Some good habits are better than others. Why? Because they create a spillover effect that improves every other area of your life. The folks that study this kind of thing call these keystone habits. Researchers who study habits have noticed some curious things: namely that when a person begins to A (good habit), they will […]
31 Days of Read-Aloud
This month, I’m participating in The Nester’s 31 Days project. If you’re not familiar with it, the 31 Days is a challenge to write every day on one topic for the month of October. 31 Days of Read-Aloud It struck me: why not make my topic something that will hold me accountable to the goal […]
Make Over Your Mornings: Make Ahead Breakfast
I’ve long been on a quest to make the most of my mornings. Mine aren’t particularly stressful, and that’s by design. One of my favorite benefits of homeschooling, for instance, is the bit about not having to go anywhere in the morning! I get up quite early – always by 6, and often at 5 […]
Give Your Voices the Silent Treatment
In his book Start: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average and Do Work that Matters, Jon Acuff talks a lot about the voices. You know the voices? The ones that tell you that your thing, whatever that is, is stupid. Or ghetto. Or embarrassing. (Or whatever adjectives your voices prefer, I dunno. I just know […]
Scarcity Makes You Stupid
In my “What I Read Last Month” post I mentioned the book Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much and promised to write an entire post on the concept. So here I am. Scarcity Makes You Stupid, Or Why I’ll Never eBay Again Why do lonely people isolate themselves and push others away? Why […]
Dirty Little Secrets About Homemade Natural Cleaners
In recent years, the popularity of homemade natural cleaners has reached a fever pitch. There are dozens of books on the topic, legions of blog posts and Pinterest pins. But I’m about to make a shocking statement: making your own cleaning products may be a huge waste of time and may not save you any […]
Ways to Make Homeschool Easier, Part 2
It’s 1:22 P.M. on the first day back to homeschool. I’m sitting here sipping a cup of tea while the baby plays at my feet. All the kids, including the preschooler (after being repeatedly ushered back into her room), are reading in their beds for quiet time. No, I’m not dreaming. And I can’t entirely […]
Ways to Make This Year’s Homeschool Easier: Part 1
My post on getting ready for a new homeschool year felt a little disorganized to me. Maybe that’s because I had several children interrupting me every 17 seconds (I usually don’t punish myself in this way, but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do). For the next few days I thought of more and […]
Teaching Kids Personal Finance Two: Entrepreneurship
Part one was about teaching kids personal finance. Today I want to talk about encouraging kids to become entrepreneurs. Hubby and I are both self-employed and have been for many years. I think I got the entrepreneurial bug from my folks. My Dad has run a successful business for 40 years, and my mom has […]
Motherhood, The Writing Life, and Asking For The $$$
Several seemingly unrelated (potentially, to you) thoughts here that make perfect sense in my addled mind. I just ordered The Elements of Style, which is de rigueur for any writer. Not only have I not read it (the horror!), but worse, I feel like a dunce for not knowing that the “White” of Strunk and […]