Tag: outdoors

Simple Pleasures: Playing in the Snow

Simple Pleasures: Playing in the Snow

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 2 Comments

My two older kids were up at 6:30am screaming excitedly about the snow on the ground and convinced it was Christmas morning no matter how many times I told them that it wasn’t. After they hunted for their Christmas gifts and found none, they were pulling on their snow pants and snow boots and begging me to HURRY, as if the snow might melt in the next two minutes. I helped them with some zippers and scarves and also lent them each one of my gloves because they couldn’t find any and then let them loose in the backyard.

It wasn’t even 7am yet.

[Good ol’ Daylight Savings.]

And of course, it wasn’t long before they were calling for me to help them build a snowman. So I pulled boots on [over my sweatpants] and put on a coat and used a pair of thick socks for gloves [gotta do what you gotta do, you know] and went outside to play in the snow.

Being a parent is so much fun because it gives you full permission to embrace your inner child and get excited about the things you used to love as a kid, like trick-or-treating, raking big piles of leaves to jump in, driving to see the Christmas lights, and playing in the snow.

Sometime between age 16 and having kids of my own I started hating the snow. It was cold. It was slippery. It cause traffic and delays and blah blah blah.

Man, what the heck was I thinking?!

Snow is awesome!

We built a snowman. The snow was perfect for packing and we did it the old-fashioned way: by rolling snowballs around the yard [occasionally rebuilding them when Daisy destroyed them] until they were the right size [or we got sick of restarting because of Daisy – which is why they are so small].

We threw snowballs at Daisy. We caught snowflakes on our tongues. The kids made snow angels, but I was wearing sweatpants so I wasn’t about to lie down in the snow [I haven’t embraced my inner child quite to that extent yet]. When we finally came inside, the kids had hot chocolate before we even had breakfast.

It was a special morning. The first snowfall of the season.

Reminded me of how much I used to love the snow and…honestly, I think it’s growing on me again.

❄️ ❄️ ❄️

Karis

Simple Living in October

Simple Living in October

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 4 Comments

October was a whirlwind – probably the busiest month of our entire year. But that, I realized, is why my simple living goals were so important. [I shared my list of goals for the month in this post.] I was able to prioritize the things that matter most to me and not get lost in the to-do lists, and schedules, and must-dos of the month.

It started with my mother visiting and Brett and I running the Chicago marathon and then taking five days to recover. Then I took the kids for a day trip south to visit my sister and then it was Brett’s birthday and then our lengthy travels [36 hours of driving and 12 hours of flying] which ultimately got us to London and back just in time for Halloween and our last CSA pick up of the season.

On top of those things, we had workers replacing the roof and siding of our home, tearing out and replacing drywall and ripping up the carpet in our basement – because of a tree that fell on our house in August.

BUT in the midst of the madness, I was able to make a lot of my simple living goals happen and enjoyed the time with my kids and the time outdoors very much.

My goals were:

1. Spend time with my kids outdoors for an hour every day. We explored several new parks and a nature play area in our park district.

We walked all over Saint Charles for Scarecrow Fest.

We didn’t let rain or cold keep us from the pumpkin fest at the zoo.

We hiked the forest preserve behind our home.

And we rode bikes in the driveway and climbed the trees in our yard and looked for bugs and worms and played with Daisy…

We spent a lot of time outside and it was great.

Next time, though, I won’t put a time requirement on it. Sometimes it is good enough to just get out for a few minutes. Sometimes I had to give myself an A for effort. Just the emphasis on getting outside every day is great – the number of hours really doesn’t matter.

2. Read 30 minutes every day. I read for a half hour a day up until our trip. I finished Slow (the inspiration for my simple living goals).

I also finished There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather.

About a week before the trip, I traded my book for a London guide so I could plan our trip…

…but I was still reading a lot, so that was great.

3. Play with my kids when they ask. I definitely played a lot. I didn’t get nearly as much housework done as I normally do, but I had a lot of fun with the kids and I know that is more important than a clean and tidy house.

4. Create something every day. I created a lot in the kitchen, but that’s about it. I colored with the kids a few times and painted once, but didn’t create as much as I would have liked.

5. Leave my phone behind. I used the Screen Time feature on my iPhone to limit my “social” time on my phone to twenty minutes. I don’t typically do a lot of social stuff anyway because I’m not on social media, but I do apparently spend a fair amount of time on Pinterest. 🤷‍♀️

I also set “downtime” from 2-7pm every day which only allowed me to send/receive text messages and phone calls during that time. I also made my phone screen black and white – which was really weird but did seem to make my phone less appealing.

Screen Time also allows you to see how much time you spend on your phone, how many times you pick up your phone and how many notifications you receive.

I was so excited to find this feature because I’ve been wanting a dumb phone – and now it seems I can [almost] make my phone a dumb phone.

But the biggest change I made was turning off ALL notifications. I still keep forgetting that I have to go back into my text app to see if I’ve received any texts. My response time is MUCH MUCH slower, but I kind of like the idea of checking messages when I have the time and not having notifications constantly alerting me of some new thing to check on my phone.

If you feel like your phone controls you – rather than the other way around – I recommend trying some of these ideas.

Overall, the month was good. I’m looking forward to a much slower November, as we have nothing on the agenda besides preschool, a little work for me, and spending the month contemplating all the ways we are incredibly blessed in this life.

Happy November!

Karis

Simple Living Goals for October

Simple Living Goals for October

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 10 Comments

I’ve been reading a new book…

…which I LOVE.

Slow: Simple Living for a Frantic World by Brooke McAlary

Even though I’ve already come across, wrestled with, and thought through most of the information in the book already, I find the author’s journey to be similar to mine in the sense that we both knew what we were looking for but didn’t really know how to get there and so went on a long journey to figure it out. She is much further along on her journey than I am, which gives me hope and inspires me to continue.

I haven’t come across a single thing in the book that doesn’t make me want to stand up and yell “Preach it, Sister!”

Brooke [can I call her Brooke? Because I feel like we are friends even though she had no idea who I am…] has inspired me to start living the simple life right now. I’ve been so busy trying to get there – trying to simplify my life, to declutter my home, to reduce my waste, to be a conscious consumer, to bake my own bread for crying out loud – that I think I may have missed out on actually enjoying the simple life, which was the whole point in the first place.

For me, this journey has been about creating a life of making memories and savoring moments and spending time with loved ones and pouring myself into my kids and caring for the world around me and enjoying all of it. That’s the whole reason I started on all this zero waste, minimalist and hyggelit stuff anyway.

So, to refocus and help myself prioritize the type of life I’m wanting to live, I’m making a few goals for the month:

1. Spend time with my kids outdoors for an hour every day. After last week, I am looking forward to spending more time outside with my kids. We are going to do some fun fall activities, explore some new parks, ride our bikes, hang out on our back deck, and take lots of walks in the forest preserve behind our home.

2. Read 30 minutes every day. I’ve been wanting to prioritize reading, but so many other things seem to be more important. So I’ve starting reading for the first thirty minutes of my kids’ “quiet time” rather than saving it for the end when I would inevitably run out of time.

3. Play with my kids when they ask. “Not now” and “In a little bit” and “After I finish this project” and “I’ve got a lot to do right now” are all common responses I give when my kids ask me to play with them – which they do about a thousand times a day. So I’m going to start playing more. I have less housework to do because of the decluttering, less meal planning and shopping due to the zero waste…so I’ve got more time to play!

4. Create something every day. I love involving my kids in art, but I know that it is just as much for me as it is for them. I have always needed a creative outlet. As an adult, I find my creative outlet in different ways than I did when I was in school art classes, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t flex my creativity and make something from scratch.

5. Leave my phone behind. Since leaving social media almost two years ago, I’m on my phone a lot less, but I still find myself tied to it, checking it, carrying it on my person at all times. There’s nothing wrong with that, obviously, but my son asked me to put my phone down the other day and I realized that I do have it in front of my face more than I should. While I may need to keep it handy to be reachable or for emergencies, it can stay on the counter or in the diaper bag or in the stroller. It doesn’t have to be on me all the time. I think that looking at my phone less will allow me to notice and experience a lot more.

Karis

TACO Week

TACO Week

by No Makeup Mama ♥ 0 Leave a Comment

Take A Child Outside week has arrived! [I know, it’s a super misleading acronym…]

Though I would love an entire week dedicated to tacos, I’m just as excited about spending time outside with my kids this week!

Not to imply that you need a special week to spend time outside [obviously], but our local park district has all sorts of fun and engaging activities this week to facilitate more quality time in the great outdoors. Plus, this week acts as a reminder to spend as much time outside as possible during the beautiful fall weather! Fall has to be my absolute favorite season because of all the apple picking, pumpkin farming, hay wagon riding, camp firing, trick-or-treating, cider sipping [I could go on all day, folks] fun to be had!

Another emphasis of this week is time together, which is a good reminder for me to get outside and actively spend time with my kids, as opposed to sending them outside to play while I stay indoors. I’m considering making a goal to spend 1,000 hours outdoors in a year [which I heard someone did and find very inspiring], so it’s been interesting to see how quickly I am ready to go back inside. And I consider myself to be someone who loves the outdoors – but apparently not quite as much as I thought.

1,000 hours is A LOT…

But, anyway, back to TACO week.

Today, we kicked things off with Farm Frolic at our local park district’s farm. We enjoyed face painting, sand digging, pumpkin painting, goat petting, corn shucking, barn raising, and pony riding. It was exhausting for me pulling the three kids around in the wagon by myself, but we had so much fun! I’m glad I didn’t skip it just because it was going to be hot and tiring. Time outside really does do wonders for the soul!

I’ve been reading a new book, There’s No Such Thing as Bad Weather, by Linda Åkeson McGurk who was raised in Sweden where apparently people love the outdoors so much that there are literal outdoor schools and they go out in rain or shine or snow or sleet or whatever. It has really inspired me to take my kids outside more often anyway.

So, this week is the perfect opportunity to see if I can make my outdoor goal a reality and refocus on spending time outside enjoying this beautiful Midwest fall.

Here are some photo highlights from our day:

So, are you taking a child outside this week?

Karis