New Year....Fresh Start........

We are almost two weeks into a brand new fresh year and I am formulating a plan.

For the last several years (probably at least 7 or 8 of them anyway) I've talked over and over about how much I need to sort through my house and get rid of all of the excess items that are cluttering our home. It is a source of frustration for both my husband and myself. Clutter is visually, mentally, emotionally and even at times physically draining. It affects the peace of our home. Causes us to feel less rested. It causes me to feel a little like a failure as keeper of my home. I've complained about it. Tried to reorganize it. Tried to hide it. Ignored it.............

Not anymore.

I have determined that 2012 will be the year that I will be free of clutter. But first I need a plan. Not just any plan because I've made clutter-be-gone plans before and they didn't work. I need a plan that I can actually make happen. A plan that I can follow through with. Something with a lot of built in flexibility to fit around my fairly unpredictable schedule (hello being a mother of 4 kiddos...and all their friends...and wife to the king of spontaneous dinner plans) so that I will be able to accomplish the task without being overwhelmed. I suspect once I get started I will be able to accomplish some of these spaces in far less than a month, but knowing how I've operated in the past, I am purposely giving myself the month long window of opportunity so I am less likely to get behind and feel like I can't do it. My unfortunate Achilles heel.

Ugh. I know what some of you are thinking.....an ENTIRE HOUSE worth of decluttering? Acckkk! Where would I begin?

I started by writing down a list of each room and storage space in my house. Then under each one I wrote all the needs for that particular room. I had to ask myself what I want out of the space, what it's used for, if anything needed to be fixed about it and what I wanted it to look like when I was finished.

Then comes the hard part. I will ruthlessly purge the room of unused items, remove items that belong elsewhere in the house, fix issues in the room, paint if necessary and then reorganize the items that are staying in the room. So with there only being part of a month left I am starting with the least cluttered area in my house...my kitchen.

When I finish each space I will post before and after pics here and add a link to the "Clutter Free 2012" section in the sidebar. I'm actually excited to see that list fill out.

How about you? Are you ready to declutter your life this year? Join me! Let's do this together.

I'd love to read about your choices to go clutter free in 2012! Please share your thoughts, progress, struggles, encouragement, tips and ideas in the comments below.

Here's to a clutter-free new year!

A Happy Christmas and a brand New Year....

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoyed a lovely Christmas with friends and family, great food and lots and lots of fellowship. That's what happens in our family during the holidays. There are many meals shared and hours spent cultivating relationships between brother and sister, parents and children, husband and wife and with each of our friends.

As I said in my last post, we had a "handmade" Christmas this year. Each of us spent time considering what we thought our loved ones would enjoy receiving as a gift and then we set our hands to work creating those things. There were wonderful treasures given this year, but I think the most precious thing shared was a piece of ourselves as we worked away at making something special for each person. I really enjoyed the whole process and I think everyone came away from the experience with a more personal appreciation for the handmade lifestyle we are trying to live out as well as a sense of pride in themselves and their abilities to create something that could bless someone else. It wasn't always easy for everyone to think of something they would be able to create, but we all persevered and I think we were all pleased ...and maybe even a little surprised... at the thoughtfulness of some of the items given. I'm not sure I can convince the family to do this every Christmas, but I am glad we did it this time.

Here is a look at a few of the things we made:

 Miss B recently started a little business making lipbalms and hard lotion bars so she blessed each of us with one of each of her products. Hooray! These are really great!

 Little Mister enjoyed painting decorative wooden items for each member of the family. This is the cross he gave his big sis. I got a birdhouse! My favorite thing!

 Chickybabe and I had fun crocheting these fun little flyers! She made up a group for her brother and I made some for Little Mister and for Cousin Jacob. Now they can have a frisbee in their pocket wherever they go and toss them all they want without the fear of breaking things in the house :)

 Chickybabe also crocheted this warm hat for Dad. He loves it and wears it often.

 One of my favorites to make this year was this crocheted beard for Big E. He actually requested it as a gift after seeing it on Etsy with me one day. He said he had to have it! I am working on the beanie that goes with it. (The beard actually buttons to the inside of the beanie) Haha! What fun!

BUT....my all time favorite gift to receive was this lovely blessing! 

My husband refinished my coffee table the way I have been wanting to do it since we bought the set off craigslist nearly 8 months ago! It looks gorgeous, don't you think? Oh my gosh! I was soooooo excited! He is working on the matching end tables now and when they are finished I've asked him to refinish my computer desk the same way since it has the same style of legs. I cannot wait to see them all complete! Aaaaaaaaaaahhh!

Well, now that it's a brand new year I am even more motivated to start with a fresh attitude and concentrate on living a more handmade life. We are blessed with the ability to create. We do it every day whether we are aware of it or not. I am determining to do more with the blessing I've been given and to do it more purposefully than I did before. Living life on purpose. That's my New Year's resolution this year. How about you? What will you do on purpose this year???

A Handmade Christmas...

It is already mid December. The years seem to creep by at a much faster pace than they used to. This year for Christmas we've opted to have a "Handmade Christmas". In this economy and especially with the financial setback of an unexpected major car repair, we need to be as frugal as possible with the money we do have available for the holidays. But more than that, I've wanted to help my kids put more real thought into what they are choosing to give to people. I can think of no better way to do that than by providing them with the opportunity to create something with their own two hands to give to each person on their lists.

It's been an interesting exercise helping them come up with ideas for each of their siblings that each of them could accomplish with their own two hands. Some of them have struggled with the idea and others have flourished with it and have their gifts already completed. All in all the idea has been received well and has served as a conversation instigator in several ways providing opportunity to examine our desires for all the latest and greatest gadgets and gizmos and what it is we really "need".

It's so easy to fall into the norm of letting our "wanter" get the best of us. At the end of the year last year I had plans to buy all new ornaments for our tree this year (every year we choose a new theme to decorate around). It was then that I was hit with the idea of a homemade Christmas. As I browsed the after-holiday sales searching for something new I realized that I didn't need anything new. I was letting my "wanter" get out of control. Now, there's nothing wrong, necessarily, with buying new ornaments and decor (especially if it's at 70-90% off!), but why did I feel like I "needed" to do so every single year? What I really needed was to examine my reasoning behind the purchase.

I was reminded of Ma and Pa and Laura and Mary out on the prairie and how simple their Christmases were, yet they were still so full of love and joy and giving and sharing. Then I thought back on all my favorite Christmas memories. Not one of them was really about how pretty the tree was or how I got the newest and coolest thing that year like all my friends. What I remember most is spending time together with my family sharing memories of all kinds and baking and blessing each other.

We gave a lot of handmade things as gifts in my family both as a choice and a necessity financially. Being raised by a single mother who grew up on a rural farm that was pioneered back in the day, there is a rich heritage of self-reliance and the handmade lifestyle laced throughout my ancestry (which accounts for my love of crafting).

Oh sure, I am charmed by the new iPads and Kindles and whatnot just like the rest of the world, but what I really appreciate are the things that I know someone has poured hours of their time and attention into creating with their own resources and their own two hands. Those are the things I love best. Sure, I would love to have the new iPad like so many of my friends and acquaintances have. Yes, I would certainly not turn down a gift of a Nook color or be thankful for an Xbox 360 to fulfill my oldest son's wish list and my husband would most certainly love an enormous new TV to watch Oregon Duck football on, but in reality those things are temporary. Next year there will be a newer, better model of each of them, yet there will never be anything more precious to me than each and every stitch in the 3 generation quilt my grandmother and I made together out of the scraps of one of my mother's old patchwork projects. I still own that quilt. It's probably my most treasured possession, especially now that both my grandmother and mother have passed away. Nothing about that quilt will ever be newer and better, yet it is such a treasure to me that I plan on handing it down to my daughter who will hopefully hand it down to hers one day and so on until it disintegrates with all the love it holds inside.

This year I hope I am helping my kids see that there can be just as much joy in the simplicity of our gifts to each other as there can be in receiving whatever is at the top of our "wish list" each year. It is a gift more valuable than any other thing I could give them. To teach them to share the treasure inside themselves with someone else. I hope each of you have a wonderful Christmas this year. Maybe you can share some of the treasure that's inside you with someone too.

Blessings to you and Merry Christmas,