Everyday Life

Everyday Life, Parenting

Happier In Winter Project

Posted on

Hello, fellow winter haters. What, you don’t hate winter? I wish I were more like you! I’m getting a tiny bit better at seeing the beauty in it. The stark lines of tall trees against a pale blue sky, the dramatic sunsets, the frosty white grass…I’m not immune to these gifts of the season. But I still could do without winter for many, many years.

Three years ago, my winter hatred was running at an all time high. We had just downsized into our current house, I had a baby and a two-year-old, and I felt like I just couldn’t handle the cold weather season. For better or worse, the weather always affects my outlook on life. At the time, the book on my nightstand was Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin. Inspired by her attitude and her title, I invented a Happier in Winter Project. I wrote out a list of things I could do to make winter bearable, and maybe, maybe even enjoyable, and I pinned it to my wall calendar in the kitchen. That winter of 2012-2013 turned out to be blessedly mild, but this winter doesn’t seem to be following suit. So I’m pulling out my Happier in Winter list and sharing it today. Add your ideas and help us all endure!

~Happier in Winter ~

  1. Plant lots of pansies, or indoor houseplants.  I always, always kill houseplants. But pansies are pretty hardy outdoor flowers where I live.
  2. Remember: exercise is the best way to stay warm. And exercise always comes with nice perks, like a little less winter weight gain. One can dream, right?
  3. Hold lots of household dance parties. Also counts for #2.
  4. Take your vitamins! 
  5. Play some instruments . I will hand out the recorder and harmonica and have a marching band around the house with the kids, or have them play their instruments while I play the piano. I’m not going to lie–I don’t do this often. There’s a good chance the “fun” ends in a headache for mom. =)
  6. Make paper snowflakes. Two years ago we glued them on one of our windows. Looking back, it was like we warded off snow with them. Not a flake fell on our house that season! I’m planning on making these with Ella soon.
  7. Pick a room to paint a nice, light color. This year, I’ll probably do our bathroom. It’s currently a garish yellow, and it’s the last room that needs painting in the house.
  8. If you’re a parent with small children, designate a child-free time to make busy bags for your children. 
  9. Graham crackers and frosting
    Photo: mommytools.blogspot.com

    Have indoor picnics and tea parties. Get out some cheerful dishes and turn graham crackers into fine, teatime delicacies with some leftover frosting or cinnamon and sugar.

  10. Plan library days and museum days.
  11. Pin a whole bunch of soup recipes and then actually make one or two of them.
  12. Rearrange a room. Sometimes a different perspective is all it takes to lift a mood.
  13. Drink more smoothies.
  14. Drink more water. 
  15. Drink more wine. Just kidding. 
  16. Bake some healthy (and not so healthy) snacks and don’t worry about the mess.
  17. Splurge on a lunchtime restaurant with an indoor playground once in a while.
  18. Load shelves and e-readers with cheerful books. The definition of “cheerful” books varies from reader to reader. Winter is the best time for whatever type of book you consider a comfort read for you.
  19. My jolly winter guy (2012)

    Put hats, scarves, and gloves in an easily accessible place so it’s easy to bundle up and enjoy what sunshine there is.

  20. Read wintry poetry and find some favorite winter quotes. Here’s one that puts things into perspective for me: “The wind was blowing, but not too hard, and everyone was so happy and gay for it was only twenty degrees below zero and the sun shone.” -Laura Ingalls Wilder. Only!?! Robert Frost is also a good winter poet (for real, no pun on the name intended).
  21. Be crafty. Sew something, paint something, knit something…whatever kind of creativity floats your boat.
  22. And finally….sometimes you just have to make it a movie day. 

We’re looking at a cold week here in the southeast, so I’ll be hitting the “Happier in Winter” list pretty heavily in the next few days. Share your ideas to help us all out!

Everyday Life

A Piece of White Paper

Posted on

It seems like there has been an out and out frenzy in the blogging world for months. All the writers feel the need to post something profound about the same topics: first Thanksgiving, then Christmas, and now New Year’s. Don’t get me wrong! There have been some awesome posts that I have really benefited from. But I’m starting to feel like there is a thought overload in my life. My brain needs some calm, still space, completely empty of other people’s thoughts. How about yours? I love resolutions (LOOOOVE). Thinking and planning to live intentionally is one of my favorite things in the world. But if I could give you one thing on this New Year’s Day, it would be a blank piece of white paper.

Here it is:

paper

You can just stare at it if you want, and soak in the emptiness of it. I imagine this is the kind of cathartic gazing a person could do who lives in a snowy climate. All that white, clean landscape surrounding you…ahhh. But the rest of us have to resort to a piece of white paper.

The best thing about this piece of paper is you can do whatever you want with it. Listmakers can get out a pen and write a list. Resolution makers can make some resolutions. Ranters can write out how badly 2014 went and just get it out of their systems. Artsy folks can make a snowflake to remind them of the beauty of white space, and then paint the snowflake black and frame it on white lace and enjoy the funky simplicity of all their handmade decor (I’m jealous of you, if you can’t tell). Painters can paint on it, sketchers can sketch on it, sports junkies can make a paper football…the possibilities are endless.

Or you can just throw it away. More power to you.

If you really, really must know, my New Year’s resolution this year is just that: white space. I want more emptiness on my calendar, in my home, on my counter tops, on my to-do lists. I want more empty white journal pages staring at me in the morning and I want time to fill them. I want to spend less time reading other people’s blogs (though they are really wonderful!) and more time writing on my own. I hope I don’t hurt anyone’s feelings when I say ‘no’ to some things so I can say ‘yes’ to other things that are less obvious to the world but just as important. I am desperate for calm places in my life, and space for the true fullness of love and friendship to overflow into.

Hey, is it okay if I just frame a white piece of paper? It would be super symbolic! Okay, yes, that’s dumb. I’m hopeless when it comes to textural art. But there it is, your white piece of paper from me. Do what you will with it. Either way, I can’t thank you enough for reading my blog in 2014 and I am honored that you choose to read my words in this world of so many thoughts competing for the space in your life. I wish you a joyful 2015 and I hope you will be able to claim some white space of your very own to enjoy the blessings that the year will bring.

“For from His fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” John 1:16

Everyday Life

Give Freedom and Get A Merry Christmas For All

Posted on

I had some high hopes for the Christmas season this year. We were going to do crafts. We were going to make our own bows to decorate the garland on the front porch. I was going to make a burlap banner that said something joyous like “Joy.” Profound.

Oh, and I was going to make my own candles. Ha! Knee slapper.

Every year I make all these plans that seldom ever happen. The only difference from this year and the other years when my over zealous plans have failed is that I am okay. Really! I’m okay that we only baked one thing (yesterday), that we still don’t have bows on our garland, that there is no burlap banner gracing our mantle (burlap is cool, but why? Something to ponder).

I’m okay because I’m embracing the word “Freedom” this Christmas. In fact, it’s turning out to be the best gift I could have given to my family. This is especially true for my daughter. Creative license is like a love language for five-year-old Ella. She unfurls like a Christmas rose when I let her do her own things. Our house really doesn’t have a finished feel at all this year. It looks like this:

IMG_2934

And this:

IMG_2935

 

And this:

IMG_2937

Err…that may be a little too much creative license taken by the 3-year-old boy in our house.

I wouldn’t say our Christmas season has been “magical” because let’s be real, we still deal with sleepless nights, bad attitudes, hectic work schedules for Daddy, and plain ol’  real life in the midst of the holiday season. But giving this gift called Freedom has changed the overall feel of our Christmastime celebrations. I made this decision that we weren’t going to stress the small stuff early on in November, but I didn’t expect that it would make our whole Christmas feel like something closer to light and cheery instead of stressful and performance driven. And now I’m realizing, isn’t Freedom what Christmas is all about?

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Galations 5:1)

Yes. Freedom is not just for the Fourth of July. Freedom is for every day, and especially Christmas Day. It’s the best gift humanity has ever been given! Freedom from the law, freedom from fear, from death, from striving to be perfect, and freedom to love and be loved. I struggle to put “give more love” into practice, but now I’m thinking it involves giving freedom to those we love.

I highly recommend including some freedom in your gift giving this year. It’s not too late. Let the children make a mess in the kitchen. Let your husband wear that ugly sweater/sweatshirt/fishing shirt without comment. Let your family members be sad if they feel sad, even on Christmas. Don’t sweat it if the bread doesn’t rise for Christmas dinner. It may not be the easiest gift you’ve given, but giving freedom gets easier and more joyful as you go along.

I hope you have a very, very merry Christmas!

With love,

Mia

Like this? Read What Christmas Looks Like Sometimes

Everyday Life

Twenty-Minute Morning Update

Posted on

A few weeks ago, I wrote about my frenzied frame of mind and my plan to calm the crazed brain: get up earlier than my kids. It’s been almost a month, so I think it’s time to let you know if my plan worked.

I can honestly say, yes, it worked! Even though I only partially achieved my goals, the difference from getting up when my kids wake up and getting up and getting even one thing done before they get up has been tremendous.

Please note: There have been some mornings when I let myself sleep because the nights with an infant can still be pretty tiring. I don’t beat myself up about those mornings as long as it’s not what I slip back into into doing every day. If you’re in a tiring season of life, give yourself some flexibility when you need more sleep!

My goals were to do just three things each morning before the children were asking for breakfast and book reading and all other manner of demands:

1. Shower/dress

2. Read and pray

3. Make a short to-do list

The truth is I have only gotten all three of those goals accomplished once or twice in the last month. We live in a pretty small house and all the bedrooms are clustered together, so in the early mornings I creep around trying to be as quiet as possible. I know where every squeak in the floor is and I tiptoe around them all. The problem with the goal  of getting dressed is I can’t quietly open my antique dresser to get clothes out in the morning; if I don’t lay them out the night before, goal #1 doesn’t happen. What does happen almost every morning is reading and praying. What a huge difference this time to focus on one thing at the beginning of my day has made in my mindset for the whole day! I’m not saying all my troubles are gone and I never lose it or react badly throughout the day. But I do have an underlying strength to draw from when the pressure cooker turns on.

I get around to writing the short to-do list almost never. I am thankful that I’ve gotten into a better chore routine thanks to this Cleaning Chart from A Well Feathered Nest. I’ve tried a few different cleaning schedules, but this one fits the natural flow of tasks in our house best. There are still some specific tasks for each day that aren’t on this chart which I need to get better at writing down, but even if I don’t, I have some direction for the day thanks to this chart on my fridge.  I’m hoping to get into a better habit of writing my to-do list the night before. Maybe this will calm my brain before bed instead of gearing it up for the next day? We will see.

It seems like every time I talk to a fellow mom these days, whether a stay-at-home-mom, working mom, or a combination of the two, the conversation always turns to how to balance everything we need to accomplish to keep our home and family well cared for. The Twenty-Minute Morning experiment is working great for me right now, but I am far, FAR from being on top of everything in my household. It would be great if any of you readers could share any tips you’ve picked up along the way on what works best for your lives. Dads, too! We all have all kinds of hats we wear and try to balance.

Everyday Life, Parenting

Seize the Nanosecond!

Posted on

It’s 3:45 p.m. I’ve needed a shower for approximately 1.5 days. Finally, Baby and Big Boy (3) are asleep and Little Miss (5) is happily coloring. For a blessed slice of this day, there are no urgent needs or tasks — no mess to wipe up, no crying baby, no squabbles to settle, no tummies to fill, just a tiny piece of silence.

“Seize the day!” I think. Except for it’s more like “Seize the nanosecond!”

Jump in the shower, jump out of the shower while nap time lasts! Grab the chicken to defrost before it’s too late in the day! It’s 6:30 a.m. and the baby is crying, hop out of bed and throw some clothes on before she wakes the big kids! Quick!

It’s craziness all the time, but when a minute of downtime comes my way, this fast and furious mindset doesn’t go away. I don’t breathe a sigh of relief and sit down. Instead, I think “seize the nanosecond!” Figure out what’s for dinner. Put the clothes in the dryer. Answer an email. Get something, anything done.

Why do I run around my house at a frantic and frenzied pace on most days of the week? How are there are one thousand items on my mental to-do list and all of them seem like they need to be done right now? I really don’t know how this happens, because I’m here at home more often than I’m not, and still feeling like it’s a gargantuan effort to get the breakfast dishes washed before dinner time.

It baffles me that Hectic lives right here at home with us. 

It baffles my husband, too. Sometimes when he’s home, he watches me and asks, “Why the big rush?” I don’t know how to explain that I’m running behind on laundry and dishes and dinners and it’s all a great big boa constrictor that’s got me up to my knees and is still swallowing. (Thank Shel Silverstein for that one).

It’s like what we tell that kicker on Saturdays: “You have one job! Make field goals!” Except it’s more like, “You have one job! Take care of everything!”

(Fact: I do not take care of everything around here, because I have the best husband in the universe. We both “take care of everything,” just not often at the same time).

I know where the problem lies. I start the day responding to needs and they keep coming all day long. That’s the nature of life with Littles. So when an opportunity to actually get something tangible accomplished presents itself, I’m all over it like ants on a melted popsicle. I’m grabbing that vacuum cleaner faster than you can say “dirt,” and no crying baby or coloring book is going to stop me, because the rugs are overdue for a cleaning by about three weeks.

“Seize the nanosecond!” is the mantra in my head on any given day.  I think I’m through with it, though. This frenetic way I go about the day is (a) exhausting and (b) basically ineffective. I get to the end of the day and ask myself if I actually got one thing done. If the answer is a surprising “yes,” that “something done” usually doesn’t involve the things I think are most important, like playing with my children or calling a friend. I don’t need a mantra, I need a method. And, much to my chagrin, I know what the method should be. It’s called Get-Up-Before-The-Kids.

Sigh.

When your nights are full of lots of things besides sleep — put the covers back on this kid, take this one to the bathroom, give this one some water so she can stop coughing, feed this one, soothe this one after a nightmare, give this one some Tylenol for ::fill in the blank:: — getting up before you absolutely have to is rough, right?

But spending all day getting swallowed by a boa constrictor is rough, too.

So I’m laying down my “seize the nanosecond!” mantra and setting my alarm instead. The experiment for this week is to get up just a bit earlier than my kids and get just three things done:

1. Shower/dress

2. Read and pray

3. Make a short to-do list

I know I should add a few other things, like exercise or prepare all our  meals for the day or lay out the kids’ clothes, and all that good stuff. But I need this to actually work, so I’m starting off with what I can fit in just twenty minutes. I know from experience that it’s a long road from having a baby to getting back into a morning routine. I’m just setting my feet on the path and hoping for the best.

If the Seize the Nanosecond mindset sounds familiar to you, maybe you would like to join me on my Twenty Minute Morning experiment? Or maybe you’d like to see if it actually works first? Check back next week and I’ll let you know. I doubt I’ll have defeated the boa constrictor for good, but maybe he’ll be only up to my ankles instead of my knees.

One can only hope.