Yesterday my boys and I watched "Meet the Robinsons" and I was reminded of the quote I based the title of my blog off of. It is a Walt Disney Quote (He really has the best quotes!), and it really helped me through some rough times. You can see it above, all decked out in the latest trend of chalkboard art.
I decided that I needed to have it up in my home somewhere, so I got in illustrator and began playing around and came up with the above printable to put up in my home and to share with you guys! I think it's going to go in my newly decked out Mickey bathroom (my boys got to pick the theme!) where I can see it every morning! You can download it HERE, or by clicking on the image above.
As many of you know our little family has been planning a trip to Disney World for a while now. We put a deposit down about nine months ago and have slowly been paying it off and it is going to be an amazing trip! I've done so much research, and we've talked about everything we want to do and how much fun we are going to have, and the boys are SO EXCITED!
With that being said I don't want my kids growing up thinking we are just going to give them whatever they want without them working for it. This trip is going to cost us a lot of money, and I feel like they need to do their part to "earn" the trip.
Enter the Mickey Helper tickets.
I sat down with the boys and explained to them that going to Disney world was a privilege and that privileges need to be earned. We talked about how they needed to do their part around the house and be "Mickey's Helpers" so they could earn their trip. They seemed to understand and we moved on to developing the ticket system.
I asked them what things they wanted to do when we went to Disney and we built a list of activities like swimming in the pool at the hotel, going to Magic Kingdom, eating lots of desserts, and going to Mickey's Halloween party. All in all we had about 20 things make the list! We then asked them how many tickets they thought they should have to earn to do each thing. They did a really good job assigning the values to things, swimming in the pool got just one ticket, while Mickey's Halloween Party they gave a value of 25 tickets!
Once we had assigned how many points each thing cost we talked about what they needed to do to earn those tickets. We discussed chores and good behavior, made a list, and assigned the tasks and chores ticket values from 1 ticket to 3 tickets. For example putting 5 dishes in the sink earns 1 ticket. helping mop the floor earns 2, and getting through an entire outing without a fuss earns 3 tickets! There were a few things they tried to lobby for more tickets on, such as taking medicine without a fuss which my oldest deemed worth 15 tickets (and the way he fights it it just might be worth it!!). But for the most part I felt they did a good job choosing how many tickets each chore would be worth.
We made little jars for them to house their tickets in during the week, and every Sunday we will count the tickets and fill in the correct number on their goal charts. 45 days before our trip if they haven't earned enough tickets to cover the cost of the trip we will discuss what they have to give up or change to make our trip fit their "budget" and finalize our plans. the last 45 days before the trip they will earn tickets for souvenirs and such. They can redeem them for specials treats, desserts, pressed pennies, disney dollars and standing in character lines (we are doing many character meals, so they will meet a lot of characters doing that, so they decided they had to spend tickets to see others).
They valued the overall trip we have planned at about 250 tickets, and there are 224 days until our trip, so they only have to earn a little over 1 ticket a day to "pay" for the trip, which I think is more than doable for them. We told them that if they have extra tickets left over after the trip they can use them to start earning our next family vacation.
If you are planning a trip to Disney and would like to adopt the "Mickey Helper Tickets" System you can print out the PDF's here: It includes a blank chore chart to fill out (with space on the bottom to put each child's name), labels for Helper jars, and the charts to fill in.
I still have to put some of our stuff together, but I will update this with a picture of our jars, the chore chart, and the canvas I am mounting the helper meters on as soon as they are finished. It has been fun developing it, especially since the boys have been so eager to help with it!
Be on the lookout for more Disney printables and projects as we start diving into the real planning! We've got a planning night planned for this next month, and you better believe we will be having some fun stuff with that!
I'm back today with more on the Flylady's beginner babysteps!
But first I wanted to do a little recap of how yesterday went for me. Day one was to shine your sink, and I have to say I did pretty well! We are ALL sick around here with a croupy cough so just shining the sink was a HUGE challenge for me. I even let my little ones "help", as in I filled the sink with hot soapy water and then let them come splash in it. It seemed to cheer them up a bit, which is good! We ended up with one shiny sink, and I got FOUR loads of dishes done. Yes, you heard me right, I had four loads lying around. I blame it on having New Years guests and then sick babies and sick me! The great news is that I now have all the dishes in the kitchen done, minus a few handwash things, and a beautiful clean shiny sink!
Now on to today's challenge! Not only are we going to continue to shine our sink like Flylady wants (It's her way of hugging us! And who couldn't use more hugs!!), we are going to....
You can find Flylady's lessons on it here, and here.
This is one I struggle with and I know some other ladies do to. A dear fried of mine lamented on her blog that her lace-up shoes didn't always match her outfit.Me, I just really don't like shoes. Well, I do, I like to BUY shoes... but wear them? FORGET IT!! I have at least two pairs of shoes that I have never worn, not even once. I have a problem, and I have been getting rid of some shoes, ones that don't fit well, ones that are damaged, etc... but with all the shoes I have only one of them are lace-up shoes, and I pretty much only wear them when I know I will be doing a lot of walking, or when I exercise. Put them on everyday? We'll see.
For today I am wearing apair of sketches slip-ons that have little straps over the foot. They are harder to get off than a normal slip-on, but comfortable and stylish. They work for me, for now. I swear I am trying Flylady!!
But shoes are only part of getting dressed. There's the clothes, the hair, the make-up, etc. It can be really hard when you are a stay at home mom to take the time to get all of that done. I hate to confess this, but when my husband was gone 17 hours a day five days a week and I didn't have money for bus fare, most days I would stay in my pajamas. I could literally go five days straight without ever getting fully dressed. I was pretty much a shut-in, leaving the house maybe once a week. Sad but true.
But all that is changing, and I am proud to say I have been fully dressed every day this year! Today it was even before six am!! I even have proof I am dressed today! See my fantastic self portrait? You can't really see it, but my hair is even curled!! i thought ahead to the fact that I wanted to look nice today to post my picture for you guys and did the fantastic hair tutorial for no heat curls below yesterday! It is one of my favorite things to do with my hair. It is fast, it looks pretty good while it is drying and making the curls, and who doesn't feel better about themselves when they have fabulous curls?
So I have one more thing today I would like to share with you! Today's beginner babystep says that in order for us to change ourselves, we need to remind ourselves of what we are doing. The Flylady did that with post-it notes, but around here beauty trumps easy. So I've got a little card made up for you guys to print out and put on your mirror to remind you to get dressed and make yourself up in the morning. I have it sized at 3x4 to be able to print on a project life card (you can find blank ones here on Amazon). I have plans to use more of these later in building my new Control Journal, because I like my things pretty AND functional. There is a tutorial here that shows you how to print directly on one of the project life cards, which is what I used to print mine. You can also just print the pdf and trim to size.
I designed the card with my blog's color scheme, but if you would like it in another color scheme let me know in the comments and I can try to accommodate! I like to make people happy! You can download the card here. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zhpghb32gw6j8d5/neverfullydressed_MFMD.pdf
I hope you all have a wonderful day! I sure am having fun starting back at the beginning of Flylady!
Since I finally shared my blog yesterday I feel like I need to post today, but I don't have a lot of time (got a project I am working on today), and none of the posts I have saved up seem like a good choice today. Hmmm... so what to do?
Let's talk about goals!
My goal for this blog is to post at least one post a day Monday-Thursday. I was thinking of doing every weekday, but Fridays tend to get really busy for us since it is the only morning that my husband has off during the week. I purposely left off the weekends for the same reason. I don't want this blog to take up time that I would otherwise be spending as a family. I want it to be a filler during the long hours my husband is gone during the week, not something that takes more time away from the little I do have with him.
While we are on the subject of goals, I wanted to talk about something my husband and I started early in our marriage that I think has really been awesome for us. We would each make a list of 10 things that we would like to do, buy, etc, in the next few months, and then exchange lists and try to make those things happen. Since it was a short time period we chose mostly little things that were attainable, like visit a certain friend, or frame a certain picture, or visit a certain museum. It really helped us see what the other was thinking about, and how we could possibly make things better for them, it helped us come up with family activities, and it helped us choose things to do for date nights and special occasions. It was really something we looked forward to doing.
That evolved into more of a bucket list, but with a twist. The short time period helped us to be more proactive in meeting those goals, wishes, and dreams, so we decided to give our bucket lists a bit of a time limit. And thus came about our 30 by 30 lists. These lists our 30 things we would like to accomplish before we turn 30, giving us 3-4 years to get through each of our lists.
It really was eye opening looking at each others lists. There were things neither of knew the other wanted to do, there were some duplicates, there were some expected things, and there were some that kind of stretched the limits of what me might be able to do before we are 30. It was a lot of fun, and we have been having fun plugging away at the lists a little bit at a time. It has helped us grow closer together as a couple and as a family.
You can view my list on my "30 by 30" tab above, and for kicks and giggles, you can go here and download a printable I made so you can start on your own lists.
I encourage you to try it! It never hurts to dream! The worst that can happen is you never do a single thing on the list, but the best is that you learn, grow, and get some insight into yourself and your spouse (or even your kids! Our five year old has a 10 by 10 list he is working on!).
As some of you may know I am a SHE. A side-tracked home executive. This term is derived from my one saving grace, which works for me about 50% of the time, if I am not sick, or stressed to the max, Flylady.
Flylady is a cleaning and organization system, it's not perfect, but it can work wonders if you can stick with it (which I am notoriously bad at, but I make a valiant effort!).
Anyway, why I am really writing about this is because about nine months back I was in a flylady frenzy and designed a wonderful subway art style print of "The Flylady Commandments" . At the time I intended to make it into a canvas print to place in my bathroom, and it was just a personal project.
I was so thrilled with it that I posted it on Flylady's facebook wall, and had quite a few people ask for the file for it. I e-mailed many people the file, and felt flattered that someone was interested in what I had created!
Well, the other day I got on pinterest and discovered it had been pinned! I felt quite giddy! The problem was it had nowhere legitimate that it could link to. :( So I have decided to share the file here on my blog! I am going to contact the people I have seen pin it and have them change the link to reflect this blogs address. Hoping it will bring in a little traffic and help me start growing and getting out there.
So here it is, in all it's glory, feel free to download it here. Go ahead and share it, pin it, print it out and frame it, whatever you would like.
If you like this make sure to follow my blog! I am getting into a new round of Flylady right now and plan to blog a little about it and share more Flylady inspired Printables! So hit that follow button!
I sat down with the boys and explained to them that going to Disney world was a privilege and that privileges need to be earned. We talked about how they needed to do their part around the house and be "Mickey's Helpers" so they could earn their trip. They seemed to understand and we moved on to developing the ticket system.
We made little jars for them to house their tickets in during the week, and every Sunday we will count the tickets and fill in the correct number on their goal charts. 45 days before our trip if they haven't earned enough tickets to cover the cost of the trip we will discuss what they have to give up or change to make our trip fit their "budget" and finalize our plans. the last 45 days before the trip they will earn tickets for souvenirs and such. They can redeem them for specials treats, desserts, pressed pennies, disney dollars and standing in character lines (we are doing many character meals, so they will meet a lot of characters doing that, so they decided they had to spend tickets to see others).
But all that is changing, and I am proud to say I have been fully dressed every day this year! Today it was even before six am!! I even have proof I am dressed today! See my fantastic self portrait? You can't really see it, but my hair is even curled!! i thought ahead to the fact that I wanted to look nice today to post my picture for you guys and did the fantastic hair tutorial for no heat curls below yesterday! It is one of my favorite things to do with my hair. It is fast, it looks pretty good while it is drying and making the curls, and who doesn't feel better about themselves when they have fabulous curls? 
It really was eye opening looking at each others lists. There were things neither of knew the other wanted to do, there were some duplicates, there were some expected things, and there were some that kind of stretched the limits of what me might be able to do before we are 30. It was a lot of fun, and we have been having fun plugging away at the lists a little bit at a time. It has helped us grow closer together as a couple and as a family.
Well, the other day I got on pinterest and discovered it had been pinned! I felt quite giddy! The problem was it had nowhere legitimate that it could link to. :( So I have decided to share the file here on my blog! I am going to contact the people I have seen pin it and have them change the link to reflect this blogs address. Hoping it will bring in a little traffic and help me start growing and getting out there.