Money Saving Mom®

Thank you so much for joining me this week for the Clean Your House for Christmas Challenge. It made such a big difference in our home and it inspired me to continue cleaning out other neglected areas in our home in the coming days and weeks.

Today was the first day all week that I’ve finally felt almost completely 100% again — which was such a blessing after days of being sick and then just feeling really tired as a result of being sick. I’m so grateful to be on the mend and back to full steam again!

Silas made scrambled eggs for breakfast — and needed almost zero help from me to make them! I still turn the burner on for him and oversee him carefully, but it’s exciting to see him really picking up on cooking skills this year.

I started the She Reads Truth 1 & 2nd Peter Study today… I can already tell I’m going to benefit greatly from it! Taking time to be quiet and spend time studying God’s Word, reading from a good book, and counting my blessings is such a great start to my day!

I love that this girl has really started to love reading! I keep catching her with her nose stuck in books this week!

While I was working on finishing up my morning cleaning, Silas asked if he could help clean all the windows. He spent an HOUR working on cleaning all the windows on the first floor! I was quite impressed!

The rest of the morning was spent on homeschooling. Right before lunch, I finally had a chance to get in a quick run on the treadmill. And then Jesse got home and made lunch while I hopped in the shower and got dressed and ready.

I came downstairs and we ate lunch and read aloud together. Then Jesse took over homeschooling and I headed out to spend a few hours working at the shared office space we have a membership to. I was grateful to finally feel up to getting out of the house today… while I love being home, I find that I’m much more productive when I leave for the afternoon and working at the office space. Plus, it was just good to get out of the house after being home almost all day every day for the past week because I just haven’t felt well.

When I got home, I tackled the bathroom cupboards. I’m kind of embarrassed to show you this one… because you see that duffle bag stuffed in the cupboard?

That’s a duffle bag we packed for a trip we went on in AUGUST.

Um, yeah.

I wasn’t kidding when I told you I’ve neglected deep cleaning…

It feels SO good to f-i-n-a-l-l-y have that bag unpacked and put away. And to have that bathroom cupboard cleaned out and organized.

Bathroom cupboard #2: Before

And after. Much better.

While I didn’t get all the deep cleaning done that I’d hoped to this week, I tackled a LOT of projects and areas that have been very neglected these past six months of my life and it feels so good to open drawers and closets and cupboards and see such neat and organized spaces again.

Now I’m determined to work on keeping them that way!

Leave a Comment & You Could Win This Stack of Books!

In my cleaning today, I found some more books that I’d love to pass on to a good home, most all that are ones I’ve loved and just want to share with someone who could be encouraged by them! Plus, I threw in a copy of both my audiobook, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, and a copy of my new Choose Gratitude Blessings Journal that’s now out of stock in our store (I have a few copies left!), and a copy of my first book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget.

Who wants to win them? To win, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll choose one winner tomorrow evening and will mail them to you so you’ll have them in time for Christmas. Some of these books are great condition and might even work as gifts for people on your Christmas list!

Did you work on cleaning your house today? If you blogged about participating in this Clean Your House For Christmas Challenge, leave the direct link to your post below that is specifically about this challenge. Or, leave a comment telling us how your cleaning went today.

The winner of yesterday’s stack of books is Jennifer (jjsbarrilleaux@) — I sent you an email tonight to ask for your address.

The winner of this stack of books from today’s giveaway is Kaitlin (literarymademoiselle@) — I sent you an email requesting your address. Congrats!

I got up later than I’d planned this morning and felt like I was sort of chasing my tail all day long. However, because of the good routine we’re getting into and because of the hard work we’ve done to deep clean the house this week, the whole day didn’t feel derailed and I ended up getting most of the things done that I’d hoped to accomplish.

I’ve been doing a really good job of doing one load of laundry from start to finish every day this week. I’m amazed at how much this is helping our days go smoother — and how happy it makes me to know that all the laundry is done when I go to bed.

One thing that has made this to actually happen is that the kids have been folding and putting away the load of laundry every afternoon. So all I’ve had to do was start and switch the load — and then remind them to fold and put it away in the afternoon.

I may have solved my years-long battle of the laundry pile! And that is HUGE!

Kaitlynn made me breakfast this morning. She loves to serve me and is always looking for little ways to do so. Today, she presented me with a bowl of oatmeal that had chopped bananas on it. Yum!

Yesterday, she brought me a fresh cup of coffee almost first thing in the morning. It was totally her idea and it blessed me so much.

Moms of littles, I just want to encourage you: your hard work will pay off. Keep loving, teaching, and nurturing those babies of yours and someday soon, they’ll be making you breakfast, helping with laundry, and encouraging you throughout the day.

Silas practiced writing out numbers today, as well as working on learning basic clock-reading skills. He also did some Do-a-Dot letter printables.

While I was helping Silas with Kindergarten, Jesse made dinner and popped it in the crock pot. Yes, folks, I am so very blessed. Truly, I am blown away by this man that I married. And I fall more in love with him every day.

Life isn’t always all roses and rainbows and we have our struggles and arguments, but for the most part, we are just loving this lifestyle of us both working together and sharing homeschooling responsibilities, and all working together to keep our home running. I’m beyond grateful for this blog (and you all who read here) and how you help make this possible for our family.

All those years of hard work, sacrifices, and living on little have borne much more fruit than we could have dreamed. We have no idea whether this is just a season or a forever thing, but we’re seeking to embrace the here and now and loving where we’re at and how it allows us to get to spend so much time together.

After Jesse made dinner and we’d finished breakfast and morning chores, he left for a meeting and to run some errands. The rest of our morning was spent cleaning, doing morning chores, homeschooling, and reading aloud together.

When Jesse got home, I finished reading the last two chapters of our current read aloud book while he made lunch — it was bacon and eggs today. Yum!

And then he took over homeschooling and I headed out to finally run on the treadmill, take a shower, and do some blogging and business work.

Later in the afternoon, the kids came outside to help me shoot the pictures for my Apple Pie post. They LOVE to help me set up and take photos for my blog posts.

Kathrynne, especially, has really gotten into giving me ideas and suggestions for how to set things up and angles to take pictures from. When I was finished with taking pictures, she took the camera and snapped some more for me.

When I was finished with the Apple Pie photos, I quickly put on a little make up and headed out the door for a meeting in town with a few of my team members. We had our end-of-year meetings last week and are in the process of making some changes for 2015, so a few of us had to meet to put things in place to move forward with one of the action items.

I so LOVE the team of people I get to work with. Not only are each of them amazing and skilled, but more importantly, they are my friends. We share so much more than business stuff with each other and that’s what makes working together so much fun.

While I was at my manager’s office, I also got to pop in and see all of the boxes and boxes of orders being packaged up and shipped out. There have been a team of people working hard to get all orders out in a timely manner for Christmas. This is our first year to offer products, so it’s been a learning experience and we so appreciate your patience and input as we’re learning the ropes and growing in this way.

By the way, can you believe that we’re now completely SOLD OUT of all the Gratitude Journals? We have enough to send out all the orders that came in through this afternoon, but we had to pull it from our site this evening as we are almost completely out of stock and we just discovered that our publisher doesn’t have any more in stock, either!

The publisher is getting another big order printed and shipped in right now, but that’s going to take at least 6 weeks or so. In the mean time, getting your hands on a Gratitude Journal is going to be bit hard to do. We think a few Christian stores may still have some in stock, as well as possibly a few places online.

Basically, you all BLEW US AWAY with your excitement and orders. And we ended up selling 10 TIMES MORE than I expected we’d be able to sell by Christmas. I don’t know what to say other than thank you for believing in this idea of mine and being excited about it! I’m truly speechless and humbly grateful. You all mean the world to me!

I finally got around to cleaning the bathrooms tonight. Well, let me take that back: I started to clean the bathrooms and then realized that there was no way I could get to every single part of the bathrooms I wanted to and still go to bed by 11:30 p.m. tonight.

So instead, I decided to just focus most of my efforts on the bathroom drawers in the Master Bathroom drawers. Because clearly, these needed some serious help.

Yikes! I cannot believe I’m posting these publicly.

And yet another, really awful drawer.

I pulled everything out — and it was a little overwhelming!

I used a rag to wipe down the insides and then tossed some things, put some items in the shelves in the bathroom cupboard, and re-organized the rest.

I think I need to find some drawer organizers for all the little things. Still thinking on what would be best there — I welcome suggestions of drawer organizers or how you keep your bathroom drawers from looking like a Stuff Bomb exploded inside of them!

Leave a Comment & You Could Win This Stack of Books!

In my cleaning today, I found some more books that I’d love to pass on to a good home, most all that are ones I’ve loved and just want to share with someone who could be encouraged by them! Plus, I threw in a copy of both my audiobook, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, and a copy of my new Choose Gratitude Blessings Journal that’s now out of stock in our store (I have a few copies left!), and a copy of my first book, The Money Saving Mom’s Budget.

Who wants to win them? To win, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll choose one winner tomorrow evening and will mail them to you so you’ll have them in time for Christmas. Some of these books are great condition and might even work as gifts for people on your Christmas list!

Did you work on cleaning your house today? If you blogged about participating in this Clean Your House For Christmas Challenge, leave the direct link to your post below that is specifically about this challenge. Or, leave a comment telling us how your cleaning went today.
The winner of yesterday’s stack of books is Sara (sara.perrera@) — I sent you an email tonight to ask for your address.

Today was SUCH a good day. I’m still not getting this posted early evening like I’d hoped, but that’s just life.

It was so great to wake up to a clean house, the laundry all caught up, and a day with fewer to-do’s. I really feel like we’re starting to get into a great rhythm here with our new schedule… and I’m just hoping that the momentum continues!

Also? I finally got my hair washed and fixed, a nicer outfit on, and a little make up on — which was the first time that has happened since I got sick on Saturday. Yay!

I’m still somewhat dragging and not 100% yet, but I’m improving each day and am hopeful to be back to full capacity again soon. In the mean time, I’m trying to make sure I take care of myself, get a good night’s sleep every night, and eat and drink well.

I love using the diffuser!

Today, we diffused the Harmony essential oil blend. I pick different ones each day — mostly depending upon what mood I’m in or what mood I want to help us all be in! 🙂

After I read my Bible, I came downstairs and we ate a quick breakfast and then started cleaning up the kitchen while the kids did their morning chores. Since we’d gone to bed with a really clean house, this didn’t take long at all.

And I even had time to make my bed… the second day in a row!!

I got the kids started on their morning school projects, switched the laundry, and finished a few more cleaning projects. Then, I exercised and helped Silas with his Kindergarten work.

After that, we all met in the living room and I read aloud while the kids worked on different things — Kathrynne on LEGOS, Kaitlynn on drawing/coloring, and Silas on practicing writing his letters.

A little after noon, Jesse got home and he made lunch. I ate quickly and then headed upstairs to finally get a shower.

They all left for Kathrynne’s swimming practice and I blow dried my hair and then got busy on my afternoon blogging work. Today, I had some posts to write, some emails to answer, a meeting with my executive team (we meet every Wednesday afternoon via Zoom), and then more emails and posts to draft, comments to answer, and some odds and ends of projects.

I headed down to the kitchen around 5:00 p.m. to make apple pie.

Jesse left (again) to take Kaitlynn to her ice skating practice.

Kathrynne and Silas finished up folding and putting away the laundry and then played in the backyard for awhile with the neighbor children.

Once the pie was in the oven, I called the kids back in and they got to watch a movie because their chores and school were done for the day.

I had planned to get a little more blogging work done, but I kinda got distracted online and ended up doing basically nothing for 45 minutes. Well, I mean, I visited lots of sites and found out some interesting information, but had little to show for that time. 🙂

So I decided I’d be better off getting up from the computer and starting in on the kitchen cleaning…

I cleaned up from my apple-pie baking and then cleaned out the refrigerator.

When I was finished, Jesse and Kaitlynn got home. They’d picked up Chili’s for dinner and we sat down to eat.

Then, it was back to the kitchen cleaning again!

The Lazy Susan really needed to be wiped out and it felt so good to take everything out, wipe it out, wipe the appliances off, and put them back again.

I also tackled the junk drawer in the kitchen.

Silas helped me organize the batteries in the junk drawer.

Much better!

I also cleaned out the pantry and a few more shelves and cupboards… and ended up with a box full of things to get rid of/trash. Yay for de-cluttering!

When it was all said and done, it was only 8:30 p.m. and I’d finished everything on My Morning Plan. Woot!

Leave a Comment & You Could Win This Stack of Books!

In my cleaning today, I found some more books and cookbooks to get rid of, most all that are ones I’ve loved and just want to pass onto someone who could be encouraged by them! Plus, I threw in a copy of both my book, Say Goodbye to Survival Mode, and a copy of my new Choose Gratitude Blessings Journal and a box of tea that I love!

Who wants to win them? To win, just leave a comment on this post and I’ll choose one winner tomorrow evening and will mail them to you so you’ll have them in time for Christmas. Some of these books are great condition and might even work as gifts for people on your Christmas list!

Did you work on cleaning your house today? If you blogged about participating in this Clean Your House For Christmas Challenge, leave the direct link to your post below that is specifically about this challenge. Or, leave a comment telling us how your cleaning went today.

The winner of yesterday’s stack of books is Michelle (kmosmond@) — I sent you an email tonight to ask for your address.