How to Use a Family Calendar

Family calendars are a great tool to help busy families stay organized and get control of the family schedule. The key is to be disciplined about using it.

Pick a family calendar that works best for your life style. Two great options, Mom’s Plan It Calendar and Mom’s Family Calendar, are designed to help busy families manage their schedules, but in very different ways. Mom’s Plan It Calendar offers families the traditional monthly calendar view and let’s you keep track of up to 5 (6 if Mom and Dad share a space) family member’s schedules, but its horizontal format requires that a parent fill in each person’s name for each week. With the Mom’s Family Calendar you lose the traditional monthly view, but you gain ease and quickness in filling it out and reading. It is more of a list view rather than calendar view of everyone’s schedule.

Keep the family calendar hung in a central location where everyone can see and read it.

Teach your spouse and older kids how to add things and spot conflicts.

Pick a day of the week, Sunday’s are often a good choice, to update the calendar with all the latest events and appointments. You can read our post Keeping Track of Party Invitations, Permission Slips, and Appointment Cards for tips on keeping track of all the loose paper.

For really busy families struggling to find down time, schedule a few days or a whole weekend as a “go nowhere day” where you agree to not do anything away from home that day. You just hang out, relax, and stay in the pajamas all day. We love these days in our home.

Raves, Craves, and Not So Fave’s - Bucket Blast

With the summer months upon us and my rising worries on how I’m going to keep my kids from getting bored this summer, I thought I would include one of my kids’ favorite summer games, Bucket Blast, in this week’s issue of Raves, Craves, and Not So Fave’s. Containing 24 bean bags, 6 buckets, 6 bucket straps, 4 boundary cones, and 6 blind folds, it offers kids a choice of 15 different games for either indoors, outdoors, or with water. For example with Beanbag Basketball , kids strap the buckets to their backs and run around trying to get the beanbags in other people’s bucket. At the end of the round, the child with the most beanbags loses. It’s a great and fun way for kids to get exercise and have fun doing it. A definite rave with the kids.

Keeping Track of Party Invitations, Permission Slips, and Appointment Cards

If your house is anything like mine, you are inundated daily with a slew of birthday party invitations, school permission slips, and appointment reminder cards. Keeping track of them can be a challenge. So in an effort to save our sanity and ease the chaos, here are a few ideas to keep them organized.

• Keep a clip board in your kitchen and attach all of the invitations, persmission slips and reminder cards for easy access.
• Hang a bulletin board in your kitchen and attach them all there for quick viewing and checking. Be sure to hang it high enough where little fingers can’t grab the tacks and poke themselves.
• Use a wall calendar, like the Mom’s Plan It Calendar with a built in pocket to keep your invitations and paper all in one place. The built in pocket makes it easy to quickly add things to your calendar and grab the papers when needed.
• Use a clearly marked file folder to keep them organized and easily available.

Harry Potter Sweepstakes Contest

If you have a Harry Potter fan in the house, be sure to check out the Harry Potter sweepstakes contest sponsored by Scholastic. Seven lucky U.S. Harry Potter fans will win a trip to London to join J.K. Rowling at a midnight launch event for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as well as the opportunity to attend “J.K. Rowling and the Moonlight Signing” at London’s Natural History Museum. And if that weren’t enough they will also join 1,700 fans who will have the opportunity to meet J.K. Rowling and have their book signed. The deadline is June 15, 2007, so be sure to add it to your family calendar.

99 Balloons

You will need a tissue….

Check out www.ninetynineballoons.com for more information about Eliot.

RandomKid

RandomKid’s mission is to take the goodness of the child and turn it into goodness for the world by helping kids help others. Right now we could really use help from family’s all across the USA to do something rather simple BEFORE JUNE FIRST!

Please go to www.randomkid.org/gulf.html and have your child or a group of children enter the “decorate your governor” contest to bring awareness to the continuing need in the gulf post-Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. You don’t have to buy anything. Simply make a design (instructions are on the site) and fill out the form. If you win, RandomKid will send you the basic materials you’ll need for your design, and then the child (or group of children) just needs to “get ready for his/her closeup”– to hopefully have a “photo-op” with your state’s governor and possibly the media on the 2nd anniversary of Katrina, August 29, 2007.

A, B, City

Make dinner time fun and enjoyable with this fun family dinner game and easy to make and great tasting dish. Be sure to check out the helpful hint at the end!

A, B, City

 

The first person names a geographic location that starts with A, such as Africa

The next person names a location that starts with B, such as Boston

Continue all the way around the table until Z

Whoever can’t guess a location is out and the others continue

To make it more difficult for older kids, name only cities. Also play with different themes like sports, toys, or food.

You can find this fun game as well as many more in Family Time Fun’s Original Dinner Games and Activities.

Barbecued Baby-Back Ribs

This is a recipe from RecipeZaar, a wonderful on-line resource for great recipes. I substituted country style ribs for baby-back ribs and rather than boil them I cooked them in the crock pot until they were fort tender. The barbecue sauce is what makes them great, so if ribs aren’t your style try chicken instead.

Ingredients
6 Country Style Ribs
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup cider vinegar
3 tablespoons dark brown sugar
3 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon liquid smoke (you can find this in the ketchup aisle)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Place the ribs in a crock pot with 1/3 cup water and cook on low until fork tender (about 3 hours). Mix the remaining ingredients in a sauce pan and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer for about 30 minutes. While sauce is simmering, heat the grill and place the ribs on the grill without the sauce and grill for about 2 minutes. Coat the ribs with the sauce and grill for another 5 - 7 minutes or until completely warmed through.

Quick Tips
For sauces such as this barbecue sauce, mix the ingredients together the night before and store in an airtight container over night. Add this easy prep to your family calendar, so you don’t forget.

If you are struggling with getting meals on the table, try creating a family meal planner. Simple and easy to use, the meal planner lets you plan meals for each season and streamline grocery shopping.

Plant an Herb Garden

Planting an herb garden is a fun spring family activity that can also be used to create heart felt Christmas gifts for grandparents and friends.With your children, plan and plant a small herb garden either someplace in your yard or in small containers on your windowsill. Work together over the summer to grow and care for the herbs. As summer winds down, dry the herbs and then package them in festive colored bags or containers to give as gifts to grandparents at Christmas. Attach a small note saying something like “Grown with love” or from “From our garden to yours”. This is the perfect gift for grandparents who have everything or the master chef in the family!

Some resources to help you get started:

 

Herbal Adventures

How to Dry and Preserve Your Garden Fresh Herbs

Gardening with Children

Rainbow Dinner

Try this Rainbow Family Dinner Game at your next meal. It’s a great way to develop creative and critical thinking skills and is available in the brand new Beginner Dinner Games.

Rainbow Dinner

 

Someone starts the game by saying a color

As a team, your family names all the foods they can think of that are that color

For example red would be apple, cherry, radish, etc

After you can’t come up with anymore ideas, have another person at the table choose a different color of the rainbow and play again.

You can find this fun game as well as many more in Family Time Fun’s Beginner Family Dinner Games and Activities.

Mixed Spring Salad with Grilled Pork, Apples, and Pecans

I originally found this recipe in an old Williams-Sonoma recipe book, but have modified it to better fit our family tastes. It’s a great dish for spring and summer.

Ingredients
Marinated Pork Tenderloin (you can find the recipe in our April Newsletter)
1/2 Cup Pecans
1 tblsp Peanut Oil
Salt & Pepper
6 tblsp Olive Oil
2 tblsp Red Wine Vinegar
1 tblsp Hazelnut Oil (many grocery stores will carry this)
2 Apples - Choose your family’s favorite kind
6 - 8 Cups of Mixed Spring Salad - Washed and Dried

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the pecans, peanut oil, and salt & pepper in a small bowl. Place the pecans on a baking sheet and bake 5-7 minutes in the oven until lightly golden. Let cool.

For the dressing, mix the olive oil, hazelnut oil, and vinegar in the same bowl you used for the pecans and set aside.

Grill the marinated pork tenderloin according to the recipe and let sit 5 minutes before slicing.

While the tenderloin is cooling, in a large salad bowl, mix the mixed spring salad and dressing. Top off the salad with the sliced tenderloin, apples, and pecans. Serve!

Quick Tips
Here is a simple trick to make working with marinades easier. While using your family meal planner to create your grocery list, quickly add a note to your family calendar to remind yourself to marinate the meat the night BEFORE you plan on serving it. For example, if you plan on serving a dish that requires marinating on Tuesday, add a reminder to your calendar for Monday, to marinate the meat. This will give the meat an entire day to marinate and enhance the flavor greatly. Don’t worry if the meat is still frozen. Simply place it in the marinade and let it marinate and defrost in the refrigerator.