If you haven’t already heard about our More Time Moms Christmas contest. It’s not too late to participate. You can win an MTM Family Organizer! One a Day, everyday! To enter, place an order or leave a comment on our blog. We are drawing a name every day for the next 30 days. You can still enter, the contest ends December 24th.
Congratulations to our daily winners so far!:
Cookie-exchange parties are the perfect way to provide Mom’s homemade variety, save yourself time in the kitchen, enjoy different types of cookies and kick off the holiday festivities. I host a “girls only” party. We don’t eat the cookies, we exchange them, eat appetizers, drink adult beverages and socialize. It’s a nice break from the stressful Christmas season. I hold this party for myself as much as for everyone else, it really gets me in the holiday spirit — and away from the malls and the hustle bustle. We have a great time. So, if you don’t already attend one or host one, I encourage you to try it! Let me know if you decide to host your own exchange.
Important Planning Tips!
1) Send the invitations out a month before the party. Everyone’s calendar fills up fast in December! I hold mine in the second weekend in December so that I have plenty of cookies for all my holiday festivities.
2) Ask guests to R.S.V.P. in advance to let you know what kind of cookie they’ll be bringing. Try to make sure there are no duplicates.
3) Tell everyone to bake their cookies at least three days in advance. The biggest reason for no-shows is that they didn’t have time to bake their cookies.
4) Invite more people than you think will come. Think outside the box. Don’t discount all the high powered business women that think you don’t have time for such domestics. It can be a great networking party and they will meet new people. Encourage people that say “I don’t bake” to attend. They’re the ones that seem to enjoy it the most!
INVITATION AND THE RULES OF THE COOKIE EXCHANGE
Don’t worry, it may be early to some of you but if you’re like me and everyday is filled to the gills, planning for Christmas couldn’t be early enough. This year I decided to get ready a little earlier. We have made the ‘what I call’ mistake in the past few years to put up the Christmas lights in minus temperatures. We pull out the ladders and I send my ‘always looking for an adventure’ husband on up in the hypothermic inducing temp to unfold the magical Christmas scene I have created in my mind. Yes, Christmas is one of my favourite times of the year. It isn’t just Christmas day, it’s the whole season. It’s the feeling I wholeheartedly embrace.
I have finally decided at my ripe age of 40 to let go of what is supposed to be the rule and just go with the flow of how everyone close to me is feeling. The last thing my husband and I wanted to do on Christmas day last year was to spend half of it in the kitchen, so we didn’t even make a Turkey. We went out for walks, dreamed, talked, and skated on the lake along with the kids tobogganing down our hill with just a few injuries. (Note for me this year, bring some helmets up to the lake) Coming in, sitting in front of the fire, watching a Christmas movie and munching on goodies made for one of the best Christmas’s I can remember. Nothing was planned, nothing was rushed, and we embraced every moment, we were so present.
My goal this year is to create a similar feeling my family enjoyed last year…….what does that mean? I NEED TO RELAX!!! I am an organizer with a self diagnosis of OCD. I like things to be just so and I will waste time getting it just so to the point where I have sincerely missed out on some special moments others have clearly enjoyed. This year the leader in me will let others lead the holiday…..to a certain point.
On a practical note, in addition to using More Time Moms Christmas Countdown checklist, I have decided to ask myself the questions I need answers to in order to have as much of a special stressed free holiday as possible.
Holiday Time Management
Before I plan the holiday activities, I need to check my Family Organizer. Are children going to be involved in exams during the season or are the exams after the holiday? How about the kids activities around Christmas i.e. parties, concerts and plays. What about their regular sport activities? Do we have to go to all the events because I would like to do what we used to do a few years ago and drive around in pyjamas, yes pyjamas drinking hot chocolate and looking at all the wonderful Christmas lights!
Everyone is always talking about spring cleaning. The whole idea of spring cleaning came up as a custom way back when because after two seasons of heating, lighting with wood, oil, gas, kerosene and candles, the condition of the house made it necessary to deep clean everything since it was coated with a layer of black grease and grime. They would be forced to empty every drawer, shelf, cabinet and closet. Now with modern day heating we do not have the same build up and this enables us to do organizing whenever it is best for ourselves. I much prefer Fall cleaning. Why? Because I like to get the house clean before we start spending a lot of time in it during the winter months.
Choose what is best for you. Make your own rules when it comes to organizing. Your home is your sanctuary. I’ve said this to my very first client more than 10 years ago and I’ll keep on saying it. In the outside world you have limited control over your spaces, very limited, if any. As soon as you walk through your front door this is when you have complete control of your environment. Remember that there are so many different ways to organize and I will give you some ideas on a general basis to get you going. Try not to dread the process, you want to make it enjoyable, yes it can be enjoyable! So:
The other day my youngest came home from school with cold-like symptoms. Of course, I instantly wondered was this the beginning of the H1N1 attack on my home turf or was this just a common cold. I haven’t even had the chance to take a stand on whether or not, I should vaccinate my kids. I kept him home from school for a few days. After wading through a pile of information on the H1N1, I was able to conclude that he didn’t have H1N1 based on the following information published from the University of Calgary. It is the clearest explanation of exactly what constitutes symptoms of H1N1.
It’s that time of year again, where the kids are planning their costumes and already making requests to have friends accompany us on our Trick or Treating adventures. I have developed a love/hate relationship with this holiday that is so beloved by the kids.
When our oldest son Jacob was one, my husband came home from work on Halloween night to proclaim that he was ready to partake in the festivities and bring Jake around the neighborhood to visit and enjoy his first foray into Trick or Treating. Secretly, I was horrified that my baby, who was still breast-feeding and just precariously walking, would be exposed to the Halloween horrors of candy. “Where’s his costume?” he said.
Sports teams and other activity groups depend largely on the support of parent volunteers. Besides acting as instructors and supervisors, parents can be team managers, coordinators, fundraisers, registration, event, promotion and communications volunteers. In our 14 years of parenting of 3 kids in a multitude of sports, my husband and I have filled many of these roles at various times. Most of these functions require little if any expertise in the sport or activity itself. Unfortunately, parents can get caught up in trying to help and end up doing more harm than good. The following may help:
Supporting Your Child
With preparing for back to school and all the routines one must re-adhere to once school is back in session, crafts may be the last thing on your mind. However, if your children need something creative to do, simple school related crafts may be just the thing you’re looking for.
If your child is a pre-teen or teenager, hanging out with their friends after school or on the weekend is what they like to do best, so why not give them something creative to do while they’re all together? T-shirts and fabric markers or paints are all you need to get their creative juices flowing and they’ll be guaranteed lots of fun in the process.
As a matter of fact, middle and high schools usually offer our children the opportunity to be a part of various clubs and committees, and what better way to show school spirit than to create matching t-shirts?
Of course, there’s nothing stopping your children from creating a t-shirt of their own for the joy of being creatively unique; and if this is the case, such a project will most certainly keep them entertained for hours. But if the t-shirts’ goal is to bring attention to a particular school club or extracurricular activity, it might be more fun to get all members involved. It could certainly make for a funtastic evening or afternoon.
Many students on the doorstep to university wonder if they have the intellectual horsepower to succeed in first year. While having great academic skills certainly helps, the reality is that first year students struggle more with coping in a new and different environment than they do with lack of brainpower. This, in itself, is a valuable lesson learned – people with a wide range of intellectual ability can succeed, but no matter how capable you are, you must be organized and work smart.
The main reason the transition can be a challenge is that in addition to managing an academic workload – often one that is more demanding than in high school – some students find themselves solely responsible for the first time in their lives for daily life tasks like finances, health care, laundry and grocery shopping. If they aren’t prepared, this can be daunting or even worse – it can amount to an unwelcome drain on their time when they can afford it least. Distractions from academic work can put a student discouragingly behind in just a few short weeks. How can students reduce the risk of this happening? The easiest thing to do is to spend some time in August beefing up a few simple life skills. (more…)
It is now the 1st week of August and I am sort of gloating when I write; I have most of my ‘Back-To-School’ shopping done! Please don’t hate me, I did say most of it, not all! Let’s not forget I still have to label everything and move on to the children’s possible clothing needs. I have to evaluate what the children will be doing as far as extracurricular activities, sports, music and plan the driving schedule, possible car pool scenarios, etc. What about doctors appointments, dental, eye appointments and whatever else I’ll try and cram in before school starts back up again.
I am a mom of 4 kids, Jonathan 19, Gregory 16, Rachelle 9 and Max 8. My husband François is on the road quite often for work leaving me to manage the household. A lot of pressure is on me not just because I have 4 children, husband, work in and out of the home, but because by trade I am a professional organizer! I am expected to be perfect! Guess what?….far from it. I have finally come to accept that it is ok to not be perfect….well sort of. Can any mom, whether you are at home or at the office relate? We are expected to be extraordinary multi-taskers and we try and keep trying until we find ourselves worn out, exhausted and forgetting to even look after ourselves. We beg for maids and nannies to drop out of the sky and save us. Not going to happen! So now we have to come up with some ideas to make life a little simpler, drop half of our to do lists (I’ll have a hard time with that one) and focus on enjoying time with our families more (that will be an easy thing to do).
Now that you know a little bit about me and my imperfections, here are a few tips to help us all get ready for the onslaught of September.
Back-To-School Tips From A Professional Organizer:
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