Apps for Busy Parents

Parenting has often been described as a full-time job. Moms and dads have to organize children’s schedules, find kid-friendly places to eat, and remember all the things that their family needs from the grocery store this week. Fortunately, there are apps that can help busy parents to keep track of everything. Here are a few to try. Mom Maps Mom Maps helps moms and dads find places that are appropriate for family fun. There are over 28,000 locations supported by this app. It gives you directions to parks, playgrounds, children’s museums, kid’s indoor play areas, kid’s restaurants and more (including … Continue reading

Low Cost Ways to Party

We are planning to have a birthday party for my youngest son at our house in less than a month. We are in the middle of some chaos at the house (nothing new), so we have our work cut out for us to get everything ready. If money was no option, we might just hire things out, but as it is, we are opting for low-cost or no-cost ways to get it all done. Here are the ideas I am batting around today, as we start to make our plans. Cleaning in Pieces In the last few weeks, we have … Continue reading

Fire Your Maid Service and Get Your Family Cleaning

Admittedly, I wouldn’t say no to maid service, if it was free that is. Since it isn’t I have to rely on myself and my family to do the cleaning. Getting three kids to clean is a chore in itself, even when just has to do with cleaning up after themselves. Still, I’d rather have train the family to clean than pay for a maid. Plus, this way, my kids get some valuable real-life lessons, thrown in. Routine is Everything Establish some cleaning routines, and cleaning won’t take up so much time. It is easier to do a quick wipe … Continue reading

Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day

As single mothers we sometimes try to do it all. We’re working to support a family on our own while trying to be the nurturers we were meant to be. We run our children to their activities, make dinner, clean the house, do the laundry, and still manage to get up and do it all again the next morning without the help of a significant other. We want to be able to provide our children all the benefits they would have if we were a stay-at-home-mother, even though that is no longer possible. In short, we try to be superwoman … Continue reading

The Life of a Working Single Mother

The life of a single mother is packed. Her mornings are spent running around like mad trying to get all the kids ready for school, packing lunches, pouring cereal, gathering things for work, making sure the kids got their homework done, then rushing to get them to the bus on time, and if she’s lucky she may even get out the door in time for work. She spends the day slaving away at her job, then comes home to make dinner, help the kids with homework, do the dishes, get the kids bathed and ready for bed, stories, and finally … Continue reading

Scriptures that Strengthen Me as a Mother

Being a mother is one of the biggest responsibilities in this life. It is not an easy one. It is stressful, and complicated, and tests your patience like nothing I’ve ever experienced. It is wonderful too, but sometimes, I think we as moms need to be reassured, strengthened, and shown love. Unfortunately, we don’t always get that from the little people we take care of. But, there is one person that is there for us, and that is our Heavenly Father. Today I was thinking about some of the scriptures that bring me strength as a mother. And, I immediately … Continue reading

Freezer Pizza Dough

Make your own pizza dough, pop it in the freezer and have it available any time you like. The best part? You’ll be saving tons of money over the year in pizza costs, and with pizza dough from your freezer, you can make enough to cover everything from a busy weeknight meal to a kid’s birthday party. Now that is economical! Freezing this pizza dough recipe actually make the dough easier to work with, so you will make perfectly round pizzas with no tearing each time. You can also work the dough into a square pan or a rectangular jelly … Continue reading

Beating the Odds

Divorce has a wide array of effects on children. They are certainly faced with more hardships than your average child in a two parent home and have had to overcome things in their young life that they never should have had to endure. It can be difficult at times and affects all children differently. We’ve all heard the typical stereotypes of children from these broken homes. They don’t do as well in school, they are more likely to have behavior problems, they may struggle with their future relationships, and they are more likely to end up in jail. As a … Continue reading

Missing You

We’ve been running around all day. We had a blast, but we barely had a chance to sit down and breathe. By the time we finally got home Logan went straight to his dad’s, which was fine because I had a lot of cleaning to catch up on from the last couple of days. I ran from one thing to the next trying to hurry and get everything done before my little munchkin got home. As we were sitting in bed reading bedtime stories tonight he said, “Mommy, when I’m at Dad’s I miss you.” My little heart melted and … Continue reading

Help! I Need Motivation to Cook

Cook from scratch to save money. It is automatic. Unless you are springing for prime cuts of steak or exotic mushrooms (in which case, feel free to cook a meal for me some time), you will always spend more money eating out than you will cooking from scratch, especially when you factor in nutrition. Heating up a frozen pizza you picked up from the grocery store doesn’t count. Those things are expensive, too (and tiny; they are very tiny). Still knowing something is good for you and your budget and actually doing it are too different things, as most of … Continue reading