Organizing Our Chaos

As a mom of three wild boys, there are days I feel like I'm constantly breaking up fights or picking up after everyone.  Actually, most days are like that!  I'll admit that I'm not the most organized person - I'd rather pile than file, I have 5 calendars - none of them are completely in sync and there are many birthday presents that are bought while on the way to the party!  BUT, there is one thing I do in my house that has helped organize my boys and eliminate some of the fighting.

Color-Coding!

I decided a few years ago that we would color code common items.  

Blue for The Chief, green for Con-man, and red for Monkey-man.  

The colors are used for towels, wash cloths, cups, plates, bowls, lunch boxes, folders, Christmas wrapping paper, even some toys.  We don't color code clothes because it's easy enough to distinguish the sizes right now and we LOVE hand-me-downs in this house!  

Why I love this system:

Before Color-coding:

Me: Who left their wet towels on the floor?!

Chief: Not me, must have been Monkey-man.

Monkey-man: Nuh uh!  Con-man!

Con-man: I didn't even take a shower!

Me: If someone doesn't get in there RIGHT NOW, you're all in trouble.

(And guess who usually had to go in there.  That's right, me.)

After Color-coding:

Me: Chief - you left your towel on the floor.

Chief: How do you know?!

Me: It's Blue.  Pick it up.

Ahhh, so much nicer.  Same goes for dishes left out on the table or counter, lunch boxes with food left inside, etc.  And speaking of dishes - it's so nice to hand each boy a cup to use all day without them fighting about which belongs to them, someone slobbering on their cup and spreading cooties!  

Well, not cooties - in this house we say that only girls have cooties.  Have to keep those girls away from my boys for as long as possible.

Our Tree of Thanksgiving

As I promised earlier this week, I want to show you what the boys came up with for one of our Thanksgiving crafts.  We decided to cut out leaves in fall colors and write down things that we are thankful for.  Then we painted a simple tree on canvas and used glue dots to attach our leaves.  

(Don't laugh at our tree, I'm no artist. LOL)

Here is our finished product, proudly displayed on our mantle.

In case you are wondering, then things we are thankful are: 

God

Nature

Animals

My Toys

Our Food

My Kitten 

My Family

My Parents

That I'm Alive 

My Digital Camera

The Toys We Have and the House We Have

We also have leftover leaves with lots of other things we are thankful for that we'll be using for another craft.  *Note* I had to translate some of the above items from Kindergarten spelling. :)

After taking a look around online, I actually found quite a few other Thanksgiving Trees!

At Activity Village

At Crafts by Amanda

Hmmm, maybe we should do something with handprints.  Stay tuned...

Review and Giveaway!

Sponsored by Tomoson.com

I have been given the opportunity to review two books from 
Story Time For Me.  
They have an interactive approach to reading by providing multimedia books with animation and narrators.  The program offers several book series to choose from, and each book is labeled with the age range recommended as well as the theme of the book.  The illustrations are beautiful and engaging and the stories have a good lesson in them.  

My 2 year old son usually doesn’t have the patience to sit through a book with many words.  As soon as we started our first book, he was glued!  He was asking for another book as soon as the first was done.  My 6 year old is just starting to read well and he loved reading along with the narrator.  Each word is highlighted as it’s spoken, so it’s easy for children to keep up!

Another awesome thing about Story Time For Me is that you can send them pictures of your child and get a personalized book!  They will add your child into the illustration and animate it.  What a GREAT gift idea!!!


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Check out their video!



Now for the exciting part!  
Story Time For Me is allowing me to have a giveaway!  
Every single reader will win two free multimedia books to enjoy with your child or grandchild!   We read Will and the Harvest Festival from the Ben The Mouse series and The Special Egg from the Flame The Dragon series.  
My boys really loved the Ben The Mouse series!


Just click on the link below to receive your free books.


Story Time For Me Giveaway








I'm participating in the following giveaway directory today:

[Product review & giveaway disclosure: I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commissions 16 CFR, Part 255 "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."]

Let's Hop!

Top 10 of 2010

I just ran across a great blog called The Texas Darlings.  She is hosting

and has a great topic to blog about today.  

What is your Top 10 of 2010?

So here is my top 10 list of things I'm thankful for, in no particular order.

10. My husband's job promotion, even though it moved us 8 hours from home.

9. My kids and I making new friends in Texas quickly.

8. Having my own space to do crafts, sew and spend too much time blogging.

7. My older two boys getting great grades and conduct marks in school, even after a big move.

6. Getting to see my parents, even though they live so so so far away.

5. My marriage growing stronger, despite many obstacles thrown our way.

4. Finding a new church home that feels like just that...home.

3. Beginning my own tiny little business that incorporates so many things I love!

2. Another year spent watching my boys grow and change into little men.

1. My 7 year old asking to accept Jesus as his savior and scheduling his baptism for this month!

Fun Fall Crafts

I can't tell you how much I love seeing all these great fall crafts in blog-land!

Of course I see a ton of Christmas crafts, gift ideas and decor I want to start on, too.

But for now, lets focus on fall - Thanksgiving in particular!

I Am An Aspiring Artist has a great tutorial for a homemade cornucopia that I adore!  

I plan to make one for my Thanksgiving centerpiece!

Flamingo Toes has another great tutorial!  This one is for chalk placemats.

I've already got this fabric on my list of things to buy at Joann's today!  

What great idea to keep the kids busy at the table.

The Party Animal made these adorable Nutter-Butter Turkey Cookie Pops.

We can't get enough of Nutter-Butters in this house, so you know the kids and I will have fun with these!  Of course I better buy an extra package because more will get eaten than make it to the table!

I found a cute craft that the boys can make at All Kids Network.

These Paper Plate Pilgrims will hang on the backs of our chairs with names on their hats instead of having place cards at the table.  Too cute!

We are working on our own little Thanksgiving crafts here, too.  Definitely a work-in-progress, but here's a little sneak peek! 

Farewell Halloween!

Hello, November!  

I cannot tell you how excited I am to see November!  It's time to get ready for my two favorite holidays - Thanksgiving and Christmas!!!  I am going spend a good part of this afternoon putting away all of my Halloween decorations, eating all the boys' chocolate and planning the crafts and decorations we'll make for Thanksgiving.  I'm super excited to share some of them with you guys very soon!!!

Before we get knee deep into turkey, pumpkin pie, and stuffing why don't we wrap up October activities by showing you a glimpse of our Halloween! 

(Forgive lack of quality AND quantity of pics, I was too busy getting messy!)

We started out by carving pumpkins.

This was the first time they boys actually carved them - usually they would just tell me what they wanted and I would do all the dirty work.

This is pretty much how they all felt about the pumpkin guts - EWWWW!

And this is how my oldest wanted to illustrate the point. lol

This was also the first year that I gave NO input on their costumes.  I let them decide what they wanted to be and come up with how to pull it off.  It was actually kind of nice to not shell out $50+ for a costume they'll really only wear once.  A mask and hoodie was a much better deal, even if I'm not crazy about it being too scary for their ages.