Share Your 'Summer Sanity' Ideas!

I forgot to ask you to share any ideas you had regarding your summer schedule. My last post featured some new guidelines I am trying to follow with my kids and I'd love to see what works for you. I'd love to post them right here! My sister, Michelle gave it a go and this is what she came up with:

I love how she displayed each boy's chore cards - it's visually appealing and simple for them to follow. Another thing I need to consider is an allowance as reward. Michelle is paying her boys $1. per chore ($5./ week). Totally worth it!

I was originally using the chores as a way for my kids to earn choice activities, but this can easily fail: if I want to be able to take away the choice activity as a consequence to negative behavior, then doing the chores go out the window and will not get done. Why bother? However if they are paid a small allowance for chores well done, then everyone wins and I get to keep the removal of choice time as leverage.

Another small tweak for me: I need to set an early time frame for chores to be completed. I am realizing my kids will wait all day to do them, and for some things, for example the dishwasher being unloaded, they need to be done early in the day. 

*Please send me your ideas and photos of any charts/schedules/bucket lists you have made to keep your summer sane.

Summer Sanity & Bucket List

So summer is off to a great start. It's only been 5 days, but really great so far. Really, I mean it. Last night I introduced my "Summer Schedule" which includes chores & rules. I had scoured the Internet for ideas of how to structure two months of free time with the two kiddos ages 10 & 6. My biggest fear was daily begging and fighting over screen time paired with a husband working from his home office within earshot of all chaos and screaming. 

posted on my fridge

I felt I needed some leverage over them to promote good behavior & ways in which they can earn "choice activities" (like screen time). Everything else on the lists is just fluff, really. I figured if I could squeeze 2 chores out of them each day, and have them doing a small amount of reading/math, this summer could actually be somewhat peaceful. Obviously there will be many days where this ideal is just impossible. Camps, traveling, and full days out at the pool, beach & neighbors for BBQs will be frequent exceptions. If you want a closer look at the charts I posted, or to edit & create your own, here they are:

Printable Summer Charts: Click Here

Another addition to this summer of love & peace in my home (insert chuckle) is the "Summer Bucket List". If God forbid my kids complain they are bored, they can chose to do additional chores for small pocket money...OR choose an activity from the 'Bucket List'. The idea is that we will have a filled bucket by end of summer. Since I just made this today, I have yet to see how it plays out. I'll keep you posted. 

Printable Bucket List: Click Here 

I found all Bucket List supplies at Home Depot.

I dyed clothes pins with food coloring for different occasions:

Blue for rainy days (came out green)

Black for night time

Yellow for sunny days

Cyber Stalking Leandra Medine

Thank God you can't see who's scanning the Internet for you, searching your name on Facebook, pinning photos of you walking down the street to get coffee and checking your Instagram 6 times a day, 'cause if you could, I'd be in jail. I am confessing to you now - and to the world - I cyber stalk Leandra Medine. 

"Who is Leandra Medine?" you may ask. Well, I had no idea who she was about 3 moths ago. One late night as I regularly scrolled though Pinterest before passing out around 11:15, I noticed the same girl kept popping up on my "Clothing Styles I love Board". Wondering why the hell she was coincidentally photographed so often on the streets of NYC, I poked around to find out who she was. Apparently, I've been living in the sad, fashion darkness of suburbia. 

Confessions of a cyber stalker: It started out  as a simple curiosity. I could't believe how she could put together thrift finds & high end designer items and make them look so cool and fabulous. I stayed up late each night and instead of scrolling through Facebook nonsense, I went straight to anything written by her or posted of her, stalking my way to sleep. Come to find out, her blog, The Man Repeller, was voted Time's "25 Best Blogs of 2012" and featured in Forbes "Top 30 Under 30" as one of 2012's most influential trendsetters as a fashion blogger. And to this day, she has thousands of Instagram and blog followers. 

Ok, so I am behind a few years on this news. But the most appealing thing to me is her confidence to wear whatever the hell she wants. That was her initial idea behind The Man Repeller blog. She explained the title of her blog to the Daily Mail: "Good fashion is about pleasing women, not men, so as it happens, the trends that we love, men hate. And that's fantastic". 

Cyber stalking Leandra Medine has  made me realize how little I dress for myself. Not that I have a huge fashion-passion. I am not a clothes horse by any stretch. My version of mixing high and low is   to pair Old Navy cargo pants with a J. Crew clearance-rack T-shirt, over a Danskin tank from Walmart. But I really need to liberate myself from putting on plain clothes that do not reflect my taste or personality in the least just to get me from work to home. She has inspired me in many ways to be more myself and I'm not ashamed to admit my stalking will continue. Thanks, L.M., I'll see you tonight on Instagram.