An Egg!!!!!

We finally got our first egg!!!! Marigold doesn't know it but she just saved herself from becoming dinner.

Great Show for Homeschoolers

Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe is a terrific series for kids! This guy, Mike Rowe, goes to all these different jobs that are dirty and shows how things are made or done. It's really fun. We watched catching slimey hag fish, cranberry farming and making bricks this morning. We found the DVDs of a few of the seasons at our library. (Wish I could put up a picture here but I haven't figured out how to copy and paste pictures on a mac yet.)

It's My Birthday

And look at what my neighbor Amie (that's her above. she loves having her picture taken.) and her daughters made for me! I am so impressed!

The peas were my favorite. I think they were made with chewing gum and m&ms. The shovel was chewing gum and pretzels. So awesome!

I am loved. 

(Joffre had to cut it because I didn't have the heart.)

New Homemade Bath Mat

I needed some bath mats. So I tried making one myself. I took an old towel and cut it in half then sandwiched between a quilted top I put together and some fabric from an old curtain on the bottom. Needless to say I was lazy and didn't measure anything but I still like it and it's quirky bit of crookedness. ( By the way, some of the fabric is from a vintage sheet I found at our local Goodwill Clearance center where you buy stuff by the pound. It is a great way to find fabric super cheaply. I recently found a sheet set from Pottery Barn Teen that is so pretty. I am trying to decide how to use it.)

Amoretti Giveaway

Rebekah Merkle is giving away some of her pretty new fabric line, England Swings, at her website, Amoretti. I love lots of reds and blues.

Tanya Whelan's New Book

So I am excited about this book by Tanya Whelan. Her fabric is so PRETTY and I mean that literally Not all fabric is so pretty and feminine. I am also really like the dress patterns I saw in the previews.

I got a free bag pattern from her already and I think I am going to make 3 of them, two for my handmade swap I am putting together at my church and one for me. This is the pattern I picked.

I Love Making a Mess

This is what my room looked like for a couple days while I was working on making those baby shower gifts. I actually wanted to leave it and get some more scrappy projects done but I was going to have company. I think I will make a mess again this week trying to work on some bath mats.

Changing Pad and Diaper Sleeves

I have 3 baby showers coming up so I decided to make them all the same thing, diaper sleeve and changing pad. This is from the book One Yard Wonders.  I am showing the sleeves with the back side of the changing pads. You can fit a diaper and the changing pad in the sleeve. It was pretty easy to make these and I am going to put some children's books with them for the presents. Hopefully they are not going to look at my blog anytime soon.

CD Weaving

As an art project for the kids last week we tried this art project, CD weavings. The bottom picture is my example and the top is Renata's. She loved it and wants to make a mobile or wall hanging of them. (I think she was better than i was at it.) The boys on the other hand had a terrible time with it . They were too young or I made too many strings for them to weave between. I recommend it for 7yrs. and up.

Slingshot Fun

We are learning about David and Goliath this week. So we were going to make slings but Joffre was not happy with the idea of the kids possibly hurting themselves or our windows. So I convinced him to let them make slingshots. ( I also made a sling so they could see how it works.) I used leather scraps from our local craft store that sells a bag of them for $3. Then I bought elastic cording in the sewing section ( I bought too thin a cording. Buy the thickest you can. The ones you buy use a rubber cording but I'm not sure where to get it.)  Then we found the right sticks and made a few rules. =)

Wardrobe Progress Part 2

Worked a bit more on painting the wardrobe.

Changeable Kid's Artwork Frames

I saw this idea (actually a similar one) on Pintrest and I decided to try it. Sorry the pictures are not great but this is the best I could do in this part of the house. I am determined to actually do the things I pin on Pintrest. So I took some spray paint and prayed some frames I had and I put white paper in the frames and put the glass back in the frames.  Then I hot glued the clips to the glass (it is easy to scrape/peel it off later if I want to use the frames in the normal way).  The original way I saw had the frames empty and clips nailed to the walls. I didn't do this because 1) holes in our walls get huge because they are plaster and 2) my walls are ...er.....dirty ( I have flat paint and scrubbing produces smears . I just need to repaint!) so I didn't want the dirty walls behind the pictures framing them.  

And here we are. I do need to put the kid's pictures under books so they are flatter and make a few mop0-ore horizontal frames. (Kid's seem to really like doing horizontal pictures more than vertical. ? Wonder why?)

Wardrobe in Progress

I painted this wardrobe white awhile ago but have been mulling about what to do with the panels on the side. I started working on it and have only gotten to poppies and grass. I am still working on them and need to find a good fabric to put in the middle. I definitely am going to add some bent buds and maybe a second poppy on one side. Still mulling and thinking about the next step.

Great Kid's Craft/Art Projects Sites

I  recently found a terrific blog authored by an art teacher. She puts up a bunch of her art projects that she does with her students and I love it. She's really terrific about sharing and gives tips too. I have found a few great craft blogs/collectives and thought I'd share my favorites here.

Make It....a Wonderful Life
Crafty Crow Kid's Craft Collective
Ziggy Crafts ( mostly more adult)
Skip to My Lou

Boys Adrift

I am almost finished reading the book, Boys Adrift, after reading a post someone else wrote about it. This is one of those books people around me have been talking about but I just wasn't paying attention . It's very good and I highly recommend it to moms with boys.

It is about a family physician who noticed how many boys were not motivated, lazy, and on drugs for ADHD. So he researched to find conclusions as to why. He has 5 factors that he thinks play into the problem. Some are the school's systems, environment toxins and things like video games and porn. He ranges in talking about kindergarten boys to adult men still living with their parents.

His studies and research are so interesting and he comes to some good conclusions but I think he only scratches the surface of what need to be done to make things better. He talks of system changes that need to happen in schools and with manhood rituals among different cultures but he doesn't say much about the parents or family systems that need to change (probably because that is a bigger problem to be fixed and  controversial one.)

A Wardism

So we are studying marine creatures right now in our homeschooling and we are learning about lobsters. We learned that there are 40lb lobsters in the ocean. This was a big deal for the kids when I observed that most of them are less than 40lbs or right at 40lbs.

Fast forward to a Dad hugging Ward and George and saying "I am hugging my two littlest boys". Ward responds, "But I am getting bigger. Bigger than a lobster."

Laugh Out Loud

So I just found out about this whole set of pictures that take the actor Ryan Gosling and pretending he is your boyfriend saying sweet things to you, the viewer. They always start "Hey girl".They have a series for the crafter that are so funny! Here is a link to a few more.

How to Seduce a Woman

This is my husband's advice on how to seduce a woman.