I Woke Up Late...

...after finishing Schlinder's List in the wee hours of the morning on our little personal DVD player, with the covers draped over me and it so as not to disturb my snoring husband. Still have clean up from his birthday party, need to workout, meal plan, grocery shop and find my mil's birthday present.

Should I make a blog post or go do all the wonderful details of my vocation...?

Hummmm........

Hey, wait, I just did the blog post! And technically this IS part of my vocation, because it keeps me connected, sane and happy. Cool.. so I am now 'ahead of the game.' lol So I will be back soon with the detail-- but just a teaser--

I got a monster post brewing on Schlinder's List (the movie I finally MADE myself watch after years of peeking around the corners) and you gotta hear about our Bananas Foster! I am on sugar hangover today, but wow....

well just stay tuned.. I will be back.


Now where are my gym shoes?

Small Investment, Big Results!

I finally took some time to organize my 'favorites' in my browser.

Oh, what a pleasure it is to be able to find all the sites and blogs I want at my fingertips! I could see getting addicted to organization!

Take 30 minutes and organize something today.. it is a real rush!

Flylady Zone - The Kitchen

I had a problem- I could not walk in my walk-in pantry. And I could not find anything. And there was not an inch of space left on the shelves, and it is a roomy pantry.

Ala flylady, we cleaned it, doing parts at a time.

Step one:
I had the guys take everything out on one wall of the pantry. They are good at mindless manual labor. We did one wall at a time so as not to be overwhelmed.










This is where it all went:




Then I threw out old stale stuff and put everything back where it went. I have little labels for 'pasta', 'rice', 'canned meat', etc. But with 4 people accessing the pantry multiple times a day, things get mixed up soon.

Here is the finished result:

A Little More on Planning...

Well, since Leonie asked in the comments of my previous post, I thought I'd share a little about planning, at least atm at my house.

I want to preface this with a post a wrote a while back about trusting God and my kids. I am trying not to over plan and/or plan without knowing why. So a lot of this is balance, just trying to do things I feel are important for us, leave room for lots of serendipity and find that neat book or website I heard about when I want it!


Here's that old post...

My planning in a nutshell:

- I have list of things I want my boys to know or be exposed to. Mostly (great and noble) ideas, basic literacy in math, science, etc and connections with the world.
These change. But I keep a running mental and written list. That goes in my main notebook. I have a tab for that and named it 'VISION'. :-)

- We meet periodically and talk about what they are up to. I see what is happening in life and jot notes in my spiral notebook. I keep that out all the time where I will see it and hopefully write in it.

- I will read through it and if I see areas they do not cover as naturally, will be on the lookout for ideas. I need a place to keep these ideas. I put notes/brochures in my idea box which sits on my desk. Also I keep a favorites section on the computer and an email folder with ideas I find online. I also have a section for Ideas in my main notebook and even tab the pages by subject.

I also have 2 fat 4x6 inch notebooks. I keep one in my purse and one by the phone and when I think of ideas, or get recommendations when out with a friend for coffee, I jot it down.

-Now that I am armed with ideas, we just live for a while. If they express and interest in an area, I will look in my idea places above or start a new search, mostly through Google or the local library search engine. I also have a Netflix account where I can find some awesome DVDs.

-For the things I suggest to the boys I have a bit more structure. This requires more planning, but not too much.

-I will often ask for time together- to share things I don't have time to during the day. These could be articles or books, lectures, etc. Most are things I find interesting and think they will, too.

-Sometimes I will strew, but more often I will just share neat things I find. For example today it was an articlein today's paper about how scientists say you can read a dog's mood by which direction (right or left) he wags his tail. Yes, they measured the angle and I assume used the scientific method....lol

-I have a white board in my office that is a great visual for me. I think the boys use it, too. On there, I jot down what we are currently doing, that is ongoing. If we start a lot of study in one area, I will write it down and some of the resources I have so the boys will know what I have available. But, mostly it is for me to remember either things we are doing or plan to do.

-I keep a place for 'project piles' books/notebooks we are currently working on and with for various areas. An example is the science DVDs. I watch them first and take notes or jot down ideas. I like to keep that all together with the DVDs and the outline guide, as well as other science resources.

-I have lists for books read and service hours performed that I keep in the main notebook.

-I have a bin of things we did- articles, notes, etc that will go in our scrapbook one day when I get around to it.

-Every few months I take the spiral notebook and type into a word document things they did and group by subject. Then we will turn them into credits.

Besides all this, I will research new things... look for audio books, lectures, local events, DVDs on Netflix, etc and weave it in.

Mostly the planning above is helping me to find things when I want them and to have a sense of where we are.

Hope this is helpful!

Planning With a Light Touch

We had a JLC meeting last night and got on the topic of planning and organizing. We laughed when we all agreed none of us have found a set workable system. I think we were all relieved that we were not the only one who can't keep a schedule working for more than 2 weeks!

We talked a bit about pegs, about letting go of what we don't need and how often it is we (moms) who need more structure than the kids.

I realized that I feel ok about how I do the backend of the system here. I have a place to journal and like the quarterly summaries and credits that fall out of our daily life. But I still have trouble with the 'front end'. Arranging all the ideas I come across. I will research and scour up neat ideas, but then they fall into some black abyss and I forget about them. I will make up a binder of 'Ideas', then forget where I laid it.

So, tonight I am rethinking this whole area, just to get a loose structure for myself on how to organize my ideas and introduce the to my dc.

Willa has some nice posts on how she plans. She is very thourough and has a lovely knowledge of classics and literature and I enjoy her classical bent so much. I laughed to myself this week as I see she posted a cartoon I put up on my blog. She gives me classics, and I give her cartoons! Pretty good trade from my end! Seriously, though I love the ideas she brings to the table.

Here is something she wrote about planning:

"I realize that I plan a bit differently every year. Last year a lot of my planning was oriented around resource-finding for the childrens' interests and for finding spaces in my day for the leisurely conversations that reveal so much about their hearts and minds. The rest of my planning energy went towards looking for things to strew. I also used a lot of planning energy to develop some(better, not great) household routines and prayer habits. These things are still helping me a lot and I don't want to let go of them. "

I like how she recognizes where she puts her energy. I think that is important. I find I often waste my energy if I am not somewhat organized, at least with a general flow.

That is what I am looking at now. A lot of things *are* working.... just to fine tune what could use some grease. More later