My MIL’s Hand Crochet for sale- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
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14 Days and Counting
In 14 days there will be bells ringing! Yes, I do have bells for people to ring. I’ve been fretting over things, answering this person and that person’s questions. Mostly my mom and his mom. When someone asks if they can help with anything, I don’t know what to say. There is a lot to be done, but I don’t want to fret. My house needs to be cleaned, some paint applied, some weeds pulled. I don’t really think anyone wants to help with these things, do you?
As far as the wedding things go, I’m open. I want things simple. I’m not opting for the florist to deliver flowers, but to pick up a few boquets of flowers and scatter them about in a hap-hazard way, that doesn’t require a lot of thought. Yeah, I know I’m crafty like that! lol! But really, my mom and her sisters are crafty and I hope that I can leave a lot of those things up to them.
I simply don’t want a lot of fuss. My house isn’t perfect, it is getting older and needs work. Do you think my guests will mind? Well if they do, they need not look. My decorating sense is not that of my sisters, or anyone else that I know. I have no decorating sense really. Are our wedding guest coming to see my house! GASP! I hope not!
Our intentions on having our wedding here at home, is so that we can share our home, our wedding, our family and our love. There will not be an abundance of lamb chops and fish, or anything fancy to eat. There will not be a wedding cake….but cakes that are family favorites. Of course there will be a few things that are traditional, a few things that I want, but for the most part everything will be simple.
A simple wedding for a simple couple. In some ways this is simple, and others it is hard. I’m letting go of other people’s dreams to have my own. Some will find this amusing. I’m a pleaser to an extent. I’d love to please my mother by having an outlandish church wedding on a shoe string budget, but guess what? its not happening that way. We do have a shoe string budget, but it isn’t outlandish and isn’t a church wedding. I’ve rarely seen myself in a church wedding. I’ve always seen myself standing by an oak tree in my wedding gown. Right now that oak tree has a horsey tire swing and multiple ropes and brown ribbons hanging from its branches. I’m not sure that I’ll even remove those 
By having simple decorations, and simple surroundings we hope to bring out the conversations that capture the spirit of our families. I want to see smiles and hear laughter. I want to see my kids playing chase, or jumping on the trampoline. We are opting for the two larger dogs to be away from the guests because they would love to jump on the tables and play, but the new puppy may get to stay for the fun.
I want to be pulled into conversations so that we don’t leave our loved ones too soon. I’d love to stay up until the sun greets us in the morning, but I know that we will be fast asleep from all of the excitement of the days before.
After a bit of a devotion tonight, I know that God doesn’t want me to worry over the details. He wants us to praise him in everything we do. That includes our weddings. If I were too busy that morning, putting all of the finishing touches on things, I know that I would be snappy to our wonderful children. God doesn’t want that, so I vow to keep that from happening. I vow to make this wedding simple and enjoyable for all of our family and friends.
PDF Simple Step #3
“Man’s life is of God, not of his goods, however abundant they may be. ”
- Henry Alford
100 Ways to Simplify Your Life by: Joyce Meyer
Winner of the UPrinting Stickers!
Congratulations Gabbriella! I hope you have fun designing these and using them for your Etsy store!
Menu Planning Basics
This week starts off a month of decluttering for myself and a group of ladies on facebook. I suggested today that we all do a bit of menu planning so that we can declutter even more this week. A couple ladies were discussing this in a chat today so I started planning my menu, and giving some suggestions. So here is what I came up with and why:
Monday: Grilled Porkchops (they are in the freezer and need to be cooked so why not)
Tuesday: Grilled Chicken (in the freezer again)
Wednesday: Leftover Grilled Chicken a top a huge salad
Thursday: Hamburgers (meat is in the freezer)
Friday: Call out for Pizza
Saturday: Baked Potato Buffet
Sunday: Roast with all the fixins
I will possibly grill extra chicken or pork chops for lunches. I’ll add vegetable, pasta salads and other side dishes to all of my meals. I’m working on adding an apple a day to my water habit also. With the decluttering and wedding coming up I want to make some extra meals for the freezer, so that its not takeout on those super busy nights of the week. I’m trying to make some more healthy options for side dishes, so if you have any good healthy side dishes, let me know!
For my friend Heather’s great healthy menu for our new Eat Sweat Lose venture together go check us out.
UPrinting Sticker/Label Giveaway!
The great peeps over at UPrinting has done it again! I’m giving away 250 Stickers or Labels. Get your entries in by January 31st!
Details:
250 Stickers/Labels for One (1) lucky winner
Sizes: 2” x 3.5”, 2” x 4”, or 3” x 3”
Paper: 70lb Label Matte
Specifications: Full color front, blank back; 4 Business Day printing
Shipping: FREE UPS Ground Shipping
Eligibility: Limited to US Residents only
Ways to enter:
Comment on this post for 1 entry
Subscribe to my RSS FEED! (its new, make sure you have the right one!) and receive 1 entry.
**For the record, UPrinting has given me the same thing that you get, 250 custom stickers or labels. Cool huh!
I think I found a dress!
At least its a dress that I like online. I don’t like it, I LOVE it. The thing is, who knows what it will look like in person. I can hopefully tell you next week that it looks great too. Tell me how you found your dress and how you knew it was the one.
This isn’t my dress, but isn’t it gorgeous!
Who does the laundry when you are sick?
Or what happens when you have multiple kids with a stomach virus? Or better yet just, What happens when you fall behind on laundry? Do you have a plan for that Mt. Washmore?
My home can have some daunting laundry mountains even on a regular week. My kids have uniforms, so to keep them nice and neat they are to change as soon as they walk in the door every day. I guess your kids do that too to keep their clothes looking nice and neat, if they don’t think about having them change into play clothes every afternoon after school.
On a normal week I do at least 2 loads of laundry a day, sometimes three. And no, I’m never caught up with laundry. It’s like it multiplies behind my back when I’m not looking. To help me a long, the kids do their laundry every week on their assigned day. My soon to be step kids will start learning to do laundry this weekend. I think that it is very vital to learn this as a kid, because as a teenager they are NOT gonna want to pay any attention to you! lol
Since Christmas I was sick for nearly 2 weeks. I can’t say that I’m completely well now, but at least I feel a little better. Everyone else has pretty much been sick also, and no one has felt like helping more than they “have to”. I don’t blame them, we’ve all felt horrble. It has been cold here. I mean its been colder for more days in a row than it has been here since 1953. My dearest has been cutting down new trees for firewood while he’s been sick. I prayed that he didn’t get pneumonia, and he didn’t! Thank God!
Anyways back to my topic…I hate laundry. It’s the last thing that I want to do when I’m feeling great, and I don’t’ even think about it when I’m feeling sick. So Mt. Washmore piles up in my laundry room. I do what I have to to get by. Its just that not everything gets done. At 2 loads a day, I’m probably behind 6-8 loads by the end of a sick week. Yep, that’s pretty daunting. It can be done in a day. Does this happen to you?
So on to my solution:
Lets say that I’m behind 8 loads today. On a normal day I do 2 loads of laundry, right? So that makes it 10 loads that I need to work on today.
So I figure it takes 2 hours (or so) to do a load of laundry. It takes about an hour to wash it, and about an hour to dry it. But hey, unless you have issues with your electricity, you can dry a load while you wash the next load, right?! Hey that means that it will take about 11 hours to finish the laundry in one day. You could break this down into two days if you need to also, but the key is to listen to your dryer, and be ready to reboot laundry constantly throughout the day.
Some tips before you get started:
- Make a run to the store to get laundry soap, bleach, stain remover, dryer sheets, and fabric softener. Maybe today is the day to try a new product. Maybe you need supplies to make your own detergent, or just some vinegar to add to your wash. You know what you need. Make a list.
- Make sure that you have plenty of water to drink nearby, a timer and plan your meals for the day. Pick something easy for dinner, You are going to be tired of doing anything if you really hate laundry as much as I do.
- Start gathering and sorting. Grab the laundry from other rooms of the house. If you have a nice big laundry room, line up hampers, baskets, boxes whatever you have to sort your laundry. (Normally I sort into darks, lights, whites, towels, handwash/delicate, bed linens).
- Have all of your clothes hangers available near your dryer, a folding table is great to have also. We have laundry shelves for folded things, each person having their own section for their undies and things.
- SOCKS! As you find socks that match, before putting them in the washer have a container of safety pins nearby to pin them together. This works like a charm. If you have a lot of socks that are not matched, put them all into a basket and at the end of the day match them all.
- Involve your family. Kids can learn to sort. Even young kids can help put all of the towels in one basket, or fold washcloths. Older kids can sort everything, and help bring all of the laundry to you, and even be in charge of this whole day. A little supervision goes a long way. Pay the kids (as my friend Misty did) ten cents for every pair of correctly matched socks, charge them 50 cents for the ones that are not matched correctly.
- Use your clothes line if you have one. If you want to use it for everything, you may have to break this into two ore more days to have room for everything. I suggest to start washing heavier blankets first, hang them out because they will take longer to dry, then go down the laundry list to the next lightest load. It may be jeans for you, or it may be towels. You know which one you need to do next, if not guess. Its a load of laundry getting done anyways, right?
My biggest tip is that when you are that far behind, and don’t have all day, or two days to get yourself out of this mess, round up all of your quarters. Take some cash to the bank and get a few rolls…yes I said a few. Load everything up and go to the local laundromat. I don’t know if this will be more expensive than doing it at home or not, but in 3 hours you can get everything done. (that is if you don’t have to wait on washers or dryers) Your sanity is worth it, go ahead and go. Especially if you have a clothes line at home that you normally use for everything and its been raining for 3 days and there’s no end in site. Think about it, pray about it. Do what’s right for you and your situation.
Now, I hope that you aren’t ever in this situation, but it happens to the best of us. Just remember that a load (or two, or three or…) a day keeps Mt. Washmore away! 
**ATTENTION SUBSCRIBERS**
If you were one of my subscribers, I’m happy to say that my feed is finally doing what it should! yay! I’ve worked on it off and on since Day 1 here at Polka Spot Farm. However I need a little help from you. Please re-subscribe to my feed, so that you don’t miss anything that’s coming up in the future. You may get some old posts, but I’m not sure if you will or will not.
If you are a fan of my Polka Spot Farm Page on Facebook or follow my feed on Networked Blogs, you will now get automatically updated as well. I’ve been manually adding my links to these two things, so this is a huge help for me.
You can subscribe in the right hand sidebar at the top in that little rss button, or by email just below, or go down a ways and subscribe with Networked Blogs or join my Fan Page. Also Google Friend Connect will allow you to import the feed also, but its a bit more complicated to actually read it. If you want, you can choose everything! I’ve included links in this post also. If you have any questions, let me know and I’ll try to help you out!
*PLEASE NOTE* Subscribing with the rss feed that shows up in the address bar is the wrong feed and will not update at this point. I’m trying to find a fix for that ASAP!!
Thanks so much!
Tuesday’s Tip
I’m sitting down to write my shopping list today and as always I grab my little black Moleskine Notebook
and open it up to a new page. I have my menu posted online and on the calendar in the kitchen. I grab my menu and then on two open pages I start my list.
I have 6 or 7 categories that are just general according to what I need that week. These are the categories that I use:
- Fresh
- Frozen
- Meat
- Dairy
- Boxed
- Canned
- Paper Goods/Other
- Bread
Each of the first 6 categories are listed at the top of the pages. Three are on each page. The other two if needed are at the bottom of the pages, to one side normally. I then take my menu and a running list of things we need in our home, then fill in the blanks for my shopping list.
Everything is nice and organized, and not by aisle because we shop at different stores on a regular basis. I normally put my debit card and any coupons that I may have in the the accordion styled folder in the back of the notebook. I don’t lug around my whole purse anymore because of it being stolen out of the shopping cart years ago.
Over the years I’ve come to love the Moleskine Notebook
for planning trips, journaling and taking notes during church among many other things. I have a few, but the small pocket one is always nearby. They make them in colors now and then, and I’m eying one in red! If you are looking for a multipurpose notebook that really works overtime, this is the one for you. Maybe you can even keep your grocery list inside!
Menu Plan Monday – Jan 4-10
Happy New Year to all of you from ORG Junkie! Thanks for visiting. I love MPM and try to participate most weeks of the year. I’m going to be focusing on ways to make your home run a little more simple this year, as we are trying to do the same here in our home. I’m also planning a DIY wedding and will be trying out a lot of things before the end of March and asking for a lot of opinions, so stick around and help a girl out!
This week the kids are going back to school on Tuesday from their Christmas holidays. Tuesday is also my daughter Kayla’s 8th birthday. She has asked for cupcakes at school on Tuesday, church on Wednesday and then again at our Girl Scout meeting on the following Wednesday. So I’ll be making about 6 dozen in the next week which is a good 1st trial for the wedding. Do you have a favorite recipe for cupcakes? Please share with me.
On to what you are here for:
Monday: Mexican is the theme. I’ll do a taco bake and a few other things like nachos and cheese.
Tuesday: Kayla’s choice: French Fries, Chocolate Cake (cupcakes), Pizza and Corn Dogs
Wednesday: More cupcakes for church potluck
Thursday: Fried Chicken, potato salad and green lima beans
Friday: Vegetable Beef Soup
Saturday: Grilled Chicken
Sunday: Barbecue Chicken Breasts, pasta salad and Green Bean Bundles
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
