*post by Shannan Powell, mom of 3 boys, RM Media community and project manager, and Resourceful Mommy contributor.  Last night, I cracked on Facebook: “Hurricane Prep  101: Actually prepare for the storm so it will laugh at your wasted time and head out to sea. Get on it, people.” I was only half joking. We…

Sing it with me: “Thank you for being a friend…travel down the road and back again…” Last night as I was getting ready for bed, I started to think about the fact that Facebook friends tend to follow commenting patterns. There are certain people who always respond to every status in exactly the same way….

*post by Shannan Powell, mom of 3 boys, RM Media community and project manager, and Resourceful Mommy contributor.  We’re just a few days away from the official start of fall. While here in the Mid-Atlantic we’re still reaching 80-plus degrees most days, I’m contemplating taking inventory of the sweaters and winter coats and all the…

This is a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions belong to Shannan Powell, mom of 3 boys, RM Media community and project manager, and Resourceful Mommy contributor   I have always had a love/hate relationship with back-to-school season. While I lament the early mornings and the evenings of homework and rushing to activities, there is…

As you know from my fire safety assessment post, June was National Safety Month, and I chose to take that time to assess the fire safety needs in my home. I turned to Kidde’s Home Safety resource to determine if our home had enough smoke alarms and fire extinguishers. What I found was startling. I began the…

As a work from home mom, I try my best to keep on top of all home-related concerns. The kitchen and bathrooms are (almost) always clean, the laundry is washed if not put away, and I enjoy tweaking the decorating around the house to freshen the look and make our home comfortable for my family….

This is a sponsored post. All thoughts and opinions belong to Shannan Powell, mom of 3 boys, RM Media community and project manager, and Resourceful Mommy contributor. I love traveling with my family and almost as much as I love the adventure of travel, I love the excitement of planning our trips. It becomes a…

In 2013 I wrote a book called Raising Digital Families For Dummies, and for a few months I spent countless hours telling reporters, radio DJ’s, and television talk show hosts that parents need to set strict digital limits for their children, creating digital family contracts that legislate everything from screen time allowances to cell phone charging…

Over the last year I have devoted most of my hours to the job of worship director at my family’s church home, working on everything from special services to managing the tech crew. One of my roles has been creating set pieces for the chancel area of the sanctuary. I’ve turned the “stage” into a…

One of my primary goals as a mom is to transfer the treasures of my own upbringing to my children while protecting them from the traumas. My childhood was a mixed bag of wonderful reckless abandon and stormy turbulence. I admired and respected my hard-working mother, yet often missed her presence. I fought without fear,…

As I sit here at my computer, there is a couch slipcover in my washing machine. I noticed after performing the delicate surgery of removing it that the tag says, “Machine wash. No tumble dry.” It is currently 24 degrees outside and my neighborhood HOA has a rule against hanging laundry outside, so I really…

IKEA, I know we’ve had an on-again/off-again relationship. Don’t take it personally. There was that sliver of time when I couldn’t afford your European design, flat-packed goodness. The budget of the early-20’s living together in sin demographic allows for one thing: free hand-me-downs. Then we began to make some cold hard cash and suddenly a…

This post is part of a sponsored post campaign. Compensation has been provided. Last week, we shared some staggering statistics with you about the knowledge of tweens when it comes to OTC medications. This week, we wanted to share a little more information with you about the resources available from to help you improve the…

This post is part of a sponsored post campaign. Compensation has been provided. Just how much do your children know about the dangers of over-the-counter medications? As parents, we do our best to educate our children about the dangers of drinking, street drugs, and even prescription medication but have you talked to your children about…

Three and a half years ago I wrote about the pain of parenting, opting to keep the details of the medical decision private and write instead about the emotions I was experiencing. In the end, the decision was made to move forward with a disruptive but mostly pain free treatment for our daughter’s medical issue. A year…

This post is part of a sponsored post campaign. Compensation has been provided. As a mom of two digital natives, I’m constantly looking for digital media that will not only entertain my kids, but that will also meet our rigorous standards for what we’ll allow our kids to view. The number of digital learning tools…

With over a month of the new school year already behind us, all of our children have surely by now reviewed their school’s safety plans with their teachers. They’ve sheltered in place, they’ve prepared for a tornado, and a staple of every school, they’ve reviewed their fire safety plans. But do your kids know what…

(This post was originally published 5/5/2011.) The first time I visited my husband’s home state of Texas, I was baffled by the roads running parallel to every major highway.  Imagine building two of the exact same road right next to each other, one with six lanes, one with two, one moving quickly, one not as…

(This post was originally published 4/19/2010) “…I try to draw the line but it ends up running down the middle of me most of the time.” – Ani DiFranco I grew up in a family that gave very little thought to how other people lived. Certainly we sat around summer picnics and shared all the…

This post was originally published 9/12/2009. Last week my dad handed me an interesting article he was reading about children and self-discipline. The basis of the article was new research showing that children can be taught self-discipline (is ‘taught self-discipline’ oxymoronic to anyone but me?). While I agree that parents can work with children to…

This post was originally published October 24, 2010. And you won’t believe where we’re going… A year ago I reviewed a book calledSpilt Milk, and while I enjoyed the entire book, there was one passage in particular that never left my heart.  Author Linda Vujnov writes: “‘All men are idiots, and I married the king…