First of all, deep breath, you can do this. :) Just work in little sections at a time and soon it will all be done. Here is what has helped us in selling: - Do a deep clean of everything- I mean everything- baseboards, walls, light fixtures, etc. Wash or scrub everything- does your house smell? Figure out how to get rid of that smell. Your house will look its best when it is clean - Everyone already mentioned this but declutter- go through every room and give away, throw away, and pack away whatever is not needed. Pretend you are camping or at a rented house. Pack away all the stuff you would not have there- including most of the kids toys. It will only be a while and then it will be like Christmas after you move. :) - As you are going through your house set aside things you can use to stage your house yourself - Clean...and clean....and clean - Take pictures of each room in your house for yourself. Pretend you are a buyer. Would you buy your house based on the pictures? Why or why not? - Look on Zillow at pictures of houses in your area- look at how they are pictured/staged and also the price - Do you need to repaint? Pinterest has lots of color ideas for selling a house and paint does wonders. Do you have any outdated features in your house? Could paint help make that less noticeable? For example, we have pink showers in our current house and new showers are not in the budget right now. We chose a grey paint color with pink undertones and the showers now look great. You don't even notice that they are pink now- they look like a tan color. Before there was a peach color paint and it was awful. My other plan for the upstairs shower is just to hang cream curtains (found on clearance at TJMaxx) on a suspension rod over the door. - Pinterest is really helpful for thinking about how you can stage your house yourself. Think of your home as no longer yours. I never went overboard but here are some things I did to stage our last home: 1. Fresh white towels in the bathrooms with a handsoap or a candle for a spa feel 2. Use pretty throws or pillows on your couch 3. Are your bed covers in good repair and look nice? I needed to purchase a new one for my kids bedroom and it made everything look better. 4. Use things that you have and organize them into vignettes so they will look nice- use your nicest books stacked together, stack your shoes neatly in a row in closet, put a fresh kitchen towel out and a pretty bowl full of lemons, put one cute/nice kids toy on top of their dresser, etc. Think about making your house like a bed and breakfast or a vacation rental. This blog below has really good advice and she most of the time uses the people own stuff and just reorganizes it to look better- look at the pictures and see how much nicer the afters are (I just linked to this one post but she has lot of great ideas in her other posts): http://www.goodbyehousehellohome.com/2016/03/a-veteran-home-stager-how-to-avoid-top.html http://www.goodbyehousehellohome.com/search?updated-max=2015-11-16T13:36:00-05:00&max-results=2&start=4&by-date=false 5. Make a list of stuff you might need to purchase (new towels, new kitchen towels, baskets, organizers, new throw pillows, etc.) I did spend a little money (TJMaxx is great for this) and it paid off so well. We use the stuff now in our new home too so it wasn't a waste. I didn't want to spend much but it made our house more appealing. Shop your house first and then buy anything else that might be necessary. 6. Make sure your house smells good for showings- buy a candle and light it, make cookies, whatever works for you... 7. Orchids look so pretty and are fairly inexpensive. They last longer than bouquets of flowers and look just as nice. I mean your goal in all of this is not to make a show home. That is just not going to happen with a lived in home and kids. But you can make your home more appealing which likely means it will sell faster or at a better price which saves your time and money. It helped us so much! Your goal is to make a very clean and organized and beautiful home that people will want to buy right away. That is why I linked to the lady's blog above. I think she does a nice job of rearranging people's items in a more appealing way. Anyway, I hope this helps.

I was super confused by their website. You have to go to one of their conferences to get the reduced price right? But that in itself is pricey and hard to do for me at least. And the cost is per child? And the cost does not include books and other materials? And they said that book selections would change...which means more expense when they decided to change and you won't be able to use it with multiple children? I mean books are just books so you can always have your child read them. But...Wow...that just seems really expensive especially for a pilot and it would be frustrating for planning to have them change things around.

No I don't really think that Magformers and Magnatiles are compatible. The Magformers are a lot smaller. I mean the magnets in each will stick together but the sizes are different so you can't really form a stable structure with both. I tried making a simple house with both and it didn't work. I will probably try and sell my Magformers or give them to a friend.

I think these would be wonderful. My 3 year old girlie loves them and has played with them a ton since Christmas. She is able to build lots of different structures and is so proud of herself. She likes making houses for her little toys and she loves the pink ones best. All my kids like playing with them- my older ones like designing more complex structures. I purchased the 100 Solid set from eBay. Each tile has two different colors on each side. The solid set has pink tiles which my daughter really loves. I paid $80 including shipping if that helps any and it was a new set. Also, because I have five kids I will be purchasing another set sometime in the future (probably next Christmas :) ) as it would be nice for them to have more pieces.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart. They are wonderful and my kids have not stopped playing with them since unwrapping them for Christmas. My four little ones are all playing with them now. I had purchased Magformers before but they were never really played with. But so many of you said that Magnatiles were such a favorite. I finally purchased a 100 set this year for Christmas because I found an amazing deal on eBay for a new set. Anyway, thank you so much!

For the past 11 years we have always gone to DH's parents house, then his grandparents on one side, and then the grandparents on the other side- usually all on Christmas Day but sometimes one of the grandparents on Christmas Eve. It is always nice to see everyone but insanely crazy and miserable. Plus quite a few of DH's family are difficult to deal with. Earlier this year we moved across the country and so our Christmas this year was just our own little family. It was so glorious to just be able to focus on Christ and our own children. We were able to have really special prayers and devotions in the morning, have a leisurely breakfast, and take a long time opening presents, and my children could play with their toys as much as they wanted. We Skyped with DH's family so that was nice. Also, this is our second year celebrating the 12 Days of Christmas. I started it last year because Christmas was always a mad dash because we always have to move on to visit the next house. For my little children Christmas was never much fun. Celebrating Advent before and then the 12 Days have been perfect for our family. And now that we are on our own, this year will be even more special. And I have slowly been moving our decor to simpler, quality, and beautiful traditional items. This year really confirmed for me that this is a good choice for our family so I think when I clean up from Christmas this year, I will be getting rid of the rest of the items that are not special or beautiful. After the 12 Days of Christmas we have a "House Blessing" Day where we clean up and put away all of Christmas, clean the whole house, and then beautify it with our simple winter decorations (a few candles, maybe some pine cones, etc.) We actually really enjoyed it last year.

I used really not like Christmas. It just felt so stressful and commercial and there were so many obligations and things to do. Then about six years ago through a whole bunch of books/resources I felt really inspired to simplify and beautify my life. And this included Christmas in a wonderful way. I have a lot of beautiful memories of traditional Christmases with my German grandparents. So I borrowed from my grandparents and started traditions in our family that are probably more European than American but I don't care. And I have a special vintage book from my grandfather that talks about "Gemütlichkeit"- the German practice of making your home and family feel cozy and warm and contented, especially in winter. This is similar to the Danish "Hygge". Here is what we do: - Baking/Cooking- I really love baking and we have special recipes that I only make at Christmas. This makes it extra special and we look forward to those recipes all year. - Decorating- We have slowly been collecting really special, simple decorations. They make me happy just putting them out. I have a beautiful handcarved Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. We have another special and beautiful hard resin nativity set for the children. I use evergreens from our yard or gotten for free when we get our Christmas tree. Whoa...I had more to say but I have to go rescue my three year old from the wrestling brothers. Back later to finish

We are working on painting our entire house- including the two story foyer. Everything said above was super helpful and you can paint a two story foyer with the extension poles fairly easily. The hardest part for us is removing wallpaper and sanding the walls to make them paint-able. The only other things I would say is to try out a paint sample of what color you want. The light in your house might be different than you expect. Pretty much all grey colors look purple in our living room which I never would have thought of. The color you have on your walls would drive me crazy, especially since you have so much of it. But both my husband and I like much lighter colors.

I have had the KitchenAid one for 12 years and it works wonderfully.

I had a problem with this and Amazon was amazing at fixing it right away. I did the chat thing and they were so helpful and sent a new one out right away.

This was so very helpful. I always feel like I am crazy when dealing with my in-laws and this article made perfect sense.

My husband and I have enjoyed a few of them: Churchill World's Greatest Paintings Quantum Mechanics

Thank you so much! I appreciate your help. Those are what I was looking for and I will have to try and find some of those. One of the Amazon suggestions when I was looking at the Crazy Game you linked was for this new one: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BX5BRS/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 I purchased it because my boys love snakes and I am sure it will come in time for Christmas as it is from Amazon. But I am so happy you found the original ones. I will be getting some of those.

When I was looking up some tessellations stuff for my oldest today I had a flash of remembering some puzzles we had when I was a kid. My kids would love them if I could find something like that. They were multi-sided puzzles that had half of an animal on one side and you had to match it up with the other side. But all sides of the piece had to match all of the places where it touched another piece. The pieces were an odd shape- like slanted rectangles. Hopefully that makes sense and I am remembering them rightly. I remember brightly colored cats being one of the ones we had. I just remember them being so much fun and sometimes hard to make it all the sides match correctly, especially with the last piece. They were made of thick cardboard with a nice shiny printing on top and bottom. Does anyone have any ideas? I have searched Amazon but can't really think what to call those kind of puzzles. These would be fun for Christmas if anyone has any ideas. Thanks in advance!

Do your boys like vehicles? I have three really busy boys and they all love running around the house pushing bigger trucks and cars. It seems like all they did when they were smaller was push around cars and trucks. I have had to find really nice sturdy ones but they get so much use. We like Bruder plastic ones and Fagus wood trucks. Wood is always better for durability. I also purchased two trucks from this etsy shop and they still are going strong: https://www.etsy.com/shop/mikebtoys ETA: I just noticed this is a really old thread. :)

I bought Prime Climb for my boys for Christmas as it was on sale before Thanksgiving. It looks really fun.

Maybe this one? http://www.rainbowresource.com/product/sku/064400 https://www.amazon.com/Learning-Resources-Robot-Mouse-Activity/dp/B01A5YMCH4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1481047485&sr=8-1&keywords=mouse+maze+game

I found a used Cuboro on eBay for my kids and it is amazing. They love the fact that you can make tunnels inside the blocks.

I got one for the first time this year and was pleasantly surprised how many fun items they had. I was super excited because a friend of mine had a little fabric doll set that my daughter just adored. I wanted to get one for my daughter but could not find anything like that anywhere. Then...there it was in the RR catalog.

My in-laws and their children (1 teen, 6 adults) visited for two weeks over the summer and trashed my house: - Wiped boogers on the couch - Clipped their nails and left the nails all over my desk and coffee table - Ate all over my house especially on the couch- I found so much food and beetles under the couch after they left - Broke about half my dishes - Spilled juice and coffee everywhere - Brought lice with them, then treated the lice in my bathroom spraying the spray everywhere on walls and floor, and left all so much mess from dead lice bodies to clean up. I had to remove the wallpaper to get it off. It was so completely nasty to clean up. I try not to think about it. Thankfully we were planning on removing the wallpaper anyway. - Broke my washer from overloading it when washing due to lice. - Somehow broke a bookshelf in the guest room they were in? They "fixed it" by using my books as boards to prop up the bookcase sides. - Sadly enough I could go on and on. My husband was completely shocked and so was I. After they left and I deloused my husband and children, I spent two weeks cleaning the house. Every inch was cleaned. I don't think that they will stay with us again but in a hotel. On the bright side, my husband and children have never been so appreciative of all I do to keep things nice and clean. :)

Thank you so much for this! I never knew they made the K-force kits and my oldest will LOVE that! Thank you!

Whoops! I am sorry. Wrong thread.

My oldest son (8) who is my gifted son especially in math has told me this past week that he hates math. I was completely surprised as this is where he excels the most and just has always not gotten enough math. We have done so much stuff that I don't have time to list it all. I have never pushed him and he has just loved every minute of math. We have been finishing up Beast 5 with some other stuff and I was planning on starts AOPS Pre-A in January. He has been really cranky in general about everything lately- not just math. Even playing outside and building things hasn't been as enjoyable to him lately. He reads books like crazy. It has been a stressful past year- we moved cross country and then had my in-laws and their children came and visited for two weeks. They are very cranky, critical people and it rubbed off on him a lot. So, maybe that is just it. I don't know. I guess I am rambling lately. What would you do- especially with math? I am feeling discouraged as I don't want him to hate it.

I just started another thread about Picasso vs Magnatiles and as I was searching around more I came across these: http://www.clickclackbracks.com/construction-sets Has anyone purchased these and how are they? Are they durable? Thank you!

I am thinking about Christmas presents and I have seen a lot of you here mention Magnatiles. I think that my children would love these. I also found an old thread about Picasso tiles too and was wondering what you all think about them,. So, I have a few questions if you don't mind: - Has anyone purchased both of them? Which do you like better? Which is more durable? - For those of you who purchased Picasso tiles- have they held up?