not of clutter and disfunction. I'm less tired now when I am at home, I don't dread my craft room/blogging office anymore. Lift your burden and don't be afraid, call a professional (cleaning ladies and maid services are not trained in handling clutter) and get it done!

Moe

How To Make Your Homeschool Day Easier?

An easier homeschool day? How can it be?

 

Another great blog post from www.hsclassroom.net 10 Ways To Make Your Homeschooling Days Easier

I am stealing several of these ideas!!

 

I went to the doctor and here is what I was told

Enjoy your weekend!

A Song To Get You Through Those Rough Patches In Life

Casting Crowns song "Already There"

I heard this song on the radio way back in February, it was so fitting for my life at that time and even now. I had been to the doctor that day and I jotted down some lyrics from the song, I had no idea who the band was or what the name of the song was. I lost the scrap of paper and just found it today. I Googled the words and here is the song. Casting Crowns "Already There" It has so much meaning to me today, just as it did that day in February when I first heard it on the radio. I just bought this song from Itunes.
The words are so true, God is already there, at the end of our lives and HE knows exactly what we will endure, even before we know.
 
Stop by my blog

http://adoptivemomhomeschoolinganonlychild.blogspot.com/

The Glory of Sanctification In the Homeschool Experience!

http://www.iche.org/blog/3714/04-21-2013/glory-sanctification-homeschool-experience#comment-746
This article was wonderful and such an encouragement. Check it out.
Moe

Can Anyone Else Relate To This?

Is it just me or can an anyone else relate to this?
I was really encouraged last night by Todd Wilson's talk on The Old Schoolhouse Expo. This is one of his cartoons that I find so funny! We have both of his calendars too and get a laugh out of them over and over again.

And yes, I often find that I have done the last load of laundry, only to walk out to the laundry room and find full bins again!  ARGH!!  But it's job security  :O)

Have a great weekend!

Stop by my blog

http://adoptivemomhomeschoolinganonlychild.blogspot.com/

Book Review TOO MUCH STUFF

Too Much stuff
by Kathryn Porter

Well this book was a real eye opener for me. So much of what I have read before on this subject talked about being born a certain way; organized, messy, etc. Now I see that all those labels are just excuses for the way we act.

The book is set up for general reading or a group study format with questions at the end of the book for each chapter to learn more and for reflection.

Not once during the reading of Porter’s book did I feel shameful, beat up or paralyzed. It’s easy to be overwhelmed when reading a book on the topic of clutter, but Too Much Stuff made me look at my “stuff” in a whole new light. No Rough Tote or Sterelite container was ever going to solve my clutter problem! Our 12 year old son went through the book with me. Unfortunately he has picked up my clutter habit over the years. Reading the book together has been a turning point for both of us . My son would give a shout out at the start of each chapter as to who had what clutter issue, him or me. We use to love to go to yard sales, now every time we pass by one he yells out

“CLUTTER SALE!” Once while we were traveling we saw a really neat looking shed with collectibles and such for sale. We both wanted to go in and look around, but he said “Mom, I really want to go in there, but I think that place is full of clutter!”

A quote from the book that has stuck with me is, “But this is why: when you cling to your possessions, you hoard your heart from others. You bury it in the stuff around you. Loved ones believe the stuff is more important to you than they are. They wish you could love them as much as you love the clutter.” WOW! That statement says so much.

Thanks to Kathryn Porter and Too Much Stuff, my son and I are now official CLUTTER Warriors. We still struggle with “Drop it” and “Leave it,” but it’s coming along.

Too Much Stuff will help you to answer some of life’s nagging questions such as:

“Can I get rid of gifts that loved ones give me?” “How do I get paper clutter under control?” “What collections can I keep?” “Why can’t I keep a clean house?”

“How can I get beyond the saboteurs?”

Check out Kathryn Porter’s book Too Much Stuff: Winning the War Against Clutter

published by Beacon Hill Press.

As a side note here, my son and I were able to toss out, give away and sell more than 30 bags of our clutter!! We have a way to go, but it’s been a very freeing experience. The hardest part of all of this was letting go of cards and letters from loved ones. I finally tossed out all the condolence cards that were sent to my parents upon the death of my sister Coreen 43 years ago. I was a toddler when she died suddenly and for me those cards were the only tie I had left to her. But really what were they doing for me? Nothing but taking up space. For my son, it was gifts. He kept every little thing that was given to him, for fear of offending the giver if they asked him about the gift. He even kept little trinket items. He is learning that if someone gives you a gift, you can do whatever you please with it. If you can’t use it, then pass it on to someone who can be blessed by it. It’s a daily struggle for both of us, especially walking in the door from a long day and just doing the “Drop it” and “Leave it” cycle.

I hope that you will be blessed by reading this book and I would love to hear how you have grown through reading the pages of Too Much Stuff.
Moe

I received a copy of this book from the author in order to write the review.

"Is this drug corn free?"

It's one of those weeks already. I've been to the allergist again due to a corn reaction, I was told to get some allergy meds. But of course the allergist could not tell me which ones to take because she had no idea if it was corn free or not.

Fast forward to the pharmacist and guess what? He could not help me either. So both told me to start calling the manufactures of these drugs. Well here is just one response for you, it's pretty much a repeat of all the other companies responses I got.  Lets just say I am trying to "Be angry and sin not."

"While we perform comprehensive testing on the more common ingredients that may provide an allergic reaction such as gluten, nuts etc., unfortunately, it is impossible to test for every ingredient and we cannot guarantee that our products are corn-free, since the source of an ingredient may change from time to time. Some of the ingredients in the product may have been purchased by us from outside distributors and we cannot say with absolute certainty that cross contamination with this ingredient did not occur at their facilities. We understand how difficult this can be for you and hope we can suggest an alternative product should you remain concerned about the possibility of an allergic reaction.

We suggest speaking to your health care provider as he/she is more familiar with your allergy related reactions/symptoms. Your your physician is really best suited to respond to any concerns that you might have about any of the product's listed ingredients and the potential for an allergic reaction, based upon your individual sensitivities. If you decide to try the product and you are dissatisfied for any reason, please contact us and we would be happy to refund you the purchase price.

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Companies fully comply with all regulations on ingredients in the countries in which our products are sold. Wherever regulatory authorities have set limits on certain ingredients, our product formulations either meet those limits or contain a lesser amount of the regulated ingredient. We are committed to maintaining the high standards of quality and safety that have been our hallmark for generations of consumers.Consumer Care Center"

Thank you for NOTHING!
So here is the response that I sent to them.

"Just to let you know I contacted you because my allergist and my pharmacist could not help with the ingredients list, so they both told me to contact the manufactures directly to find out what products would be safe for me. Since you make the product, you should know what is in it.

Thank you,"

Some days I feel like I'm at the end of my rope and I just can't go on. I had a nurse argue with me yesterday about whether or not one of my RX drugs contained corn. She flat out told me that there is NO WAY that X drug contains corn. Well she is wrong and I plan on photo copying the ingredient list that I have from my pharmacist and giving it to her. Cornstarch is one of the main ingredients in the prescription! I think that cornstarch is CORN! lol  Am I wrong? Please, please correct me if I am wrong.

Yes, it has been an evil corn week here, maybe even month   :O)

Have a great gluten free, corn free, dairy free, homeschooling, only childing week!!

Moe

Getting It All Done........"I'm behind in our homeschool!"

I know many have contacted me to say that they are struggling with getting the school year finished up and worrying that they will never make it to the next grade level because they are behind. Remember you are NEVER behind in the homeschool, in most states we do not have to follow the public school calendar, which is a blessing since we homeschool year round. I do remember our 2nd year of homeschooling (we had homeschooled preschool and then again in the 4th grade). I would dream that our son was a big tall boy STILL in the 4th grade......lol. I could never get him out of the 4th grade in my dreams, we did tons of school and he was still a 4th grader! It was now October of the following school year and he was still a 4th grader in my dreams. lol. We did end up finishing the 4th grade right on target, but those dreams haunted me day and night.

If you think you are behind, sit down with a calendar and your student books. Look through and see exactly where you are, you've had to make some progress unless you have been laying in bed with a pillow over your head for 9 months!  LOL.  Glance through what is left, most of it could be review, look and see if there are any review items that your child really needs, if they did well on all the areas move forward, skip the review. If they struggled with factoring trees or roman numerals or multiplications tables, (or whatever math you are working on that year) take those review pages and work on them. Work on any new materials and then move on. Don't get bogged down with what the curriculum tells you needs to be done, work with your child on what he needs. I know a lot of material has tons of review days before a test, if your child has that materials down pat, move forward with the test. I usually ask if he is ready for the test and he will either say "YES" or he might say, can we work on a few more problems in the area of XYZ."  Or "Would you go over this section with me again?" So in some areas you can move through several lessons in a day. Also who says school must be M-F from 8:20am-3:00pm? Sometimes we will work on stuff in the evenings, a few math problems or some reading. Some of our best school times have been snuggled on the couch on a Sat or Sun afternoon doing spelling words or working on sentence structure. Learning is what you make of it, if you make it out to be drudgery, then the kids will see it has a hardship.

Enjoy your time with your kids, you only get 12 school years with them and that goes by pretty fast!

Feeling down & out? This is just what you need!

This might take a minute to load. Have a wonderful week!! Moe

Thankfulness during the Pantry Challenge?

As I think about being thankful for the surplus I have and how I am able to be wise in using it, the 10 leprous men come to mind that Jesus healed.

Luke 17:12-13 ^12"And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: ¹³And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. ¹⁴And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. ¹⁵And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, ¹⁶And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan."

A couple of key things here, 10 guys with leprosy (some sort of nasty skin disease that is painful) and only 1 guy says "THANK YOU to Jesus for healing him", only 1 guy fell down and gave thanks and praise to Jesus, and that 1 guy was a Samaritan! Which is very key because "Samaritans were hated by the Jews as part of a complex and ancient racial prejudice." In James MacDonalds book Lord, Change My Attitude he says it like this

"The point is, no one has an acceptable excuse for ungratefulness.Everyone can make the choice to give thanks and acknowledge the goodness and the grace of God. Sadly, however, only a small fraction of the human population ever personally thanks God for His grace."

Have you taken time to thank God for His saving grace? For the things that you have in your life? Good things and things that you suffer for? Take time today to thank God and pick up a good read. Lord Change My Attitude Before It's Too Late by James MacDonald with forward by Dr. Erwin Lutzer. Our 11 year old son read this book first and then told me that he thought I should read it. I have been wowed by many things it the book. The most captivating so far is the fact that many of us, including me (gasp!) are living in the 'wilderness' like the Israelites. If you are a Child of God, you have it all (not meaning stuff either) yet you may not realize it and suffer for it.

Get out of the wilderness!
Moe

Craving An Egg Roll & recipe

So today I was craving egg rolls, homeschool mom of a 7th grader and public school math teacher mom know exactly the egg rolls I was craving!

 "We open: what you want!"  lol.

So I called up my mom and she got my Filipino SIL's recipe, though SIL uses wheat wrappers, I had to use rice wrappers. I miss her egg rolls too.

Here is the first batch and how they turned out.

Slightly burnt.........lol  Nope they are not as pretty as our fav' Chinese hang out back in the gluten days, so I tried again.

Well this batch was mushy, but looks better than the burnt one next to it. I gave up, whimpered away, cried my eyes out and posted to my new favorite gluten-free, casein-free hang out. One of the dear ladies there Theresa recommended trying 2 wrappers instead of just one. I was done for though.

My dh had just come home from work, we chatted, shared our woes from the day and I was revived. I came back in and tried the double wrapper method. Here are the results.

Much better!! Again not as pretty as the Chinese place, but they were YUMMY!! Dh said the that the recipe is a keeper.

The recipe is super easy!!

Brown a pound of ground beef, pork, chicken or turkey with an chopped onion, drain any grease. Then add your choice of veggies, I added a can of La Choy GF veggies with baby corn, bean sprouts, bamboo shoots and stuff like that, I chopped a carrot up and added some chopped cabbage. Add a few tablespoons of GF soy sauce (or make your own if you can't do soy), salt and pepper to taste. Toss all this together until warm. Get grease ready and use rice wrappers, dip them in water for about 15 seconds, drain. Add 2 tablespoons of meat mixture to the center and fold forward, then fold in ends and then fold forward again. Fry in oil until crispy and not burnt (like I did).

Now that my craving has passed I can relax, dishwasher is running, I've got one in the bathtub sleeping and one in front of the DVD watching The Sound of Music (a class assignment).

Please let me know if you make these, share how they turned out.

This entire fiasco made me think on Proverbs 3:5-7 "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths."

Guess what? I slept in today and did not start my day with my Lord, would my attitude have been different if I had spent some time with Him? I think so.

Are  you busy? Get in the Word.

Are you tired? Get in the Word.

Are you bummed? Get in the Word.

The book of John is a wonderful place for you to start.

How is your homeschooling going this year?

When stressful days come a knockin', momma has got to figure out how to get a rockin'!

Here is my best tip for you on those tough homeschool days.

Always keep a pocket new Testament Bible in the bathroom drawer. Escape to the bathroom, AKA Teacher's Lounge. Read a few verses of scripture, cry your eyes out, wash your face and grab a fresh cup of coffee. Kiss the kids and move on...............

Moe