Emergency Specific Food Storage

So if a picture is worth a thousand words, then does this picture give you any clue how my weekend went? Yeah, it wasn't pretty. Anyway, as soon as I was feeling better, I decided that I needed to make a little corner of our food storage to be set aside for just those special items needed when our family is going through the dreaded tummy troubles. All your favorite "B.R.A.T." diet items and a few extras. You see, while my amazing hubby was able to work from home on Monday so I could have a day of recovery, he still had to work which meant being on the phone pretty much all day. So when I requested a simple cup of applesauce around noon it slipped his mind and he brought it after a rather pathetic reminder around 1pm. Really not complaining - he was very busy and was making sure the kids were fed and where they needed to be - and I am very grateful for that. But I thought that if we put all the supplies in a specific location, then next time maybe it will be easier to locate said applesauce. So my contribution to emergency preparedness for the month is to prepare for an emergency that unfortunately is almost guaranteed to occur on a fairly regular basis.

Encouraging Reading - One Rain Gutter at a Time

Recently, rain gutter bookshelves have shown up on several of the blogs that I watch. I love the idea of displaying children's books in such an inviting way. I get a lot of my books through the Scholastic catalogs sent home from school. It is a good way to get some excellent books for about $3 each, but the downside is that they are paperback and hard to keep track of on a traditional bookshelf. We have several great books that we hadn't read in a long time - out of sight, out of mind.

Family Room (The bags underneath hold all of our dress up clothes.)

So we decided to go ahead with the rain gutter bookshelves and we love them. Now, with one quick glance we can see all of our reading options. It is also VERY easy to put books away. Emmarsyn spent some time pulling books out to read in her bedroom and put every single one back on her own - I didn't even have to suggest it. Besides the functionality, I think they look great. The big, empty wall in our family room has become a fairly dramatic focal point. (And a lot of nail and screw holes have been completely hidden!)

The price is great too - it was right around $5o for all the materials. Enough for the family room, each child's room and the floor puzzle holder in our toy closet.

If you are interested in making some, you can search for rain gutter bookshelves and find plenty of links. Click here for one of the best step-by-step tutorials that I came across. Or you can just ask Bruce. He has become an expert. (One tip - get your gutters at Lowe's. Home Depot only carries the kind with brackets that wrap under and in front of the gutter. While our brackets aren't completely hidden, I prefer the cleaner look of the Lowe's gutters.)

Matthew's Room (Spencer's room is currently under construction, but he will also get a shelf.)

Emmarsyn Enjoying Her Books

Rain Gutter Puzzle Holder in the Toy Closet

Matthew's New Room

We are kind of playing musical rooms in our house. The first big change is that Matthew has moved downstairs into what used to be the guest room (which has moved down the hall). It was one of the last vestiges of wallpaper in our house so we took that down and got a little crazy with the paint. The blue and orange combo was a bold move for us but we absolutely love how it turned out.

Besides the paint, we all really like the "desk". It is actually a small fold-away dining table from Ikea. The metal bar and hanging cups for his supplies are also from Ikea (not to mention the stool, garbage can and light by his bed). I love that place! You can do quite a bit there on a small budget. Plus the rooms in our house are not exactly huge and the space saving products at Ikea really come in handy. (And of course there are the cinnamon rolls.) I still want to get a magazine rack to hold his paper and a magnet strip so he can display some of his masterpieces, but this is a good start.

The best part is that Matthew likes the room so much that moving to the basement was not traumatic at all. It helps to have Spencer right across the hall. Spencer, by the way, is pretty put out that his room make-over has to wait for our new dining room (Matthew's old room) to be finished. But since we already sold our table and chairs and now are working with only a small pub style table with 4 stools, we really need to get the dining room done. Hopefully, I will be able to post pictures of that in the relatively near future.

Custom Chore Charts

I wanted to give the boys some extra jobs during the summer (although they will most likely continue with the new responsibilities even after school starts) so I did a quick search and found this really cool site. I created custom chore charts for each of them in about five minutes. You can even pick a fun character - I went with Scooby Doo and Spongebob.

Motivated Moms

I came across a reference to a chore chart when reading a friend of a friend's blog. (Actually they are not really friends, but my friend has mistakenly been receiving their Christmas cards for years now. Kind of a funny story that is probably Post worthy on its own.) Anyway, I clicked on the link and found something that could revolutionize the cleaning process in my home.

You see, cleaning is not my thing. I do it when I have to - particularly when I know someone is coming to my house. Other times, I do enough to get by. I don't expect to ever feel completely on top of it, after all houses - especially those with small children - just keep getting dirty. That fact alone is discouraging enough to keep me from accomplishing much.

But the Motivated Moms Chore Chart has given me a glimmer of hope. It comes in several different formats but basically has a list of daily chores as well as a few additional tasks for each day. Most are pieces of larger jobs that can sometimes be rather overwhelming. For example, one of today's tasks is to clean the toilets - not the entire bathroom. (Thanks to Bruce for taking that bullet for me. Frankly, I think that if men were responsible for cleaning toilets, toilets would be a lot less messy in the first place.)

So if you are an anxiety prone, cleaning-challenged mom like me, the Motivated Mom system might be worth checking out. (It costs $8 to download the 2009 chart.) I may not get everything done everyday, but a little direction can go a long way for me.

Slacker Mom Thank You Notes

Making sure my kids get out their thank you notes after birthdays and Christmases has never been my strength. I haven't really gotten over my own dreaded thank you note writing experiences as a child. It's not because I wasn't grateful. I was. I just didn't know what to do with the three quarters of the page that remained glaringly blank after I wrote my brief thank you. This of course does not excuse my historically spotty record of getting the kids' notes out. And trust me I have beat myself up about it plenty. But no more!

I have recently discovered my thank you note salvation...fill-in-the-blank thank you notes. I kind of think of them as thank you notes with training wheels. For example, here is one I made for the boys' birthdays.

I filled in the "for" line and they each wrote their own names. I figure as they get older, I can modify the design to give them room to write a little more. But no overwhelmingly blank pages staring back at them (and me). Plus I can have them printed out and ready to go before the birthday, Christmas or whatever the occasion.

Apparently, these have been around for a while, but they are news to me. It may not be the ideal way of doing thank you notes, but it is going to save me a lot of stress and guilt. Friends and family will actually receive an expression of our gratitude, which I think is the most important thing. And as a bonus, my boys had a lot of fun filling them in and sending them off. With a bit of luck, this little discovery will spare my children and theirs from years of thank you note failures.

Bag Meals

I tend to get excited about weird things. Often rather mundane things. Today it is the concept of "bag meals". The idea is to find a recipe that consists of mostly non-perishable items, pre-measure them if possible, and put them all in a bag. When you need a quick meal, add one or two perishable items and voila, you have a complete dinner at a moment's notice. In Relief Society, volunteers were asked to taste test a "bag meal". As Spencer says, "Mom loves free things", so I was all over that. We tested out a beef stroganof recipe. While the dish left much to be desired, I loved the concept. Since the stroganof wasn't going to happen again, I set out on a search for a new recipe. I found one with just a few ingredients that were - as a bonus - really cheap! Tomato,Beef & Noodle Skillet Dinner - very simple but actually quite tasty even to me and I am not a huge fan of ground beef dishes. On days like today when we were running errands until about 5pm, it saved us from the temptation of picking up fast food. We got home, put the boys in the tub and I had dinner on the table before they were finished flooding the bathroom.

So here it is. If anybody has other recipes that can be adapted to the bag theory, please feel free to share.

Tomato, Beef & Noodle Skillet Dinner
Serves 4
Bag Contents:
2 14 ½ ounce cans stewed tomatoes
1 cup uncooked elbow macaroni (Can add more to stretch the meal a bit.)
¼ cup dry chopped onion
1 t salt
1 t chili powder
1 t garlic powder
¼ t ground pepper
¼ t sugar
(I add a dash or two of curry powder and ginger as well.)

Add:
½ lb ground beef (The original recipe called for 1lb.)

Cook and drain macaroni. Sautee ground beef with dried onion. Add tomatoes and seasonings. (I use a potato masher to crush the tomatoes as the kids - and I - do better with fewer "chunks".) Stir and cook until bubbly. Stir in macaroni and serve. (Additional ingredients such as fresh or frozen vegetables and cheese may be added to taste.)

Google Calendar

Last week I made a little discovery that has really helped with my family's scheduling difficulties. Google Calendar - it is easy to use and perhaps even more important - easy to share. I spent an evening inputting all of my family's potential summertime activities - storytimes, concerts, movies, festivals, etc. My husband has also set up a Google Calendar with his scheduled conference calls and a other known obligations. The dates and times are there, the locations are there. Now here is the genius part - with just a couple of mouse clicks, we shared our calendars. A couple of clicks and all of our plans and appointments are visible to both of us. This could save a marriage (not that ours is in need of saving - at least not today). Husbands rejoice - these simple mouse clicks - and the small chore of actually remembering to check your wife's Google Calendar - can turn you into the most attentive, tuned in, and caring guy around. I guarantee that if Bruce calls after I have slogged my way through the Summer Movie Club and the Bookworm Story Time with my three preschoolers in tow and asks me how the kids enjoyed the Bee Movie and story time festivities - he will be well rewarded. Thanks Google - from both of us!