Family Management Solution (for now anyway)

Chore Time Woes

Chore time at our house usually turns into me barking orders and what's-taking-so-longs and threats of no swimming, no teevee, and no food.  So I looked through all of my favorite Pinterest and other-mommy-blog ideas and came up with one that is working so far at my house.  It's colorful enough to keep the kids interested, versatile enough to keep me interested, and cheap enough to keep hubby interested.

In addition to chore time troubles, we suffer from "CanIPlayYourPhoneItis" and while our chores were going undone, our phones batteries were draining as Angry Birds Star Wars and Littlest Pet Shop stole lots of our brain time.  So I also put together a little system to help us out with managing our technology time.

Both are included in this little Power Point that you can print off and change up to fit your own family's needs.

For Chore Time, I printed out a chart for each chore-capable child and taped it to the fridge.  Then I cut out little chore stars and glued them to circle magnets I'd bought a while back at Michaels.  Each morning (or whenever I decide it's time to dispel the tendency towards summer laziness I am too quickly passing on to my offspring) I put three or four stars on the "to-do" side of the chart and when the children finish each one, they can come move that star to the "Done" side. I try to keep it even with fun stuff (open the curtains, get the mail) and boring, time consuming stuff (clean your room, put toys away).  They can do these chores in any order they wish, as long as they get it done. All TV and promises for swimming or phone-playing are suspended until all of their chores are in the done pile. Usually it doesn't take too long.  Usually.

The benefits of this system so far have been that the kids see an end in sight for their chore time and aren't just finishing one thing and having no idea what they'll have to do after that.  And, related, it takes away the seeming-capriciousness of my task assigning.

Chirp...Tweet...Ding...Whack...Whiiiiiiine

Another problem we've been dealing with is too much asking to play on our iPhones.  Admittedly, one of the main impetii (my word) for dealing with this problem is so that I would have more time to play my iPhone.  But also, I don't want the cherubs wasting hours (I know, it's terrible) playing addicting (albeit great for hand-eye coordination) 99c apps.

Thus the second little system. Right above our new chore charts, I have put three little folders.  Each Sunday morning I put 8 tickets in each folder. These tickets are good for 30 minutes of tune-out time on an iPhone or computer.  They get 8 per week. They can use them up as quickly as they want to (within reason) but when they're gone, they're gone until the next Sunday.  Saturday night, if there are any left, they get paid 25c apiece for them.  So far, my littlest addict has averaged about 25c per week and my not-as-addicted child earns about $1.50 per week for the time she doesn't spend playing on my phone.

**I'm having trouble loading the ppt into the blog, so if you leave your email address in the comments section, I'll email it to you**

Landscaping Before & After: Spring Photos

I totally missed taking pictures when the lavender azaleas and dogwoods were blooming, but here are some from this week of the other plants which have leafed out since the winter.

Hosta's on the North side of the house.

When these hydrangeas bloom I'll post pictures again.

White Encore Azaleas between the deck and cart house.

Variegated Liriope, Little Gem Magnolia, and Loropetalum.

The muscadines are leafing out.  I wonder if we'll have fruit this year. ??

Strawberries and blueberries.

Plum and Nectarine trees. These do have little bitty fruits on them. :)

Behind the cart house and the apple trees.

Landscaping Before & After: Winter Photos

Here are some photos of the finished product during the winter.  As soon as I get the springtime beds weeded (Thank you, rain, we've had enough for now!), I will take those pictures.  Hopefully some azalea blooms will still be left.  

New Mailbox Location

Curvy walkway leading from mailbox to front door and around to the driveway.

Walkway leading from driveway around to the patio and deck in the back.

Outside the sunroom.  On this side of the stepping stones are the blueberry bushes and strawberry plans. the spring pictures will show their progress.

No more holly!  These plants remained super green all winter!

Ferns, azalea which was transplanted from the front yard and hydrangeas which were original.

Encore azaleas, Japanese Maple.

New landscaping around the cart house.

Little gem magnolias.

Apple Tree number one and more blueberries.

Kenneth's muscadine trellis.

New entrance with stamped concrete walkway.  Stain color is "cola".

Walkway leading back towards the driveway.

Walkway lighting and accent lighting on the japanese maple.

Stamped Concrete.  We love it.

Landscaping Before & After: The Work

 The work began in the winter.  We had an excellent team of guys from Four Seasons. The vision of Adam and the brawn of the crew were so amazing to witness.  Our entire family was delighted to have them doing this work and each day there was something new to see.  First began the tear out work:

A stack of the tons (literally?) of scalloped brick border material we removed.

Hello, Mr. Adam!

Bye bye, holly bushes!

My favorite piece of equipment. It removed the lattice and the octagon sidewalk.

No mo' bushes.  The last one eventually went away too.
 (As did the bike, unfortunately. Thank you, Christmas thieves.)

?Donde esta la holly?

R U Nekkid?

We left the hydrangeas and the river birches,
but everything else is gone gone.

The kids got quite an education.
Here is Newt helping install the new water meter.

After the water meter was installed, the planting began.  And after the planting, the new front walk. As mentioned in The Assessment, there was no sidewalk leading from the driveway to the front door. The one that did lead from the front door to the mailbox made a circuitous journey through an octagon. After The Octagon was hauled away, we used extension cords and spray paint to lay out and re-lay out our desired new walk.  The day the concrete truck arrived was an exciting one in more ways than one.  Unfortunately, this is the only picture I got that day. In case you aren't aware, concrete is heavy and it had been raining a lot.  Have you ever seen a concrete truck buried to it's axle in someone's front yard? I have.

The concrete truck arrives!  This is the day that my
three-year old learned that it was a concrete truck.
Not a cement truck.  A concrete truck.

After the path was poured, and stamped, we waited six or eight weeks and then stained it.  And that was it. We were so pleased with how it turned out.  Next up, winter after pictures!

Landscaping Before & After: The Assessment

Landscaping Before & After: The assessment

This is our house as we bought it, just before our landscaping crew showed up.  What we didn't like: the entire house was surrounded by holly bushes.  The sidewalk led straight from the mailbox at the street, through this "interesting" octagon thingy in the middle of the front yard, to the front door.  There was no sidewalk leading from the driveway to the front door. Also, there was the lovely scalloped brick border going around the existing flower beds.

Front Before

Front Before

Before: the mailbox area

Before: holly bushes all around

Before: this broken trellis hid the HVAC (the HVAC was prettier than the trellis)

And moving on to the back yard...the holly bushes and brick scallops continue. Also, there was more trellis leading from the driveway to the back patio and deck, a fish pond where the fish were seldom seen, a ginormous bush in the back hiding the view of the golf course, and lots of big, dying cedar trees.

Before: Trellis and pea gravel leading to the back patio.

Before: more trellis

Before: Trellis view from the sunroom

Before: holly in the back, and the fish pond

Before: holly holly holly (and monkey grass)

Before: side yard...more holly and some hydrangeas (which we kept)

Before: dying cedar and monkey grass around the cart house

Before: meh

 Before: Cart house monkey grass

Before: the big bush in the back yard

Before: oddly spaced crepe myrtles