Sheri Graham is a busy homeschooling mom with a houseful of children. She also runs her own business and writes books. Somewhere in all that hard work, she manages to post a blog each day. I am encouraged and challenged by Sheri and her ministry.

To do all that she does, and to do it all so well, Sheri must be a very organized lady! So, when she sent me her Intentional Planner to review, I was eager to see it. I like to learn from other homeschooling moms who do all things well.

The Intentional Planner is an E-book that you can download the minute you purchase it on Graham Family Ministries online store. You can make as make copies as you need and put together as many planners as you need for your family. Before I tell you any more about it, though, I have to give you some really good news! The Intentional Planner only costs $5.00. Yes, that's right, only $5.00 for 247 pages of wisdom from Graham Family Ministries. I could not believe that you could spend so little and get so much!

With a desire to combine her planner, calendar, journal, and home management binder into one notebook, Sheri created the Intentional Planner. It is everything you need to manage your home and home school in one neat package. There are fields on the pages available to customize your planner too.

This planner is laid out very simply.

• Front Section:  Daily Planning Pages
• Tab #1:  Monthly Calendars
• Tab #2:  To Do Lists
• Tab #3:  My Daily Journal
• Tab # 4:  Miscellaneous Lists
• Tab # 5:  Menu Planning & Cleaning Schedules
• Tab # 6:  Homeschool:  Lesson Plans
• Tab # 7:  Homeschool:  Reading Lists
• Tab # 8:  Homeschool:  Current Year
• Tab # 9:  Homeschool:  Long Term Plans
• Tab # 10:  Homeschool:  Articles/Information

There are 4 different covers to chose from: blue, green, red, and purple. The same covers are also available with only the border so that you can make up your own title for your planner. Throughout the planner, there are several opportunities to personalize your planner.

The daily planner pages are the "heartbeat" of The Intentional Planner. The Weekly Evaluation and Planning Page touches my heart every time I read it. There are spiritual examination questions. One question is "Where am I lacking in the fruits of the Spirit?" Ouch! I forget to ask myself questions like that. The page goes on to ask you to come up with practical ways to:

• Strengthen my relationship with the Lord
• Bless my husband
• Love my children
• Serve others
• Encourage others
• Simplify my life

I love the idea of starting each week with these questions and challenges. I commend Sheri for making this planner intentional by bringing prayer and self-examination into it. 

The daily planning sheets that follow have 4 sections: Daily Schedule, Appointments, To Do Items, and Notes.

Next, comes the monthly calendar pages, monthly plans pages, dates to remember pages, birthday/anniversary chart, to do lists, Bible reading schedule, memory work prayer list, personal reading list, and personal reading journal.

The goals section follows with room for family/ministry goals, health goals, handcraft goals, personal goals, and business goals. A daily journal section is a nice touch in this planner. I like to carry around little notebooks to journal in, so I liked the idea of this section.

The miscellaneous section has lots of neat, rather random pages.

• Membership websites
• User names and passwords
• Thankful Page
• Photograph pages
• Books to review
• Blog ideas
• E-book Ideas

The Menu Section has a master shopping list, shopping lists, menu pages, and weekly chore charts.

This year  I will be making gifts instead of buying them. I will dig out my trunk of material and my serger and make some napkins.

Napkin Directions

To make Christmas napkins, buy 1 yard of Christmas cotton fabric. Cut it into 4 equal size squares and iron until wrinkle-free. Then simply serge the edges of the napking with a contrasting thread color to give you the nice finished edge you find in stores. If you don't have a serger, you can do a hankerchief hem around the edges.

You don't have to be limited by Christmas fabric. You can make everyday napkins, Thanksgiving napkins, spring napkins, St. Valentine's Day napkins, or Fourth of July napkins.

A set of 4 napkins with 4 homemade napkin rings will make a nice gift.

Jar Gifts

Or maybe I will make cookie mixes in a jar. Directions for these projects can be found online. I have other options to fill my jars with. There are soup mixes in a jar, baking mixes in a jar, and casserole mixes in a jar too. These all make lovely gifts.

Gifts of Time

"The cheerful heart has a continuous feast!"  (Proverbs 15:15 NIV).

"A cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones," (Proverbs 17:22 NIV).

Okay! It's time to share my deep dark homeschooling secrets with you! There are many!  Here are my confessions!

I don't fix breakfast for my children. Yep, it's true. As soon as my children leave the high chair, they are on their own for breakfast. If they want a hot meal they have to pull a stool up to the stove and cook it themselves or bribe an older sibling. My children don't even realize that there are mothers in the world who cook breakfast!

I would rather be shot in the head than teach my teenagers to drive. There! I admitted it! My children are all great drivers, but I am a terrible passenger. By the time we have backed out of the driveway, I am ready to be committed to a psychiatric hospital. I beg and plead with my husband to teach the children to drive. They seem to like learning from him better, anyway. Go figure.

There are millions of paper piles around my house. When I get rid of one, ten more take its place. My heart is to keep my home neat and tidy. File folders in the untold millions are labeled and in file cabinets, but still these piles appear! You can tell where I am and where I've been--just follow the paper piles.

A day at the beach by any other name is a field trip. Yes, it's true. I have put away the school books, loaded up the minivan, and driven over to the Florida coast for a day in the sun. Forgetting my cares, and sometimes my name, I have fallen sound asleep while the kids play in the sand and body surf in the waves. Sometimes they look for shells or capture poor innocent sea animals. I will go home, lather on aloe, and convince my husband that we went on a field trip.  "The field trip was a nature study on marine life." I can look my husband straight in the eye and say this. He begins to have doubts after the tenth nature study on marine life in one school year.

Technology is a necessary evil in the world we live in, but it is not my cup of tea. There are too many remotes in my house to understand what each one does, so I can't even turn on the  DVD player by myself.  I don't even like mechanical pencils. My computer can do fifty million things that I can't even comprehend, let alone make them happen. I force myself to learn one new thing each year on my computer. One year I learned that you can hit "reply to all" and respond to EVERYONE at the same time. It was a miracle and changed my life. This year I've already learned three new things--I'm way overwhelmed!

Starting a project is more fun than finishing one. Things are much more fun at the beginning of the adventure than when it is winding down. I have millions of unfinished sewing projects, novels, craft projects, and songs that I have never finished. Likewise, I enjoy the beginning of the school year more than the end. I love the fresh new start when we are eager to begin again after a long break. By February, I'm counting the days until summer.

When I was pregnant, I always fell asleep while homeschooling the other children. I would try so hard to keep my eyes open, but he minute I started reading aloud, I lulled myself right to sleep. Once the baby was born, nursing my new little one would put me to sleep too! It was so amazing when I weaned my youngest son. Two months later, I woke up one morning and, for the first time in twelve years, I had energy! It was wonderful! I don't fall asleep anymore while I homeschool. Now I fall asleep watching movies.

My children would rather play than do their schoolwork. They are not as eager to learn as all the self-motivated children in the homeschool books I've read. My children actually complain about school sometimes and I've had to discipline them for complaining. In the books I've read homeschooled children discover new stars, invent computer software, and rake lawns for all the elderly citizens in the town where they live. My children are just normal children, but I do like them!

I don't use math manipulatives--they are too much trouble. Yes, I own them, but I find that dragging them out of their special box onto the table to show my children a visual demonstration is just too much for me to handle. So, though I believe that hands-on math is the best way to learn, my children use workbooks with brightly colored pictures instead.

"What are you doing?" my husband asked. "Are you coming to bed soon?  You've been on the computer all night."

"And all day too. I'm making room on my hard drives. They are both full. I deleted 4,000 emails today. Now, I'm deleting duplicate picture files. My camera is 10 megapixels and the files are large. Also, there are a lot of video files from Shine and Phoebe..."

"Okay, Honey. It's fine. Don't explain. I'll see you in the morning."

I had 600 somethings on my computer. My computer friends told me that my computer has enough space that I will never fill it. Hah! Little do they know!

Clutter in my Life

I can fill anything--an empty drawer, an empty bookcase, an empty room, and an empty hard drive. I create piles of papers and books wherever I go. If I walk into a room, I will leave behind a pile of books.

But, filling up my hard drives was a wake-up call to me. I have a problem with clutter. There is clutter in my homeschool room and clutter in my computer. I might join a support group.

"Hi, I'm Meredith Curtis and I'm a pack rat. I hate to get rid of anything because one day I just might need it. How do other people live without collecting piles of things?"

There is just one thing to do. I told my husband that I need to buy a computer with a bigger hard drive and we need to buy a bigger house. He's not buying it. He suggested a family project. My family is not thrilled about the Curtis De-Clutter Adventure.

My problem runs deeper than filling up space. This is a problem that only God can handle. I need wisdom from Heaven on what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw away. There are many things that I should hold on to or I will just need to spend money to replace them in a few months. Homeschooling requires many books, file folders, and computer files.

My Plan for Clutter

Do you ever stop to imagine what Heaven is like? What sounds, smells and sights await us? What a joyous moment it will be when we finally arrive home!

God has prepared Heaven with His beloved bride (that's us!) in mind! Though first and foremost,Heaven exists for the GLORY of God, it is also our eternal home where we will live in the very Presence of God!  Unlike earth, where we see through a glass darkly (I Corinthians 13), in Heaven we will see face to face!

Temporary Models of Eternal Things

Marriage, a temporary relationship, is a picture of the relationship that Jesus has with the church, a permanent relationship that lasts forever! (See Ephesians 5:22-33 and Revelation 21:2) Our marriage is a picture for our children of how Jesus loves His bride and how she loves him! Our marriage gives our little lambs a picture of the love relationship between Jesus, our Risen Lamb, and the church.

Our family, a temporary group, is a picture of the Family of God, a permanent group. (See Ephesians 2:19-22 and Ephesians 3:14-15). Our family models to the world what life in the church should look like with strong ties of love, loyalty, and commitment.

Our home, a temporary dwelling, is a picture of Heaven, a permanent home. (See Philippians 3:20) We can prepare a small-scale model for our husbands, children, and friends of Heaven itself. So, let's take a quick look at Heaven and then we'll talk about imitating Heaven in our homes!

"Be imitators of God, therefore as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God," (Ephesians 5:1-2 NIV).

Heaven is a Prepared Place!

Jesus told His disciples that He was going to prepare a place for them! When we glimpse Heaven in Revelation 21 and 22, we see a lovely place that has been laid out with order and precision. Our Heavenly Father started with a plan and carried that plan out completely. Heaven is clean, sparkling, and in perfect order.

"In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with Me that you also may be where I am," (John 14:2-3 NIV).

This side of Heaven, we have an opportunity to reveal Heaven to our little ones. Cleaning and organizing our home is one way to prepare our homes in imitation of our Heavenly Father. Our homes don't have to be immaculate, but they should be organized and ready for life to happen. A realistic schedule also provides security and order to our busy lives.

But beyond, cleaning and organizing--have you ever considered what it is you want your home and family to look like. What things do you want to do with your husband and children? Are there dreams you have that you feel are unreachable or unaffordable? Don't underestimate God!  He may just surprise you!  Or He may have an alternative that is just as wonderful as your dream. Prayerfully and purposefully, plan your home and family.

Heaven is Lovely to Behold!

"Do you think Pastor Mike would give us some money to cover a bounced check from the church's benevolence fund?" the young man finally stammered, after his wife had spend two whole minutes glaring at him. There was tension in the air.

"I can't really answer for him," I responded, adroitly passing the buck to my husband. "What happened? Do you want to talk about it?"

Of course, they wanted to talk about it. Both husband and wife blamed the other for the financial mismanagement with venom in their voices. Had they just two years earlier promised to honor and cherish one another? I had been at their wedding. My mind began to wander and I forced myself to focus back on the louder of the two voices who were both speaking at once.

"I called the bank to see how much was in our account..."

"Why did you call the bank?" I interrupted. "Why not look in your checkbook register?"

This shut them both up instantly and a look of confusion clouded the two young faces.
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