6 Things For "Type B" Personalties

I am an A-/B+ personality
I can be very organized in small ways and mostly a cluttery butterfly in the rest.
Organization for me right now is 2 cutely decorated spiral notebooks, one keeping track of my personal life and the other for my current party planning job, now if only I knew where they were... just kidding

Some days I freak out at my clutter,
most days I don't.
One morning years ago while watching the Today Show some organizer said that if you could find something in under 3 minutes you were good. I'm sure she said it more eloquently but that is the gist of it and a theory I stick to.

So, since I can find anything in 3 minutes, I'm good.

But being a stay-at-home home for the past 19 years I thought I'd put together a small list of things that have helped me survive my days.

How To Survive as a "Type B" Stay-at-Home-Mom

1. Make your bed as soon as you get out of it, if not you'll probably go right back into it

2. Start 1 load of laundry every morning, since your a type B personality combining whites/darks and towels makes no difference, then every time you eat "push it through"

3. Think about dinner within the first 30 minutes of your day, that way you can get your meat thawing or int he crockpot before everyone is starving at 5pm

4. Be at peace with creating something over cleaning something

5. About 30 minutes before your man walks through the door freshen yourself up, you may not have showered in a few days and that's OK, do your hair, at least comb it or redo the pony, dust up your make-up or blush or lips and put on something cute- for me it's always jeans and a shirt

6. Know what household chore "settles" you the most and make it a priority; for me it's the floors. I do best when the main areas are vacuumed daily, especially the entryway and kitchen, when they're clean it seems to make all the other stuff not seem so bad

Especially with the holidays in full swing these 6 tips really help me. What top tips help you keep the house in working order?

Christ Is Risen

He is risen indeed!!

From our family to yours...

 5 generations

Easter

Today I am prepping the house for Easter.
My only responsibility this year is to set the table!
I am working on making something like this for our table centerpiece,
we'll wake up and enjoy these yummy rolls, also found here, with a story, in addition to our traditional Sunday morning pancakes.
After eating lunch on Sunday we'll do a small Easter eggs hunt for the little ones.


Excited for a relaxing day, celebrating the resurrection of my Savior!
How wonderful it is that I serve a living God, 
a God who became man,
lived,
experienced all it is to be a man, 
to be a me,
then conquered death so that I might live.
Glory to God!
Peace to all!
Shalom friends,

Today is the Day that Mattered

Spring is on us, my garden is in full swing and I am ready for the kids to be out of school, for hot summer nights and even hotter summer days.

Today is Esther.

Today is the day that matters.

If Jesus Christ, the Son of the virgin Mary, born to a carpenter in Nazareth; if He had not risen from the dead today then all He claimed to be would have been false, all He walked this earth living would have been a lie and what I believe would simply not be.

I grew up in a family of traditions.

A family of love.

Each holiday we gathered to eat, laugh and enjoy one another.

We never had any family quarrels, I never heard my aunts and uncles speak harshly of one another; and beside my 9 cousins and I getting yelled at for playing in the laundry chute, my family never yelled.

As an adult I wanted that for my kids.

But life doesn't always pan out the way I plan.

My kids live far away from their cousins of the same age and the cousins they have here are a great deal younger than them. Add in the fact that we have 2 drug addict siblings in the immediate area and family holidays are slowing becoming a burden and not the joyous time I remembered as a child.

I get asked a lot the question of "how are things at your house?", the question comes to me as if the person asking feels sorry for me, as if life should suck because I have my teenage son, his wife and their daughter living with me.

Well it doesn't.

I mean some days it does, when I look at the reality of the situation and look at things in terms of my perspective and my dream and my view I begin to panic.

But today.

Today is the day that made it all well with my soul.

Today is the day that Jesus conquered death so I can look at my granddaughter and rejoice.

So I can look at my daughter-in-law and love.

I can talk with my sister in law with grace and friendship.

I can look at a hurtful drug addict with my heart breaking and full of compassion.

I can show up at family gatherings and smile, truly smile.

Yes, today is the day that made it all available to me.

It is because God sent His one and only Son Jesus to this earth that I can even begin to smile at my life; or the even the people in it;

it is because of this loved poured out that day on the cross, that empty tomb three days later that make it possible for me to even begin to try to love these people around me.

Begin to love this life.

So today I rejoice that the tomb was empty, that death was overcome.

Yes today as the holiday looks nothing like I'd like it to I can rejoice because it was the vision reality of that original day that matters.

So I encourage you to look at those in your life a little different.

Instead of what you want to think and say and feel, think about the sacrifice on the cross that day and maybe you'll have a change of heart.

Hallelujah and I love each of you who takes the time to read my rambling words.

Happy Valentine's Day 2011

Happy Valentine's Day from our home to yours!

May you love those who are hard to,

thank thoe who are easy

and never think you are not loved.

"For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life"

book of John chapter 3, verse 16

Hello Internets!

2010 has been quite a year.
Full of changes,
memories,
fun times with friends and lots of family visits.
My family has gone from four people to six and God has preformed miracles in my heart.
It's been the hardest year of my marriage and the best year of it too.
I've doubted my parenting skills more than ever
and
I've never believed in God my Father and His skills more than I have in 2010.



Christmas was a blast, how could it not be with this little button around:

I think I've gained about 10 pounds this last week.
I made a double batch of my Ribbon Cookies and I'm pretty sure I've eaten that whole extra batch. I'm not gonna even step on a scale, my work pants will tell the truth tomorrow morning and perhaps I'll start on some exercise routine.
I'd like to lose a few pounds anyway, I was thinking of it before this last cookie eating spree.
Well, at least it wasn't the gaining weight spree a few Christmas' back, resulting from a daily dose of Kahlua and milk- but that's another story, for another post. Who knew drinking too much milk could cause warm spots on a person's thigh?

So as I slowly ease my way back into blogging I'm not sure what to blog about?
Being a grandparent?
A parent of teenagers?
My day to day? I've been taking pictures like crazy so I could just picto-blog my life; but what fun would that be, it's kind of hard to use semi-colons with pictures and the beauty of words make me smile.

So now I will finish this Christmas weekend the only way I know how: folding laundry.
Only this time I'm doing it in my bedroom watching a chick-flick while part of the family watches Die Hard and the other Shallow Hal.

Sleep tight and may dreams of sugarplums always dance in our heads.
Love you internets!

Merry Christmas

On the Way to The Grocery...

Today I got stuck behind the slowest driver ever.
Really, the slowest- ever.
I was in a little bit of a hurry, but I didn't get irritated,
I didn't curse her out or shake my head in disgust.
Instead I enjoyed the slowness of it.
So I hope you too get stuck behind a blue-hairded lady driving a mint condition 1988 Vauxhall Nova,
may you remember to slow down this Holiday Season.

Fourth of July Recap

Our 4th of July was full of new life stages as well as old traditions.
Like Vaughan working til 3pm- new life stage
and
Justin being gone at a friends until 3pm- new life stage
and
then there were old traditions like:
going to the Fireworks Store!

It's how we start our 4th of July every year, taking stock in our firework supply and seeing what's on sale at the Fireworks Stand!
Here they are making final decisions.

The guys played volleyball by the river.

Justin was the background music.

Here is a great shot of my nephew and my grandmother, his great-grandmother. I love the pimpin' sunglasses Nana!

Vaughan and Caleb headed out in the little dingy, I was convinced they were gonna sink it, but they didn't!

More pictures on by the river.

My camera died after this picture so no pictures of the firework show.

We set off a decent amount early in the evening.

The we watched the local town fireworks then

the neighbors put on their own firework show that was pretty good.

No cars were blown up this and it was a quieter night than usual.

A little old a little new.

God Bless the

Red, White and Blue,

-Michelle

Happy Fourth of July!

God bless America!

Happy Mother's Day & More!

We had a great Mother's Day! The first year in 3 that we didn't hit a Florida State Park- instead we went to the local water park!
The reason I can celebrate Mother's Day- my babies!

My mother, grandmother and I met for breakfast at my mom's and then went to church with my grandmother. We always have fun together and I get a glimpse into my future!

Mom and I leaving Daytona Lagoon.

Just for fun I'm throwing in some other pictures. I just love this shell above, it's as if it was painted with stripes.

I've been back in the sewing room- oh it's heaven with a cement floor. I took two old towels and sewed them together to make a long bath mat. I figured we prefer a towel on the floor and I just can't pay the price that large bath mats go for, so in keeping with reduce, reuse, recycle I made this! Bleach stain and all! Oh I sewed lines through it to keep it good and flat.

My tomato plants. Can't wait to eat some and really need to plant more and maybe take them to the local farmer's market. Hmmm, maybe not?

I pulled apart our closet today, as in I took everything out of it, vacuumed and cleaned the walls and now am in the process of putting it back together- yuck! I'd rather wait til tomorrow except all the clothes are on our bed!

Have a great week.

Peace, love and sofa sleeping,

-Michelle

Happy St. Patty's Day!

This is a family night for us. We tend to eat and visit and eat and laugh. No fancy ideas for games and totally copied cake idea,but a great night with my family,I am so blessed.

So I made the rainbow cake I saw on Jacinda and Heather's blogs. Well I didn't actually make the cake they linked to. I had planned on making it then I realized it was some sort of diet cake. No way- we have sweet tooths around here so I decided to make a regular cake, you know one from a box.
I ended up making two boxes of cake mix.
Here's the pretty batter. By the way I went out on my own and didn't use the gel food coloring suggested, since I already had traditional food coloring I used that.
I dumped the different color batter in three separate spots, layering red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet. I filled in the other areas of the pan with various colors.

I baked it for 45 minutes and here's what it looked like out of the oven.

We put green frosting on it and a shamrock in sprinkles.

A few years ago my boys would have loved to have helped mixing and baking the cake. Today, this is what the do:

We have fun visiting and sharing since the laptop, PC are housed in the kitchen area. Steve had to work late so he meet us for dinner, until then we enjoyed one another.

Oh yeah, this is what the dog does on family nights:

We packed up the cake and headed to my mom's. My mom always puts on a good meal and sets a pretty table.

Vaughan and Richard, my mom's "friend", were the first to sit down.

Luke read on the sofa before heading out to Boy Scouts.

My grandmother.

Mom made Cottage Pie, Irish bread and a fruit salad with spinach.

The cake looked great once cut! Yummy!

Happy St Patty's Day!!

More family night ideas- go to Whittaker Women.

-Michelle

13th Birthday #1

These last few years our kids have had separate birthday parties. One for friends and one for family. We have done this mostly because we have a large family and can't fit everyone in the house at the same time and also so birthday child is not torn between family and friends.

Tonight was Justin's 13th friends party and we let him do it up kind of big. No theme, he didn't want one, no planned games, although they did pay manhunt and sardines. We had the party at the church gymnatorium and I invited a few of my friends along for the ride.
Now the pictures...
For some reason they ended up in costumes with dart guns.

I don't fully get the "put a mask on and run around" thing, but hey it entertains them for hours.

The cake of cupcakes. It was cupcakes stacked with pirouette cookies as candles and banana runts for the flame. I then decorated the edges with other runt candy. It was a little topsy turvy and kind of Dr Seussish. Yet another idea I got from my Hello Cupcake book!

Eating pizza.

Opening presents. This is the only shot I have of the majority of the group. It was a good time, although I was reminded that I will never figure out teenagers nor do I really want to; for now I'll just be happy enjoying them!

Now a friend is sleeping over, birthday breakfast tomorrow (actual birthday) and then family for dinner tomorrow night.

have some special things planned, we make a big deal about the 13th birthday. Letters from dad, special gift from great-grandmother, a birthday boy performance, scripture memorization and poem, actually the poem won't be a part of the program we slacked on that one, oops. Plus he picks the dinner menu. Now I have a dinning room to get ready, I have a table under the pile of junk on and around it.

Well off to do some more pick up and then to bed.

-Michelle