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Polls show many people have New Year’s Resolutions to become more organized, and I count myself among them.  This week, a college girl from our parish still home from break has spent several days with me moving furniture and doing some re-organizing and carting stuff to Goodwill, and we have the sore muscles to prove it!

Smart Martha’s Catholic Guide for Busy Moms by Tami Kiser is the book that I reviewed & so enjoyed in this category.  In particular, her book has helped me to think more about home management in order to be more present to my family.  I’ve visited  Tami Kiser’s website and hope to talk more in my upcoming interview with her about her Smart Martha seminars.

What I’d like to learn is your top homekeeping tip, and I’ll start the conversation.    

My favorite home management/organizing tip is to set a timer for 15 minutes (or sometimes even 5!) and tackle … whatever…. a dreaded cleaning job, an organizational task, or something else home-related (I’ve even used this very successful for writing projects).  I learned this great tip from the excellent email reminders I get from the Flylady; I’ve been getting the emails since way back when it was a small yahoo group, and their ideas for organizing projects and getting rid of clutter have been extremely helpful. 

The Flylady website is a lot more complicated than I remember, because I don’t ever visit it, but let me say that the emails have been a great service for me, in particular the 15 minute rule (and I have three of the Flylady timers scattered in different places in our house, and they are well worth the investment).  I’ve tried to use that with my kids to help them with cleaning tasks of their own, with varying degrees of success, depending on the child’s temperament.

So, since I’m always looking for new ideas to get more organized, what is your top organizational tip?  Share away!

In early January, the Church celebrates two great American saints–St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, whose feast day was yesterday, January 4, and St. John Neumann, whose feast is today, January 5.

Thomas Finds a Treasure: a St. John Neumann Story (Glory of America, Catholic girls and boys of the U.S.A), tells the story of St. John Neumann from the eyes of a young boy who learns from his parish priest (St. John) about doing the right thing, even when difficult.

In Kat Finds a Friend, a St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Story (Glory of America, Catholic girls of the U.S.A), Kat benefits intellectually and spiritually from Mother Seton’s tireless guidance and love.

Because we have a new Kindle in our house, and I use the Kindle App frequently on my iPhone, I was especially excited to see that Behold Publications is beginning to publish books in the Kindle e-reader format.  So far, these two books are not yet available on Kindle, but I did download Behold’s newest title, The Search for the Madonna.  Like most Kindle books, this arrives at a significant discount to the print version, a bonus.  I’ll post a review in the near future.

from Elizabeth Ann Seton, a conference to her spiritual daughters:

I know what his will is by those who direct me; whatever they bid me do, if it is ever so small in itself, is the will of God for me. Then do it in the manner he wills it, not sewing an old thing as if it were new, or a new thing as if it were old; not fretting because the oven is too hot, or in a fuss because it is too cold. You understand – not flying and driving because you are hurried, not creeping like a snail because no one pushes you. Our dear Saviour was never in extremes. The third object is to do his will because God wills it, that is, to be ready to quit at any moment and to do anything else to which you may be called….
   You think it very hard to lead a life of such restraint unless you keep your eye of faith always open. Perseverance is a great grace. To go on gaining and advancing every day, we must be resolute, and bear and suffer as our blessed forerunners did. Which of them gained heaven without a struggle?… 
   What are our real trials? By what name shall we call them? One cuts herself out a cross of pride; another, one of causeless discontent; another, one of restless impatience or peevish fretfulness. But is the whole any better than children’s play if looked at with the common eye of faith? Yet we know certainly that our God calls us to a holy life, that he gives us every grace, every abundant grace; and though we are so weak of ourselves, this grace is able to carry us through every obstacle and difficulty.
   But we lack courage to keep a continual watch over nature, and therefore, year after year, with our thousand graces, multiplied resolutions, and fair promises, we run around in a circle of misery and imperfections. After a long time in the service of God, we come nearly to the point from whence we set out, and perhaps with even less ardour for penance and mortification than when we began our consecration to him.
   You are now in your first setout. Be above the vain fears of nature and efforts of your enemy. You are children of eternity. Your immortal crown awaits you, and the best of Fathers waits there to reward your duty and love. You may indeed sow here in tears, but you may be sure there to reap in joy.

I’ve been thinking for some time of having posts from time to time about great Catholic Apps for different electronic devices, such as iPhones, other smartphones and iPads.  I am a Mac girl, so know that I will probably highlighting more of those than ones available for say, the Android.  (Though I know many of Apps are available across multiple platforms).  I heavily use Apps on my iPhone and our family’s iPad, and I have quite a few Catholic ones I would love to share with others.

The first Catholic App spotlight doesn’t qualify as an actual App for those devices (since as far as I can see it is only available online), but it is just so cute and fun that I decided to feature it as the first App spotlight.

The Saint’s Name Generator is a simple little program created by blogger Jen Fulwiler.  Fulwiler will be one of the featured speakers at the upcoming Behold Conference to be held here in the Peoria Diocese, so it’s especially appropriate

This weekend, our family enjoyed generating different saints for each member of our family just for fun.  We had to laugh that my husband’s saint was St. Albert the Great, patron of theologians (my husband has a doctorate in theology).

Check it out!

Happy New Year Everyone!!


Here are my answers to the four questions I ask on the first of each month:
first, what are you reading?
what do you like best about it?
what do you like least?
what’s next on your list/pile to read?

I hope you’ll consider sharing yours on your blog and/or sharing yours here in the comments or on Facebook.  Happy reading!

Dear Enemy, like it precursor Daddy Long-Legs, is a novel in letters (officially called an epistolary novel, but I’m trying not to be too “English major here!”).  These are all letters from the spoiled and headstrong Sallie McBride as she takes on the challenge of running an orphanage and remaking it in love and .


I love, love, love novels in the form of letters.  I read once that Jane Austen once considered writing my favorite novel of all time, Pride & Prejudice, as a series of letters only.   That I would love to read.

What do you like least about them?


The only thing I don’t like about Lucy Maud Montgomery novels is when they end, so I’m glad she was fairly prolific.  I’ve still got lots of other novels I haven’t read in years and can rely on those when I need relaxation


A bit shocking about Dear Enemy is several positive mentions of (not named as such but described) eugenics–trying to prevent “feeble-minded” orphans from joining full society.  At the time Dear Enemy was written (1915), eugenics was fairly progressive and not so understood as terrible as it is now.  This was of course before the Nazis used the theory of eugenics to kill millions. 


This is a small problem, in my mind, and actually allows for a discussion with young people who have read Dear Enemy about the progression of thoughts, and how ideas do matter, whether they are good or bad.

What are you reading next?

I ordered from the library, 168 Hours:  You Have More Time than You Think by Laura Vanderkam.  I’ve seen it referenced in a few blog posts and elsewhere, and it looks interesting. 


My 7-year-old son and I are reading together the popular series, “Guardians of Ga’hoole” about owls.  Not usually my thing, but we are alternating pages in the first in the series The Capture, and enjoying it so far.  We wanted to read the series and see if we were interested in seeing the recent movie when it comes out on DVD.


I’m also previewing a lot of books for February and March columns.  Lots of books about marriage and love (for February) and  Lent and Lenten themes.  Any suggestions from you?  What are you reading?

I’m working on my print column for this month’s book page of the Catholic Post, and since my theme for January is “New Year” and books on things people might have resolutions about, I was searching around for information about the most common New Year’s Resolutions.  Wikipedia has a moderately interesting article here, but what I loved was the image from the page (above), of a postcard from the early 1900s.

Now, liturgically speaking, I know that the “New Year” starts on the first Sunday of Advent, so talking about a “New Year’s Resolution” from a Catholic perspective, we are actually a few weeks late.  But since culturally here most people do make resolutions starting the calendar year (you know, a new calendar, a fresh start), I thought it would be fun to talk about our new year’s resolutions.

With all my writing about New Year’s resolutions and books related to it, I actually have not made any official resolutions.  A number of bloggers write about how they choose a word for the year.  You can read an example from last January of how Elizabeth Foss writes about the trend and her word.  I have long been completely terrified of doing this, primarily because of how dramatically different the past five or six years have been in our family’s life than my expectation of each year, both for good and for ill.  So I think I will stick with the basic personal New Year’s resolutions for now.  I’m pretty goal-oriented, so having specific things in mind (clean out a room, sign up and train for a race), is more appealing to me.

So inspire me.  What is your New Year’s Resolution?   What’s your word for the new year?  (Note I’m not against other people choosing a word of the year, just “me!”)  Do you avoid making resolutions?  Share away!