Inspiration All Around Me

It's getting a little closer to the Holiday Season. So I thought I'd post a little about inspriration, and people who inspire me.

First off, Mother Nature is finally starting to inspire me for the holidays! We've gotten a millimeter or two of snow finally. Unlike the winter of 1996-1997, when we'd already had a major blizzard (November 17, 1996 - Heaviest recorded snowfall in a single day in 30 years) and had several feet of snow by this date, this year we haven't even had 5 full centimeters of snow (or 2 inches.) Without the snow, when you can still see brown and in some places GREEN! grass, it's hard to get into the holiday spirit! (By the way, in April of 1997, we had another blizzard, with over 50 CMs or 19.7 inches of snow. That lead to our Flood of the Century. Scary part is, that was our 100 year flood. We have yet to have our "500 year" flood. So, we've actually built a ditch and dyke system to protect our city when that flood happens!)

Other people who have really inspired me to do things that I have wanted to do, but not gotten around to in the past while are:

Terri from With An Angel on My Shoulder with her "OAMC". Once a Month Cooking is a great idea. While I haven't done it, when we were talking about it a while back, we wanted to get together and have a cooking day. While that never happened, I succeeded in doing some cooking myself a few weeks later, and ended up with several frozen lasagnes. But, then my Deep Freeze died and we lost all sorts of stuff, not limited to almost 50 lbs of home made sausages and all the lasagne. Sad... we're buying a new Deep Freeze on Friday though, so that will help me get back in the swing of things! Yay! Thank you Terri for inspiring me to make some meals ahead of time, so I have more time in the evening to spend time with my kids!

Jill from Controlling my Chaos: This woman is amazing. Pure and simple. I love her ideas. I've already made some of the little book marks she showed us (her "Followers") how to make. She's so great, she even just posted her layouts so all us lazy people had to do was put them on a flash drive and go to Shoppers and have them printed on photo paper! Like I said, AMAZING! took me all of 30 minutes to make, and that included copying the layouts, driving to shoppers, coming home, finding my cutters and finishing up! I am also really inspired by her magnet boards. My daughter and I are having trouble in the mornings, so I bought a magnet board for her (and my son) and I'm now in the process of following her directions to make mine. I'm going to put our morning routine on mine, so the kids know what they have to do in the morning, and they can have a little fun moving their magnets around to get their things done (brush teeth, eat breakfast, get dressed, put on boots, etc.) Hopefully by the time they are bored with it, it will all be routine. Then I can change up the board! Thank you Jill for inspiring me to make things that will make my family life a little less hectic.


Jen, a co-worker: Thanks for inspring me to make yummy breakfasts, ahead of time. Each day she has an egg and a muffin. I've started hard boiling eggs now ahead of time (which both kids LOVE) and making muffins for the week (which the kids enjoy "helping" with too). Makes the morning in our house just a little easier, and now I have a nice easy take along breakfast for work. I love it. Thanks Jen, for making my mornings just a little easier.

Now, if only I could get inspired to organize the front entry, get my Christmas cards done and mailed, and get my shopping done for the birthdays and Holidays that will come over the next six weeks (Let's see... we've got Jenn, Ter and Art before the 6th, then Zach, then my Dad on the 24th, my nephew on the 28th then my Mom on the 10th of January and my Father in law on the 13th! eek!) But, I'm getting there!

Thanks for being my inspiration! Who is yours?