New Feature at Lizzie’s Home!
I’ve been meaning to do this for quite a while, ever since I found that free online PDF converter and put up the couple of articles you see on the left.
Online friends of mine have often ribbed me (in what I presume is awe and amazement at my skill, LOL) about my strange affiliations with self-made templates and spreadsheets. On a couple of boards I would regularly prattle on about the benefits of such-and-such a template as a household tool. I bored them all senseless, no doubt :P
The various spreadsheets and templates I make up go hand-in-hand with my Home Management Binder (for a good overview on how to set one up, see here) . Along these lines, a site I particularly like is Donna Young’s - her printables come in many different formats, but what I liked the most about her pages was their simplicity. There are no fancy graphics to waste your printer ink. Most are in PDF and Microsoft Word format. I actually like these much better than the pages from Organized Home’s Household Notebook - their pages are graphic and colour-heavy. They also open as images rather than documents, and its just that little bit more fiddly to print using the ‘print images’ section of the menu (whereas the PDFs and Word documents print directly).
Anyhow, I’m going to (very slowly!) begin altering and converting my Excel and Word templates to PDF (and I’ll provide certain templates in their original formats for self-altering) and then offering them as free downloads from Lizzie’s Home. For the most part these documents will be quite plain, maybe with a little bit of shading or a very simple image. If you see something you like in the menu to the left but want colour or pictures removed for ease of printing, just let me know and I’ll be happy to oblige. It might take me a few weeks to get a selection up, but it is coming!
I’ve thrown up a simple Freezer Meal Inventory to start things off - those familiar with 30 Day Gourmet’s Freezer Cooking Manual will recognise the format :) . Useful for those who like to do OAMC or freezer cooking, you make a “\” mark in each box as you put the meal in the freezer and when you take it out, make a “/” mark to form the X. You’ll be able to see at a glance how many of a particular meal you’ve eaten, and how much you’ve still got left. Make some simple notes in the ‘needed on hand for serving’ section - things like side dishes to prepare, items to make sure you have (like hotdog rolls, or wooden skewers etc). Post the list on the freezer door, and train the kids and hubby to cross things off as they take them out!
Cheers,
Lizzie
Hi Ho, Hi Ho…It’s Off To School We Go
It helped that we went away during the second week (the Kangaroo Island post is coming, honest!) but even so, it seems like it was just a couple of days ago that we were having our last day of term.
My plans for today are pretty simple. I have a kajillion things to catch up on in regards to study, so that’s the primary focus. I sat down yesterday and printed myself off a two month study plan. With any luck, I’ll stick to it.
Also, sometime today I have to drag hubby out the door and toward the local shopping centre. He hates shopping (a prerogative of most men I think? LOL) but he hates this particular shopping centre worse than most. Like most shopping centres I suppose, there’s tends to be a particular group of people who congregate during the day, and the nature of hubby’s job is such that he often recognises members of this group. Conversely, he’s always concerned that they’ll recognise him. So in that regard, it bothers him somewhat when we are out shopping together, especially if we have the kids with us. Hubby’s job is one where minimal information about one’s private life (outside of what he’d ordinarily tell his workmates) is a very good thing to promote. He doesn’t want it to be common knowledge in the wider community that he has a family.
Anyhow, today he needs to look at new computer systems (he’s still umming and ahhing about getting a whole new system vs buying just a new tower) and I need to hit the butcher. Miss Moo is also in need of plain navy jumpers for school. Oh, and we need a couple of reams of printer paper.
(Actually, while I’m mentioning it, a ream of paper is often good value drawing paper. If you buy in the back to school sales in January, you can often pick them up for as little as $3.50 per ream. A lot of kids drawing pads go for $2 or more and have maybe 50 sheets. I always pick up an extra couple of reams specifically for the kids to use as drawing paper)
Other than those two concerns, its the usual pottering about the place, housework and the like. Hope you’re having a great day wherever you are in the world!
Cheers,
Lizzie
Out With The Old…
And no, we didn’t take to him with a sledgehammer, though hubby looked ready to on more than one occasion! I haven’t a hope of understanding computer maintenance, but the problem revolved around multiple (and unprompted) reboots and freezing up. We battled on for weeks until hubby finally took it to the repair shop this morning to find that, unfortunately, it was terminal (LOL). Or rather, it would cost at least $600 to fix. In hubby’s eyes, there’s little point in forking out that much when we could by a whole new replacement machine with the same features for a bit over $1000. In reality, it’s a good opportunity to finally upgrade the main family computer and we’ll probably spend closer to $1500. Hubby will finally get his flatscreen monitor :P
So hubby is out today, with Grandpa ‘embalmed’ (wrapped in a blanket) in the backseat, checking up on prices and features of new models. It’s probably not the most opportune time to be spending a cool grand-and-a-half on what is, realistically-speaking, a luxury item, but the money is there so that’s not the biggest issue. It just hurts to spend so much money in one hit!
Cheers,
Lizzie
The Evening Routine
Lizzie’s Evening Routine
* Clear away dinner dishes
* Load and run dishwasher
* Kitchen Patrol
* General tidy
* Quick sweep
* Lay out clothes for tomorrow
* Check school bags
* Pre-make lunches
* Load washing machine
* Cup of tea and Think About Tomorrow
Of all the routines, the Evening Routine is by far the most useful. It cuts my workload during the next morning by at least half, and there’s no ‘headless chicken’ feeling to contend with. This is especially important as I often don’t get my first cup of tea and start feeling human until after I see Master J off to the taxi :) If I sleep in, I can go from waking up to pushing a fully fed, dressed and packed up kid out the door in twenty minutes. This is very important!
The aim is to get the Evening Routine done (and the kids’ dried off and dressed in jammies) by the kids’ bedtime at 8:30. All the really good TV programs come on after 8:30 and it means I can relax and have what I like to call Mum’s Down Time for a couple of hours :)
At 10:30 (okay, in an ideal world, LOL) I prep for bed - teeth, shower, etc - and hit the sack by 11:00. Like I said…in an IDEAL world :P
As with all the routines, things chop and change quite a bit along the way. Some days we go off track completely. If, for example, I’m out doing errands, I might skip the Mid-Morning Routine altogether. I’m extremely loose with the execution of all of the routines, LOL, but they do help keep me on track.
Cheers,
Lizzie
The Afternoon Routine
When I walk in the door after the school run, its bedlam. Shoes, jackets, school bags and notes go flying. Mama goes a little crazy in this first hour after school :)
Apart from the necessity of feeding the children their after school snack (think a nest full of baby chicks all clamouring for food and you’ve about hit the mark), if I can manage to do just two or three other things during this time it makes life so much easier later on in the evening.
Lizzie’s Afternoon Routine
* Help the kids change out of their uniforms (if it’s clean enough to wear again the next day, it gets folded to be reworn - no point playing the martyr!)
* Afternoon tea (the standard deal is whatever they’ve got leftover in their lunchboxes, with a tub of yoghurt thrown in for good measure)
* Unpack / repack school bags (check for notes, dig up library books for the next day etc)
* Reading Time (each kid has to read to a grown up)
* Fold / iron clothes (I’m happy if I can just iron two or three things…)
* Hotspot (there’s always something that needs doing!)
The main purpose of the Afternoon Routine is to kill as many birds with as few stones as possible. Repacking the bags now helps me later when I do the Evening Routine, reading with the kids now helps minimise the (worse!) craziness of the kids’ bedtime routines, and so on. At a pinch, its the one that get drops first, but most days I try hard to stick to the plan. The Afternoon Routine is (loosely) pencilled in for 4:00 - 5:00.
Then comes another break until around 5:30. Mama takes a couple of headache pills and sends the kids to their rooms for some peace! (Just kidding….sort of!)
I try to get dinner going by 5:30. Sometimes I can get away with starting later, if its a really simple dinner. I also try to get dinner on the table by around 6:30. I’m laughing inside my head as I type this though because I can’t remember the last time I actually managed to achieve this, but its the ideal, LOL. The days are getting shorter down my way and little tummies somehow get hungrier sooner with the cooler weather :)
Cheers,
Lizzie
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