How I learned to be organized.

Christmas is over and a New Year is here! This is the time I like to think about goals. I really don't want to make any resolutions as those seem to come and go. This year I have been thinking about how to plan my long term goals and then make shorter ones so I can see my accomplishments or how well or bad I am doing thru out the year. When I was a young mother I felt really disorganized and so I read many books on organization. I also read how to motivate your kids type books. I made up several different motivation games to help my kids and myself to keep on tasks and try to make cleaning, and maintaining my house fun. Then I realized that some jobs are really not fun. The fun part sometimes can be that the job is finally done. I did figure out though that how fast or trying to make a job fun was not the secret to getting my kids to clean. The secret I learned was in a book that I think is out of print, but it was called the Side Track Home Executives. This was written by 2 sisters that had a hard time keeping organized. You used a card file with 3 X 5 cards to list all the jobs in your house and filed them by daily, weekly, bi-weekly, Monthly, Bi-Monthly, 6 months, yearly. It seemed overwhelming at first but It really helped me. The big think that I learned with this system was to time a job and to see how long it really takes to do it. For example-the bathroom. I made a card for, Clean the toilet- 3 minutes, Clean the mirror-3 minutes, Clean off the counter top 3 minutes, Clean the tub 7 minutes, Sweep and Mop the floor-10 minutes. Now I put down how long I thought it would take, and then I took all the cards into the bathroom and timed myself. I can tell you these times are pretty accurate. So then I would take one of my Kids into the bathroom with all the cards and say you are incharge of cleaning the bathroom. I explained the cards and each chore ( if they can't read then put pictures next to what you want them to clean.) Have them take a card and explain exactly how to clean it. Then take a stop watch and time them doing it. You both with find that maybe it takes less time than you put on the card. I explained to my children that if we split up the jobs and all did a different part of the house then we could get every thing done in about 20 min. I found that after 20 minutes they were no good to me anyway. Then I made sure I did not make them do any more large type chores that day. My husband says that I still can clean really quick. It is a good thing since I am really good at making a mess! My Mother was not the best at keeping the house really neat but we were really good at quick speedy clean ups. As a kid I really did not watch commercials. When there was a commercial on during a show our family was watching, my Mom would say, "Everyone get up and pick up 5 things and go put them away. With 8 kids and 5 items each. the room would be clean in no time. I also use to play the same music when we were cleaning. Whistle while you work, and Supercalifragilistic. Years later I played that music when my kids were home and one of them said, why do I know this song? So let's have a Happy New Year and Make some New Changes for good in our lives. With God Nothing is Impossible! Pray for help, I came to realize that Heavenly Father knows us and our loved ones very well and he will help us improve if we want to.

Over the river and thru the woods to Pauline's house we go!

I can officially say it is the start of the Holiday Season. Now you might be one of those fuddy duddies that says it does not start until the Day after Thanksgiving but I say It's November and Yippee! I love Thanksgiving and Especially Christmas! This year try not to let Thanksgiving zip by and not even think about it. We have so much to be thankful for in this Country! We have a wonderful freedom that has been bought by many who have given their lives for us to live like we do! We have family around us, If you are lucky enough to have a Grandchild or 2 or 4 you should be over joyous. Is that correct english? Oh well that's another thing to be thankful for. Talking how ever we want! When I was a little girl I always heard about gingerbread houses and making candy and fun holiday traditions. We had our traditions but I wanted to try out some of the other ones. So now that I am grown up, Mostly! I love to have holiday craft classes. If you or your children have not come to one, then consider this your invitation. I have put together 4 classes that will happen starting Nov.20th. I always have them on Friday night, 6:00-8:00 pm (this is by design. I figure if Mom and Dad want to go out for a couple hrs they can.) Except the Mini Crafters Classes they are Fridays 4:00-5:00
Check out the pictures. If you want all the specifics, email me. I send out details about each class and all that we do.
Nov. 20th Thanksgiving Class $20.00 Candy & Cookie Turkey, Acorn Dough Nuts & Can do Turkey Soup
Dec. 4th Mini Crafters Class $10.00 Snowman gift bag, Nativity Necklace, Decorating Gingerbread men.
Dec. 4th Christmas Popouri Angel $20.00 and Christmas necklace
Dec. 18th Decorate your own Gingerbread house and Free Gift table.$20.00 (Children take turns picking a gift from the free gift table to keep or give to someone special, nothing elaborate but the kids love this!)
If you want more info email me at psully6@cox.net
Happy Holiday's and don't forget to be thankful!

More towels

Pretty Towels, Useful Towels, Kid's Towels and More...

For years when we needed towels we went to the store and bought any towels that looked nice to us. Then about 15 years ago when I bought new curtains for my kitchen I realized something. If I bought towels that matched my curtains my kitchen would look like I was trying to decorate. Now many of you might wonder why it took me so long to realize this but up until then I was very busy with little league, popwarner football, volunteering at the kid's schools, cub scouts, girl's camp, etc... Finally when the kids were older and I had more "free" time I turned my attention to the house. So now when I go out to buy towels I only buy ones that go with my kitchen decor, or my shower curtain. You know that you need to redecorate your bathroom when you just can not find towels to match your shower curtain anymore! I now look at my shower curtain and think, what ever possessed me to buy this? My tastes have changed and I have realized that if I buy a shower curtain and towels that are in the same family colors that my counter top is It might look nicer in there.! Yes I am still evolving. There are just somethings I don't think about for several years! Even though it has taken me some time to think about decorating many of you might already be doing it! So when you come to my house and see something that might look a little interesting to you, just remember that I will probably figure it out in a couple years. I have figured out the towels. Look at all the towels I have embellished over the last year.(Minus all the ones I forgot to take a picture of!)

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BBQ Apron we can use it all year long here in California!

Check out my Embroidered BBQ aprons. I made one with a Grill Sergeant design and one that says Camp Cook. These are a nice sturdy fabric and each one comes with a fork,spatula,tongs,oven mit, and salt & pepper shakers. They have adjustable straps and can be rolled up and snaps together for taking to the beach or a picnic. Makes a nice gift. $24.00

Sewing for horses? You never know!

Well I can add sewing a costume for a horse to my list of things I have sewn. One of my little friends that I have taught sewing and crafts to, was in a horse costume show. Her horse was an angel and she was a little devil on her back. I sewed the white robe and attached the wings to the robe. Amber and her horse won 3rd prize! Now I had never sewn for a horse before but I think it came out great! So in honor of horses I made a towel set that has an embossed horse head on them. They really look nice. I showed them at a show lately here in Poway. I knew we were a horse community, but I guess I never realize how big that love of horses was. These towels are embossed instead of embroidered. It is different as the design sews around the towel and makes the towel stick up in places to create the design. And yes it is the same design on the toilet paper. Embroidered or Embossed towels make a great Christmas, Wedding or Birthday gift.

And if you are wondering...the answer to how do you emboss on toilet paper? Very carefully.

Halloween means candy corn and lot's of fun!

Well here it is October! This starts out my favorite time of the year. Halloween, Thanksgiving and then Christmas is just around the corner. I found this cute recipe for a fun way to make creative hot dogs with a Halloween theme on line. You wrap the hot dog in that pop and ready dough and bake it. They put mustard on the top to make 2 eyes and it looked like a mummy. Also there was a bowl of ranch dressing and then you put some ketchup in a small ziplock baggie and poke a hole and pipe out a big circle all the way around the edge of the bowl on the ranch and then make another circle a few inches in from that circle and keep doing it until you have the ketcup looking like a big bullseye on top of the ranch. Then you take a toothpick and starting from the inside pull it out to the edge of the bowl, do that all the way around and it looks like a spider web. You can also cut your hot dogs in half and wrap them in dough and bake and stick french's dry onions in to make it look like spider legs, them just put a couple drops of ketchup on the top to look like spider eyes. Use the spider dip for your hot dogs or have crackers or pretzels or carrots or celery for dipping. Make sure you stock up on all those fall decorations, pumpkins, candy corn, etc... so you have some left over for November. Now you say why would I want any left over? Well this is why I stock up. Grocery stores only bring in enough pumpkins to sell for Halloween and aim to have them sold by the 31st. When our children were young we had a tradition of making homemade pumpkin pies for Thanksgiving and each child picked who they were most thankful for that year. They picked a teacher at school, a church teacher or scout leader or whom ever they thought was important to them. We made little 3 X 5 cards and put stickers on it explaining our tradition and that they were the one picked this year. Everyone who got one seemed to really like it and I wanted our children to think of others at this time and not get wrapped up in the "I want" syndrome. So you could make a pumpkin pie or pumpkin bread, or pumpkin jelly roll with those pumpkins. We just used a black marker on the ones we were keeping instead of carving them. Also look at the cute things you can do with candy corn. On Kimi Coopet's blog I found this cute oreo turkey cookie and this other sugar cookie on several other sites. So stock up on candy corn too. Happy Halloween!