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