Mandi Ehman's Blog, page 115

How to Deal with Distractions that Cost You Money

The following post is from Christina of Northern Cheapskate :

source: Rennett Stowe

Do you suffer from shiny object syndrome?  Do  you start one project only to flit to the next?  Get sidetracked by some great new thing (shiny object)?

All of those little distractions can cost you money.  While daydreaming, you get into a fender bender with your car.  You get distracted by your kids in the store, so you aren’t able to focus on your shopping list.  You get distracted at work (by co-workers, family issues at home, or the internet) and it costs you opportunities and promotions.  You’re distracted by advertising and lured into buying things you may not actually need (or even really want).

There is so much competing for our attention these days – and so much information coming at us – that it is very easy to get distracted.  When you’re distracted, it’s easier to make bad choices when it comes to your money. It’s easier to make impulse buys, make poor decisions, or make mistakes that cost you.

Have a plan.

Start every day with a plan.  Make a list of the things you have to do and follow it.  Never go to the grocery store without a shopping list.  Set short-term and long-term goals and assess your progress regularly.  If there’s a plan in place, it’s much harder to get sidetracked.

Take a minimalist approach.

Less is more!  Do a massive purge of clutter.  Unsubscribe to magazines and e-mail newsletters that you never read. Turn off the television. Unplug from all those gadgets. Eliminate all those little time wasters and things that tempt you into spending money.

Focus on a few causes or projects that are most important to you and let go of the rest.  It’s easier to juggle everything when you have fewer balls in the air.

Set a timer.

Have you ever logged on to your computer to pay a bill or check your bank account and discover that you’ve lost 2 hours of your day to Pinterest and Facebook?   Eliminate distractions by setting a kitchen timer or setting an alarm on your phone.  When you give yourself a strict time limit to get things done, you’re less likely to get distracted.  I’ve even known some women who set the parental controls on their TVs and computers to make sure they stay on task.

Keep a notebook handy.

Sometimes distractions pop up that you just can’t ignore.  For those occasions, I try to keep a notebook around to jot down things I need to remember or deal with later.  If I don’t have a notebook, I’ll use the notepad or memo function on my phone. This allows you to make sure you remember the things you need to remember without disrupting the project you’re currently working on.

Recognize what’s real and what’s hype.

It’s easy to get sucked into a good sales pitch or lured into the drama of a highly persuasive person. Make sure a deal is really a deal.  Figure out how to tell what needs attention and what doesn’t.

Figure out what your time is worth.

When I find myself getting distracted, I stop to think about what my time is worth.  For example, if you have a job that pays you $15 an hour, and you just spent the last hour playing Angry Birds, then you’ve just lost $15 in productivity.  Stop to ask yourself if what you are doing is helping you reach your goals.  If the answer is “No”  then stop what you’re doing and go back to your plan.

It’s not easy avoiding all those shiny objects trying to get our attention.  Having a few strategies can help.

How do you handle distractions?

Christina Brown is the creator of Northern Cheapskate, a blog dedicated to frugal living through coupons, freebies, and money-saving ideas. She lives in the rural north woods of Minnesota where she clips coupons, pinches pennies, and chases her three boys (a 7-year-old and twin 5-year olds) as a stay-at-home mom.

How to Deal with Distractions that Cost You Money is a post from Life Your Way

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Beauty & Fashion for Moms eBook Collection for $7.40! {BundleoftheWeek.com}

Beauty is more than skin deep, and this week’s bundle is designed to help you feel beautiful from the inside out! Discover the secrets to jump starting your energy, inspiration to get your weight under control, and beauty and fashion tips to help you prioritize yourself even as you juggle your busy life — all for 75% off, this week only!

With your purchase, you’ll get all five of the following ebooks:

Embracing Beauty by Trina Holden
The No Brainer Wardrobe by Hayley Morgan
Energy Explosion by Arabah Joy
Frumps to Pumps by Sarah Mae
100 Pound Loser by Jessica Heights

Get yours today!

Even if you’re not interested in this week’s bundle, be sure to sign up for the BundleoftheWeek.com weekly newsletter so you can be the first to know about the newest bundle:

Beauty & Fashion for Moms eBook Collection for $7.40! {BundleoftheWeek.com} is a post from Life Your Way

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Weekend Reading: May 11, 2013

source: mandiehman on Instagram

We’re currently at Disney World for the Disney Social Media Moms conference, and let me tell you…it truly is magical! Between the character sightings, the food, the fun giveaways and the free time to explore the parks we already know and love, our family is soaking up every moment. I’ll be sharing a little more about our trip next week, but in the meantime, you can follow me on Instagram (@mandiehman) to join us virtually!

This morning? We’re off to Merida’s Royal Coronation at the Magic Kingdom!

Our weekly newsletter is currently on hold , but be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss our next issue on June 1st!

Here are some of my favorite posts from this week. As always, check out what I’m reading to see the other posts that make me stop and think. You’ll find new posts all week long!

Family {Raising Adults}

A Nation of Wimps | Psychology Today


Diagnosing the Wrong Deficit | NYTimes.com


How To Keep Our Babies Safe | Glennon Melton

Health {And the Role Food Plays}


174,203 Ways to Measure Health (Besides the Scale) | Whole9



 Avoiding Monosodium Glutamate: One Family’s Story | Simple Bites

Homeschooling {Enjoying the Journey}

5 Ways to Manage Home and School | SimpleHomeschool.net


How to Enjoy Homeschooling {A Few Things I’ve Learned Along the Way} | SarahMae.com

Have a great weekend!

Mandi Ehman is the founder and publisher behind Life Your Way and the co-author of All in Good Time, as well as a wife and the homeschooling mom to four beautiful girls. She lives with her family on a little slice of heaven in wild, wonderful West Virginia and loves coffee, chocolate, easy meals, beautiful things and minimalist spaces.

Weekend Reading: May 11, 2013 is a post from Life Your Way

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CommentsLooks like you all are having a great time! What a wonderful ... by Joyce (and Norm)

Confessions of a Mac Owner: Are You a Photo Hoarder?

The following post is from Lauren Rothlisberger of Get Me Geeky :

If you have thousands of unorganized photos in your iPhoto, if you keep every photo you snapped, even the blurry one of your kid running by, if you have tons of iPhoto Events all listed by date… repeat after me: “I am a Photo Hoarder”.

Well at least you admit it, now it is time to do something about it. I have good news and bad news, the good news is I have a program for you, and it is 4 steps, not 12! The bad news? You need to set aside a block of time, this process can take awhile.

Here are the 4 steps to get your photo hoarding under control:

Step One: Import.

You may be thinking, “This doesn’t make any sense, I thought we were trying to get rid of photos!” True we are, but lets at least get them all in one place so when we start deleting and organizing we don’t muddle it up with old pictures getting imported in.

The simplest way to import photos is through iPhoto. Plug in your camera or iPhone into your computer. If iPhoto is not open it should launch. If it doesn’t, open it up. Your plugged in device should show up in the left-hand column.

To the right you see the photos that are on the camera. You can choose import all, or select particular pictures and choose import selected. If you would like to pick out only a few pictures click on the photo, hold down the command button, then click on another photo. Or you can also drag your mouse across several photos and select them all at once. Be sure to choose “import selected” if you do not want all the photos. Before you import, take a minute to look down at the bottom. To the left, check the box to auto-split your events. This ensures that your photos are split into events by date making it much easier to organize. You also can give your event a title here, if you forget or aren’t sure what you want to call it, you can always do this later.

Most of the time you will probably import from a camera or phone, however there may come a time you need to import photos from another location on your computer or an external hard drive. This is particularly important if you purchase a new computer and want to bring in photos from an old computer.  Let’s say that a friend sent her a few photos of her son playing soccer this season. She saved them to her desktop and now wants to bring them into her iPhoto. Go up to the very top of your screen to the menu bar, click on File and choose “Import to Library”. Browse to the picture location and click import. After importing, iPhoto takes us to our Events. You can always access Events in the left-hand column.

Step Two: DELETE, DELETE, DELETE!!!

You need to delete photos that are not really great. Now note I didn’t say, delete the bad photos. I said delete the photos that are not really great. Just because we can take 100 photos of our son’s third birthday doesn’t mean we really need to save all those. One day many years from now you want to be able to enjoy looking through your life’s events, you don’t want to feel like you are drowning in them. 

I notice people become emotionally attached to their pictures, even the really bad ones, throwing away a photo of your child doesn’t mean you don’t love them. Become a curator for your photos; this is your personal museum.

Step Three: Create events.

While I won’t dive into a full explanation here, it is best to use Events (not Albums) to organize your photos. Event organization certainly leaves room for personal preference, but I will give you a method that will lead to successful organization. It is easiest to mentally divide your events in two categories. One category, is for a specific event, say a birthday party or vacation and the second category is for less specific pictures over a period of time. For example, you could have an event for Fall 2012 or a more specific event for Todd’s Soccer Fall 2012.

Obviously events don’t necessarily naturally import into the events you want, they import by date. So, let’s say you import 20 photos from your camera one Saturday night. Half are from your son’s soccer game in the morning, and half from a birthday party that evening. As you might guess, all these photos import into the same event because they naturally create events by date. 10 of these pictures are from soccer and ten are from the birthday party. The most important thing you learn about events is how to split and merge them.

Step Four: Split and merge.

As you can probably guess splitting them divides the events and merging them combines them. In this case, we are going to divide the photos according to soccer or party. Then, we will turn the birthday party into a separate new event and merge the soccer pictures with an already existing Fall Soccer event.

Let’s get back into iPhoto and take a look at how we do that:

To go into the event with all the photos I’ll double click the front picture, by the way this picture is referred to as the “key photo”. Once we double click into this Event we see the 20 photos. Highlight the first ten photos from the soccer game, go up to the menu bar, under Events choose Split Event. As you can see now you have split those pictures into 2 set of ten. Let’s go back out to “All Events” and take the next step. Click on the date to change the name of the event with the pictures from the birthday party. Let’s call it “Nana’s 60th Birthday”. Now, there are still the ten soccer photos in the event titled by date. Sally already created an event for Soccer this season so simply take the new photos, and drag and drop them on top of the existing event. That will combine those with the existing event.

Bonus tip: Photostream

If you have photostream linked to your iPhoto account, that gives you another set of pictures to deal with. Every month there is an Event automatically created your your photostream pictures. Just treat this Event like you would any other and split and merge with specific and general events you have already put together.

Bonus tip: Key Photo

Looking to change the cover photo of your Event? It is simple. Go into your Event, choose the picture you want to display on the cover and then control-click on that photo. Choose “Make Key Photo” and you are set!

I hope this quick step process gives you the inspiration to come clean with your digital hoarding and start a whole new life as a digital organizer!

Are you a photo hoarder? Do you need help?

Lauren Rothlisberger blogs and consults over at Get Me Geeky. As a military wife and mom of three girls five years old and under, she loves focusing on technology and productivity and finding new ways to simplify her life. She recently started putting together MacMinis, which are easy to follow videos for Mac users, and also wrote an ebook, Evernote for Moms.

Confessions of a Mac Owner: Are You a Photo Hoarder? is a post from Life Your Way

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What You Need to Know About Preserving

The following post is from Kate of Modern Alternative Mama:

source: Kate

Three years ago, I was about to preserve my own food for the first time.

It was an exciting adventure.  And I was nervous.  I didn’t want to get burned, or break any glass, or mess anything up and make someone sick! But, I wanted high quality food, I didn’t want to pay a lot of money, and I’ve always been a “do-it-yourself”-er.  So, I jumped in.

It seemed like a lot of work that year to do just a few jars.  I think we did 40 – 50 jars of a few different food items.  In our third year canning, we did about 300 jars, and it didn’t seem so hard!

I’ve learned a lot about canning since then (and freezing — I freeze a fair amount too, and dehydrate some).  I want to share a bit of that with you!

Here’s a guide if you are a total beginner.

Make a plan now.

My first year, I kind of jumped in without a plan.  I somehow thought that I would save so much money (I do) that I would be able to get all the food I would need for $50 or so (I can’t). Take a realistic look at what you really want to put up and what the prices are on the fresh food items.  I can get tomatoes and apples for $0.50/lb. or less.  Other things, like blueberries, simply cost $2.50/lb. even you-pick, in season (it costs twice that at a store though).  Look around your area and find your best prices and do some math.  Set aside money.  Do it now, before you jump into preserving.

Grow your own…if you can.

My yard is too shaded to grow much besides a few pot of herbs, although we hope to move and change that soon.  If you can grow a garden, do it. If you don’t have space, do a few pots of herbs or a basket of strawberries.  It’s something, even if you never really get enough to put away.  It’s significantly cheaper to spend $50 up front to buy some plants than to buy all the food.  I’ve done the math, and I was amazed!

Get the equipment.

You don’t need to buy a fancy pot and canning kit.  Often times, what you have around the kitchen will work.  I use a big stock pot and a quilted pot holder instead of a canning pot and jar rack.  You will need jars, lids and rings for canning and that will be your biggest initial expense, but you can reuse the jars and rings year after year.  Try to get them used if you can, but check prices; I found some at Good Will that weren’t cheaper than buying new!  You can read more about the equipment here.

As for dehydrating, you can do that in an oven on low, by hanging herbs upside down (wouldn’t work so great for meat, though!), or laying outside in the sun on trays.  Or you can use a “real” dehydrator. I do love mine.  For freezing, you only need large cookie sheets and bags.

Start with just a little.

Don’t try to preserve everything your family will eat in the first year.  And don’t get caught up in delicious and beautiful foods that your family won’t eat.  I love the idea of strawberry jam, but it’s not something my family eats.  Choose two or three things your family eats a lot of and can that first.  It’s tomato and applesauce for us.  It will seem like a lot of work as you are learning, but will eventually become easy.

Don’t be afraid.

A lot of people are worried about making people sick if they can improperly, or getting burned during the process, or making the canner explode. I have used both water bath and pressure canners and as long as you follow the directions, you will not do this.  In three years and hundreds of jars, I have never made anyone sick, and I have never had a jar break.  

I did get burned once when I did something stupid.  (I tried to force an empty jar down into a pot of still-very-hot water, figuring when it got low enough, it would fill with water…it did…but the hot water sort of “exploded” and splashed all over my hand.  Don’t do that.)

Have common sense, follow directions carefully until you feel confident, but really — it’s not that hard!

Do you preserve food for your family?

Kate is a wife and mommy to 4 and is passionate about God, health and food. She has written 7 cookbooks and is planning to release more in 2013. When she’s not blogging, she’s in the kitchen, sewing, or home schooling her children. You can find her at Modern Alternative Mama or contributing to Keeper of the Home.

What You Need to Know About Preserving is a post from Life Your Way

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10 Simple Ways Using the Library Can Save You Money

The following post is from Tiffany of Mommy Goes Green:

source: University of California Berkeley

I adore the library and think it’s one of the most underutilized public programs we have available to us! Our local libraries offer so much more than just books, they have a wealth of material, programs and online resource available to save you money:

Internet Access

Using the Internet at the library can be a great way to chop $50 or more from your monthly budget.

If you don’t have a computer, they have one for you to use or you can bring your own and use their free Wi-fi.

Movies

We recently cancelled the DVD portion of our Netflix account because we can score both DVD and Blu-ray movies from the library for free. We also really like that most are available for check out for as long as one or two weeks.  We reserve movies we want online, and I am notified by email when they are available.

Magazines

I am a magazine junkie, but I only subscribe to a few favorites. I’ve been known to climb in a comfy chair with a cup of coffee and a magazine at the library. I also like that the magazines there have a longer life because they are used by many readers.

eBooks

Here’s the thing about eBooks – you don’t even need to own an e-reader! Most of them are available for download to your computer or mobile device so take advantage of all the free eBooks your library has to offer.

Music

Sometimes I just need to listen to a CD a few times before to decide that I don’t need to buy it.  I check them out from the library, blast them in my car for a week or two and then return them. I also take advantage of the library’s Freegal system, it allows me to download up to three MP3′s at a time and keep them as long as I’d like. I’ve saved myself a lot of impulse iTunes purchases this way.

Programming

The children’s programs have been particularly good for us during the winter when outside play is not always a good idea. Instead of paying for a pricey indoor play area, we can head over to the library for their weekly free programs. Our library offers crafts, movies, sing-a-longs and I’ve also seen teen classes for SAT prep and free tutoring.

Free Tickets and Passes

Our local library offers a family pass to the local museum, and the one I belonged to previously had tickets for every major museum, garden and historical venue in the area. It was a great benefit allowing us to try out many cultural events in our city for free. We ended up liking one of them so much that we paid for an annual membership.

Summer Reading Program

The reading programs offered by most libraries not only encourages kids to read throughout the summer, but you can often score several freebies for participating. We have gotten many free books, pizzas, ice cream cones and sporting event tickets when we completed the program.

Language Lessons

I’ve had my eye on some online language lessons, but then I discovered our library gives all members access to Mango Languages where we can study 11 different languages. They also offer an ESL course. This might be particularly helpful to homeschooling families.

Book Sales

I have stocked at least half our home library collection from the wonderful sales at local libraries. I try to attend several per year and have scored so many great books for $1 or less. Not only have I purchased many books in great condition, I’ve also purchased DVD’s, CD’s and puzzles. My advice: go early and go often, you will not regret it.

What special perks or programs does your library offer?

Tiffany is a wife and mom of two, living simply to indulge her family’s love of outdoor recreation and travel. You can find her contributing at Simple Homemade, The Creative Mama and her personal home on the web, Mommy Goes Green.

10 Simple Ways Using the Library Can Save You Money is a post from Life Your Way

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The Importance of Playtime for a Mom’s Soul

The following is a guest post from Elizabeth of Seasons with Soul:

source: Seasons with Soul

Sparkly Sparkly Crazy Hair is famous in our family. A My Little Pony who sells ice cream sundaes for $50 a pop, she also has a perennial bad attitude. And, if you argue with her, the price just skyrockets. We’re not sure how she stays in business, but she does.

Though my daughters are 10 and 8 now, and they haven’t really played ponies in years, they still remember Sparkly Sparkly Crazy Hair — the fun, goofy, off-the-cuff invention of my husband — and they’ve kept her. {Pretty amazing considering how many preschool toys have been donated and/or sent the way of a garage sale.}

Maybe you’re like me — the mom who all too often takes the weight of the world onto her shoulders and feels she doesn’t have time to play. Have you ever looked on wonderingly as your husband {or babysitter, or parent} gets down on the floor and just plays?

Have you ever wondered what would it be like to just let the laundry pile, and the dishes sag sideways in the sink, and the emails and notifications stack up unread?

Have you ever had the crazy urge to throw an old afghan on the grass and simply cloud watch with your elementary school kid just home from school, instead of diving right into homework, or rushing off to an activity, or starting dinner?

Have you ever imagined how amazing it would be to take the entire two-and-a-half hours of preschool to go to the local park by yourself {without your friend or your baby or your pulling dog} and just walk in sun and silence?

I have, and I’ve learned how freeing it can be to start saying “yes” to play. <- Tweet This!

Creativity for the Soul

I used to consider myself creative. I’d indulge in reading novels and creative writing and long walks — and all manner of things that fed my soul — both spiritually and creatively.

That was before marriage and housekeeping, jobs and kids.

Permitting myself the time and space to play, to intentionally pursue and nurture my creativity — well, that just didn’t fit into the schedule anymore.

Sound familiar?

We say to ourselves: If I don’t have time to take a shower, then on earth can I {fill in the blank … paint, design, compose}?

It’s a valid question, but if we insist on doing the math, we often end up frustrated. Many times, there aren’t enough hours in the day for the “must-dos,” let alone the “like-to-dos.”

That’s where play comes in.

As moms, we’re not going to have huge blocks of time to create {well, at least most of us won’t}. We are going to be tired some days and will fail to meet our expectations for pursuing creativity. There will be days where our best-laid plans to create are interrupted by a kid home sick from school.

So, we moms have to be creative about our time to create.

I do this in two ways:

1. I strive to find inspiration in the everyday by being fully present in the moment — in essence, turning work into play.

2. And, I block off time for a one- to two-hour grown-up “play date” by myself each week.

They’re both forms of play, and they’re both actually accomplishing important “work” for us creatives. These forms of play refresh, revitalize, and restock our creative reserves. For a type-A, can’t-sit-still, get-er-done mom like me, there’s something incredibly liberating about considering play work, that allows me to indulge in it more often.

When I can find inspiration in my daily duties as mom, well, that’s just the best. I’m accomplishing what I need to {washing dishes, pulling weeds, folding laundry}, but I’m also fully present and engaging. And, I often find God meets me there, and rewards my focus with inspiration, with ideas, and a feeling of refreshment.

The secret: Leave your smart phone, computer, book, magazine, agenda, behind. Choose to just be there. All there. Talk to yourself, if you have to. Calm that mind clutter with the present moment. Narrate details of what’s happening. Notice colors, smells, sensations. Get down on the floor and play My Little Pony beauty salon like you mean it. Make a light brite masterpiece with your son. Weed your garden. Chop vegetables. When you engage wholeheartedly, these mundane activities can be transformed into the divine.

The second form of play, the grown-up play date, has only two guidelines: It has to be you and you only {the cultivation of solitude being essential to your creativity}, and it has to be fun. You get extra points if it’s frivolous.

I’ve adapted the idea from The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron, a wonderful resource that’s essentially a three-month creativity workshop in a book. It revolves around the concept that your inner artist is a child that needs to play. Creativity, at its heart, flows from a sense of playfulness. And, creativity without playfulness will drain you and your reserves. You are, in essence, restocking your creative stores. You can’t keep drawing and drawing from them, without ending up with bare shelves.

It’s a beautiful irony: By actively engaging in play, you’ll be doing more work than you knew possible. <—Tweet This!

Join me at Seasons with Soul as I explore the intersection of creativity, spirituality, and motherhood with a new series, Spark Moms: Igniting Your Creative Passions for His Glory.

How do you embrace play? Do you wish you were more playful?

Elizabeth grew up on a small, 220-acre farm in the Midwest and lives today in the suburbs with her three littles (10,8, and 3), her husband, and their ditsy but lovable English Springer Spaniel. She’s a food freak, lover of all things DIY, and a reformed perfectionist. You can find her writing about faith, family, and nature at Seasons with Soul or follow her on Twitter @seasonswithsoul.

The Importance of Playtime for a Mom’s Soul is a post from Life Your Way

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10 Knobs You Can Make Yourself

The following post is from Lisa of The Pennington Point:

source: The Pennington Point

Knobs.  Something so small but they can make a big impact on a room.   A knob or drawer pull can determine if the room is contemporary, traditional, or in my case, wacky!

I love to use odd things as knobs.  Why not?  Life is an adventure!

Anything that is reasonable sturdy and can be drilled through can serve as a knob.  Baby blocks, dominoes, sticks, buttons, rubber bands, curtain finials, jewelry and wire can all be made into knobs or pulls.

Some of my favorite knobs in my home are some that I made with what I had lying around.  I painted a hallway cabinet and the old knobs were awful.  So I found some cheap wooden ones in a drawer and covered them in twine.  Now I love them!

Here’s another idea for those little wooden knobs.  Stain them and decoupage something on them….LOVE it!

source: icraftwithlove

Another favorite is my garden gate.  Why use a plain old handle when you can use something with real personality?!

source: The Pennington Point

When I saw this next idea I knew I would have to find a place to do this.  So easy with a vintage lock and eye hook!

source: BH&G

What about a simple cork knob?  Super cute!

source: Mrs. Greene

These clothespin pulls make me want to add a cabinet to my laundry room!

source: BH&G

And do not get me started on how much I love these ruler drawer pulls.  They make my heart melt.

source: BH&G

These stamped spoon handles are another swoon worthy idea!

source: Thistlewood Farms

If you can’t find something to drill through, you can always use rope!

source: Design Squish

I love these knobs made with faucet handles.  I’m going to make some of these for the backyard!  I don’t know where I’ll put them, but I will figure it out because I have to try this!

source: Wit & Whistle

I’ll bet you’ve got a cabinet or drawer you could wake up with some DIY knobs!

Do your drawers need a pick me up?

Lisa winds through her little Texas farm house every night, tucking in her nine homeschooled children and turning off lights. Then she scans the rooms & makes a mental list of what she wants to rearrange, restore or paint. Her husband of 26 years hangs on for the ride while she blogs about it over at The Pennington Point.

10 Knobs You Can Make Yourself is a post from Life Your Way

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Mobile Apps for Lupus

The following post is from Michelle of Mommy Misadventures :

Lupus is a chronic disease where the body’s immune system attacks one or more of the body’s organ systems, cause pain, inflammation and organ damage. Lupus can affect either gender and any ethnicity, however it is most common in women of color between the ages of 15 and 44. It affects 1.5 million Americans and 5 million people world wide. Lupus has no known cause and there is currently no cure.

May is Lupus Awareness Month and May 10th is World Lupus Day. I am one of the 1.5 million Americans diagnosed with lupus. As part of my contribution to lupus awareness, I’ve compiled a list of apps that I use to help me manage the daily challenge that come with lupus.

Pain/Symptom Management

Lupus is a disease that presents differently in each patient. It is also characterized by a flares, when disease activity increases and remission periods, when the disease takes a rest. Flares can sometimes be triggered by different things, such as stress or weather changes. Keeping a detailed diary of her symptoms is important to helping a patient learn more about her disease’s patterns.

Chronic Pain Tracker (iOS) – Lite, Premium $9.99


There’s a lot of pain trackers on the market but Chronic Pain Tracker for iOS is my hands down favorite. It allows you to create separate, custom profiles to track particular symptoms, especially helpful if you have multiple chronic diagnoses to keep track of. What I like best about Chronic Pain Tracker is that it has various pain tracking variables including type, intensity and location, as well as an analysis tool that allows you to compare data over time. Over time, the data collected by Chronic Pain Tracker can help a patient identify patterns or changes, as well as make it easy to share with doctors.

Productivity

Many patients with lupus experience what’s known as “lupus fog” which can affect everything from thought processes and memory.  For some, the fog is just a mild annoyance but for others, it can be debilitating.

I often deal with mild memory loss which can sometimes make it difficult to recall everyday information or what I’m supposed to be doing. To help me cope, I rely on productivity apps to help capture and access the information that I can’t always remember.

Evernote (web/Android/iOS)


From personal notes to client research, my Evernote account acts like my second brain. I have gotten into the habit of entering just about everything into my Evernote account and it has been well worth the time. I love that I can capture information from just about anywhere — manual notes, clipping web pages, photos, voice notes — and then access them whenever I need via Evernote’s search function. While I still prefer Chronic Pain Tracker for symptom tracking, Evernote is great for capturing questions or specific events that I want to talk to my doctor about.

Astrid (web/Android/iOS)


While Evernote allows you to create checklists within notes, the inability to sync with calendaring applications was always a deal breaker for me. Luckily, there’s a bunch of task management applications available that do just that. My personal favorite is Astrid because it has a robust notes and commenting feature, allowing me to keep track of the progress of a task. Plus, it syncs with Google, allowing me to see my tasks (and set reminders!) at a glance.

Dragon (Windows/Mac/iOS/Android)


My identity as a writer is second only to my identity as a wife and mother. Nothing can send me into a depression faster than being unable to write. More and more, I have found my hands being affected by lupus and some days they are so painful that typing is an impossibility.

Going a day without writing in some fashion just isn’t possible for me, I use Dragon’s speech recognition software to dictate. To be honest, it took awhile to get used to dictating vs. typing but the more I use it, the more comfortable I’ve become. Dragon is an expensive application but well worth it for the paint it saves me when I’m unable to use my hands.

Do you have a chronic illness like lupus? What do you use to help you manage your illness? 

Michelle Mista is an IT professional, writer and blogger with a love for all kinds of technology. She writes about tech tips and trends for work at home professionals on her portfolio blog and muses about motherhood at Mommy Misadventures. She is on the constant quest to balance life, work and geekery.

Mobile Apps for Lupus is a post from Life Your Way

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DIY for Kids: Make a Pillowcase Laundry Sack

The following post is from Kristina of Toddler Approved:

source: Kristina Buskirk

We’re going through a big remodel and pretty much every part of our house is a big mess. Add that to the fact that we are never home, and we are still adjusting to having three kids, and you can understand why life is a bit of a disaster. The thing that has suffered the most has been the laundry. There are laundry piles in the kid’s bedrooms and piles of clean laundry in the laundry room. It has been hard to keep up with everything.

To try and keep dirty clothes off the floor in the kid’s rooms we decided to have them help create some kid made DIY pillowcase laundry sacks inspired by this Ever-Open Laundry Bag idea from Martha Stewart. 

Last year we shared how we did glue batik tie dying. Since it was such a fun technique to use, we decided to use it again to help us personalize our laundry sacks.

Supplies:

Elmers glue
plain white t-shirts
different colored dye bottles (I bought ours at JoAnns in a tie dye kit.)
rubber bands
plastic bags
white pillowcase
embroidery hoop (12-14 inches)
grommets/grommet tool
hook & screws
paint (We are using extra wall color paint from each child’s room.)

Directions:

source: Kristina Buskirk

Cover your pillowcase surface with glue designs and then let the glue mostly dry.

Next you’ll want to dye your pillowcase. We used the simple instructions shared in our previous tie dye post, but you could also just dye it one color.

After we let the dye set for several hours, we washed and dried the pillowcases and then got them ready to hang up in the kid’s rooms. We loved how the glue designs turned out!

We used a grommet and grommet tool to secure the grommet, and then we wrapped the mouth of the pillowcase around the interior of the embroidery hoop. We secured the pillowcase in place using the outside piece of the hoop (and screw). We hung the bags on the bedroom door hooks so they could start collecting laundry.

source: Kristina Buskirk

I am so excited to have laundry off the floor and have such cute kid made hampers in each bedroom!

How do you keep laundry organized at your house? 

Kristina is a mom of 3 and a former Special Ed teacher for children with communication disabilities. She blogs at Toddler Approved as she looks for ways to make life a little more fun and creative with her kids while embedding learning into everything that she does. Kristina tweets as @ToddlerApproved and can be found on FB and Pinterest.

DIY for Kids: Make a Pillowcase Laundry Sack is a post from Life Your Way

© 2010-2013 Purple Martin Press, LLC | All rights reserved - This feed is provided for the convenience of Family Your Way subscribers. Any reproduction of the content within this feed is strictly prohibited. If you are reading this content elsewhere, please send an email to contact@yourway.net to let us know. Thanks.