Happy Fat Tuesday, Lets get ready for Lent!

I was thinking of something great to post on this fat Tuesday/Paczki day. I wanted to talk about our preparations for Lent and some good tips for bringing ourselves closer to God. Well a good friend beat me to it, Rachel from the blog Young Catholic Mom has written a great post about Paczki Day and more importantly Lent.

Thanks Rachel for writing such a great post, it frees up my time to eat more Paczki! :)

You can view Rachel's post HERE.

Flying High With Fly Lady

Are you overwhelmed with cleaning? Are you like me and think of cleaning as walking through every room with a tub of baby wipes, wiping here and there and then calling it a day? Then the site Flylady.com may be for you.

I am cleaning challenged, I was in denial, and a neat room was a clean room to me. With 5 kids my house can get dirty fast and I chose to ignore it until I could not stand it anymore and then I would do one big clean. Then I would be in a foul mood because I knew within a week it would be back to the same old grime.

I decided to try the site Flylady.com and get my house in order, and most important, keep it that way.

My review on this site is that it is great! You are given permission to go S-L-O-W. You get a week to do heavy duty cleaning in one area. But every morning you must wipe down your bathroom and every night shine your sink. I am on week two and I will tell you my sink has gone from something you would see in a busy restaurant kitchen to sparkling white, everyday! My bathroom has also stayed clean for two weeks!

I am on week two, the kitchen...yuck! But I am only doing one wall of the kitchen each day, so it's really not so bad. I can not believe how dirty my house actually was! I did the wall with the refrigerator today, and I got so into it that I did the broom closet as well. I have never in all the time I have been living in this house cleaned the broom closet, that would be 6 years. Lets just say it took three buckets of soapy water to get that done, but it's done.

I have informed my husband that while I am getting the house in order with the major cleaning he is going to have to overlook the rooms that I am not doing that week. And being an awesome and loving man, he is overlooking them. To be honest he has overlooked our dirty home for the past six years.

I have one more wall in the kitchen to do and then it's done! I believe the bathroom and one extra room is next week. When I am done with the major cleaning it will be on to keeping up with it. Giving myself a couple of chores a day and nothing else and saving the big jobs for once a month.

I am really liking a clean house. I will be happy when the major cleaning is over and I can establish a routine to keep up with it all.

You can check out the site at Flylady.com. The key is to go slow, follow the routine, and make it fit your life. One of the her suggestions is to get up shower, do your hair and make-up. I do think that is a great idea for a normal daily cleaning. I tried that the first couple of days with this major cleaning and I found that I needed a shower and new clothes when I was done, so now I shower and get "pretty" when the major cleaning is done.

This site has helped me so much and I give it two thumbs up. If you are struggling with a messy and dirty house it might just help you out too.

Distributism-Family First

"You can't have the family farm without the family." - Tales of the Long Bow

With Spring coming up and all the Gardening and planting that comes with it, my mind has been going over things I can do to help my family be more efficient and in turn help society.

All this thinking got started when I got the idea that we needed to add some chickens to our backyard and create a city farm for our family.

Thinking about chickens and our garden got me thinking about Distributism.

Awhile back I wrote a post about an article and ways we can bring Practical Distributism into our family life. This article lists 102 ways to bring this concept into our lives.

Go HERE to view the post, the article, and the list.

P.S. I will keep you posted about those chickens. :)

Go Fishing! Good and Easy After School or Any Time Snack

Here is a snack for the kids that is healthy and fun. It is also easy on mom.

What you will need is cream cheese, celery, and fish crackers.

Smear some cream cheese on the middle of a plate. Then place the fish crackers around the cream cheese. The celery is the fishing pole.

The snacker uses the celery to dip in the cream cheese and then catches some tasty fish!

Yummy, healthy and fun!

Thanks to Family Fun

Some of My Favorites on Etsy.com

Etsy.com has to be one of my favorite Internet sites. The homemade items that the merchants sell on this site are incredible. I was going to do a post about some of my favorite things on the site but I realized there would be way to many favorites to put in one post.

As I was looking through all the goodies on Etsy.com I came across this art work by TummyMountain. I love this art work. It is so cute and just reminds me of my little ones so much. Take a look at some of these prints.

The Thinking Tree.

Walking With Sticks

When Friends Drop In

Are these adorable or what?

How to Raise Good Catholic Kids

I love this painting. This is what I want, to take my children by the hand and lead them straight to God.

Sometimes it's easier said than done. I use the site ehow.com for lots of things, like how to make a skirt, or how to fix the noise my washing machine is making. Who knew the site would have simple tips everyone could do to make a start at raising good Catholic children.

I love the side bar that tells you what you will need. The list includes- perseverance, Bible, and Rosaries.

Take a look at the four steps it takes to get your children on their way to becoming good Catholics HERE.

You can always look at How to Avoid Grizzly Bears While Hiking later.

Trouble In Mind

Trouble in mind, I'm blue,

but I won"t be blue always.

Child that wind's gonna come and blow my blues away!

-Trouble in Mind-Janis Joplin

We all have our troubles and we all get blue, but it is very important not to dwell on all the bad things that come our way. In my experience the best way to fight the blues or troubles is to forgive. It seems all things that hold me back or keep me angry stem from incidents that I have not let forgiveness heal. Whether it is forgiving someone else or the hardest type of forgiveness, forgiving myself.

I have done many things that need to be forgiven, I have asked the Lord for his forgiveness and believing in His Grace I know I have received that gift. But forgiving myself is another story.

Not forgiving myself for shameful and hurtful things I have done or have allowed to happen to me is a drag. Basically I am living day to day with a person who is angry, resentful, and hurt. Imagine living with someone for your whole life who will not forgive you for anything you have done. After a while you will see yourself as those hurtful actions, that is who you will eventually become. If that is who you are you will most likely continue to do more hurtful and shameful things.

Forgiving others is a little tricky for me. I forgive easily but tend to hold a grudge, that is not forgiveness and it hurts the other person and me. It is easy to forgive someone you love, especially if that person tries on a daily basis to be a good person and tries not to do the offence that was forgiven again.

How do you forgive someone who continually does the same offence over and over again? The Lord says we must forgive for the sake of others and ourselves. How do you do this when the person will not stop hurting or offending you?

A wise man told me something about marriage. He said a marriage contains three rings, her ring, his ring, and suffering. The suffering is do to the forgiveness a marriage must have to survive. I am lucky that my husband is a person who strives everyday to be a good person. But what if your spouse will not correct their ways and you must forgive them for the same acts over and over again? What about a friend or a family member who will not correct their offences?

There is suffering in life, that suffering holds many Graces for us, but there are times when you must forgive a person, love and pray for them from far away. Some people are detrimental to our soul, but that does not mean we leave them and hold hatred for them, that is damaging to the soul as well. Some people think that when someone forgives them it means what they did was alright. Those types of people don't know what forgiveness is, or how precious to the soul someones forgiveness can be.

Some people including myself at times, see true forgiveness as a sign of weakness. How can that be when it takes so much strength to do so?

Lent is coming up and I have been thinking about what I can do this year. What I can "give up"

I have given up a lot of physical things already. This year for Lent I am going to give up holding grudges. I am going to feel what it's really like to forgive, the way the Lord wants me too. Even if it means forgiving people in my life, past or present, and loving them from far away.

This year I am going to try not to let grudges, for myself, or anyone else trouble me. I am going to let the wind of forgiveness blow my blues away.