Ingredients:

1/2 bag lentils (any color will do I usually use brown)
1lb Polska Kielbasa
1 or 2 potatoes diced small
1/2 large onion diced small
spoonful diced garlic
couple shakes of salt
1 tsp Marjoram
1 large can diced tomatoes
slices of swiss cheese

What you do:

Slice kielbasa (I usually cut slices in half so there seems to be more meat).

Brown kielbasa in a large pot.

Add potatoes, onion and garlic cook 5 minutes or so to blend the flavors.

Add salt and marjoram cook for 5 min to blend flavors

Add rinsed lentils and 8 cups of water.

Stir it up and bring to a boil.

Reduce heat and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add tomatoes and lower the heat.

Cook until lentils are your desired tenderness.

Serve topped with a slice of swiss cheese.

Enjoy!

They got the to front of the line and she said oh no way.

I guess my mom was talked into sitting in Santa’s chair with her, and the elf snuck this picture. My mom wasn’t even aware there was a picture. She only found out about it when she stopped in the company store and the ladies all told her she HAD to see this amazing picture of Hanna (my mom shops there a lot and everyone knows her lol) This is my FAVORITE picture. I just love it.

It is SO Hanna, and I love the twinkle in Santa’s eye. Maybe next year she’ll tell Santa what she wants for Christmas, mabye not.

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Enjoy!

She had a BLAST at the fair. She was well behaved, she listened, she had sooooo much fun, and it was a joy to spend the day with her and watch her experience all the delight of the fair.

I took lots of videos, which you can find on my youtube channel. (now that my video camera software is working properly I will be adding plenty more video ~ since it’s so easy. If you want to see new videos just subscribe to my channel and you’ll be notified when I add videos) I thought I would post some of the pics here since so everyone can see them.

While we were in the petting zoo the giraffe was peacefully sleeping. I’ve never seen a giraffe sleep with its neck wrapped around like this, it was so sweet.

Hanna LOVES horses. I’m not sure where it came from, but she truly loves horses. She has been talking about riding a horse at the fair for MONTHS. She was so excited to ride the pony. His name was Easy ~ now her rocking horse is named Easy too.

She and her Grandma have been talking about riding a camel for quite a while. I wasn’t sure she would really do it, but she did. She loved it. She was so much more outgoing and brave than she has ever been this year. She tried things I never expected her to follow through with this year.

The roller coaster was another thing I didn’t think she would actually do. She rode around about 3 or 4 times and seemed to be enjoying it. (There’s a video of the ride at Youtube), just after I turned off the video to grab the camera she got scared and started hanging on for dear life.  She came off the ride saying “I didn’t like that”, even now when I play the video she reiterates that fact.

Now ice cream on a stick I knew she’d have no problem with

There she is Future Farmer of a America. She drove the big orange tractor and got the t shirt to prove it. She really enjoyed that, even though she needed a little help steering so she didn’t run into the fence.

That’s about it. It was a long LONG day, but we had so much fun.

Yesterday we were driving back from Wichita, my mom was with us. Hanna was in the back seat being relatively quiet, but I heard these quiet spitting sounds.

I have a HUGE issue with spitting. I think it’s disgusting. We’ve been going round and round about spitting lately ~ as Hanna has decided it’s super fun to spit. GROSS.

So anyway ~ I hear these small spitting sounds and I’m like what the heck is she doing back there. So I asked her. She exclaims ~

It’s SPIT PAINT!!

I look back and see she is covered from head to toe with spit ~ her hair is wet with spit. She is spitting in her hand, and then painting her entire body with spit.

DISGUSTING!!!!

I begin telling her how spit paint is pretty close to spitting and we don’t spit ~ yada yada yada . . .

In the middle of my very calm lecture about spitting she exlaims at the top of her lungs

But MOOOOOM… spit paint is GRRRREAAAAT!!! (imagine tony the tiger yelling great and that’s what she did)

At this point ~ I can’t even contain myself any more. I burst out laughing. I mean really ~ what kind of imagination does it take to come up with spit paint, and then be so overwhelmingly ecstatic about it???

I had to give the kid some credit. I never in a million years would have thought up spit paint.

My second thought ~ after I wiped the tears from my face was

SCHOOL!! she had to have learned this from school ~ and jokingly wondered what the hell I had gotten myself into.

It all starts with a call from the coroner. It’s possible Kate’s brother in law has been found dead in the bay. That day she goes into labor. Once the baby is born and she gets home the mystery unfolds. Kate dreads going back to corporate America, having to leave her precious newborn.  As she begins to unravel the mystery she starts thinking maybe she could be a PI and be able to be home more with her baby.

The thing I particularly love about this book was how spot on the feelings she has are. The first time mom feelings about herself and her newborn daughter are portrayed exactly right. It took me back to the first few weeks I was a mother, and I could totally relate to Kate, her feelings, and her dilemmas.

This book is an easy read, it pulls you in and keeps you interested from beginning to end. The author even caught me by surprise at the end ~ which I always love.

It’s a good thing I got this book on a rainy Saturday, because it was tough to put down, and I ended up devouring it all in one day!!

If you like a good mystery I highly recommend “Bundle of Trouble A Maternal Instincts Mystery” ~ if you are a new mom, or can remember being a new mom, I double recommend it!

She can turn on the computer. Turn on firefox. click to her favorite websites. Choose the game she wants to play.

She can also pick out the video she wants to watch. Put it in the computer and play it.

She can get to youtube and start her playlist to listen to her favorite songs.

She can go to the site that plays her favorite shows, go to the page with all the options and pick the one she wants.

Very interesting.  I guess she just learned by watching me do it for her a few times.

While I was being amazed by her computer savvy I started thinking.

She will probably never use internet explorer, in fact, as much as she knows about the computer already she doesn’t even know what internet explorer is.

Did you hear some 20 something cops picked up Bob Dillon and didn’t know who he was. He didn’t have ID on him so they had to take him back to the hotel where the hotel staff identified him.

My hubby was like how can you NOT know Bob Dillon??? But really, if I was 20 in this day and age not sure I’d know who he was either.

It just stuns me all the things we take for granted may be completely unkown by the next generation.

I guess I’m just getting sentimental and nostalgic on this rainy Saturday morning.

Uh OH ~ she just said “I’m starting a pillow fight ~ you ready? Pillow fight!!”  Whack

Ack ~ I’m being attacked by pillows ~ gotta go defend myself.

I finally, after 10 years, was able to grow 3 canteloupes this year.  Granted, I didn’t plant them, they just came up outta no where, but still ~ they count Anyway, I went out today to check on the garden only to find my canteloupes had been attacked by the damn chickens.

not only that they had trampled the whole area. grrr.

They of course left the brussell sprouts completely alone lol

As we were walking back to the house, after the chickens got a good talking to, we noticed one chicken had grabbed a little snake and was very happy. She ran away so she didn’t have to share her yummy with anyone else.

Then I was checking out my pumpkin ~ which just like the canteloupe showed up out of no where. I can’t believe my hubby hasn’t mowed it down yet considering it is growing right out into the front yard.

Well low and behold it’s got pumpkins!!

That’s about it from the garden today.

We went out and looked in on them from the ladder, and hubby said one of them almost came to him ~ wow. We did get a bunch of cool shots that are posted below.

When we came in Hanna was sent back to bed and proceeded to wail and cry “I can’t sleep” for a while. I finally was like just go deal with her. He put on his gruff voice and marched up the stairs.

Then I hear this light airy voice ~

“I bring care bear powers to help you sleep!!” and he proceeded to talk care bears to her for a bit, now she’s quiet so hopefully the care bear power worked!!

Here’s the newest shots of the owls. We think there really are only 2 up there, but they are digging and clawing and trampling around on the ducting making a ton of noise.  Would really like to know when they plan to leave.

But damn, they are cute!

As a work at home mom I’ve noticed over the years that I have this crazy idea ~

If I at least appear to be working I will make more money.

It really is crazy, because it’s not true at all. I was recently listening to an audio within the Blog Mastermind course about the 80/20 rule.  A rule I’ve been familiar with in association with other things, but never related it to my life or my business; until now.

What is the 80/20 rule?

The 80/20 rule goes like this; a small portion (20%) of  something creates a large portion (80%) of the results. This works in just about every area of life and business when you really think about it.

• America uses 80% or the worlds oil, but only has 20% of the world’s population.

• In a membership site 20% or your members will ask 80% of the questions.

• In network marketing 20% or your organization will produce 80% of your income.

• In my business 20% of my actions create 80% of my results.

So why on earth am I spinning my wheels, wasting time, looking busy with the other 60% of crap I am doing during the day?

It’s a good question.

It’s a question I think I need to look at because it goes way deeper than just busy work. This is where  beliefs rest, and some of those beliefs are probably not serving me, and maybe you, well.

Here’s some things that come up when I think about why I have to be “working” all day.

• If  I’m not working “hard”/”a lot”/”all day” what I’m doing isn’t valuable.

• It takes hard work to make money.

• If I don’t work I don’t make money.
• There’s always something that needs to be done.

• I have to prove that I am working hard to prove that working from home is legitimate.

WOW ~ who knew all that was in there?

What to do now?

I think some serious tapping (EFT) is in order.  I think tapping on each of those beliefs will help to clear them out and make it a little easier to apply the 80/20 rule in my life.

I will also use Zpoint when I notice I am sitting at the computer “working” but not engaging in the 20% activities.

How to implement the 80/20 rule in your WAHM life.

1. Identify the activities that bring you the most bang for your buck.

This may be difficult if you’ve been keeping busy for a long time, but this is crucial.  You may need to really strip away all the layers and get down to the very basics.

The basics of my business ~ blogging/writing ~ is content and marketing.

2.  Figure out your most productive activities

When you break things down to the basics you will see there are some specific activities that give you the most bang for your buck. For me it is writing blog posts/articles and for the marketing element I have identified 3 distinct activities I can do to market my business each day.

What activities can you do that will give you the most bang for your buck? I can almost guarantee it isn’t checking email every 5 minutes. lol (yeah, I’m guilty too)

3.  Batch process everything you can.

This comes from Timothy Ferriss’ book The 4 Hour Work Week, and when I can implement this it makes all the difference in my day.  Very quickly batch processing is about doing one thing at a time. If you have to answer email ~ wait and do it all one time a day. If you want to reply to forums, wait and do them all at one time. If you want to write articles, buckle down and do them all at one time. This focused energy will create a lot more time in your day, and a lot less “busy” work that is often times procrastination.

4. Make some plans for the rest of your day.

I find it really easy to keep sitting at the computer all day long if I don’t have something else planned to do. I’m beginning to plan craft projects in the afternoon for Hanna and I to do, so I will have something else on my schedule to help get up me up and away from the computer.

5. Be flexible.

This one is tough for me, I want my day to go in a certain order, and it rarely does, but now that I know what my 20% activities are I can finish one, and then jump into the next one when the ruckus has died down.  This flexibility also allows me room to follow my inspiration which also make the day go much smoother.

Creating Balance with the 80/20 rule

Implementing the 80/20 rule in my business is opening up more time to do other things that need to be done. It’s giving me the space to do the work that needs to be done, but let go of having to “work” all day. This is giving me the space to create a lot more balance in my life ~ at least giving me the opportunity to create the balance

Do you use the 80/20 rule in your business life? I’d love to hear how it helps you create more balance in your life.