Circling Through This Life

I do not decorate for every season, nor do I decorate for every holiday. I decorate for fall/Thanksgiving and am starting to do more decorating for Pascha (Easter) but Christmas?  Well, I love decorating for Christmas. Many, many years ago I gave away all of our Christmas decorating stuff because we were in our “Christmas is Pagan and we don’t celebrate it phrase” (You can read a bit about our journey back to celebrating by reading my Christmas: It’s Not a Birthday Party blog post from last year.) I’ve been re-building our Christmas collection over the years. I still haven’t convinced my husband that we need outdoor decorations but that’s ok.  He lets me have at it with the inside of the house!  This year we did not do as much decorating as I have in the past.   But this post isn’t about putting up decorations.  It’s about taking them down.  When to take them down and what to do with them between now and next Christmas. When I was growing up we always k...

Have you heard the saying “if you fail to plan, you plan to fail?” I feel like my life is spinning out of control. Like many modern women, I wear many hats. I rush around putting out the fires of urgent demands and handling the little but important things that pop up but I don't feel like I am getting anything done. I don’t have time to plan and I end up feeling like a failure. I know I need to plan. I know that planning things out relives stress because it’s fewer “on the spot” decisions I have to make, but planning out priorities and goals in addition to lesson plans and menus? Who has time? Knowing that I need to make a change in my life, I knew I needed to review The The 7 Minute Life™ Daily Planner from The 7 Minute Life . I knew that would force me to take the time. Force myself to slow down, breath deep and work through the front portion of this planner and then I would be able to use the main daily planner pages called daily progress reports. Let’s chat a bit about tho...

I have always wanted a separate space for homeschooling.  A place where we could have everything set up and not worry about it wandering all over the house.  A room with a door so we could exit the room, close the door, and not see the in progress experiments or drying art projects.  A space large enough with a comfy couch for snuggling and read alouds yet also big enough for a big dining room table for experiments and “seat work.”  Oh and of course plenty of shelf space for great books. I’d love a closet to store book supplies.  Oh and a desk for mom with space for a computer, printer, copier and scanner. Yes that was my fantasy.  My reality?  We live in an 1100 square foot 3 bedroom house with no attic, no basement and no dedicated storage space.  2 parents, 4 children and 2 cats.  We moved here when my oldest was in Kindergarten.  She’s about to start her sophomore year in college. The girls were so little that we put all four of the...

**Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!** I love planners.  A couple of weekends ago I was on a date with Honeybear and we stopped in an office supply store. He left me behind in the planner and office supply section.  He wandered over someplace else because he knew I had found a bit of my heaven. When I say planners I don’t just mean lesson planners or homeschool planners. I love home management planners and meal planners and plain calendar collections. I have digital planners, paper planners, planning software and even a planner based in Excel! Just last week I received the 7 Minute Life Daily Planner to review. (Look for the review Mid-September!) On Monday I talked about Planning: The School Calendar .  I use the School Year Calendar tool in Homeschool Tracker Plus (HST + )to create the school calendar. This is a downloadable software. Unfortunately, it is no longer being offered but Homeschool Tracker does offer Homeschool Tr...

**Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. Thank you for your support!** Before I can make lesson plans or create assignment sheets I must know what we are actually studying. My two favorite planners for planning our courses is the Course of Study page from the TOS Schoolhouse Digital Planner . Did you know that if you purchase a membership to SchoolhouseTeachers.com you get access to all of the TOS Digital Planners ? I know I digress but tomorrow I’ll be talking more about the different planners available from The Old Schoolhouse . Yes, it’s a digital planner but what does that mean?  It means that it is a PDF. It is not software like Homeschool Tracker Plus or Homeschool Tracker Online. But the TOS Planners can be printed out or you can just type right into the planner. You can use the SAVE AS to create a planner for each of your children. When I first start to plan the courses I print out a copy for each of my students. This is like a scratch copy or rough draft. I ...

I am a planner.  I mean I like to have things planned out. I don’t have to be locked into the plans and the plans frequently change but I need to have structure. I need to have a frame or map to get me started.  As part of the Back to Homeschool Blog Hop I am doing a series of posts about planning.  What do I plan before we head Back to Homeschool: planning the calendar , planning our course of study , and using both paper and digital planners . When the girls were very small I didn’t stress too much about calendars. We have have always leaned more towards a year-round approach taking time off as needed. We would just start the next math book or the next level of whatever subject when we finished the first one. I did take the time to put in specific breaks such as federal holidays that Honeybear is off and scheduled breaks at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter.  Our first day of School would be in late August or early September and we would aim to be finished by Me...

I know today is already seven days into August.  (Say what??!!!  August?  No. No. No. I do not want summer to end. We’ve had some hot days but not so hot that I wish them away!)  Ahem where was I? Oh yes seven days in to August but it’s not too late! For what?  To join in on this really neat decluttering challenge that my friend issued. Bethany is a minimalist already. This is is just one more great character quality that I admire about her.  She’s laid back, generous, has a great attitude when faced  with those bitter lemons of life, and on top of it all doesn’t allow things to take over her life. I could learn a lot from her.  Hey wait.  I’m supposed to the be the older woman. Oh well.  Anyway Bethany posted about the Minimalist Game on her blog, The Land of Curly Hair . I decided to join her. So What Is It? How Does It Work? So there is this blog called The Minimalists and they encourage people to play the Minimalist Game . I t...

I know that some people think I am organized.   I think I’m fairly organized with a few things but I long for being more organized or rather to be organized in more areas. I’m currently reading yet another book about organizing your home: Organized Simplicity by Tsh Oxenreider. She even has a website with some free downloadable forms . I started reading the book, because I needed some inspiration and motivation. I do really know what needs to be done and how to do it but . . . well sometimes I get stuck and I need to have my hand held.  The book didn’t really tell me anything I didn’t already know, but she did get my creative juices flowing.  I’m evaluating and pondering and finding some solutions.  Some seem so obvious and simple now but they’ve plagued me for ages. {Think of the catch all drawer where all those kitchen gadgets like apple corer thing.  How on earth do you keep that thing organized???!!! Read on and I’ll share what I’ve been doing!} Ms. ...