 Hey everybody, welcome to the Waldoch Way. I'm Jessica and today's video is a homeschool show and tell. The homeschool show and tell is an open collaboration hosted by Abby from Rooted and Rest and Myself. Our goal when we started the homeschool show and tell collaboration was really just to show that there's not one right way to homeschool. And we do that by bringing homeschoolers together from around the globe each month to share their take on a single topic. And this month's topic is mom self-care. This is literally the perfect topic for right now because it is the holiday season and I don't know about you but me as a mom, I am doing everything but taking care of myself. We as moms are normally so busy running around taking care of everybody else making sure we've got the gifts and the wrapping paper and the decorations and we're making all of the magical memories and the last thing we're doing is taking care of us. So we thought that this would be the perfect time to share some tips, some tricks, get some inspiration. I personally am super excited to be inspired because I'm not the best at self-care in general and so I'm hoping to get some ideas from all of the people who join in on this collaboration this month. If you want to get ideas from them too you can do that at the link in the description box where we will list the playlist that's going to have everybody's videos in it. So the first thing that I wanted to do was share a few practical self-care tips and when I say practical I mean that they can be done in a short period of time that you don't have a ton of time to do them. Most of them you can do in your pajamas um you don't even need to put a bra on for them because let's be honest the idea of having to get like super dressed up to go somewhere to do something that's supposed to take care of me does not sound fun like I don't want to have to do that. I don't want to get ready and dressed and do my hair and my makeup to go to a spa to spend hours on which I'm going to be stressing about all the things I'm not doing while I'm there. That for me anyway is not going to take care of me in any way. So I have practical ones. You can do them in a short period of time. Most of them you can do with your kids in very close proximity. You don't even need a babysitter for them and they're perfect for busy moms like us. So I'm going to share those with you. Then I'm going to share a resource that I have purchased for my upcoming 2022 year in an effort to try to take better care of myself and then stay tuned to the end because there's also going to be a giveaway. So my first tip is to get outside. Vitamin D has a fantastic property to it. It's it recharges your batteries in a way that very few things can and it is the first thing that Kevin will suggest when I get stressed. He's like let's go for a walk. Let's get outside. And the best thing is you can do it with your kids and you can have them play while you just sit in a lounge chair or a hammock. You can read. You can do nothing but getting outside and being in the sun, enjoying nature, breathing the fresh air. It really just has a way of recharging. So go for a walk around your block. Sit in your front yard. Sit on your porch while your kids play. Whatever you have to do to get outside, even if it's only for like five or ten minutes, that is going to drastically improve your mood and help you take better care of yourself. Tip number two is to get creative and you can get creative in many different ways. You can journal. You can sketch, draw. You can take pictures. You could blog. You could whatever you wanted to do to get creative. And the great thing about a lot of these is that you can get creative alongside your kids kind of parallel to them. So we do something called Mail Time Monday in our home school. If you're new to that, I will link it up here for you guys. And it's where me and Emily sit kind of at the table together and we write letters and cards to friends and family. And we're doing it together but we're also kind of like parallel. So we're side by side and we're doing it independently side by side. So you could do a lot of those things with your kids. You could institute a like day that you're going to journal and get all of this stuff out and just also the table and journal quietly independently but you know together. Same thing with planning. If you love to plan and you really just want to you know plan peacefully, man it is about to be January. Planners are going to be dirt cheap and on sale. Grab a planner on clearance and give it to your kid. Give them some of your old pens, some washi tape you don't like, and let them go to town so that you can plan peacefully. If that is something that brings you joy and makes you happy, figure out a way to do it so that you don't feel guilty because making yourself feel guilty when you're trying to take care of yourself is literally the opposite of what you want to do and counterproductive. And then you're including them and so they're kind of leaving you alone. You can do it side by side parallel but not together. Tip number three is finding time for friends. I know we don't always have time to go out for you know a girl's night on the town or a girl's trip weekend. If you have time for that and you can fit that in fantastic do it. But one of my favorite ways to find times for friends is using an app called Voxer. It's a walkie talkie app and what's fantastic about it is you can record up to 15 minute voice recordings. So it's all of the perks of talking on the phone without any of the negatives of it. So instead of a text message where you're just getting you know words on the screen and it feels a little impersonal, you're getting the personal touch of you know a phone call but you're getting at the convenience of you and the other person. So if you're in different time zones or you're you know a night owl and a morning bird friend or let's just say you have a you know crazy house and you only have a little bit of quiet time in the evenings you can record a conversation and send it to your friend and then they can record one's convenient for them. And so it's just nice to hear that you know hear the voice and get kind of that personal touch to be able to talk to them without it feeling like it's a hassle. So it's like all of the pros of a phone call without any of the negativity. So that's my personal favorite when I just need to chat to somebody or with somebody is Voxer. And it's a free app. You don't have to get the pro version. The free one works just fine. And tip number four is to find a hobby kind of like the get creative. Find a hobby that you can do kind of alongside or in front of. For me it's reading. That's something that I have recently fallen in love with again and if you're looking for book ideas I will leave a link in the description box of all the books that I have been reading and enjoying. And you could do something like implement a quiet time 15 to 20 minutes a day or every other day or once a week where everybody's going to get a book and just read quietly. And that way your kids are reading you can count it as school you can feel less guilty about it and you can take 10 to 15 minutes to yourself to read a book of your choice and kind of fill your cup because honestly at the end of the day you can't pour from an empty cup so you really do have to find a way to fill yours. And I say that as somebody who really stinks at this so I'm talking to myself as much as I'm talking to you when I say all of these things. I am not great at self-care. It's not one of the things that I am good at. I'm literally the person who runs as hard as they can run until they slap into a brick wall and crash and burn. But I'm trying really really hard to be better about that to set a better example for Emily and to take better care of myself. So my current self-care routine consists of staying up way too late when the house is quiet and reading or binge watching tv, eating chocolate, drinking tea, you know, all of the wonderful things. And then regretting it in the morning because I'm tired and I'm cranky. So I really really want to try to change that in 2022 and one of the things that I got for myself to try to implement a little bit of a better self-care routine start my day off on a better note is this Breathe Mama Breathe book. It's an invitation to busy mamas everywhere to take five minutes to rest, refocus and feel like yourself again. And I love that it was like five minutes and for busy moms. So it wasn't going to take a ton of time which made it more realistic and something that I was more likely to do and keep up with. Like I'm not going to make this goal of something huge that I can't actually keep up with. So that is what I am going to try to set as a goal for myself for 2022. And that being said I would like to help three mamas do the same thing. So I am going to be giving this book away to three moms. All you have to do is be a subscriber and leave a comment and that will enter you for the giveaway. And now I would absolutely love to hear from you. What does your self-care routine look like or what are some of the things that you do to fill your cup? Please tell me in the comments down below because I'm sure we could all use some ideas. And again if you're looking for even more ideas make sure you check out that link in the description that is going to be the playlist where you can find tons of videos all about the same topic.