“How to Add a 'Spoonful of Sugar' to Get the Daily Tasks Done"

Do you have dishes to do?  Laundry to fold?  Toys to pick up?   So do I!  I have learned that I can't do it all!  There is no way that I can keep my house clean without help from my family.  On the Power of Mom's website today is one of my favorite articles that I have written about how to get your kids to help with daily cleaning tasks.

While we are talking about houses I wanted to mention that I am so excited with some of the current projects happening at our house!  Before Christmas we always have a "Pre- Christmas Clean Out."  It is a major deep clean where we try to get rid of as many things as we can to make room for all the new toys that we will get.  I wrote our clean out plan on our chalkboard (all the ideas are from "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.")

Chalkboard

 Our oldest girls got new beds and bedding for Christmas!  We are having fun re-decorating!  

For Christmas I got a new shower curtain and rugs for the upstairs bathroom!

 We are enjoying our cleaned out rooms!  

My girls are organization experts :)  

Free E-Book

Merry Christmas!  My husband is playing a game with the kids so it left me with a few minutes to sit at the computer and write.  Life is great.  We have had such a magical Christmas.  Christmas is so fun with kids and it is super exciting with EIGHT kids!

Power of Moms recently created an awesome new E-book, it is called, "A Deliberate Mother's Guide to Holidays, Vacations, and Quality Family Time."  It is an excellent resource for how to make the most of family time, while still keeping life simple and reasonable.  I have used many of the ideas from this book over the last few years, and it is a great resource to have all the ideas combined in one E-book.  One of my articles is in the book so they have offered me 10 free copies to give away.  If you are interested send me an email (tashabradshaw@gmail.com) or leave a comment with your email and I will send you a link to get your free copy of the book.

Merry Christmas!!

Design Process

This is an old post I wrote last year, but decided to publish.

This is a before picture of our family room.

We use this room for four main purposes:  practice the piano, read, and we gather as a family for family home evening and scripture study,  this is also the room we are in when people come over.

When we moved into the house I put the TV in this room.  It didn't take long at all for me to realize that I made a BIG mistake.  It was loud and the TV was the focus.  We moved the TV downstairs and brought the small bookshelf with kids books upstairs.  It worked like magic.  The kids would be waiting for dinner or have a few extra minutes and they would grab a book rather than turn on the TV.  The same is true with our piano.  If they have a few extra minutes they sit down and practice because it is conveniently right there.

There were many things about this room that worked, but I was tired of all the brown.  I decided to lighten and brighten this room.  I started pinning things on Pinterest that were the general "feel" of what I wanted for our family room.  Overall, this is what I took with me shopping and the "feel" that I wanted to acheive:

I wanted the final room to be described as "Clean, Bright, and Light."  

I wanted to keep the couches, would you believe we have had those couches for over 10 year, they have lived in 6 states, and we have 7 kids, but they still look fabulous thanks to two rules:

-We take our shoes off in the house.

-We only eat food in the kitchen.

Anyway, I would like to keep the couches for a couple more years so I was looking for new pillows to brighten the space.  I also planned to paint the walls a lighter shade of what they already were and paint the fireplace white.  

My first stop was TJ Maxx (Homegoods) and Marshall's. 

Shopping at Homegoods and Marshall's is usually a jackpot.  Here are some of the amazing things that saw:

When I went to Marshall's I found exactly what  I was looking for quality down filled pillows with zip closure made from beautiful thick designer fabric. . . on clearance! I pick up a cute pouf for a foot rest and some other accessories.

After Pictures

2015 MOM ADVENTURE #5

Humane Society Mom Adventure (Summer 2015)

I think this was the kids favorite!  We collected items that the humane society uses to care for animals and we dropped of our donation and played with the baby kittens!

2015 MOM ADVENTURE #4

*I am trying to get caught up on Summer Mom Adventures.


For this Mom Adventure we chose to do projects at home.

One Word and Art:

We each picked a word that we want to focus on and engraved them on little medal circles (my mother-in-law gave us the stuff for this awesome project!)  We framed our words and they hang in our mudroom.

We read books about people with Integrity and then we drew a picture and wrote our own quote about lessons that we learned.

2015 MOM ADVENTURE #3

For Our Recent MOM ADVENTURE . . . 

We Went To  Pump It Up!

        Everyone loved our MOM ADVENTURE to Pump it Up, and the only bad thing that came of it was a couple of skinned elbows. 

                         

        After part one of our MOM ADVENTURE, we got to go out and get one dollar ice cream cones.

                                        

2015 MOM ADVENTURE #2

If I gave this MOM ADVENTURE  a title it would be:

"Unexpected Blessings!"

I took the kids to the temple to take Alexis' pictures in her baptism dress.  Apparently, our timing was impecable.  We hadn't been at the temple for very long when we looked up and saw a group of people coming towards us.  It was the temple President and Sister Okiisi, Elder and Sister Deshler (our area Seventy), Sister Leslie P. Layton of the Young Women General Board, Sister Mary Durham of the General Primary Presidency, and Sister Linda Reeves of the General Relief Society Presidency.  We had a wonderful visit with all of them and they wanted their picture taken with Alexis who was getting pictures in her baptism dress!