Life gets busy these days doesn’t it? Time flies by, kids grow so fast…

When I received an email asking if I was interested in reviewing Making a Family Home by Shannon Honeybloom, I was definitely interested.

Making a Family Home is a book filled with Shannon’s tips for creating a warm, intimate and inviting atmosphere for you and your family. The book is filled with beautiful, colourful photos and she shares what she did to make their house into a home for her family.

At the beginning of the book she writes that “many mothers, in their modern isolation from families and traditions, have lost a sense of how to care for young children and for their homes.” I don’t disagree with much in this book, but I disagree with that statement. I think that the disconnect today comes from the rat race…

We are so busy now, there are so many avenues by which to get sidetracked and caught up in. There is the phone, email, faxes, twittering, facebooking, and (insert your favorite time waster here).

For example, if you don’t harvest your crops on Farmville on time, they wither (you know what I’m talking about!). If you don’t post on some forums, you get deleted (note to those forums I am a part of, please don’t delete me, that was just an observation)! The list goes on and on.

It’s so easy to get wrapped up in everything, getting unwrapped is the hard part. And as we get wrapped up, the important things start to suffer. We start to make quick, processed dinners. We throw a video on to babysit our kids and we (insert your short cut here).

I found this book to be very insightful both as a book on families and for home decorating. In part of the book, Shannon talks about her children’s sensory issues. This helped me to realize that my daughter has some sensory issues with sound and movement. She has a couple of toys that she hates due to the sound they make and how they move. It makes her cry. She also hates it when the sound level in the house gets too high. So we are trying to work around her; vacuum when she is out, turn on loud appliances when she is in another part of the house etc.

This book goes room by room and talks about why they have it set up the way they do. They use a lot of handmade toys and they have a lot of crafts around instead of big ticket toys. It is a back to basics book that is a great read for anyone who is trying to bring the focus back to their family. You can buy this book from either Amazon.ca or Amazon.com for about $20.

You can also visit Shannon’s blog at Honeybloom at Home for more posts and useful tips.

I also have one (1) copy of this book to give away to a lucky reader…

To enter:
Tell me what your favorite childhood memory is and leave a way of getting a hold of you if you win. *You must do this for any additional entries to count.

After you have completed the first entry, you can enter an additional comment one time for each of the following:

• Follow This Bird’s Day on Twitter and tweet about this giveaway. Please include your twitter id in your comment.
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• Subscribe to This Bird’s Day (at the bottom of the page).

This contest is open to Canadian and US residents and runs until 12pm MST on Tuesday, February 9, 2010.

* I received this product for free to complete my review. The opinions expressed in this post are mine only and are in no way influenced by any outside factors.