Easter Planning

Spring is in the air- tulips blooming, seeds started and time to start thinking about Easter. We want Easter and Christmas to be our two big holidays of celebration in our house. For some reason it is much easier to decorate and find things for Christmas than Easter. Mostly because of the nature of Easter I suppose. I am trying to get away from the Easter bunny and eggs (we still do colored eggs). So I started this banner and I am close to finishing the hand work on it.  It has two lilies on the ends and the says "He is Risen" on strips of linen. I hope to finish it next week. I am also considering making these cute little lamb pillows.

A Wardism

Ward told me today that he had an arrow in his foot. I discovered a splinter on the bottom of his foot and removed it. I told him it was a splinter and had him repeat the word "splinter" (which he did very successfully). Then I sent him on his merry way. He ran up  to his siblings and told them, "Mom got out a big arrow from my foot." I guess it just sounds more impressive.

Homemade Popsicle Time

 We went to IKEA this week to get Ward a mattress and the kids all brought a little bit of money with them to see if they could buy something. When they realized $2 was not going buy very much they started to get disappointed. Then I spotted the homemade popsicle containers. George bought it with his money (the other two had a bit more and got candle lanterns.) he was very excited and wanted to make them at breakfast time. I held him off a little while then we made strawberry lemon ones. So yummy!!

The Park

Homemade Day

I have been working on DIY home repair projects all week and needed a break. I have to have glass panes cut again ( 3rd times a charm) because I mismeasured ( can I write that? Spell check says no, but raspberry on that!). The drywalling is done no matter how lumpy it is because I am tired of sanding it 5 days in a row.  So enough of my grumbling....I decided to do some easier handmade projects today:

Homemade granola

Homemade toothpaste

 Homemade vanilla extract

I did them all in less than an hour. That is my idea of production.

Our Tolerant Kitty

Ward likes to put his favorite green blanket over his head and walk around saying, "wooooo, I the green ghost." Today I looked on the couch and saw his blankie lying there with a lump under it. Ward came up announced to me that Momo (our cat) was the green ghost.

Christianity and Culture

I really enjoyed thinking about this article. This topic is fascinating to me right now. What should a Christian culture look like today?

Thoughts on Christianity and Art Today

Makoto Fujimura - The Art of "The Four Holy Gospels" from Crossway on Vimeo.

A Cordova Visit

My brother and sister-in-law came for a visit last week and brought their 4 year old son and their cutie pie baby girl. The kids had lots of fun and I was getting a bit of baby envy. She is so so cute. I did not take many pictures- I know, boo hiss on Kim. My sister-in-law got some cute ones that I hope she sends my way ( hint, hint). Here are the two pictures I took. Which are pretty lousy. I tried to get Renata to smile twice and she kept making this expression. It totally puzzles me but baby Cordova is so cute with her little nose and fat cheeks.

DIY

Lots of home projects going on in the Swait Household. I have been reading lots of articles about how to fix things yourself ,etc.and after printing out lots of these articles I started my first one.

I decided to change my garden spigot outside. It looked like one of the easier projects. So I read to twist off the old spigot and I read that sometimes they are tough to get off. So I twisted and twisted and twisted hard. It was turning! Yea!! (and yes, I did turn the water off.) Then I saw that the spigot was soldered to a copper pipe and it was the pipe that was twisting not the spigot. I hadn't read anything about soldered spigots!!!! So the long and short of it was that I twisted the soft copper piping in half and our wonderful friend had to come solder it shut till we could replace the whole pipe. It was not a huge repair but it was so disheartening to bomb on my first home DIY repair!

I was pretty leery after my spigot episode but I was determined to persevere. So I decided to make my own rain barrel from a barrel my friend gave me. If I messed that up it wouldn't be a big deal. It totally worked (see my shiny new spigot I caulked to death on my rain barrel?) and we had a ton of rain this week and my barrel is full. I am excited to hook up a soaker hose to it and see how far I can get it to water my plants just by using gravity's force.


Next up: Kim's adventures in drywalling!
We are fixing some things in the bathrooms and it is getting interesting.

Necklaces

Some new necklaces. I have to get out of this length and try some long ones. I just really like this length. i am also trying to find time to paint some wooden ones I bought.

This is a terrific article about how to deal think about the timing of affliction and the space of affliction. My favorite part is when he says that God loves cliffhangers and we should too even if we are the ones hanging from the cliff.