Infuse Warmth into Your Presents with Personalized Wrapping With the holiday season underway, I’m excited to share some personalized Christmas gift wrapping ideas for a memorable family celebration. Infuse warmth into your presents with these unique touches. From handmade gift tags to one-of-a-kind wrapping paper, here are four ideas to add a personal touch to your Christmas gifts. 4 Personalized Gift Wrapping Ideas: 1. Wrapping with Love: Butcher Paper Canvas Swap traditional gift wrapping for butcher paper. With butcher paper wrapping you have a blank canvas perfect for personalizing gifts through art or notes. Also, butcher paper works great for multiple art forms: painting, markers, crayons, etc.… Let the kids…
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Meal Plan Ready
Strategies for Easy Meal Planning Here are a few strategies for easy meal planning that have helped me to have a meal plan ready (most of the time). I’m not perfect at meal planning, but utilizing these tools makes it easier and helps me have a meal plan most of the time. Family Meal Planning Strategies: First, have a place where you plan to write your plans down on. I like to use a meal planner. After years of making my own for personal use and trying other planners out that I had purchased, I put together a meal planner that has everything I use for meal planning. While you…
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Looking to the Past
Looking to the Past Find Connections to Your Ancestors Looking to the past to find connections to your ancestors can be an enlightening experience. A few weeks ago, at a request, I gathered information about the women in my maternal ancestry line. The project ended up being larger than I had originally thought it would be. It wasn’t difficult, but it was more involved. Having less knowledge, the further back the line went, I turned to my mom for her help. She in turn turned to her mother, my grandma. The similarities we found in the many women going down the line was remarkable; it was more than physical similarities.…
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5 School Lunch Note Ideas
Make Lunchtime More Fun These 5 school lunch note ideas might help you stay connected and make lunchtime more fun for kids that struggle with school lunch (or they might just provide a delightful occasional surprise). I’ve had a couple of kids that have struggled with school lunch (or lunch in general). While notes are not going to get them to eat their lunch better, it does give them something to look forward to at lunchtime and it’s provided me an additional way to connect with them while they are at school. Even for my kid that doesn’t struggle, I’ve used these ideas on occasions where he might pack a…
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Types of Journals
How to Navigate Your Options With several types of journals available, you might wonder how to navigate your options. Here’s a list to help you find what might work best for you right now. While I’ve kept most of these at different times during my life, I have not kept many at the same time. Also, many of these options don’t need to take a lot of time to be beneficial. This list is intended to provide ideas of options available for journal keeping making it easier to find ideas and get started writing. If your just getting started keeping a journal it might be helpful to check out my…
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Daily Celebration Journal
Recognizing Wins, Small and Big Recently, I started keeping a Daily Celebration Journal to help me in recognizing wins, small and big. Incorporating this journal into my routine has created an easy way for me to reflect on my day and my efforts in a positive light. Because sometimes it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking you are not doing enough, just taking a moment to recognize what you are doing feels renewing. What do I mean by small and big wins? I have chosen to define a “win” as something I have accomplished during the day. Most everything I have written down so far falls into the…
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Easy Family Photo Gallery
5 Simple Steps to Create a Family Gallery Wall Here are some easy-to-follow steps to create your own family photo gallery wall. While I have been thinking about writing this post for a while, initially I hesitated to follow through on it. One reason is that there are better curated home galleries that have already been shared. That being said, I thought other people might share a similar perspective to my approach and the steps I used proved simple to follow. Also, I really do like my result. It is what I was aiming to create. 5 Simple Steps: Set aside or create a space for your gallery wall. After…
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Halloween Pumpkins (NO Carving)
Carving a pumpkin for Halloween? Sometimes, I prefer to try an alternative idea to traditional jack-o'-lantern carving. While, I have no problems with dedicated jack-o’- lantern carvers and I have enjoyed carving several pumpkins over the years, sometimes, I simply want to try something new. Also, some options are less time consuming and create less mess (which appeals to me more certain years than others).
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DREAM BIG
DREAM BIG with a DREAM JOURNAL What do I mean by dream journal? I’m not referring to literal dreams, rather aspirations of things you’d like to do or accomplish. These dreams can be large or small in size. How does a dream differ from a goal? Sometimes dreams can be confused with goals as they are both things you want to aspire to. To me, a goal has a clear time frame and is actively being worked on, while a dream carries more of a someday tone. Dreams hold the possibility of becoming goals. Why write your dreams down? From my own experience, I “shelved” (literally and figuratively) my dream…
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Give Thanks
20 Ideas for Expressing Gratitude “In every thing give thanks.” While I believe most people would agree with me that gratitude supplies joy, I think it’s fair to say that, sometimes, gratitude in every thing can feel challenging. I love the reminder to give thanks in all things. While I am grateful for my challenges, it can be hard, especially in the moment, to feel that or to keep gratitude in mind. It’s the kind of gratitude I want to pass on to my children. With that goal in mind, it’s something I’m consistently working toward. While creating a simple gratitude list is a good expression of giving thanks, there…
