Spilled Milk {teaching your kids how to deal with failure}

"No use crying over spilled milk", the saying always goes. Which is true... unless you're the one who spilled it OR you're the one that has to clean it up. That was how my morning started today, and I'm beginning to wonder who ever thought that was a good thing to say in the first place. Whoever they were, they obviously didn't have kids! However, they might have known a thing or two about grace.

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Intentional Parenting: Training Your Kids for Success

We didn't want to have endless fights with our kids and we especially didn't want to be reactive parents. We wanted to be purposeful, proactive, intentional. And then we stumbled upon the one truth that changed the way we raised our kids.

Busy Mom’s Guide: Managing the Mess

No matter how 'OCD' you naturally tend to be, no mom can turn a blind eye to the chaos forever. It begins to grate, like fingernails on a chalk board, and before you know it, you hear yourself making empty threats about giving away all their toys because they're messy, ungrateful, little minions of destruction. It was time for this Mama to take action.

A Few Of My Favorite Things

From caroling to the Christmas play, wrapping to reading Christmas books, testing the tree lights (again, and again...) or gorging yourself on every goody insight, Christmas is the best time to bring out your favorite traditions! Here are a few on my bucket list this year. I hope you enjoy! There is no two flavors on earth …

A Daddy’s Heart {A Father’s Day Tribute}

Father's Day was always a very special day in my house growing up. All six of us kids would elbow our way into the kitchen to help mom serve up the best breakfast of the year and then fight over who got to pour his orange juice. Some lucky duck would think quick and race into the closet to deliver his bathrobe and slippers. I'm pretty sure he got non-stop back rubs from the moment he woke up until he finally peeled us off to put us to bed at night {enter the Velcro sound effect}. We would shower him with gifts, homemade cards with scribbled names and always - always - mom would initiate a craft (usually something he could wear) that had all of our hand-prints on it. If you peek in his closet today you can still see the ratty sweatshirts with fabric-paint hand outlines boasting 2, then 3, then 4 and 5 then 6 sets of prints, names and ages. He wore them proudly and we loved to go up and find out hands throughout the year and compare how they had grown. Needless to say, we loved our dad - adored our dad - and there was one very simple reason for that: he adored us.

The Stay-At-Home Mom That Stays At Home

Hello, my name is Jasmine and I'm a Stay-At-Home-Mom. No, I'm not introducing myself at SAHM's Anonymous; more like the "stay-at-home-mom's that don't want to stay at home club". I can't help it - I can't sit still! NOT that I'm sitting still at home with my LIttle Miss and Mr. Not a chance! But …

How To Teach Your Kids About Modesty {And Why It’s Important}

I was at a BBQ recently with my 4-year-old daughter when she called me over to a little group of teenie-bopper girls she was sitting with. "Mom," she called in that infamous tell-tale voice, "We've got a problem." Upon my approach, however, I saw no spilled lemonade, everyone was smiling, and there wasn't a trace of blood anywhere. "What's the matter?" I asked, confused but not surprised. 4-year-old divas going on 35 always have a problem - they're like birds. They migrate to find drama and they usually go in flocks. "Somebody," she began, exaggeratedly peering around the group, "Has shorts on that are TOO short." She delivered her last line with all the confidence of an old grandmother lecturing those young whipper snappers, and no, to my horror and dismay, there was no way the comment went by unnoticed. It was well heard by everyone in the group. I wanted to melt into the floor. But she was right. Somebody DID have on shorts that were too short, and it was my 4-year-old that had the guile to address the problem.

Busy Mom’s Guide: 5 Family-Friendly Vacations {that aren’t Disney}

Now the real question: how (and where) to vacation on a budget, with kids? We love road trips, live for adventures, are suckers for tourist traps and - in a perfect world - would take a vacation at least once a month. But we also have two little kids who are allergic to their car seats after 5 minutes, want to touch EVERYTHING, and have attention spans that are about as long as their eye-lashes. So where do we go? Here's a few of our favorites! And the best part? They're not Disney!

When Mama Just Needs The Simple Things

I would like to state right off the bat, that this post is not a rant. I love {LOVE} being that crazy, frazzled, exhausted mama who hasn't showered in days and is missing an earring. No really, I do. But not because I'm a drawn to large amounts of laundry or enjoy self-imposed insomnia. I love my kids. I love being a mom and having kids. And I can't wait to have more! However, I also love things from my past life like naps, alone time, silence... some days you just need to have you some silence. So, to make myself feel a little better and to, hopefully, inspire a few tired mama's to laugh instead of cry at their current situation, I've made a list of my top 10 'simple' things that some days I would pay exorbitant amounts of money to have. It's kind of like searching Pinterest for deliciously sinful desserts while on a diet. Pointless? Yes. Dangerous? Probably. But we still do it and it makes us feel, if only for the moment, like we're in good company. {Did I take this analogy to far? Because if I lost you, you can find me getting chummy with a piece of red velvet cake.}

Raising My Little Control Freak {By A Control Freak, For A Control Freak}

"The apple doesn't fall far," my husband will chuckle to me after a power struggle with our 4-year-old going on 35-year-old. I sigh. "It's not my fault." He just looks at me. "Ok, maybe it's my fault, but it's not my fault!" And it's not. I didn't teach her to be a control freak... I didn't have …