A Day of Wonders

I haven't disappeared!!

2011-07-10T10:01:00.002-05:00

Hi! Is anybody still out there? Just checking in. I apologize for being absent for so long. Lots of changes have been in the works for me and my family. In May, I finished my final year of teaching at the Montessori school where I was both head teacher and director. I am finally pursuing a long-held dream of mine to be a homeschool mama to my two sons. I am super-excited about this new adventure. To bring in a bit of extra income this fall, I will be teaching private piano lessons and offering Kindermusik classes from my home studio. I've been busy designing and creating two new blogs to document all these goings-on. You can read about my new studio by visiting Walnut Hill Studio. And.....you can read all about my homeschooling adventures by visiting Walnut Hill Homeschool. With so much new happening, it made sense to me to document everything at a new place in cyberspace. So.......I'm not sure how much I'll be posting over here. I may still pop in to tell you about various non-homeschool-related events and activities. Maybe I'll save this space for a place to share my cooking and crafting, since I still hope to do lots of that. By the way, I've recently discovered Pinterest. Oh, my word! Pure awesomeness. I think this link will take you to my Pinterest page where you can see all the stunning visual inspiration I've found online.

Chickens in my bathroom (again!)

2011-04-11T22:52:00.006-05:00

Yep, I really do have four chickens in my bathroom again. I decided to get some new baby chicks this year so we could double our "flock" and have more eggs. We have four full-grown hens and today the boys and I went to our local Bomgaar's and bought four more "girls". By this fall, we should be in the organic, farm-fresh egg business. My sons are old enough now to be more involved in caring for the chickens and gathering the eggs. They can profit from their efforts by selling the eggs to friends and family. It is so fun to raise chickens from chick-hood. They are so cute. I sat in the bathroom and watched them for a long time tonight. At this age, they fall asleep very easily. When they sleep they completely sack out and almost look dead. Sometimes they will be standing up and their eyes will drift closed, then their head droops down, finally their legs collapse and they are sound asleep. I watched one tonight who was getting drowsy right by the water bottle. Her head would start falling until her beak dipped into the water. Then she would startle awake, raise her head to swallow, then quickly fall right back to sleep. It was so cute. For you poultry-minded folks, we got two Ameraucanas (they will lay bluish eggs, which should be fun), one White Rock and one White Leghorn. The Ameraucanas are the darker ones, and the White Rock and White Leghorn are the yellow ones. The White Rock will lay brown eggs, and the white leghorn white eggs. They should be laying by September. PS: For those of you who are wondering, the chicks in the bathroom are in a Rubbermaid tub with a vented lid. They are not in my bathtub!! PPS: I apologize (to myself as much as to anyone who reads this blog) for not posting more often. Hopefully that will change after the school year ends. PPPS: Some exciting news which I have not yet shared online.............this fall I am finally going to be...........a homeschool mama!! Yay!! I am very excited. I've wanted to do this for 10 years (I've been a mom for about 10 years) and am finally taking the plunge! I will document this journey on a new blog which I will start posting on sometime near the end of May.

Here's why my son isn't getting a Nintendo DS anytime soon

2011-02-22T22:24:00.007-06:00

My children do not have the latest in popular entertainment and video devices. While we don't live under a rock and my boys do watch TV, we have not yet jumped on the bandwagon of digital gadgetry in our household. Yes, my laptop is my BFF. However, I am not on Facebook or Twitter. I don't know how to text (I know that is VERY lame...........I just haven't needed to learn yet), and my phone is a Motorola Tracfone which I buy minutes for when my minutes run out. It doesn't even have one of those cool little keyboards that slides out. Usually I just use it to call DH with an item to add to the grocery list. (Yes, he does our grocery shopping. I am very blessed.) And believe me...........if someone walked up to me today and offered me one of those really cool phones that does everything, I would not hesitate to accept.

So..........before I go any further, please know that in no way do I judge others for their relationships to digital devices. Nor I am opposed to or "against" the use of said devices. To be honest, we just haven't purchased some of these gadgets because as of yet no one in our family has felt a pressing need to have them. It doesn't make sense to us to buy something for our children that they are not asking for. That would be like introducing an ice cream sundae to a child who consistently and contentedly eats a variety of healthy foods. If they're happy eating healthy, why mess with it, right? Likewise, if my children are happy and occupied with books and toys that don't beep or light up, why mess with it?

Recently, however, my youngest son (he's 5 1/2) has been telling me he REALLY wants a Nintendo DS. I have explained to him that these cost a lot of money and that he will have to really save his money (which he earns by keeping his room clean) if he wants to buy one. The chances of him saving up enough to buy one are slim to none; money kind of burns a hole in his pocket and is usually used to buy more LEGO sets. And I love it when he buys LEGO sets because they are hands-on, open-ended, constructive and will get lots of play time in our household.

Today, however, something occurred that pretty much convinced me that none of MY hard-earned cash is going to buy him a DS anytime soon. There's a bit of a backstory here. Today (Tuesday) was a no-school day for me and my sons. We also had the day off on Monday for President's Day. On Monday I took the boys to a local museum where they were having President's Day activities for families. I also bought the boys lunch at the museum. My youngest son had an orange cream soda to drink. It came in a glass bottle. He didn't drink it all, but when I asked the restaurant employee if they recycled the glass bottles, she said no. I am a pretty dedicated recycler, so I took the bottles into the restroom, dumped the remaining soda out, rinsed the bottles and hauled them around in my huge purse the rest of the afternoon. My youngest son was very excited that we were saving his bottle. He said he was going to make something with it when we got home.

Fast forward to this morning. I decided to clean out the junk drawer in our kitchen. While doing this project, I had the contents of the drawer spread out on our table. My youngest son spotted a round metal lid that was missing its handle. He asked if he could have it. Knowing there was a good chance I had no use for the lid, I agreed. A little while later I was sweeping the floor. My broom dislodged a circular piece of heavy wire from beneath our couch. My youngest son spotted it in the pile of pet hair and dirt just before I swept it into a dustpan. He asked if he could have it. I agreed, but cautioned him to be careful with it.

Later in the morning I rounded up the boys to go to work with me. They often accompany me when I have to get things ready in my preschool classroom. As we headed out the door I noticed that my youngest son was planning to bring the empty glass soda bottle, the metal lid and the ring of wire along. Not wanting to deal with that, I urged him to leave them behind. He persisted, telling me he was going to make something with them. I gave in. We went to my school. While I busied myself with the tasks I needed to accomplish, my youngest son played with the bottle, lid and wire. He showed me all the different things he could do with them. At one point, he used them as a catapult to roll a globe from my classroom across the floor. Another time he showed me how the curved wire could be used like a hook to pick up the lid.

Much later in the afternoon, the boys and I had to stop at my parents' house to pick something up. Again, my youngest son insisted on bringing his bottle, lid and wire with him. My mom greeted us at the door and remarked about the strange assortment of items my little guy was carrying. I told her that he had occupied himself with these three items for much of the day. The boys played at my parents house for about an hour while I went back to work. Although he played with other things, I know my son continued to enjoy his trio of "junky" treasures at their house as well.

At one point today he told me he wants to collect lots of bottles so he can make lots of things with them. It reminded me of his Valentine's party at school last week. I had brought juice boxes for the children. Instead of throwing his juice box away when he was finished, my son asked to bring it home. He wanted to make a boat out of it.

So........now you know why he isn't getting a Nintendo DS anytime soon. Who needs a fancy video game when you can be happily entertained for hours with a bottle, a discarded lid, and a piece of wire? Why mess with a good thing?

Giveaway Winner!

2011-02-12T21:43:00.007-06:00

I used the random number generator to choose a winner for the Candace Cameron Bure book giveaway.

The random number was #34, posted by LT: "PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!! I struggle with both spiritual and physical fitness. I could definitely benefit from a book like this, plus...Candace Cameron Bure is one of my role models."

Congratulations, LT! Please email me at directress@live.com with your snail mail address and I'll pop it in the mail to you.

Thanks to everyone for playing! Best of luck to you on your fitness goals. I am plugging away with my exercise and better eating goals. I used to drink 3 diet sodas every day. Now I am only having a few each week and I'm gradually learning to drink lots more water. I have found that I much prefer cold water to water right from the tap, so I've started keeping a large glass in the frig at all times so I can grab it and drink. I'm also keeping a water bottle in the frig at my work so I drink more water throughout the day. In addition, I'm doing a treadmill workout (using this beginner's running program) about 3 times per week and I'm doing exercise DVDs on the other days, about 3 times per week as well. I have found that exercise DVDs are a great and inexpensive way to fit fitness into a busy schedule since you don't have to go anywhere or be anywhere at a specific time. If you haven't already done so, head over to Collage Video. This website features only fitness videos. You can preview every single one of their DVDs right on the website because each title has a short video clip. You can also read the reviews written by other women who have tried the videos. In addition, you can usually find videos here for much less than anywhere else and the selection can't be beat! I recently ordered 4 new DVDs to put into my weekly rotation. Yesterday I did Skinny Sculpt with Ellen Barrett. I totally loved this workout and still feel a little sore today! The great thing about this DVD is that it is not a strenuous high-impact aerobic workout, yet you still really feel toned and strengthened at the end. I highly recommend it and it has great reviews over at Collage.

If you read nothing else today.........

2011-02-07T15:53:00.001-06:00

.........read THIS. You won't regret it.

Reshaping It All Book Giveaway

2011-02-05T17:52:00.006-06:00

I can't believe how rarely I am making it over to this space to write posts. Hopefully I will find the time and motivation to write more over here soon. Anyway, a few weeks ago I became aware of this book, written by Candace Cameron Bure (of Full House fame for those of you who are old enough, also the sister of Kirk Cameron) and Darlene Schacht. At the time I read a review of the book our MOPS group was going to have a speaker about fitness and health. On a whim I decided to email Darlene to ask if she would send me a copy to give away at our MOPS meeting. Being the gracious and generous woman she is, she sent me THREE copies: one for MOPS, one to keep and one to give away on this blog.

I read my copy cover to cover in one day. There is a lot of good stuff in this book. What I loved most about it was its focus on the need for spiritual as well as physical fitness. There are many Scripture references in this book which I found to be helpful and thought-provoking. There is also a lot of practical advice and encouragement for living a healthier life. I have already implemented some of the suggestions in this book and have seen results. I have dropped a few pounds already and have started exercising again after a three-month hiatus. Candace and Darlene truly gave me the encouragement and motivation I needed to get back into a healthy lifestyle. Some of the great advice tips I've used so far include: being mindful of how much I am eating (I tend to eat extra servings of food I really love), being mindful of when and why I am eating (I also had gotten into a habit of snacking after my boys were in bed which was adding a lot of calories to my overall consumption each day), and drinking more water. I am a diet soda fiend, so I am still working on this one.

Candace has included several of her favorite healthy recipes in the book. The first week after I read the book I tried (and liked) several of these recipes.

All in all, I whole-heartedly recommend this book. I do not have a lot of weight to lose (hopefully another 5 pounds.....), but I still found it very useful. I am planning to give my "keep" copy to our local library so others can enjoy it.

If you would like to win your very own copy of this book, leave a comment on this post telling what you struggle with most when it comes to either physical or spiritual fitness. I'll keep the giveaway open until Friday, February 11th. Then I'll choose a winner randomly from the comments.

Christmas Pajamas

2010-12-30T19:14:00.007-06:00

This year I made homemade pajamas for the boys to open and wear on Christmas Eve just like I've done the past two years. I ordered the Michael Miller mitten flannel a few months ago, but of course, waited until a few days before Christmas to actually make the pajama pants. They really don't take very long. I think it took me less than 2 hours to make both sets of pants. I had a heck of a time finding plain colored long sleeve t-shirts in any of my local craft stores this year. So I ended up ordering shirts online from Jiffy Shirts. They were pretty reasonably priced even with shipping and arrived VERY quickly, within two days of my online order. I freezer-paper-stenciled the mittens on the shirt to match the mitten flannel of the pants. I bought enough extra flannel to make myself a matching pair of pj pants, but haven't sewn those yet. I will also have to order myself a t-shirt from Jiffy shirts to match. While I'm at it, I'll probably order a few shirts to paint for Valentine's Day. I'm thinking of doing homemade pjs for that as a surprise. We'll see...........

Below are photos of the pajamas. My boys knew they were getting these, but didn't know the "theme" this year. My little boy had fun guessing what he thought they would be............his main guess was "presents", but he was WRONG!

In case you are interested............I just ordered THIS FABRIC for next year's pajamas and I'm headed over to Jiffy Shirts to order the t-shirts for Valentine's and next Christmas too!

Storybook Christmas Tree

2010-12-05T23:12:00.005-06:00

This year the boys and I decorated a tree for our local county historical museum's Festival of Trees. Last year for Advent, we read several Christmas story books and made ornaments to go with them. You can see the posts about the books and links to the ornament directions by clicking on "Christmas book activities 2009" on the sidebar of the blog. Since we already had the ornaments made, it was pretty easy to decorate the tree. I bought a white tree at Dollar General for $20, which I thought was a great price. I had also bought some red and tree ornaments from my favorite local thrift store. I made a chain garland with alternating red and green pipe cleaner circles. And I sewed some little Christmas bunting garland too. I used green tulle and red pipe cleaners for the topper. To illustrate the fact that our ornaments correlate with stories, I scanned the covers of all the books and made laminated ornaments out of the scanned images. Then I hung the "book" ornaments next to the ones we made to go with each book.

The full-length tree is shown below.

Close-up of the topper............

Cinnamon gingerbread ornaments............

Green pinecone trees.............

Pipe-cleaner trees...........

Popsicle stick snowmen (these are my favorite ornaments)............

Craft foam Rudolphs............

Felt poinsettias on juice can lids.............

Craft foam "J" is for Jesus candy canes.........

Felt Santa hats............

Glittery gold popsicle stars..........

Clear "snowflake" ornaments..........

We placed the actual storybooks around the bottom of the tree.

I'm not sure if we'll decorate a tree every year, but it sure was fun this year. I already have an idea for next year's tree brewing though! I need to start working on ornaments now because the ones I have in mind are hand-sewn from felt. They are REALLY cute!

We have been to the museum twice to see all the other trees and to vote for our favorites. You can vote for your favorite in the Youth and Adult categories. It cracked me up that my sons picked other favorite trees in the Youth category instead of voting for their own tree! (I totally voted for our tree both times, in case you were wondering!)

Turkey Handprint Trivets

2010-11-14T20:58:00.005-06:00

Today I decided to try an idea that was brewing in my head. I cleaned my craft room yesterday because there has been some craftiness taking place in that space and it was a mess. When I was cleaning I discovered two white ceramic tiles that I had bought a few months back. I originally had a hand-print Christmas tree trivet in mind. However, when I tried it with acrylic paint on the ceramic tile (from Home Depot) the paint didn't adhere well. So I washed the tile clean and it ended up piled under a bunch of other stuff until yesterday. I needed an idea for my MOPS group blog post, so I decided to do hand-print turkeys using scrapbook paper and Mod Podge. I think they turned out really, really cute.

Below you can see most of the supplies used. I traced the boys' hands on the wrong side of some scrapbook paper and cut them out. Instead of doing each "feather" in a different paper, I decided to use a brown plaid paper I really liked for the whole tail. I used my star punch to make feet and a beak (I cut off a star point for the beak) and my heart punch (cut in half) for the wattle. I used a regular size hole punch to punch out an eye. The photo shows everything laid out on the tile before I Mod-Podged it. That's why it looks kind of crooked.

The first step was to spread a thin layer of Mod Podge all over the clean, dry tile with a foam brush. Then I laid out the paper pieces and brushed another layer of Mod Podge over the top. After that coat was dry I added stickers to spell each boy's name and the year. Then I put another 2 coats of Mod Podge over the top again to really adhere the stickers. The photo below shows one tile which is mostly dry and the other one still wet. If you try this and have never used Mod Podge, don't worry, it dries clear.

I think these turned out SOOOOO cute. I am so happy with them. I will add little felt circles (like the kind you put under furniture) to the back corners. I think I'll also pick up some little plate easels at Hobby Lobby and display these on a shelf in an upright position. They will be fun to pull out each year. I was barely able to fit my 9 year olds' hand on one, so I'm glad I did it this year. He might be too big next year to do this!

The photo below shows last year's Thanksgiving hand-print craft. I used fabric paint to do "hand turkeys" of each boy and freezer paper stencilled the words in the middle. The pillow is made out of burlap. CLICK HERE for a link to the post describing this project.

Cute Turkey Candleholders

2010-11-07T19:53:00.005-06:00

Hello! If any of you are still reading this blog, I apologize for being AWOL for so long. This has been a really hectic fall for our family and for me especially. I took on some extra commitments that are filling a lot of my time. I was just thinking recently that I miss making stuff and posting about it. Today I am sharing a turkey craft that I did with my youngest son on Sunday. I found the idea for this craft on the Family Fun website. CLICK HERE for a link to the actual craft. I changed a few things from the one on FF. I did not have wooden beads so I used brown pom-poms for the head of the turkey. I used yellow cardstock for the beaks and red felt for the wattles and googly eyes for the eyes.

My little 5 year old took the photo below of me cutting some tissue paper into squares. I thought he did a great job, so I wanted to include it.

Here are the supplies needed. I bought the clear glass votive holders at Dollar Tree for $1 each. We made five turkeys so we can give them to a few people at our family Thanksgiving dinner. We will keep one for our family, of course! You also need Mod Podge, a foam brush, and tissue paper in fall colors. If you are a local reader of the blog, I found a package of fall-colored tissue paper at Kally's General Store. LOVE that store!

I spread a layer of Mod Podge onto the sides and bottom of the votive holder using the foam brush and then my little guy adhered the tissue squares all over it.

Then I covered the whole thing with another layer of Mod Podge and let it dry.

The final step was adding a pom-pom head, cardstock beak, googly eyes, and a felt wattle using a hot glue gun. Tissue paper strips folded in half and twisted at the bottom were then hot-glued to the back of the votive holder to make a tail. It is hard to tell in the photo, but I put a battery-operated candle inside. It looks really pretty when it's glowing. These are so fun and easy to make. Wouldn't Grandma love to receive one of these on Thanksgiving day........especially if it was handmade by her precious grandchidlren? Of course she would! So go do it!

Fall Craft Idea: String a Leaf Garland

2010-09-19T19:46:00.005-05:00

I can't believe I haven't posted here for over a month. Needless to say, the beginning of the new school year has been VERY busy for me. Today I wanted to write a quick post to share an idea to do with your children this fall.

First, go to Dollar General (or your local dollar store) and buy a package or two of fall silk leaves. Unless you are planning to make a HUGE garland, one package should be plenty.

Now get some pretty fall ribbon and cut it to the length you want for your garland. If you are doing this with young children, I would recommend using only a 2-3 foot length. If you are making a garland that you will hang up you can skip the next step. However, I wanted to make one as a stringing activity to put in my Montessori classroom. Since it would be used over and over by many children, I folded over the ends of my ribbon and sewed a button over the fold. This will make it sturdier for little hands to string and will prevent the end of the ribbon from fraying.

Next, fold your leaves in half and cut a slit in the middle as shown below.

Give your child the ribbon and a pile of leaves and let them string the leaves onto the ribbon. This is great for developing their fine motor skills.

My five-year-old loved stringing the leaves onto the ribbon. He wanted to hang it up right away. The one in the photos is the one I'll use in my preschool classroom. However, we have a TON of leaves left over so I will have him make another one that we can hang up to decorate our home for fall.

This gives you an idea of what the garland looks like with the leaves on it. So pretty for fall!

Happy Fall, Y'all! (I know it isn't officially fall yet, but fall is in the air here in the Midwest and I LOVE IT!!)

I'll try to drop in here again soon and update everyone on what we've been up to.

Buzzin' About Bees

2010-08-12T06:00:00.003-05:00

This past Saturday the boys and I went to a local nature center that we belong to for a special program all about honeybees. We were able to take a little hike in the prairie and one of the bee-keepers came out to show us a frame from one of the hives. It was covered with bees! I have long wanted to convince DH to let us get a hive for our property so we could harvest the honey. So far he has not given me the thumbs up. One cool thing is that the nature center has started a bee conservation program where people can call them up if they have honeybees in their wall or in a tree on their property and the bee conservation guy (like the guy below.....in fact it probably IS the guy below!) will come and rescue the bees. Then they are taken back to the hives at the nature center and (hopefully) they will start up a new hive. Isn't that cool? We learned a lot about honeybees and how important they are and how their numbers are declining. I do think our family is pretty busy this fall, but maybe I can learn more over the winter and talk DH into adding bees to the "farmstead" next summer. After all, they can't be more work than chickens and we added chickens last year.

Here's a close-up of the honey frame. The bees had been "smoked" before he took the frame out so they were calm and not being aggressive.

Here are some pretty black-eyed Susan flowers that were in the prairie.

If any of you reading this raise honeybees, I would LOVE to hear from you about your experience so leave me a comment, 'kay?

Meet my new BFF........

2010-08-10T23:39:00.004-05:00

.........the Eureka Enviro Steamer. I am officially in LOVE.

Let me tell you how this relationship began. A few weeks ago I was running on the treadmill and watching an infomercial (I know........) about the Shark Vac & Steam (or Steam & Vac). I was instantly intrigued by the idea of cleaning my hard-surface floors using only water and not chemicals. I have wood laminate floors over the majority of our main living space and vinyl tile in a large area downstairs. I had previously cleaned my hard surfaces using a Swiffer with an old washcloth and spraying all-purpose cleaner on the floor. While that system was working okay I never felt the floors were truly clean. So......after my little informercial incident I did a little steam experiment. I boiled some water in a glass measuring cup in my microwave. Then I poured it into a plastic spray bottle and squirted it onto my floor and wiped it up with my Swiffer and washcloth. It worked brilliantly.........even my youngest son commented that the floor felt very smooth under his cute little bare feet. There was a problem, however. I did not anticipate how beastly HOT a plastic spray bottle is with boiling water in it. I had to hold it with a hot pad to be able to squirt it and it eventually caused the spray bottle (which obviously was not designed to spray BOILING WATER) to malfunction. Still, this little experiment convinced me to take the plunge and buy a steam mop. I did quite a bit of research on Amazon before deciding on the Eureka Enviro Steam. I just got it today and immediately ripped the box open and cleaned my whole upstairs and, later, the downstairs. This baby even gets the gunk up. If you come to a sticky spot you just hold the mop over that spot for....no less than 8 and no more than 15 seconds.....and the gunk pretty much comes right up. I can't say enough for this product. It is probably one of the best investments I've made in cleaning supplies. And now I don't have to buy floor cleaner anymore which will also save a ton of money.

Do you see how the camera flash reflected on the GLEAMING tile in the photo below?

Oh, I love you, Eureka Enviro Steamer!

This is what the pad looked like after cleaning the vinyl tile in my basement. Yuck! These can be tossed in the wash but have to be air-dried so they don't shrink. I would love to hear from you if you have had good luck with a steam mop.

County Fair 2010

2010-08-02T00:01:00.001-05:00

This year the boys made some projects to take to our county fair. The fair, like most fairs, is a 4-H fair but also has an Open Class division where anyone can enter exhibits. I was a 4-Her from 8th grade through 12th grade and I can honestly say that of all the things I participated in as a young person, 4-H was the most life-changing and positive. I cannot say enough about how awesome 4-H is. And it's not just for kids on farms or kids who have livestock. There is SO much more. Anyway..........I definitely hope my two boys want to be involved in 4-H. You can't join until 4th grade and my oldest son is just starting third this fall. I wanted the boys to get a feel for what the fair is all about and entering projects in Open Class was a great introduction.

Both boys worked on an embroidery project which I turned into pillows. My youngest son embroidered a football on a square of burlap. I just drew a football shape with a pencil and he followed the line, going up and down with his needle and thread. He just turned 5 a few months ago and I didn't think he would be ready yet for a traditional backstitch. Below you can see two photos of his pillow.

Up close............he did a really good job considering I didn't help him at all and it was his first sewing project ever.

My older son embroidered a monkey. I showed him an Ed Emberly drawing book and had him choose an animal to draw on paper. I then transferred his drawing onto a piece of burlap and taught him to embroider on the lines. I helped a little bit on the corners and tight curves, but he did most of it independently. His pillow received a Purple Ribbon in its class which was a fun surprise.

He also did an art project...........a crayon drawing of a hen and chicks. I got the idea for this project from a blog I have grown to LOVE so much...........Art Projects for Kids. Be sure to go check out this blog. It is written by an art teacher and has great projects that you could do with your children at home. I am thinking about choosing a few projects to do with the boys for them to give as Christmas gifts. Truly great stuff over there.

In addition to these projects the boys entered their fireworks t-shirts that we made for Fourth of July. They also each entered a plate of 10 green beans from our garden and a marigold flower from our gardens. AND..........they each entered a dozen eggs from our chickens........blue ribbon eggs I might add. :0) They were so excited to see their ribbons and to bring them home on the last day of the fair. Each ribbon also has a premium associated with it so they each got a check to cash as well. We will definitely be doing this again next year. If you think your child would love doing this, consider saving some of their art projects from school this year and contact your local county extension office to find out about the Open Class division in your county. In our fair the Open Class division has classes for collections and even Lego constructions, something that my little guy was TOTALLY into looking at this year. He is already talking about what lego sculpture he wants to take next year. All good country fun!

Fourth of July fun

2010-08-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

To make up for the absence of any fun mommy-inspired creativity in June I tried to make up for it by pulling together a few projects for the Fourth of July. We invited a few friends over on Friday, July 2nd for a little swimming party. Before the kids swam they made firecracker crowns. I forgot to take a finished photo but below you can see how they are made. The directions and idea were from Family Fun. CLICK HERE. Basically you just need tape, straws and pipe-cleaners. They turned out so cute!

I also got creative in the kitchen and made red, white and blue cupcakes. I found the flag picks at my fave thrift store, of course! To do the cupcakes you just divide your white cake batter into 3 bowls and color one bowl blue and one red. Then you glop the batter into the cupcake liners, color on top of color. Once they are baked they are red, white and blue inside. Totally easy and also fun to bite into! Again, I forgot to take a picture of one cut apart, but in the photo below you can see the layers of color pretty well. We also had strawberries dipped in white candy melts on the bottom with the ends dipped in blue sugar. You can just barely see them in the bottom right corner of the photo.

The most visually stunning part of our feast, however, was the layered Jell-O I made. These turned out SO awesome. I didn't know if I could actually make something that looks this fancy but it was very easy. It takes several hours since you have to let the layers set before adding the next layer. But if you have time and plan ahead it's very easy to do. CLICK HERE for the recipe I used.

Each year for the past few years I have helped the boys make special Fourth of July t-shirts. This year we made fireworks shirts. The idea and directions can be found on the Family Fun website. CLICK HERE. Again..........so easy with a great result.

Our friend, Bob, visited us for the Fourth of July. DH grilled out burgers and brats and my parents came over. Grandma brought a pump-action rocket set which was a real hit with everyone. It was especially exciting when Bob launched a rocket across our lawn with a lit sparkler stuck into the end of it! We won't forget that anytime soon. Luckily we did not have reason to call the fire department. We also had our annual baseball game on the front lawn. It was a good way to spend a special day.

Big Ol' Bugs

2010-07-31T00:01:00.000-05:00

Earlier this summer the boys and I took advantage of a special event at a local Nature Center. My parents had bought us a membership this year and we have enjoyed attending some special members-only events. This event was all about insects. There is a temporary exhibit of huge wooden insect sculptures in the woods. On the day we went the boys each got a map and we hiked out and found all the insects. They also got backpacks and were able to fill them with tons of buggy goodies. There was also a great spread of catered food, much of it "bug"-themed. It was wonderful to spend some time together outside. We are excited for another members-only event in August about bees.

Father's Day Surprise

2010-07-30T00:01:00.000-05:00

For Father's Day I surprised DH (and the boys) by planning a 30 minute plane ride. A nearby airport had a special deal going on that made it pretty reasonable. DH only knew he had to set aside a few hours but didn't have any idea what we were doing. He and the boys had a great time. The pilot flew over our house and hometown. The boys were excited to see their pool in the backyard with a raft still floating in it. My little guy also thought he saw our chickens out in the yard. I am glad they had fun. I would have joined them but the plane would only take 3 passengers. Maybe next time.............

Summer Vacation

2010-07-29T00:01:00.000-05:00

In June we took a road trip to Michigan to see our niece graduate from high school. This was the longest car trip we've ever attempted with kids and it went really well. We had invested in a dual-screen car DVD player which helped a lot. We also broke up the 12 hour trip over two days. On the way out we stopped in Chicago and went to the Field Museum to see Sue (the t-rex) and all the other great exhibits. What a fantastic museum! We loved it. Sue and the story behind her are really amazing.

On the way back we stopped at a beach on Lake Michigan so the boys could play in the sand and water. They loved it!

We are thinking now that we may be brave enough to try some longer road trips in the future. Now that the boys are older (almost 9 and 5) it is much easier. I'd love any great road trip ideas any of you have to share. So post a comment with your words of wisdom.

Memorial Day 5 Mile Run

2010-07-28T00:01:00.000-05:00

A big accomplishment for me this spring was completing my first road race. On Memorial Day I ran a 5 mile race. It is the first race I've ever done (not counting the 3-legged races I got stuck doing in every elementary track meet) and my goal was just to finish. I am happy to say I ran every step of the race. It was a pretty hilly course, but I really paced myself well and ran pretty comfortably the whole time. I had never run that far before the race but I believed I could and so I did. I have found that running takes more mental strength than physical strength. When your body tells you it wants to quit you just have to be mentally tough and tell it to "Shut up and keep going." That's what has worked well for me, anyway.

Thanks, Justin, for taking the photo shown below. It is nice to have some action shots of my first race. I have continued my running throughout the summer although I've moved back inside to the treadmill these last few weeks because it has been SO hot and humid. I am hoping to do a few races this fall. My two boys also ran their first race on Memorial Day, completing the 1/4 mile Fun Run. So we all have matching t-shirts and can look back and say we all ran our first race on the same day.

Au revoir, Arthur!

2010-07-27T00:01:00.000-05:00

In other chicken news of the year, we regretfully had to part ways with our rooster, Arthur, in May. As you can see, he had grown up to be a fine and beautiful rooster. However, he became very aggressive this spring with my husband and the boys. It got to the point where no one (except me) could go into the chicken yard without being attacked by him. It was a real dilemma because neither DH or I wanted to end his life, but the boys couldn't even go outside and enjoy the hens because of Arthur. So........a friend of ours ended up taking him off our hands because his rooster had been killed by a fox and he wanted another one. On Mother's Day we loaded Arthur up and took him to his new home. He was happy there for a few weeks, but ultimately fell prey to the same fox that took his predecessor. We'll always remember Arthur fondly. But it's been nice to just have our four friendly hens and not have to worry about rooster attacks.

In the photo below Arthur is trying to attack DH's shoe. (DH tried so hard to make friends with Arthur but Arthur was having none of it. I guess in Arthur's mind there could only be one rooster in the flock. Since Arthur never attacked me I joked that he thought of me as one of his "girls.")

Incubating Eggs

2010-07-26T00:01:00.000-05:00

Another exciting event in early May was incubating eggs in my Montessori preschool classroom. My assistant, Miss Melissa, loaned us her egg incubator and I brought several fertilized eggs from our flock and another assistant, Miss Carla, brought some fertilized bantam eggs from her flock. I think we had about 19 eggs in all and if I remember correctly 11 hatched. Below you can see them in the incubator. It was awesome to actually be able to see them hatch. So amazing! The Xs on the shells are so I knew which side was which. The eggs have to be turned about 3 times a day and marking them helps keep track of that.

The babies stayed in the incubator for a few hours to dry off.

Then they were moved into a tub in my office with a heat lamp. They stayed at school for a few days so all the children could hold them and look at them. Then they moved to Miss Carla's house where they have made their permanent home.

Coleman Montana 8

2010-07-25T00:01:00.000-05:00

I did get a tent for Mother's Day. I love it! It is the Coleman Montana 8. It is HUGE. It's "footprint" (isn't that cool that I know the technical "tenty" term for it) is 16 feet by 7 feet. I think it's about 7 feet high in the center too. We have not yet camped anywhere other than our own backyard in it. Maybe we never will. We have 2 acres and DH and I think our backyard is better than any campsite we could find. No annoying ding-dongs camping 15 feet away and easy access to the bathroom and anything you forgot to bring!! Our oldest son overheard me saying that our backyard was better than any campground and was quick to point out that our backyard does not have a.) a lake or b.) hiking trails. True that. However, we could always drive to the lake or hiking trails then come home at the end of the day!

Here's a photo from inside. You can see how spacious it is. We can fit a queen-sized air mattress on each end with room for at least another 1 or 2 in the middle. I bought a patio rug that is intended for use outside RVs to put in the bottom so the floor is kind of carpeted. I haven't "glamped" it up any more than that, however.

Another great feature is the hinged door. Genius! You insert some poles into the door so it can be opened and closed just like any other door instead of having to zip and unzip. Love it!

I'll post more about our camping adventures when they happen.

Update on Square Foot Garden!

2010-07-23T14:53:00.008-05:00

Many of you have been wondering about our success with the square-foot gardening method I wrote about in April. I am happy to say that we are having great luck. Below you can see a photo I just took in July after adding the vertical frames. For those of you who will wonder, the vertical frames were VERY easy to construct. We used some pieces of rebar and pounded them into the ground on the sides of the raised beds. I had 3/4 inch electrical conduit cut into 5 foot lengths (for the sides) and 4 foot lengths (for the tops) at Home Depot. The conduit was less than $2 per 10 foot length, very inexpensive. The corners are held together with connectors that can also be found in the electrical area of a hardware store. Those babies were over $4 apiece so that drove up the cost a bit. Luckily we won't ever have to build these again. They easily slip onto the rebar and can be slipped off and stored inside for the winter if needed. I used nylon garden mesh attached with zip ties for the netting. I couldn't find this large sized mesh locally and had to order it from Burpee. I have a ton left over. The zip ties were in the electrical section of Home Depot.

So far we have harvested broccoli (from plants), peas (from seed), green beans (from seed), onions (from sets), basil (from seed) and carrots (from seed). We have MANY green tomatoes on the vine and I am practically drooling over how awesome they will taste. We also have strawberries, cucumbers, mini pumpkins, gourds, radishes, and peppers planted. (And asparagus and lemon balm. The lemon balm is overtaking my youngest son's garden.) I am planning to move the strawberries to their own bed this fall and add more. You can see them taking over the front of the garden closest to the front in the photo above. We also planted marigolds, zinnias and four-o-clocks from seed. The zinnias did not do very well......only one grew. The marigolds are taking over my oldest son's bed......you can see them in the back left garden. I will probably plant a smaller variety next year.

Here is what I've learned: I will probably not do broccoli next year. We did have good luck with it and got several heads. However, the last head I brought in had a chubby green worm in it. I knew broccoli was prone to worms, but it really grossed me out. Also, I didn't realize how big each individual broccoli plant grows. The leaf-span was probably almost 2 feet which meant they were overshadowing the little pepper plants that were trying to grow nearby. We may try lettuce from seed again this fall when it cools off. I didn't have any luck with lettuce this spring. However, I was using old seed so that may have been the problem. The peas were SO good right from the garden..........I will definitely do them again and plant more next time. Below are a few photos I snapped recently.

Roma tomatoes............cannot WAIT to eat these!

Marigold.........my boys took marigolds very similar to this one to the fair this year.

Basil...........we had some of this in a pasta dish this week. It was awesome to go out and pick it right from the garden. It took 2 plantings of seed for me to get it to take off though. Not sure why.

Our green beans grew really well. I may even pull them now that they're mostly harvested and try for a second crop yet this year.

One last comment...........my main reason for choosing this way of gardening was so I wouldn't have much weeding to do and I have to say that the weeding is VERY minimal. It's so easy to stay on top of it. I would love to add more beds for next year. I am planning to at least add a big bed of just strawberries. That will free up space in the other beds so I may not add any more vegetable beds until I go another year to see what grows well here.

4 Little Words...........

2010-07-23T11:53:00.005-05:00

..........that brought me back from my long blog hiatus: WHOLE WHEAT CINNAMON ROLLS.
I knew when I snapped a photo of some cinnamon rolls yesterday that I was ready to start blogging again. I am sorry for not writing in so long. To be honest, I got mad at Blogger back around Mother's Day because I was trying to write a post about the tent I received and couldn't get my photos to upload. I tried again about a week later and still had no luck. So although I wasn't planning it, I ended up taking about a 3 month break from blogging. All is well here and a lot has been going on with us. I am planning to write a bunch of posts in the next week or two to update everyone about our summer. For now, I wanted to share a recipe I just tried for the first time that is FAB.U.LOUS. I have been up late for several nights working on things for school this fall. I was dinking around online the other night and stumbled across a blog called Finding Joy in My Kitchen. There are a lot of great recipes over there, but I could not get THIS ONE out of my head and ended up making it the very next day. This is a big deal for me because I have always been too intimidated to try cinnamon rolls. They seem very complicated and I can't even bake an apple pie that I like. What drew me to this recipe was that it looked easy and it used whole wheat flour instead of white which definitely ups the nutritional value. I am pleased to say that in not much more than 30 minutes start to finish I had some very yummy homemade cinnamon rolls. They truly represent the pinnacle of my culinary achievements to date. I did not add blueberries to mine since my oldest son nixed that idea when I asked him. These are really awesome rolls. I am going to make another batch soon and see how well they freeze. They would be great heated up for breakfast every morning. Yum-ola! Well.......it feels good to be back. Please enjoy the two photos I took..........they were EASY to upload so I'll be posting again very SOON!

Before baking (above)

After baking (with icing drizzled on top)

SFG Day is here!! Yippee!!

2010-04-24T19:42:00.012-05:00

This week DH screwed together some 2X6 pine boards to make my 4 raised Square Foot Garden (SFG) beds. And on Friday I picked up peat moss and compost to fill them. Today I picked up some vermiculite that I had to have special ordered by a local nursery and some free 4 foot wood laths that my uncle gave me. The weather ended up being pretty decent so this afternoon I spent about 3 1/2 hours putting together my SFG beds. The beauty of the SFG method is that now that the beds are done I will have very little prep work each spring from now on. No tilling or prepping the soil.......all I'll need to do is mix in a little compost each time I'm ready to plant. Such an awesome method.

Here is what the back of my van looked like at 1:00 p.m. when I started the project. It took me about 30 minutes (and some muscle power) just to haul everything to the backyard. DH would have helped but he is out of town this weekend.

Once everything was moved to the backyard it was time to make my "Mel's mix". This is a mixture of roughly 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost, and 1/3 vermiculite. It is the combination recommended by Mel Bartholomew, the creator of the SFG gardening method. The great thing about starting with Mel's mix is that you don't need to worry about the condition of your soil.....you don't use your soil. Also, the combination is specially designed to hold just the right amount of water to make your plants grow really well. With this combination it is impossible to overwater your plants. If you want to know more, head over to Mel's website or check out his book from your local library. I have it checked out right now for the second time.

Here are my beds waiting to be filled with Mel's mix.

To mix the Mel's mix I got a big tarp and poured out all the ingredients on top. In the book Mel recommends starting with the compost, then adding the peat moss, then the vermiculite. The main reason he recommends this is because he strongly suggests finding several different types of compost and mixing them together first. I could only find a bagged mixture of humus (plant matter) and manure so I didn't need to mix compost. After mixing everything up this afternoon I have a few suggestions if you are going to try to do this yourself. First........if you are mixing material to fill several beds, only mix the amount needed for one bed at a time. I started by mixing about half of my whole batch (which means half of 12 bags of compost, 5 bales of peat moss and 2 HUGE bags of vermiculite) the first time and this ended up being pretty difficult to mix well. It was just too heavy. After that I only mixed one "bed's" worth at a time and that was much easier. Second, if you don't have to mix different types of compost I found it easiest to pour out the peat moss first, then mix the vermiculite into that. I ended up mixing these with my hands because it felt so good and worked better than doing it any other way. I was literally up to my elbows in mix. My sons helped with this part. It was fun to get so dirty. If you have another adult helping you Mel recommends folding the tarp and mixing it that way. I only had an 8 year old and a 4 year old so we used hands. After mixing the peat and vermiculite, add the compost. It tends to be the most damp and heavy so it was much better to mix it in last.

Here is what the mixture looks like before being mixed together.

And here is what it looked like after.

I lined the bottom of the bed with some landscape cloth I found in my garage and several layers of newspapers since I didn't have enough cloth to cover all the beds. Hopefully the newspaper will be enough to deter weed growth. A major reason I am doing this method is because I HATE weeding. As Mel says in the book, there is little to no weeding with this method. Because you are not using soil there are no weed seeds in the mixture. Any weeds that do pop up are easily pulled out because the mixture is so loose, unlike your yard which is compacted making it difficult to pull out weeds.

My big boy took a photo of me spreading out the mix in one of the beds. In the background you can see the corner of our chicken yard, one side of our boys' fort, and our two compost piles (in the white circular "fence".

It was a good feeling to get all the beds filled without getting rained on. It was cloudy all afternoon and at one point it seemed like it would rain, but it didn't.

The final step was to nail pieces of wood lath into a grid shape on top of each bed. Mel insists that without the grid you don't have a square foot garden. He says it is important to add the grid so you can truly see where you need to plant everything. In theory, each square foot could have a different vegetable or flower in it.

It feels good to have these done. Hopefully I will have enough energy to start planting tomorrow. I am really tired tonight!

What I've been up to

2010-04-13T21:57:00.015-05:00

I realize I have been MIA for a while. We went on a family vacation over Easter......lots of fun. Since we've been back life has been busy, as usual. Also as usual I have become obsessed with a new idea for spending more quality time together as a family. I am hoping to start a new family tradition of camping together. We have not yet ever tried camping as a family. DH and I camped on our honeymoon (one night if I remember correctly) and also camped a little early in our marriage. We own one tent.........a teeny little pup tent that fits a queen size air mattress and nothing else. You can't even stand up in it. So.......if we are going to dive into family camping we will obviously need to invest in a family-sized tent. Since I love doing internet research I have spent NUMEROUS hours online over the past several nights after the boys are in bed looking at tents, reading tent reviews, searching for family camping blogs, etc. I can be very one-track-minded about things sometimes. It is a little over the top. I was like that last summer when we decided to get chickens. I immersed myself in "chicken research" for many weeks.

I am hoping that our family will enjoy camping together. I really want my boys to grow up loving and respecting the natural world. It is SO sad that children these days spend so little time playing outside. My favorite childhood memories are almost exclusively tied to times I spent outdoors either on my own or with my family. We did a little camping when I was a child. Although we didn't do it really often.........and sometimes it was just in our own backyard........I do have good memories of it.

For a while I was really hoping that we could get a pop-up camper to use for family camping. In fact, last summer we were VERY close to purchasing a used pop-up camper but we decided to not go through with it. We were afraid that we wouldn't actually end up using it and that it would be a waste of our financial resources. The truth is......we don't have an extra $5000+ this year to buy a used pop-up camper. So...........tent camping seems to be the best option for us to get our feet wet and see if camping is for us. While doing my extensive research these past few weeks I discovered a concept previously unknown to me called "glamping". Have you heard of this? It is where you combine luxury with camping.........like camping, but with the comforts of home. Here is a great article about glamping if you want to read more. The crafter in me really digs the idea of special camping "bedding" with coordinated table linens, etc. I am already dreaming of the cute color-coordinated camping accessories I could sew for us. (I realize this borders on insanity.......no need to point that out. I'm aware.) But............I truly do see some camp-related sewing on the horizon if we end up getting a tent and moving forward.

In case you are interested, the tent I am pretty sure is my true heart's desire is the Eureka Copper Canyon 1312. Below is a photo of it courtesy of Amazon. And HERE is the Amazon link. I have truly read dozens of reviews of dozens of tents and I think this is the one. DH............if you are reading this, pretty please can we buy this tent? It is WAY WAY WAY cheaper than a pop-up and we could use it for years to come. Just think about it, 'kay? You know Mother's Day is coming up soon!

Here are some features I love about this particular tent. First of all, the size is great. It is 13 feet by 12 feet which makes it the size of a good-sized bedroom. It's important to me that the tent is spacious enough for use to put air mattresses and cots for sleeping. Gotta have comfort. I also love that this tent is tall enough to stand up in without bumping your head on the top. Since it is a cabin-style tent the walls are pretty vertical so there should be no need to bend down to get to any part of the tent. Another great feature is a sweep-out doorway so you can easily sweep out any grass that accumulates inside. In most tents there is a "lip" at the doorway which makes it quite difficult to clean out. Most of the reviews I've read say that this tent is easy to set up. Finally, the Eureka brand is a really good brand name with a great reputation. If we are investing a big chunk of change in a tent I want it to be one that won't have to be replaced for years to come. Maybe our grandkids will someday go camping with us in this tent. If any of you out there have tent-camping experience, I'd love to hear from you. What kind of tent do you have? Any good tips for camping with kids?

"Gear"ing up for a trip

2010-03-29T22:45:00.013-05:00

We are taking a trip very soon that involves air travel. For quite some time I have wanted to sew the boys some new "gear" to take with them. Of course I waited until this weekend to get started. I am pretty happy with how these turned out. I made each boy a drawstring backpack using THIS TUTORIAL from Martha Stewart. These backpacks were SO easy to make. I am pretty sure I made them from start to finish.......both of them........in under an hour. They will be awesome to take on hikes, etc. this summer. I used a contrasting cotton print fabric for the inside instead of nylon recommended in the link. Also........I bought the fabric at Hobby Lobby and they didn't have drawstring cord. So I used really narrow double-fold bias tape. I just had to stitch it together first using a straight seam down the middle. This worked okay but if you have access to cord that would be easier and would eliminate a step. I used Wonder-Under to iron a monogram on each pack.

And I made each boy a drawing pad/crayon holder to match their new backpacks. They both like to draw and write so I knew these would be great for taking on the plane. To make these I used THIS TUTORIAL from Skip to My Lou. I had to adjust it somewhat to make it shorter from top to bottom so it would better fit the drawing pads I bought at Target.

When opened they look like this. I put Crayola Twistable crayons in the pockets. You could also put colored pencils.

I love you, Goodwill

2010-03-28T21:36:00.003-05:00

Today I headed to Goodwill to scout out some new clothes for spring. We are going on a little vacation later this week and I wanted to see if I could find any great deals. Boy, did I! I really need to go to Goodwill more often. I bought 9 pieces of clothing for myself for just over $30. I decided to dedicate this blog post to showing you what I bought. Perhaps it will inspire you to consider thrifting for clothing for yourself. It takes time and patience to score good deals at Goodwill. Don't be discouraged if you come away with nothing. Go back again. Sometimes I find nothing to bring home and sometimes (like today) I find a bunch of great stuff. Below you can see many of my new clothing items hanging in my bathroom.

I was absolutely thrilled to find a brand new (tags still on) MUDD coat for $5.49. It is tan-colored "suede" with a fleecy lining. A perfect transition coat and I really needed one. I also found a cute white cardigan sweater with tags still on for $5.49.

One great thing about Goodwill is that they always have some of their clothing on sale for 99 cents. Today it was green-tagged clothing. I bought this royal blue Starter running shirt for 99 cents.

A pair of shorts and a paisley knit blouse (I LOVE it!) for $3.49 each (I think).

I debated about the flowered top on the left. It has a matching cami with it. They are made from kind of a crepe material. I was a little afraid they look "little old lady", but I know that the trend this season is florals. I felt much better when I saw something VERY similar at Target today. I think I can pull it off........and for $3.49 you can't beat the price. The green knit polka dot shirt was also $3.49.

This blouse was 99 cents and will be great to wear to work.

This olive green knit top is a really flattering fit on me, I discovered. I wished they had it in many different colors, but that usually doesn't happen at Goodwill. When I got home I found a hole in it, but it was in the seam and I quickly stitched it closed on my sewing machine (which was already up and running since I was up late..........1 AM.......working on a project last night. I'll reveal the project soon!). Good as new! And it was $3.49 (I think).

OK..............admit it! You're totally impressed with my thrifting bounty. Now get out there and run (don't walk!) to your nearest Goodwill. Drop me a line and let me know what great things you find, 'kay?

HopAlong is doing well :-)

2010-03-22T14:44:00.004-05:00

I wanted to post a quick update to my last (gruesome) post. Sarah is doing really well with only 1 leg. We kept her inside the first night, then put her back out with the flock the next day. We tried to change her bandage this weekend but it quickly fell off so we are leaving it uncovered. Her stump looks like it is healing nicely. She is quickly adapting to her new condition. In fact, yesterday when I went outside to get a photo of her I took a ripe banana with me. I tossed several chunks into the yard for the chickens to eat. They LOVE bananas. Sarah, on a single leg, totally beat Arthur the rooster to a chunk of banana and ran off with it before he had a clue what was going on. This is very impressive since she has only one leg and is less than half the size of him. I was really happy for her, especially since she still has to fend off his "romantic" advances on only one leg. There is a lot of truth to the saying, "Like a rooster in a henhouse." You can see from the picture below that she is looking healthy and happy. I am SO glad.

Bloody Stump

2010-03-17T21:00:00.006-05:00

Some other titles that were considered for this post include: "Missing: One chicken foot" or "Where the heck is Sarah's dead foot?" or "Guess what I discovered in the henhouse today?" Instead, I settled for what you see above. Yes, "bloody stump" pretty much sums it up nicely with no sugar coating or beating around the bush.

DH told me when I got home today that he thought Sarah (the chicken with the dead foot) wasn't doing very well. We have been free-ranging our chickens a little each afternoon and today when he let them out Sarah didn't want to leave the coop. Instead, she was huddled next to the nest box. When I went out to check on her I picked her up to see how her sore foot was doing. You can, perhaps, imagine the alarm and shock that I felt when I saw a bloody stump where her foot had been. And no foot in the near vicinity. It was a truly gruesome discovery. I immediately headed inside to enlist the help of my DH. I was a teeny bit panicked if you want to know the truth. My husband was more diplomatic and calm about it. He reminded me that we actually had HOPED her foot would fall off on its own. We discussed it further while waiting for the vet to call us back. I heavily insisted that my husband go out to examine the stump for himself. Truthfully, I didn't want to look at it. Long story short, DH talked to the vet (who happens to be a friend of ours who goes to our church) and we brought Sarah inside (again) for the night, put Neosporin on her stump (DH did that while I held her; he's nice like that), and wrapped the stump in a piece of gauze and taped it up. She is currently resting in the Rubbermaid tub (AKA "chicken hospital") in our bathroom. Hopefully she will fully recover and be a cute and friendly "disabled" chicken. A few people who have learned about her situation, knowing my crafty nature, have suggested I design a chicken prosthetic. However, I am pretty sure that is outside the realm of my capabilities. I think Sarah would just peck it off anyway. I'll keep you posted. You can thank me later for the absence of bloody stump photos.

Seeds Family Worship CDs

2010-03-15T14:50:00.007-05:00

I recently heard about a great little thing called Seeds Family Worship. I read about it on Angie Smith's blog. As soon as I checked it out I knew I wanted to order a CD for our family to enjoy. I picked The Power of Encouragement, their newest CD. Each CD contains scriptures set to music. The best part is that the songs are really fun, contemporary and catchy. I love listening to this in the van. Each CD comes with an extra tear-off CD to share with a friend. I gave my extra one to our MOPS group to use as a door prize at our meeting last week. You should head over and check out this ministry. It is really awesome!

I took my boys to a forest for a hike yesterday and we listened to this all the way there and back in the van. It was just what I needed. My mind had been focused on something that happened this weekend and I was not thinking very positively. The Scriptures featured on this CD were perfect for helping me gain a right perspective on things. I have so much to be thankful for.......and it never hurts to be reminded of that.

The cutest book ever!

2010-03-07T08:00:00.001-06:00

On Saturday I was killing some time while my oldest son was at a birthday party. I went to a Pottery Barn Kids store at a nearby mall. I was instantly drawn to their children's books and ended up purchasing Spoon by Amy Krouse Rosenthal. This is the most adorable story I've read in quite a while. I LOVE LOVE LOVE it. I think this will be my new standard birthday gift for children. I just looked up the Amazon link to include in this post and was a bit disgruntled with myself for not waiting to buy this on Amazon once I got home. I paid $16 for it at PBK (no surprise there) and the hardcover version is on sale at Amazon for $6.40 which is a great deal. Now head over there immediately and order yourself a few copies. You will NOT regret it. This is a super story with a great message for everyone. LOVE IT!

On the to-do list

2010-03-06T11:36:00.010-06:00

Since I am back in the mood to blog again, I thought I would share what is on my to-do list for today. I had the day off of work yesterday but basically frittered the day away. Honestly, I get much more done when I have less time. Is that true for anyone else?

At the top of the priority list was mucking out the muddy chicken yard. With all the snow melting (finally! Praise God!) the chicken yard (even though it has a roof over it) has been SO muddy this past week. Muddy as in standing puddles of water, boots slipping around mud. I have been researching some options for it on Backyard Chickens. I was originally planning to get a bunch of sand to put down. Then I read about some people who put the old pine shavings from the coop out into the run. Since I needed to put fresh shavings down anyway I thought this was a great option. I told my husband that I felt like a total Farmer Cluck this morning as I headed out to the local feed store just after 8 a.m. I bought 4 big bales of pine shavings (which ended up being way too many..........but I'll need them over the summer anyway). Then I came home and put on my "work boots"...............

And headed out to the coop, shovel in hand. It took very little time to scoop out the old shavings into the chicken yard. Now I have a nice thick layer of shavings and no mud showing at all. I love it. My boots will stay mud-free and my chickens will have clean feet. I have been bragging all morning that I have the cleanest coop in the county. It smells so good after you lay down a fresh layer of pine shavings.

I grabbed the camera to get a shot of the hens "fighting" over the nest box. I had really disrupted their laying schedule with all my cleaning, apparently, and three of the hens managed to wedge themselves into our nest box at one time. In the first photo Sarah's beak is open because she was basically cackling her head off at Abby and Reba.

Then she managed to wedge herself into the box with them. You can just see her white tail poking out. Reba quickly removed herself from the nest box with Abby following shortly thereafter. Then loud-mouth (dead-footed) Sarah had the whole box to herself. She is such a boss!

After that task was completed I wanted to make some homemade granola. So I have that done. This recipe makes a ton, keeps really well, and tastes SO fantastic.

I must be feeling very domestic today because I also have a batch of bread-dough rising as I type this. I am using this No-Knead yeast bread recipe which we like so well. I divide it into two loaves and it never lasts long.

Once the bread is done the boys and I are going to go to Target to pick up some Project Life photos (I am about 2-3 weeks behind) and to a teacher supply store to get birthday crowns for my preschoolers and a birthday gift for a party my oldest son has later this afternoon.

Also on the list.........we need to write a letter to our Compassion child, Fernando. We got two letters from him within a week of one another and have to write back. And I need to finish revising our preschool brochure, find some songs about birds to sing in class next week, run, put away Valentine's decorations. Oh, and take a shower! So it should be a pretty busy day. It's been productive so far. I love Saturdays!!

Where has the time gone?

2010-03-05T14:27:00.008-06:00

I know I've been lax about writing on this blog for a while. And I'm even worse about keeping up on Random Acts of Reading. Don't give up on that project if you were initially excited about it. I am really hoping to find the time to pick back up where I left off very soon. It's been so hard to make book drops with the yucky, cold, snowy weather we've been having. I plan to be very inspired and motivated to get going with those again soon.

Anyway..........you may wonder what's up with our invalid hen, Sarah. We were able to reintroduce her to the flock on Valentine's weekend. She was getting around on her foot and was not very happy in her Rubbermaid "cell" in our bathroom. I was not sad to see her back outside with the other chickens. However, last week I noticed that her "bad" foot was turning black. My little guy and I took her to the vet on Monday and he confirmed that her foot is, indeed, dead. So...........amputation is an option. Since I am not Bill Gates I had to inquire about the cost of this surgery. The vet told me, "For your $5 chicken it would cost you around $150 to do surgery." However, he kindly assured me that even Warren Buffett would have wanted to know the cost and that my asking didn't necessarily imply my indifference to the plight of sick animals. Sarah, for her part, seems as perky and clucky as ever for now. So..........we are opting to wait and see what nature will bring. There is a chance that her foot will shrivel up and fall off on it's own. (I know that sounds very gross...............and I'm not looking forward to going out to the coop one morning and finding a detached chicken foot lying on the ground.) I have heard from other people that they have had chickens or ducks with one foot who survived just fine. So we will see.

In other news, I've been doing pretty well (until this past week) keeping up with my running. I usually run 5K on the treadmill 4-5 times per week. I am really looking forward to running outside very soon. I'm considering entering a 5K race in early May. It will be my first race ever, so it should be fun. I now know I can very easily do a 5K so it's not intimidating from that standpoint. And I think it will motivate me to train for a longer race later in the summer.

Work is keeping me VERY busy but very happy. I cannot imagine any other job that would make me happier than my current job. I love working with preschoolers.

Well............that's what's up around here. I haven't done anything crafty or creative lately though I wish I had so I could post a cute photo or two. Until next time...........

Valentine S'mores Teacher Gifts

2010-02-12T13:44:00.005-06:00

I had fun making up some little Valentine S'mores treat bags to give my sons' teachers as gifts for Valentine's Day. The printable tags are from Tricia Rennea. I saw them featured on another blog and that is what gave me the idea to make them. I hadn't made marshmallows from scratch for a while so I used THIS RECIPE from Family Fun and made little heart shaped vanilla marshmallows. I dipped them in red sugar and I think they turned out pretty cute. I am sure that marshmallows are easier to make if you have a stand mixer (they have to be mixed for 12 minutes), but I only have a hand mixer and was able to make them without falling over from exhaustion. So don't be deterred from trying this even if you only have a little-ol' hand held like me. Someday I hope to graduate to a "big-girl" mixer, but they are quite pricey, so it may be a while before that happens. I guess I should have registered for one for my wedding.......17 years ago. Anyway............these were fun to make. You could probably still whip some up to give this year, or bookmark the idea for next year. Everyone who received these thought they were very cute. (And obviously, you could do it without making the marshmallows from scratch. Sometimes I just get a "Martha" moment and have to go all out.) :-)

I packaged the marshmallows in a separate treat bag and closed the top with some pink and red paperclips that I had in my stash.

Kiss Kiss Hug

2010-02-11T00:01:00.001-06:00

This project has been all over the blogosphere and I don't even remember where I first saw it. Anyway, yesterday I quickly whipped up this little XXO display for my baker's rack. I don't have a lot of Valentine's decor and thought these would be quick and easy to make. I think I would like these a little better if the frames were white, but it is WAY too cold here in the midwest to spray paint right now. Besides, the Target Dollar Spot has a set of 3 little square silver frames for $2.50. Can't beat that! (Well, actually you COULD beat that at a garage sale or the right thrift store......) I just removed the little papers in the frames and replaced them with scrapbook paper in Valentine colors. I wanted to take out the glass, but it was not removable. So........I just glued the glass marble chips (found at a garage sale this summer) right on top of the glass. I used Elmer's white glue and it worked fine. You could do this for almost any season. I've seen many variations on different blogs. I literally did these while talking to Amber on the phone. They were so easy.

More vehicle valentines

2010-02-10T00:01:00.003-06:00

If you read my last post, you already know that my little boy made race car valentines to pass out at school. This weekend I helped my oldest boy make some candy airplane valentines for his class. I used a printable banner from Giver's Log and tied it to the end of the airplane. He signed his name on the back. For the airplanes, you use Smarties candy for the body, a piece of gum for the wings and Lifesaver's candy for the wheels. Everything is held together with a rubber band. CLICK HERE for the instructions from Family Fun.

Chicken in the bathroom (again)

2010-02-09T20:06:00.004-06:00

Today I did something that I have never done in almost 41 years of living. I took a chicken to the vet. Why? This morning when I went outside to open the chicken coop, I found our favorite little chicken, Sarah, stuck to the wire netting on the chicken ramp. She had most likely been stuck there all night long with her toes caught in the wire and her leg pulled out behind her body. When I unhooked her the leg was completely stiff, cold and deformed looking. I was beside myself. When I shut the chickens in for the night yesterday, she must have just been getting ready to jump off the bottom of the ramp when I closed it. I don't usually open the coop and look in after I close the ramp, so I didn't realize her foot was stuck. I sobbed when I went inside to tell my husband what had happened because I felt responsible for her injury. Unfortunately, we both had to get out the door, DH to take my oldest son to school, and I to get to work. Luckily, my husband's schedule allowed him to come home and bring Sarah inside around noon. He held her for a long time and warmed her up. Gradually he was able to reposition her foot and leg so they looked more normal. He set up our "brooder box" in the bathroom to keep her in. When I got home I called the vet and they suggested we bring her in. So my little guy and I loaded up the chicken in her box and headed to the vet. Luckily, she did not break any bones. She also seems to still have some intact nerves in that leg. The vet is worried about her circulation, however, and gave her a steroid shot. The wounded leg is very swollen and is still colder than the other leg. Hopefully the steroid will reduce inflammation and that, perhaps, will get her circulation going again. For now, she is living a life of luxury in our bathroom. It is about 69 degrees in our house as compared to less than 20 degrees for the other four chickens out in the coop. She may decide she wants to be a house chicken from now on. We are certainly babying her a lot. Within a week we will probably know whether or not her leg will recover. I will be sure to keep you all updated. Below you can see her in her luxury suite. She is sticking her wing out to help keep her balance. I truly hope she recovers with no long-term damage. She has always been our most inquisitive and out-going chicken. She certainly has the pluck and stamina to come through this ordeal unscathed.

VRRROOOM!!! Valentine Race Car cards

2010-02-01T16:50:00.005-06:00

This afternoon my little boy and I made his valentines for his preschool valentine exchange next week. I LOVE to make valentines "from scratch" instead of buying them in a box. Don't get me wrong.........I've definitely bought boxed valentines in the past and no children were harmed by it. However, if I have the time and a great idea ("borrowed from another creative person. of course) I love to make homemade ones. A great resource for ideas is Family Fun.....both the magazine and the website. For my race car-lovin' boy, I found THIS IDEA and thought it was perfect. I decided to skip the (very expensive and hard-to-find) chocolate cars...........although they are very cute.............and used some great little race car stickers that I found at a card outlet store. We picked out a little truck from our HUGE stash of toy cars and rolled the wheels in black paint. Then my son rolled the truck back and forth across a piece of red cardstock. He was so proud of himself and kept saying, "I can do this all by myself, Mommy. You don't need to help me." Which was true. I put a piece of waxed paper under the cardstock and he was totally independent.

I used some large (2X3 inch) white shipping labels to print out the message, "You make my heart race!!" I printed 2 messages per label, then cut the labels in half and used my scrapbooking corner rounder to round the cut corners. On the back we attached a little return address label that I had printed with "Happy Valentine's Day!" and my son wrote his name on the back of all the cards. They turned out so cute and I know he will be proud to share them with his friends.

Valentine Pillows

2010-01-30T20:04:00.005-06:00

Today DH, my little boy, and I went to Hobby Lobby. Oh, how I LOVE that store!! My big boy was spending a little time with Grandma and Grandpa. Anyway, I needed to pick up some things for school for next week and they tagged along. I also wanted to get some Valentine fabric to make some pillows for my boys. I settled for the print I bought because there was literally no other choice. It's pretty cute, I guess, but I would have appreciated a better selection. Anyway, I'd seen the idea for making Valentine pillows in THIS POST on How Does She? (which is a great blog with great ideas that I discovered recently). For some reason I decided to make my pillows round. I had bought some really wide rick-rack to trim them with. I am not totally pleased with how they turned out, but my boys love them already. And that's what's important, after all. I used some sparkly felt to make a heart-shaped pocket on the front of each pillow. The top of the heart is open so that each day in February up until Valentine's Day I can tuck a little "love" note into the pocket for each boy. Hopefully, DH will write notes to them too. I know my oldest son, especially, will treasure these little love notes because he is always very touched when we write special things to him.

Here's a close-up of the pocket on the front. I added the small pink heart in the middle for an accent. I had originally sewn it on using a straight stitch but was really unhappy with how that looked. I like the loose zig-zag much better.

The "love" pillow below is another in my series of freezer-paper stencilled burlap holiday pillows. I painted the "love" on the burlap ages ago and just had to sew and stuff it which I finally did tonight. It took MANY coats of white paint to make the word look really white on the red burlap. If you are planning to freezer-paper stencil on burlap, remember to place some waxed paper underneath because the paint really bleeds through. I found that out after I accidently printed the word "believe" on my ironing board cover. Like DH said, though, it's not a bad word to ponder while you are ironing. He irons WAY more than I do. I try to buy clothes that don't have to be ironed. In fact, I only iron when doing sewing projects. Anyway, I digress. I added a little heart pocket on the back of this pillow so I can write love notes to DH in February. AWWWWWWWWW...............how sweet is that? Maybe if I'm lucky he'll write a note or two back to me. (hint hint)

Here's the pocket on the back.

FYI: For the heart shapes I used patterns printed from Preschool Express. If you click on the left sidebar on "Pattern Station" you will find printable shapes for all sorts of occasions. I often find patterns there that I can use for school.

Buzzy is a Blog Star!!

2010-01-27T22:23:00.003-06:00

I'm so excited to finally be able to tell y'all that Buzz (our dog) and I have been interviewed over at Coffee with a Canine. Marshal, who writes the blog, contacted me a few months ago asking if I would be interested in being featured with Buzz on the blog. I loved the whole concept and he published our interview today. CLICK HERE to read it.

(By the way, someone should really do something similar with cats. Lee? Are you reading this? You would be PERFECT to start a cat/owner blog. If you decide to do it, count me (and Nina, Macy and Prince Bob) in!!)

What we've been up to

2010-01-25T11:43:00.007-06:00

I haven't checked in here for over a week .........so I'm long overdue for a post. Here's a quick update about what's been going on.

First...........today I didn't have preschool because our local school district called a two-hour late start due to blowing snow. However, I was not aware of this until I went to school. I had gotten up early to work out and checked the school closings on TV before switching over to a cable channel while I ran on the treadmill. Afterwards I figured we were still on since by that time it was getting too late to call a delay (or so I thought). It was pretty bad driving on the back roads I take to get to school, but our superintendent rarely calls a late-start due to weather. It wasn't until I drove past our high school and noticed there were very few cars and NO busses that it dawned on me that perhaps something was amiss. I immediately called our local elementary school (where I used to work) when I got into my office and then found out that there was a two-hour late start. I guess the teacher was truly the last to know today. I stayed and worked for a while before heading home with my little boy.

When I got home I decided to sew a chicken saddle for one of our hens. I had cut it out this weekend and just had to put it together. For those of you who are not fully aware of the tools of the modern chicken farmer, a chicken saddle is a piece of fabric that is attached to the back of a hen who has been "overloved" by a rooster. Unfortunately one of our hens, Clara, is apparently very popular with our rooster, Arthur, and has developed a very nasty sore on her back due to his overzealous advances. Yuck, huh? Fortunately I was able to research this problem on Backyard Chickens and found that some people put a "saddle" on the hen to protect her back during mating. I found a great pattern on Back To Basic Living and sewed it up just a little bit ago. Since Clara has tan feathers (she is a Buff Orpington chicken) I tried to find a fabric in my stash that would color coordinate with her feathers. To slap any old fabric on her back would just be wrong. Of course it has to look good with her coloring. Lucky for Clara I found a scrap of designer Amy Butler fabric in my scrap stash. In case she really starts to love wearing high fashion I already have a handbag to match.........isn't that awesome?

Below you can see two photos showing the new chicken saddle. It basically lays right on the hen's back and the elastic straps snap under her wings.

OK..........chicken saddle done, all very well and good, right? The hard part, of course, was getting the dang thing on the chicken. Of course I wanted to try it on her right away. So, armed with my chicken boots, "chore" coat, camera and the new saddle, I headed out to the coop. First I took the photo you see below. I wanted to show you the sore on Clara's back that prompted this little sewing project. It is so gross looking and her feathers have come out in that area.

It took me quite a while to catch Clara to put the saddle on her, even though the interior space of the chicken coop is only about 64 square feet. She was just not grasping the idea that she was soon to become the most fashionable girl in the flock. During the "dressing" I had stuffed my camera in the pocket of my coat so I could have both hands free to wrestle with Clara. I managed to successfully get the saddle on her and put her down. Then the other chickens started pulling on it and one of the straps came loose. So...........I had to catch her again to reattach it. When I leaned over to pick her up two funny things happened. My camera fell out of my pocket and into the not-so-clean pine shavings on the floor of the coop AND Sarah, our little white chicken, flew up and sat on my back!! I'm sure that had this been filmed I could have won our family a large amount of money on "America's Funniest Home Videos". I finally got the saddle back on Clara and released her, much to her relief, I'm sure. She immediately turned her head and started trying to pull the saddle off her back. The first photo shows her doing just that.

Here is the best picture I got of Clara with her saddle. I probably don't need to tell you that chickens are hard to photograph under any circumstances, but they are especially difficult to photograph when they have recently undergone the trauma of having clothing attached to their body. I'm just sayin'..........forgive me for the poor photo, 'kay? I am thinking that the saddle might be a little big for her because it should really fit closer to her body. However, it does completely cover her "owie" which is the goal after all.

After all this hullaballoo I would not be the least bit surprised to go out to the coop later this afternoon to find my beautiful, handmade chicken saddle trampled and dirty on the floor of the coop. In fact, I am pretty sure that I WILL find it off Clara's back and buried in the pine shavings. I'll keep you posted. ;-)

PS: In other news, my husband has been busy this weekend helping our sons make their cars for the upcoming Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. We were excited to find out at last week's pack meeting that there is a separate category for siblings, so our little boy gets to make a car too. He is BEYOND excited about it. I will post more about that soon, FOR SURE!!

Edited to add: At 4:00 p.m. I went out to the coop to do my afternoon "chicken chores". As predicted, the chicken saddle was off Clara's back and lying on the pine shavings. So..........I think I'm going to try a design that doesn't use snaps and see if she'll keep that on. If that doesn't work then.............too bad, so sad. At least I tried. And for heaven's sake, if she would just keep her clothes on she probably wouldn't be in this situation to begin with!! (Sorry..............I couldn't resist writing that. Please know that I'm KIDDING!!)

Project Life = Project LOVE!!

2010-01-17T21:03:00.008-06:00

Way back in November I wrote a post about Becky Higgins' new scrapbook product called Project Life. I ordered it the moment it was available and it finally arrived on Saturday. It was supposed to arrive via FedEx on January 5th but FedEx LOST my original order. Isn't that amazing? Anyway..........Becky and her husband, David, were awesome about corresponding with me through it all and got another kit sent out right away. I was SO happy when I saw the FedEx van pull into my driveway Saturday morning. You should really click over to Becky's site for all the details about this awesome kit. However, I am going to devote this post to it to try to describe to you how wonderful it is.

Before I start I want to tell you that I have been a "scrapbooker" since about 1996 or so. Before we had children I was very into it and kept all my scrapbooks very up to date. I still enjoy pulling them out and looking through them. Once the boys were born I did pretty well keeping up for about the first 5 or 6 years of my oldest son's life and then I pretty much just stopped for the most part. It was just too much to keep up with. Becky's new system will, I think, reinvigorate my previous enthusiasm for preserving our family memories. Before you stop reading because you believe you could never "be a scrapbooker", let me assure you that this system can work for ANYONE who takes photos of their life. It is so easy and Becky has made sure that it will look really good with little effort.

In the kit you get a HUGE binder to hold all the pages you will make. I was a little surprised at how big it is. I love the colors and design of it. You can see mine pictured below.

In addition to the divided page protectors (I will explain those more in a moment) you get a box with all the decorative "elements" (all precut to slide right into the pockets) and 4 little boxes with journalling blocks.

The next photo shows the "title page" of my album. You can see from this photo how the page protectors are arranged. On every double-page spread there is space for 8 4X6 horizontal photos (one space will be used for a "header" card..........more on that below) and 8 little 2X3 inch spots for journalling (and decorative) cards. Becky has included several decorative cards to insert into the title page.............here you can see my layout.

This system is very flexible. Last year Becky launched a Project 365 product which encouraged people to take a photo every day for a full year. In the Project Life kit you have enough space to do the photo-a-day approach. However, it is also really flexible if you fall "off the wagon" and don't have a photo a day to scrapbook. As I described above, there are "header" cards that you can insert in the top left space of each double-page spread. I have gone ahead and inserted those into all the page protectors in my album. You can see from the picture that you can simply circle the month and then write the dates of the photos on that layout in the little white space at the bottom.

In addition to the journalling cards there are a bunch of little tiny stickers with the days of the week that you can stick right onto the journalling cards if you wish. In the photo you can see the "sat" sticker in the bottom right corner. There are also arrow stickers that may be used to point to the photo referred to on the card. You can see one in the photo below.

There are also clear days of the week stickers that can (if you wish) be stuck onto the page protector covering your photos to further label your photos. You can see the "sat" sticker in the bottom left of my egg photo..............this egg photo corresponds to the journalling you saw above.

Here is my plan for keeping up with this system. Luckily, I frequently upload photos from my camera to my computer because of all the blogging I do. I have set up a separate folder in "My Pictures" folder called "Project Life." As I upload, I copy the photos I plan to use in the Project Life book into that folder. Every weekend I plan to upload the Project Life photos to Shutterfly. I can then pick them up (or my husband can) at our local Target store. That way I don't have to pay shipping. If you don't have more than 100 photos, you can usually pick them up in 1 hour. Becky suggests writing on the journalling cards every day if you can and I am going to try to keep that up. I started this project on January 1st because I knew my kit was on the way. Before I had the kit I had a Word document where I was briefly listing the things we were doing each day that I wanted to include in the Project Life book. Now that I have the journalling cards I will probably just use those to jot things down as they happen. Another strategy I am planning to employ is to take some "filler" photos each week which I will fill in when I don't have a specific photo for a day of the week. For example, tonight I took a photo of the split pea soup I made for supper. If I don't have enough photos for the whole week, I'll fill that one in as it gives a glimpse of our life right now.

Oh...........I almost forgot. Becky is just about to release a digital version of this kit. Details will be posted later this week on her site. It sounds like you will be able to totally play around with it for free. Then if you like it you order a finished book to be sent to you..........one that you've customized online. It sounds pretty cool too.

I'm really not scared of mice & My first blog interview

2010-01-12T21:36:00.004-06:00

I feel like a horrible mother. Today after preschool my little boy and I were getting ready to leave the classroom and I glanced over and saw a live mouse on the tile floor near the kitchen of my classroom. I knew we had a mouse because Michelle, my assistant, had also seen it. However, without thinking about what I was doing I SHRIEKED very loudly when I saw it. I'm really not scared of mice. They just startle me when they appear so unexpectedly and move so quickly. You know what I mean? Anyway............simultaneous to my shriek my little guy started bawling in a more terrified manner than I've ever heard him cry and he BOLTED through the door of the classroom, down the hallway, past my assistant and her son, out the doors to the outside and when I finally caught up to him he was in the parking lot standing beside our van sobbing. With much prodding (and dragging) I convinced him to return with me to the classroom where I had left all my belongings, all the while trying to convince him that Mommy didn't scream because she was scared of the mouse. Rather, I screamed because I was SURPRISED by the mouse. I assured him that mice can't hurt us, etc. Well, he talked about little else all night so I'm sure I've instilled an irrational phobia of mice in him, completely unintentionally. When relaying the story to DH he asked me why I had screamed. I told him that I think it is perhaps part of my female genetic make-up and that it just happened without me even knowing it was going to happen. And that's true. Because I am NOT scared of mice. I just don't like to be startled by them.

In other news, I'm excited to announce that Shannon from Letters, Numbers and Books Oh My! has interviewed me over at her blog about my Random Acts of Reading project. CLICK HERE to read the interview. I was really excited that she wanted to interview me. It's my first (published) blog interview. There is another one in the works that I'm excited to tell you about when it goes online. That's all I'm saying for now though.

Update on waffle experiments and a new obsession

2010-01-09T17:44:00.007-06:00

If you read my previous post you are aware that during our GREAT SNOW-IN I pulled out a waffle iron that hadn't been used since the 1990s and tried out some made-from-scratch waffle recipes on my family. You would also know that my banana cinnamon waffles were met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. As I said in that post, I am not easily discouraged and planned to try out a gingerbread waffle recipe. Which I did. Let's just say that future waffle experimentation is on hold until further notice. Nuff said.

(Sidenote: I will say that between the two recipes (links are in my previous post) I really loved the banana cinnamon waffles. In fact, I ate some of the leftover ones for breakfast this morning. I had refrigerated them and I just popped them in the toaster like an Eggo waffle and ate them with sliced bananas and pancake syrup on top. It was much more decadent than my usual breakfast fixings! So I may make more of these for my own breakfasts and freeze them to eat during the week.)

In other news, we haven't retrieved any more gigantic eggs. However, today was a 4-egg day which is always exciting because that means all four hens laid an egg today. I found a frozen, squashed mouse in the chicken coop and had DH dispose of it. Before tossing it he brought it to the door to show our boys. My oldest son promptly said, "Mommy, you can write about that on your blog." So I am. :-) I will, however, spare you a photo glimpse of the mouse remains. In case you are wondering I DIDN'T even take a photo. (Thought about it, though!)

My new obsession is planning our garden for this summer. We have not had a vegetable garden since we had the boys. Usually we don't even think about gardening until about the middle of June and then it seems too late to tackle it. So.........I'm getting a head start and planning it all out now. I have been obsessed about looking up information from the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) website. That is the method I plan to use. It requires virtually no weeding..........seriously. I'm all over that. You should check out the concept of SFG..........it's a really neat idea and you can do it in very little space with very good results. I have also been looking through my Burpee seed catalog that just came yesterday and getting on the Burpee website to read the customer reviews of all the different types of seeds. That has been really helpful in deciding which seeds to order. I am pretty excited about our venture into gardening. I'm sure I will write many future posts about it. If any of you do the SFG method, I'd love it if you'd post a comment about how you like it, what you grow, etc. Below is a photo of my garden notebook and some gardening books I checked out from the library today.

Reba's MONSTER egg (and other news from the Arctic)

2010-01-08T06:00:00.003-06:00

Laura here, reporting from the arctic zone also known as the Midwest. Temperatures here reaching a whopping 4 above today (or something like that) with windchills around -20 degrees. When this posts we will be on our third straight day off from school. The first day (Wed) due to a snowstorm which dumped another 4-5 inches on top of the MANY we already had on the ground, the second day due to winds creating blizzard like conditions, and the third day due to a HIGH of 0 on the thermometer with windchills of -30. Yeah.........that's what's going on. Because of the cold I have been going out to the chicken coop several times a day to thaw the frozen water and to collect the eggs before they freeze. I was completely blown away by the egg I found late this afternoon. Most of the hens lay in the morning, but when I had gone out around 2:00 p.m. Reba was in the nesting box although nothing was under her when I checked. When I went back around 4:00 or so there was a gargantuan egg in the nesting box........very dark brown so I knew it was Reba's. Of course I had to blog about it. What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't brag to everyone about the huge eggs produced by my girls? You can see the monster egg next to another egg I gathered this morning.

I don't know if it was just a fluke today or if we can expect ginormous eggs from Reba from now on. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.

Wednesday morning when we had our first snow day I went downstairs and brought up a waffle iron that DH and I got MANY years ago, perhaps as a wedding gift. That would make it a circa 1993 waffle iron in case you are wondering. This baby hasn't been used since WAY before we had kids. In fact........neither DH or I could remember when we had used it EVER. Anywho........waffles from the waffle iron are my boys' new favorite breakfast or just about anytime food. Since I've been a bit of a blogaholic on my days off, I stumbled across a recipe for homemade banana cinnamon waffles. I decided to make these for dinner tonight along with roasted potatoes and scrambled (monster) eggs. Now I'll let you guess...............did my oldest son (the one who's been asking me to make waffles for him about 5 times a day since the waffle iron appeared) prefer his mother's made-from-scratch, farm fresh egg infused, fresh banana-cinnamon with buttermilk waffles OR the generic store-brand pancake mix waffles we'd been having up until tonight? I'm sure you're thinking the made-from-scratch waffles were a hands-down winner, right? You might be thinking, there's no way he could have preferred the bland, boring box-mix waffles. Oh. Yes. He. Did. About 2 bites into the most fantastic waffles this girl has ever produced he announced (in a fairly whiny voice I might add), "I don't LIKE banana waffles." Yeah. That's what he said. Seeing the obvious disappointment on my face he asked, "Are you mad?" To which I replied, "No, I'm not mad. I had just hoped you would like these waffles, but it's okay."

Later on when I was putting my youngest son to bed I asked him if he liked the banana waffles I had made........still grasping for some waffle validation, don't you know. He said, "WHAT banana waffles?" I said, "The ones Mama made for supper tonight." He said, "Oh! Those tasted YUCK! Sometimes when I eat the food you make it doesn't taste very good to me."

Alrighty then..........Not one to be easily discouraged, I am totally planning on trying the gingerbread waffle recipe in the link above sometime VERY SOON! I'll let you know how it goes. ;-)

Joyful Job Jar

2010-01-07T13:56:00.005-06:00

You know those little decluttering and straightening jobs that always seem to take a back burner? Well, if you're anything like me you can think of about 20 things you'd rather do than declutter the junk drawer or the hall closet. I actually enjoy organizing things, but sometimes getting started is really hard for me. To give myself renewed motivation I decided to make a "job jar" for myself. I wanted it to have a catchy, alliterative name and since I couldn't find a synonym for "dreaded" that started with "j" I decided to be positive and call it the "Joyful Job Jar." Now I just need to generate some joy about using it. Haha

I used an empty peanut butter jar and printed two labels for it.

It's funny..........I don't mind doing laundry at all and I'm almost always caught up on my laundry tasks. Hey! Laundry is a joyful job for Laura!! Yay!!

I cut up a bunch of slips of paper and wrote a decluttering type job on each of them. When I have an extra 15-30 minutes I am committing myself to reaching into the jar, pulling out a task and tackling it.

See all those innocent little pieces of folded paper? I am about to reach into this very jar and pull out a job. I am on my second snow day in a row and didn't accomplish much yesterday. I am determined to make today more productive. Here goes.................and the joyful job of the day will be..........."declutter cabinets in basement kitchen." Our home has 2 kitchens. Not because I am a prolific cook but because that's what it had when we moved in. We use the cabinets in the downstairs kitchen to store a VARIETY of things which I guess I will now go and sort out. Can you sense my joyfulness? Me neither. Oh well..........off to the basement. I would love to hear how you discipline yourselves to complete your most dreaded and annoying of tasks.

Art class

2010-01-02T20:25:00.004-06:00

This afternoon the boys and I met my friend, Krystal, and her two boys at a new local gift shop that has art classes on Saturdays. We had fun although my little boy got pretty rowdy. The boys did print-making, spin art, and played with clay. These photos show the spin-art. For only $5 per child it was a pretty good value. We will probably do it again but my little guy may stay home next time. We'll see! :0)

Other than that, we tried to stay warm. It is FREEZING here. Actually, if the temperature was at freezing it would feel balmy. It is below zero right now. My toes were frozen after a 5 minute ride in the car. UGH! I hate the cold of winter when it's too cold to even go out and enjoy the snow. My husband, however, did his daily run OUTSIDE today. He is crazy! Actually, I admire his dedication. He has been running for decades now and knows how to dress for all sorts of weather. Still...........I was pretty happy on the treadmill this morning. :0)

Happy New Year!!

2010-01-01T07:00:00.001-06:00

Hope your festivities last night were joyous or peaceful, whichever you prefer! I am typing this at 11:04 p.m. on New Year's Eve, but posting it on the morning of New Year's Day. My oldest son and I just watched the "ball" drop in NYC on TV. He is still going to try to stay up until midnight here. I am the parent designated to help him accomplish this. :0)

Today I am revealing the project I've been working on. Yay! It's a new blog!! It is called Our Random Acts of Reading and you can check it out by clicking on the link here or on the sidebar. I know I may be crazy. My oldest son just said tonight, "Mommy! Now you have 3 blogs!" And he's right! I'll let you click over to read about my new blog adventure. I am pretty excited about it and would love to hear what you think.

I've decided to reveal myself to you this year as well. You may or may not have noticed that I now have a photo of myself in my blog profile. It about killed me to do it as I hate to be photographed. But I also felt that the time had come...........I've been blogging now for about a year and a half so it was time to come out of the closet so to speak. I had my husband take a bunch of photos of me so I could choose the least hideous one! haha!

That's all for now! Have a great New Year's Day!!

My favorite Christmas gifts of 2009

2009-12-31T17:18:00.006-06:00

Where has the time gone? I wanted to write a quick post showing my favorite gifts from this Christmas.

This birdsong clock was given to me by my oldest son. He purchased it from the "shop" at our church's Advent festival. I love it. It still surprises me to hear a bird "talking" on the hour every hour, but it's a welcome surprise.

In school my oldest son also made us this PEACE plaque. As you can see, he glued different types of beans and seeds to form each letter. I love it so much!

The snowman plate was my little boy's gift to me. He bought it at the church Advent festival. I've taken down all of our Christmas decorations, but my baker's rack has lots of snowman items on it which I will leave up throughout January and into February. So this plate now has a place of prominence on one of the shelves. I will treasure it every year as I pull it out to decorate our home in the wintertime.

The holly teapot is a gift from my mom. She bought it at my favorite local thrift store and I have already had several cups of Christmas tea poured from it. I will be on the lookout for a matching cup and saucer.

A close-up of the holly motif

The next photos show some great after-Christmas deals I picked up at my favorite thrift store. All the Christmas items were marked down to 75% off this week. I will probably give the two little metal signs shown below as gifts next year. They cost me a whopping 63 cents each!!

I had my eye on this white metal snowflake wreath every time I went into the thrift store during December. I told myself to wait and see if was still there after Christmas and I was so excited to see that it was!! It's original price was $9 and I bought it for $1.13!! Yay for me! It is on the top shelf of my baker's rack right now and will stay there throughout January and February.

Close-up of the metal snowflakes. I love finding great home decor at thrift stores. You can get some awesome bargains. I forgot to take a photo of it but I also bought a really awesome Christmas wreath for my door at the thrift store for 50% off about a week or two before Christmas. That means I paid only $5 for a wreath that would probably be at least $40 at Hobby Lobby.

After Christmas we also bought 4 boxes of 9-foot pine garland with lights from Target at 50% off. We are planning to put them outside on our deck next year. Our outdoor Christmas decor could definitely be beefed up. We also got a stand for a real Christmas tree at 50% off so we'll have it ready for our REAL tree next year. I'm excited about that.

I hope you are all enjoying your end of the year festivities. We will be staying home tonight as we always do. Our New Year's Eve tradition is to pull out the couch in the living room and eat pizza in our jammies and watch movies together. DH is in town picking up the pizza right now and my little boy is asleep on the couch!! Not sure what the big boy is doing..........he's downstairs. Yesterday he started a "news" scrapbook and I think he's working on it right now. I am planning to pull out my scrapbooks from 1999 and 2000 to look through tonight. It was just DH and I back then as we didn't have children yet. I am going to make him sit and reminisce with me. He's already been forewarned. I haven't seen the spark of enthusiasm that I'd hoped for, but he agreed to look at them with me. I am pretty sure that he will enjoy looking back once we get going.

Check back here tomorrow because if all goes well I am going to "unveil" the project I've been working hard on behind the scenes. I'm super-excited about it. Happy New Year!!

Facelift

2009-12-27T22:26:00.004-06:00

Hello! I just wanted to let everyone know that I've been messing around a bit with the blog and have given it a facelift. So if you read the blog through a feed reader, take a moment to click through and tell me what you think of the new look. Otherwise, just tell me what you think of the new look. I found the background on Shabby Blogs. I love it so much. I was long overdue for an update. Best part of it? It was FREE!!! Now I'm trying to figure out how to install a customized header. I've found one I really like on Shabby Blogs but can't figure out yet how to add text to the image. If you've done that and can give me advice I'd love the help! Thanks!

PS: I'm working on a new BIG project that I'm hoping to reveal soon. I'm really excited about it! Can't wait to share!

A very Merry Christmas

2009-12-25T18:36:00.012-06:00

We awoke to a HUGE amount of snow and blizzard conditions. As you can see from the photo below my husband had to dig out before he could take the dog out this morning. I took this photo sometime before 7:00 a.m. Our boys were up and ready to see what was under the tree by 6:30 a.m. Apparently my big boy had been awake much earlier than that but my husband held him off until 6:30. Because of the snow we did not go to our church's Christmas Eve service last night. I am 40 years old. I can honestly not remember ever missing church on Christmas Eve. It was a little different to say the least. However, we enjoyed a quiet evening at home. We did our Advent wreath and were able to finally light the Christ candle in the center. My oldest son found three stories in his Jesus Storybook Bible that he wanted to read aloud for our home Christmas Eve service. My husband, little boy and I used our fabric Nativity characters to "act out" the stories as he read them. It was quite nice.

Here are a few more photos of our massive snowfall. You can see how the snow has drifted against our chicken coop halfway up the windows. I had to step through huge drifts to get out there today.

And this big mound is on our deck.

It is still snowing as I write this post at about 6:45 p.m. We usually have our extended family on my side over on Christmas day. As I wrote earlier, we were planning to get together on Tuesday but couldn't due to the weather. We have yet to reschedule that event and my oldest son has asked me several times today when we will have it. I am glad that being with family is such an important part of Christmas for him. When we planned the big get-together for Tuesday we still planned to have my parents over here on Christmas Day. Because of weather that didn't happen either. So it was just the four of us home all day. In all honesty our little family being snowbound and together all day has made this the most peaceful and relaxing Christmas in my memory. We just hung out all day. The boys played with their new toys. I read a book for large periods of time and played with the boys off and on. My husband relaxed some too in between going out and shoveling every few hours so we could at least get out our doors. It was a really nice day and I feel so very blessed to have a family whom I love dearly.

The boys both loved their gifts. I didn't get many pictures of their new toys without the boys in the picture. Below you can see the Hot Wheels race track that my little boy got. He loved it and has played with it a lot all day. My big boy got a few new geography puzzles among other things and is in his room assembling Asia as I write this. He also got a cool circuitry kit and has been constructing projects from that as well.

And I am thrilled to report that today, Christmas Day 2009, was a 4-EGG DAY!! I went out mid-morning to check and found one egg on the floor of the coop and one chicken, Reba, trapped against the wall in the nesting basket!! Poor baby! Apparently someone in the coop had flipped the basket over against the wall and Reba couldn't get out. She probably trapped herself. So.....I repositioned the crate so that can't happen again. When I went out in the late afternoon to bring fresh water I found 3 MORE eggs! This can only mean one thing.........now all of our hens are laying. I loved that one of the eggs was really dark brown. It actually brought back a childhood memory that I will share here. I hadn't thought of this in about 30 years. When I was in elementary school we were asked to bring an egg to school for an art project. When we pulled out our eggs in art class my egg was the only brown egg in the class. I do not remember specifics, but I do remember being teased about the color of my egg. I also remember feeling embarrassed about having the only egg that was different. And I think I was even mad that someone would make an issue of the color of my egg. Anyway........we made Santa and Mrs. Claus faces out of our eggs. I went ahead and made a brown Mrs. Claus. It's funny how something can trigger a memory like that..........I haven't thought about it for years. Below is a photo of our diverse, multi-cultural, egg collection from today. I am excited to cook these up tomorrow morning. After my last egg post I got a great comment giving me specific guidelines for cooking an egg. Thanks, Annicles. Also, I now know that my good buddy, Amber, is an eggspert at cooking eggs. Who knew? I knew she could bake an awesome cake, but eggs? You learn something new every day!

PS: I almost forgot! This morning I knocked over our Christmas tree when reaching under it for a gift. The leg broke off just as it had on our other Christmas tree. So.........that makes 2 artificial trees that I've accidently broken in the last few weeks. My little boy burst into tears when the tree fell down but recovered quickly when presented with the distraction of opening all his gifts. DH and I decided that this is a sign that from now on we will get a real tree every year. We've talked about it in the past but when we had an artificial one to use it didn't seem practical. Now it seems like a necessity. So that's a new tradition we can look forward to next year.

It was a two-egg day (and other happenings)

2009-12-23T22:49:00.007-06:00

Well, this morning after I jogged on the treadmill (I finished the 8-week running program and am now officially a "runner") and took a shower I decided to cook up the two eggs I had gathered from our chickens over the past few days. Only a blogger or scrapbooker would take a bunch of photos of cooking an egg. Since I happen to participate in both hobbies (though much more of the blogging than the scrapbooking lately) I DID take some photos. Below you can see the two eggs ready to be cooked. Is it just me or are those yolks incredibly yellow?

I was originally going to do fried eggs but realized once I got going that I don't really know how to make a fried egg. Isn't that lame? I am sure I could Google it, but I think that is even more lame. So I made fried/scrambled eggs instead. My little boy was excited when I started making the eggs, saying he wanted to eat some. My oldest son was not so enthused. He stated that he would rather eat the eggs from our chickens if they were baked in something instead of cooked on the stove. He also informed me that he really liked them "like Easter eggs", not fried or scrambled.

Here you can see that I went from fried to scrambled since I don't know how to flip an egg without it going everywhere. I am sure my husband could teach me. He is really good with eggs. I think he was outside running when I was doing this.

Here is the finished product. Let me tell you.............those eggs were AWESOME!! Seriously. Once they were done my oldest son decided he wanted to try them. So the boys and I all had a fork and that egg disappeared faster than a ripe banana in a chicken coop..........in other words, it was gone in under a minute. After we scarfed down the egg, I decided to go out to the coop to see if any more eggs had been laid. I think it was about 11:00 a.m. when I did this. I was pleased to find another little brown egg (there hadn't been any when I was out in the coop earlier in the morning). When I brought it inside my little boy wanted me to cook it right away (which I did) and to eat it right away (which he did). The new egg was laid right under our nesting box so later in the day my husband went out and removed the nesting box I posted about yesterday. We decided it may be too small for the hens to lay in. He replaced it with a plastic milk crate that we just put right down on the litter in the corner. When he was doing all this he also found a white egg in the coop!! So that means that two of our hens are now laying eggs (and that's why today was a 2-egg day). I am so proud of those girls! They are awesome! I can't wait to eat more of their eggs. They are so tasty.

Moving on to other news since you are likely sick of hearing about eggs. My mom invited us all over to her home this afternoon to exchange gifts. Traditionally we go to my parents' house on Christmas Eve to eat a meal, exchange gifts, then go to the Christmas Eve service at our church. Because of the big snowstorm that we are supposed to get tomorrow our Christmas Eve service has already been cancelled and we are likely to be snowed in for a few days. So we got together today. It was fun. My mom always finds really fun gifts for the boys. Below you can see my little boy's hands. He got a Playskool race car driver helmet. It comes with a hand-held control/steering wheel that has all kinds of cool sound effects. The helmet has a microphone that you can talk into. He LOVES it. He played with it so much when we got home.

One of the gifts my oldest son received was a little magic tricks kit. He immediately went off to my parents' bedroom to study a trick. Below you can see him and his volunteer (AKA Daddy) doing a ring and rope trick that he learned.

When we got home I holed up in my craft room to sew the boys' Christmas Eve pajamas. I had painted their shirts earlier in the day. I didn't have a sewing pattern........I just grabbed a pair of pants for each of them that currently fit them and used that as a pattern. The PJ pants went together really quickly and I think the boys will be excited to open them tomorrow night. Below you can see the shirt and pants together. In hindsight I kind of wish I had bought red shirts instead of the dark blue because I think that would have looked cuter with the flannel I bought. Oh well!

This last photo makes me go "WAH!!". I took the PJ pants I made last year for each boy and laid them on top of the new ones, all lined up at the waistband. In the photo you can see how much longer I had to make the ones for this year. Of course I want my children to grow and be healthy...........but I still feel wistful when I think of how fast they are growing up. I want to hang onto and treasure every moment with them. I love them both so much!!

The boys and I were also pretty busy today trying to finish some more of our Advent books and ornaments. I will do some posts on those soon. I am positive now that our Advent book activities will have to trickle past Christmas Day. Even though I planned only 15 (not 25 like last year) we have so far only done nine. Again.........oh, well! We've enjoyed doing it and hopefully the boys will be up for finishing all of them. Then I can stash the ornaments away for the Festival of Trees next year!!

A bit of everything

2009-12-22T19:59:00.014-06:00

Be forewarned..........this is a very photo-dense post. I am too lazy to do a bunch of separate posts so I'm playing catch-up and writing one big post to describe all that's been going on here since I posted one week ago. First let me say that the reason I finally found time to blog tonight is because we had to cancel a family get-together that was supposed to be at our house TONIGHT because there is a big ice storm moving into the area. I was really bummed out because the boys and I were really excited to have everyone over here and we had made a bunch of stuff to give out to the guests. But, I would rather have my loved ones be safe, so instead I am catching up on blogging.

I guess I'll start by summarizing what I've done in the past week. OK...........last Wednesday night I went to my MOPS Christmas party which was very fun, as always. We had an ornament exchange. I forgot to take a photo of the one I brought home.........it's a glass snowman with green accents. Love it! On Thursday last week my oldest son had his winter program for school. The theme of his program was "Peace". His role in the program was to read aloud a report he had written about Nelson Mandela. He got up in front of an auditorium filled with people and read his report out loud. He was so poised and read with such expression. I was so proud of him that my eyes welled up with tears as he read. He is such an awesome kid!! On Friday I went out to a local Mexican place with a few friends to celebrate the 40th birthday of my neighbor. On Saturday the boys and I went over to Amber's house. She is our daycare provider. My little boy goes to her house two half-days a week. She always hosts a Christmas get-together for her daycare families and had a breakfast this year. There is always a special guest who appears during her get-togethers----------Santa Claus! And he always has a gift for each child. My boys got two new games from Santa...........Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee. These are great additions to our games collection. Thank you, Amber! I went shopping Saturday afternoon and Saturday night the boys and I and my mom went to a Christmas pageant at a mega-church in our area. We met my friend Julie and her family there. (DH was home with the dog. We have to keep him on a rigid medication schedule. He has made it almost 6 weeks without a seizure, the longest he's ever gone and we don't want to mess that up!) The pageant is amazing.........almost like (I imagine) a Broadway show. There are live animals (camels walking past us only 1 foot away) and angels who truly fly across the set on zip-lines. There was real snow falling on us during one part and there is always just an amazing and touching reenactment of the first Christmas story along with an inspirational modern storyline. I am so glad we went.

During the past week in my preschool classroom, the children and I were busy making parent gifts. Below you can see the one my little boy made for me!! If you are curious about this project, read this post over at my school blog. These would be great to make if you need to still whip up a last-minute gift. They take only a few minutes and turn out really pretty.

Last Friday I read this post on WhimsyLove and instantly knew I wanted to make some of these to give my female relatives at our get-together that was supposed to be tonight. When I was out and about on Saturday afternoon I stopped by my favorite thrift store and picked up 5 vintage spoons for about 75 cents. They had the half-price colored tag on them!! I typed up the story from Nikki's post and printed it out on cardstock. I used a corner-rounder to decorate the corners and then I adhered them to another color of cardstock and fancied up those corners. I tied a ribbon around the spoon and stuck an ornament hanger through the back so the spoons could be hung on the tree as shown below.

I punched a hole in the corner of the story and tied it to the spoons as shown here.

I love the message behind this story. I truly believe that the best IS yet to come. Hopefully I can still get-together with my family soon and pass out the spoons I've made.

When I went to Hobby Lobby Saturday I picked up supplies so my boys could make an ornament for each person at our family gathering (the one that now ISN'T tonight.........can you tell I'm disappointed?). All the holiday items were at least 50% off, so I got some great deals. I wanted the clear glass ornaments but they only had the frosted ones left. I have seen lots of initial ornaments around the blogosphere lately and wanted to copy those. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sticker letters I found, but they were glittery and Christmasy.

We stuffed red gift shred into the ornaments as shown. This was much harder than you would think as you pretty much had to do it strand by strand. My little boy soon tired of the project after this photo was taken. I can't say I blame him!

After filling them with the shred, we attached the top, added a letter sticker, an ornament hanger and a ribbon. We made 15 ornaments in all and have some left for future crafting.

The photo below shows one finished ornament.

Also this weekend I made a ton of chocolate pretzel rods to give as gifts to Sunday School teachers, school teachers, bus drivers, etc. OOPS! I guess DH needs to get a bag since he is the bus driver for our oldest child who attends a private school!! I think I have an extra one, honey!

Here they are all packaged up and ready to give out!!

We also have exciting news from the chicken coop. On Saturday I went out and found a perfect little brown egg frozen to the ground in the chicken run. I had to pour warm water on it to get it off the ground and the shell broke in the process. I didn't get a photo of the FIRST egg due to this! Below you can see Sarah and Abby hanging out on the roost in the chicken run. I have suspicions that Abby is our egg-layer.

On Sunday there was another perfect little brown egg, this time inside the coop on the floor. It was still warm to the touch when I brought it inside. Since we didn't have a nesting box in the coop yet, DH and I had to scurry to put something in place with the hope that our egg-layer would soon find a proper place to deposit her daily treasures. The next two photos show two little sets of hand holding our first (unbroken) egg!!

We decided (for ease of time and labor in very cold weather) to repurpose an old kitty litter bucket to use as a nesting box. DH just used a screw to attach it to the wall of the coop as shown below. On Backyard Chickens I have read that it helps the chickens know what it's for if you put some fake eggs in it. So you can see two plastic Easter eggs in it in the photos. On Monday there was another perfect little brown egg. It was found below the nesting box, not inside. But the two eggs IN the nesting box, the fake ones, were mysteriously moved to different places so there has definitely been some fowl play involved. haha

Below you can see the nesting box relative to where the roost is in the coop. Today I could find no evidence of an egg anywhere. So we'll have to see what happens next. Very exciting developments in chicken farming I must say. I have yet to cook one of the two eggs we've retrieved. DH seems a bit squeamish about the whole thing but I've just been too busy. It's kind of scary that we have moved so far from our agrarian roots as a society that we are cautious to eat food that comes directly from the animal of origin. When you think about it, there's nothing more natural than eating an egg laid by your own hen, is there?? I'll let you know once I cook it if it's the best egg I've ever had.

On the homemade gift-making front I've been busy. Below is a photo of a little doodad I made for my oldest son's teachers. As I mentioned above, their winter program theme was "peace" so I decided to make these little word-art knick-knacks for his teachers as a gift. I had seen something very similar in a Country Living magazine a few months ago. Luckily I had a thrifted Scrabble game in my crafting stash. I just sawed off the letter-holder pieces to the right size and glued the letter tiles onto them with Elmer's glue. Easy peasy! These would be great to make for Valentine's Day, spelling LOVE or other sentiments.

In keeping with my "give thanks" pillow from Thanksgiving I decided to make up some "believe" pillows. I gave one to each of my classroom assistants who are also my youngest son's teachers. I also gave one to Amber, our daycare provider. And I kept one for myself since I am also my son's teacher and since all his other teacher's got one................. I love how these turned out. I am already thinking of "let it snow" on blue burlap for January, "love" on red for February, "get lucky" on green for March...........OK..........maybe not that one!! :0)

Also for Amber, our daycare gal and my good friend, I made a Christmas apron. I didn't use a pattern, just kind of winged it. I started it Sunday night and finished it yesterday. I gave it to Amber today and to my face she said she liked it. Actually, I know she really did like it because she loves aprons. I loved the really big rick-rack. Aprons are so easy to whip together. I can't believe I don't actually own one. I need to change that!! Maybe a good Christmas break sewing project.

Here's a closeup of the rick-rack trim and fabric.

The only other handmade gift I need to finish (I mean, start and finish) is pajamas for the boys. I made them a set of pajamas last year and wanted to continue the tradition. I already have the shirts and fabric so I'll start those tomorrow. They'll be ready to wear by Christmas Eve. Whew! Now you can see why I haven't posted in a week! In case I don't post again before Christmas, please have a blessed day with your family. And treasure the reason behind the season. There is truly no greater gift than Jesus. My wish is that each of you reading this would know and embrace that truth this year.

Festival of Trees

2009-12-15T06:00:00.001-06:00

On Sunday afternoon our whole family headed to our local county historical museum to see their annual Festival of Trees. My MOPS group has decorated a tree for this festival the past several years so I usually take the boys to it. However, this was the first time DH had been there. In addition to seeing all the lovely trees we had a special experience. One of the volunteers started playing the antique player piano for my boys. She invited them to help her "pump" it. Below you can see the feet of my oldest son as he "plays" the song "Winter Wonderland." You should have seen the look on my boys' faces when the piano started playing all by itself. My big boy was so proud to have helped play the song and was talking animatedly to the other guests at the museum about his experience. He later whispered to me, "Mommy, what do you think is the best part so far?" I said, "Is it when you got to play the player piano?" He said, "YES!" It was very interesting to see how the piano worked and how you can change the songs it plays. The volunteer estimated the piano to be about 100 years old and said it was in great condition. I think my maternal grandfather had a player piano in his parlor. Mom, is that right? What ever happened to it? What a bummer that it is probably lost from our family forever.

Anyway..........my boys enjoyed looking at all the trees. They also liked choosing their favorite tree in the "adult" and "youth" category. One of the most unique "trees" was this one completely made from Diet Coke cans.

Below are some pictures I took of some of my favorite trees.

This one was GORGEOUS. I loved the lime green and red together. So pretty!

This one I also loved. It was decorated by the public library. It was covered with Little Golden Books. (The theme of the festival was the celebration of the museum's 50th birthday. So lots of the trees sported a "gold" theme.)

Being a former 4-Her, I loved this white tree with green accents (green is also my favorite color) that was decorated by a local 4-H club.

The next tree was the one I voted for because it was decorated by my MOPS group. It was called "Moms have hearts of Gold" or something similar to that. Great job fellow MOPS gals who decorated this one!!

I also really loved this red and purple tree decorated by our local Red Hat Society.

I am already thinking it would be fun to have my boys decorate a tree for next year's festival. The theme is "Homespun Holidays". I'll have to get my wheels turning to think of what we could do. Maybe we could just use the decorations we're making this year for our Advent project. Anyway, I'm sure we will enjoy next year's festival as much as this one.

Advent Festival

2009-12-14T06:00:00.001-06:00

On Saturday afternoon the boys and I went to our church's annual Advent Festival. This has become a special tradition for us. There is a wonderful angel at our church named Carol H. who organizes this every year. She is assisted by a team of fantastic volunteers. She basically transforms our whole Sunday school wing. There is a cookie decorating station, a room set up with actors playing Mary and Joseph who read the Nativity story, many rooms with crafts to make and take and (my sons' favorite part) a "store" where children only are allowed to go in without parents to buy gifts for their family. All the items in the store are donated by church members and none are priced higher than $2. There are volunteers who help them shop and wrap their gifts. They are SO excited to come out with armloads of gifts that they have personally chosen for their loved ones. My little boy wanted to "keep shopping". Carol amazes me every year with the great crafts she comes up with. Our Christmas tree has many ornaments made at past Advent festivals and they are truly family treasures.

This year my children made snowglobes. Carol had it all set up with the lids ready to go. The children chose the figure they wanted from the ones available...............

Then they went to the next table where little jars of water waited for a scoop of snowy glitter. An assistant helped glue the lids on and decorate them with a ribbon.

What a cute little snowglobe!!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVED this next project. It was a pinecone wreath. Again, Carol was so organized and had the pinecones already glued together in a wreath shape.

The children used paintbrushes to cover one side of the wreath with glue. Then they shook green glitter on top as shown.

Next, red sequins, a ribbon, and a hanging hook were added to complete the little wreaths. I really love these so much!! And now there are two hanging on our tree at home. Some of these photos did not turn out very well! :-(

I also completely loved this little Baby Jesus craft. There were little tiny babies to wrap in "swaddling clothes". These were then placed into a walnut shell manger. The gold ribbon was already glued on ahead of time.

I tried to take a picture of these on our tree but couldn't get a good shot. Here are the ones my boys made. This photo does not even come close to showing how adorable they are.

I am so thankful that Carol does this every year for the children in our church. We will look forward to attending for many years to come and will always treasure the memories and the ornaments we made.

Advent Book Activity: The Legend of the Poinsettia & Poinsettia ornaments

2009-12-13T19:18:00.006-06:00

For our sixth advent book activity we read The Legend of the Poinsettia by Tomie dePaola. Who doesn't love Tomie? Seriously. He's a genius. This is a great story, set in Mexico. Of course we had to make poinsettia ornaments to go with it. I got the pattern here, but revised it somewhat. We used juice can lids (from frozen orange juice) as a base. I cut a green felt circle to glue inside the metal lid. Then I cut the petals using the pattern from two shades of red and also from pink felt. We layered the petals together to make the flower. Then I pulled out my stash of buttons and let the boys each pick one. I sewed them through the center of all the petals and then glued the whole flower onto the green felt. The final step was to glue a loop of ribbon on the back so they could be hung on the tree.

These look sweet hanging on our tree.

On an interesting side note: I accidentally knocked over our other Christmas tree on Friday. One of the legs snapped off and we had to lean it against the wall. On Saturday I went to my favorite thrift store to see if Terri had any trees for sale. She didn't, but told me to go to the Episcopal church in town where they were having a cookie walk and rummage sale. She had been there earlier in the morning and saw two trees. I headed right over and found a tree nearly identical to the one I broke for only $10. So yesterday I took all the ornaments and lights off the broken tree and took it apart and put up the new one. When I was getting ready to put the lights back on I got a HUGE shock from the lights which were plugged in as I was untangling them. So I had to throw that strand of lights out. I was pretty tired of the whole ordeal by Saturday night so I waited until today after church to put the ornaments up on the new tree. Hopefully this one will survive until Christmas Day. I would not relish putting up a Christmas tree for the third time even though I love to decorate for Christmas.

Advent Book Activity: The Christmas Hat & Santa hat ornaments

2009-12-11T06:00:00.002-06:00

On Wednesday the boys and I read The Christmas Hat by A.J. Wood for our fifth Advent book. To go with this book we made little Santa hat ornaments. They were basically the ones shown here, but instead of gluing the ribbon and felt I sewed them on my sewing machine. I folded the triangle with right sides together and placed the ribbon INSIDE the fold, sewed up the side seam and then turned it right side out. The final step was gluing the cotton balls on. These were SO cute, but I think they would have been much harder and more frustrating to make had we glued them.

Below you can see the little hats on the tree. I think they look so cute. I wish we had made more of them.

Christmas Memories books

2009-12-10T13:26:00.006-06:00

I was so thrilled when unpacking our Christmas decorations this year to find this little Christmas Memories book that my oldest son had made last Christmas. I had totally forgotten about it and it is definitely something I will always treasure. To make this I just took 2 sheets of printer paper and folded them in half. Then I cut a piece of Christmas scrapbook paper a little larger than 8 1/2 X 11 inches and folded it, placing the white pages inside. Using red thread and a zig-zag stitch on my sewing machine, I stitched up the side. My son added the letter stickers to spell "Christmas Memories 08" and then illustrated and wrote on the inside pages. I forgot to photograph one page, but the sentence starters were: "My favorite gift was........., My favorite thing to do was.............., My favorite thing to eat was..........., And my favorite part was........." He did such a great job writing and illustrating the pages. I loved pulling it out this year. I am planning to make one for each boy this year. Obviously my 4 1/2 year old will need a little more help with the writing part, but he can definitely illustrate his ideas. If you would like to do this project and don't/can't sew, just staple the side or punch holes and tie or lace it with yarn or ribbon. I'm planning to get ours out every year to put in a special basket so we can look back at our past Christmases through the boys' eyes.

front cover

first page

close-up of his illustration of his favorite gift, the game "Mousetrap"

"favorite thing to eat" page

I loved reading that his favorite part was handing out gifts. Hopefully he will hang onto the joy of giving as he grows older.

Advent Book Activity: The Little Fir Tree & Pinecone tree ornaments

2009-12-10T09:39:00.003-06:00

Over the last few days we've been working on our ornaments to go with our fourth advent book, The Little Fir Tree by Margaret Wise Brown. This book is SO beautifully illustrated it's almost breath-taking. It is a really sweet story as well. I love pretty much everything written by Margaret Wise Brown and it seems that every year or so I discover something else she's written. We have owned this book for a few years. The first time I read it to my oldest son he was quite teary and touched by it. I won't spoil it by telling you why........you'll have to read it yourself. We made pinecone Christmas trees to go with this book. I was loosely basing them on something I'd seen online, but we kind of did our own thing too.

During the snowstorm on Tuesday I gathered some pinecones from one of the trees on our property. Then the boys helped me paint them green. I only had lime green paint and kind of wished they were darker, but they will show up well on a darker green tree. Below you can see my oldest son painting a pinecone.

After the paint dried we (I) glued sequins on to make little ornaments on the teeny tree. It is pretty hard to handle such tiny sequins. I ended up putting a dab of glue on the pinecone and then picking up the sequin with the glue. The boys were both excited to find some snowflake sequins (there were only 2) and we used those for the "stars" on two of the pinecone trees.

I tied some very thin gold cord around the pinecones to hang them. We made glittered pinecones last year and the hangers fell off some of them. This time I tied the cord around the pinecone and put a dab of glue on the knot. Then I used the long ends to tie another knot to make a hanging loop. I also put a dab of glue on that knot.

SNOWED IN: Day 3

2009-12-10T09:24:00.004-06:00

We are on our third day of no school here. I didn't post yesterday, but we were snowed in all day. It snowed from Monday night until Tuesday night. Then the winds picked up and blew all the snow around all night which caused huge drifts. The road crews spent all day yesterday trying to get everyone plowed out. All in all I think we have about a foot of snow on the ground which is a lot for us. It is frigidly cold here right now. Negative temps. Which I HATE!! Luckily the boys were able to spend quite a bit of time sledding on Tuesday before the drifts got so deep and the temps got so cold. My husband took them out for a little yesterday to sled but they had to sled on a path he had scooped because the snow is drifted so deep that even DH and I have a hard time walking in it on most parts of our property. I took all these photos yesterday to show how deep the drifts are.

The picture below shows where our driveway meets the road. You can see that it was totally drifted shut. Since we don't own a four-wheel drive vehicle we were pretty much stranded at home all day yesterday. The county finally plowed our road around 7:00 p.m. last night.

I wish I could say I've been really productive on our snow days, but I haven't really been. The Christmas program at my school is tomorrow night and I've decided to go ahead and have it even though a majority of my students won't have practiced all week. So.....that's on my mind right now. I'm sure it will all be fine. And although the boys and I are having a good time at home, it will be nice to get back to our routines again tomorrow.

Party in the coop tonight!!

2009-12-08T19:33:00.006-06:00

It's a good thing I don't have too many snow days because I might inundate the blogosphere with mundane and boring posts about my chickens. As it stands, this is my second post of the day and as soon as it's posted I'm going to post another one!! I meant to blog some more about what else we did on our snow day. Well..........we had a failure situation with the Christmas goodies we tried to make. More on that later, perhaps. The other thing the ol' DH and I did was to hook up a heat lamp in the chicken coop. It's supposed to get really cold tonight and tomorrow. Cold as in negative temps. I know you have frost growing on the walls in Montana, Anne..........but I personally do not love supercold weather. :-) Anyhow, I wanted to be sure my little chooks were warm (relatively speaking) so we hooked up the heat lamp that we had used for them when they were chicks in our bathroom this summer. We had some figgerin' to do since we couldn't fully close the door to the coop with the extension cord looped through it. DH was concerned that having light all night would upset their rhythms so to speak. I figured that would be better than freezing to death. That's why I titled this post "party in the coop" in case they are out there partying all night in the light and warmth instead of roosting like they usually do. I couldn't resist peeking through the window once it got dark to see if they were living it up. When I peeked in I saw 5 little "fuzzy-butts" (that's what my peeps on Backyard Chickens call their chickens) all in a row up on their roost, just like usual.

Below you can see a photo I took right after we hooked up the lamp. It's infrared so it casts a reddish glow on everything. Hopefully it is positioned just right to keep the water from freezing tonight.

Here's the lamp, suspended from a hook on one of the rafters.

After some figgerin' and after attaching a hook and eye to the door, the DH and I decided it would be best to just cut a notch out of the door frame to allow the cord to pass through. I felt that the hook and eye remedy was allowing too much of a gap and I didn't want my little darlings to have a cold draft blowing in on them all night. One little zzzzzzzzzzzzzzt of the reciprocating saw and the job was done. Love it!!

In other chicken news...........I wanted to share something very very cute that my youngest son has been doing lately. First of all, I've meant to blog about the fact that over the past several days my two boys have had the BEST time playing together and have done so (without too much pounding and crying) for long periods of time. I am not always sure what they're playing, but they've been having fun. In the course of their play my little boy found this stuffie that my husband got at a science-y conference. It is supposed to be a model of the Salmonella bacteria. My little boy has decided to call this stuffed bacteria his "chicken". He named it Chicken and has been carrying it around, loving on it and telling me how much he loves it, asking me to pet it, etc. For quite a while yesterday Chicken was living in his nest which happens to be the pocket of the sweatshirt I usually wear around the house. It's very cute and is one of those memories that could be easily forgotten if not documented. So..........I snapped a quick photo of Chicken to help us remember him once he becomes a forgotten playmate. He actually does kind of look like a chicken, and very much like our favorite chicken, Sarah.

Advent Book Activity: Snowmen At Night & Snowman Ornaments

2009-12-08T15:13:00.006-06:00

This is my third post for today. I really wanted to post this now since we started another Advent book project today that I want to post tomorrow. Please keep scrolling down to catch up on what we've been doing. The other two posts I wrote are below this one. :-)

For our third advent book activity we read Snowmen at Night by Caralyn & Mark Buehner. We already owned this book and while it's not exactly a Christmas story, it seems to fit the season quite well. When I was looking up the Amazon link to embed in this post I noticed that Caralyn & Mark have written a book called Snowmen at Christmas. We may have to add that our stash next year.

Our ornaments this time were snowmen (of course) inspired by these. We didn't add stick arms, although we could go back and do that. We used stiff black felt for the hats and orange craft foam for the noses. The boys added face details with a black Sharpie marker. I think they turned out so cute. The first photo below shows the two my oldest son made and the next one shows my little boy's ornaments.

And here they are on the tree. So simple and cute!!

Sights and Sounds of a SNOW DAY!!! (Part 1)

2009-12-08T13:02:00.009-06:00

Today the boys and I are home from our respective schools because the Midwest is having a HUGE snowstorm right now. It's been snowing here since about 10 p.m. last night and isn't supposed to stop until about that time tonight. We may very well have another snow day tomorrow. Since I am blessed with more time at home today I decided to blog about our day here at home.

Well, even though both my boys' schools were cancelled as of last night both my boys were awake by 6:30 a.m.!! I guess I forgot to mention that you are supposed to SLEEP IN on a snow day. It was still a relaxing morning and we went sledding in our front yard around 9:00 a.m. While the boys were sledding I took a bunch of pictures of them and of the snow. Our rooster, Arthur (AKA "The chicken formerly known as Dixie), was crowing his head off while we were sledding so I thought it would be cool to make a little video of that to post on the blog. Of course when I started taping on my camera he didn't crow. However, I am pleased to report that this post does include the very first video I've ever posted. Scroll down and you can view, "Snow Chickens", directed and filmed by yours truly.

Below you can see our dog, Buzz. He is not enamored with the snow. I took him out to do his thing an hour or so ago and the snow is almost up to his tummy. Here you can see him sacked out on the floor next to me while I type this.

By the end of this storm we could have about a foot of snow on the ground. It is so peaceful to be outdoors in the country when the snow is falling. There is really nothing else like it that I've ever experienced. So serene and lovely.

The chickens are not incredibly thrilled about the snow either. They spent most of yesterday and today so far "cooped up" in their coop. Here you can see the silent Arthur and Clara peeking out their chicken door.

When I approached the coop to start filming my masterpiece, Sarah, our outgoing chicken, came out to greet us. She is such a camera hog. She is basically the star of the movie and wouldn't have it any other way. She is such a little diva!! ha!

You can see from this photo that we already have several inches of snow and it's not letting up anytime soon.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for..............may I present the premiere of "Snow Chickens". (In case you are wondering who is speaking to the chickens in a dippy voice..........it was my twin sister. OK..........it was me.) Enjoy!! (NOTE: To hear the audio and to begin the video, click on the arrow in the lower left corner. Or click on the big arrow in the center. You may also need to scroll down to the very bottom of the blog screen to temporarily turn off my playlist. Otherwise you'll be hearing music and the video at the same time which would potentially be very annoying.)

PS: I will post later about all the other stuff we're doing today. I am just really excited to see if the video works so I have to post this right now!!!

What we've been up to

2009-12-07T13:03:00.007-06:00

I realize that I haven't posted here for a few days so I thought I'd pop in with an update. On Friday night the boys (little ones, not DH) and I went to an Ethnic Holiday Festival that we go to every year. We always look forward to seeing the booths from the different countries and my oldest son particularly loves to pick out a few new tree ornaments from other countries. Sadly, this year there really weren't any ornaments for sale that we could find. So.........my boys each got a flask (I know........I told them it was a canteen for water) from the Croatia booth. They are actually pretty cool and decorative. My oldest boy hung his on the tree when we got home. The little one has been periodically swigging water from his. :-)

On Saturday aside from my little guy having a YMCA basketball game in the morning we pretty much stayed home. I got my hair cut and colored. That afternoon DH worked outside putting up some lights and decorations. We let our chickens go out into a big dog pen we have so they could have "chicken recess". Our smallest and friendliest chicken, Sarah, is light enough that she can fly over the top (it's 6 feet high......or maybe higher). So.........when I opened the back door to get them back into the coop there was a porch chicken. Below you can see a photo of her. Also that afternoon as my husband and I had a brief moment of rest on the couch (we were just watching TV, not actually sleeping) my youngest son came into the living room and said, "Mom, Dad! Look!" He was carrying Sarah. So we had a chicken in the house for a short time. Not something we'll be doing on a regular basis, be assured. I have enough trouble cleaning up after the four 4-legged creatures who live inside without adding chickens to the menagerie.

Saturday night around 7:20 p.m. I headed to Kohl's to buy myself a new outfit for the Montessori Christmas Program I am directing on Friday. Can I just say something here? What is UP with putting bright fluorescent lighting in dressing rooms? Is there anyone in the world who would find it flattering to look at every little bump, dimple and roll under that kind of lighting? It's a wonder they sell any clothes at all. I was fairly depressed after the whole episode. Seriously. I hate shopping anyway though. I did find a fairly presentable outfit. I bought a new necklace to go with it. It's from the Simply Vera Wang collection for Kohl's. If the local paper did a write-up about my Christmas program they could say something like, "And the directress (that's what you call a Montessori teacher) wore Vera Wang." Ha!! Sounds pretty swanky, eh? Oh, sorry. There won't be a photo of me in the new outfit. Gray pants, fuschia sweater, cool new necklace and shoes. Does that help with your visual image? If not, sorry!!

The boys have enjoyed doing our two Advent calendars since December began. My oldest son is in charge of putting the Nativity figure up on the calendar shown below each day. They decided on their own to each do one instead of taking turns with the two calendars.

This year we added the Playmobil Advent calendar. I saw it at Target and couldn't pass it up. My little boy loves Playmobil. Each day he opens a door and gets out a new figure to put in a winter scene. Below you can see what is up so far.

Other than that...........we're just hanging in there, trying to enjoy this season of waiting and anticipation. We did our second Advent candle last night so there was one for each boy to blow out afterwards. I still have a TON of things to do before the 25th but I'm not getting stressed about it. It is incredibly cold here now and I have to go out a few times a day to break the ice out of the chicken's water. Makes me feel like a real farmer. Haha! We are supposed to get a ton of snow over the next 48 hours so a snow day may be in the schedule this week. We'll see.

We've done another Advent book and activity but the ornaments aren't quite finished. That will be another post. I guess I'll go for now. I'll end with this thought: Wouldn't it be awesome if I could get paid to stay home all day and just make crafts and blog about it? That's what I feel like doing right now. Unfortunately, crafting isn't on the urgent to-do list for today. Other mundane things like.............fold laundry, sweep floor, etc. await, however. So I'm off.......

Advent Book Activity: If You Take a Mouse to the Movies & Popcorn strings

2009-12-02T20:17:00.006-06:00

Tonight we did our second advent book activity. It looks like this week and next week our schedules will only allow us to do 2 books during the work week plus 2 on the weekends. That's making me really glad I didn't try to do 25 activities this year. My little boy unwrapped the book If You Take a Mouse to the Movies by Laura Numeroff. However, he didn't sit and read it with me and his brother. And I didn't force it. I don't want to ruin the spirit of the activities by forcing them on the boys. My oldest boy and I enjoyed the book. It is charming in the spirit of all the "If you give a mouse" books.

Since the mouse in the book makes a popcorn string to put on a Christmas tree that was our activity. My little boy didn't participate (other than eating a lot of the popcorn) but my big boy was able to string several pieces onto a thread and only poked himself once with the needle. No bloodshed, thankfully. He tired of doing it after stringing about 8 inches and I added a little more. Instead of making it a long string I just tied the ends together and made it into a circle which we hung on the tree. If you're interested, go read my original post about this book. I linked to an edible popcorn wreath recipe that looks fun, although we didn't make it.

Here's our popcorn "wreath" on the tree!

Advent Book Activity: Dream Snow & Snowflake ornaments

2009-12-01T06:00:00.002-06:00

On Monday evening the boys and I did our first advent book activity. You can read about the concept behind these activities in this post. First we decided which boy would get to open which "paper". We decided my oldest boy will open the books in polka-dot paper and my little boy will open the ones in green striped paper. The boy who doesn't open a book will get to pull the activity description out of the felt stockings (Scroll down in this post to see a photo of the stockings. We are just using 15 this year instead of all 25.) Below is a photo of our advent books all wrapped and ready.

Tonight we opened the book Dream Snow by Eric Carle. This is a brand new book for our family. I bought it after Christmas last year at Barnes and Noble, 50% off. It's a great little story with awesome illustrations. I LOVE Eric Carle!!

We made glass snowflake ornaments to go with this book. In my original post back in July I had a link to a specific project from Michael's that inspired our ornaments. The only adhesive backed snowflakes I could find at Hobby Lobby (much closer for me to shop at than Michael's) were multi-colored. I had envisioned using all white but couldn't find a package like that. I picked up 2 glass ornaments with another bonus ornament at my favorite thrift store for 75 cents. Can't beat that price!! So...........our materials were: glass ornaments, foam adhesive-backed snowflakes, and ribbon for hanging the ornaments. I had some snowflake ribbon in my stash. Perfect!

This was a quick and simple ornament to make. The boys were both successful and were excited to go downstairs and hang them on our $3 garage sale tree which has been reserved especially for our advent book ornaments.

Below you can see our finished ornaments. They look so pretty and definitely spruce up a previously bare tree. Just last night I was thinking I'd like to somehow turn images of the book covers from each book we read into ornaments. My wheels are turning on that one. I think that would look really cool. I'm sure Modge Podge will be involved in this project in some way. If you have any thoughts, let me know!

Advent Wreath

2009-11-29T14:34:00.003-06:00

I have very distinct childhood memories of doing an Advent wreath each Sunday night leading up to Christmas. It is one of the only times I can remember my whole family sitting down together to do something (besides our evening meals). It was such a sacred time with the lights off and just candlelight. Because of my strong positive memories of this experience I wanted to be sure my own children have this ritual as part of their childhood. Last year was the first year we started this and my oldest son was very excited to do it again this year. I purchased the candle holder at our local general store (Kally's for you locals). For those of you who are unfamiliar, a candle is lit every Sunday night leading up to Christmas. On Christmas day (or eve) you light the center (Christ) candle. There is special meaning and scripture for each candle. I scoured the internet and found a simple outline for doing this with your family. You can download it by clicking on the link I've provided below the photo. Here you can see our wreath with the first candle lit. My oldest son can now look up the scripture in the Bible and read it out loud. He also read the prayer out loud to us. I am so happy that my boys will remember doing this together as a family. Family traditions are so important and especially those that instill a stronger faith.

Here is a link to a downloadable set of readings to do each week of Advent.

How I spent Black Friday

2009-11-28T12:40:00.012-06:00

Umkay............I'm going to be honest here. Kudos to all of you who get up at the crack of crack to go shopping on Black Friday. Me? I can't think of one material item that would make me get out of bed early on a day off. I know..........I'm missing out on the great deals, the obnoxious crowds, etc. Y'all can snicker behind my back if you went out and got a super buy yesterday. I'm fine with it. Seriously. I just hate shopping in general and if you add a big crowd just the thought of it makes me twitchy. As they say in the blogosphere...........that's how I roll. :0)

In our house we have a family tradition on the day after Thanksgiving. A tradition that is anticipated with great excitement second only (perhaps) to Christmas morning itself. A tradition that, in fact, caused my oldest son to get out of bed at exactly 6:03 because he was so keyed up about it. (You may be wondering why I didn't just get up at that point and head out to the mall since it was so early. Well......DS and I had a little deal where he wasn't allowed to wake me up until 7:00. AND he knew that I was going to run on the treadmill, shower and eat breakfast before we started. It's good to plan ahead.) Here's our tradition: we put up our Christmas decorations. It's something I enjoy doing every year on the day after Thanksgiving. I am very adamant that no Christmas decorations are allowed to go up before Thanksgiving. I believe in letting every holiday have its share of the spotlight. As my boys have gotten older they have become pretty good helpers at getting our fake Charlie Brown Christmas tree assembled and the ornaments hung on it. They pretty much poop out on me after that. In this post I am sharing a few glimpses of our Christmas decorating.

This metal sign was a gift to me from someone...........I don't remember who! If that someone is reading this I'm sorry I forgot you gave it to me. I love it, however. I am going to try to remember this sentiment during the Christmas season. I hate the thought of getting bogged down in all the preparations and thus forgetting to savor the joy.

OK.........I did do a little shopping on Black Friday. I just kept it local and took my mother-in-law who was visiting from Florida to my fave local thrift store to look for some new decorations. I purchased the two types of garland shown below at that store. I love how they look twisted together although the red star garland is so twisty that my MIL and I were both about to curse it! Seriously. There were little red stars all over the floor.

I am not totally thrilled with my corner rack. I loved how I had it decorated for fall. Even though I have a lot of Christmas decorations I haven't been able to find the right groupings for this area. I will go ahead and show what I have so far anyway. It looked better after I put a strand of white Christmas lights on it.

On the top shelf I have a very special Christmas plate that my mother-in-law, Donna, painted me for Christmas last year. She is so artistic. She painted it completely by hand and without a pattern. I love it. It is so elegant looking.

For fall I had filled this Goodwill glass goblet with fall filler. It looks great for Christmas filled with gold-glittered pinecones and shiny gold ornaments.

On the next shelf down I placed a red and white snowflake plate that I bought on BF (Black Friday) for 99 cents at my local department store.

The little trio of trees below were all purchased on BF at my favorite local thrift store. If you are local and coveting these, they have more of all three types of trees. They were each $2 or less. I love them grouped together but would like to find a perfect little tray to place them on.

I had picked up one of these Santa mugs at Goodwill over the summer. I was thrilled to find a bunch more of them at my local thrift store on BF. Now I have one for each boy. I probably won't let them actually drink from them as they are vintage and I'm not sure of the lead content in the paint. Someday, however, if they promise to be very careful with them I may let them take them from my house. ;-)

Oh.........I almost forgot to mention that the cute Christmas napkins that I used to cover a few of the shelves were picked up at a garage sale this summer. I think I paid about $1 or less for four cloth napkins. LOVE IT! (Try to top THAT deal all you BF shoppers!)

Below you can see our tree. It is decorated with white lights and a hodge-podge of ornaments which include ones my mom gave me when I was growing up, ones I made as I was growing up, ones I've collected over the years and ones my children have made. I LOVE my tree!

It is fun to have the house looking Christmasy. I am now sufficiently inspired to tackle my long to-do list. I love to handmake many of the gifts I give and unfortunately did not achieve my New Year's resolution to have all handmade gifts done by the end of October. Doesn't look good for finishing by the end of November either. Oh well, what would December be without the annual flurry of gift-making? More on that later............

"got thanks?" t-shirt

2009-11-24T18:24:00.006-06:00

The other crafty thing I've been wanting to do is make a freezer paper stencilled t-shirt for myself for Thanksgiving. I think this is totally my idea because I have not seen it elsewhere. Using a take-off of the "got milk?" campaign from the Dairy Council I thought it would be cool to paint a t-shirt to wear on or near Thanksgiving that said, "got thanks?" Last night I finally got my act together to make one. I just picked up an orange t-shirt from Target yesterday. Below you can see how it looks. I pretty much like it. I was originally going to use black paint but decided that would look too much like Halloween and used white instead. It looks pretty good in the photo but in person I think I needed one more layer of white paint. I had planned to paint "give thanks" on the back with my two sons' handprints right next to it but I'm not sure that will get done in time for this year's Thanksgiving. Maybe I'll add it later. I'm not sure. Let me know what you think. Is this a weird idea? Will people get it?

"give thanks" pillow

2009-11-24T17:10:00.016-06:00

OK.........I've been hinting around about a few projects in the works and I finally buckled down last night and stayed up late to finish one of them so I could post it. Since I've started the new running program I haven't been staying up very late but today was a rest day so I made an exception last night. My inspiration for this project was some burlap monogram lampshades I saw over on Rhoda's blog a while back. I thought it was a great idea and I love doing freezer paper stencilling. Immediately I could envision how cute it would be to do a "give thanks" pillow on burlap with my boys' handprints decorated like turkeys and that is what I decided to try to do.

In case you are unfamiliar with freezer paper stencilling I decided to make this a detailed step-by-step post. If you aren't interested or already know how scroll down to see the finished pillow.

First I found a font I liked and printed out the words "give thanks" in a Word document using landscape orientation. The font I used is called Kristen ITC. I just kept enlarging the font until it pretty much filled up the entire 8 1/2 by 11 inch space. My font size was probably about 200 although I can't remember exactly. I also used bold typeface. Once I had it how I wanted it (I also had to adjust the margins to make them as narrow as possible) I printed it out. I then placed the copy underneath a piece of freezer paper (shiny side down) and traced it onto the printer paper with a pen. See photo below.

The next step was the most tedious and probably took me about 30 minutes. I did it while watching TV. Using nail scissors I carefully cut out the insides of all the letters from the freezer paper. Make sure when you do this to cut out the middles of your letters and don't discard them as you will need to iron them on during the next step.

Once all the letters were cut out I ironed the freezer paper (shiny side down) onto a big piece of burlap. Use a dry iron for this or the freezer paper will get wrinkly. Be sure to carefully iron on the center of your letters with open middles. Check to be sure all edges are adhered securely to the fabric.

Next, using a paintbrush (sponge ones are great for this) tap fabric paint inside all the letters until they are covered as shown below. You may need to add another coat. I usually do this one right after another instead of waiting for the paint to dry between coats. I'm impatient like that.

You will need to let the paint dry for several hours (I usually do this after the boys' bedtime and let it dry overnight). Once it's dry, carefully peel off the freezer paper to reveal your image. This is my favorite part of freezer paper stencilling. It always looks so good when you peel off the paper. I was a little leery of how this would turn out on burlap as I've only ever freezer paper stencilled on knit jersey fabric. It worked like a dream!!

Since I wanted to add the hand turkeys I painted the boys' hands and fingers with the fabric paint and stamped them on either side of the words. This didn't work so well and I had to go back with a paintbrush and fill in the paint quite a bit. I then used more fabric paint to add a bead, wattle, eye and legs to the turkeys. I am bummed about how the black paint for the eyes spread out. I think I was using old paint and it was pretty runny. :0(

This one is my little boy's hand.

And my big boy's hand.

I finished the painting about a week ago and last night I finally headed down to the craft room to sew the pillow. I just cut an even rectangle around the painted part and then used that as a template to cut a second piece of burlap for the back. I sewed the two sides together (paint side out) leaving a very wide margin all around so I could trim it afterwards. I left a hole a few inches wide and stuffed the pillow full of polyester fiberfill. Then I sewed up the hole. It was pretty easy to do this even though the pillow was full of stuffing. The final step was to trim all the edges evenly (eyeballed it) and then fray the edges to give it a fringed trim. The stitching line stops the fraying so I just pulled out strands until I was really close to the stitching. I LOVE the fringed trim. It's just about my favorite part aside from the hand turkeys. Oh.......and I also love how the saying turned out. OK............I just love the whole thing. It's fun when an idea goes from your head to reality and looks as good as or better than you imagined it. This will be a fun keepsake to pull out and display each November.

Here's a close-up of the fringed corner.

If you like this idea but are intimidated by the sewing part think of how cute this would be just done up on burlap, fringed, and hung on a dowel instead of being made into a pillow. You could also frame it. Many possibilities. When I bought the tan burlap at Hobby Lobby I also bought about a yard of red burlap. (Burlap is really inexpensive by the way.) I thought it would be very cute to make some little red pillows with "ho ho ho" stencilled on them for Christmas. So........that's on the to-do list too. A burlap pillow (or burlap in a frame) with a monogram would make a great, easy and inexpensive Christmas gift. Your children could help out with the painting and stuffing part. I have a lot of burlap left and am already thinking of more project ideas. Fun, fun, fun!!

Thanksgiving Story Bracelets

2009-11-23T13:38:00.003-06:00

I just wanted to pop in quickly to tell you to head over to my other blog to read about a Thanksgiving story bracelet project I did with my preschoolers today. It would be a fun one for you to do with your own children, grandchildren, nieces/nephews, etc. at home. Read all about it here. I did this at home with my boys a few years ago.

Hopefully I'll get my act together and finish up a few more Thanksgiving projects I've been (sort of) working on so I can post them.

Update on THE SHRED

2009-11-17T06:00:00.001-06:00

A few of you may be wondering if I am keeping up with doing Jillian Michaels' DVD The Shred. Umm.........no, I'm not. BUT.............I am happy to report that I am not completely neglecting my fitness and health. Although I was seeing benefits from The Shred, I was not doing it very consistently as I was finding it hard to do in the evenings since we are getting so busy with the boys' activities. For a while I had been thinking about taking up jogging/running again. I used to do that fairly consistently before I had the boys but haven't for many years. I was inspired by a couple of my local buddies, Justin and Krystal, who recently trained for and ran a marathon. That is just such an amazing accomplishment. I am truly in awe of them and their efforts. My own DH has been a runner since he was a teenager and has also completed a marathon as well as some half-marathons and many, many other races. His dedication to running is also an inspiration to me. SO..................about a month ago I decided to get serious about it and get going. In the past I've started new exercise routines and done too much too soon which has resulted in burn-out and/or injury. This time I wanted to do it right. So I headed over to the Runner's World website and found a training program for beginning runners. I printed it out and on Saturday I finished my fourth week of the 8 week program. I am proud to say that I have stuck with it and that I am actually getting up early and doing it in the morning. It is fantastic to realize late in the afternoon that I've done my workout for the day. I have renewed energy and my body feels stronger. I've dropped a few pounds already and am definitely getting more toned legs which is a major goal for me. If you have ever thought about starting a running program, I really recommend this one. It tells you exactly what to do each day for 8 weeks. It is easy to follow (I'm doing mine on our treadmill) and provides the perfect amount of challenge at the perfect pace. The end goal of the 8-week program is that you can run for 30 consecutive minutes at a relaxed pace.......they say this would be a distance of about 2 miles. That is a VERY relaxed pace because when I walk on the treadmill I walk at a 15 minute per mile pace. At about 4 weeks into the program I am running over 2.5 miles each time. I realize this will be different for everyone, however. I can honestly say I look forward to my running days. I can't see me giving it up anytime soon. As for Jillian and The Shred, I am thinking about adding it in on the non-running days but haven't yet. My husband keeps cautioning me to take it slow so I don't get injured and I am taking his advice. If you are a runner I'd love to hear from you. Actually, I just love to get comments over here period...........so no need to be a runner to comment. ;0)

Project Life

2009-11-16T19:40:00.007-06:00

As some of you may recall, I made an attempt (didn't stick with it though) to use Becky Higgins' Project 365 as a format for documenting our family life during 2009. I was really good about taking a photo a day for about the first 6 weeks of the year, then I got behind, got discouraged and stopped entirely. It was also a bummer that her Project 365 kits sold out immediately and weren't able to be reordered. I know a few of you were interested in the photo a day concept and I know one of you (Beth!) did a better job keeping up than I did. Well...........in case you never jumped on the 365 bandwagon, Becky in her supreme creativity has designed a new concept called Project Life. It went on sale over the weekend and as far as I know will not be sold out and if it does sell out quickly, there is another printing. So..........if you're curious, head over to Becky's blog and check out the details. It is an amazing value for only $40 (not including shipping) and is perfect even for people who don't scrapbook. It is also flexible so you don't have to do a photo a day. I am really leaning toward ordering one for myself and trying harder in 2010. I did a pretty extensive scrapbook for the year 2000 which I truly treasure. Now a decade and two children later it seems time to tackle this again. And I think Becky's system will make it really doable. If you decide to order, let me know! Then maybe we can encourage each other through cyberspace. (Although I think my local buddy, Krystal, was interested. If so, we can do it IRL.........in real life for those of you not well-versed in cyber-speak.) This would be a super Christmas gift for a busy mom of young children. Although it won't be shipped out until early January, Becky suggests if you are giving it as a gift this year you could print out a picture from her website and roll it up and tie it with a ribbon as a cute presentation.

Edited to add: After publishing this post I decided to take the plunge and order myself this kit. I have loved Becky Higgins and all things Becky ever since I began scrapbooking. I have many of her books and they are so awesome. If DH is reading this, consider it my Christmas present. But if you WANT to get me something else, let's talk IRL. :0)

Operation Christmas Child

2009-11-16T14:09:00.007-06:00

This week is the national pick-up week for Operation Christmas Child. Our local MOPS group did this as one of our missions for the year. My two boys and I went to our local Dollar Store a few weekends ago to pick out everything for our boxes. This is our second year doing it as a family. We printed off the list from the Samaritan's Purse website of suggested items to pack and the boys had a lot of fun picking out everything. We used plastic shoe boxes with lids this year instead of the cardboard kind. It's amazing how much you can fit into those boxes. This year if you pay your shipping donation online you will receive an email telling what country your box goes to. I am excited about this. My oldest son, especially, is really interested in geography so he is anxious to know where his box ended up. I love this mission because it is a very personal and hands-on way for children to be involved with giving. My little boy wanted to go right to "the other little boy's house" to take him the box. I tried to explain that the other little boy lives too far away for us to do that but assured him that some grown-ups would be sure the box was received by a needy little boy somewhere in the world. Last year and this year we packed 2 boxes, one for each of my boys. And again we chose to send them to boys of similar ages as our own boys. Some year it would be fun (for me at least) to pack a box or two for a little girl since I never get the chance to shop for girly things.

Here is one of our packed boxes.

Here are the unpacked contents of one box. Both boxes contained a similar variety of items, all purchased at our local dollar store. The boxes included: toothbrush, toothpaste, washcloth, coloring book, crayons, slinky, nerf football, matchbox car, 3 pairs of socks, t-shirt, playdough, pencils, pencil sharpener, Slinky, hand puppet, small stuffed animal, and a ziploc bag filled with lollipops and peppermints.

If you are looking for a great hands-on mission project to do with your children, click over to the links listed above. You can put in your zip code and find the closest drop-off site in your area.

Kelly's Compassion trip

2009-11-09T22:24:00.006-06:00

I have so much going on that I am hoping to post about soon. I have a bunch of projects either started or in the planning stages but can't seem to find the time to DO the projects. Hopefully that will change soon. Anyway, I wanted to write a quick post tonight to tell you that one of my favorite bloggers, Kelly of Kelly's Korner, is in El Salvador right now on a mission trip for Compassion International. She is blogging each day about her trip. My husband and I decided (well, I kind of just did it actually, but he's okay with it) to sponsor a child through Compassion during the Jeremy Camp concert we went to a few months ago. Most Christian musicians are very passionate about this organization and really try to promote it during their concerts. Our little boy is named Fernando and he lives in Honduras. We have written to him but haven't heard back from him yet as our sponsorship of him just started. If you are at all interested in learning more about this great organization be sure to follow Kelly's blog during the next week or so as she blogs about what she is experiencing. One of my lifelong dreams is to someday go on a mission trip and, even better, do it with my family. For now I'll live vicariously through Kelly. So head on over and see what it's all about!

New beginnings

2009-11-05T22:24:00.003-06:00

As of tonight I am a Cub Scout mom!! I love it. My oldest son who is 8 had his first Cub Scout meeting tonight. One of the most exciting things for him was getting his uniform. His little brother is already asking when he can be a Cub Scout. After the meeting my little scout took off his belt and my youngest son tried it on. He said, "Well, Mommy. I tried on that belt and it fit so I think I CAN be a Cub Scout!" It was very cute. I am excited for my big boy. I remember very clearly my first Brownie meeting when I was a little girl. I was so excited to have my little brown beanie and my Brownie handbook. Having a sash and being able to earn badges for it was awesome too. It is fun to relive the joy of new beginnings through my sons. I am looking forward to many great experiences as a Cub Scout mom. My husband will be really involved with it as well. One thing I really like is all the great activities we can do together as a family. Here are a few anonymous peeks of my son in his uniform.

He was also really excited to receive his official Cub Scout handbook at the meeting tonight.

My Halloween treat

2009-11-05T22:11:00.006-06:00

When the boys and I went to my parents' house to trick-or-treat on Halloween night my mom surprised ME with a paper bag labeled "Happy Halloween" and "Merry Christmas". I was surprised and delighted to find a little autumn teapot and two matching teacups inside. I had seen this at my favorite local thrift store and had left a shameless hint about it in this post. Just like with the chicken quilt, my mom came through! Thanks, Mom!! I love them so much!

The lid of the teapot has a cute little acorn-shaped handle. So adorable!!

A few things we've been up to

2009-11-03T21:24:00.004-06:00

A week or so ago I headed down to my craft room and dusted off my sewing machine so I could make a Halloween pennant banner for our home. I had bought a pack of charm squares (pre-cut 5 inch squares in a coordinating variety of fabrics) at a quilt store this summer but had not been able to find them. When I was hiding the candy corn treat bags I made for the boys I found them! It didn't take me long at all to get this festive little banner stitched up. I just picked several squares that I liked (all different), folded them in half diagonally and ironed them. Then I placed the folded edge into the crease of some orange double-fold bias tape I had on hand and sewed it all together using a straight stitch. Easy peasy! I also made one with just fall fabrics that I'll hang up now that Halloween is over. Below you can see the Halloween one.

On Friday evening the boys and I cleaned out and carved our jack-o-lanterns. Here you can see the boys pulling out the pumpkin guts. I forgot to take an after picture to show the finished jacks. This year I used those little battery-operated LED candles instead of real candles. I love those......so much safer. For Halloween my oldest son who is 8 dressed up like a Patriot (the Revolutionary War kind, not the football kind) and my youngest son who is 4 dressed up like a racecar driver. We had great Halloween trick-or-treating weather. A little chilly but not too cold.......a full moon and a clear sky. I'll have to do another post about a great treat that I got on Halloween night.

Clarification

2009-10-28T16:14:00.004-05:00

Very recently a reader of this blog pointed out to me that my post about the book, The Shack, may have implied that I have discovered something very awful about my husband. Please let me assure you that that is definitely not the case. And I want to publicly apologize to him if that is what anyone thought. I knew it was going to be hard for me to express in writing what the "skin of knowing" quote meant to me and now I am sure that I did a chop job of explaining it. I'll try again here.

As most of you know, I am a teacher. I am currently teaching preschoolers who are just about the most fun and joyous type of people to be around. However, preschoolers tend to think about things very literally and to see things in black and white. This is why you may often hear a preschooler say, "You're not my friend" or the infamous, "You're not invited to my birthday party" (stated indignantly even when the birthday is 9 months away). To a young child, if their friend does not behave in a certain way they think they can no longer be friends with that person. In my classroom this happens when their friend plays with someone else, sits by someone else, etc. Thankfully, as we grow older we become more flexible in our thinking. This flexibility allows us to accept and even love people who don't share our beliefs or who don't look just like us or act just like us. In fact, as adults we are often very willing to overlook the annoying or aggravating habits of those we love due to the very fact that..........we love them. So what I was TRYING to say in my previous post is that I find it a beautiful fact of life that our love for others is able to grow over time even as those we love do things that surprise us, upset us, or disappoint us. I am the first to admit that I have done many things to surprise, embarrass, upset, and disappoint the people in my life who claim to love me. (My previous post may be just one of many examples of this.) And sometimes I do those surprising, embarrassing, upsetting and disappointing things over and over even though I know they are surprising, embarrassing, upsetting and disappointing. How wonderful that the people who love me are able to "grow" their love even in spite of this. Am I making any sense now? I hope so. And again, my sincere apologies if anyone thought for even one second anything negative about my DH. I love him........he's a great daddy, a great husband, and an all-around great guy.

Perfectly mismatched

2009-10-25T06:00:00.001-05:00

Last week our whole family went to see the movie Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs at the theater. This was kind of a big event because we have rarely gone to a big theater to see a movie. We are more of the movie-rental types. Anyhow.........as we sat in theater before it was darkened I looked over and noticed that my little boy had on mismatched socks. My gut-reflex instant thought was, "Oh crap! I should have noticed that and had him change before we went OUT." Immediately on the heels of that thought came another thought........."I love it that his socks don't match. I love how it reflects his uniqueness and originality. Someday I will look back remembering when he was little and sweet and we sat together in a dark theater and I will wish for more days of perfectly mismatched socks." Just thinking about that moment almost brings tears to my eyes as I write it. I love my boys so much. I am so proud of them and have loved watching them grow up. But I HATE the thought of them getting so big that I can't carry their sleepy heavy little bodies to bed when they fall asleep on the couch..........so big that they won't beg to be spun around in the kitchen or tickled under the covers...........and so big that they won't look at me in the dimness of a nightlight-lit bedroom as we snuggle under the quilt and say, "Mommy, I love you." I live for those precious moments..........they are truly treasures in my heart.

I'm glad I remembered to snap a photo of Mr. Mismatched that night before he went to bed. Isn't life better with one red sock?

Halloween Crafting.......I love it!!

2009-10-24T23:24:00.014-05:00

You know, it's been a while since I've created anything. I really get a great sense of satisfaction when I make something. So I'm feeling pretty good right now since I've managed to create a few fun new things this weekend. This morning I woke up and read my Google reader and saw these great Jack-o-lantern jars on Chasing Cheerios. I immediately decided that I wanted to make these with my two boys today. I had one jar and my mom had one.........so once I picked up the extra one from her after our morning basketball game (with my youngest son) we were good to go. These were really easy and fun to make. Please see the tutorial on Not So Idle Hands for details about how to make these. I added green curling ribbon to the tops to make pumpkin vines but otherwise I followed her tutorial pretty much exactly. I didn't have any black tissue paper so I just printed the faces through the links on her blog and cut them out and Mod Podged them right onto the jars..........just the printer paper. It worked fine. I stuffed my candy corn lights into them and they look really cool on our "harvest" shelf.

(Sidenote: I hadn't "discovered" the Not So Idle Hands blog until today. I love finding new blogs. I am really wanting to try her tutorial for making your own gummy candy.)

The Jack-O Jar on the left is my youngest son's. He really didn't do any of it. He wanted me to do it all. He chose the face he wanted but I did the work. The other one is my oldest son's jar. He is 8 and did most of it himself. I just smoothed out the Mod Podge a little for him and put the face on.

The other thing I created this weekend was candy corn treat bags to give my boys for Halloween. I don't usually give them anything for Halloween, but I saw this tutorial on The Crafty Crow and thought these bags were so adorable I couldn't resist. They were SO easy to make. I plan to fill them with candy corn along with a little honeycomb pumpkin. I found these little honeycomb pumpkins at my favorite local thrift store for 50 cents each. When I was little I loved those fold-out honeycomb decorations. Since my mom was a teacher it seemed like she had a lot of these in her classroom. I don't think they're sold much anymore. I was happy to find these and I think my boys will love them.

(Sidenote: In addition to finding the pumpkins on my thrift outing, I got 2 "new" pairs of shoes for fall/winter for $17 total. I would have had to pay more than that for one pair if I had bought them new. I was really excited to find those bargains. I also saw a teapot with autumn leaves on it and a matching teacup that I LOVE. I've seen it several times in that store but so far haven't been able to bring myself to buy it. If it's there the next time I go in.........maybe I'll splurge on it. It would look great on my baker's rack.........and I would love to use it during the fall to hold my tea. Sorry for digressing.)

the skin of knowing

2009-10-23T20:51:00.003-05:00

I recently checked out the book The Shack by William Young from my public library. A good friend of mine whom I highly respect and who is an avid reader had raved about it so I was curious. I am not writing this post as a review of the book. To be honest, I didn't finish reading it. Not because I hated it...........I just got a little bored. Please don't let that deter you from reading it, however. It is a very intriguing and thought-provoking book from a spiritual standpoint. I may check it out again just to reread certain parts.

There is one phrase from the book that has just stuck in my mind and that's what I wanted to write about. I can't get the words out of my head. "Love is the skin of knowing." To give you the context of this, the main character has the occasion to meet up with God and these words are among many of those spoken by the God character (who is actually represented in the book by three "characters" to illustrate the Holy Trinity). God was trying to get the main character to realize that as our relationships with one another grow and deepen we inevitably come to know much more about each other. And despite some of the pain and anguish that "knowing" brings our love grows to contain it. I'm probably doing an awful job of explaining this. I think what really hits home with me about this idea is that there are so many times in my life when I've lamented the fact that I am at my worst in the relationships that mean the most to me. I actually had several conversations about that this week with some other women. We talked about how sometimes, especially in a marital relationship, the two partners tend to bring out the worst in each other. Marriage is difficult. I remember hearing that when I was newly married. At the time I thought it was just difficult for other people. I couldn't imagine it ever being difficult for ME. Sixteen years and two children later I am the first to admit..............it's difficult. Living in close proximity with someone else brings with it many disappointments and unmet expectations on both sides. The more you know about someone the more you find out things about them that are possibly surprising, embarrassing, upsetting, or disappointing. Of course marriage brings joys and blessings too. As I think about my relationships and especially my marriage I realize that my love has expanded to encompass the knowing. When I am frustrated and discouraged about my marriage I am going to try to remember that love is the skin of knowing. I am blessed to be loved by a God who already knows everything about me........who anticipates and expects my failures and loves me in spite of them. It is because of this divine love that my love for others can continue to grow............despite the sometimes painful knowing.

Bakerella wannabe

2009-10-22T22:06:00.007-05:00

I recently found the website, Bakerella. While I do like to bake, I have never felt inspired or confident about baking things that are decorated. I truly admire people who can decorate beautiful cakes.........that is really a talent. I have many hobbies and have never really wanted to take up cake decorating. However, when I looked at all the great ideas on Bakerella, I actually wanted to try making her cupcake bites. They looked doable and are very similar to a cake ball recipe I recently bookmarked over at Kelly's Korner. Since I had to take a dessert to my MOPS maidrite fundraiser on Wednesday, I decided to try out the cupcake bites to see if I could pull it off. While my cupcake bites didn't turn out as cute or perfect as Bakerella's, I was still pleased with how they turned out. They tasted really good too. I decided to do a post since a few of my MOPS buddies were wondering how to make them.

I started with a boxed red velvet cake mix and baked it according to the package directions. Once it cooled, I used 2 forks to crumble it up in a large bowl. It is easiest if you crumb up about 1/4 of the cake at a time. Try to get the pieces down to true crumbs, not chunks.

Then I added about 3/4 can of cream cheese frosting and worked it into the cake crumbs with 2 forks.

It takes a little time, but after everything is mixed the mixture is moist and looks kind of like raw hamburger!!

I chilled the mixture overnight which made the next step easier. The following evening I used my Pampered Chef cookie scoop to scoop out balls of the mixture. Then I used my hands to roll the scoops into balls. I placed the balls on waxed paper on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet into the freezer.

I chilled my cake balls for probably about 20 minutes which I think was enough time since they held up pretty well in the next step. They could probably have used another 10 minutes or so.

Here's what my hands looked like after rolling all the balls!

I had purchased a peanut butter cup candy mold at Hobby Lobby to do the next step. I made the "easy" Bakerella version of cupcake bites. She has another version she makes using a cookie cutter to form the bottom of the cupcakes. I may try that version too, but this way is really easy. The next two photos show the mold I used.

I wanted white "bottoms" on my cupcakes so I melted white almond bark in the microwave and put a plop of it in the bottom of each cup of the mold as you can see below. Then I squished a cake ball on top of each blob. I think my cake balls were a teeny bit large for these cups, but the almond bark still squeezed up the sides which is what you want.

Then I put the whole mold into the freezer for about 5 minutes or even less to set. I don't know what that weird triangular spot is on my freezer, but there are the frozen waffles I have for breakfast every day!!

For the next part I melted some pink candy wafers in a glass measuring cup in the microwave. I bought these at Hobby Lobby too. I really wanted red tops, but I couldn't find red candy wafers.

I guess I didn't take any photos of the next steps. After chilling the balls in the freezer I popped them out of the molds and held them upside down and swirled them in the melted pink candy. It was a little hard to get it so there wasn't a teeny line of red velvet cake showing between the layers, but I did better after I practiced. Before the candy set I sprinkled each cupcake with rainbow sprinkles. After only a few minutes the candy had set and my cupcake bites were done.

I'm not the best food photographer by any means, but here is what they looked like when finished.

A fun thing about these little treats is that they are completely edible. The cake part on the inside was incredibly moist. I loved these with the red velvet and cream cheese frosting. However, I've been dreaming about making them with chocolate cake, chocolate frosting (homemade, not canned), chocolate candy melts and chocolate sprinkles. Doesn't that sound awesome? These would be so cute to give as a gift all packed up in a little white box with a cute ribbon. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the fun ideas on Bakerella's website. I also want to try the cake pops which are basically the same thing I did here, but in just a ball shape and attached to a stick!! I think I'm addicted and I'm going to have to make a variation of these for every major holiday. They are just so cute, fun, and yummy!!

Whazzup with the chickens

2009-10-19T20:36:00.005-05:00

My DH and I spent a little time this weekend putting a few more finishing touches on our chicken coop. A few weeks ago we finished the windows to get them ready for winter........which was a good thing because we got some snow on October 10th. You can see what the coop looked like on that day. Luckily we are getting some nicer weather..........it was in the low 70s here today and beautiful.

One thing we hadn't done until a few weekends ago was to add the white trim on the windows. I am really happy with how it turned out. It really makes the little ol' coop look finished and "fancy". We needed a way to cover the windows for winter, but wanted something that would be easy to remove when the temperatures warm up and we want more ventilation. Here in the midwest we should be able to just have the window screens for about 3/4 of the year. We ended up getting Plexi-glass and cutting it just wider than the window frames. Then DH drilled holes in the corners and attached screws in the window frame so the Plexi-glass can just be slipped onto the screws from the outside and then removed quickly and easily. We hope this will be a good set-up for winterizing the coop. Below you can see the window with the "glass" on.

And here is a close-up of it with the "glass" on.

Just this past weekend we built a roost for the chickens. We had placed an old stepladder in the coop when we first moved them in. They quickly adapted to using this as a roost and at first they all were able to huddle together on the top rung. However, as they grew bigger, they spread out more and since chickens are not considerate to one another, they were pooping on top of each other throughout the night. A bigger pain (for me at least) is all the poop that was landing in the shavings below the ladder. I wanted an easier way to clean up after them each day, you know, being Farmer Cluck and all. :0)

So.............we constructed a roost that was all one level and added a droppings board below. That way all their poop from the night falls onto the board. The next day it is easy to scrape the droppings off the board and into a bucket where they can then be deposited in the compost pile. Below you can see the new roost. You can also see the "poop" bucket hanging up on a nail. We had to add a diagonal piece of wood to the roost to stabilize it.

This weekend we also tacked chicken wire above the storage shelf. As I've alluded to in past chicken posts, the chickens were very eager to get onto my shelf and poop on everything. Again, not so considerate about where they put their droppings. It was getting aggravating to me so I gave up the storage space and closed it in.

When I put the chickens to bed the first night the new roost was in I found that they had quickly adapted to it. Below you can see Clara and Sarah huddled up on one end.

And Reba (middle) and Abby (far right) were also comfortable on their new roost. Dixie (our rooster.......we haven't given him a boy name yet) was relegated to perching precariously on the diagonal support bar instead of hanging out on top with the girls. The interesting thing about this is that on the stepladder s/he was usually on the bottom rung. I was a little miffed at the girls for not allowing him space on the top since there is PLENTY of room for all of them. I posted a question on Backyard Chickens about the phenomenon of hens forcing roosters to the bottom of the pecking order so to speak. Several people responded that they've noticed similar actions or attitudes in their own flocks. My DH, animal lover that he is, proposed constructing a separate roost just for Dixie so s/he wouldn't have to put up with getting pooped on during the night and not being allowed on top with everyone else. I admit that I was skeptical about this idea..........mainly because I really need the space to the right of the roost for my nest boxes.

I am happy, however, to report that tonight when I shut the chickens in I noticed that Dixie was on top with the rest of the flock. I couldn't wait to tell this to DH. Just before I started to write this post I snuck back out to the coop to see if Dixie had, in fact, retained a prime roosting spot. I had my camera with me and below you will see the evidence of Dixie's acceptance. It was totally dark when I took this so I'm sorry for the poor quality. It will be interesting to see if Dixie continues to be allowed to stay on top........we sure hope so!

All that's left to do now is set up a nest box or two so we can start gathering eggs. That will be very exciting!! Huevos rancheros, anyone?

Umm.....it's still fall, right?

2009-10-10T11:17:00.004-05:00

That's what the calendar says anyway. I think Mother Nature is pulling a fast one. We woke up this morning to about 2 inches of snow. My boys were VERY excited and have already been out playing in it this morning. It's a strange juxtaposition of two seasons in our area today. Just before I started typing this post I went back to my bedroom to check on my boys..........there were loud noises that warranted a quick peek. As I listened to them explaining that they were taking turns being the "tiger" and the "deer" while wrestling each other on my bed......the unmade bed with a pile of laundry to be folded.........I looked out the window and saw fall leaves slowly drifting off one of our trees while light snowflakes gently fell. It was a really cool sight! Below you can see the snow on our little maple tree in the front yard..........fall colors still evident beneath the white stuff.

This is the scene that awaited our chickens this morning. They are lucky to have a covered chicken yard so they don't have to get into the snow much. However, when I opened their pop door so they could go out, they were quite uncertain about venturing out. Just a few minutes ago I noticed that a few had finally decided to go outside.

While I was out with the boys earlier I checked in on the cooped up chickens and found three of them on the shelf (where I DON'T like them to be)..........

And the other two were just hanging out. Although "she" hasn't started crowing yet, it's become pretty obvious that Dixie is a rooster.

On another note...........I was thrilled to arrive home from work yesterday to find a package addressed to me. I was mystified to see that it was from my mother-in-law as I wasn't expecting anything from her. I was so surprised and happy to find a ceramic hen and chick inside. And even more pleased and touched to find out that she had hand-painted it just for me. Thank you SO much, Donna! I love it and I love you. You are so thoughtful. Here is the sweet little hen perched on my baker's rack. I love the little chick on her back and her wing angled protectively over it.

This has become our latest family treasure. What a talented mother-in-law I have!!

Finally, I'm sorry for not posting over here. I didn't realize it had been so long until I started this post. I've just been so busy with school and the boys that I haven't gotten around to posting over here very often. Hopefully that will change and I will make time to write here more. I like having this place to document what we've been doing. Hope you all are having a great fall!

Barnyard cake

2009-09-21T23:02:00.003-05:00

If you are reading this post, please scroll down to the following 2 posts I just wrote. I'm making up for lost time and have posted 3 tonight (including this one). My oldest son had a birthday party this past weekend with a farm theme. I truly thought I had taken more photos, but this was the only good once I took of his barnyard cake. I saw this idea on another blog. It was VERY easy which is good for me since I don't have much patience for cake decorating. It makes me bonkers if truth be told. The "barnyard" is a 9X13 cake frosted with chocolate frosting. The "field" was made from crusehd chocolate teddy graham cookies and the grassy "pasture" was made with green tinted coconut. The split rail fence was made from pretzel sticks. Easy peasy!