You know that runner’s high people talk about? Or even a shopper’s high? I don’t get those (because I don’t run and I’d just feel guilty if I went on a big shopping spree), but I do get a sort of euphoria from a seriously clean and organized home. In fact, clutter makes me temporarily insane. If my family wants to set me off on a rampage, they just need to leave cluttery messes in every room, especially on kitchen counters.

For the sake of mankind, it’s probably a good thing that God didn’t make everybody this way. The world would be delightfully organized, but things would get pretty boring.  Dana, who blogs as “Nony the Slob” at  A Slob Comes Clean, does not share my psychosis — but on her blog, she does share “the truth about cleaning and organization methods that actually work for a real-life slob.”

Dana has recently released an ebook for anyone overwhelmed by the mess of their home. While I can’t write from the perspective of the so-called “seriously disorganized,” I can say that Dana has written a humorous yet helpful guide to changing habits over a period of four weeks.

Dana says,

28 Days to Hope for Your Home is not a guide to getting your home completely organized in a month.  Based on the experience I have gained during my personal deslobification process, this e-book is a guide to developing basic habits that other people seem to know (but people like us don’t).

If you follow the instructions for each day, you will learn new habits and change your thinking about your home.  Through personal experience (the best teacher), you will understand the basics of keeping your home out of Disaster Status.

Day One takes less than two minutes to read. Dana gradually builds upon what she has shared each day, but none of the days’ readings are intensive. The daily assignments vary in required time or intensity. All along, though, she is realistic and encouraging. Right now, 28 Days to Hope for Your Home is only $5; I’m not sure how long that introductory price will last, so if this book is for you, now is a good time to buy!

Psst!! If you use the code “JAMIE” anytime through Sunday, March 25, you can get Dana’s ebook for only $4!

I received this ebook for the purposes of review, and this post does contain affiliate links. However, all opinions are entirely my own!

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A few weeks before the end of the year, I started a list of all those things I intend to do but usually forget when I actually have a bit of free time. Most were in some way related to organizing and/or de-cluttering. After Christmas, I didn’t have many other obligations, and Ken was at home to help me, so I began my DE-CLUTTER campaign in earnest. This is only the beginning, a kick-start to something I plan to work on for months to come! My family has learned to be very afraid when I announce an adventure like this. (I think they think I’m a little bit psychotic about all this!)

We emptied a storage room upstairs (a glorified large walk-in closet), painted it, and transformed it into Ken’s new home office. This involved a vicious does-it-really-need-to-go-in-there test for every item before he took it into the new office. And if it went in, it had to be organized. It was painful (mostly for Ken), but he is very happy with his office now. (Photo below from his blog.)

We brutally cleared out and reorganized the room we just call “the upstairs room.” It has the only television in the house, plus the Wii, and was also where Ken’s desk was before we created an office for him. We organized the exercise equipment that was laying around, and took down a big dark ceiling fan and replaced it with a small white light fixture; this all made the room feel so much bigger! We now even have room for a recliner (which had been relegated to a guest room) in addition to our little sofa, and I can actually enjoy going up there to work out or watch a movie without being stressed by the mess.

Did I mention Ken got a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas? I usually stick to tea, which has less caffeine than coffee, but I think the ease of the new Keurig — and the added caffeine of coffee I’m not accustomed to — kicked all this into high gear. Bwahaha! (See how the coffee maker lives happily next to the tea kettle? It’s like me and Ken!)

Then I attacked my kitchen. This involved a total reorganization of the kitchen pantry, and I cleaned so much stuff out of the pantry and kitchen cabinets that I now have 8 bags of kitchenwares to donate. How did we end up with so much stuff we don’t truly need? Since I’m planning on a bigger table in the kitchen, we won’t have room for the small china cabinet that was in there, so that moved to the sunroom.

Next came an overhaul of the master bedroom closet. This featured all new IKEA shelving, purchased with money my dad gave us for Christmas. (Thanks, Dad!) I took everything out of the closet, Ken installed the shelving, and then I put everything back in, minus a boatload of clothes to donate. If I haven’t worn it in a year (with the exception of a couple of special-occasion dresses), I don’t need it. If I don’t like it, I should give it away. So I did. Oh, how happy this makes me!

I was on a serious roll, so I decided my sewing desk would go better in the little living room nook where my computer desk was, and I really wanted to have more of an “office” for my mental well-being, but it still needed to be central to the house. So a little rearranging in the sunroom (where the sewing desk had been) created a nice office for me. The little china cabinet that had been in the kitchen is now working nicely to organize my office supplies. I’m still working on wall art and a bit more organization in here, and still deciding how best to organize my fabrics for sewing, but it’s all headed in a good direction.

My organization spree carried over into my online world as well, in re-doing my blog, revamping our Worley Arts Photography site, and creating my own new photography site. Oh, and I designed and ordered new business cards!

Feeling inspired to start your own de-clutter adventure? I found this 2012 Declutter and Organize Calendar at MySimplerLife. It has small tasks to do each day to get your home decluttered this year. If you need some organizing ideas, I have a whole pinboard for that on Pinterest: Organizational Bliss.

Oh, if I had a labeler...

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It’s coming! The holidays will be upon us SOON! Are you ready? I’m not entirely ready, but I always start planning our family’s Christmas cards way in advance. Memories of my grandparent’s home covered in the Christmas cards they received each year impressed upon me the delight of receiving holiday cards from family and friends, and I have enjoyed sending Christmas cards to family and friends every year since I became an adult.

Today I’m sharing a few creative ideas you can use to make the holidays a little merrier with holiday greeting cards that are not like everyone else’s!

1 – Thumbprint cards! Use your family’s thumbs and an inkpad to create reindeer, a Christmas tree, snowmen, stockings, carolers, or whatever else you can think of! Here’s one example I like:

2 – Caricatures! Is there a budding artist in your family? If so, have them try doing caricatures of your family. If you like this idea but have no one to do the drawing, you can make caricatures online! Try this caricature maker for cards at VistaPrint.

3 – Send New Year’s cards instead of Christmas. Does sending cards in time for Christmas seem like too much to add to your holiday to-do list? Then take the pressure off, and send Happy New Year’s cards instead. You could write up a few key highlights of your year, like this one. Another bonus: your card won’t get lost in an influx of other holiday cards.

4 – Do a pen and ink drawing of your home. You could do a simplified version this way: enlarge a crisp photograph of your home, trace the outlines (use tracing paper or put a light behind your photo), then copy and reduce the traced image, and it will be ready for use on your holiday cards. Add a little text, like “From our home to yours…” and you have totally unique cards on a budget! Or you can commission an artist like my mom to do a pen and ink drawing of your home; she did this one for me when I lived in a log home years ago:

5 – Make button cards! You probably don’t want to try making 100 of these, but for a few special (and hand-delivered) cards, you can use buttons to create wreaths, snowmen, Christmas trees, and more. One cute example:

6 – Scrapbook-style cards! Use your scrapbook skills and supplies, or do a little recycling by using wrapping paper scraps for making cute custom cards like this one:

7 – Stamp ‘em! Use fun stamps, or even consider using a mini letterpress to create your own cards! I like this one at PaperSource. This wouldn’t be the budget-friendliest way to make cards, but super fun and totally custom.

8 – Pop-up cards! I wouldn’t want to make dozens of these, but they’d be adorable!

9 – Photo cards! I’m a photographer, so of course, I loooove photo cards. But I don’t love boring family photos. My advice: choose not too holiday-ish outfits for your family photos; this way you can use these photos all year long, and your family and friends won’t want to put them away when the holiday is over like they will if you’re all wearing reindeer sweaters. (Check out this family’s outfit choices!) Have FUN with the photos so they will reflect your family’s personality! We have a day on the calendar soon for our own family photos (courtesy of a remote camera trigger), and we’re making a day of it to hang out and enjoy a family dinner that has become far too uncommon since my stepson moved near college campus.

This photo appeals to the dog-lover in me, but there’s no way Lacy the WonderDog will allow us to do this:

10 – Use your child’s art for the graphics on your holiday cards! When Kathryn was in preschool, she drew an adorable nativity, and it made an adorable Christmas card! Just use the art in place of a photo when creating online cards or printing your own at home.

11 – Stitch a card! Choose a simple design, like a Christmas tree, to stitch on a piece of paper, then cut and glue onto a card. This would be something older children could do as well, perhaps for a special card for grandma. This example uses an apple, but you could do the outline of a Christmas tree, wreath, snowman, or gift.

12 – Send post cards! You can use almost any of the above ideas to make your own postcards and save on postage, which can add up quickly if your Christmas card list is long.

Another thought: What will you do with all those cards you receive this year? Try these ideas: put them in/on your Christmas tree; arrange them on your mantle; make a card tree; recycle them into gift tags for next year’s gifts; or — my favorite idea — keep them in a basket and use the cards as reminders to pray for your friends and family all year long!

If the holiday season seems more stressful than joyous, if your budget seems too small to be generous, or if you are simply in search of inspiration, the 12 Ways of Christmas is written just for you! Click on each of the buttons below and join all 12 of us as we share crafts, decor, traditions, and more!

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We like at-home birthday parties. They feel cozier, and they’re typically much more frugal! Kathryn is turning 11, an age where little-kid themes no longer cut it — but I never want to rush my kids to grow up and have a party that’s not age-appropriate. Ideally, of course, the party suits the interests and tastes of the birthday girl. So for Kathryn’s birthday this year, she decided she’d like to have a flower-themed crafty party.

The birthday girl helped ice the cupcakes. Although I would’ve liked to have some fantastic flower-looking icing on the cupcakes, my icing skills are not in top form, so we opted for simply using pink icing with sprinkles (I made a point NOT to read the ingredients on the icing can), and arranged our cupcakes in a flower pattern on our cake stand.

One bouquet of flowers was given to Kathryn by her daddy, and one was given to her by Brandon and his fiancee Diane. All we bought in the way of decorations were come cute paper plates and napkins in fall colors — with flowers, of course.

We started out with snacks, and decide to go ahead and sing the birthday song so everyone could dig into the birthday cupcakes. “Happy Birthday to Kathryn…”

Thanks to Pinterest, I have a gazillion or so nifty craft ideas. Kathryn and I wanted a craft that was flower-themed, and that would be a cute make-it-yourself sort of party favor. Our guests’ ages ranged from 8 to 11, so it needed to be fairly simple, but not too childish. We decided on felt flower headbands.

The only supplies we needed were:

• felt in several different colors
• assorted buttons (I keep a jar of them)
• plain headbands (I bought two packs at Target)
• hot glue
• needle and thread
• scissors

Thankfully, Lindsey and my friend Wendy both helped with the craft, because I just don’t have that many hands! The girls picked the headbands and felt colors they wanted, we cut out felt circles of various sizes, and when the girls had arranged them in the pattern they wanted, we helped them sew the felt circles together with a button on top. When the felt flowers were completed, I hot glued them to the cloth-covered headbands.

Making the headbands:

The girls all seemed to love their cute new headbands, and wore them for the rest of the party!

After a few lively (and entertaining!) rounds of charades, Kathryn opened her gifts. I always request no gifts, but apparently people just really like to give gifts — which is fine, but I dislike the have-to-buy-something feeling. And I want it to be about the friends, not the gifts. But her friends gave thoughtful, not overly-expensive gifts, like a gift card to Kathryn’s favorite frozen yogurt place, or this cute crafty gift from another friend:

I’m so proud of the young lady my littlest girl is growing into. It’s hard sometimes, watching my baby grow up, but I wouldn’t trade this for anything.

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I’ve been a lazy bum lately in regards to regular exercise (no good-enough excuses), but I have still been thinking about healthier eating.

Statistics say that one-third of U.S. adults are obese, and two-thirds are overweight. One-sixth of U.S. children age 2 to 19 are obese; this number has tripled since 1980. Yikes! But there are a large number of people with eating disorders like anorexia, too. Clearly, the majority of Americans do not have healthy eating habits, one way or another.

A recent sermon at church focused on the Biblical command to glorify God with our bodies, and pointed out that poor eating habits usually result from a lack of self-discipline. That’s definitely the case with me. It’s not that I don’t know what’s healthy; I just don’t do a very good job of meal planning, and too often let busy schedules or hot weather (who wants to cook when it’s 90+ degrees?) dictate our meals rather than the other way around. I want to do better, for my family’s sake as well as my own.

And I can’t keep letting poor air quality days and pollen keep me from exercising. I have plenty of DVD’s I could do, even if I don’t want to get outside.

How are you doing in your quest to live a healthier lifestyle? What’s your favorite healthy recipe, or a great healthy-recipe blog I should check out?

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I want my kids to learn how to manage money now, while they’re still under our roof, where poor financial decisions are far less disastrous.

The Proverbs 31 woman set a great example in managing money (as well as a whole bunch of other things!) “The heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will not lack anything good“; if she had squandered the family’s hard-earned money, this would not be so. She must’ve been smart in how she spent money because she had enough to buy and plant a vineyard, make profitable business deals, had no fear of keeping her family clothed and fed, and she was still able to extend a helping hand to the poor! Whew!

So, how do we teach this to our kids?

With Kathryn, the first way we started teaching managing money was with jars labeled: “GIVE“,  “SAVE“, and “SPEND.” This was for any money earned or received as gifts. The first money (minimum of 10 percent) goes in the GIVE jar. Our suggestion was half of the remaining money in SAVE and half in SPEND, but we allowed her to choose. She could choose to move money from SPEND to SAVE, or from SAVE to GIVE, but never in the other order.

Ten-year-old Kathryn is a saver, and she has quite a sizable savings account for her age. We have recently given her access to view her account online as another first step towards managing her money. We are still in control of the account, and what she can do is very limited. But it makes her feel important and encourages her to continue her habits of saving.

Sixteen-year-old Lindsey, on the other hand, is a spender. If there is money in her pocket, it disappears — fast! This could become a big problem a few years down the road if we don’t help her learn now. Earlier this year, we gave her a prepaid card; she uses this like a debit card but she cannot overspend, so there is no worry of overdrafts or added fees. We set the amount on the card, and she can log on to an account online to see where that money is going. This way, she will begin to realize that she really did spend $30 on Starbucks last month, whereas if she pays in cash, she won’t remember that.

The money on this card is not an allowance or extra money; this is the amount we have budgeted for her part of our family’s clothing and personal care budget — but now it’s her responsibility. We have spelled out exactly what she is now responsible for: clothes, shoes, hair products, toiletries, jewelry, etc. If she blows this money on Frappucinos, she may not have money for deodorant — but we won’t bail her out, and she’ll learn! We started this for three months at a time, but she was spending it far too quickly, so for now, it’s monthly. At some point, once she is managing her budget well, we’d like to stretch this out to six months or a year, which will require even more self-control and responsible budgeting on her part!

Oh! An important caveat on Lindsey’s spending: though she’s responsible for buying her clothes, they must still pass the Dad-approval test for modesty or they go back to the store!

With Brandon, we didn’t have as much opportunity to teach these things in an everyday sort of way (since he lived most of the time with his mom and stepdad), but we did discuss them. He’s already said he’ll be talking to me when it’s time to buy a house because I’ve done it so doggone many time, so I hope that means he might listen to us about other finance-related things, too.

There’s just so much to do in this journey called parenting, isn’t there!?!

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I think it’s about time for a garden update!

We’ve been working on tidying up flower beds and making a few new non-grass areas, but I just haven’t taken pictures of all of that yet. I’ll try to do that in the next week or two.

After seeing the yellow and white roses in Ken’s grandma’s flower garden, I wanted my own white/yellow rose. I picked this one as a mother’s day present for myself. The blooms start out very yellow, and mellow to a creamy color as they mature.

I also chose a live oak (which Kathryn reminded me today is our state tree!) and a Southern magnolia as my other mother’s day plants. I don’t like funding Hallmark for the holiday, but I do like any excuse for a few new garden plants!

I keep saying I’m just going to dig up this one rose bush which is constantly straggly looking and overwhelmed with black spot — but then it sends up a bloom that makes me leave it a little longer. (For some reason, this one shoot had no black spot so it looks so healthy in this photo!)

I have three different varieties of peonies, and this is the first year they have all bloomed. I {heart} them! This one actually has two shades of pink in each bloom but it looks almost white once it opens. I think this one is called a sorbet peony:

This foxglove volunteered itself this year, which was a delightful surprise. I haven’t planted them in at least two years! It’s tucked in behind one of my big lavender plants.

My coneflowers (also known as echinacea) have spread like crazy. That’s good, but I’m going to have to move some of them before next year. These particular coneflowers are double-deckers, but that second layer is just beginning to form.

I’m growing some veggies, too! Several variety of tomatoes, some jalepeño peppers, bell peppers, and one cucumber plant. And some strawberries in a pot, at the girls’ request. It’s my first attempt at strawberries. Someday I want four of these little garden boxes, which will form one big square, but for now, we have these two.

I love seeing what’s growing in other gardens. If you do, too, hop on over to Jami’s garden party at An Oregon Cottage!

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