Shocked and feeling guilty.

I had a visitor to my blog the other day who commented that she found me through the homeschool blog awards.  Not really knowing what she was talking about, I googled it and was absolutely shocked to find I'd been nominated in two categories- Best Super Homeschool Mom blog and Best Crafts, Plans, and Projects blog.  My initial reaction was, "Why?"  I was really shocked.  Then I began feeling guilty.  I've obviously misled somebody.  Believe me, I am NOT super.  AT ALL.  Just ask my husband and kids.  I'm usually running on adrenaline and running behind.  I almost never get everything accomplished that I want to in a given day.  I gave up making lists years ago.  They're just too darn frustrating.  Of course, I'm honored to be nominated and I admit it was a bit of a thrill, but I definitely do not belong in the same category with some of those awesome ladies like Ann at A Holy Experience and Kimberly at Raising Olives, two women who have inspired and challenged me to take my mothering up a notch.  I'm not voting for me, that's for sure!

And as for crafty, I'm like the least crafty person I know.  I'm really challenged in that area, but I do love a good project!  I decided since someone out there considers me a project blog that I'd add some  of my past organization projects to the sidebar.  I think I crave organization because I'm naturally so disorganized.  Again, just ask my husband and kids.  If I don't have my keys in the key bowl, I'll hunt all over the house frantically and end up being late. 

So if you love organizing and haven't seen some of my little projects before, I encourage you to check them out and give me your feedback.  I'm always on the lookout for new ideas of how we can better streamline our lives.

And whoever nominated me, thank you.  You're too sweet and I really hope I haven't made myself appear to be more than I really am.  I'm grateful for the grace of God that covers my sin and for my incredible family that takes me as I am and never keeps a record of my wrongs.  And for the record:  I almost NEVER have everything organized at once.  Wouldn't it be cool if my house looked like all the pretty pictures on my blog ALL THE TIME?!

Taming the Toys Part 2: the upstairs playroom

When we designed our upstairs playroom 6 or 7 years ago, I begged BigD to make a half-wall of built-ins on the other side of the stairs.  I thought we would use them for toys while the kids were younger and for books when the kids got older.  (I didn't know we would have both younger and older kids at the same time.)  I found these baskets at Hobby Lobby that fit the space just perfectly.  We have 8 large baskets and 6 small baskets for toys. 

After finding pictures online of the different kinds of toys we have, I had them laminated and fixed onto the baskets using velcro adhesive.  (See pics from the process.)  I also wrote the name of the toy underneath the picture. 

My hope is that our 5 and 3 year olds will be better able to put their toys away where they belong now.  It should also be helpful for when friends are over and want to help pick-up, but don't know what goes where.

There's one large miscellaneous basket for toys that don't fit nicely into any of the other categories.

You know what's even more awesome than having everything look nice and clean?  Our kids now realize what great toys they have.  Prince had forgotten about all our blocks!  He had so much fun building and then when it was time to move onto something else he loaded up his basket with blocks and slid the basket back into its slot.  That made me very happy.

Lucie had fun playing dollhouse.  The basket of toys she's playing with goes in another built-in that's exclusively devoted to dollhouse stuff. 

This may be Calvin's first time upstairs.  He had fun hangin' out with his big bubba.

Taming the Toys Part I

My mom was telling me just the other day what an organizational genius I am.  I told her that was funny because my  husband was just telling me how chaotic our house seemed.  Somewhere between my organizational genius and our chaotic house there must be a breakdown. Or maybe that's just life in a house with 8 chaos makers people.

Some members of the family are more adept at spreading chaos than others. 

I can't remember where I saw this, but at the time I thought what a great idea!  I found pictures of our most common toy categories online and printed them out with our color printer.  I also wrote the name of the toy under the pictures for the upstairs, but not for Lucie's room (she can't read). 

I had them laminated then used velcro adhesive to stick them to the toy baskets.  This way I can change labels from basket to basket if I want or even remove a label and add a different one. 

Lucie's toy chaos

We threw away a few things and gave away about a bag of toys and books.

I know it's still too much stuf for this little room, but at least it's organized now.  And I'm happy to report that Lucie now knows what she has and where everything goes.  (The blue basket on the bottom shelf is for miscellaneous toys and I didn't want to confuse her with a picture.)

Tomorrow we hope to tackle the upstairs playroom.  I think we have 12 baskets of toys up there.

Teamwork

We all know the secret of teamwork.  Many hands make light work. 

You can always tell when Twinkle Toes has her hand in something.  She's so creative.  Her snowman is in the background with the hat.  Measle's and Prince's is in the foreground. 

Anyway, this post isn't really about making snowmen.  I've been very spoiled to have help with my house.  We've had a wonderful housekeeper who has actually been more wonderful than housekeeper, but anyway she's been a big help to us through the years.  Her life has gotten crazy and unpredictable lately and she hasn't been able to help us very often... at all.

Big D came home from work last night and decided he was up for some cleaning.  What's funny is the house didn't even look dirty, but he knew it was, down deep.  The stuff I never have time to get to!  I manage to keep clean clothes in the kids' closets and keep everything pretty straightened up and the kitchen clean, but the other stuff has to wait for project days.  Well, Big D had a major project day last night.  He used the handy dandy vacuum with attachments to clean in all the corners and even braved the sofa!

Isn't that terrible?!  We actually dig around in the sofa about once a week looking for the remote, but Big D lifted the back cushions up and scooped everything to the front.  I knew all those pencils couldn't have been disappearing into thin air!  Yuck! 

Then he emptied out my computer desk and hutch and filled an entire 50 gallon trash can with junk!  Let me repeat- I had 50 gallons of stuff in my computer hutch.  I know it's hard to believe.  I'm very skilled at cramming things into tight spaces.  And I keep everything computer-related.  Software, instruction manuels, cords, scanners (this was one of the original prototypes- I got it in college!), scanner accessories, camera card readers (to cameras we lost long ago), modem and router boxes, EVERYTHING.  I couldn't even watch.  I just kept telling myself that if I really needed those things then I would have been using them on a regular basis.  I'm one of those people who thinks I should hold onto anything that I might want to use someday.  It feels great to be purged.  Hopefully I won't need anything that ended up in the trash can.

I'm grateful to have a husband who doesn't expect me to do everything on my own.  He knows how busy I stay homeschooling the kids and running the house.  And he knows that I just don't have the heart for some jobs.  Thanks, Big D!

You would never know...

...that this was my sewing room earlier today. 

Now, it's our dining room once more!

Notice the colorful mis-matched cloth napkins.  Let's call my table ecclectic rather than garish, shall we?
Remember how messy this room was earlier today?  So, where did all that sewing stuff go?

Tucked away in my "server".  There's a place for everything and everything is in its place.  Just the way I like it : ).

I slid the sewing machines to the side of my storage closet.  It's still technically a "walk-in closet" so I think this will work.

Now to get some sleep.  Good night All.

Weekends are for projects!!!

I awoke yesterday with one thought in mind:  clean out my storage room.  The before pictures are so embarassing.  I'm fortunate my family hasn't turned me into Hoarders:  Buried Alive, I hear they're always looking...

I clean this closet out about once a year, but old habits die hard and somehow the storage room quickly fills back up again.  As you can see, we couldn't even walk in there.  When it got so bad that the kids were risking their lives just to bring me a can of tomato paste, I knew I had to do something.  Check out the after shots. 

I drastically reduced our gift bag stockpile.  Hopefully, this way I'll actually use them!  And I do still have a few framed works of art and other assorted pictures on the floor, but I hung up five from the stash and gave away a few more.

This was a "quick" clean meaning I left the upper two, out of reach, shelves as they were.  I'll tackle holiday storage, well... around the holidays.  I accomplished my mission, which was to make our storage room safe and usable once more.

The "quick" clean didn't actually go that quickly.  It turned out that my little storage room project led to mini projects all over the house.  Each item that I took out had to either find a new home or find its way to the garbage or giveaway pile.  And often the items that found a new home meant rearranging other items in that location.  For instance, I took three large pictures from the floor of the storage closet and hung them in the "office", or the room formerly called Daddy's Special Room which has since become Mommy's special room, aka blogging headquarters.  Of course, the walls were not bare, so that meant taking pictures off the wall and finding new homes for all of them!  I like how it turned out, though.

I had to carefully angle this shot so as not to show my paper monster lurking on the coffee table.

 
The picture that this cheerful oil painting replaced was a truly ugly work of art.  What an oxymoron!  I don't know what I was thinking, but I bought this papyrus in Cairo years ago and had it framed when I came home.  I'm sure the heiroglyphic writing means something special or I wouldn't have bought it, but I've since forgotten, which pretty much means it's a meaningless ugly work of art.  Anyway, I'll probably move it to a less visible part of the house.  (Notice I didn't show you any pictures of my dining room, otherwise known as the room right next to the storage room.  Let's just say it's next on my to do list.)

And lest you think this is all I did over the weekend...

I wandered into Big D's garden to see if there was anything to pick and came back with this.

After I took this picture, my husband actually brought in two more butternut squashes and about a pint of green beans.

We chopped the bellpeppers and froze them spread out on cookie sheets then placed them into pint size freezer bags in 1.5 cup increments.  Big D cut and flash froze the green beans.  I cooked three of the butternuts, scooped out the yummy part and drained it in the fridge for a couple of hours before freezing it in individual bags for baby food.

You'll just have to trust me that this is a freezer door newly stocked with garden veggies : ).

I also canned 8 pints of dill pickles this weekend and told Big D it was the last time I was doing dill pickles... EVER.  It seemed lots more complicated and definitely took longer than doing bread and butter pickles, which we like just fine.

And finally to finish the weekend, Twinkle Toes and I made homemade pop tarts tonight.  I adapted Laura at Heavenly Homemaker's recipe.  We made a raspberry jam infused frosting for them, too, and decided to scoop it into a ziploc so that tomorrow morning we can just snip the corner and the kids can squeeze the desired amount onto their pop tarts.  Cool, huh?

Uh, you can probably tell that the chefs sampled their creation.  We felt it was our duty.

Well, it was a profitable weekend.  Now back to school tomorrow.  What did you do this weekend?  Any projects?

Tame the paper monster? 4 Moms Discuss Large Family Logistics

Paper monster?  Is she talking to me?

Oh, and don't mind that cook top in the corner there.  This is just its temporary location.  The paper stack I've been working on off and on for about two months now.  Ok, so it's been more "off" than on. 

Kim Brenneman in Large Family Logistics suggests assigning a certain day of the week to tackle the major jurisdictions of our lives, such as laundry, kitchen duties, etc.  I have to admit, the idea of having an "office day" never crossed my mind.  Maybe that's why my "office" looks like it does!  I've been inspired by Kim to finally tame this paper monster.  Umm- if I don't get back to you, be sure and ask me how it's going.

To a certain degree, I think assigning a day for particular tasks is intuitive.  For instance, I run errands on the days that I have help at home, such as my husband's day off.  That way I can take one or two kids along for special mom time, but not have to tow everyone all around town.  And certainly, Sundays are different around here.  We prepare for worship before church by saying some Psalms together and praying.  We eat with my family.  We have worship with two other churches one Sunday night a month.  And last Friday was my "kitchen day" and it just about finished me off.  Maybe if I consistently spent one day each week on the kitchen, I wouldn't ever get so far behind.  It does feel good to get ahead in the meals department!

A gardening day?  What's that?  Big D does the gardening around our house and maybe that's why we have vegetables coming out our ears and one big flowerless flower bed.  I know I need to work on it.  Should I really give it a day?  I think I just might.

Check out how the other 4 Moms are implementing Kim's ideas from Large Family Logisitics.

Kimberly at Raising Olives

Connie at Smockity Frocks

Kim at In a Shoe

The Headmistress

Kim of Large Family Logisitics

Not Back to School Blog Hop- Schoolroom

I know I unveiled our schoolroom just a few weeks ago, but I thought I'd re-post as part of the Not Back to School Blog Hop.

I love that our schoolroom is right in the middle of our house.  It's next to the kitchen and the living room.  Most of the members of our family can usually be found in one of these three rooms.  The lower cabinets hold curriculum not currently in use. 

These shelves hold our current year Sonlight books and Instructor Guides. 

More homeschool books.  I have the books organized by category in these brown shelves and the yellow cabinet has our Sonlight books from previous cores.

The cubbies house the kids individual subjects like Math, Wordly Wise, and Greek.  Each kid has one or two cubbies and a couple are shared.

My first... and last day in the kitchen!

When I say "day in the kitchen", I mean ENTIRE day!  We finally broke down and bought a new AC unit.  So, I thought to myself, today, your first day with central AC all summer, would be a great day to make a bunch of dinners to freeze.  With this idea in mind, I headed to the grocery store with only Calvin in tow at 6:30 am.  It was 9:30 pm when I finally finished cleaning the kitchen.  Maybe I'm just a wimp, but I was hurting.  Bad.  Oh, and I was sweating a lot, too.  Every time I checked the thermostat it said 78 ir 79, and that was in the living room.  I bet it was about 85 in the kitchen where I was working.  I called my husband at one point and said it seemed really hot to me.  He said to call the AC guy and turns out our unit had frozen over and wasn't working!!  No wonder I was hot.  It was a scorcher yesterday and I spent all day in the kitchen cooking with no AC!  In retrospect, not a good idea.  Anyway, I got a lot accomplished thanks to the book Fix, Freeze, Feast.

I love that this book includes re-heating labels that can be copied and affixed to the freezer meals.

When I normally think "freezer meal", I think casserole.  I'm just so tired of transferring frozen block-of-ice casseroles into our oven for 2 + hrs in order to enjoy a break in the kitchen.  This book has lots of ways to use the freezer to plan ahead. Sometimes the meat is cooked and sometimes it isn't.  I don't know why, but I'm just happy to follow the directions of somebody who knows what they're doing!  It feels so good to have so many meals planned, even though I will have to do a few last minute things on the evening we eat each dinner.

 

Here's what I put away yesterday:

3 X Chicken a la King- sauce with chicken and mushrooms and also chopped bell pepper.
2 X Cashew chicken stir fry- Raw, cut chicken in marinade with veggies and cashews in separate bags.
3 X Ana's pork chops- Our local grocery store had a by one get one free on these yesterday.  The chops are raw in marinade- ready to thaw and throw on the grill. 
1 X Sticky Ribs- Actually I made two and we at the other one last night!  They were finger licking good!  Boneless ribs in marinade, ready to thaw and cook.
About 30 Beef and bean burritos, individually wrapped.  I'm hoping these will be good for an easy lunch option.  Oh, and I made my own re-fried beans.  Actually, I made non-fried smashed pinto beans.  It was my first time to work with real beans.  Measle was my official smasher.  (We don't have a food processor, nor do I think we need one with a Measle around.)

I didn't get it all finished.  I still have 6 lbs of hamburger meat in the fridge for making 60 meatballs.  I'm not looking forward to that.  Maybe tomorrow :).

Putting Together our Sonlight Instructor's Guide Binders

First off, Sonlight does such a great job of putting together their IGs that you really don't have to do anything with them.  You can use them exactly as they come, like I did our first year.  Being the obsessive control freak that I am, I just had to tweak them.  I do think I've learned from last year's mistakes, though.  I'm not sure what possessed me to move all the study guide notes from the appendices last year up to each week where they would first be used.  Maybe it was the pregnancy hormones.  Maybe it was my crazy friend (you know who you are).  Unfortunately, I only kept up with moving the notes back to the following week for the first few weeks, which means I basically quit using the study guide notes a month into our school year.  Not good.  Another unnecessary effort last year was writing in the kids' science assignments to their Core schedules.  The kids didn't use them, but rather found natural breaks as they worked along.  Monk finished up Apologia's General Science about two weeks after the rest of his subjects, but did quite well and preferred working at his own pace.  So that's what I haven't done this year.  Here's what I have done. 

We have three separate binders this year.  The first is for our Science F IG and activity sheets.  Monk (12), Twinkle Toes (10), Measle (8), and I will all do science together this year (this is a change from last year).  It made sense to me to have a separate Science binder for our IG and student activity sheets.   The activity sheets are at the end of each week's schedule.  Hopefully we'll be able to keep up with them this way.  As you saw in our schoolroom, the Science binder goes in the Science cubby with our other Science resources. 

We also have separate binders for the two Cores we're studying this year.  Measle's pink binder contains her Core B, Language Arts B, and 3rd grade reader IGs.  Monk and Twinkle Toes will be using the red binder, which contains their Core F and LA F IGs. 

Here's how I organized the Core and LA binders.

I used 3 sets of colorful 12 tab index dividers to separate each week's schedule and assignments.  (They come in packages of 6 sets so one package should work for two binders.)  I also bought these handy-dandy paper clip page markers and I'll explain their use in a second.  First, I want to show you how I arranged the weekly schedules.

Behind week one's tab in this order is our Core schedule (Bible, History, Read-aloud, Reader), Language Arts schedule and notes, LA student activity sheets, and Core schedule notes, if any.  The kids should be able to easily find what they're supposed to read and do, without my help.  I've gone over the guides several times with Measle and I think she's got it!

Remember, I decided NOT to move up all the study guide notes this year.  That would work fine if we read each book in a week, but that's not the way it works, so we need some of the note pages for several weeks in a row.  It was even more complicated last year (Core 3 and 4) when some books were used off and on for months on end.  I completely lost track of the study guide notes!  I think what I've done this year will work great and be MUCH easier to maintain.

I used the page markers to mark the first book in each section (History notes, Reader notes, and Read-aloud notes).  All of the study guide notes arrived in alphabetical order, so I took a few minutes to rearrange the notes according to the 4-day weekly schedule we'll be following.  For example, Torches of Joy, seen in the picture above, is the first History book we'll be reading, so it's first.  Then as we finish Torches of Joy and move on to the next book, I'll simply move back our page marker clip to the study guide for the next book.  No hunting for the next guide required!  (I moved the notes for the books in the 5-day schedule, that we won't be reading, to the very back of the binder.)  I put the LA appendix, with info like how to do a research paper, after the Core study guides. 

I arranged Measle's binder the same way.  After her History and Read-aloud study guides, is a tab that marks her Diamond Notes for help with LAs.

I'm really excited about our binders this year.  My goal for the kids is as much independence as possible.  I'll go over our homeschool 2011-2012 plan of action, course of study, and tentative schedule in future posts.

What do your binders look like?  Tweaking last year's system?