Check out this awesome Giveaway!

Circle ME and Life With My Littles are teaming up together to sponser a giveaway for a $25 gift certificate! As you all know my favorite store happens to be Circle ME because of their awesome customer service and the dedication to you and your family. It helps that they carry a lot of my favorite items too of course!

The blog post on Life With My Littles is a review on an Aristocrats wool cover. I've never actually used an Aristocrats cover so I can't really tell you any of my experiences. However I can say that the untreated wool used in Aristocrats covers is amazingly soft.

Join the giveaway, have some fun and good luck!

I almost forgot to tell you! There's plenty of time to enter the giveaway!! It ends on May 8th at midnight!

Keeping the Daily Routines

Soon we will be entering a new month. In May Flylady's habit of the month is moving. I have to be honest with myself. . . other than running around with Baby Gee and Dizzy I don't have time to move. Unless somebody else takes care of the boys for me, that is, and for free (yeah, right!). So this month I am making my own 'habit of the month' instead of following Flylady's. I will be drinking more water and work on building my daily routines.

Let's start with the water. How many glasses of water would you guess I consume a day? Well, unless you count coffee, hot tea or sweet tea (which are all made with water!!). . . then the answer is 0. Yes, a big, fat, unhealthy 0. Rarely do I drink a glass of water unless I'm dining out or staring at health magazines while waiting in line at the grocery store. So on Saturday I purchased a gallon jug, sliced up an orange and filled it with drinking water. It's pretty good.

Then, because I"m really not getting enough done around the house on a regular basis, I drew up some daily routines. I made one up for Morning, Afternoon and Evening. I did this last week with moderate success. However, when I do all the routines it really makes a difference in the house. Here are the routines:

Morning!!

1. get up, straighten bed Su M Tu W Th F Sa

2. start coffee & bottle Su M Tu W Th F Sa

3. get dressed to shoes Su M Tu W Th F Sa

4. read Bible Su M Tu W Th F Sa

5. reboot laundry Su M Tu W Th F Sa

6. online time Su M Tu W Th F Sa

7. 15 minutes in the zone Su M Tu W Th F Sa

Afternoon!!

1. Clean up lunch Su M Tu W Th F Sa

2. 5m room rescue's: 3 Su M Tu W Th F Sa

3. Dizzy cleans up boys' room Su M Tu W Th F Sa

4. Set out snack Su M Tu W Th F Sa

5. reboot laundry Su M Tu W Th F Sa

Bedtime!!

1. Help children clean up Su M Tu W Th F Sa

2. clean up dinner Su M Tu W Th F Sa

3. Plan meals & day

4. reboot and put away Su M Tu W Th F Sa

any laundry

5. set out clothes Su M Tu W Th F Sa

6. dishes/shine sink Su M Tu W Th F Sa

7. declutter 15 minutes Su M Tu W Th F Sa

Just so you know, that looks much nicer on my publication document saved on the computer. It's nice and bright colors, because they make me happy. I didn't include any cute cheerful images, because that just felt cluttered to me. I added days of the week so that I would have something to cross off, and keep tabs on my progress. I printed off 5 sheets and hung them on the fridge. I think three days last week I did really well. The other days. . . Well, not so much.

I really put a focus on what would help the most. I wanted to make the biggest difference with the least amount of work. There is room for tweaking. . . there always will be! Right now you see three times I reboot the laundry. That's because I"m so far behind. . . oh, wait! Not so far anymore! Because I had it as part of my daily routines I did more laundry last week and I'm closer to the top of Mount St Laundry! You'll notice there are things on there that shouldn't need to be listed. Well, it gives me success!! I can cross it off! I put a lot of those on in the morning because I want an encouraging start to my day. I"m going to have to weed through my evening routine and make it a little more easy to succeed at. By the time The Hubs shows up, I"m exhausted and just finishing dinner or thinking about bathing children can send me over edge. I'm not really sure what I want to do about that. I do try and get as much as I can of my evening routine done as early as I can.

You'll notice that in the afternoon the 3yr old cleans his room. That's his toys, his mess, his job. Not anyone else's. My job is to make sure he does it. I don't care if it's perfect (remember housework done improperly still blesses your home!) or spotless. This is just day to day no more than 20 minutes at a time. I also help the children clean up at bedtime. Instead of expecting them to do it on their own, because that would mean Dizzy is cleaning up his and Baby Gee's mess, and that's not fair, I help them out. I also include Dizzy in the room rescues and other chores. If I don't teach him to clean up, I will always be cleaning up after him. I don't even clean up after myself enough to worry about other peoples messes!! So parents: Please for your children's sake, make them pick up their own messes and help out a reasonable amount! You can start this as early as they figure out the concept of 'pick it up' and 'put it in'. That's how I taught Dizzy!

Happy Flying!

I would like to thank a special Flybaby for inspiring this post! Check out her post on making your morning routine enjoyable!

How to Wash your Woolies ;)

Well, I've been meaning to post this for awhile now, and thought this the perfect time since I've been asked to create a blog to link to Circle ME's official blog: mynaturalfamily!

First lets look at the reasons you need to wash your wool.

1. It's brand new and needs lanolized
2. There is visible biological matter on it (ok, we're all sensible people. . . that would be POOP!)
3. They're dirty with plain old dirt!
4. The completely dry woolie smells like urine.
   
5. It's been a month or more since you last washed or it just needs to be relanolized.

Ok, so today I am assuming that you need to lanolize as well as wash your woolie, and that you have not gone out and bought the miracle wool wash from CJ's All Natural (available at Circle ME in Lincoln NE). So this means, what I"m showing you is the most complicated it ever has to get. Funny thing is that it's really quite simple!!

Step 1: Strip the wool from your adorable baby butt!! Then take a picture because they are just that cute!
Step 2: Turn on the water to boil (or just microwave it!) I do double duty with this and get the water for my french press done at the same time! Skip this step if using wool wash AND not lanolizing!
Step 3: Put soap and Lanolin in heat safe container I use Lansinoh Lanolin and a natural fiber wash found in a local yarn store. Baby shampoo works wonderful! Notice the amount of Lanolin I"m using. It's a lot. That's how much I use to lanolize a woolie for the first time ever. You can use less for future lanolizing of the same woolie. If you're just washing without a lanolin rich wool wash or bar, then please use a pea sized amount. Skip this step if you're using a wool wash!! If you're lanolizing, you should still do this, but you can use less lanolin and wool wash if you'd like.
Step 4: Mix in hot water until milky white.
Step 5: Fill a clean sink or basin with water that is LUKEWARM or ROOM TEMP. It should not be hot or cold!!Step 6: Add wool wash or solution to water and mix

Step 7: Pull woolie inside out, place in water crotch first (so you get the most lanolin where it's needed!) then gently squeeze a few times to help it absorb as much water as possible. Let it soak for 1/2 an hour minimum. If the woolie needs to be lanolized as well as washed soak it overnight!! If there are any stains, gentle scrubbing works wonders here!
Step 8: Drain water. VERY gently squeeze extra water out.
Step 9: To speed up the drying process, roll each woolie in a dry prefold (or a towel) and press gently. Repeat with a dry prefold/towel. Once the woolie is mostly dry you have a few different options. 1) Lay flat (do not hang!!) to dry in a well ventilated area ~I do this by laying it over a bucket in front of the cool air vent or 2) before laying flat to dry, place woolies in the washing machine and use the spin cycle. I do this twice before laying flat to dry!You can also do this to your favorite hand wash wool socks for the most awesome moisturizing treatment ever. . . in fact, I think I"m going to make myself some socks and gloves to do this with!! For spot treatments between washings try Eucalan wipes. For boosting your lanolin between washings try a wool revitalizing spray, like the one CJ's All Natural makes!

It's Tuesday Again!

So it's Tuesday again. Today I"m just going to give you some of my flying progress. The month of April is so crazily busy. . . so I'm still working on just maintaining flight. I haven't had a shiny sink every night before bed, and I've gone to bed with dirty dishes even. However, I"ve been dressed to the shoes before 9am almost every single day since March 1st, and my bed has been made every day in April other than this weekend! I'm thinking that regardless of how busy I am this week I need to get back in the habit of shining my sink every day!!

The zone this week is the main bath and laundry room. Thankfully our laundry room is pretty neat (thanks to The Hubs!) and the bathroom is fairly decent. The only thing I really need to focus on for either of those is wiping down surfaces and scrubbing the toilet/shower/tub. I"m still not going to be working on my missions for the zones just yet. I think in May, once the zones start over with zone one, I"ll do the actual zone work that's listed, such as decluttering bit by bit and detail cleaning. If I do that for a month, some of the zones will be ready for the daily missions by June ;)

Happy Flying!

REdiaper Sale and upcoming events!

I had such a great time at Circle Me last Saturday! Of course it took the rest of the weekend to recover, and Monday I was in no condition to blog (you don't want to know what Dizzy did to my freshly clean and folded laundry ~note to self: always put it away the minute you're done folding it!!!). But today, I am!! And it's Woolie Wednesday of course!!

The morning started off nicely with my parents showing up with fresh Starbucks and the biggest apple fritter on the face of the planet. I was too embarrassed to eat it, because it was THAT big, but it made a great reward for a long month of working on soakers. I met so many nice people who really put a lot of thought and care into what they want touching babies skin! And I thank those that purchased from my booth and look forward to seeing pictures of their little ones sporting their new fluff! There were also some custom orders placed. . . and let me tell you, it is so much more fun looking for sweaters for a specific baby!! I didn't walk away a millionaire by any means but I did get a good start!

Since then I've been real busy getting custom orders ready. One will surely inspire a new product line for The Sleepy Sheep and I look forward to launching that soon! Many of us don't think twice about putting cloth on our babies bums. . . but what if the tables were turned? I plan on writing a post on some woolie options for adults next week!!

Due to some awesome networking going on I have become involved in a giveaway towards the end of April with Brynns Boutique!! I can't wait for that one!! This is going to be the month of giveaways as I plan on donating some to Circle Me for their Earth Day event and the prizes they will be handing out. There are other exciting giveaways coming up soon as well!!

Check Out My flying!

Ooops!! I had to edit to add the pictures (a second time!!!) Hopefully they're really there now!

As soon as I got out of bed, I got Gee up and gave him a bottle, and let him play on our bed while I got dressed. . . to the shoes even. Before leaving the room I made the bed. That's the habit of the month people. Just do it.

I also made Dizzy's bed. As you can see, I also cleaned his room up last night. We'll work harder on that later, making it organized as well as clean.

Ok, so there's stuff on the counters. . . but the sink is shiny. . . and that stuff isn't dirty dishes!

Well. . . . except for the two bottles and lid I found this morning. Thankfully those bottles are only for water now!

See how there's no dirty pots and pans hanging out on the stove top? I did that. All of that!! If I can do it. . . so can you ;)

Happy Flying!

Tomorrow: Be sure to check out my post on how the sale went yesterday!