Project Life Layout, January 29 - February 4 {Week 5}

January 29 - First, Happy Birthday to one of my brothers who turns 30 today!!!  It is Hayley's Sunday School class Christmas Party.  Better late than never...lol!  A tobogganing party filled with roasted wieners and hot chocolate.  A bit chilly (-29 Celsius), and overcast.  My husband took this picture.  By this time lots of the kids had come in cold or gone home cold.  FREEZING out there.  Had alot of fun though.

January 30 - My youngest son is still battling a deep hoarse cough so my husband took our other three children to Church and Sunday School while I stayed back with him.  I have been reading in Revelations since the new year but was led to this verse today by another lady's blog and it just made me sit back and take a moment and process what the meaning of this was to me.  I do try to take too much control and I need to rely more on The Lord for things to happen than just try to make things that I want happen, happen.  Exodus 14:14 (NIV) The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.  This is very powerful, I love it.

January 31 - The first picture is a combination of the three pictures you see on the digital page just above.  I made a collage in picasa and used the multiple exposure setting to achieve the look you see.  I will use the multiple exposure as my main POTD, but created this digital page to slip into my layout to 'tell the story of today'.  I haven't decided if I will develop it in a full 12 X 12 or take it down to an 8 X 8.  I can already predict that 2011 is not going to be a 'single' album edition.  Every week I have extra pages and I think for sure it will be 2 albums in length or three if I keep adding all the extra stuff I want!

February 1 - I can hardly believe that this is the first day of February!  I am so thankful that I came across Project Life last year.  To be able to look back and see that I captured so much in January 2011 that I would not have had Project Life not existed.  Thank You Becky Higgins for that!  Now onto my POTD.  We are a homeschooling family.  My oldest daughter is in Grade 3, my second daughter in Grade 1 and my first son is in Kindergarten.  My three year old is an 'observer' if you will.  We use the ACE program for the most part.  My little kindergarten boy is learning alot!  I had my doubts early in the year...boys really ARE different than girls when it comes to learning.  It seems that the Christmas break actually helped him more than hinder.  I was afraid that a few weeks off would be detrimental to what he had already learned (or not learned...), but much to my amazement he knows alot more than I was giving him credit for.  Today, he added the '50 train' card to his numbers.  He lays the train out on the floor and counts from 1 all the way to the last number of the last train card he is working on.  He was so proud when I gave him this new card today.  To him it meant the world. 

February 2 -  Who doesn't love a fresh bowl of fruit.  This family is no exception.  What you see here, less 6 bananas cost $21.  In just under 24 hours there was only 1 banana, 4 grapefruit and 1 apple left.  That is what a family of 6 can easily do to a bowl (and it is big) of fruit.

February 3 -  So this week I have taken on a little (or alot) or extra work, it all depends on how you look at it.  I have joined a 28 day challenge by willette photography called The Joy Of Love, and I have also taken on a 64 week challenge that has to do with a box of 64 crayola crayon colors called Project 64.  Today the challenge for The Joy Of Love was {then and now}.  I chose to used my dad as the subject for this and created a page to include in my project life album.  You can see my other blog postings for The Joy Of Love here.  The second week challenge in Project 64 was to take a picture that has the crayola color carnation pink.  I will use that picture as my POTD - My daughter and her toque of many colors!  My other Project 64 posts are here.   

February 4 - I am not sure if I am crazy to include a picture of our bed as my POTD, but I really do LOVE my bed, so does my husband.  I have a feather bed on my mattress, then the fitted sheet that we sleep on.  I have a soft sheet, a cream blanket, the white quilt, the green quilt, THEN my silk duvet to wrap myself in.  I faithfully make my bed every morning to look just like you see here and I look so forward to crawling into it at the end of a busy day.


A warm cozy way to bring {Week 5} to a close.

Kids And An Allowance

Do you give your kids an allowance?  When do you think they are old enough to earn an allowance?  These are some questions I wondered about for myself.  When ever we went somewhere, my two girls who are the oldest of my four, always want to buy something, but they have no money.  Do I always buy it for them?  No.  I don't think I need to, all of the time. 

I homeschool our kids and have decided that it is time they really start to learn the value of money.  What better way to do this than to pay them for work they do and they can see the money pile up.

A couple of months back I made of list of age appropriate chores that they can do.  Clean the toy room, take clothes out of the dryer for mommy, make their beds, even brush their teeth (that is a chore for most kids...).  I likely have 14 or so items on the list.  To each of those items, I decided what to pay the kids if they did it.  I made a spreadsheet that includes all seven days of the week.  Each day has three columns, one for each kid (the youngest is too young for this).  When someone does one of them, there is an "X" put in their column beside the very job that they did.  At the end of the week, I tally it up and pay them their allowance.  A dime here and a quarter there adds up.  For my oldest, it added up to $5 last week, second oldest $4.50 and my son $4.00. 

I am not forcing these kids to do any of it.  They want to.  It is their choice.  I don't see anything wrong with giving children the option to help out in the home and they are learning responsibility at the same time. 

Not only do I want to stress the value of money, but the importance of not just buying something for yourself, but sharing it with someone who may need it.  I told the kids they can save it and buy something they want for themselves, but it is important not spend all of your money on yourself either.  Maybe there is a missionary that could put that money to good use.  Maybe there is a sick little child in the hospital and a new stuffed animal would brighen their day.  I want my children to grow up thinking of others, and not just themselves.

This has proven to be very successful in our household thus far.  I will continue as long as it is working.  As they get older, the list will change, and so will how much they get paid.  I think if I was a 10 year old, and my mom was paying me .10 to brush my teeth, I would never forget...lol!

I would love to hear what other mom's and dad's do out there.