Our Good Luck dinner

Two years ago on leap day, my sister gave me a call. She said she had been trying to think of something fun to do for leap day dinner, but had not been able to come up with anything. She even checked the internet and couldn't find a great idea. She said she knew I must have come up with an exciting idea she could borrow. I was flattered she thought so, but unfortunately, that was not the case. So very quickly, I started to brainstorm and out came an idea that both of us tried (with great success) on leap day.

First, I have to say that it was inspired by my friend, Jana, (thanks Jana!) and something hilarious she does with her family when dinner is leftovers. It involves a dice and I laughed a lot when I read her idea. And although she inspired this good idea, I changed it quite a bit to fit with our leap day dinner. And after doing it once, we changed my original idea even more to work that much better. And it was decided we loved it so much, we couldn't wait for four years before we could do it again.

And our annual St. Patrick's Day Good Luck Dinner was born.

Here are the details:

First, I asked the kids to decorated 24 paper lunch bags with a St. Patrick's Day theme.

Next, you either make or buy one main dish item for each member of your family, one side dish item for each member of your family, one drink for each member of the family and one dessert for each member of the family.  (Hence the reason we needed 24 bags the first year we tried it. Six people that ate regular food in our family, times four food items per person. This year we will need 28 bags.)  

Then the fun starts.

I put each of the main dish items in a lunch bag, fold it over and staple it.  Then I do the same with the remaining individual food items. (Note: make sure and keep the categories of food together and separated from the other categories or there will be confusion later.)

When everything is bagged up and closed, invite the family in.

And grab a dice.

Each member of the family rolls the dice to determine who will go first, second, third, etc.  If two people tie, they have a spin off to determine which one goes before the other when their turn arrives.  When you have the order, put the six (or whatever number you have in your family) main dishes on the table.  

Now, anyone played the white elephant game?  Same rules.

For those that have not...

The first person gets to choose any bag they want. They open it up and everyone gets to be excited and/or jealous of their sandwich or burrito or something more fancy if you have more time. Their turn is over. The person that is second now gets a turn. They have two options. They can pick a new lunch bag and open it up to have for their own, or they can take the first person's meal if they really want that for dinner. If they take away the first person's meal, the first person gets to pick another bag and open it up for all to see. And it continues this way until the last person gets their turn.  Obviously, being last is usually the best because you can take a food item from anyone else in the group or pick the last bag and open it up.  

When everyone has a main dish, time to move on to the side dishes. But first, you have to roll the dice again to get a new order, because who wants to go in the same order four times? Repeat with the drink and the dessert (although, we waited until everyone had eaten their main meal before we had the dessert round).

Honestly friends, it was fun. Really fun! I have to credit my husband with the great idea of running it like a white elephant or ornament exchange. We originally just used to dice to spin for our meal and it wasn't nearly as exciting and hilarious.

(Another note: While there may be times that this would be funny with crazy food that not everyone would love, I didn't figure this was the time. I only bought things that each family member would be happy with and feel excited to eat. After all, this is a Good Luck Dinner.)

So, if you have a little extra time on your hands, give it a try this coming St. Patrick's' Day (or the night before as we will be doing, since St. Patrick's Day falls on Sunday and we don't shop on Sunday).  I tell you, my kids still can't quit talking about it.

I'd love to know if you have any questions or thoughts or need any clarification. Or...if you give it a try and want to share how it worked, that would be fabulous!  And for those that think they have to make four or five or eight different meals to make it work, not true. Go to your favorite sandwich shop or fast food restaurant or grocery store and get creative. That is a big part of the fun, having something you wouldn't normally eat most other day of the year.

Okay, friends, good luck on your own Good Luck Dinner. May it be fun, fabulous, hilarious and delicious!

The snooze button that is actually advantageous to use

One of my favorite ideas that occurred to me not long ago, involves the ability to "snooze" an email you receive, until a future date. (I personally use Gmail, where snoozing an email is a possibility. I'm not sure what other email providers give their users this option. I sure hope there are others.)

I use this trick in many ways, but one of them is when companies or businesses send me a coupon, promotional credit or discount code that has the option to be used at a later date.

For instance, the hairdresser our family uses, will often send a digital coupon for $10 off a future haircut. But that email with the coupon will usually arrive not long after one of our family members has recently had their hair cut, as a thank you for coming in. So rather than archive it in my email and hope I remember it the next time we go (which I can guarantee you is very unlikely to happen with my brain these days) or screenshot it and hope I remember I have that in my photos (same problem, different place to keep it hidden), I use the my email snooze button. 

But before I use that snooze button, I go into our family calendar and see when the next haircut appointment is scheduled, either for myself or for our children. And when I find out the date of that, I snooze the email, choosing to have it reappear in my inbox the morning the appointment will be happening. Thus increasing the chance I will see it and use it. 

The same goes for a coupon or digital "cash" from a particular store I am sent. I read the fine print on the email and when I see the dates it can be used, I snooze the email until the first day I can use it, as a reminder that if I plan to buy anything with it, I'd better get that done in the next couple of days. 

Or one last example. The company where we take our cars to get an oil change will often reward us with a coupon, shortly after we have visited. When I receive this email, I estimate about how long it will likely be until one of our vehicles will next need an oil change. It isn't an exact science for sure, so I just go my best guess. Then, when I snooze the email with that coupon, I get two helpful hints when it reappears at a later date. Because it not only reminds me to make sure and use the coupon to save money, but that I also need to take one of our cars in for an oil change soon, something that isn't always easy to remember to do on my own, especially with three vehicles in our household.

Okay, there you go. Hope that helps! Let me know if you have questions or have your own tips when it comes to this idea. I would love to read them. Thanks friends!

The gift of Mondays

I have plenty of things that I do in an attempt to organize and simplify my life, but I truly believe that one thing I do on a regular basis that keeps my life as calm as possible, is to give myself the gift of Mondays.

Every Monday morning it seems I wake up to chaos. More than usual I mean. The weekend is over, most of the things in the house are not where they are meant to be and the kids are a bit more tired and off their schedule. That is why I do absolutely nothing on Monday.

Monday is my organization/regrouping day. I do everything in my power to not schedule a single thing on Monday. No appointments, no play dates, no errands, no activities or lessons--nothing. I spend the entire day getting our life back to "normal." I stay home and organize and clean and go through paperwork and make a list of what I would love to accomplish the rest of the week. And it is amazing that every Monday is filled up with these tasks alone.

And when the sun sets on Monday night, if I have followed my ideal plan that day, I truly feel calm and peaceful and ready for the rest of my week. Yes indeed, I am a big fan of Mondays.

The joy of paper clutter

Anyone out there feeling the sarcasm included with the post title? Just checking.

Unfortunately, paper clutter is a thing. A constant thing, as far as I can tell. And I wanted to post about two specific areas that I've given a lot of though to, when it comes to clutter of the paper variety.

Let's start with children's school papers. I don't know about you, but there are a lot of papers that come home every single day with our kids. And very early on, I had to figure out a system that would work and that would not make me want to pull my hair out with every stack of paper I was handed from a child walking in the door from a day at school.

And this what I came up with...

To keep important schoolwork, projects, artwork, worksheets and tests, each of our kids have a single, portable file box. Inside each box, there are thirteen hanging file folders, with a tab on each one. They are labeled with each child's name and each grade (from Kindergarten to 12th grade). Every school year, as papers and projects come home from school, I have a place in our office that I keep the ones that mean the most to our kids or that represent something fun or special that happened during that grade. They all go into the stack for the current school year and there they stay, until the school year has ended.

(Side note: Some of my kids keep all of the work that is handed back to them, until their grades come out for the term. Especially in junior high and high school, it isn't wise of them to get rid of anything, just in case a teacher forgets to record that they did it. So my older kids usually keep everything in their individual folders and binders until the term is over and their grades are posted. Once that happens, we quickly go through their papers/projects from that term and keep a few they did extra well on or want to remember. And then add them to pile I mentioned above.)

At the end of each school year, I take out the stack of papers/projects we have kept and sort them into piles for each child. And then I sit down with each of my kids to go through them. We keep just a handful of their favorites and put them into the hanging file folder for that particular school year. Last, I put in their yearbook for that year* (if they have one in the school they are attending). And voila, all finished.

Okay then, any questions I can answer? Head on over to my IG post here, to not only ask your questions, but also to see a photo of our actual school file boxes.

* High school year books are huge, at least where we live. So they do not fit in the file box. Instead, I stack the three high school yearbooks
each of my children receive (in the state we live in, high school is 10th through 12th grade) on top of their file box, so everything stays together.

Our important family information binder

I posted a question on my Instagram account yesterday, asking if anyone could tell what I was working on, just by looking at a single picture I shared. And a couple of you lovely people guessed correctly. I'm impressed.

As was mentioned, I've heard some refer to what I was organizing as an emergency binder, others call it their 'grab and go' binder (if they had to leave the house quickly in an emergency, it would be what they would grab). I give our particular version the very fancy name of the important family information binder. (If someone has a more clever name I can adopt, please share away.)

The one reason I don't call ours an emergency binder is because it actually includes quite a bit more information than that. (Although, I would for sure grab it if I had to leave the house in an emergency.) For some people, it might make sense to separate what we have in our binder in a couple of different places. But it is actually really helpful for me to have it all in one place. In fact, the reason I was going through it yesterday was because I had additional items I needed to add to update it. Plus, I wanted to reorder things in a way that made more sense to me. Or maybe I was just coming up with an excuse to work on an organization project. Either way.

Nonetheless, for those interested, I'll list below what I keep in this binder. It definitely has important emergency info, but I also include other important family information that belongs together, at least in my mind.

(And a side note for those who could possibly be confused at several things I have on my list. Many of the items are from important events and milestones that occur as individuals and families within the church I belong to and love so very much. So if something doesn't make a lot of sense to you, it is likely because it falls under that category. If you have any questions, either organizationally or otherwise, about what I mention here, please, please don't hesitate to ask.)

And now, what is included in our important family information binder:

• Marriage certificate

• Birth certificates

• Baby blessings

• Patriarchal blessings

• Blessing certificates

• Baptism and confirmation certificates

• Priesthood ordination certificates

• Mission calls

• Seminary completion certificates

• Eagle Scout award certificates

• Young Womanhood award certificates

• Blood type of each family member

• Immunization records

• Vehicle titles

• Social security cards

• Passports

Okay, any questions to ask or thoughts to add? I'd definitely love to hear them. In the meantime, one last idea from me.

If your kids are getting to the older stage, it might be smart to set up your binder in a way that leaves empty pages ready to add to as soon as those milestones are hit and the certificate or record is given to you. With our six kids and many important events happening often, it makes it more likely that I will add to this binder more quickly and efficiently, if the space is ready to hold what is to come. And let's be honest, time flies when you are raising kids. So why not make something in your life just a little bit easier and less time consuming?

Recipes and cooking

I am one who enjoys cooking. I would be lying if I said I love to make dinner every single night, but for the most part I take pleasure in making meals. Nevertheless, I have a confession. I don't own a single cookbook. I used to own one that had basic instructions for most anything you needed to cook properly, but with the internet these days, I found I didn't need it.

Instead, I have a binder (white, of course) in which I keep all of my recipes. I have typed up these recipes on the computer and have them categorized from appetizers to soup. I print them on regular computer paper and slip them into plastic sheet covers to keep them from being ruined while I am cooking. Everything in my recipe binder I have tried personally and use on a regular basis (with the exception of special holiday dishes that I obviously use only on occasion, but couldn't do without).

When I find or ask for or receive a new recipe, I slip it into the front pocket of my recipe binder and there it stays until I know it is something we will use and like. If I find I do love it, I type it up and add it to its appropriate category. From my own personal experience and from talking to many people (excluding professional chefs who try new things constantly), I have found that most people use what they love over and over. I have found many people feel like their numerous recipe books are a waste because they hardly use them or use the same two recipes repeatedly. Nevertheless, if you use and love your cookbooks, definitely keep them. As for me, I love having my recipes that I use, and that my family loves, all together and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Some additional thoughts:

• Compiling all of your recipes may take some time, so go easy on yourself. Choose one category to start with and focus only on gathering recipes in that area until it is completed to your satisfaction. Then move on to the next category.
• Set a goal to look through your recipe book once a year to see if all of the recipes are still being used and enjoyed. Get rid of those that you initially loved, but later found out were not used as often as you thought.
• Email your friends once a year and ask them for their favorite recipe in the last twelve months. This is a great way to get the best recipes out there.