My One and Only Home

by Emily Nagel

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By: Emily Nagelcomment

Our 2nd home is quite different from our Jefferson St. house.  We basically could move in all our belongings and enjoy it,  unlike the Jefferson house that took a few years (and a few $) to make it what we wanted.  However, one area we noticed was missing from our new home was a location to keep our calendar, notes, invitations, and school papers.  We picked the wall in between the kitchen and powder room because its a nice central spot for my family.

I first did some research on Pinterest to [Read more…]

Make a Magnetic Chalkboard Wall

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Magnetic Chalkboard Wall

I had been putting it off for a while, but this was the weekend to make a magnetic chalkboard wall in the kitchen.  My kids Bubbe pointed out one day that this spot in our kitchen would be perfect if it had magnetic walls.

The old owners of our house were wine enthusiast and had a little alcove built into their kitchen for a beautiful rod iron wine rack that housed many a bottles of vino.  When they moved out they took that wine rack with them.  We were left with a tall and very narrow nook in our kitchen which houses our garbage can.  Did I mention that there is a spot light in there too – fancy garbage can location.

Over time I started decorating the nook with my children’s artwork.  It is a great place to rotate art and display their latest projects which they proudly point out to friends and guests who visit our home.

My husband was taking the kids over to the local nursing home where we volunteer, so I had three free hours!

The walls were already clean, so first I taped off the area and laid down some old t-shirts to keep splatters from landing on the floor and baseboard.

Next I put on disposable gloves – buy a lot.  The magnetic paint is [Read more…]

Packed Lunches Made Simple

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Packed Lunches Made Simple

Sunday night is when I used to start mumbling about the lunches I need to pack for the next 5 days.  Aggh, I need to get the lunch box packed!

Its certainly not a hard tasking, and I only have one school-ager right now.  All I need to accomplish is making a kid-friendly sandwich and rounding out the meal with healthy sides and a drink, but it is ALWAYS a pain. I didn’t really understand why this task drove me nuts until one night I realized it took me at least 15 minutes every school night to make a packed lunch. That is when I took matters in to my own hands.

I started prepping. Sunday night pull out five sandwich tubs, a loaf of bread, my peanut butter and jelly and a [Read more…]

8 Simple Kid-Friendly Christmas Traditions

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Christmas Pie Table

December is one of the busiest months for me, and not for the obvious reason. In our household we have two birthday’s to celebrate, one anniversary to commemorate, and a Christmas celebration to host.  Our month gets filled up quickly when you add in the gift shopping, Christmas card writing, Holiday party hopping, and what not.   Even with the full social calendar we make time for our Holiday traditions.  These are 8 simple kid-friendly Christmas traditions worth trying. [Read more…]

10 craft items you need for your school ager

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Schoolager Crafts

I remember when I was in high school  I had a friend who asked if I wanted any of her parents craft supplies they were planning to throw away.  I gladly took many of the items, but I also asked why her parents decided to unload these fine items.  She simply explained that the only reason they had them in the first place was that they had kids in school and didn’t need them anymore.  As an adult and a parent I finally understand them.  There are craft items you just need stocked in your house when you have kids: [Read more…]

Birthday Card Banner

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Card Banner

Are you looking for a way to display your birthday or holiday cards?  We had so many sweet cards from my little one’s birthday that I decided they needed to be displayed somewhere other than [Read more…]

Save Spend Share Jars

By: Emily Nagelcomment

Savings Banks

We were trying to decide how to approach money management with our children at a very young age.  After doing some research we came upon Dave Ramesy, a Financial author and radio host who helps people get control of their finances.  He recommends that financial education be taught starting at a very young age. One of the ways is to use a system which allocates money into savings, spending and giving categories.  We took a similar approach in our home.

Allowance is handed out once a month in our house.  The amount you get depends on your age (three year old = three dollars).  The money is not tied to chores as we expect the kids to keep up with their family responsibilities with our without allowance. What we really hope the allowance is doing is teaching them, at a young age, a thing or two about money.

The kids have three places where they keep their allowance which they split into thirds each month.   There is jar for savings, spending and sharing.   [Read more…]