New Year----------New organization

Happy New Year!! I have been working non-stop today since about 10:00 a.m. First, I removed all traces of Christmas from our home. It's my tradition to do that on New Year's Day. I actually felt quite motivated to do it a few days ago, but my oldest son (knowing our routines) insisted that I wait until New Year's. So I did. That "little" project took two or three hours. Since then I've been reorganizing STUFF and setting up a learning shelf and art shelf for the boys. Luckily, I already had 3 shelves in our main living area that I was able to repurpose. They were being used to hold toys, but honestly, the boys didn't play with half the toys on them. So I removed the toys from 2 of the shelves and made one into an "art" shelf and the other into our "learning" shelf. (I plan to rotate the removed toys back in and I'm sure that will also renew interest in them.) Isn't it funny that on my other blog I always write about hands-on Montessori learning activities and setting up a learning environment for independence yet it wasn't until today that I did that in a big way in my own home? Oh well, no time like the present, right?

Here is our little art shelf. This shelf is in our dining/kitchen area. It was already here before, but it had an identical shelf pushed up next to it. Both shelves previously held various toys. And during Christmas they had our Christmas village on the top. I moved one of the shelves to another area and it is still going to be used for games and toys. We have always had access to art materials, but they were in a different place. I think putting them out here where we all spend most of our time will help facilitate spontaneous creativity. Each of my sons also has their own "art" table in our computer room and they each received art totes for Christmas that are full of supplies. These totes will stay on their art tables so they will have supplies right there too.

I pulled two mugs out of our kitchen cabinet and plunked a bunch of plain pencils into one and colored pencils into another. My oldest son is constantly drawing and writing and setting his pencils everywhere and asking, "Where's my pencil?" Now he will have one place to find AND return his pencils. DUH!! Why didn't I do this sooner? It's exactly how I have pencils set up in my Montessori classroom. The little tote has extra scissors, envelopes, hole punch and (under the sock which we use as an eraser) dry-erase markers for our little whiteboard. I also put the Do-A-Dot markers in there.

We previously had this little drawer unit in our computer room next to my sons' tables. I have a drawer for markers, crayons, and the bottom has oil pastels and crayon rocks. I weeded out all the markers that were dried out. THAT was on my to-do list for a LONG time. Today I can cross it off! YAY! You can see our little white board tucked in next to the drawers so we can easily find and use it too.

This shelf had also previously had a HUGE tub filled with cookie cutters for playdough. While my boys did use it some, the tub was way too big and heavy for them to easily move around. It also had so many cookie cutters that they really had to dig to find the ones they wanted. So.....I got smart once again and just pulled out a few favorite cutters and seasonal ones and placed them in a smaller tub with the two rolling pins and container of dough. The rest of the cutters will be rotated in and out. I'm pretty sure the playdough will get more use now. It's on my list for the weekend to make a batch of "snow dough" for home and for my classroom.

We also previously used this drawer organizer in our computer room to hold paper. I just moved it onto our new "art" shelf for easier access. Top drawer has plain white paper, middle drawer has lined manuscript paper (my oldest son has recently become obsessed with using this kind of paper to write stories on) and the bottom drawer has construction paper.

I also put out a little basket with strips of colored cardstock to use simply for cutting and/or making collages. My little boy will love this, I'm sure.

I am excited about our newly organzied art supplies. I plan to occasionally set up "projects" for the boys and I have plenty of unused space on this shelf to accommodate those types of activities.

Snowman Garland Thingy

I finished my snowman project last night. I am calling it a "garland thingy" because I haven't yet decided if it is going to be merely decorative or also functional like my stocking advent calendar. I had lots of ideas in my head about how this was going to turn out and I am pretty happy with it. Originally, I wanted something similar to the stocking advent calendar but using snowmen to "reveal" some seasonal activities for January. I had planned to design the snowmen with a little pocket on the back where I could insert a folded up piece of paper stating the activity. However, I didn't have as much white wool blend felt as I wanted, so I didn't put the pockets on. Instead, I sewed a strip of ribbon on the back so they would each have a loop that I could use to string them onto their hanging ribbon. I didn't want to hang them using clothespins; I thought that would have looked strange. If I decide to use this to present activities, I will paperclip a folded piece of paper onto the ribbon loop on the back. Otherwise, I may just put all the papers with our activities into a container and we can draw out one at a time. Regardless of what I do, the little snowmen look festive and bright.



Here's a close-up. I made 10 snowman heads in all. I just traced around the bottom of a mug for the pattern. For each "head" I used two circles of white felt. I hand-stitched a piece of orange felt to one of the circles. I also sewed on button eyes and used embroidery floss to stitch a mouth. Then I sewed the two white circles together on the sewing machine; on the backside I sewed a piece of ribbon for hanging. The final step was hot gluing pipe cleaners and pom-poms on so they would have "earmuffs". I liked the color this added, but they would be cute without the earmuffs too. I used some extra blue ribbons I had to tie a little "spacer" onto the hanging ribbon between each of the snowmen. This added color and also kept them from sliding into each other.



Here is what the garland looks like hanging up. I hung it in the same place as the stocking advent calendar. As I was hanging it my oldest son asked when I was going to put numbers on the snowmen. I explained that they wouldn't have numbers. Of course he wanted to know why. I told him that way we can just do the activities whenever we feel like it and have time instead of trying to do one every day. Luckily, this explanation satisfied him.



This shows the back of one of the "heads". You can see the transparent ribbon "loop" that is sewn onto the back and the white "hanging" ribbon strung through it.

Tonight after I post this I am going to try to go downstairs and cut out all the pieces for my big quilt project of 2009. I kind of have a headache and my kids are still up, so I am not really motivated to do it. But I know I'll be really happy with myself if I get that part done. We'll see. I told myself from the get-go that I wasn't going to put pressure on myself about the quilt. That would definitely kill the joy. So we'll see. No matter what, it's all good here.

I hope you have a wonderful New Year. We are just staying home as a family tonight which is what we always do. I wouldn't have it any other way. There are no other people on this earth with whom I would rather spend the last moments of 2008 (or any other year).

Sneak Peek!

The photos below will give you a little inkling of what I've been working on the last few evenings. Now I have to head downstairs to try to finish this project up so I actually have something complete to show you soon! Stay tuned.........

Fleeting.......

..........are those precious little moments where all is good with the world, your children are home, safe, and snuggled up next to you. I have been blessed to have many of those moments over my break from work, and I'm so grateful. I became really conscious of it this afternoon. My little boy woke up from his nap and crawled into my lap to cuddle. He remained there for a LONG time, much longer than usual. As I bent over to kiss his sleepy little head, I was reminded of his babyhood and that of his older brother's. I remembered suddenly and with clarity how it felt to have an infant snuggled against my chest in full-out slumber. The weight of their little bodies completely relaxed and pressed tightly into mine. And I realized, sadly, how fleeting these little moments really are. When they were babies and snuggled against me as I've described, I often thought about how quickly those days would pass, and they did pass quickly. I am trying very hard to not get caught up in worrying about how fast these years fly by, but instead to treasure every moment like those I had this afternoon. They are truly among God's greatest blessings in my life.

Thanks, Alice!!

I love a blog post title that draws the reader in with its complete obscurity. Tonight after the DH got home, I headed out to run a few errands, the most notable being a trip to Hobby Lobby to pick out fabric for my quilt!! It took me quite a while to choose. One problem was that Hobby Lobby doesn't have an extensive selection of fabric. But I wanted to just get it and get going, you know what I mean? A very kind saleslady in the fabric department named ALICE spent quite a bit of time with me helping me decide on which fabrics looked best together. We probably pulled out about 15 or 20 bolts before narrowing it down to the final 5. She would think of something and go grab a bolt, then I would, etc. I am REALLY REALLY happy with the ones I picked out. In the photo below you can see them all stacked up just before I pre-washed them. They're in the dryer as I am typing this. In case you were curious as to the whereabouts of my fabric..........as if you had nothing better to think about! :0)



I started by picking out the paisley fabric at the bottom of the stack. Then I made my other selections using it as a guide. The polka-dot and diagonal stripe were made by the same manufacturer as the paisley, so they match up perfectly. The stripe is going to be the border between the quilt blocks as well as making up two other borders around the outside of the quilt. I think this quilt is going to totally rock!! I am planning to cut all the pieces out tomorrow night after the boys are in bed. Then I will be all set to start sewing as soon as 2009 rolls around. YAY!!

Here's a funny sidestory: Alice (the Hobby Lobby saleslady) told me to bring in a photo of the quilt when it's finished. I told her I would if she could wait a few years. Seriously! I knew I would be blogging about it, however, so I briefly considered giving her the blog address so she could see the progress of my quilt. Then I realized how totally weird that would have been not to mention overly familiar and inappropriate. I just wanted to confess to y'all that the thought DID cross my mind. But I restrained myself. I realize the whole world isn't as into blogging as I am. They don't know what they're missing, do they?

I picked a quilt pattern!!

I picked out a quilt pattern that I found on the internet (where else??). I know it may be a little ambitious since I want to do the whole thing by hand and I haven't ever made a quilt by hand. Still, I'm not a novice seamstress, so I think I can do it. I found it on Block Central which is a VERY cool quilting website I stumbled onto. It is set up as a block-a-month project. This is the quilt from their 2006 Block of the Month series. Each individual block looks like it will be fairly straightforward to sew since there are mostly just straight seams. Getting all the corners to match up may be challenging, however. I am hoping to buy the fabric sometime within the next few days. Then I'll really be committed. The website has charts for everything such as how much of each fabric to buy, coloring pages so you can design your own color scheme, cutting charts so you can cut all the pieces ahead of time, as well as detailed patterns and directions for each block AND for finishing the quilt with borders and sashing. I am setting a goal to finish 2 blocks per month from January until June. If I stay on track, I'll have the blocks finished before summer. Then I can use the summer to sew it all together with the borders and all and be ready to start quilting it in the fall. Maybe for my 40th birthday this year I'll ask for a quilting hoop. Then I can leave it set up and quilt when I feel the urge. The quilting will take the longest amount of time. I am thinking it may take up to 2 years to finish, and I'm okay with that, although I usually like shorter term projects. I'm sure I'll find many shorter, easier projects to finish in the meantime.

January activities

I loved doing our Advent stocking activities this year so much that I decided a week or so ago to surf the web for some fun winter ideas to do with my boys at home in January. I also have a very cool idea for how I'm going to present this to the boys. I'm hoping to have something to actually show you tomorrow. Until then, here is a list of the activities we MAY do in January. I've tried to cite the sources for these ideas in case you'd like to check them out in more detail.

1. Using old Christmas cards as a base, we will "frost" the pictures by painting over them with a mixture of 1 part Epson salt to 1 part boiling water. Supposedly this forms a sparkly "frost" when dry. I got this idea from Preschool Express.

NOTE: ALL the following activities are ideas I got from Perpetual Preschool. This is a website that is new to me. It has lots of good ideas, but I am not in love with the way they are organized. It takes quite a while to read through them as they are listed as emails that have been sent in. Still........it's worth taking a look at.

2. Make a torn paper snow scene by tearing pieces of white paper and gluing them to a dark blue or black background paper.

3. Make snowflakes using pasta that has been colored white and gluing it together to form snowflakes. The website recommends putting the dry pasta in a bag with white paint and shaking it until coated then letting it dry. Sounds easy if it works.

4. Glue fake snow to a polar bear cut-out to make him furry. My oldest son got some of that Insta-sno in a science kit, so we already have that. I think I'll have the boys pin-punch the polar bears then tape them to a stick and insert it into a styrofoam ball to look like a snowhill.

5. Make and eat blue jello (ocean) cups with whipped cream (snow) on top.

6. Paint snowmen using large marshmallows to print the balls of snow and Q-tips to paint falling snowflakes.

7. Make 3D snowmen by sticking cotton balls and other decorations to a piece of clear Contact paper cut into the shape of a snowman.

8. Grate white soap with a cheese grater and use it to form snowmen. We'll use toothpicks and I'm not sure what else to decorate the snowmen.

9. Make and eat a rice cake snowman face using a rice cake spread with white cream cheese and decorated with veggie bits to make a face.

10. Paint "knitted" mittens by first painting on a piece of shelf liner, then placing the cut-out mitten shape on top. This is supposed to result in a knitted mitten look. I am going to try this in my classroom too if I can figure out how to set it up for the children to do independently.

11. Make patchwork mittens by gluing pieces of printed scrapbook paper to large mitten cut-outs.

12. Lace together two "knitted" or "patchwork" mittens with yarn. After reading Jan Brett's The Mitten, see how many animal cracker animals will fit inside our laced mittens.

13. Use a mitten cookie cutter to cut out bread in the shape of a mitten. Use milk paint (milk with food coloring) to paint the mittens. Sprinkle with sugar and bake in the oven until toasted.

14. Make snowflakes by gluing 3 popsicle sticks together in the center and painting white with glitter sprinkled on top before paint is dry.

I purposely didn't plan 31 activities. I realized after the Advent activities that it's just not feasible to do an activity every day. This way we will have lots of flexibility and can do the activities when and if we feel like it. I also love that for the most part I won't have to purchase anything to prepare for any of these activities. Good for the pocketbook, yet also great for making some family memories.