~ My 100th Blog Post (!) and Some Words about Minimalism ~

How is it mid-June already? The summer comes and goes quicker and quicker each year! We have had a lot going on this year, but I'm trying to find that delicate balance between filling our time with fun and still taking a moment to just breathe and "be". This,of course, can be very hard with three very high energetic and active children! But that brings me to the subject of this post: minimalism. 

The dictionary definition of minimalism:

Definition of MINIMALISM

1

:  a style or technique (as in music, literature, or design) that is characterized by extreme spareness and simplicity

I don't like the word "extreme". Extreme is a word I try to stay away from in almost all aspects of my life, but it helps paint a picture. "Extreme simplicity" isn't necessarily a bad thing though. :) But aside from all that, I am working on taking a minimalist approach to my household. I simply spend to much time cleaning, organizing, and fussing with all of our stuff! I want it to end! I love plating with my kids, creating, exploring, reading and just... 'being" Even when I'm keeping up well with house work, there's just to much of it! I don't want to spend so much of my time maintaining a clean household and keeping up with our many items, I want to be living life! Not sorting through another box of toys and folding limitless loads of laundry.

A quick search of "minimalists" online will bring up some extreme examples. Those who limit themselves to 100 items, people who insist on fitting everything into a certain number of containers, some even insist on cataloging and photographing each and every single item they own.

 Whoa. 

Although you can be overcome and obsessed with all that you own, I have come to the realization that you can also become just as obsessed with what you don't have and maintaining a certain quota. I don't think either of these extremes fit me or our family because I simply don't want to focus on what I own one way or another. I just want to be doing the things that will matter for eternity, like reading outside to my kids or snuggling with hubby and coffee, as compared to washing a ton of dishes while my kids play or doing the umpteenth load of laundry while my husband is sitting in the other room.

I'm tired of:

... fighting with the kids about keeping their room clean

... putting off creating things for my home so I can clean my home

... an overflowing laudryroom

...an overflowing closet and nothing to wear

... feeling overwhelmed with my responsibility of keeping up with all the cooking, cleaning, organizing, folding dishes, ect...

Ah! There's so much more! But I'm ready to let go and get going with life. It's time to play more and clean less. Create more and organize less. 

It's summer and our family is ready to have fun and come fall, I'l be busy with homeschooling and don't want the pressure of housework constantly looming overhead.

This will be a ongoing journey for me, as I assume minimalism is much more of  journey thing than a destination thing. Especially for me. But, I'm ready to dive in head first and start having less so we are free to do more!

I'll be posting my progress and sharing in my blog what I'm doing so I can keep track of my progress and help sort out what works and what isn't working. Feel free to follow along and offer suggestions! These are some of the things I'll be working on implementing in our home:

+ Less table/ desk space = less clutter. Get rid of things that only gather clutter and don't enhance our home atmosphere.

+ Freezer meal planning / cooking! By shopping in bulk and cooking a bunch of meals at once, I'll be spending less money, cooking less, and washing dishes less! It's a win, win...win. ;)

+ Creating a capsule wardrobe. Instead of so many "so so" clothes, I'll have less clothing but more timeless, classic clothing that works well with a lot of what I own, as compared to so many odd, trendy, or ill fitting pieces. 

+ Less TV! This may not help with actual clutter, but will help clear the mind clutter :)

+ And of course, clean and toss!

So, here we go! Do you have any tips on letting go???

Planning a No Spend Week

Planning a No Spend Week or: How to Save Extra Money when You Don't have Extra Money

As a large(ish) family living on one income, I’m always looking for ways to save money and lower our weekly and monthly expenses. Through talking to other woman, reading books, blogs and my own trial and error process, God has blessed us with many different ways to save!
I recently have been using another method to save money, called a no spend week. My no spend week is a chance to save a little money in addition to whatever Daniel brings in. Admittedly, my no spend week savings go towards… “fun” money. 

We often have a little extra left over at the end of each week, and unless there is something we are in need of or some unforeseen bill or expenses, that’s our “extra” or fun money for the weekend. We don’t do much, normally it’s a weekend breakfast out as a family, gas money to take the Jeeps out to the beach or date night money. So although there is that extra amount, I hate spending our family fun weekend money on say, a new rug. Daniel always encourages me to use what we have if I find something I like (he is so generous and giving!) but I know that the kids and us will have more memories from being at the beach for the day, than say me getting on them for stepping on my new rug with muddy shoes! So, my no spend week is a way for me to have a little fund that I can use to buy things for the home or keep hidden away for a rainy day,  it’s a mini savings that won’t take away from the money we put into savings or take away from our weekend fun money budget!

What is a no spend week?:

* A no spend week is where you do just that, don’t spend anything that week! 
Normally each week I carefully budget our $160 to account for all meals for the five of us for the week plus groceries like toilet paper, diapers, pet food, ect. I plan our weekly menu and shop for that week.

* During my “no spend week” I don’t go shopping for anything but some fresh fruit and some milk. That’s it! So for my first week of trying out this method, I saved myself about $140.00! Of course you could take it one step farther and buy nothing, but I get very picky about milk and we eat so much fruit that it would be almost impossible for us not to buy any fruit in a week.

Planning your no spend week:

 Now I say that my first week I saved $140.00 but that took 4-6 weeks of preparation. It‘s a simple plan, you just need to be diligent about keeping stock of what you have and not use the food you are preparing for your week of not buying anything!

I’m sure there are many people who could do this in less time or on a bigger scale, but this plan is specifically for anyone who doesn’t plan on spending anything more than they normally would in a week’s time.

Here is step by step how to plan your no spend week:

Week 1-4

* Buy what’s on sale! This seems obvious, but pay attention to anything that is at a super low price and stock up! If fruit is on sale (and often there is something at it’s peak of ripeness so the price is dramatically cut down.) buy it and freeze! Sale prices on specific items seem to rotate every 4-6 weeks. Our local grocery store has a sale on our favorite bread once a month or so, instead of $1.88 it’s $0.88 that week. So I always buy twice what we need, so I can stash a weeks worth of bread in the freezer for later but I still haven’t spent a penny more than I normally would have.

*  Check out the clearance carts! Lots of small town grocery stores will have a cart or part of an aisle dedicated to clearanced out food. (It’s often just discontinued items or dented cans) this can be a hit or miss, but if you check them every week for 4-6 weeks and stash away at home anything you buy from the clreaenced aisle, you normally have a nice little stash of food for cheap!

*Always divide up your snacks! I keep 2 plastic shoes boxes in my pantry. One at eye level and one larger sized one (with a lid) way on top in back of the pantry where no one can see it! When I buy a box of nutri grain bars, I dump them all into the main shoe box and stash 2 in my secret shoe box. If I buy pop tarts, all but one pack goes in the snack shoe box. When I buy mini pretzels or animal crackers, ect. I divide the bag up into a bunch of sandwich size ziplock bags and always stash a bag away. At the end of the month for my so spend week, I always have plenty of filler snacks on hand!

*Freezer meals! This is one of the biggest ways to save money! In order to have enough dinners for your no spend week, you have to squeeze out about 1 to 2 extra dinners a week from your normal budget (without spending extra) . This can be done fairly easy as long as you are willing to get a bit creative! For example, If I’m making meatballs, I add a little oatmeal and some cooked rice to the recipe. Because of that I can then add in extra tomato paste, egg and anything else the recipe calls for. So one pound of ground meat can quickly turn into 2 pounds worth of meatballs. (and they taste just as delicious, I promise!) IN fact, I almost never cook ground beef by itself anymore. By adding finely shredded carrots and onions, you can gain about an additional half pound of “meat” from one pound of ground beef, plus your sneaking in carrots! When I do that, I divived the meat portion for whatever Im making in half and freeze the rest of the meat for tacos.

French bread pizzas are another good cheap and yummy freezer meal. You can normally pick up French bread for cheap on the bakery sale rack. (once again, not spending anything extra) Then just slice the bread lengthways, top with sauce cheese and whatever toppings you have and bake half and freeze the other half for later!

So that’s how you squeeze out extra dinners, just 1-2 a week and before you know it you have a stash quickly built up!

* I also do this with breakfast! Make extra pancakes, freeze half, make extra French toast, freeze half. Using the extra ingredients doesn’t take away enough from our pantry to send me to the store for anything more, but that is at least 2 breakfasts worth sitting in the freezer.

Week 3

By the last 2 weeks of prep, I start to take stock of what I have in my pantry and what I have already saved specifically for my no spend week. I build a menu based off of that then make a list of what meals or snacks I’ll still need. I don’t need much and can easily squeeze what I need out of the budget for the next 2 weeks.

Week 4

Make hay while the sun shines! Basically, if you’re like us, there are always some weeks you have more money than others. The weeks that hubby got a little overtime or less bills were due that week, that’s when I take the few extra dollars and buy an extra thing of toilet paper or an extra package of diapers and stash away for later. With all this meal planning don’t forget other household necessities!

Week 5

On the last week I make sure we have the bulk of the freshest food, like extra fresh vegetables and lots of eggs. We eat eggs often, (scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, hard boiled, in cooking…) so I’ll buy a pack of 5 dozen this week (around $9.00) and that will be more than enough for this week’s menu and next week.

Week 6

Bask in all of your hard work and money saved! Since my menu is already planned out, I don’t even need to do that this week, yet alone grocery shopping! Like I said, I do keep a little grocery money on hand ($20.00 more or less) but the rest is there to do what we want! Not only that, but I didn’t realize what a break it would give me the rest of the week as well. Other than sometimes whipping up a side dish, I really didn’t cook all week! I would pull a dinner out of the freezer the night before and stick it in the fridge, then throw it in the oven right before dinner. No prep, no cooking, no dishes yet we still had a good home cooked meal each night.
Breakfast was just as easy! The weekend was pretty much breakfast casserole or quiche and during the week if we wanted French toast, I just would use the toaster to dethaw and heat it up!

As long as you are willing to put in a little extra effort with meal planning and have some patience, you can easily save $150 or more depending on your weekly grocery budget. This has really helped me save some money, what are some of your favorite sneaky ways to save money?

Before & After Entry

I have so many posts rolling around in my head! As usual though, things are always busy and finding time to sit down and write posts for my blog usually take a back seat to other things. like, Pinning on Pinterest, I'm sorry to say :) But here we go with the first of many posts on..... how home renovations have been going! (and by renovation, mean lots of paint :) But seeing my friend (and cousin... in law! ) share all of her inspiring home projects have inspired me to share and come up with my own!

The first project to share.....

The Entryway!

I forget how old this house is (we rent) but I can tell you, many, MANY renovations were done in the 1970 and 1980s! And I don't mean the cool, vintage vibe of the 1970s. More like dark gloomy colors and lots of stained, peeling wallpaper.

Before:

Now, cost is a big factor in the changes to our home. We only plan on being here a short while. So in addition to saving for our dream home (That, God willing, will be a nice piece of Texas land to put a pond in and have a cow :) We don't want to get "to comfortable" renting and seeing this as home. But, after living in an apartment for 5 years and never doing much to that, we really want to make our home really feel like "Our home" and reflect us.

I'll be share some of the deatils about the decor, but this is how our entryway currently looks:

After:

So much more lighter, refreshing, and airy! I still have many things I want to do, like paint the trim and get a mirror and some larger pictures. But right now, I'm really just liking the airy and more "us" feel of everything. :) 

A Day in Our Home and Some Recipes!

So tonight I have been unable, or just  unwilling to go to sleep. Although it's been a long crazy day and I'm exhausted and my feet hurt, I just lay in bed not wanting to sleep. It's not even that my mind is racing, I feel perfectly peaceful, calm and collected. But that's just it... the calmness! The Peace! The still gentle quietness. I know once I close my eyes it will all slip away the moment I fall asleep. And although my sleep will most likely be a restful one, it still seems like I sleep for a moment and all of the sudden the alarm goes off and another whirl wind of a day starts! 

Today was pretty "average" in all the wonderfulness and tragedy that comes with staying home with young children. So in case you were wondering, this is what a average weekday looks like at our house....

5:00 Wake up! Hubby gets ready for work while I make coffee and prepare his lunch. We get to talk and snuggle just a few minutes before he is out the door! I also let out the dogs and feed that kittens and dogs.

5:45 Shower, get geared up for the day, make our bed. Drink coffee! Eat some peanut butter.

6:15 Spend some time with God praying, giving thanks and reading His word. This is so very necessary for me! This quite time in the mornings with my bible and coffee is what keeps me grounded for the day and is the well in which I draw hope and patience for later on!

You know those woman are so patient and slow to wrath? Come to find out, that's not me....  But God picks up where I let off!

                                             source:http://www.pinterest.com/pin/558376053771863775/

7:00  Quick check on emails, blogs, facebook, and Pinterest!

7:30 First girl wakes up! The second girl isn't far behind! (One always seems to need a little more sleep than the other. :) We all lay around a little and usually watch Micky Mouse Clubhouse on the couch together.

8:00 I make pancakes! I make all that we need for today plus what's left in the rest of the box. That way I can freeze the rest for a day when we are short on time!

8:30 Caleb is up! He was up a bit ago but seemed content so I let him be so I could finish making breakfast. Once I go to get him though, I find out he has peed through EVERYTHING! 

8:45 The baby is clean and the bedding is all tossed in the laundry room. I make the girls pancakes and hold Caleb while he drinks some milk. (although he is weaned, he still like to sit on me most mornings cuddled up and drink his milk.) The girls finish their plates, I get them seconds and make Caleb up his plate of pancakes.

9:15 Clean breakfast up, Go hang up laundry on the clothes line, start a new load of laundry. We all spend time together in the living room playing/ I write out my goals for the day. We all eat a snack of fresh blueberries! 

10:15 Suntan and bug spray on! We all go outside to play before it get's too hot out. We fill the girl's pool up so they can play in it later. We play with the hose and chase each other around the yard. Caleb finds handfuls of mud and proudly brings them to me :) The Girls dance in the water :)

11:00 Inside, dry off, Caleb gets changed and put down for a nap.

- The girls and I clean the living room top to bottom. We pick up and put things away. They take turns dusting and washing the windows. 

- The girls pick up the mess in the hallway/ foyer area. I sweep

- I tidy up the bathroom and sweep. Girls feed the pets and clean the litter box (Diana loves that job 0_o )

- Go outside to take the laundry of the line, fold it, hang up a new load and start another load of laundry!

12:00 Eat lunch! Mostly fresh fruit and sandwiches for the girls.

12:45 Do a little school! (Very, very laid back school. But learning none the less! :) 

- Practice letters and sounds

- Practice writing out letters

- Do a few pages from pre K and Kindergarten workbooks.

Us girls just talk, write in our notebooks and play.

1:30 More suntan lotion! (Brutal South Texas sun!) 

I bring fitness and cooking magazines along with my pen and notebook. The girls swim and play in their pool while I plan my freezer cooking.

I bought extra food last week so I can cook a bunch of extra dinners for convenience and in anticipation of my no spend week. (More to come on that later!) 

With 9 pounds of chicken breasts and a pound of ground beef I plan my dinners:

- 2 9x13 pans of lasagna roll ups

 source:http://thrivinghomeblog.com/2011/03/meatless-monday-spinach-lasagna-roll-ups/

- 2 9x13 pans of wild rice and chicken with slivered almonds

source:http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/wild-rice-chicken-dinner

- 2 9x13 pans chicken, green beans and potatoes

Source:http://www.pinterest.com/pin/178736678932660096/

- 1 gallon bag of chicken breasts, onions and vegetables for the crock pot

- 1 gallon bag of lightly breaded rosemary and Parmesan chicken strips.

(This source has a fancy recipe, I'm just using a packet from kraft :)

Since I pulled out all the meat earlier in the day and everything is just about de thawed, surely I can whip up most of those meals in an hour or so after coming inside... right? :) 

I almost call my mom and sisters, but instead spend time talking to the girls while writing out my list :)

2:15 Come inside. dry off! have a snack. I hear Caleb up but wait to get him until the girls go down.

2:30 The girls get tucked into bed for quite time and spend some down time cuddling with their kittens.

 I get Caleb after putting them down. Diaper change then lunch for the little man! 

After getting cleaned up I spread toys on the floor and we play with cars then I scoop him up and cuddle and play and swing him into the air and be silly!

I can't but help think of the dishes and my dinners. But remind myself that the reason I stay at home with my kids isn't to have a perfectly clean home and a bunch of things accomplished (though being at home instead of working helps me get more done around here! ) The reason I stay at home is to lavish much love on all my children! The rest will always be there.

3:15 The girls get up. All the kids eat a snack. They play and hang out while I divide my attention between playing/checking on them and cleaning the kitchen and dining room and do all the dishes.

 

The dishes, they smile at me!

4:00 PBS Wild Kratts starts ( Two 30 minute animal shows, the kids love it!) They watch tv while I start browning the hamburger meat, slicing the chicken breasts up and cook a few batches of lasagna noodles. (I need a bigger pot!)

I prepare the filling and lay out the pans for the lasagna dinner. The kid's show is almost done so I have the girls help me! I knew it would be messy and take longer, but decided to go for it anyway.

I brought Caleb's play pen into the kitchen and set up 2 little "stations" so each girl could help with one pan and I stood in the middle to help them.

Oh My.....

I knew this would be messy, but the mess far exceeds even what I anticipated! The girls have food everywhere, they are starting to fight and Caleb's fussing has turned into crying. The dogs are chasing the cats and fighting over all the food on the floor and totally under foot.

5:45 Dinner finally ends up in the oven and I freeze the other pan. The kids get cleaned up I give them a snack because I know dinner is going to be late and then clean up the mess in the kitchen. (Most of it, anyway)

(Random things that often happen when I go to the bathroom)

6:00 Hubby is home! Kids get crazy we try to talk over them and then dinner is done!

6:30 Dinner time!

7:00 We finish dinner, Daniel chases the kids around the living room while I sit and watch them all and laugh. Daniel and I literally sit and talk for 10 minutes before the kids start to meltdown. He turns on the tv, they all chill. I start the bathwater for all the kids to take a bath and gather dry diapers and pajamas. By this time the kids are calm and hubby has fallen asleep on the couch. (He worked almost 12 hours outside in the 100* heat! Poor man :( )

source:http://www.pinterest.com/pin/270286415109548171/

7:30 Bath time (Crazy time!)

8:00 Kids are all out of the bath, dried and ready for bed. Hubby is still lightly sleeping so I go ahead and tuck the kids in. I put Caleb down and give him some milk and sing him a song and then go to the girls room, tuck them in and pray with them. Diana's prayer is that she is so thankful we got to do school and Ellie was so happy we got to play outside :)

I put away away dinner and prepare Daniel's lunch for the next day. I take care of the dogs and change into comfy pajamas myself. I check my emails and hubby wakes up!

8:45 Although still somewhat early, we are both exhausted and decide to get ready for bed. By the time we actually finish showers, talking, laying out clothes for the next day get something to drink ect... it's 9:15 when we actually go to bed.

9:20 The hubs is already asleep and I'm laying in the peace and quite. I can hear the bull frogs outside and the moon light is shining bright and streaming through the window into our room. So peaceful! I feel as if I could lay here and enjoy the quietness all night. But 2 minutes in and I'm already feeling myself fall asleep. Except, I'm really not. I have gotten out of bed and have been on line for 2 hours! So before much more time passes, good night all!

                                     source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/384846730627826191/

*Next Day Edit*

Note to self: When you're exhausted, go stinkin to bed! There is a reason why God lets us feel peaceful and tired at night, it's so we can go to bed and get some sleep and not be dead tired and grumpy the next day! :)

The Homemade Pasta "UnRecipe"

Although this is a "recipe" for pasta, this is actually an un recipe. I'll give all the directions, but if you go a head and make them for yourselves, you'll see that you really made them without any directions at all. So this is my "un recipe" for the best homemade pasta. Ever. In the world. Yes.

The Homemade Pasta "Un recipe"

Ingredients:

• 1 egg
• I cup of flour
• 1/2 teaspoon of salt
• 2 Tablespoons of water

3 servings

Directions:

Mix together the salt and flour. Make a "well" or hole that doesn't quite reach the bottom of the bowl and crack a large egg into it. You can do this in a bowl, like I did. Or, if you're feeling brave, do like the Italians do and Just heap the mound of flour directly on the counter and add the eggs into that.

Since this supposedly is only 3 servings I went ahead and tripled it. As I was adding in the flour I was disrupted by the littles running around me and lost my train of thought (Oh Lord, this is sad. I only had to count to three, for three cups, and I lost my train of thought. This is a new low for me and slightly disturbing) Anyway, I lost my "train of thought" and could not remember if I had done 2 cups or 3 already and I was in a hurry, and it looked about 3 cups but I added about a half cup extra anyway.

Go ahead and mix that and add the water. The dough should be sticky and firm. This WILL NOT be enough water. I ended up doing about 10 Tablespoons of water and 4 Tablespoons of olive oil. Just add enough water and oil to make a dough you can knead and that looks all doughy and happy.

Knead this for about 4 minutes. I then let mine sit for 15 minutes.

Once that is done you can either roll out the dough with a roller or use a pasta maker. I used my nifty pasta maker that my mom gave me.

I took about 1/8 of the dough, floured it and rolled it through twice before rolling it through the pasta side. I decided to let the kids help. This, of course doubled the time it took to do this, but that's ok. :) After a while of this though E. became bored and wandered off and I set D. off to the side of where I was working. She happily, very happily kneaded her little ball of dough in the flour she kept stealing when I wasn't watching her. :)

Once you have the pasta, let it dry out for a bit before cooking. I let mine sit and become slightly dry, about 20 minutes.

Start a salted pot of water boiling. These noodles take about 8 minutes (depending on how long you let them dry out for.) to cook. It doesn't look like there a ton of noodles, but they are so very filling! All four of us ate our fill, and there was still enough left over for another whole dinner's worth, at least!

The rest of the family had the normal pasta sauce, but I rinsed mine until they were cool and added in just a bit of ranch dressing, a tiny bit of Sun Dried Tomato vinaigrette and a slight squeeze of lemon. It was perfect!

Although this takes longer to make than dumping a box of pasta in a pot, it was worth it! It doesn't even taste like pasta, it taste like long strips of Italian wheat goodness! Try it, you won't be disappointed!

Come check out some other great recipes and crafts here at:

"Every woman would love to replace a life of survival with a life of meaningful accomplishment."

-- Elizabeth George

Wow.. isn't that a true statement! I know that's how I often feel. There often seems to be so much going on and so much to do that I sometimes seem like I am doing nothing but running in circles all day. Then on the flip side, everyday can seem so alike and my time here at home seem so meaningless because I have nothing to show for it. Of course there are my children to take care of and train up in a Godly manner, but my mind is wired in a very fleshy way and I often find myself looking to see what "accomplishments" I can claim as my own. We live in a very worldly world where what you do is more important than who you are or who you serve. I have pursued so many different paid work at home opportunities and looked for ways to fill my time at home because I want my time to be filled with "worthwhile" activities. Of course I'm a stay at home mom and homemaker, but there has to be more, right? I mean, if someone asks you what you do, just replying "Oh, Im a stay at home mom" sounds so overly simplistic. Too easy. Almost, lazy even. But, is it? Is that what God says?

I was busy trying to clean our room the other day and became frustrated with the whole process. I asked the Lord, "Lord, more dirty laundry?!? How am I ever going to keep up with all of this? Why can I never stay organized enough to not accumulate so many piles of stinkin paper everywhere and why am I cleaning the same thing everyday?! I just can't seem to keep anything clean for more than an hour or a day? What's wrong with me? It's not that I'm lazy or un motivated, I just truly can't seem to keep my house tidy for very long. Please Lord, if there's something I'm missing, show me what it is! If there is something I'm doing wrong, show me another, better way to do it! It's house cleaning for crying out loud! Not rocket science!"

This has been my prayer (or one very similar to it) for the past few weeks. Now, in the last few days, weeks and months He has been showing me some things!

Lesson 1: Be in the world, not of it!

Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--His good, pleasing and perfect will.

Romans 12:2

Although I am very secure and comfortable fulfilling me call as a stay at wife and mom, I have a tenancy to be very "success" oriented. When people ask me what I do, I love rattling off a long laundry list of items that include so much more then just laundry! There's my photography business, my numerous little online writing jobs, there's all the different etsy shops I plan on opening, many different online work at home jobs that I have pursued at any given time, ect..... I like to have things to "show" that I can make good use of my time being at home. My thinking has been that I will not be one of those moms that just stays home and cleans or sits around everyday!

So, are those thoughts God given thoughts, or are they a result of my carnal self trying to bring glory to myself? Is being a good stay at home mom requiring me to "just clean" all day anyway? (Although having 2 under 2 it often seems that way!)

I feel like God has been showing me that being the sunny, joyful and encouraging wife to my husband, the patient and kind mom to my little children and keeping my home is more than enough for one person to master. I shouldn't feel even the slightest shame replaying "I'm a stay at home mom" to anyone. Because being a stay at home wife and mom will have more than enough jobs in itself to master! Of course, God has blessed me with opportunities such as my photography business, which I completely enjoy and am so thankful for, but that is just additional. It's not a part of my "official" job description.

So, one of the main things He has been teaching me:

Get over seeing myself in the world's light and what the world would see has not only successful and what the world sees at "a good use of time."

He had to teach me this through and through before the next lesson.

Lesson 2: No one is perfect!

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

Romans 3:23

I like to kick myself when I'm down. Has the laundry been in piles for days and am I once again frantically searching for envelopes and the address for the electric company? Well then, I guess I am a horrible home maker and a failure at things organization. Did I forget to take something into account when balancing the checkbook or over spend on the budget for that week? Well then, I might as well let hubby take care of all the finances because apparently I can't.

Hhmmm... what kind of thinking is that? I have unrealistic expectations of myself and when I don't live up to those expectations, I get so down on myself that I end up more down and even less encouraged. But you know what? NO ONE is perfect and that probably means that nothing we do is perfect. Were only human. Not only does God know this, but He created us like this! Why? Because our weakness is perfected by Him! When we are having a hard time with something or struggling trying to fix it ourselves, no true help will come to us without Christ's hand in our lives.

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God - not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

God purposely made us imperfect so that not only can we learn to lean on Him for help and support, but also so that when something does go right, we can give all the glory for that right thing to God. God is the only way anything in our life can go right and all the glory is due Him!

Lesson: 3 Homemaking is a learned profession that takes many, many years to learn and master.

Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live... to teach what is good Then they can urge the younger women to..... be busy at home (also translated as " to do work in their home" "manage their households" "homemakers" ......

Titus 2:3-5

Just like no one can expect to become a specialized surgeon after one human anatomy class, not one keeper at home should expect her home and all her household affairs will be perfected with the surgeon like precision a master would have without many years of training. Even after years and years of running a household, there will always be something new to learn.

I have had my own household for just over 3 years now. Of course I don't have it all together! I never really will, but I know as the years go by and I learn from those woman who are older and wiser than I, that the state of my household will continue to improve.

The outcome of these new lessons:

I feel that the Lord is leading me to stop pursuing so many different pursuits. Maybe I have just a few to many "irons in the fire" and I need start weeding out a little better what I'm being called to do and what I'm doing to fill up time that I don't really have in the first place.

Aside from my photography business (an opportunity that I truly believe God has His hand in right now) I'm going to start trying to learn how to run my household better. And what does running a household entail? Here is a list:

First, to serve my husband and children. I want to be their rock. No matter what goes on in the world and happens in the course of their daily lives, I want to be the smiling, encouraging , loving, pillar of strength that loves them. When they think of home, I want them to think of me.

She watches over the affairs of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness. Her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.”

Proverbs 31:27-29

Now, everything else in no particular order:

Menu planning

Nutrition and meal preparation

Cooking

Baking

Cleaning (not picking up, but how to actually clean things)

Financial planning

Weekly lists and week by week planning

Organizing

How to make my home a beautiful, peaceful and restful haven.

i.e....

Decorating

Thrifting

Creating

Crafting

Sewing

There are more than enough things of interest to pursue to help fulfill my job of running a household. Most of these things have to be done by everyone to some extent, but what an honour to have the opportunity to become a master of these skills and provide our family with a beautiful and smooth running household! I realize of course that God has different callings for different people, and just because I am called to be a stay at home mom doesn't mean that I think that's what every person who has a husband or children should do, but it's what I am called to do. So I will do it with all my might!

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might

Ecclesiastes 9:10

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men

Colossians 3:23

In closing, let me share an encouraging quote from Elizabeth George:

"When we get up every morning with a fresh prayer for our home in our heart, and a burning passion for building our home in our soul, when we acknowledge the priority, and pledge to better the lives of the people at home by bettering the place of home, and then practice the many tasks that such love requires, in time we master the skills of homemaking.