Category: Home + LIfe

  • Do You Hate Freezer Meals? Three Reasons to Try Them Anyway

    Do You Hate Freezer Meals? Three Reasons to Try Them Anyway

    I used to hate make-ahead freezer meals. They never, ever appealed to me. But now? Now I can’t stop talking about how much better they are. We’ve been freezer-cooking for six or seven months now and I can’t say enough good things about it.

  • How Meal Planning Helps Anxious Kids

    This week I’m writing about simple ways that you can add structure to your homeschooling life. Look. I know that children — my children — thrive on structure, but as a hopelessly disorganized homeschooling mom, I struggle to give my kids that structure that they crave. It doesn’t come naturally to me. If my kids went…

  • A Printable that Teaches Kids How to Clean Their Room

    My mom loaned me her laminator once. Needless to say, I did not get enough sleep that night. OK, I know what you’re thinking: please tell me this isn’t a post about what you laminated. That’s crazy. In my mind, this could be a whole SERIES about the things that I laminated. In fact, it occurred…

  • Your Year-Long Meal Plan

    I LOVE meal plans — but I hate writing them up. I usually make them for 4-12 week periods, but this being the year of structure, I made one that would last 365 days. It seems a bit extreme, doesn’t it? The thing is, making a year-long plan didn’t take me all that much longer than…

  • DIY Doll Beds with Storage

    DIY Doll Beds with Storage

    These DIY doll beds are made from plastic bins, decorated to look like beds but leaving lots of room to store a growing collection of doll clothing. My favourite part? When your child outgrows dolls, you get a new plastic bin for your storage room.  I have a child who has trouble falling asleep. She’s…

  • Let Go of Perfect

    Let Go of Perfect

    My grandma made me a ceramic music box with Santa Claus on it when I was little. Every year, my mother put it out on the coffee table on December 1 — and not a day sooner. I so clearly remember the ragged cardboard box that we stored it in, and the way that the old shredded newspaper fell…

  • My Favourite Decluttering Tips from The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up

    I reached a point sometime in June where my house suddenly felt clean. Not as clean as my mother-in-law’s house, of course, but clean by our standards. And then it was still clean the next day. And the day after that. On that third day of cleanliness, I panicked and took the kids camping for…

  • Why I Wouldn’t Let My Child Do A Ropes Course

    Thank you for visiting my blog! If you enjoy it, you might also enjoy Mom vs the Wasps, which is a fun post about facing my fears for the sake of my children. Well, mostly it’s about me running away from wasps. Do ropes courses teach our kids valuable life lessons? I sure hope not,…

  • Stop Feeling Like the Family Chauffeur

    The year-end dance recital was last Saturday, so like moms everywhere, my week was a blur of rehearsals, sequins, makeup, and hairspray. And that was just me. That’s right, I danced. On stage, in front of hundreds of people, I stumbled across the stage in a sparkly Irish dress that was used in a dance competition some…

  • When You Can’t Find Your Child

    This post first appeared on the Huffington Post Canada:To Those Judging The Mom Of The 4-Year-Old Boy At The Cincinnati Zoo You will lose track of your kids at some point. Maybe for a moment, maybe for an hour. It does not matter how carefully you watch them. And I think that it’s the worst…