Fighting that "whelmed" feeling

Sometimes I feel whelmed. Not completely overwhelmed, just whelmed. Do you ever feel that way? It's at those times that I try to most to remind myself, "By small and simple things are great things brought to pass." Or, to quote Flylady, "I can do anything for 15 minutes." Those thoughts calm my mind and help me take action.

I've been envisioning what I'd like to become over the next year, trying to imagine how I'd like to improve my life, what weaknesses I want to tackle and which relationships I'd like to strengthen. I've also been thinking about ways I changed in the past year and what factors helped to bring about those changes.

One of the best things I did this past fall was start meal planning. If you look at the archives of my blog here, you'll see when I started doing it. I've been pretty regular about it, and I'm really pleased. It has helped me save money on groceries, eat better, and avoid that witchy 4 pm panic of "ACK! What's for dinner?"

Tsh Oxenreider is the reason. She is the blogger at SimpleMom.net and founder of Simple Living Media, which includes 4 other blogs: Simple Kids, Simple Homeschool, Simple Bites, and Simple Organic. Tsh is the author of Organized Simplicity, which I have read several times. She has given me great tips to organize my time, my home, my life. She taught me to begin my day by eating a frog (which means doing the worst thing first. I'm still working on that). More than anything, she is a great model of intentional living: thinking about what you want out of life and then living to make it happen. Tsh also introduced me to Pinterest. I had heard of it, but avoided it for a long time, but she showed me how to use it as a meal-planning tool in her e-book One Bite at a Time. She is a homeschooling mom, has lived abroad, and is an all around great person in my estimation.

To help you get a great start on this new year, Tsh is giving away a free copy of One Bite at a Time, right here at Small and Simple Things! To enter, please leave a comment below, telling me what project in One Bite you'd like to work on first. For a second entry, tell me what you do to find peace and soothe yourself when you feel frazzled. If you'd like a third entry, you can subscribe to my blog either in your reader or via google friend connect, and leave me a comment letting me know. The winner will be announced here on Monday, January 9th.

If you'd rather get going on things right away, use the promo code HAPPYNEWYEAR to save $1 and get One Bite at a Time instantly (it's available as a pdf, on Kindle, or Nook) for only $4. This code is valid through January 10th.

I was not compensated in any way for this post. I bought my own copy of One Bite at a Time (although I'm now an affiliate of the e-book because I think it's so fabulous).