The golden rule and Grace, we are teaching them but are we living them?

Are we holding our children to a higher standard than we hold ourselves? 

Are we as parents following "The Golden Rule" we expect our children to follow? 

How about Grace? We certainly expect and at times take advantage of the Grace of God, do we extend that same Grace to our children?


I see it all of the time, and sadly I do it all the time. You know that situation where your 5 year old does something that they "know" they should not be doing, like painting the bathroom mirror with your new lipstick, then you lose your cool and yell, punish and humiliate them as though they just locked the doors and then set fire to an orphanage? Yeah. I think we are doing it wrong.
We *know* we shouldn't have lost our cool, yelled, some parents spank or worse, some call their children names, some even make them do things like scrub the toilet with a tooth brush........we KNOW better, we really do. But what is the typical response? While laughing with our mom friends we retell the story with a chuckle and say" we are just human, thank God for Grace!".
So not only are we completely unrepentant, we think it's *OK* for us adults to make mistakes because God gives us Grace. He doesn't scream at us, physically hurt us and humiliate us.......
Aren't we supposed to be modeling Godly behavior for our children?
Why are we holding our children to a higher standard than ourselves? I'm not saying we shouldn't discipline. But I think if we were better examples and worked harder to DISCIPLE our children, we would need to discipline less.

Today I am going to start remembering these verses and applying them as a mom;

"And just as you want men to do to you, you also do to them likewise."
 Luke 6:31 
"The one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as he walked." 1 John 2:6

Will you join me? Let's start treating our children with the Grace and Love that God shows us :)

Until next time!    ~ Allicen <3

How I keep up with my children's growing feet!

Hi y'all!  :)
This morning I am going to share how I keep up with the near constant growth of my children's feet!
 About six or seven months ago one of my little ones started complaining that their shoes were hurting their feet. I checked their shoes and sure enough they were WAY too small! I found this great printable shoe sizing chart >>  "Size 'em right" Shoe sizing chart, printed it and was shocked to find his feet had grown 2 1/2 sizes since the last time I had checked!! 0.0
Since we try to avoid buying new shoes for children (because not only do they grow out of them quickly, they tear them up!), we try to buy the next shoe size up before they need them. 
Now what I do is once every 6-8 weeks I pull out my sizing chart, measure everyone's feet and write the sizes and date on a sticky note and keep it in my wallet. Now whenever I am at goodwill and they have shoes half off or a bunch of new additions to the racks I don't have to guess sizes and can buy for current needs and future needs if they have what I am looking for! 
Not only has it helped us avoid sore feet and squished toes, it has helped us save a lot of money! We spend $0.99-$1.99 per pair of shoes and $1.49-$2.99 per pair of boots, that is a BIG savings compared to even the clearance shoes at shoe stores or even Wal-Mart! 
I hope this information is helpful, until next time!

  ~ Allicen

Post of randomness :)

Ok y'all, what I am about to tell you has changed my life! Are you ready????>>>

Don't buy multiple colored/design socks!!!!!

I have taken the advice of having all black socks for my husband and sons and all white socks for the girls! We no longer have the constant issue of "Has anyone seen the match to this?!"!
It's amazing that just changing the color of our socks has reduced the chaos in our little house!

I am Also working on reducing the the quantity and variety of our wardrobes. Just the basics for our family of 7 add up to a lot of laundry, add to that the fact we have such a hodge podge of styles and fabric types it just complicates the laundry process. We also don't need 5+ sets of jammies for each person! I am realizing that having more clothing and dishes means we just enable ourselves to put off doing laundry and washing dishes until we are completely out of clothes and dishes. That means by the time we finally get around to washing those things they have turned into a huge mountain to be conquered, and ain't nobody got time for that lol!

Another thing that I have learned is that while it's good to buy used and save the difference in most cases, and sometimes the cheaper new items are just as good as the more expensive, sometimes you save money by spending more money up front and sometimes you save money by buying new. We have realized that with things like large appliances it is best to buy new so you get a good warranty. The same applies to tires and parts for vehicles, if you can buy new do so. Also be sure to research the products before buying sometimes there is a good reason in price difference (as we have found to be the case with things such as tires).

Well those are a few of the things going on in my house and mind!

Until next time!  ~Allicen <3