• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

mamakay

managing a household of 10 by the grace of God

  • 2020 Book List
  • Seasonal Living
  • Blogging
  • Investment Cooking

Orange Juice

Morning High Five

March 4, 2014 by mamakay Leave a Comment

Each morning we have our “high five.” To get a high five you have to accomplish your 5 things before 8 am.

1. Make bed

2. Brush Hair

3. Get Dressed

4. Feed Animals

5. Morning Job

Morning Jobs are an assigned job that helps the family such as:

  • make orange juice/smoothie
  • take out the trash
  • take out the ashes
  • take the scraps to the chickens
  • empty the dishwasher

If the child gets their high five they also can add a point to their tally otherwise they lose a point. They must get their jobs done before they can eat breakfast. Based on the Bible verse:

2 Thessalonians 3:10

For even when we were with you, we would give you this command:

If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.

We have found this combination of incentive and natural consequences has made an effective enough motivation for getting the work done. It sometimes does take longer than it should but at least their is a goal and set consequences for not achieving it. And we have a lot less fights over what they should be doing. This has been a win win situation for us all!

MamaKay

Filed Under: Homemaking Tagged With: 2 Thessalonians 3, Bible Verse, Brush Hair, Chickens, Dishwasher, Feed Animals, Jobs, Morning Job, Motivation, Natural Consequences, Orange Juice, Scraps, Tally, Trash, Verse 2

Keeping a Clean (Enough) House

March 2, 2014 by mamakay Leave a Comment

20140206_163048

Our large household demands team work to be able to maintain any sort of order. As a family of 9 (ages 16 months to 41 years old) that is home all day every day (well at least some are), has lots of animals (current count: 1 dog, 4 cats, 2 cows and 25 chickens) and we make most of our foods from scratch just one day of letting things go can result in several days of catch up. It is crucial to have a plan and to have as many people working together as possible! Getting everyone involved is one of our keys to success.

I have tried so many different things over the years. Flylady, Side Tracked Home Executives (notecards), all kinds of chore charts, etc… But mainly everything dissolves to chaos and then we have company so we work really hard to clean up and then we are worn out and let it slide again. My latest inspiration has come from Leila at http://www.likemotherlikedaughter.org/2010/01/reasonably-clean-fairly-neat-and/ She is a wonderful source for good motherly advice. She is nearly done raising 6 kids and homeschooled too so she knows what its like to have a larger than normal family that is home all the time and she cooks for her family too.  I don’t follow her protocols exactly but she was the spark I needed to get on track for our family.

20140206_163615

For many years we have had assigned individual jobs that each person is responsible for but when we recently added a joint effort to the zone once a week I found that we were finally achieving a higher level of clean!

We spent a bunch of time over Christmas decluttering and clearing out the stuff we just really don’t need. We are big believers in a big clean out from time to time. I know Flylady always says baby steps but the amount of time it would take us to dig out 15 minutes at a time is so discouraging with so many messing it up as soon as you walk away! Maintaining is so much easier if we have a big resetting first!

20140206_163421

Here is our current strategy:

Each morning we have our “high five.”

After breakfast we work on our zone for the day.

In the afternoon before Papa comes home we do our afternoon chores where each child is responsible for picking up their assigned areas. Each child has two different areas to work on.

Each child also has two different table chores. One to prepare for the meal and one cleaning up afterwards. This has been the hardest habit for us to be consistent at but when we are successful everything runs so much better.

In the coming days I will have specific posts about each of these areas.

What are your strategies? Have you found something that works really well for your family? I’d love to hear about it!

MamaKay

Filed Under: Homemaking Tagged With: 15 Months, 2 Cows, 4 Cats, Brush Hair, Cats, Chaos, Chickens, Chore Charts, Chores, Cooks, Decluttering, Dishwasher, Feed Animals, Habit, Homeschooled, Joint Effort, Keys To Success, Leila, Likemotherlikedaughter, Lots Of Animals, Many Different Things, Morning Job, Motherly Advice, Orange Juice, Scratch, Side Tracked Home Executives, Trash

Thanksgiving 2011

November 24, 2011 by mamakay Leave a Comment

This year I am so thankful that my girls are getting big enough to be a great help preparing our Thanksgiving Feast!

 

Here is this year’s menu (partially for my own reference):

Roasted Turkey from Smockity Frocks

This is similar to the Alton Brown version I usually make except you cook it at 500 degrees the whole time but put water in the pan underneath. I put an onion, apple and fresh herbs (sage, thyme, & rosemary) in the cavity. We roasted a 23 pound bird in 1 1/2 hours & it was so yummy! Crispy skin on the outside & juicy but cooked on the inside!

Cranberry Apple Sausage Dressing from Allrecipes.com

Everyone enjoyed this but it was a little dry. I think next time I will double the broth.

 

Mashed Potatoes (10lbs)

Sweet Potatoes with Roasted Marshmallows

I cook the sweet potatoes then mash them with butter, a little orange juice and pumpkin pie spices. We then put the mixture in a 9 x 13 pan and top with mini marshmallows. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Green Bean Casserole

1potato made this recipe this year. We made our own white sauce instead of using cream soup and added some sour cream to thicken it up. Then we mixed in greens beans that we boiled for 5 minutes and some fried onions. Baked for 30 minutes at 350.

 

Butterhorn Rolls from Balancing Bedlam and Beauty

These are a family favorite. We baked 4 dozen rolls and saved the rest to make cinnamon rolls  later.

Grandma brought the applesauce and cranberry sauce.

Pumpkin Pie

We roasted a pumpkin we grew this year but it didn’t taste very pumpkiny.

Apple Pie

I’ll have to post this recipe separately sometime. It is a wonderful recipe that uses 4 pounds of apples in 1 pie. It’s a little extra effort but so worth it!

Apple Cider from my uncle’s apples and my cousin’s apple cider press. YUM!

 

 

We had a wonderful day as a family and enjoying the fruits of our labor. We were able to incorporate many things that we grew ourselves and made ourselves!

Thank you Lord for the abundance you have provided for us and the time we had to spend as a family working and enjoying the day together!

Filed Under: Holidays, recipe Tagged With: 30 Minutes, Alton Brown, Amp, Apple Cider Press, Apple Pie, Apple Sausage, Applesauce, Butterhorn Rolls, Cavity, Cinnamon Rolls, Cream Soup, Fresh Herbs, Fried Onions, Green Bean Casserole, Mash, Mini Marshmallows, Mixture, Onion, Orange Juice, Pound Bird, Pumpkin Pie, Rosemary, Sausage Dressing, Smockity Frocks, Spices, Sweet P, Sweet Potatoes, Thanksgiving Feast, Whole Time, Wonderful Day

Menu Plan Monday

October 22, 2007 by mamakay 4 Comments

Menu Plan Monday

I decided to start doing weekly plans again for our meals. I usually plan breakfasts and dinners. Lunch is usually leftovers, sandwiches or something easy. Here’s my plan for this week:

Monday:

Breakfast: Banana Muffins (from the freezer), cantelope and orange juice

Dinner: Teriyaki Chicken, stir fry veggies and steamed rice

Tuesday:

Breakfast: Baked Oatmeal, fruit and OJ

Dinner: White Chicken Chili, Salad and Tortilla Chips

Wednesday:

Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs, Toast and Fruit

Dinner: Cube Steak, Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans

Thursday:

Breakfast: Leftover Baked Oatmeal and Fruit

Dinner: Lemon Chicken Soup, Salad, Dinner Rolls

Friday:

Breakfast: Smoothies

Dinner: Chicken Strips and Carrot Sticks

For more ideas check out: http://www.orgjunkie.blogspot.com/

Blog Widget by LinkWithin

Filed Under: Investment Cooking Tagged With: Baked Oatmeal, Banana Muffins, Breakfast Smoothies, Cantelope, Carrot Sticks, Chicken Soup, Chicken Strips, Cube Steak, Dinner Rolls, Freezer, Fry Veggies, Green Beans, Leftovers, Lemon Chicken, Menu Plan, Orange Juice, Sandwiches, Teriyaki Chicken, Tortilla Chips, White Chicken Chili

Primary Sidebar

Stitch Fix outfit

So glad you stopped by. I am a Christian wife and mother of 8 in the middle years. My kids are aged 4 to 20 and just about every 2 years in between. I write about our life as a big family, what God is personally doing in my life, food and books.

Hopewriters

Our Sponsors


This website includes affiliate links. Please help support our site by clicking through and purchasing from our sponsors! Thank you!

Newsletter

Simplified Organization Simple Meal Planning - Plan to Eat

Recent Posts

  • How Yoga Helped Me Fight Depression
  • What is the Best Way to Practice Advent?
  • Amazon Prime Days 2020
  • What I Learned This Spring 2020
  • Favorite Family Read Aloud Books

Categories

Copyright © 2021 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in