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The benefits of preparing and enjoying food as a family are clear. You save money and eat healthier meals. You create opportunities to connect and communicate with your children and spouse. And most importantly, you show love for your family when you spend time cooking and eating with them. Children of all ages need your attention and your time. By working together to create a meal or bake a batch of cookies, you spend valuable time together. (more…)

Most people understand how difficult it can be to balance their work and home lives once they get married and have children. Somehow it seems that work life or home life is always encroaching on the other and causing problems at work, at home, and many times both. However the following five tips are great options to help with balancing work and home.

Make a Schedule

The best thing to do when trying to balance work and home is to make a schedule. Know how much time you’ve and schedule your work time and your home time. And then, you’ll know when you need to schedule work and home events. These will make your life significantly easier and you’ll know which activities fit into which time frame. Just be sure you stick to your schedule.

Share Responsibilities

Many times work and home responsibilities can become overwhelming because one spouse is handling more of the responsibilities than the other. So, learn to share responsibilities at home and each spouse can be responsible for their work. Also, older children should have some home responsibilities as well to help parents balance work and home. (more…)

Taking the entire family out for an evening of fun can be exciting and something all parents want to do on a regular basis. However, going out costs money and frequently it can cost more the average family can afford. So, whenever you prefer to enjoy an evening with your family consider these 5 cheap nights out where you can really enjoy some family bonding while saving money at the same time.

Cheap Family Night #1 The Movies

I know you’re thinking the movies are really expensive and there has no way you can afford to go. All the same, frequently during the week movie theater* offer specials, even 2 for 1 deals, to get more people in to see movies during the middle of the week. As a result, by taking your family to the movies on a Tuesday or Wednesday as opposed to Friday or Saturday you can save a lot of money. Also, consider popping popcorn at house and carrying it with you in a purse. That way you can enjoy popcorn without spending $5 for a small bag.

Cheap Family Night #2 Bowling

Bowling is a great family activity and like the movies many bowling alleys offer specials during the week, especially for kids. So, have a great dinner at home and head to the bowling alley. Course, call ahead and find out when your local bowling alley offers specials for families and kids. (more…)

Grandparents Day started with the idea of honoring the elderly and championing the cause of the lonely in nursing and retirement homes.  Marian McQuade, a housewife from Mountain State, brainstormed the idea, which was later to become a nationally recognized holiday, thank you to President Carter in 1978.  Now the holiday is celebrated on the first Sunday after Labour Day, in September among the first vacations of the academic year that greatly affects most students.

McQuade, the master founder of Grandparents Day, is the mother of fifteen children, grandmother of forty, and great-grandmother of three.  With so many descendants, she was cognisant of the special bond that children should have with their grandparents.  While mothers and fathers are the main source of discipline and example in a child’s life, his or her grandparents have a profound affect on viewpoints.  Without the wisdom of the grandparents, many children today wouldn’t understand what it was like to grow up without the technology and amenities of today’s world and wouldn’t appreciate what they’ve nearly as much. (more…)

All right, now I need to ask do you find yourself making the same meals over and over and over?  Them seems like I get in a rut and fix the same foods on a rotating scale.  Granted I’ve picky eaters in my family but not that picky.

I decided to do something about it.  After reflecting on that for awhile I discovered the biggest problem with cooking supper was deciding what to make so I got off a notebook computer and started writing off meal ideas complete with entremotses.  I even asked friends and family occasionally what they were having for dinner to get more ideas. (more…)