Welcome back!

Thanks you dear readers for reading the latest and welcome back! You are in for a whole new adventure, so much has happened since my last update. We found, purchased, and moved into our new home. It's pretty rural, very large, and located on one acre. My goal is to make our little plot of land not only beautiful, but functional as a major contribution to sustaining our family. The vegetable garden is all plotted out and I'm excited to share it's progress with you. As it is so late in the season much of the garden will be postponed until next season. This summers focus will mostly be on the flower bed in front, and possibly a patioish area out by the barn. I'll be posting pictures and details of different projects both small and large soon. There's much to be done in this house as it's in need of major updating, but I love it. I'd like to start posting twice a week, with my first post hitting the net this Friday. So stay tuned!
I hope you all had a blessed July 4th!

First on the list is my office, shown here in the picture when the house was listed. This is pre-Woolley, standby for the subtle changes as we take over.

Nutritional Resolutions? This blog's for you!

For those of us that are tracking one thing or another in our diets, I wanted to do a quick comparison on a breakfast toast topper that I'm always debating on. Which would you think is better, hazelnut spread or peanut butter?
Peanut butter VS hazelnut spread
The ads on TV tout that hazelnut is much healthier than plain ole' peanut butter. Let's check those facts.
I used Berryhill hazelnut spread and peter pan creamy in my comparisons. I found it very interesting that all the websites are off by a bit on what they're showing the calories and fat counts to be. They're showing a lot less on the Internet. Look at the "real" label when logging your food. If your logging your food the difference could be detrimental
Hazelnut: Serving size 2 Tbs, Calories 210, total fat 14g, sodium 20mg, total carbs 19g, fiber is 1g of that, and sugars 18g, protein is 2 g. Looking down at the ingredient list Sugar is the number one followed by vegetable oil, then hazelnuts (13%), it goes on.
Peanut butter: Serving size 2 Tbs, Calories 210, total fat 17g, sodium 140 mg, Potassium 180 mg, total carbs 6g, fiber is 2 g of that and sugars 3g, protein 8g.
Vitamin wise iron is 2% in peanut butter and 6% on hazelnut, with hazel beating out peanut by 4% in the calcium, but peanut makes a come back by adding 10% magnesium.
My take on all of this is....both are horrible to put on my toast and I won't use either of them again except in recipes. It doesn't matter, if your counting calories, if your tracking salt, checking out your carb intake or sugars, trying to meat a protein guideline...bha ha ha...get it "meat", there are foods out there that are higher in protein value.
What is even more disturbing during all this research is the fact that NUTRITIONAL VALUE SITES HAVE INCORRECT INFORMATION!!!
Every single site I found had hazel coming in lower in fat and calories then it actually was! Note to self, don't take the easy road, look at the actual label yourself!

I am blogging this because I wanted to reiterate how important it is to track things that pass your lips. Whether it's supplements, food, or especially drinks such as water. Do you know how much water to drink in a day for optimum health? Take your body weight and divide it in half us that number and add ounces behind it. That fact is the most up to date and accurate information that I've found. I googled the question thinking that maybe the first lady's new campaign on drinking water for better health would be one of the top responses but it wasn't. That's kind of disappointing, but runs along the same little pattern today of the Internet not being accurate and up to date. I credit my information coming from many sources, I looked them up on US News, Doc Oz, interestingly Webmd is still showing the old 8 8oz glasses of water. So there again, web info very sketchy. Dividing your weight in half has been around for more than 5 years now. Is this a new problem that we're going to continue to run into. Books can be updated and get rotated out at the library. The Internet, it's up there forever, never updated, just hanging out waiting for the collective consciousness to pull it back down into popularity. Not very comforting stuff is it? My suggestion, take your health into your own hands. Log your foods, and use the most up to date information, get it straight from the source. Having peanut butter toast, read the label, having a burger at McDonald's request their information at the counter.
Stay informed and attain your goals!

Holidays and Organizing

Christmas, I hate to see you go. So many people in the world act a little nicer around Christmas. As the stockings come down, the count down board gets cleaned, the baking paraphenalia gets put back in the back of the cupboard, I ponder, is it possible to do a little Christmas something all year? Maybe this year I'll try. After all, I still am working on getting my holiday cards out. (smh) Maybe I'll make them into Valentines cards. So as I box up and move Christmas back to the basement, I'll bring up the Valentine's day box. One cute little box, it's not much but then again, I don't undecorate my house to decorate for Valentine's, like I do for Christmas. Love, it's the most important of our emotions.
So for the next month or so I want to take my organizing on a Love Journey. I want to love God first, then others. It's a little daunting with my resolutions fresh in my head, it's a veering from the path I set myself on for sure. For a while now I've been screaming (inside) "I need ME time!". Then God set me straight. I had an epiphany. Our own Woodland Shores Baptist Church children's minister, Dolly, illustrated to the children how when you have God in your life and you put him first, everything else fits. She did a wonderful spin on a classic science experiment, this time using a canning jar, 22 marshmallows, and 1 cup of rice. It made me reflect on the whole "ME" thing, and I realized. If I fill my life up with God and live for him, he'll make sure that I am taken care of.  He will pour his love into the areas of my life where I don't even know I need them. The alternative, is for me to try to to measure out the what's, and the where's and fill them myself. Experience tells me that always ends badly. I am not saying to blindly go through life doing good and loving God and others first...oh wait, yes I am. More on this epiphany later, but suffice it to say, God first, God last, God always, and as long as your listening to him and being obdient to him the rest will fall into place. It's all about Love after all.
Love: Valentines: Organize
I don't usually blog about food, but this caught my eye on pinterest this year and I thought, "How cute, and healthy!" So here is a nice sweet treat for the Valentine's season that is a little healthier than a box of chocolates. Valentines Jelly Pops.
My organization challenge this week is to continue organizing my household paperwork. I must admit, I am curious about the little scanner that automatically files your papers. I can't justify the Benjamins it costs though. Especially now that we're back on track with our Baby Steps. Yep, that's also top of my hit list this week. Finances. Then I have to read and understand this insurance stuff. That is what I plan on doing, but it's not written in stone. So I'll plug along with my crafts and organizational goals. Fit in a little personal fitness and health. I'll blog it when I can. Pardon the mess while I constuct a more efficient page. I'm still working out this whole blogging thing, and I forsee it getting a whole lot better this year. Hopefully you'll stick around through the growing pains and will still be here when the butterfly emerges.
Update on the whole, "Are you done with this." placecard. Yeah, um, ...it failed miserably. Bob came out of the bathroom, threw it in my lap, said, "No I was charging it." He was referencing his clippers, which for a week now has been sitting on the bathroom counter, plugged in. Then he inquired about where those placards were so he could dish them out for me. I knew that was coming, and I was ready with a witty comeback. Back to the drawing board on that problem. There's got to be a solution, asking them doesn't work. I get that blank look, and a nod, or a prerecorded automatic response. I've debated creating boxes for the three little messes in my house and just start putting their stuff in there that's laying around. Then I thought, "Nope, I don't have boxes big enough, or a nice way to "not" display them." If you've any thoughts or ideas on this matter, I'd appreciate them.
Wherever you are, and whatever you're doing today, and however you're feeling,  know that God love's you. His love is amazing. I may know you, I may not, but know that I'm praying for everyone that reads this blog. May you all feel his love and peace.

Organizational Must Have

Do you spend more than 20 minutes tidying up?

Then this may be your answer!

Now I realize that there may be some repercussions from putting these little tent cards all over the house. I'm also anticipating the "I see your things lying around, do I get to label all your stuff?" response. When anyone else in my house starts picking up and putting things away, cleans toilets, counters, tubs, floors, well then I suppose that would earn them the right to put those out. But for now, I'm reserving this for me.

I'm mass producing these puppies. They're on good cardstock, printed on my computer. If you'd be interested in purchasing them, I'd sell them $2 a sheet + postage. I'll update this blog with the complete cost, but I'm thinking I could probably get 12 in a regular envelope for a regular stamp postage. Message me here if you like it and want some for your house. They're available in a multitude of colors, just ask. Here's a close up shot of the graphic. Of course keep in mind, this was my prototype, so I grabbed whatever cardstock I had handy. It'll be an interesting experiment for sure.

So, this is my organization tip of the day. Time to work on my budget!

2 Days Before My Birthday!

...and that's all I'm saying about that. Honestly when you hit your 40's age doesn't quite matter anymore. At least I don't think so. I haven't kept track of how old I am for a good 8 years at least. My children remind me whenever I get that glazed look in my eyes when someone asks, so I really don't need to remember then do I? I'm sitting today on this particularly cold day in Southwest Michigan staring at my laptop wondering just how I'm going to segway those comments with some organizational inspiration. I think we'll start with the glazed eyeball look. Where exactly does the term "glaze look in your(my, their) eyes" come from? I have no clue and don't wish to speculate, I do however know that it matches the fog that swirls around my head and both things usually happen simutainously. Like when I'm looking at my desk drawers wondering, how in the heck am I going to make this not only an organized mess, but functioning chaos as well.
Google to the rescue!
Googling how to organize a home office works. I found an answer on "How Stuff Works" that will explain it to you if you have no idea where to start, but that's not my issue. I'm very organized, I have labels and bins, and magazine holders and file folders galore. What I need is to get rid of the old stuff, and set up a more efficient way for the paperwork to flow through this space.
Paperwork may be an oldfashioned way of organizing an office, but let's face it, some of us still get paperwork in the mail, and need a way to process this. The estatements are cool, and I write down every verification code they give me when I'm paying bills online. However, I have important, and not so important things that physically cross my desk and need to be organized. I have reviewed a fellow bloggers system and loved it! http://dawnathome.typepad.com/by_sun_and_candlelight/2009/06/the-care-feeding-of-the-file-crate-system.html She does file folders per week for everything and once a year in June she cleans them out and redoes for the next year. I thought long and hard about doing it this way, then decided it wasn't for me. I need to have an account specific file system. If I want to review say my tv satellite provider bills, I do not want to have to remember what week I received it in and try to hunt down the file. I realize and acknowledge that if you have ebills this would not be an issue. It's very tempting to try her system and have everything go electronic, but I'm still to scared to take the plunge. Plus, what in the heck would I do with the other 4 file drawers in my desk? Ok, enough with dragging my feet on this, let's get started.
First I need to look at the flow of my office, and what I don't like about it, then hatch a plan to fix it. This is how I took care of the problem of my OCD and my husband hanging up his hats on the post of the bed. Every night he'd hang his hat on a post, or his pants, (OMGoodness!!! I remember the pants were the last straw!) on the post of a beautiful four poster king size bed. When the grease and dirt form his clothes started rubbing off onto the beautiful wood, I pondered the dilema. The problem wasn't that my husband was using the bed as a clothing rack, the problem was that the bed was presenting itself to be a multifunctioning piece of furniture! So instead of getting mad and trying to change his patterned behavior, I took the ripsaw and cut the posts off the bed. See, problem solved, no more post, no more stress. I've since gotten rid of the bed altogether, but it actually worked out quite nicely and was beautiful in a new way. We downsized to a queen size bed, another one of my schemes, but a story for another day. Point is, I spend a lot of time at my desk, and I get a little freaked when people stand behind me or start digging in drawers especially when said digging boxes me in or squishes me. Remedy, I'm going to move the files to my outside drawer and then now one has to crowd me to get into it. Next, is the file system. Now I don't need the carboard file folders because for $8 at Sam's Club you can get a box of 50 hanging file folders.http://spaceforlivingos.com/2012/10/3-steps-to-organized-files.html. Here's my picture of today's accomplishment. All ready to go for the next year, and another plus to buying all those hanging files, I now have a sturdy empty box to put last years paperwork in. Oh, and store/misc receipts I simply put on one of these and then stick them in an envelope with the first date and the last date on it. Just in case...

I break them down into categories that will serve to organize and where I can dig up info dating back through the year quickly and efficeintly. Example:Budget, bank accts, utilites, income, taxes, medical, insurance, vehicles, kids, pets, storage unit. (I lied, I do use some file folders for each seperate bank, and vehicles, the utilites are filed in their own hanging file. All are in alphabetical order. File categories are given on this organizer guru's blog

Here's before & after:

 

 

A great start, don't give up, it has to hurt if it's to get better!

Yep my office exploded when I emptied some drawers! Don't be afraid, just break out the garbage bags!

 With this mess created, it's time to bounce! See you tomorrow, in a cleaner office I hope.

 

Thinking bout the new year and what I'm going to do with it:

Over the last few years I've had some really interesting epiphanies. Today I'm wondering exactly what I should do with them and trying to get a game plan for the new year. Seems every year I want to be more organized, healthier, richer, more lively, and not only more goal oriented but more goal achieving as well. So this year, as is the norm I scoff at the "resolution" writing and instead am coming up with a game plan to get back to basics.
My plan will include daily visits to organization, cleaning, finances, and health. I realize with the blink of an eye that God can take me down a different road then the one I plan to follow.  Travelling the road is the key though, you can't expect God to take you anywhere if your aren't moving already. My success is based on my obedience to God. I pray for all of us this year that  our ears will be open to his voice, that our eyes will be open to his direction, and that if we achieve nothing else this year that we all learn to love and live more fully. 
Fullness in life is something that is missing for me. I fell into the rut surviving this life, without seeing any beauty. I was convinced that my burden was to suffer through a mundane existence, that my life had already been lived. I've travelled, I've done good, I am loved and love deeply, and still I would sit at this desk and wonder, "Is this it?" "Is this all there is." How many times did I pray to my God, "Okay, I think I'm done, I've done what you wanted, and will do whatever you ask. Have I finally learned the lesson I was sent here to learn? Can I go home now?" Looking up to heaven I've thought that I was ready.
God then started placing people into my life that made me wonder. Where did it go, my passion? I've read and studied and watched modern day inspirations from "regular" however famous people. The "self-help" guru's of our age, and wondered with all the pieces before me, how they all fit together to form the big picture.
My quest now is to find out what moves me. Surely there is something here amongst all my life's messy pieces.
I invite you, reader, to follow my rights of passage into a new chapter in my life. This month as I wrap up our holiday traditions and pack them back in the boxes they usually reside in, I'll be forming the skeleton, if you please. The framework of some sort of routine, that will once again carry me down the road of life. I'm hoping while doing this I'll come across the wheels that will make the journey much smoother. In my minds eye I'm seeing something more along the lines of a travois.

Not the most ideal way to move, but sometimes it's necessary just to start the motion. Ken Davis said in Fully Alive, "A body in motion stays in motion, a body at rest, rests in peace.

Speaking of people that have inspired me to finally put the pieces of this journey together and their works that go along with it, I want to make it very clear that I am a christian. None of these self help authors have actually proclaimed that they are saved. I have been, and I believe there is room in my belief system to add these hints on making my life better, and I believe that each of these people are on to something. Life's "Secret" if you will. So you may have to open your mind a little more than what is comfortable, but as I say when I pass on information from unorthodox sources. Take what you want, and discard the rest.

I leave you today with a list of sources that sometimes gave me epiphanies, but always inspired me to become better at being me.

 

The Bible

Excuses Begone

The Secret

Fully Alive

The Power of Intention

The Tao

How to Get What You Want and Want What You Have

 

Until later, may you have peace my friends.