And my planner giveaway winner is ... ❤

HELENA!

Congratulations, Helena! I am so happy for you, and will be in touch soon to set up mailing details! I hope you will enjoy using this wonderful planner - I know mine has made a real difference in how (well) I manage all my weekly to-dos!

My sincere thanks to all who entered my "12 years of blogging" giveaway - especially for all the good wishes! I really enjoyed reading through all your comments and questions - your ideas have given me quite a shot of inspiration! How fun to begin my 13th year of blogging with so much encouragement and so many possible posts already in queue!

Here is Helena's question, which I will definitely feature in an upcoming post ...

"My question for you would be this - I think Little Bear will be in kindergarten in the fall, right? If that is the case, I would love to read about your plans for him - not just the seasonal themes, but curriculum, if you use any, and favorite resources."

This is a great question, Helena, and perfect timing - because yes, Little Bear will be starting Kindergarten this fall! (I can hardly believe it!) So next year, because Crackerjack will be ... gulp ... off to college, I will have just two students in our homeschool: Earlybird (16, special needs) and Little Bear (turning 5 in May). So naturally I'm already thinking about my very last year teaching Kindergarten ... and have started organizing a lesson planner for next year. So far it's mostly just notes and pretty tab dividers, but I will share my ideas and a peek at this planner soon!

You all had so many great questions and I appreciate the time you took to share them! I printed all of them out (including comments left for me here, at Facebook and Instagram - 80 in all!) and filed them in my home management binder, right behind my blog planning tab ...

I will happily refer back to this list as I work on getting back to a semi-regular posting schedule this spring. :)

For now though, I will concentrate on putting my house put back together and catching back up with routine tasks that often get pushed aside whenever we're preparing for a major holiday! The "holiday hangover" I call it, lol! I will also be posting a new Mitten Strings update soon - I'm thinking our next chapter discussion will be on Sunday, April 15th, but will post a firm "teatime" in another day or two ...

Oh, and back to the planner shown above for a moment - I'll have a tour of "this week" coming up soon, but here's a sneak peek. As you can see it doesn't have much in it! I usually have my planners filled out well in advance of a new week, but with the busy Easter weekend, that all got pushed back ... so this morning (after a super early dentist appointment) I finally sat down to start writing out my spread:

p.s. No cavities!

Well my friends, I hope you enjoyed this post and thanks again for the kind words, thoughtful comments and as always, your lovely encouragement! Congratulations again to Helena, and to all, I wish you a day (and night) filled with peace and joy ...

See you here again sometime soon!