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The Day I Was Accused of Copying a Coupon

A few months ago I was shopping at Wal-Mart and had a cart full of groceries as well as three children in tow. (Yes, shopping with three children is a chaotic adventure that is another post in and of itself.) Before paying I handed the cashier two coupons I wanted to use. They were two of the same coupon. Low and behold they wouldn't scan. They were ones I had printed off line and I often seem to have trouble with those type. Usually stores will just type them in manually and move on.

But not this time. This time the cashier called over her manager who came in a huff, irritated to be bothered. She glanced at the coupons for a few seconds and then said, "These won't work. You copied them." I copied them? It took me a while to register what she meant and by that time I just mumbled something, asked the cashier to remove the items and got my antsy kids out of there as fast as I could. But later her accusations really started to bother me.

I copied them? Doesn't that lady know that you can print two of the same coupon from each computer and that just because I had two identical coupons it didn't mean I copied them? (I went home later that day and saw that each of the coupons had a different bar-code printed on them. Wish I would have noticed that in the store!) I have been couponing for almost 10 years. I am not an extreme couponer by ANY means. I mean, that day at Wal-Mart I had a cart packed full of groceries and only had 2 coupons. I do enjoy combining coupons with weekly sales and getting good deals but I don't stress out about using one on everything I buy. But hear me say this: Never in almost 10 years of couponing have I EVER copied a coupon! It's illegal!!

The more I thought about the manager's words, the more insulted I felt. I had done nothing wrong, I had simply tried to use coupons that I had legitimately printed off my computer yet I was so upset that she would accuse me of such a thing. Then I thought about this... Sure I've never copied a coupon, but what other tiny little sinful actions have I done? Actions that hide under the guise of an "innocent half-truth" or a "little white lie" when in reality they are just plain sin? Integrity is a character trait that I so badly want to uphold in my life and yet in my humanness I fail more often than I'd like. The world's version of honesty and integrity is far removed from God's and we need to make sure we are constantly aligning our thoughts with God's and upholding His standards (not the world's)! From coupons to completing our taxes and everything in between we need to live a life of honesty. It's not always easy to do and sometimes it seems like we could get ahead if we didn't hold such high standards. But it doesn't work. God does not honor deceit.

Copying a coupon is not the end of the world. Trust me, I know there are much bigger issues at hand in the world today. But what those coupons helped me remember is that God desires integrity from us even in the smallest details of our lives. As Christians, we should live lives that point non-believers to the Lord by our actions. Let's rise up and be different than the rest of the world. Let's be a reflection of Christ in our high standards, integrity, and honesty. It starts with the little things...like coupons.

Show yourself in all respects to be a model of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity, and sound speech that cannot be condemned, so that an opponent may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say about us. Titus 2:7-8

How To Keep a Clean House in 20-30 Minutes a Day

I'm generally an all or nothing type person. When I start a project I like to finish it as soon as I can. I don't like starting something new until I've finished up what I started earlier. This personality trait has, for all of my adult years, carried over into how I clean my house. For years my cleaning schedule has gone like this: 1.) wait until the house gets dirty enough that I can't stand it anymore (which isn't long...I'm a neat freak) 2.) spend the whole day cleaning the entire house from top to bottom 3.) crawl into bed at night exhausted with dry hands and a sore back.

That schedule worked ok for a while and I'll admit there is something so soothing about having your whole house clean at once. But, let's face it... with kids the whole house stays clean for a total of about 5 minutes before something's messy again. Plus, it was getting harder and harder for me to find a day where I could devote 5+ hours just to cleaning my house. I pay (too much) attention to detail when I clean and also end up sorting, rearranging, putting things away while I clean. That, coupled with lots of interruptions from the children, made for very long days of cleaning (yes, they do help me with cleaning but their "help" often creates more clean up for me!).

But everything has changed! You guys.... I have found a solution! I have changed my cleaning habits from a project into a practice. I've implemented THE TWO WEEK CLEANING SCHEDULE! It totally goes against my grain but I have gotten into the routine of it and I am loving it! All it takes is about 20 -30 minutes of cleaning a day. And the good thing is...my house always feels clean!

Ok so you may have seen people post before about how they clean one area of their house each day of the week and then they always have a clean house. Yea, well, that sounds good in theory... but cleaning each part of my house every week is just too much for me (honest truth). And, while some areas of the house could use a cleaning once a week, there are many areas that I think do just fine with a cleaning every two weeks. So that's what I do. I choose one area of the house to clean each day and complete the whole house over a two week period. Here's my sample schedule:

Week One:

Monday: Vacuum
Tuesday: Deep clean kitchen
Wednesday: Master bathroom
Thursday: Guest bathroom

Week Two:

Monday: Empty trash throughout house, clean windows (not all my windows but things like the slider and back door which the kids touch)
Tuesday: Dust
Wednesday: Sweep
Thursday: Mop

I have chosen not to clean on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday because I like to have the weekends free and I also like to have some extra days in case one day I just can't fit in the time to clean. I also do laundry on the weekends and meal prep. But if you have a larger house or more areas to clean you can always add some or all of those days to spread out the work. Also once a month on a Friday or Saturday I do something that only needs to be done once every couple of months like windows, blinds, ceiling fans, and baseboards. As a side note, this schedule does not include things like dishes, picking up toys, putting away clothes, vacuuming or sweeping up spills and messes, etc. These are things that I do on a daily basis and don't need to add to my cleaning schedule. I will also swipe the toilet or wipe down the bathroom sink real quick if need be in between cleaning days. This list is just for the more scheduled deep cleanings, not the quick things I do daily.

The beauty of a schedule like this is you can customize it however you like! You can do a little something every day of the week or cut it down to just 3 days a week. You can clean the bathrooms once a week instead of once every two weeks if yours get dirty quicker (I'll admit they probably do need it but I just hate cleaning bathrooms so I figure once every 2 weeks is enough!). If your dog sheds and you need to vacuum every day then add vacuuming along with something else to your schedule. The only carpet we have is in our bedrooms so I don't need to vacuum as often. The key is, don't overload the schedule! If your cleaning is going to take more than 20-30 minutes you probably aren't going to get to it each and every day because it's too time consuming. You want short, quick jobs that you can accomplish quickly and that you won't be able to talk yourself out of.

I've been loving my two week cleaning schedule so far and it's taken alot of stress off of me as I know that at any given time most areas of my house are clean. What about you? What methods of cleaning work for you? What household chore do you absolutely hate to do? I'd love to hear!

"If it's not a HELL YES, then it's a no"

So I just realized that I didn't post any blog posts in December. Nadda. Zero. Zilch. Oh well!

December was a great month for us. Just busy! The kids are at such fun ages and it made Christmas such a magical time this year! But since they're getting older now we've also added more activities to our plate during the holiday season. Isaiah had parties at school and a basketball performance at the half time show of a local basketball game. Eloise had her first ballet recital. We saw Santa at several events. We took one last trip to SeaWorld before our season passes expired (WOW!! SeaWorld at Christmas time was AMAZING! Even though we're not buying season passes again for 2016 we're still planning to try and make it there at Christmas time again. Truly magical!). We stayed up late looking at Christmas lights in different neighborhoods. We spent one evening at Adventure Landing for WinterFest. We crammed in as many Christmas movies as we could. We moved our Elf on the Shelf ("Elfis") around the house every night while the kids were asleep and tried to come up with something creative for him to be doing the next day (man that's stressful!!).

We hung Christmas lights on the outside of our house for the first time ever (and then (after hanging up 5 strands) realized we didn't' have enough to go all the way around the house so we tried to buy more... and then found out that they were out of stock at all the stores and were being discontinued (thanks Target!)... so, since we didn't want to buy 10 completely new sets (because just 5 new ones wouldn't match the 5 we already had) and since by this time it was just a week before Christmas, we just decided to get back up on the roof and take them all down. And...the story gets better. When we took them down we put them in a garbage bag and set them in the garage (why did we do that?!?)....and then a week later accidentally threw away the garbage bag full of 5 strands of perfectly good icicle lights (bangs head on table). Yea, that was one of our Christmas adventures I'd rather not remember!). We read the Christmas story several times and and sang to lots of Christmas music. Drew and his dad spent Christmas Eve (after our Christmas Eve service) setting up the new trampoline we bought the kids so they would be surprised on Christmas day. We made a gingerbread house, Christmas cookies, crafts, and decorated the house. Not to mention buying all the gifts for friends and family which rests pretty much solely on my shoulders. We had alot of late nights and early mornings. It was a busy month for sure!

And now I'm just focusing on rest. I usually don't add too much to my plate but this holiday season I feel like I did. I'm usually good about putting up boundaries. About saying no when I need to. About declining a play date or forgoing an event if it's just too much. But as 2016 is beginning I want to refocus on this. I want to make sure that I go all in on what GOD is calling me passionately to and weed out everything else that just creates busyness. If it's not an emphatic YES, then I want to say no. Of course ministry and serving sometimes need to be done whether we feel like it or not and, if God is calling me to it, it needs to go under the emphatic YES category. I'm talking about saying no to things that I add to my plate that are simply things I want to do or even feel compelled to do. I want to say no to those things so that I can have room to say yes to more important things.

Have you ever heard of Jen Hatmaker? Oh my gosh. If you haven't you totally need to look her up. Here is her blog. She is an amazing woman of God and an amazing speaker. I could really listen to her for hours. She is actually speaking at the IF Gathering (if you haven't heard of that it's so awesome too. Click the link!) in February and my mom and I are going to a broadcast of it at her church while we're in Indiana visiting them later this month. I'm so excited!

Anyways, Jen posted this on her Facebook a few days ago and it exactly put into words what I want my year 2016 to be. I'll just let you read this and I'll slip out the door because, really, what more could I say?

"As you move into 2016 hoping for a saner schedule that prioritizes your actual life and keeps you focused on the things that matter the most, let me share the decision-making filter my agent Curtis always gives me:

"If it's not a HELL YES, then it's a no."

So that medium yes, that I-feel-like-should yes, that guilty yes, that coerced yes, that I-actually-hate-this-thing yes, that I-guess-so yes, that who-else-will-do-it yes, that careless yes, that default yes, that resentful yes, that I-probably-shouldn't-but-struggle-with-boundaries yes?

NO. Nope.

No thank you. I am unable to commit to that this year. Thank you so much for asking, but any new yes I give right now means a no to my family and sanity. I am so flattered you asked and count on my prayers, but I am at my maximum bandwidth right now. I appreciate your work so much, but I've already committed my time and energy this year. I've loved being a part of this, but I am no longer able to continue. We are aggressively focused on x, y, and z this year, so as a family we've agreed on no new commitments. This is what I can give but won't be able to do more right now.

Now, the things that make your heart race, your blood pump, the fire in your belly burn, your gifts to leap to life, and keep your family and home healthy and strong...the hell yeses? ALL IN, BABY."

Before and After: The Transformation of our House

On Thanksgiving Day we celebrated one year of owning our home! On November 26th, 2014 (the day before Thanksgiving last year) we signed on the dotted line and received the keys to our very first house!

I've been trying to think of a fun post to do to honor our one year anniversary. You have all seen the house tour that I posted here on the blog earlier in the year so I didn't want to post similar pictures again. Then, the idea hit me!

The previous owners of our house foreclosed on it. An investor bought it, flipped it, and then put it back on the market. When we bought it, it had already been completely remodeled so we never saw the house in the condition it was in before. BUT on the Zillow listing, there were old pictures of the house from when the previous owners tried to sell it. Over a year ago I downloaded and saved those pictures to my computer because the transformation was so shocking to me!

So today I thought it would be fun to post the before and after pictures of our house. Remember, we didn't do this transformation! We bought the house already completely updated. And thank goodness, because if I would have stepped foot in this house when it looked like the previous pictures I would have taken one peek in the door and said no thank you! I'm amazed that the investor saw the potential in this house and gave it some much needed love and updating. I absolutely love our house and feel so at home here. I'm so grateful it's ours!

So... here we go! (You can click on the pictures to make them larger)

The outside before:

The outside after:

The living room before:

The living room after:

The kitchen before:

The kitchen after:

The dining room before:

The dining room after:

The master bedroom before:

The master bedroom after:

The master bathroom before:

The Master bathroom after:

Isaiah's room before:

 Isaiah's room after:

The fan in Isaiah's room was the only fixture in the whole house the investor didn't update! We can't figure out why. =) But it didn't matter because we put bunkbeds in his room and replaced the fan with a light anyways. We just thought it was funny!

The girls' room before:

The girls' room after:

The guest bathroom before:

The guest bathoom after:

 The playroom before:

The playroom after:

The garage before:

The garage after: