Category Archives: Organization

UPLEVELING the Meal Planning

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Life has a good way of reminding us that we are never in control. This year has brought on new challenges that we never thought we’d be dealing with. When faced with an unexpected health challenger or diagnosis there are 2 choices: fight and do what you can to help your body heal, or give up and resign to let it eventually beat you down. I wholeheartedly believe that food is medicine, so when we found out this year that my husband’s twenty year career as a Marine left him with some long term traumatic brain injuries that are just now starting to present, a “no brainer” move has been to tweak our diets to give him the best possible nutrition to boost brain health and regeneration.

Part of his developing condition was the onset of focal seizures, which are not the typical seizure that people think of, but incredibly debilitating and damaging nonetheless. The Ketogenic diet was originally created as a therapy diet to deal with brain conditions like seizures. We are DEFINITELY not newbies to food restrictions and special diets with all the food allergies and chronic issues that we have been through with our kids, so going Dairy Free Keto was a fairly simple tweak to the diet we already had. It mostly meant taking back out some of the carbs and sugars that we had slacked and let come back in even though we eat a very real food diet already.

For me, the biggest step in making a diet change for our family is the MEAL PLANNING! This is such a foundational part of our week anyway since without the meal plan my days and meals turn into chaos.

1) IMG_2098I have been using the app Plan To Eat for several months now, and highly recommend this for anyone wanting to organize or start their meal planning. I absolutely LOVE this app for scheduling, tweaking recipe changes, saving new found recipes and putting together a shopping list of the week’s meal plan ingredients. This makes a weekly shopping trip a breeze and ensures I have all the items stocked and ready to go for what we plan to eat each week.

2) Once I’ve dropped in both a breakfast and dinner meal plan each day of the week, I transfer them to our Meal Planning Menu board  that is front and center in our dining/kitchen area so the whole family knows what to expect each day.

3) Adding breakfast to our weekly meal planning has made a WORLD of difference in our homeschooling routine. I refuse to let the kids eat sugary cereal each morning and call it breakfast, so putting in some variety lets them know what they can expect and what they are only allowed to eat that in the morning, even if they wake up before anyone else. Let me tell you – this has been a GAME CHANGER!

Do you have a meal planning system that you love? Share it with us below! Stay tuned for some of our weekly KETO meal plans and compilation of recipes.

Travel tip {doTERRA supplements}

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This is so simple, but oh so much cuter than other labels you can find. Many of you have these supplement travel cases that you can find at www.oillife.com or www.aromatools.com, but here is my tip of the day…

1) Gently peel back the label on an empty or almost empty bottle and cut just past the cute dotted border to make a square

2) Place your new little sticker on one of your vinyl zip pouches from the case

3) you now have your travel stash and do not have to sort by days (because SURELY I am not the only one that forgets and then gets all confused and stressed about what I needed to take when)

4) you can cut the ingredients label in the same way and put it on the back of the pouch in case you want to share with a friend and get questions about what specifically is included!

5) happy and HEALTHY traveling!

simplify:: my closet

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with less than 4 months to go until we hopefully hit the road, i am getting a new urgency to get rid of as much stuff as possible. i’m actually carving time into my week (thanks to my improved time blocking skills and my new Erin Condren planner) to tackle an area of crazy in this house in hopes to take small chunks out of this mountain sized project of moving from excess to minimalism.
today’s project: my clothes. this is one i’ve been putting off, but i made a good dent today! i don’t know if it would have been easier or harder had i actually FIT into all the clothes i’ve been toting around for the past 10 years. nope, pretty sure the jeans i wore out of college before life with three babies aren’t going to fit the same way again….ever. time to let go. though i have NOT been successful following the KonMari method, i did find it useful today to realize these clothes have served their purpose and it is ok to let them go. crazy the memories that we can attach to clothing, right? like the sweater I was wearing the day we brought our puppy home and i had him hiding out in the pocket!

Needless to say all this stuff is now OUT and I am one step closer to creating a capsule wardrobe that will work for our life on the road! 

Who here has done a capsule wardrobe? Tips? I’ll be updating when I get mine down to that and all set!

 

Simplify: the 10 minute pickup

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This is another very simple habit, but one little thing that has made a HUGE difference in my sanity and stress. For me, messy house = higher anxiety and stress (though with 2 little boys you sort of learn to deal throughout the day). The last thing that I want to do after a long bedtime/bath routine is come back down and pick up all the stuff around the house, so here’s the solution:: 10 minute pick up time for EVERYONE just before going up to get ready for bed!

SIMPLIFY: the 10 minute pick-up habitNow maybe everyone already does this, but if you don’t you should start today!
Make it into an event:

  • set the timer
  • turn on some music
  • sing a song
  • whatever it takes!

I have a 2 and 3 year old and they are more than old enough to help out with this, and the more we do it the better they get. They know exactly where their toys, shoes, clothes are supposed to go and that is their job. Being 9 months preggo the less I have to bend over and pick things up the better! They work on their mess, I make sure the kitchen and random piles are clean, and in the morning we all wake up to a clean slate!! If we fail to do this at night, it takes me literally 3-4x as long to go and pick everything up. I get worn out and frustrated while they miss on a learning opportunity to be responsible for their own things.

Oh happy day! Waking up to a picked up house = relaxing start to a good day (for a few minutes anyway)! 🙂

Simplify: save time & money with home deliveries!

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Ok, this has seriously been SUCH a huge help to me since having kids that I cannot say enough about it. One basic way to simplify AND save money is to price out home delivery options for things that you would normally run around town for at the store. For me, I LOVE LOVE LOVE amazon and their subscribe & save program.

I have over 20 things that I don’t have to buy at the store anymore and that I get in bulk shipments and SAVE money on by having them show up at my door. There’s no way that’s not a win-win in my book! Taking 2 (soon to be 3 kids) to the store leaves me less than productive to say the least, plus I don’t have the option to price compare or the room and hands to fill the cart with enough to stock up things.amazon_boxes

This week, I’m not able to get off my feet much (while stalling the arrival of our next precious little one ) and I still have been able to stock up on pantry and household items, thanks to this —>

If you have an amazon prime account you can do their subscribe and save program and if you order more than 5 items at a time, you get 20% off your entire order (when a lot of the items are already cheaper to start with)! If you don’t already have a prime account, you can sign up with Amazon Mom and get a free 3 month trial here.

So here’s how it works…
with Subscribe & Save you pick your item, pick how often you want it auto-shipped (once every month – once every 6 months) and what day of the month you want your shipment. For example, I have an auto-ship for the 3rd of the month so on that date everything I have set for that month will ship. It take some getting used to, but you can easily change the dates and months around once it’s set up.

Here are a few tips and trick that I’ve learned to make sure we’re getting deals (as well as saving time running to stores, gas driving around town, headaches getting my kids to cooperate on extra shopping trips, etc…..)

  • Next time you go shopping, save your receipt and come home and price compare to the amazon price. Make sure to factor in your EXTRA 20% off if you find 5 items. I was shocked at how many things are cheaper online, no tax and no shipping fees! yes, please!
  • Set items to ship only once every 6 months at first so you can learn how long it takes you to use what you’re buying. When you are about to need more, just go and change your shipping month to the next month and it will be on it’s way with the next shipment. After that it’s easy to gauge how often you use up each item.
  • Once you have 5 items shipping in one month, try and spread it out to order 5 different items for the next month to get the 20% discount. This also makes it easier if you think of something you want to add later and still want the bigger discount.

For those wondering what kind of items you would order like this, here is a list of what I get to give you some ideas:

  • diapers x 2
  • wipes
  • paper towels
  • toilet paper
  • flavored syrup for coffee
  • organic coconut milk
  • organic ketchup
  • deli brown mustard
  • organic coconut oil
  • allergen free cereal bars
  • allergen free cookies
  • squeeze applesauce
  • organic vegetable glycerin
  • moisturizing lotion
  • herbal tea bags
  • sunflower nut butter
  • brown rice flour
  • gluten free baking mix
  • organic vanilla extract
  • rolled oats

I swear I don’t work for amazon, but I would if I could b/c I love it SO much! I did sign up to have an affiliate store on my blog for the aforementioned reason, so if you want to see specific brands of what I use, you can browse through there to see a lot of these items. I am just all about saving time and saving money right now to SIMPLIFY our lives and this has been a great way to do it!!

 

 

 

How to eat real food…really: MEAL PLANNING!

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So this idea is rather basic, but makes or breaks my success every week without fail. If I fail to plan, our meals are such a struggle and it’s tempting to throw something less than healthy on the table to get it done fast! I’ve learned (ok, am STILL learning) the hard way that there is much less work and stress involved with planning ahead and the meals are much better, healthier and balanced! Eating real food is not hard when you know ahead of time what you’re going to do!

meal planning menu boardI’ve tried everything out there to get myself organized in this fashion, but without fail, our trusty menu board is the easiest and best way to make it happen.

My super handy husband threw this one together with some spray paint and chalkboard paint inspired by the thousands of versions on pinterest and it’s been SO helpful!