Remaining Frazzle Free Checklists for Evernote

As promised here are the remaining weekly checklists for 8 Weeks to a Frazzle Free Christmas in Evernote format.   Remember they are in BETA which means there might be some glitches.  If you have any problems, please leave a comment and I will see what I can do to fix or help resolve it.

Here are the instructions for importing them into Evernote: Read more

Frazzle Free Checklists for Evernote

I am a big fan of Evernote and use it regularly to keep track of lists, recipes, vacation plans for home as well as files, emails, notes, and assignments for work.  And because of Evernote, I am almost paperless when it comes to work.

So this year I have decided to give it a try when it comes to working through 8 Weeks to a Frazzle Free Christmas.  I have created the Week 1 and Week 2 checklists along with a Buy List, and two Gift Lists (Single and Multiple) in Evernote and have exported them here for anyone who would like to download and import them into Evernote (you have to be using the desktop version to import notes). Read more

Establishing Good Relationships with Your Child’s Teacher

By Melanie Moore of Only a Breath

Teachers have one of the most important jobs on the planet — molding, encouraging, teaching young minds. As parents, our relationship with our children’s teacher can have a profound impact on the success of both the teacher and the student. After gathering input from several teacher friends, I realized that there are many ways parents can establish a good relationship with our children’s teacher.

Establishing a good relationship with our children’s teacher requires much more than sending an apple a day for the teacher! Here are some tips that teachers would like to give to parents in order help both your child and their teacher have the most successful school year possible:

• Give your child a great start to the morning! Teachers appreciate when parents make it a priority to ensure their children are well-rested and eat a good breakfast. A teacher’s job is much more difficult when they are trying to keep the attention of a sleepy, hungry child.
• Teachers love to see your smiling face! There are normally many opportunities to volunteer at the school, attend PTA meetings, schedule parent-teacher conferences, etc. One key factor to establishing a great parent-teacher relationship is to see your child’s teacher whenever possible so they know you are completely supporting them!
• Communication, communication, communication! Please talk with your child about their day, both the good and the bad. Do homework with them, get to know the names of their friends, ask if they are having any problems in school that might need extra attention, etc. Also, send your child’s teacher a letter or be sure to respond to any letters they send home with students. It is so important to keep the lines of communication open, both with your child and with the teacher.
• You’re on the same team! Remember that your child’s teacher wants to help your child succeed. Especially when there are disciplinary issues, talk together about how you can both support your child’s learning and encourage good behavior.

What are some ways that you have found in relating to your child’s teacher? If you are a teacher, do you have any tips to add to the list?

Let’s encourage both our children and our teachers in order to raise a generation of energetic learners!

Melanie writes at “Only A Breath” about life as a small-town, southern, girly-girl mommy of two rough and rowdy little boys. She is so thankful for a wonderful, hard-working husband who makes her laugh and is a wonderful daddy. She works full-time as an industrial software developer (“computer geek”) and offers practical tips and encouragement for moms who work outside the home. Her heart’s desire is to encourage others to celebrate life and cherish each breath of this journey.

Planning Meals When You Hate Planning

Laura Rolands of My Attention Coach

How often have you heard us say it?  Plan your meals ahead of time and it will make your evenings easier.  Easier said than done isn’t it?  When I work with my clients who have ADHD, I help them simplify steps to accomplish their goals.  Healthy eating and meal planning are frequently topics of discussion.

What if there is a better way?

How would it help you if we could find a better, less complex way to meal planning?  I propose that we can find ways to make meal planning quicker and easier.

Stocking Up on Basics

Whether you eat meat, are vegetarian or fall somewhere in between, identify the basics that you and your family tend to eat.  List at least fifteen items that you can buy in advance to have in the freezer or pantry.  This list might include different types of meat, pastas, lentils, snacks and breakfast foods.  In addition, list 5 spices that your family loves to use.  Having your favorite spices on hand can ensure that you actually have a way to use what you have available.

Weekly Planning

Personally, I hate spending a lot of time on meal planning.  In my book, if we make the process quick and easy, you are more likely to do the planning.  You do have to spend some time planning to make this process work though.  My suggestion here is to spend 15 minutes over the weekend planning your meals for the week using what you have available in your freezer and pantry.  You might need to buy a few things at the store, but if you have stocked up on the basics the planning and shopping should go quickly.  Finding a favorite cookbook has helped me in my planning.  I have found The Best 30-Minute Recipe cookbook from the Cook’s Illustrated editors to be a great help.  There are wonderful recipes and most really can be made in 30 minutes!

Planning a Break

If you don’t plan your meals, chances are that you end up getting carry out more often than you would like.  By planning one or two nights for carry out or eating out, you can be more mindful of your decisions.  In addition, I find that you have a better chance of finding coupons and even making more healthy choices when you plan to eat out rather than realizing at 6pm that you need to eat.  Unhealthy choices always seem to be the closest when that happens to me!

What do you do?

Share your meal planning tips with everyone below!

Laura Rolands is the founder of LSR Coaching and Consulting, LLC. She is a coach whose passion is to support, lead and inspire independence and success for people who have either been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD or who are facing other attention-related challenges. Her clients include individuals with attention-related challenges and/or their parents. If you have any questions or more suggestions to add, please visit her website at www.MyAttentionCoach.com.

Winning the Bedtime Battle

By Susan Heid of The Confident Mom

It seems that two areas that seem to become a battle field for moms are the morning routine and the bedtime routine.  You can end up becoming a drill sergeant, yelling out orders and trying to “get” your kids to do their tasks OR you can find ways to help your child develop skills which will help them become self-reliant.

Fights over bedtime can be one of the biggest power struggles you’ll have with your child, whether they’re five or fifteen. If you examine the reasons you will come up with quite a few.  You may have kids that just don’t want to go to bed at night, because they’re afraid they’re going to miss something. With others, it might be because they’re frightened of the dark, or afraid to go to sleep. And for some kids, it is simply a matter of exhibiting control over a situation they can try to control.

Bedtime just becomes another arena in which kids will try to fight with you. If you’ve ruled out common fears that leaves us with the basic issue of —the power struggle.

First of all, as in any power struggle, we don’t want to engage in a fight if we can possibly avoid it. Try to reflect on behavior that you are doing which has contributed to the continued bad pattern.

Do you give threat after threat?

Are you inconsistent with bedtime?

Do you not have a standard routine in place?

There are many things we do as parents which almost ‘invite’ our children to be combative. Before you implement a new bedtime routine, it will be in your best interest and your child to avoid the battles that trigger the frustration and realize that you cannot take that behavior personally.  When you take your child’s behavior personally it ends up touching those emotional nerves that tend to get out of control.

What you should be doing for both morning and bedtime routines is focusing on what your children should be learning in order to manage self-care tasks and responsibilities rather than your child becoming an expert on how they can manage you through the power struggles.

Here are some points to keep in mind when creating a bedtime routine.

Create a Checklist

I recently was working with a mom who needed help in this bedtime routine area.  She knew she had drifted way off course and was spending her whole evening coaxing and threatening her kids to brush their teeth, put their pajamas on and get into bed.  By creating a simple check-list for her children, ages 5 and 9 she could easily set the expectation for them indicating what tasks they needed to do on their own.  (brushing teeth, pajamas, washing up, etc)  You can use a picture chart or something which has a moveable tag that they can move when they finish a task, but provide some type of visual for your child to follow and that they can refer to every evening.  This prevents the constant nagging and threatening.

Set Expectations

For this particular mom, she had 30 minute windows to assist her children to get to bed.  We decided to keep those 30 minute windows, but instead of using that time having her coax her kids to do their tasks, she invited them to have those tasks accomplished before their set aside time and if they did then they could use that time to spend with mom.  They get to pick an activity to do only with her.  She felt this would really work because that was one thing her children always wanted, more of her. By clearly stating the tasks as well as the benefit of completing the tasks you are giving your child a choice as to whether they complete it or not. Do not fall into the nagging or reminding pattern here, allow your child to take initiative and make a choice.

Logical Consequences

In this case the logical consequence is that if the child does not have their tasks done, then the 30 minutes is spent with mom walking alongside them helping them complete them.  This is where you cannot let those emotions come into.  It would be natural to lecture your child, repeating that they made a bad choice, allowing yourself to take it personally that they did not comply.  Instead, say only this, “That is a bummer you didn’t choose to complete your tasks, I was really looking forward to doing _________ with you tonight.”  Leave it at that.  If they respond with something, do not respond or get into a back and forth battle with them, instead you can follow up with, “Tomorrow is a new day, perhaps we will have time tomorrow night.”

Be Consistent

Here is the tricky part for most parents – sticking to the expectation and following through with the consequence.  But if you do not do this, you may as well not even try to create a routine that will work itself.  If you do not follow through your child learns that you truly do not mean what you say and that they can then find ways to manipulate you to get their way.  I’ll say it again, be consistent with the consequence and follow through.  If your child does not complete their responsibility – stick to the consequence.  If they do, stick to the consequence.  It is that simple – almost!  It will be hard to see your child upset when they don’t get the snuggle and reading time they normally get when they do their part, but that experience will be stored in their minds and hold more weight than you lecturing them about what they should do next time.

Bedtime routines are a must – starting early create a simple routine that can easily be adjusted as the child grows.  Consider bath time, reading books, teeth brushing, prayers and tuck in.  Try to follow the same pattern night after night and it will become a comforting habit for your child.

Susan Heid loves inspiring Christian moms to make small changes managing their home and family life giving them more time, order and less stress! As a Certified Parent Coach and Family Manager Coach she enjoys sharing her expertise with moms through workshops, teleseminars, public speaking, and individual and group coaching.  She is a proud mom, step-mom and foster mom to 3, married to her very own prince charming, loves coffee, cloudy days, and does think the “bluest skies you’ve ever seen are in Seattle.”  Her FREE 5 part mini series: “The Opening Act” is helping moms worldwide become the calm mom they want to be!

Have a Frazzle Free Holiday

By Bobbie Friedman of Simplified by Bobbie

I am so excited that it’s time again for the Frazzle Free Christmas (FFC) by Families with Purpose! I have enjoyed this amazing resource so much for the past two holiday seasons, that by the time summer rolled around this year I was already thinking about and looking forward to the holidays! However, I wasn’t always so excited for this season to begin… Read more

Self- Confidence 101: Liking Who We See in the Mirror

By Sandra Huber of the The Soulful Parent

The journey of a parent consultant and a mother continues to teach me a great deal about that interesting time between early childhood and teenage years. I have found my own confidence shaken at times and wonder how I teach my daughter to be self-confident when our culture seems to have very high expectations of moms and kids.

The reality of many of our lives is that we are the main care-takers, the ones who are in charge of managing the home and the lives of everyone in it. How can we find the confidence to get anything done? Are we setting ourselves up for failure?

Here are 3 suggestions to make sure you don’t lose sight of what a great job you are a doing as a mom. That confidence in turn will transfer to your children as they see their mom honoring every step of her own journey.

Reality Check: Let’s give up the idea that anything and everything in your life has to be done perfectly.  If you are a mom, like millions of moms around the world, you know that it’s a futile attempt to put ourselves under the stress of becoming “Supermom”.  Share some of the  chores, responsibilities and tasks with your children in an age appropriate way.  Not only will you get help but you also will be allowing them to develop self-confidence and a feeling of accomplishment.  No small feat!!

For example, your children can learn to pick the clothes the night before and get their backpacks and homework ready. There’s no need to be frazzled in the morning trying to find a matching pair of socks or their homework!

Also, allow your children to see you handle stress, upsets and sadness in the way you’d like them to handle it. You can’t be up and smiling all the time and still be human. That’s a great lesson for them!!

Listen to your inner voice:  I know… How do we know that our inner voices are not mental crazy talk, right? Well, I believe that life has placed an inner compass in our heart to guide us through the challenges of raising children. It’s hard when never in your life before have you been showered with so much unsolicited advice, opinions and observations that may make you felt invalidated and wrong… But in the end, you are the one who knows your children best. Trust your intuition and listen to your gut. You are the expert on your children!!

Set yourself (and your child) for success: Unrealistic expectations whether self-imposed or imposed by others are the toxin that kills confidence and self-esteem. Regardless of how organized your mom was, what a great cook or excellent baker she was, focus on your own strengths. You have a lot to offer your children if you don’t compare yourself or compare them.

Don’t expect your child to have the same interests in sports or music or academics just because you did. Trust that the one thing your child can excel in is being herself. A great relationship and confidence booster for any child is to know that your love for her does not depend on your approval of her performance.

One last thought: Embrace the challenges of developing your own confidence as well as your kids.   In caring for your child you often heal yourself!

Sandra is the “soul” and “coach” behind the Soulful Parent. She has worked in Early Intervention, Special Education and has supported many families in the road to successful parenting. She became a PCI Certified Parent Coach® because she’s deeply passionate about changing the world, one family at a time. Sandra believes that life becomes a more enjoyable journey when you lead from your strengths! She can be contacted Sandra {at} thesoulfulparent(.)com and www.thesoulfulparent.com for more information about seminars, presentations and individual coaching services.

Eeek-O Friendly Halloween

By Beth Engelman and Jenna Riggs of Mommy on a Shoestring

Get into the Halloween spirit with these “eeek-o” friendly crafts and recipes.

Edible Eyeball Centerpiece

Forget buying flowers!  Arrange these eyeballs in a bowl or place them on a platter for an eye-opening presentation.

You will need:

Small, White Powdered Sugar Doughnuts (with holes)

Red Icing

Life Saver Gummies

Chocolate Chips

Directions:

• Place doughnuts on a plate and cover the center holes with a thin layer of red icing. The diameter should be slightly larger than the Life Saver candy.
• Place the candy on top of the red icing and push gently to secure in place.
• Place a chocolate chip in the middle of the candy.
• Make the eyeballs scary (and bloodshot) by drawing lines from the center of the doughnut to the outer edge with red icing.
• Arrange the treats in a large glass bowl or poke each one with a fork and place it on a platter.

Thank you to candy expert Beth Kimmerle for this idea.  For more information visit www.bethkimmerle.com.

Pumpkin Pops

These cute pops are a snap to make and will delight kids of all ages. 

You will need:

Cream-Filled Sandwich Cookies

Orange-Colored Chocolate Wafers (available at craft stores)

Mini Chocolate Chips

Red and Black icing

Popsicle Sticks

Directions:

• Melt chocolate over a double boiler, or in the microwave.
• Transfer chocolate into a separate bowl.
• Dip cookie into the chocolate until it is completely covered.
• Place on wax paper and add a face using chocolate chips for eyes and icing for nose and mouth.
• Insert popsicle stick and place in refrigerator until chocolate hardens.

 Recycled Jar Luminaries

This project comes courtesy of expert Amanda Formaro.  For more information about Amanda and to see more crafts visit www.CraftsbyAmanda.com

Light up your doorway with this clever idea that puts old pickle and jelly jars to good use.

 You will need:

Recycled Glass Jars

Non-Toxic Acrylic Paint

Felt Tip Pen or Marker

Glow Sticks

Spray Glaze

Directions

• Paint each jar with 1 coat of paint (any color).
• Paint lid black and wait several hour for lid and jar to dry.
• Use a felt tip pen to draw the outline of a Jack-o-lantern face.
• Fill in face with black paint and once again, wait several hours to dry.
• Spray lid and jar with clear glaze (to protect jar against the elements).
• Add a glow stick to illuminate before displaying!  Boo-tiful!!

 Green your Halloween

Looking for other ways to make your Halloween fun Earth friendly?

Here are some tips from Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson, founders of www.greenhalloween.org and authors of the book, Celebrate Green.

• Instead of carving pumpkins, paint them instead.  That way, you can enjoy homemade pumpkin pie, pumpkin soup or pumpkin bread when the holiday is over.  Check out this pumpkin friendly website for more recipes: www.pumpkinrecipes.org
• Make your own “Trick or Treat bag” with recycled milk jugs or laundry containers.
• Compost candy:  Add candy to your compost or yard-waste bags.  Just remember to remove the wrappers first!

For more information on ways to “green your Halloween” visit: www.greenhalloween.org.

Jenna Riggs and Beth Engelman are the creative talents and owners of Mommy on a Shoestring, a website and weekly radio show chock full of ideas on how families can live creatively and large on a small budget.