How I Survive Mondays

Monday mornings normally dawn with my house in disarray, my eyelids heavy, and my kids grouchy.  I love Sundays, but they can take a little bit of a toll on my house.  My husband and I try to get up early enough to have breakfast together as a family, get ourselves and three little ones dressed for church, and leave early enough to make sure our responsibilities as Sunday School director and pianist respectively are taken care of.  In our wake is normally a trail of pajamas, outfits that didn't work out, dirty breakfast dishes, and miscellaneous articles the kids got out behind our backs.  We come home to a quick lunch, determined to straighten up before naptime, but end up crashing and leaving even more dishes to be done.  After a short nap, we all get ready again for choir practice and evening service.  After the service we usually spend time fellowshipping and/or practicing music.  On our way home we often swing by the store to pick up bread or milk for the week.  By the time we get home it's getting late and there are hungry mouths to feed, little clothes to change, and a mess that is still staring at me as I add yet more dishes to the pile.  Any notions I may have had about cleaning up before bed are quickly fleeing as my eyelids struggle to remain open.

Monday arrives with my engine struggling to start, but I know I've got to get things under control as soon as possible.

So here's what I do.

I start in the easiest room, which is usually the bedroom.  I set a timer for 5 minutes and start straightening up as fast as I can.  I get the kids involved and send them on errands.  “Go put this in the trash can.  Hurry!  Put this in the hamper.  We have to get done before the timer dings!”  They enjoy racing the timer, and it definitely helps me go faster too.  By starting in the easiest room I get to see immediate progress which encourages me to keep at it.  When the timer dings I move on to the next room.  I spend five minutes in each room, and I am usually surprised to find that every room gets clean in that amount of time.  The kitchen usually takes longer, but it doesn't bother me too much because the rest of the house is already clean by then!

In less than an hour my house goes from looking well nigh hopeless to completely clean!  It's definitely an encouraging way to start off my week. When I try things any other way I end up discouraged and walking around in circles.   

So that's how Mondays usually start at my house.

How do you survive Mondays?  Do you have any tips we should know about?  Please, leave a comment!

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Mother’s Day Gift Ideas Kids Can Make

If you are my mother, I'm sorry, but you have to stop reading now unless you're reading this after Mother's Day.

For the rest of you, scroll down to see what my kids made their Grandmothers for Mother's Day!

These are handprint flowers that were so easy to make, but the kids had a blast!  They got to use paint, markers, scissors, and glue!  It doesn't get much better than that for a kid!

First I had them paint a popsicle stick with green paint.  I love the little tongue sticking out!

He's really starting to get coordinated.

Then I traced their hands on construction paper, cut them out, and had them decorate them with markers.

I decided to lay down newspaper after the first couple minutes.  I thought these were washable markers, but apparently they weren't.  Thankfully a Magic Eraser took the stains off the table.  The kids' hands still don't look too pretty, though!

When they were finished, we glued the hands to the popsicle sticks, then cut out some leaves and glued those on too.  I hot glued magnets to the back and we were done.

I love the green lips!

We also printed off these questionnaires from The Crafting Chicks.  I asked the kids the questions and they told me their answers.  I had so much fun with this, and I know their grandmothers will love it.  The answers were hilarious! They will absolutely love their ages and weights!  Oh, and I found out that grandmothers secretly love to eat cupcakes!

Have you finished your Mother's Day projects yet?  Did you make anything fun or buy anything special?

Anti-Procrastination Challenge: Time for a Break

I haven't been posting a lot of new challenges lately.  Honestly, I haven't really been doing any.  I have about a bazillion shortish longish term goals that I'm chipping away at every day, so I'm counting any work I do on those as my Anti-Procrastination task for the day.  I just haven't had time to work on any specific finishable task.  I haven't really even had much time to sleep.  I know this sounds like more excuses, but I promise it's not this time.  In fact, I've been running on too little sleep long enough.

My Anti-Procrastination challenge for the day is to go take a nap!  I've been concentrating so hard on getting these things done, plus running a household and taking care of three children, that I just need to stop and take a break.

Go do the same if you need to.  Or maybe sitting down and reading blogs is your break.  Either way, rest a while if you need to so you'll have more energy to get back up and get back at it!

I don't know if this post is even coherent; I'm just plumb tarred.  (That would be “tired”, but my southern accent really comes out when I'm “tarred”.)

So that's all for now, folks.  I'm outta here while the little ones are sleeping…or are at least in their bedrooms…not sure what they're actually doing…ignorance is bliss…for a while anyway.

If you're just now joining our Anti-Procrastination challenge, you can read all the details here. Be sure you're subscribed to email updates or follow me on Facebook to receive each day's new challenge!         

Anti-Procrastination Challenge: Something is Better than Nothing

 I keep a scrub brush in the shower, and I normally try to clean it while I'm taking my shower.  Lately the hot water hasn't been sticking around long enough for my liking, so I've been ready to get out as quickly as possible rather than staying in to clean.  That hasn't done much to help with the cleanliness of the shower, though. 

Yesterday, I was taking another semi-cold shower, and I was getting disgusted with how dirty it was getting in there.  I figured if I stayed in long enough to clean just one section (maybe 30 seconds worth) it would only take about 7 or 8 showers before the whole thing was out of totally gross mode and back into routine maintenance mode.

I tackled just one shelf, but decided to do the other one on that side.  That wasn't so bad, so I did the other 2 shelves on the other side.  After that I figured I might as well scrub the walls down too.  After only1 shower half the thing was clean!  And I didn't freeze to death, either.  I was cold, but I survived.

And of course, now that I'm typing this out, I realize how lame of an excuse cold water was to not clean the shower.  That's how most of my excuses have ended up seeming throughout this challenge.  They sound so legitimate in my head, but when I actually start putting it out there for everybody else to see, it becomes obvious that I'm just being a sissy and need to get over it.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I was procrastinating because I knew I couldn't clean the whole shower in one shot (at least not in one warm-water shot!)  Because I couldn't do the whole thing, I didn't do anything.  But something is better than nothing!  Now I only need to take one more shower and the whole thing will be sparkling again!

So, my friend, what have you been putting off because you couldn't do it all in one shot?  Something is better than nothing, and if you just start you'll be further ahead on it than if you never start at all!

Set a timer for 15 minutes and see how far you can get before the timer goes off!  You might surprise yourself!  You might decide you have the time after all to do the whole project.  If not, that's okay too.  You'll have more done than before you started!

If you're just now joining our Anti-Procrastination challenge, you can read all the details here. Be sure you're subscribed to email updates or follow me on Facebook to receive each day's new challenge! 

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Easy Homemade Granola Recipe

1/4 cup virgin coconut oil (If you do not want a coconut taste, you'll want to use refined coconut oil instead)
1/3 cup raw honey
3 cups quick cooking oats
1 cup almonds (sliced or chopped)

Directions:

Melt coconut oil and honey.

Add oats and almonds and stir until coated evenly.

Spread into a thin layer on a baking sheet.

Bake at 300 degrees for 12 minutes.

Allow to cool completely before storing in an airtight container.

Anti-Procrastination Challenge: Cleaning out the Clothes

Organizing my clothes has become a big ordeal lately.  It seems like my size is constantly change between having babies, nursing, losing weight, getting pregnant again and so forth.  Making sure I have the right size and the right season of clothing is becoming a challenge.  Right now I have plenty of clothes, but it's overwhelming to me to get them changed out at the beginning of a new season.  I have to try everything on, and I have to make sure I leave out some smaller clothes right now since I'm at the losing baby weight stage.  I've had a bin of clothes sitting in my bedroom floor for a couple weeks now, but I haven't felt up to getting myself involved in all that confusion.

I finally decided that I would just take a small bite out of it at a time.  The first day I went through just the skirts that were in the closet.  Those were the bigger ones that are now almost all too big.  I got out anything that was too big and put it in one place.  I'm hoping that putting all the similar size clothes in one place it will be easier to figure out what fits me next time I have a baby.  Next I need to get out the smaller skirts and find out what currently fits, what I need to put away until I lose more weight, and what I should leave out because it will probably fit pretty soon.  Ugh.  This business of gaining 50+ pounds with my pregnancies is annoying!  Hopefully now that I'm exercising regularly I'll be able to exercise through my next pregnancy and not gain as much weight.  (Or at least maybe keep myself toned up better.  I'd be happy with that too.)

I've got to keep working on those clothes a little bit each day until they're done.  I need to hurry up before my husband gets tired of having the bin sitting in the bedroom floor.  Actually, he's probably already tired of it, but he's being nice and not saying anything.

All right, it's your turn.  You may not have the same issues I have with your clothes, but you probably have some work to do on your wardrobe.  Whatever it may be – getting rid of stuff you never wear, mending stuff so you can wear it, changing out seasonal clothes, whatever – just do what you need to do.

And if you're just now joining our Anti-Procrastination challenge, you can read all the details here. Be sure you're subscribed to email updates or follow me on Facebook to receive each day's new challenge! 


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