I came across the above website today with some great ways to get you kids into a regular routine. Go check it out.
Here's a snippet of some of the advice…..
Ten Changes You Can Make, 15 Minutes at a Time:
Spend 15 minutes preparing the night before for the day ahead
Set your clock for 15 minutes earlier in the morning
Get in the habit of spending 5 minutes immediately after each meal washing the dishes with your child (3 meals a day = 15 minutes)
Start your bedtime routine 15 minutes earlier in the evening
Spend 15 minutes outside with your child and work your way up to an hour (or more!)
Do 15 minutes of structured play or crafting with your child
Spend 15 minutes reading to your child.
Take in 15 minutes of peace and quiet. Do nothing. Slow down.
Have a 15 minute Tea Time or After School Snack with your child
Set one 15 minute toy pick-up at the end of the day (or three 5 minute toy pick-ups during the day)
Individually, these items are fairly easy to accomplish. Keep in mind that I am not encouraging you to do ALL of these things at once.
What I am asking you to consider is spending just 15 minutes every day working on one intentional change that you want to see take place. Spend 15 minutes a day cultivating the habit and you are on your way toward developing a rhythm.
Work your new routine into the fabric of your daily lives and then, once everyone is comfortable and your time is flowing smoothly, add in something new.
Take your time. Tweak. Tinker.
There is no time-crunch here, no deadline. Layer things in as you need them, take them away as you don't. These ideas are just the seeds, the rhythm that grows from them will be unique to your family.
Above all, keep it simple.
I am going to try & implement this into my daily life…will keep you informed on how I go.
I've decided not to update my blog anymore, I just done seem to keep it up to date.
http://www.facebook.com/michelle.cryns?ref=nameso you can catch up with me over there
The weather has been nice & sunny this weekend The kids have been having a ball today getting squirted with the hose by there Dad & playing in the muddy puddle...didn't get any photos though darn it!!!!
Just thought I would share some more pages I did in the last few days.
Holly cow its cold today....what happened to the sun?
Yesterday the sun was shining & it was so nice & warm that I put away any wood we had stored inside. I shovelled out the old ashes & vacuumed out any that I couldn't get, I washed & polished the outside of the darn thing & now it looks like I might have to go get it all dirty again because it's sooooo darn cold!!!!
Not much else happening, Jenna had her first Athletics Club meeting last night. She is so funny she runs like an absolute spaz & always comes last in the sprints, she has major difficulty jumping over the high Jump & can't throw the shot-put very far but she seems to enjoy giving it a go & is excited to go again next week.
I think her lack of athletic skills must come from me; I hated doing any thing that involved running or jumping at school & always tried any excuse in the book to get out of it, I even hid in the bushes on the first round when we did cross country (we ran around the street that went around the school) & just joined in the last lot of kids that came passed me that way I only had to do 1 round instead of two lol!!!!
As you know I have recently discovered digital scrap booking - I think I am in love! There are so many things I can do with digital scrap booking that I don't think there are enough hours in the day to explore/learn them all! I am looking forward to finding them all out. Below some reasons why I love Digi scraping so much:
1. Paper
When you are a traditional scrapbooker, the first thing you buy is paper. Lots of paper! You buy it when it's one sale, because the paper is cute or you have a specific project in mind so you buy some more paper. Then when I get ready to crop, I can't find that paper! So I either use something else or I don't crop that page. It's frustrating. With digital scrapbooking, the paper is always there - it can't get lost, crinkled, or torn. It's always perfect! You can download free paper or pay a small fee for a bundle of paper. The best part of digital paper - you NEVER run out! You never have a scrap that you wish was just a "little" bigger! Or a piece of paper that you wish could magically multiply itself because it is the perfect color for a series of pages! With digital paper, it never lets you down, it never runs out and you can do the same things with it that you can with traditional paper, stamp it, tear it, punch it and cut it! The possibilities are endless!
2. Letters
I like to have some titles on my traditional pages. I like to have different fonts to go with the theme of the page. I like to have different color letters to match the pages. I also like to have different sizes on the pages. Sometimes with a page of letters, we end up needing just ONE more letter that we don't have available anymore. So we either buy one more page for that letter or we get creative! This gets expensive and I can never find them when I need them! With digital letters, the fonts are endless. You can change the colors and sizes whenever you need to, there is no limit (except by your imagination!)
3. Tools
With traditional scrapbooking there are a lot of tools involved - paper cutters, scissors, tearing tools, shape cutters, punches, etc. It is hard to keep up with all the products (and expensive!) and finding a place to store them all! With digital scrap booking, all of the "tools" that you need are stored in the program. You still have access to all the same types of tools, you just don't have to have an additional room to store them all!
4. Photos
In the "old" days of film we had to print every picture that we took. And we took a lot of duds! Today with digital, the cool thing is we can delete photos that don't look very good - we don't have to print them. The problem is, many people never print their photos. They stay on their camera or computer - running the risk of being lost forever. If you do print some of the digital pictures this can get costly - we tend to take more pictures with digital cameras than we did with film. With digital scrapbooking, we don't have to print the pictures at all. You just put them into the page that you are working on and the whole page is printed. No extra money to print the photo and then put it on the traditional page.
5. Mistakes/Changes
I have made mistakes while cropping with my traditional scrapbooks. It is not fun to go back and redo it. It is impossible to recut the "only" photo you have. With digital scrapbooking, you can go back days later and make changes, correct spelling mistakes, take out photos and it is so simple!
6. Sharing
With a traditional scrapbook when you want to share it, you have to either pull it out when friends are over or you drag the big book around to show everyone . If you have family that lives far away, neither of these options are great. With a digital scrapbook, once you complete it you can share it with them! They can then print a copy of it or just look at it and enjoy it.
7. Traditional vs Digital
You may think by now that I have given up my traditional scrapbooking. No not really! I have kind of gone down the hybryd scrapbooking path & I love the "therapy" sessions when I go to our monthly Pukekohe Crop, not that I have found the time to go latley. It's as much about the pages as talking to a great group of ladies about everything!
Digital lets me be creative without a lot of effort from me! There are pre-designed pages that I just have to put the photos onto and I am done! You don't know how frustrating it is to look at a blank piece of paper and 4 - 5 photos and wonder what you're going to put on the page! With digital scrapbooking, I can just plug in the photos. I also think that overall, digital scrapbookingis going to save me money! I can't guess how much I have spent in paper, stickers, letters, tools, books over the years. Now I just have to pay to have the pages printed or in my case I have a wonderful little sister who runs a Wedding Invitation Business from home who happens to have a very good industrial printer that costs next to nothing to have them printed out *wink*
Below is my latest page that I did for a template challenge over at Little Dreamer Designs
Just thought I would share some photos of Jenna's School Calf Club that we had yesterday. She had decided that she wasn't going to compete this year because she didn't do enough work with her goat Clover over the school holidays & she didn't want to be embarrassed if her goat wouldn't do what it was ment to do, but come the morning of the competition she changed her mind and really wanted to go so off we went very un-prepared.
She actually did surprisingly well & got a placing in all 3 of the categories she was in:
4th for most obvious Pe,t which basically means if her goat came to her & followed her when she called it.
1st for Leading which was a huge shock because we did hardly any practice.
Reserve Champion for leading
& 3rd for breeding, where she had to answer questions about things like what plants can't goats eat, what diseases they can get & what breed her goat was, of course we never bothered to learn any of those things because she wasn't going to go but she still got a place...mind you there were only 4 kids in that section.
I am so glad we ended up going & her Dad & I are very proud of her for giving it a go.
If you found me it's either because you followed me here from my typepad blog -which I have closed- or you happened to stumble on me while searching the WWW ( or I have told you my new blog address)
I have stopped using Typepad because I don't want to pay for another years subscription *** I would rather spend the $80 on some new digital scrapbooking supplies lol***
Any hoow the school holidays are nearly over, boy they have flown by fast.
The big thing that we were going to do over the passed 2 weeks was to teach Jenna's goat how to lead &; how to navigate an obstacle course but the weather has been so icky that we haven't had the chance. I have no idea how Jenna's is going to do any good at calf club but I suppose it's more about trying than winning ribbon*** Jenna would argue otherwise***
I took the kids to the Hamilton Zoo yesterday &; although they both had fun I came to the conclusion that I am way too unfit & need to do more exercise. I am thinking of investing in that Zumba Programe that has been gracing our TV screens in every ad break, thing is you have to get up off the couch & actually do the dancing sitting & watching funnily enough doesn't do anything :)
Found a amazing Digital Scrapbooking supply site the other day called Nitwit Collections.
My name is Michelle Cryns. I am a photographer based in and around the Franklin area. I specialize in lifestyle photography where you get to play, hang out, and be yourself. I capture the moments, real emotions and stories that occur during our time together.
