The holiday season is notorious for inciting panic in women and if they don’t know how to deal with that shoulder-burdening aspect of this time of year, they’re destined to miss what the holidays are really all about…PEACE, JOY, HARMONY. We need ME time to re-charge.

I recently appeared on a local television talk show in Portland, Oregon, to talk about the free day I have in my weekly plan. To bring up this topic, this time of year when most women who work outside their homes can barely find a free hour let alone a free day each week, seemed absurd!

If you'd like to watch that segment, just click on my little Christmas girl.

Mom Let the House Fairy Help

If you'd like to listen to this blog, it was recorded so you could get some mindless job accomplished while you listen.

Chances are, if your kids are in a mess it’s because you’re in one too. But there’s hope. Your children can get organized when you make it fun. What will make the difference? Magic! But in order to put magic into the mix, you’ll need to call upon your children’s imagination. Think of the power you have around Christmastime with Santa and his elves lurking around and checkin’ his list. Kids are natural imaginers! And that’s where the House Fairy comes in!

It's hard to ignore the fact that the holidays are here! We’re flashed with tons of emails squawking about Holiday Sales on everything from food and kitchen appliances to fake Christmas trees and yard decorations. We get inundated with sparkly catalogs hyping the urge to get new furniture (for holiday entertaining) and glossy pages advising us to consider getting new china for that holiday table and maybe even a new car (red or green of course).

We complain about the commercialism and materialism of the holidays, but put us in our local Starbucks slurping a yummy Caramel Brulee Latte from that festive red and green cup and we brim with excitement and anticipation about spending time with family and friends. Love is really what the holidays are all about.   

Starting with Thanksgiving, a holiday that marks our gratitude, to Christmas with its message of peace, love and joy, it’s a magical time and love is behind it all. The 5 words to remember are:

Let’s think about the month of November for a sec.

If you live where there are seasons, you're lucky, because you get to enjoy the winter weather of November. November is a cozy time of year. Time for crackling fires, homemade stews, baked apples and roasted walnuts.

Mother Nature has many lessons to teach us in November. She uses this month as her reminder to us to streamline our homes. It’s her month for letting go of last year’s stuff by stripping her trees bare and putting her plants into a deep, winter coma. November reminds us to slow down, rest, and hibernate a little. She gives us longer nights and shorter days….hint, hint. She also uses November to remind us that life can be harsh sometimes, but it doesn’t last forever.

How many Novembers have you lived? Does the thought of November bring memories of family get-togethers centered on turkey feasts, or are they filled with chaotic recollections as the holidays loomed? Have you been organized in any of your Novembers? Are most of your November memories good ones?

Maybe these illustrations will call up some fun memories for you.

Yesterday was Halloween and Terry and I had such fun in our costumes! We dressed as Trump and Clinton. (I actually planned ahead and bought wigs on the internet.)

Our main stop was to the bank to get crisp five dollar bills for our trick-or-treaters (we just have six children in our neighborhood who have been coming to our house since they were babies). Our banker and the tellers were all dressed as minions and we enjoyed laughing at each other. They wanted to know why our bank accounts don't reflect all that money we have! 

If ever there was evidence that we all have an inner child just waiting for any opportunity to play, Halloween certainly gives us a reason to let them out.

Is it time to change your dream?

Are you a day dreamer? Do you like to imagine yourself going to exotic places? Do you love to look at magazines and dream of wearing fancy clothes and jewelry? When you watch movies do you like to look at the back drops and what the characters are wearing and eating and the cars they're driving? Isn't it fun to imagine what it'd be like to be wealthy or slim? Be sure to have day dreaming as part of your daily routine.

We SHEs (Sidetracked Home Executives) are creative, so we spend a lot of time thinking about what it'd be like if....this or that happened. We're really good at visualizing what we want and our lives reflect much of what was in the begining, just a dream. When I was young I dreamed of living in a cozy, happy home on a high hill in the country. I dreamed it into reality, but it took 30 years, but you know how time flies.

If you've had some of your dreams not come true, maybe it's time to change the dream to fit who you are now.

A few years ago my son Michael and his wife Meredith were invited by the FOX network to go to the Super Bowl and Terry and I were invited to babysit the two grandchildren Jack age eight and Brooklyn age eleven. I have such fun with these two! (They're probably 2 and 5 in this photo.

The first night we were with them, when it was bedtime they both wanted me to tell them a bedtime story. Since they slept in separate rooms I sat in the hallway with the light on so they could both see me if they sat up and it was easy for them to hear me. I love to make up bedtime stories because I never know what I’m going to say myself. I guess I should say Nelly (my inner child) loves to hear my stories or maybe she’s the one who makes them up? Whatever, I love to do it.

Here's the story:

Rabbit Ears, Elephants, and Donkeys

The little boy in this video is Jackson Brace, one of my grandsons. He’s fifteen now, and taller than his sister Brooklyn, who is also in the video. He has gone on to other interests, but he can still name any bird when asked. As you'll see, his sister is not that excited about watching birds, but she was a great sport.

We were at a popular wildlife refuge in Ridgefield, WA, where birders come from all over the country.

Do you get confused by political issues,

or are you a well-informed voter when you head to the polls?

God bless America, but God help the uninformed voters!

In the state of Washington, our Secretary of State sends out a Voter’s Manual before every election. It’s quite thick, probably a hundred pages at least. In it you can read about and better understand the candidates' positions, ballot measures and issues, if you’re a Yale graduate of the law, that is. Take ballot measures for example. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition:

A ballot measure is a piece of proposed legislation to be approved or rejected by eligible voters. Ballot measures are also known as "propositions" or simply "questions."  Ballot measures differ from most legislation passed by representative democracies; ordinarily, an elected legislature develops and passes laws.

I’ve never read an explanation of a ballot measure on a ballot, that I’ve clearly understood. And if you’re the average citizen, it’s my “proposition” you’ll be wasting your time trying to understand what they’re writing about. If they want us to understand, why don’t they make what they write understandable? Do you think it’s because they want us to be confused? Using big words is just another way to show off one’s education, not one's IQ. There’s also power in knowing more words than the masses. You get to use words with each other and make the masses feel stupid.

There are about ten well-known marital fights that disturb our peace and if you’ve been married very long, you’ve probably had most of them.

But with the advent of GPS, there’s one less marital fight to have; “the map fight.” Most husbands expect their wives to be natural navigators. Most wives are not. The map fight most commonly occurs when the husband is driving on an unfamiliar freeway at 70 mph and he tosses the map to the wife and says, “Where are we?” If she’s like most women, she can only read the map when the car and the map are going in the same direction and that’d be north. South is out of the question, because it’s just too hard to read a map upside-down.      

When I got married, I wasn’t prepared for the real world of marriage. My parents had three four fights in their entire marriage of 60+ years. It was always over the same issue. Dad would lose track of time, fishing and as it started getting dark, mom would get worried. The fight looked something like this. He’d come in the door wearing his waders and holding his fly rod in one hand and a couple trout on a string in the other. He’d hang his head with a beseeching, I’m-sorry look and mom would shake her head, tighten her lips and sigh with a mix of disgust and relief that he hadn’t drown. My sister and I would run to our room, sure this would end our happy home because they were going to divorce and we’d be put in foster care.