A few of my good friends, and moms of A LOT of kids, have decided to live blog their day, so the world can see how moms of many manage. I know of a few of these women in real life and they are amazing! If you have a minute today stop by their blogs and see how a big family operates. Having a big family is fun and crazy, so I am sure this will be better than any reality tv!

Connie from Smockity Frocks: Mom of 7 and 1 on the way

Kimberly from Raising Olives: Mom of 9 and 1 on the way

Kim from Life in a Shoe: Mom of 9 and 1 on the way

Deputy Headmistress from the Common Room: Mom of 9

I am sure anyone that has had a baby has at least one crib mattress protector. Somehow (although I am guessing it has a lot to do with the fact that I have had seven babies) I ended up with several of these mattress protectors. While they are great for cribs, I didn’t see much of a purpose for them after the baby grew out of the crib.

The other day I realized that they make great “sick pads.” When my little kids get sick I don’t like them to stay in their room. I want them on the couch close to me so I can keep an eye on them. The mattress protector covers two regular sized couch cushions and since it is waterproof it protects the couch from whatever ick your child is suffering from.

We put a crib mattress protector on the couch, then covered it with a sheet. My sick child was comfortable and secure knowing I was in the same room, and I was happy knowing my couch cushions wouldn’t need to be hosed down at the end of the day!

I love it when I am able to reuse items in my home, how about you? What is your favorite re-purposed item?

This post is linking to Works for Me Wednesday.

I absolutely love the Motivated Moms 2010 Planner. For the past 16 years my family has struggled to stay on top of the chores. It seems like if we miss one weekly cleaning our house looks like this:

With nine people it doesn’t take much for the house to go from good to really, really bad.

Last year I found a solution to my cleaning dilemma. The Motivated Moms Planner. There are very few things that I think every homemaker (and working mom) must have, and this is one of them!

The Motivated Moms Planner is a year long planner that helps keep me organized and on top of daily activities. I use the Motivated Moms one week on each page planner. I print out each week and we all mark our names on the chores we are tackling each week. The chores are broken down into easy to accomplish tasks that take a short amount of time each day.
A example of a daily chores list from the planner:

• Inventory refrigerator contents and plan meals around leftovers
• Vacuum main/public rooms or 1st floor
• De-clutter/organize desk
• Dust office
• Clean toilets
• Replenish stock of toilet paper in bathrooms

My younger children are able to replace toilet paper, dust, and vacuum. My older kids can clean the toilets, which leaves me with inventory the fridge and de-clutter the desk. Our daily chores are finished in under 30 minutes.

If you diligently complete each day’s chores you end up with a super organized, clutter free, and clean home! I used this last year until I moved and I totally regret not starting back up in the new house. We spent most of our Saturdays plugging away at the cleaning… not fun!

The best part about this planner is that it is only eight dollars! I think that is a great deal for something that saves me hours each week and keeps my house organized!

If you want to see a sample page you can view it here. They have many different planner styles ranging from a page per day to a page per week. I like the page per week style, but every style is only eight dollars. You can visit their site to view all the different planner styles.

The folks at Motivated Moms have given me a coupon code to share with you. You can save $1 on your order by entering the code NEWYEAR. This code is good until January 14th 2010.

Do you know someone who has contracted H1N1 this year? I do. It seems like each week I hear of someone else who is sick with the flu.

No one wants to get the flu, and I am doing my best to protect my family from the flu and all the other illnesses that seem to affect everyone during the winter months.

If you have young children who put their hands in their mouth, nose, and other parts this little tip could prevent the spread of a cold or flu this season.

What do all these items have in common? They are high “touch” zones in your home. Frequently wipe these areas down with  antibacterial cleaner to help prevent the spread of nasty germs.

While I can’t guarantee this will keep your family flu free this year, it will keep what you already have from spreading!

This post is linking to Works for Me Wednesday.

I love IKEA, I could spend the next year posting Works for Me Wednesday tips with my IKEA finds.

Today’s tip is my IKEA chalkboard. You don’t have to buy one from IKEA though. Pottery Barn makes one that is almost identical, although it costs three times as much. You could even make one yourself with chalkboard paint.

In our new house we have an eat-in kitchen. Since we eat breakfast at the kitchen table, the chalkboard is one of the first things the kids see when they come downstairs in the morning.

On the board I write the date, and our breakfast and dinner plans. I also add a little piece of encouragement. After we get a school schedule going, I will also keep their chore packs at the bottom of the board.

If a child comes down and sees that French toast is for breakfast, he or she knows they need to wait until I come down. If it says cereal or bagels, they can get their own breakfast even if I am still upstairs getting ready for the day.

Posting dinner keeps me from answering the “what’s for dinner” question ten times a day. It also allows for my picky eaters to fill up on lunch if they don’t care for what is being served at night.

The kitchen message board is just a little something to make my life a bit easier.

The following is a guest post from Jennifer who blogs at Getting Ahead. Jennifer is a homeschooling mom of 4, who likes practicing frugality, scrapbooking and writing articles for Hub pages.

I wish I would have read an article like this when I was first married, it would have made the road much smoother for me.

I was married almost 13 years ago.  At the time, I absolutely did not consider myself a housewife.  Wife yes, housewife no.  I worked full time just like my husband and it seemed that neither one of us was ever home, how could I be a housewife?  Then we started having kids.  Even then I didn’t consider myself a housewife, but a stay at home mom.  Can you tell that my focus wasn’t really in the right place?  Thankfully things have changed a lot over the years and I thought I would share some of the ways I try to make my husband’s life easier by being not just a stay at home mom to my children, but a housewife to my husband.

My husband is a teacher and brings home a lot of work to do.  This means that in the evenings he is almost always working.  Rather than take this time to do my own thing, after the kids are in bed I try to be in the same room as him.  This way, even if he is working, we are still together.  We can talk a little bit, sometimes we watch TV together while he grades, etc.  We are closer as a couple when we spend our evenings in the same room, even if he is working.

I always pack his lunch the night before and frequently make his breakfast the night before too.  I want to make his early mornings as easy as possible for him.  He gets up so early, he doesn’t need to hunt for something to take to work for lunch.   I also try not to call him during the day.  At some point years ago we got in the habit of talking each day on the phone and I would get upset when he wouldn’t call me.  Now I accept the fact that he is very busy at school.  And the more he can get done while there, the less he has to bring home to do.  So I leave him alone.  If we are dealing with an issue at home I might ask him to check in with me on his lunch hour, but it doesn’t happen often.

I try not to ask him to do things that I can do myself.   It is nice for him to take the trash out, but I can certainly do it myself.  Don’t get me wrong he helps a lot around here, more than many other husbands I know, but unless I really need help with something I don’t ask for much during the week.  I also try very hard not to complain about the work he brings home or the coaching that takes many hours out of our day.  I am not perfect, but since I have made a good effort to not complain about these things, we have all been happier.  He is working very hard to earn money for me to stay home, complaining about all the time spent doing that was just damaging our relationship and making him feel guilty.

While my husband works hard to earn money, I try my hardest not to waste it.  I want to stretch his paycheck as far as I can, because that means he can work less and spend more time with us.  I know he appreciates all my efforts at frugal living.

When he is having a tough time I try to do little things to cheer him up.  I make his favorite meal, make sure there is a cold beer in the fridge, buy him a pack of Twizzlers (his favorite candy) or offer to give him a back rub.  Encouraging him to work out really helps relieve his stress.   He loves to work out, but doesn’t do it often because he doesn’t want to take time away from the family.  Letting him know that it is fine with me for him to go for a bike ride or a run gives him a much needed break.

Becoming a housewife was certainly a change for me.  I am constantly learning more and more about being a better one.  I feel that making my husband’s life easier is a big part of my job as housewife and that is what I strive to do every day.

There have been several great posts lately about the cost of having a baby. When you are on baby #7 things are pretty cheap. You own everything you could possibly need and you know what works and what doesn’t. All babies are different, but the learning curve is not very steep.

One question that does arrive when you already have a lot of kids is where to put the baby? Even when we had extra room, I have always preferred to keep the baby with me. It seems to simplify those middle of night feedings and I like being able to keep my “ears” on the baby.

My very kind and helpful friend helped me clear out my room a few weeks ago and it has stayed pretty neat. Last weekend her husband came over and helped my husband move furniture and set up the cradle while I sorted clothes. If you remember the corner of my room looked like this.

They moved the dresser to the window to make room for the cradle. Now the room looks like this.

The bin below the cradle holds sheets, blankets, and other baby linens for easy access.

While there has been much debate on the necessity of a changing table, I prefer some sort of elevated surface to change the baby since I had back surgery a few years ago.
I do not however spend money on changing tables. Fourteen years ago my dad bought this secondhand dresser for $30. It makes a perfect sized changing table with the changing pad placed on top.

This dresser is in our bathroom, a perfect place to deal with diapers. I emptied the top drawer of the dresser to hold baby items.

We also installed a shelf, that had been sitting in our garage, and a hanging rack from Ikea to help organize wipes and other diaper changing necessities.

Total cost to make room for baby…

$16

By utilizing items we already had in our home as well as hand-me-downs we have created a nice cozy space for our little one.

This post is linking to A Beautiful Life, Blissfully Domestic, Tightwad Tuesday, Tackle it Tuesday and Talk about Tuesday.

My county has a great recycling program. They recycle almost everything and you don’t have to sort it either! One of my goals this year is to reduce our household waste and recycle more. There are a few ways I hope to accomplish this goal.

Last week my husband headed to the county dump and picked up our free recycling bins. We now have four bins and one trash can. I had planned on getting another trash can this week to make a compost bin, but my two trips to the hospital delayed those plans.

We have a garbage can inside the kitchen that we usually fill every day. My goal is to turn this bin into our indoor recycling bin, and reduce our waste to a small bucket under the sink. I would like to decrease our use of paper plates, napkins and paper towels as well. I have some fabric that I plan to use to make simple napkins, I already have tons of towels for rags, and the paper plate thing might have to be put on hold as I am now on modified bed rest until further notice. If my kids and husband are taking over most of the from scratch cooking the least I can do is go easy on them with dishes!

As for now, I need to set up my kitchen so this plan will work. The area under my kitchen sink is nasty (I’ll spare you a picture!) but it needs to be cleaned out so I can make room for clean rags, dirty rags, and a small garbage bin. If I could reduce my garbage to one bag every two days that would be an improvement! I want to make these changes slowly so that they will stick! I also want to spend as little money as possible implementing these changes.

Goals this week:

• Make cloth napkins
• Purchase garbage can and make compost bin
• Cut up larger rags
• Clean out under the sink to create system
• Find a small garbage pail for under the sink

Next week I hope to share my new system with you and let you know if it is working for our family! For more “green” ideas visit Laura’s blog and join her “litte Green Project.”

If you have any tips on how to make this transition smoother for my family leave me a comment If something worked for you or if it didn’t, I would love to know!

For those of you hoping I was going to show off a new hair cut, I am sorry to disappoint. I try not to make many big decisions while pregnant (like cutting my hair) because I almost always regret them. I do however love to move furniture around.

December is Laura’s last monthly round up of the year and she is finishing up with “The Living Room.”  Since we had to move furniture to put up our Christmas tree I thought this would be the perfect time to try out a new look.

Before December our living room looked like this.

I really liked this set up, except for the fact that the bookcase was always a mess. Since this is the first room you see when you walk in my house I don’t like people to see a mess!

We moved things around for the tree and it looked like this.

Now the tree is gone and it looks like this.

I like this set up because it brings another chair into the room and we never have enough seats. What I don’t like about this arrangement is that my windows look bare!

If I am going to keep it this way I think I need the following:

• Big picture or mirror over the piano.
• Small table between the two khaki chairs.
• A little something for the windows.
• Some type of storage for a few games or toys for the kids.

We moved the tall bookcase to the stairwell and I really like it there so it is not coming back down. Plus it is a big pain to move all those books. The piano can be moved because it is getting fixed next month and they have to take it to the shop to fix it, but I like it on that wall.

I am not an interior decorator, my style is something like late yard sale/ hand-me-down. I would love any opinions you have to help me finish off this room!

Have you entered my giveaway for the Motivated Moms 2009 Planner? Click here to enter! The giveaway ends Sunday.

I posted this tutorial about a million years ago, okay not really, but before Mother’s Day. If you are a beginning sewer and need a last minute, cute idea for a gift try making a place mat purse.  A place-mat purse is an easy, inexpensive gift that you can make even if you have little or no sewing experience. I noticed last night that cute Christmas place-mats are already on clearance at Target.

A fellow blogger read this tutorial and made a similar purse without using her machine. Click here to see her great purse!
I posted this tutorial before, but here it is again for those who missed it the first time.

Step one- get a place-mat

Step two- fold the place mat right sides together and sew up the sides as close to the edge as you can, as a side note, start sewing at the opening of the place mat so you are sure it is lined up correctly

both sides sewn together

Third step- fold the bottom part of each side of the place-mat into a triangle, measure and mark each side. I usually make the triangle about 2 inches long

then sew across the triangle

Check both side to make sure they are the same size.

Admire your work so far…

I hope this picture helps show the triangle part a little better.

Time to attach the handles, I purchased these at JoAnn’s.

I use quilt binding to attach the handles. It is pretty strong and doesn’t fray.

Cut four pieces of binding the same length. Attach each piece to the loop on the handle.

Then attach the handles to the purse. Measure the purse so that the handles line up. Most place-mats have a seam that runs right along the edge of the mat. This a great place to sew your handle on because the stitching for the handle blends in.

I then tack the bottom part of the binding on the purse for more strength.

All done, your purse is ready to go shopping!

This makes a great gift, and to make it even more special, fill the purse with a book or some pretty cards. Or even better… coupons!

Here are some more of the place-mat purses…

This one was hand sewn by a friend. She used decorative ribbon to attach the handles.

This one looks a little lopsided because I have stuff in it.

You can fill your purse with fun Christmas goodies too!