I'm back

Well, maybe I'm back.  I haven't done anything with my blog for over two years. We'll see how it goes.  With homeschooling, mothering, cooking, cleaning, ect., I'm not making any promises.  My newest venture is trying to sell on Etsy.  I love all kinds of crafts, but stopped doing them because it was creating a lot of clutter.  I struggle with clutter.  We probably all struggle with it.  I know that the more clutter I have the more stressed I become.  I'm hoping to turn what I love into something profitable.

I feel like I need to relearn how to blog.

What kind of posts would you, my readers, like for me to write?

Did you know...

...that a pencil will make marks under water on a porcelain surface? Elisabeth proved this to us just the other day.

The artist...


The artwork...


Fortunately it came off with a simply cleaning. :)

Organizing and controling the toys

Have you ever noticed that toys seem to multiply as the children grow. The toys get smaller and have more pieces, too.
A few months ago my husband pointed out that the toys were taking over the house. He was right. They would take out all their toys at the beginning of each day and then whine and complain when it came time to clean up. My husband wanted to get rid of the toys. That thought crossed my mind a few times, but I resisted the urge to throw everything away. I do purge the toys from time to time. I also have noticed the most popular toy is usually new or the one that they haven't played with for a long time.
I attacked the problem with an idea I got from “Managers of their Home” by Steve and Teri Maxwell, which I purchased from Titus2.com. It was suggested to get out only one kind of toy for a certain length of time. I sorted all the toys one day during nap/quiet time, and then put the containers up high, very high – Abby likes to climb up to get things.
I get down one box for them to play with at a time. Sometimes I let the one who finished his/her chores first chose the toy for the day. If they come and say they want a different toy, I make them clean up all the pieces to what they have out, then I put it up and get a different one down. They learn quickly. They now come and tell me, “We picked up all the cars. Can we have the people?”
This has greatly cut back on the toy clutter. We still have some toys through out the house, but it is much easier to pick up since they are not ALL out.
I am constantly looking for ideas to better organize my home and my life. I get so much more done when things are in order.

Let all things be done decently and in order. - 1 Corinthians 14:40

Computer problems solved

For the past few months I have been battling computer problems. It was slow, but I thought that was because it was old. It started shutting down in the middle of the games the kids were playing. I was ready to replace the thing. It is about five years old, which is really old in computer years. While trying to solve the mysterious shutting down problem, I came across a possible solution that I thought was crazy = clean out the computer. Well, after trying and trying all kinds of other ideas I finally unplugged every wire in the back of the tower and took it to the kitchen table. I didn’t really want to do this, but what could I loose? While the kids were napping (I didn’t need little fingers touching it) I opened it up and was surprised at how much dust was inside my computer. After picking out handfuls of dust, I used up a can of compressed air to blow out the rest of the dust. When my mom reads this all she will think of is her allergies to dust. She would have died from all the dust, but thankfully I am not allergic to dust and I had no reaction to the mess. Wonder of wonders, after putting everything together, it runs great! No more shutting down, no more being kicked off the internet, it downloads sermons faster, and programs in general run smoother and faster. Why didn’t I do this sooner? I will now add cleaning the computer to my occasional things to do list. If you are experiencing computer problems, you too may want to try blowing out the dust (don’t vacuum – it might suck up more than the dust).