When I was working full-time and especially as a full-time university student, I always had a day planner that held all my planned appointments and schedules. These days, my role as a mom and co-head-of-the-family has it’s own needs and demands for staying on top of things… I take my domestic engineering job as a big responsibility because even that is a great deal of work for someone struggling with a chronic pain syndrome!

One method of organization I wanted to highlight is my “book book”. I have had this system for several years and have found it to be invaluable. Even when you are a stay-at-home-mom or home on disability or anything like that, it’s still crucial to stay on top of all the household responsibilities. There will always be bills to pay, extra-curricular activities for the kids to plan for, shopping and meals to plan, budgeting, etc.!!

I recently had to get a new “book book” because my previous spiral notebook got full. Here’s the one I chose:

It has since had some graffiti added to the cover courtesy of my DS, so I’m glad I got a pic of it when I did!!!

On the inside…

… if I have the time and inclination, I can stamp into the pages with a couple of my favourite Stampin’ Up date stamps (I have the big stamp with the “To Do” list and “Week of…” calendar and the little “Save the Date” set with the month stamp and coordinating tiny stamps). Looks really pretty and also tends to keep my week manageable! When I just write “Week of” and have unlimited space for each day, it doesn’t help encourage me not to overdo it!

I write down pretty much everything family related in my notebook, including jotting down recipes I find on the internet, details of phone calls, and plans for meals and trips.

Here are some other items in my “organization” toolkit:
* a large family calendar (I currently use “More Time Moms” but there are others out there too – get one with big squares to write in and pick a highlighter colour for each family member)
* a tiny planner (cheque-book sized) for my purse to schedule appointments while I’m at them (e.g. physio, dentist, etc.)
* snappy cases for different types of paperwork: one for childcare documents, one for school stuff (newsletters, food orders, event flyers, etc.) & others
* a notepad and folder for health claims with a pocket for all related items (letter envelopes, printed address labels, stamps, claim sheets, receipts gathered that month)
* a large wicker basket with cloth liner to keep some of these cases and folders!

Anyways, my “book book” and other tools is what works for me! maybe they will work for you too and you’ve found some of these tips to be helpful! For other tips that are more specifically on the subject of clutter, bills, and incoming papers, check out my previous blog post, the Paperwork Parade!

Good luck managing whatever your clutter may be and staying on top of it!

All in all, there are new blinkies in the following sets (or the whole set is new!):

• Autism Awareness Big Blinkies(new set – 12 blinkies!)
• “Toddler Bright Stripes” Big Blinkies (5 new)
• “Expecting…” Big Blinkies (10 new)
• Pregnancy Big Blinkies (15 new!)
• Pregnancy Loss Awareness Big Blinkies (8 new)
• Remembering Angels Big Blinkies(new set – 14 blinkies!)

Phew! I’m a blinkie-a-holic (awww great, now I need to make a blinkie that says that!!)

Hope you enjoy!

My scrapbook of construction photos of our new home is now complete! The album covers 24 pages and the time span of July 2008 to April 2009 – from the time we started shopping to the time our house was built and we got the keys! I do have other photos that continue the story (our first days, weeks, months as new home-owners) but I’m thinking I’ll do another album for those.

So these layouts have all the pictures from our last couple months leading up to the completion of the house. We had two inspections before taking possession (that’d be why there’s a picture of my spouse and I wearing silly construction hats), so there was ample opportunity to go through and take lots of pictures of everything. I left out many of the “boring” but very essential pictures: such as pictures of little flaws that needed to be fixed. One of the perks of buying a brand new home is the warranty, but it only goes as far as you can show the problems were due to construction faults, etc.

I’m glad to have all of these photos of our house in (near) “mint” condition… before the kids got at it!! They have managed to flood a small room *each* (our son the laundry room and our daughter the kids’ bathroom), so it has definitely lost it’s shine a little. No matter; we are all in the process of making it a home, our home, and that involves a little destruction here and there I guess! It is also a good “Before” reference for visitors who will see our newly decorated home and paint jobs. Which, like I said, will be the subject of a whole other album! For those I’ll be waiting to make sure we indeed get to keep our house… Sadly, the resulting financial difficulties from my car accident and the disabilities that it caused may force us to sell this beautiful dream home. I hope I won’t be looking at these pictures with longing and regret though, but with fondness and nostalgica as the years go by and we build many memories here.

A couple fave layouts from this section of the album:

To see the layouts, visit this album OR if you’ve already seen the first batch and want to start off at the 2nd batch, you can skip right to this picture.

TFL!

Which is just my chosen cute (bilingual) word for these little comment messages.

So far I have two categories: “Welcome Baby” and “Message of Love”.

They come in a few different sizes, but are noticeably larger than blinkies (and don’t blink, although some have glitter and other animation components).

The codes are up and ready to be copied and pasted wherever you’d like these messages displayed: whether sent by e-mail (use HTML code) or in a message board post (use BBCode) or anything like that.

Enjoy! And come back soon because I’ve also branched out into yet another area of freebies and I am absolutely thrilled to be very close to launching my first set!! Here’s a hint, it’s something scrapbooking-related!