The Evolving Homemaker

So I decided to sleep in this morning since the kiddos went to bed so late and were sleeping in.  Instead of getting up and blogging and starting our day, I hid in my room, took the time to meditate, read the second mindfulness training from Plum Village Monastery, and began perusing a book called If It’s Not Food Don’t Eat It. It was next to my nightstand and all my other books I am currently reading were in the living room.  Not worth the risk of waking the kiddies up to go get them.

Ahhhh…….

And then the kids got up. And our day has begun.  They are eating breakfast, yummy coffee cake from yesterday, and some yogurt, while I get this post up and think of breaking out the Omega Juicer for breakfast.

The knitting has hit a SNAG this week.  A big snag.  I finished the body of the glove then cast off, easy as pie.  Then I watched a You Tube video to try to figure out how to pick up the stitches for the thumb.  I knitted a thumb.  Then realized that there were a couple of large spaces in the knitting of the thumb AND it was inside out.  The knit was on the inside of the thumb hole and the backside was on the outside.

So I ripped it out and have yet to find the time to find another video.  We had a blasted busy Saturday and Sunday I played catchup with making a list of things that need to get done in the garden and in my life.  The list is long.  I am not feeling any pressure to get to it, actually feeling like I have knowledge of what it is, instead of the rambling thoughts in my brain that get lost.

So you can see my needle holding the four stitches that I had to ‘hold’ for later.  I will figure this out.  I will.  I want theses gloves.

I am still reading the Dynamic Laws of Prosperity, and will be for the next five weeks as long as the class goes.  And went back to I Need Your Love-Is That True.  Funny, the day I finished Stillness Speaks and went back to this one, a friend posted she was reading Loving What Is by Byron Katie.  She was loving it, so it will probably be next on my list since I am enjoying the philosophy of I Need Your Love so much.

That is it for my reading and knitting update for this week.  Not much to share since I have found myself stuck at the moment.  Hope you all are having better luck this week!

Joining, albeit late, with the weekly Yarn Along!

Somebody stop me.

Not kidding.

It is 12:07 AM and I can’t put my knitting down.  I feel SO close to being done with my first glove that I just want to keep going, and going, and going.  Unfortunately I am NOT, I repeat, NOT the energizer bunny.  A night with such little sleep can throw me off for an entire week.  I will pay for this knitting escapade tomorrow.  I mean today.

Yeah, you can even see the whole I created in the glove at 7.5 inches.  Remember how I was afraid of this sentence: “Knit 4, slip next 4 stitches to a piece of waste yarn, CO 4 stitches using the backward loop method, knit to end”?  With lots of positive messages last week and a leap of faith, I pulled it off.

I have a hole.

I have never been quite so proud of a hole before.  I am not yet sure what I have to do with the 4 stitches hanging on the extra piece of yarn, but when the time comes I am beginning to think I will figure it out just fine.  I am in love with this pattern and the look of these gloves.  I imagine there will already be a new pair on the needles this time next week.

And maybe, gasp, a pair of socks will soon grace the needles.

As for reading, I just started a class at my church in which the required reading is The Dynamic Laws of Prosperity.  So far so good, it is mostly about keeping a positive attitude, using positive affirmations, and positive prayer.  I tend to be one that when one negative thought gets in my head, I latch on like a leach in the Amazon.  I play it over, and over, and over until I am really worked up in anxiety, depression, or just foulness.

I don’t want to do that anymore.  Thankfully, Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle is simply WONDERFUL.  Lots of little snippets that I can read in the car waiting for coffee in the Starbucks drive-thru, or for five minutes when I first wake up, or the two minutes I might grab at one of my kiddos gymnastics classes.  It has an amazing power to bring you back to the present moment, to remind you to breathe, and allow you to remember what is really important in the grande scheme.  I have practically underlined the whole book.  Totally true.

So what are you working on this week?  Just staying awake and get through your day?  Or a masterpiece is being born? Do tell.

This Yarn Along update is being brought to you by Ginny over at Small Things.  Check it out.  You might be inspired to try something new!  Or something at all. Whichever.

It is Wednesday again, I am not sure I like being this clear about how fast my weeks fly by.  Nevertheless, here we are yet again with Small Things and the yarn along delight of seeing so many amazing projects.

Dare I say it?

Out loud?

I am not sure I should…

I am trying something on double ended needles.

I am serious.

Last week at this time, I had just finished my first ever knitted hat.  I didn’t know what I would do next, should I practice the hat again before moving on?  Or should I dive into something else?  What was a gal to do?

Find inspiration.

Which is exactly what I got last week perusing all the projects until I was reminded about fingerless gloves.  I have been dying for some, and wanting to learn to make them, but trying to work my way up slowly through knitting endeavors so I don’t get in over my head.  I found this seemingly easier pattern at A Friend To Knit With which I fell in love with right away.  I want to try both patterns.

I am new to double ended needle knitting, duh, so I needed a little You Tube love to get started.  Of all the videos I found, this one seemed the easiest to see what she is doing and also made the most sense to me and my logical brain.

And here is my current project:

Needless to say, not much reading happened this week so the books are still the same.  But I am just super excited that I started this glove yesterday morning and it feels like I have made a surprising amount of progress.  Hopefully next week I will have at least one of them done, I still don’t know what “Knit 4, slip next 4 stitches to a piece of waste yarn, CO 4 stitches using the bakward loop method, knit to end” means, but I am willing to bet I will figure it out when I need to.

Yeah!  I finally feel like I am making some knitting progress and moving up the challenge ladder.  Before you know it I will be on to sweaters.  O.k. maybe not, but still, FINGERLESS GLOVES!

What are you challenging yourself with this week?  On the needles or off?  In the pages of a book? Or not?

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Happy Valentine’s Day!

While many think it is a cheesy day created to sell endless cheap crud from all around the world to those that are willing to buy, I am thinking that it is a good reminder to hold close those that I hold dear.  Often it is easy for me to forget to have gratitude for those I love because I am too wrapped up in my own thinking, my own expectations, whatever it is I have to do next on today’s ‘list’.

As I type this up, I am also making breakfast for the kids in which they want in bed.  Of course they got up before me, so as soon as breakfast is done they plan to crawl back in bed to have it ‘delivered’.  Right now they are squirreled away making Valentines at our kitchen table yelling, “Don’t look!  Don’t look!” every time I walk by…

This is a sweet day.

Yesterday to celebrate we made beautiful tissue paper votive holders, the idea of which came from Homemade Serenity, to use as our centerpiece for dinner tonight.  The kids loved it, although like their father, they don’t enjoy getting their hands completely messy which this project requires.

We all tore the white tissue paper, but only mama cut out the hearts!

Painting the mod podge glue all around the outside of the jar, refraining from painting the bottom.

First we added the white tissue paper to the jar, then we added the hearts.  I found as I did mine after the kids were done with theirs, that you really need to do more than one layer of the white tissue paper to cover the jar.  The white tissue paper got see through in some spots.

Here little man is adding glue to his hearts to put on his jar.  I found it fine to just put the hearts up on the jar and then add some glue in spots with my finger.

Mama’s finished product.

And wallah!  The kids hid theirs from their Dad so they could surprise him today.  I had to light them after everyone was in bed to get this shot!

I didn’t have to buy anything for this project which makes it extra appreciated.  I had tissue paper, mod podge which I used instead of the starch glue, and jars.  All I had to do to get the jars was to open my glass cabinet.  If you remember we have been using glasses we get from the store for mayo, peanut butter, chai tea concentrate, washing them when they are empty and putting them in the cupboard.  Which makes it especially easy to not care when craft time rolls around, or one hears a crashing sound from the kitchen.

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Yarning along this week for the first time in like FORever.  Check out all the other projects at Small Things for more inspiration on needles!

As I said yesterday, I had a week in January where I didn’t leave the living room floor because I was in need constantly to catch vomit in a trash bucket from two little people.  It was a long week emotionally and sleep accordingly.  BUT, on the bright side, I finished my first hat knitting project for myself!

I had been so scared to try a hat, and for good reason, it actually took me a few tries to get her started.  I had to pull my starts out three times. The first mess-up I wasn’t doing stockinette stitch so I started again.  Then, I did knit, pearl, knit, pearl, without realizing that when you knit in the round, you automatically are knitting a stockinette stitch.  Duh.  And then I jacked up some stitches.

But, fourth time is a charm.  I did miss ONE stitch the whole way, but in the end, I got an alpaca knit hat.

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The pattern came from this easy YouTube video:

I am currently reading Stillness Speaks by Eckhart Tolle and I Need Your Love-Is That True by Byron Katie.  So far I love them both.  Stillness Speaks is a bunch of small sutra style paragraphs, so it is not a straight through read, more of a bedtime contemplation, when I need a reminder, or am in need for some spiritual nourishment.  I Need Your Love is a book that is focused to changing your thought patterns, which I really need cause I tend to be my own worst enemy.

So that is it, an actual knit and some books.  I don’t know what my next knitting project is yet…but I have a boat load of yarn to create it from!

What is on your needles or in your reading bag this week? Or both?

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Two weeks ago, we were on a lovely play excursion with some friends.  During a little wrestling ‘moment’ between two boys my son got a foot in his mouth.  An hour later he states, “Mom, I think there is something wrong with my mouth.” I turn incredulous, and panicked like usual, and said, “What?!”

“One of my teeth are loose.”

Then giddy excitement on my part.  You see, my son is 7 1/2 and this is his first lost tooth.  But that giddiness quickly gave way to fear.  Sadness.  It was a reminder that as much as I love my babies and want them to stay just the way they are forever, they are growing up.  Literally, before my eyes.

The tooth was out before 6 o’clock that night.  Fast.  The dentist said it was probably because all the roots had dried up before, eww, and the tooth was just being held in by the skin, like all the others cause there ain’t any other loose ones, and when it got hit, wallah…out it came.

So, in sudden need of a tooth fairy pillow, I got to work.  I don’t have any photos, cause that is how much of a hurry I was in, but I have photos of the finished product and will walk you through what I did.

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I basically grabbed my scrap fabric, matched some colors up and grabbed some ribbon that matched those.  I made the pillow a square, I sewed the blue part of the square on the front first, then I hot glued the ribbons on so I could get them straight.  I stitched them on to be double safe, but obviously wasn’t going to re-thread the machine to match each color, I had like an hour.  I then made the little tooth pocket out of some leftover felt fabric and stitched the ‘My Tooth’ in with brown floss.  I then sewed the little pockets edges together.

Then I turned her inside out and sewed the edges of the big square.  I also sewed the blue ribbon for the door hanger on the back too.  After turning it right side out again, I glue gunned the little pocket to the front, let it dry, then stuffed it with stuffing. I hand stitched the opening closed at the blue ribbon.

I tied a little brown bow and glued it on to the front. I would have sewed the bow on, and there are a billion tiny mistakes in this, but time was of the essence.  I wish now father time had been on my side, I would have done it perfectly the first time around, but sometimes in motherhood, ok most times in motherhood, nothing is perfect the first time around.  And us perfectionist types, we just have to breathe and start again. Pin It
My son left a little note for the tooth fairy asking if he could keep his tooth.  This makes life so much easier.  I didn’t want to throw them away, but I didn’t want to really keep them either.  Now he decides!

Stay tuned for a pink pillow to follow…

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Joining Ginny after a month and a half away for this weeks Yarn Along over at Small Things.

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Finished my niece’s shawl yesterday.  I had finished the body like a month ago, but had yet to get around to the fringe.  Now if I can only get to the post office.  My least favorite errand on the planet.

I started a scarf for a little boy on Monday and finished it last night.  I also started one for his little brother last night too.  Hopefully I can finish it today cause there is a little boy in my house who is hoping for a knitted BLANKET for Christmas.  Gulp.  I originally wanted the brown and blue for the little brother, but it was too wide once I tried it on my little tykes.  It was perfect for my 7 year old, not so much my 5 year old.  Knit and learn.  Knit and learn.

I am reading at the moment Surrendering To Marriage, author of Surrendering To Motherhood, and Surrendering To Yourself which I will read both next, and have started Born To Run.  Born To Run because I need a lot of inspiration at the moment, and Surrendering To Marriage, because well you can never have too much inspiration to keep your ‘civilization’, as she calls the family unit, going strong.  My husband and I have been both VERY busy the last couple of months, I am personally choosing to slow down cause I was about to implode, but he doesn’t have that choice.  I am almost done, but this was a nice read to remember that the long haul isn’t perfect for any marriage, but it is worth it in so many ways.

Obviously not if there is violence or abuse in a relationship, there is no suggestion in this book to stay in such.  But how to keep the marriage strong in a time of such distractions that we have today?  Young children?  Building careers? Frustrations? Extended family?  Friends? Activities? There is so much pressure on families today to do it all, but at what cost?  How much pressure are we putting on our most precious of relationships?

“Loving someone at the moment they are asking for it because they need it even though you don’t want to give it is the ultimate surrender in marriage.” Ahh, how hard is that when kids have been clamoring for you all day, you feel busy and overwhelmed, and you just want to rest and replenish yourself?  And what about him?  Who spent all day at a stressful job and an hour and a half in a commute?  Doesn’t he want to replenish too and not have to give to me?

Surrender.

“It doesn’t get much better than this.  The older I get the more sure I become that the peaks and passing fancies are not what ultimately make for happiness.  I can’t say that the grind of the ordinary makes me happy, either, day in and day out.  But living our a conventional marriage with children and a husband has forced me to know that happiness is only ours in fragments, in delicious bites that we need to thoroughly savor, because, hey, the next day could be a whole different story.  Can any human ever really be happy?  The answer is yes.  The answer is no.  The answer is sometimes.”

Is it only sometimes?  I don’t know.  So many spiritual teachers would tell us no, that it is up to us, but it can be so much more of the time than it is for many of us on a daily basis, and some would argue most of the time.  I feel like it is sometimes now, but I am hardly enlightened and I suffer great mood swings while I am PMSing.  For now it is sometimes, and I will take it.  And relish it, because there is really no place else or no other thing I would rather be doing than what I am doing right at this moment of my life.

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Joining Ginny at Small Things for yet another yarn along update this week.  I took some time off after I finished the last two shawls two weeks ago.  I wasn’t ready to jump into the waters of yet another shawl just yet, but time is of the essence and Christmas is fast approaching.  I am knitting one more shawl for my niece, a nice shade of purple.

I finished Left Neglected, to be honest I really didn’t like it that much.  It was a nice reprieve from the mostly non-fiction I read I suppose, but it left a lot to be desired.  The characters seemed massively underdeveloped or just missing any true emotional depth.  Way too much brand name dropping for me, and way too much focus on material wealth and striving for success.  Even when the main character decides not to pursue life the same way, it is lacking believability.

I am still working on the parenting book with the long name, and started this essay book written by women about things men have said to them.  Some of them are incredibly poignant, I resonate especially with the ones that deal with the treatment of women on an international stage, but many are interesting to read, just to see how other women really do think outside my circle as a stay at home, homeschooling Mom.  I am not sure I would recommend it yet.  It would really depend on your personal tastes, there is a fair amount of cussing along the way in many stories.

Some have asked where I got the shawl pattern, why You Tube of course! Here it is:

If you are new to knitting like myself, this shawl turns out great and really gives you ample opportunity to perfect your stitches! I will be ready to move on after this, except my son wants a blanket for Christmas, and not sure what to do about that just yet…I haven’t even picked out the yarn!

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*Wow, my computer has been uber wonkey this morning and has given me fits to try to get this post up.  It is late, like WAY late, but nevertheless, it is now up.*

Joining Ginny for the weekly yarn along again this week, motivation is oh so helpful this time of year!

Do you ever get the feeling you just can’t finish anything?  Like the laundry?  The dishes?  Or you can’t finish cleaning the house because you don’t know where to even start?  You can’t finish a book cause your eyeballs won’t stay open any longer at the end of the day?  You can’t finish a sewing project you might have started a year ago because like, there just isn’t time for that?  You don’t seem to have any time to work on your writing because for some reason little people need to eat?  And often?  You can’t handle making dinner from scratch again…cause the mess in the kitchen behind you is just one more thing to add to the list of to-do’s?

Sometimes I just get the nagging sense that I cannot finish anything.  It leaves me with a sense of being completely out of control of all aspects of my life, which leaves me crazy.  This of course, doesn’t bode well for the rest of the family cause how Mama feels…Mama does…crazy is never good.  With this in mind, yesterday I was a mad woman at gymnastics in the morning, in the afternoon at Irish dance class, and after I got home from my beekeeping class just so I could claim victory today.

I. Finished. Something.

In fact, two things!  My daughter’s pink shawl for Christmas is officially done, fringe and all.  The birthday shawl for a little girl who’s birthday is this Saturday, is officially done too!  That is a miracle.  Usually I would be up late the night before the party scrambling trying to finish.  This time, I am done with three days to spare.

I thought after I had finished this one, that I would maybe use bigger needles on the one for my niece for Christmas.  I am a bit sick of looking at the same pattern for two months at a time, but…I like it when it is finished.  I am not sure I want to make the holes any bigger seeing as she is so little, that seems like just more opportunity to snag on something.

Three out of four of the same books as last week.  Left Neglected is OK so far.  I am not raving about it and telling all my friends they have to read it.  I am about halfway through and parts of it seem really ‘forced’.   It irks me when authors who are writing fiction add so much of themselves into a book, i.e. ‘two Harvard coffee cups on the table at breakfast’.  And it seems really unbelievable that the character would be in SO much denial at the moment where I am at.  I mean, not telling your kids for two weeks that you have been in a massive car accident, might die, and have significant brain damage…that doesn’t fly with me.

Yes, I am fiction picky…that is why I gave it up.  BUT, this book may redeem itself in a gazillion of ways since I am only halfway through.  I will let you know!

I also got It Is All Too Much from the library.  Already out of the gate in the introduction I am in love with Peter Walsh and he just might be my hero by the time I have finished the book.  I am heading right now to renew it from the library since changing my life, starting with the house, in three weeks is probably not completely possible.

So that is it, computer problems, house disasters, children who need to eat…but I actually finished SOMETHING…

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Another week has passed, another yarn along is here with Ginny at Small Things.  Wow, how time flies when you are havin’ fun!

I finished The Help.  It must have been stupendous cause I finished it in a week, while getting all of my other stuff done and not hunkering down in bed for two days as many of my Mama friends joke they did when they read it.  I am not actually sure how I got through it so fast, but I did stay up until 12:39 on Monday night since I so desperately wanted to finish and see how it ended!

This is BIG for me.  I haven’t read a fiction book since Edgar Sawtelle.  No joke.  That was actually the only book I have ever ‘given’ away too.  I was THAT disappointed in the ending.  It made me physically ill…I ain’t lyin’.  But The Help redeemed fiction and I went out and bough five fiction books at the bookstore to celebrate and rediscover a few new gems.

OK, so duh not a lot of knitting got done since I was reading MOST spare moments, but not all.  I only have a few rows left to finish the blue shawl, I did 3/4 of the fringe on my daughters shawl last night, and will easily be beginning the purple one for my niece before next week…I hope.  I am feeling optimistic today! (I can’t show you the pink one cause my little gal is up and running around at the moment)

My reading this week includes The Beekeeper’s Handbook as I just began my beekeeping class last night and am so excited and intrigued, but we have to read two chapters by next week.  Left Neglected is a fiction book I picked up last week that sounded interesting about finding out what is important in life.  I am always searching for that reminder too so I thought it would be up my alley.  And of course How To Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk, you are supposed to read but one chapter a week so you can practice.   Which actually is working out well, it did give me time to practice the first chapter more instead of plowing on through the book and forgetting everything I read at the begining.

There you have it.  My work is cut out for me for the week, but as I am learning to prioritize my time these days, spending heaps of less time on Facebook for starters, I think I am leaning into more productivity and enjoyment out of the quality of my life.

Happy knitting and reading all, if you have any fiction you just LOVED you should leave me a note telling me which ones so I can check them out!

Joining Ginny at her weekly Yarn Along again this week.  I missed last week, I was taking it easy on myself and trying to regain some normalcy, whatever that is, in our daily comings and goings.

I am still finishing the blue shawl for our little friend who turns 6 in two weeks.  I am not sure how these other gals at the yarn along finish much more complicated projects in way less time than me, but it is as it is.  I really only have time to knit when we are at the kids activities, an hour here, an hour there, and then no more hours till the next week comes around again.

I am reading How To Talk So Kids Will Listen And Listen So Kids Will Talk and The Help.  I am LOVING The Help, and see why it was such a phenomenon.  I am halfway through and only started a few days ago, which with all the stuff on my plate, that means it is really good.  I am enjoying the other book as well, I am not going to type the entire name out again, it is just too long.  My parenting needed help and this seems pretty much up my alley as far as style.

So there it is.  My less than stellar knitting achievements along with some juicy books.  Maybe the lesson here is: The less juicier the book, the more knitting gets done.  The more juicier the book, the less knitting gets done.

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Another Wednesday is here, I finished a book FINALLY and am working on two others.  Joining Ginny in our weekly Yarn Along.  If you are looking for my Savor book review, the book I have been reading for the past month, you can find it here.

Ahh…life slows down, a WEE bit, not enough to write home about really and sickness hits.  That is the way it happens isn’t it?  Your body says, “Oh, you have been very stressed lately, and now you are trying to settle down and ease into a routine, so why don’t I just nail you with a sore throat and boogers out the ying yang to help get you started.”  The boogers aren’t coming out the front exit yet either, they are slithering out the back exit and giving me the heebie jeebies.

So this post is late, I slept in.  I had the weirdest stinkin’ dreams last night which made for not a good sleep at all.  Here is my yarning and books this week:

I don’t think I got that much farther on my knitting, but honestly I can’t remember.  It is either my brain or my week that has made recall at the moment hard.  I read The Well-Trained Mind last night before bed, and I think it was one reason I had restless sleep.  I am a bit disappointed in it for sure.  I am wishing I checked it out of the library before buying, considering the cost, I could have bought a bunch of books that were a bit more up my alley for the same price.  I am not regretting reading it, but I am wondering why the author’s sons are left out of talking about how much they LOVED this style of homeschooling and how it benefited them.  Maybe the family wrote another book highlighting such, I will look into it.

In all honesty, I cannot imagine my son sitting down and learning in this way.  My daughter?  Maybe.  We will see.  I will read more and do a full review when I am done.  I am leaning toward at this moment, we will probably not get super excited about classical education, the method, or the practicality, and the reasoning behind it.   See, the title says, “The Well-Trained Mind”, what about the rest of the child?

That is my week of reading and knitting.  Not stupendous, but hey, it is something.

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Wow.  That week flew by.  Without any feeling as if I accomplished a quarter of the things I set out to do.  After yesterday’s post of expanse, and hope, and a cup that felt full, the day went on in a continual downward spiral.  So as I was feeling great and refreshed in the morning…by the end of the day something had to give.   That something was me.  I crawled into bed feeling completely defeated.  Incapable.  Completely unprepared.

So today?

A long day of television.  JUST so Mama can get the house cleaned and organized so we actually can start ‘official’ school on Monday.  Next year I will look at our summer plans a bit more closely to see when it is appropriate to begin school.  My idea of starting yesterday was a pipe dream.  My goodness, we had just walked in the door from three days of camping the night before LATE.  The house was already a disaster from the week before.  There was way too much on the to-do list in a short amount of time to even hope to start school in a lovely way instead of a way which would feel more like rushing through and another check in the ‘done’ column.

That isn’t how I want school to be.

Some randomness that has to happen:  1- a bow that got left at the music store a half hour away needs to be picked up before tomorrow…my son wants to try cello, so great we rented it, brought it home, opened it to try out, only to find the bow was left at the store and we had no time to get it before leaving for camping.  2- I was planning on getting a booster seat for my daughter, she needed one I was sure, my husband questioned…I got out the measuring tape to check…she is 3 INCHES above the cut-off in her old seat.  Of course our local Target is out, so there is one on hold in the half hour away town so I can get it today.  3- Dentist appointment that I somehow made during my daughters gymnastics class must be changed.  It is today. 4- The house officially looks like a tornado went through it.  And if you don’t believe me you can come see for yourself.  Last week the kids couldn’t watch any t.v. because a room they made messy they were not cleaning up.  So instead of cleaning, they made all the other rooms messy too. On a positive note, they finally cleaned that messy room last night so they could watch some t.v.

That is just the beginning of the list of things to get to today.  There is more.  I don’t want to bore you, instead I am meaning to show you my knitting from the week for the weekly Yarn Along!  The pink shawl is cast off, but I still need to add the fringe.  The blue shawl is cast on and on it’s way, getting ready to be given as a birthday gift for a little friend.  The only reason I had time to work on it was because of the expanse of car time had this past weekend. The book?  The same.  Cause who has any time to read AND blog, AND home school, AND sleep, AND clean, AND camp, AND do laundry, AND knit, AND, AND, AND….

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I am joining Small Things again, for this weeks yarn along…

Sigh.

So I am still working on the same bubblegum shawl, reading the same book, except now I have added a new book, The Well-Trained Mind, to the pile as our school year is fast approaching and I was hoping to glean a bit from this one for our upcoming learning adventures.  I found one idea in the book already a little disconcerting, “In the classical curriculum reading, writing, grammar, and math are the center of the curriculum.  History and science become more and more important as the child matures.  Foreign languages are immensely valuable, but shouldn’t crowd out these basic skill areas.  And music and art are wonderful when you can manage them.”

Why is art and music the last we care about?  I find that a bit crushing to my spirit, and the spirit of children, who love to create!  Where is the bit of education that nurtures the spirit?  The soul?  Allowing us to explore the world around us with colors, and glue, movement, sound, and a keen eye?  A friend once sent me this TedTalk, which I may have posted before,  and I have never forgotten it, especially as a homeschooling family:

The fantastic part about homeschooling?  I can pick and choose what works for me and what is completely lame.  Leaving art, music, drama, dance, and the like at the bottom of our education piles is doing a great disservice to the ones we are claiming to educate.

So that is what I am reading at the moment!  And here is the shawl, I will be casting off today and finishing it up, it is probably a bit too big for her, but I wanted her to be able to use it for awhile.  I have my next two colors lined up, the blue for a present for a little gals birthday and the purple for a little niece for Christmas.  Those should go WAY faster seeing as how I won’t have to do them in secret!

Another Wednesday means another knitting update with Small Things:

Once upon a time, there was a gal who loved books.  She was so in infatuated with the written word that she even worked at a book store.  She was such a nerd she probably read a book a week.

Then one day she had a child.  At first, this child napped.  During those spells of quiet, she would continue on with her passion of reading books.  About a year after, this little child began to move.  And move.  And move some more.

And then she had her second child.  This one napped too, but usually when she and the older child were traveling from point a to point b.  But even when the youngest was sleeping, the oldest wasn’t.  Rarely did this gal get a chance to read until the kids went to bed for the night.

As time waned on, her babes stopped napping all together.  She found too, that it became harder and harder for her eyelids to stay open after they went to bed.   While once she could be found reading a whole book in a day, now she is lucky if she can get a book in a month read.

And she is sad.

But she also knows that this time with her kids is also waning, one day at a time.  She is learning to accept that there is a season for everything, that while her kids are young and actually WANT to hang out with her, now is the time for indulging that.  One day, her children will be more independent, they will need hugs less, they won’t want snuggles at all, then she can pick up all those dusty books that she had wanted to read back in the time when her babies wanted her to read books to them instead…

So yes, this week for the yarn along, this gal is reading the SAME book she has been the last two weeks.  AND, there isn’t as much progress this week on her shawl as the kids are still sleeping in her room until tomorrow night, making it really hard to knit a Christmas present without getting caught.

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So, a few months ago I made some felt gnomes, which you can see here, and some felt fairies, which you can see here.  The only problem?  My dog ate them.  I just didn’t do my homework, the dog really did eat each and every one, save for the blue fairy my son took to his room and set on the windowsill.  She didn’t eat them all at once, she was methodical about her murderous ways, one. at. a. time.  They were each sitting on our nature table, and while the rest of us were busy getting a restful night of sleep, she swiped them, chewed them, and left them in a pile of wood and felt mess in front of the door.

We were sad.  And I had no desire to remake them anytime soon.  BUT, my nieces birthday was yesterday, so in light of trying to make most gifts homemade this year I decided to send her a family of felt fairies and gnomes.  If you are looking for the pattern to these adorable little creatures, look no further than here for the gnomes and here for the fairies.

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Here is the whole family.  I want one for myself.  Not sure I want to start on a whole new family at this moment!

The gnomes.

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The fairies.

The cute little flowers on top of each of their caps.  I can say I have finally mastered the art of the french knot.

I tucked them all into a bag that something from Target came in, I can’t remember what that something was, a pillowcase, sheets, something of that nature, but it made the perfect bag for a little girl who also has a doggie that may prove dangerous to such a family.

And just in case you are thinking to yourself, “How the hell does she have time to do these crafts while keeping the rest of her world together?”, this photo is for you.  This is the mess my kids, and that murderous dog, made in my bedroom while I was cutting and gluing and sewing my little gnomes and fairies.  Every single cushion from our couch is in there, plus the mattresses they have been sleeping on the last few days, plus a whole pile of clean towels from the bathroom and a bunch of pieces of paper they made into a campfire and roasted real marshmallows and chocolate squares over.

So yes, I craft, but don’t think that doesn’t mean some other disaster is being made in the house while I am doing it.  Cause it is. And, there was also an injury along the way:

I had just glue gunned one of the bodies of the gnomes, dropped it, went to grab it before it burned our carpet, and ended up with a swath of glue on my finger.  As I peeled the glue off, part of my skin came with it.  So in all reality crafting with children in the house is not all sunshine and lollipops, without a little pain and mess.

This, just in case you thought I was wonder woman or something, and you are a miserable failure cause you can’t do it ‘all’.  Wonder woman does not exist.

Every Wednesday I am joining Small Things in her weekly Yarn Along.

Reading and knitting a gift for my little girl is a challenge.  Mostly because I can’t knit in front of her so I have to wait until she is asleep or I am away at the coffee shop to make any progress.  This also inhibits my reading time, after all, my moment to read is usually after the kids go to bed too! Last night I wanted to knit, but both kids were sleeping in my room as my tonsillectomy needs to be under adult supervision for 14 days in case of bleeding.  I don’t want him waking up in the middle of the night alone and finding out he is bleeding to boot!

Needles to say, I read for a bit and then when they fell asleep I knitted away in secret.  My eyelids did not last long with that method, especially with the reading warm-up.  But here it is, my bubblegum shawl for my 5 year old princess for Christmas and the same book I was reading last week but really like, so I don’t mind reading it longer! Here is last weeks post so you can see there was actual progress made though!  Hopefully I will be casting off by next Wednesday and starting something new…one can be hopeful anyway!

It is Wednesday and I am joining Small Things in her weekly yarn along.  Why?  Cause I have committed myself to knitting all of my Christmas presents this year, minus a few other handmade items and some toys like the Millennium Falcon Lego set, for um…my son…not um…for me…at all.

Stop laughing.  I can hear you.

I have knitted exactly 2 things successfully in the past.  And I have knitted a few not so successful crooked scarfs.  And I have showed the terrible ones to you.  I really, really am wanting to learn how to knit hats too, a few different colored beanies for the winter.  After all, I don’t like to wear coats, so a vest with a hat should cover me!

Anyway, here is my project for this week, a shawl I started a couple months ago for my daughter, but I had just finished two back to back for gifts and then my son got his concussion and the summer got away from me.  She is still waiting for it, and I am only going to work on it at night so she doesn’t think she is getting it any time soon.  I want Christmas to be a bit more homemade than it was last year.

A few months back, a friend of mine sent me this link with a project she thought I would like to do.  I did want to do this project and thought about it all the time.  Yet, I never quite had time to get er’ done.  What else is new?

Well thanks to our weekly hikes/walks we have been taking, I have had the perfect push to get these things finally banged out.  How long can one Mom listen to, “Mom I am thhhiiiirrrrrsssstttttyyy” on the trail before she does something about it?

Here is the coolest ever water bottle holder pattern link from Pink Chalk Studio.  It was quite the little adventure for me to sew these.  First off, my sewing machine was behaving quite strangely.  The needle broke the first night, and than the whole time working on my daughters, the stitches were sticking out and not getting that tight.  It looked terrible, but only up close, which has given me time to do her brothers and take a break before I remake hers.

What is so interesting, is that as I was watching a YouTube tutorial about the french seam, I was so jealous of the lady who had this thread cutter actually in the side of her machine.  I thought to myself, “What a swell invention that was!”,   never realizing for a moment that my machine actually had one too, which I didn’t notice till like a day later.

Then as I was trying to fix the stitches.  This was really frustrating.  I would turn one knob, then another, then take out the bobbin, then re-thread the bobbin, and not until I tried to re-thread the machine as a last resort did I realize there is a stinkin’ knob above the needle.  Uh huh.  A knob.  And you wanna know what that knob does?  Adjusts the tension.  You wanna know how many years I have fought with such annoyances and given up on sewing all together?

Uh huh.  A lot.

So we are back in business.  Here are the photos of the kids holders, like I said I will be doing the pink one over again, and I still have yet to make mine which I think would be awesome for trips to the zoo, hikes, etc.

Try them!  They will make your load so much lighter when your kids are carrying THEIR OWN bottles.  Genius really.

His and Hers…

The pattern calls to only sew the straps once, but I sewed them twice to hold better, and I also sewed twice along the bottom seam when I sewed the circle to the body of the holder.  Water can be heavy, especially with ice and kids swinging the whole bag around, better safe than sorry!

In action!

Last weekend I got a few fleeting hours at the coffee shop.  One of the things that had been plaguing my to-do list was searching the web and brainstorming my heart out to create a list of fun things to do with the kids this summer.  We still have to do some school, but since my son will be getting a tonsillectomy at the end of the summer, I am highly motivated to make the beginning as fun as I can!

I thought I would share my list for those who may just be looking for something to do on any given random day!

THINGS TO DO WITH KIDS IN THE SUMMER (Or at least things I will be doing with my kiddos this summer!)

1- Turn the sprinklers on (Add some shaving cream for extra fun!)

2- Bike ride together

3- Each of them will make a scrapbook at the end of the summer of all the fun stuff we did! (Gives me a reason to take lots of photos too!)

4- Picnics

5- Art/Crafts (I went to the craft store and loaded up on a bag full of stuff we can pull out randomly, including REAL canvases for the kids to paint on!)

6- Photography outings (The kids taking their own pictures and making a collage out of them and/or framing for their walls)

7- Field trips (to local sites of interest and of businesses like the post office, ice cream shop, farms etc.)

8- Baking (cookie surprises at random especially cranky days, cakes for no reason, AND we are having our own ‘cupcake war’ day on Tuesdays, trying out yummy recipes cause we ALL love that show! Look for yesterdays cupcake recipe tomorrow)

9- Reading classic chapter books (starting with Wizard of Oz inspired by The Reading Promise)

10- Visits to the Pick-Ur-Own berry patch

11- Start a hiking club (once a week we have scheduled a bunch of hikes/walks for our friends to join when they can)

12- Camp (Outside in the wild AND in the backyard when we need an adventure!)

13- Build a teepee  (From Soulemama’s book Handmade Home)

14- Make our own documentary

15- Museum days with Imax thrown in

16- Zoo (duh)

17- Build a time capsule (I remember doing this in elementary school, but never remember opening them…)

18- Have our own real art show (this idea came from a friend of mine who is ready to hostess with appetizers and all!)

19- Community dinner nights (Inspired by The Family Dinner)

20- Tie-dye some clothes (cheap t’s at the craft store)

21- Water balloon party

22- Movie afternoons with friends (and popcorn)

23- Homemade ice cream (duh)

24- Ice cream social with our friends

25- Swim

26- Practice astronomy late at night by our fire pit in the backyard

27- Make up our own holiday, invite our friends to celebrate

28- Yoga (I have had enough classes to lead the kids through a salutation)

29- Decorate our dinner table for different days (inspired by The Family Dinner)

30- At home ‘spa’ day

31- Add 1 hour of reading/quiet time into our day

32- Make popsicles (we did this one yesterday with just juice, so easy!)

33- Dollar movies

34- Activities at the local library

35- Make a BUNCH of homemade play-doh and let em’ at it

36- Bowling

37- Board games, card games, etc.

38- Pajama day (we stay in p.j’s all day and eat pancakes and watch movies, great for winter too!)

39- Publish our own books

40- Playground

41- Create clay creatures

42- Make gak (you know, the stuff like play-doh except made with glue)

43- Learn to juggle

44- Giving day (we pick a group/organization/or individual to do something nice for)

45- Take the dogs to the dog park

46- Make our own chalk and chalk on the sidewalk.

47- Paint some rocks (they have kits for this at the craft store, but if you have paint already, go find some rocks!)

48- Host a tea party

49- Puzzle hour (pull out all the puzzles and let the kids try them OR get one to do as a family)

50- Make cards and send them to people

51- Work in our sketch pads/nature books

52- A day at a local lake

53- Their own activities to pursue their own interests! (swim class, tennis, t-ball)

So there you have it, 53 things to keep your summer days busy, and hopefully the kids not fighting!  I am sure we will not get to them all and will do some of these in the winter too, but we are having fun so far since I made the list, it makes it way easy when things start to go downhill to just head to the list and pick one.

Enjoy and share your summer activities for inspiration!

For the last month or so, we have been studying Alaska.  We just finished up, with our grand finale of an art project.  I can’t tell you how tired I am of doing ‘crafts’ with the kids.  Since we began doing more ‘unit’ studies in our homeschooling around geographical regions, I have been trying to step up the art that goes with each area, and avoid the ‘craft’.

I have faith that kids can do more than popsicle stick activities.  Give them real art sensations and tools, real pastels, real fabrics, real photographs to explore.  Why does it so often have to be paper bags and crayons?

I digress.

I got the idea for this hunting Inuit quiver project from a book in the library called Hands On Alaska.  Again, the craft idea was to use a paper bag to make the quiver.  Instead, I went to the sewing store and got some 40% off suede, on sale due to the end of season.

They were pretty easy to make, if a bit time consuming to make three of them.

1- I started by cutting the shape I wanted on the fold of the fabric to get two sides.  I then turned it inside out and sewed around the outside edge, leaving a two inch hole at the bottom next to the fabric fold to put the strap in later.

2- I folded a half inch over the top of the bag and sewed around that. Then turned the bag right side out.

3- I then cut a long three inch piece of fabric, measured to my kiddos backs, turned it inside out and sewed the edge together, then turned it right side out again.  I then sewed both edges at the 1/4 inch, to make the edges flat, but also to give it that ‘hand sewed’ look.

4- I inserted one end of the strap into the opening at the bottom of the bag, and sewed around the bag on the outside edge, again, for the hand made look.

5- To sew the top of the strap in, I sewed it to the opposite side edge of the top of the bag, taking care to actually SHOW the stitches!

This was the last one completed, so it turned out the best of course!

Here are all three bags finished.

To decorate my bag, I made slits with the scissors around the edge and threaded another piece of suede through the hole.  Then I put a bead on over both ends and hot glued a real bird feather to the inside of each one! The kids did all their decorating with the glue gun, beads, and feathers directly on the bags wherever it suited them.  Which is totally the plan!

Here are our finished Inuit quiver bags!  A fine ending to a fun unit studying igloos, the Iditarod, lots of famous dogs, lots of cool animals, and the wildness of Alaska.

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Remember not so long ago, I dyed playsilks for the first time with a friend of mine? You can read that post here. Well, this weekend I took to task playing catch up with so many of the projects that had been cluttering up our living space.  First on the list?  Finishing up those playsilks I had yet to finish.

This time? Some tie-dye!

We got a pretty groovy system going that was very efficient.  First, two big pots on the back of the stove.  One for the hottest of tap water, and one for simmering water.  After I had soaked the plain silks, I would dump that water into the simmering pot in which I had just taken hot water from.  It worked great to keep the train moving.

1-Fill one about half way with the tap water and pour a bit of vinegar in, I did about 1/4 C.

2-Get the next one simmering on the stove full.  I started with super hot tap water to speed things along. No vinegar.

3-Soak the playsilks you are getting ready to dye for about 15 minutes in the tap hot water.

4-Place the simmering water into a bowl for one color projects, or ball jars, or Bhakti Chai jars as we did, for each color desired.

5-Add a 1/4 C vinegar to a bowl project, a dash to a ball jar tie-dye project.

6-Dump in your Kool-Aid packets.  Three for a bowl, one or two for a jar.  Lemonade isn’t that dark, so you will need more.

7-Drop in your project to a main color and continue to move it around.  OR, for tie-dye, rubber band clusters of fabric together, I did two or three bands per cluster and dip them into the ball jars one at a time, using different colors.

8-Wring them out, and dry them out on a clothesline or in your bathroom and you are done!

I have to admit, I LOVED the tie-dye ones WAY better.  They turned out beautifully and the kids went crazy over them.  Not to mention they looked lovely blowing in the wind on Saturday!

Our reflection in the grape Kool-Aid!

Putting the playsilk in the grape dye.  I wanted to show you how the water looks from beginning to end.

This is the water after just a couple minutes!  The silk absorbed all of the grape Kool-Aid!

A ready to go silk with seven jars of colors behind! Here we go…

I was so nervous, but there was really no reason to be!  It was super easy and they turned out so cool. It is an amazing thing when intention and reality actually meet.

My sons tie day silk!

This color turned out to be our favorite!  Black Cherry.  I suggest you get some because the color was so stupendously vibrant and beautiful!

Isn’t it striking?  Who new this about Kool-Aid?

Ahh…our efforts blowing in the wind as if calling us to slow down and take it all in.  An invitation back to the moment.

My favorite photo of the day.

Try some of these at home!  It was really fun, and they tuck away nicely in the living room in a basket with a lid found at the thrift store with a pile of clothespins added for creativity sake!

Here they are, our new little nature table friends.  I used the flower fairy pattern and instructions from Wee Folk Art again which you can find here.  The gnomes were so dang cute I couldn’t help but use their adorable pattern for the fairies too.

This is the daffodil fairy.  She was the first one I tried and WOW, it did take awhile to figure out.  The two I made after became much easier with each attempt!  I had to You Tube search the running stitch and the daisy stitch and learn them as I went, but it was worth it, and not very hard once I saw the videos.

The blue one was the next, and my son picked out all the colors.  It was quite adorable how cute he thought they were.  He was equally excited as his sister to get one that he designed made especially for him.

The pink and purple fairy was the last to make, and it was WAY faster than the first one.  Once I got the hang of the new stitches I needed to learn it was a breeze.

The flowers came from our local gardening center.  When we got our seeds and raspberries the other day, they were trimming a bunch of plants and let the kids gather however many they wanted from the floor!  Perfect for the spring nature table.

The wood blocks are the Branch Block Building Set from Imagine Childhood. You can see them here.  I actually got them for the kids for Christmas, and thought they were bigger.  When they came I thought they were a bit too old for the blocks  so I didn’t give the blocks to them, but put them on a shelf in my closet for maybe a birthday for another little child.  But then when we finished the nature table, I thought they were perfect!

And the kids have been playing with them everyday since, arranging their fairies, rocks, blocks, flowers, and gnomes!

We used the yellow play silk from our dying activity here a few weeks ago to cover our log, and this little space is ready for little hands to explore and add their own natural touches too.

Oh my goodness.

How cute are these little people?

I stayed up a bit past my bed time last night making them.  I was getting very tired of checking everyone’s blogs I follow to see the loveliest of projects splattered all over their pages, while I struggle to find time to shower everyday.  FYI, so far I have not had time yet today.

I saw similar gnomes at a friends house a few weeks ago, and thought they were adorable.  I have been wanting to set up a Waldorf inspired nature table for the kids, but really wanted a large log instead of a table.  And of course more available time to do such.  But last night I made these two darlings, and today, we got ourselves a log.

The log is still sitting in the back of my car, I can’t move it.  I will be waiting till the hubby gets home from work for this excavation.  But the two little fellers look so at home on their new table.  Now we can collect our joys of Spring to add to it from our daily adventures!

The felt gnome tutorial came from Wee Folk Art, and you can see it here.

I did not know how to blanket stitch, such a novice, so I got that tutorial from this video, all here for your convenience so you can make your own happy felt gnomes! They were fast and fun.

I am trying to stick to a Spring theme and make some for each season. I didn’t want them too bright, I mean, Spring starts this week, and there isn’t a lot of green or flowers around these parts yet. They will come.

The wind has really been on my mind lately too, hence the blue felt gnome with the brown trim. I did the brown trim to represent the trees as they are at the beginning of the season. The purple and yellow gnome represents the joys of the early crocuses.

Stay tuned for felt fairies, forthcoming for my little gal! Maybe one of my fairies will need to be daffodil inspired, my favorite of all the Spring blooms!

*Crafters tip: I got two of the wood pegs at Micheal’s for $1.99. I got a bag of 8 at Hobby Lobby for $2.99. Just FYI!

We went to a friends house on Tuesday to dye playsilks.

I must admit she did ALL of the research in how to take part in this little activity.  She did all the diligent reading and then pieced together from all the differing opinions what directions we would do.  You can read her blog post about our day here.

First she ordered all the silks per specifications on what we wanted, from the Dharma Trading Company.

Then we purchased lots and lots and lots of Kool-Aid.

First we soaked the silks in hot tap water with a bit of distilled vinegar, maybe 1/4 C for like 15-30 mins.  I don’t know for sure, of course we had children there who required managing and feeding and it became much more of a wing it exercise, at least for me.   We then took 5 C of simmering water and put it in a separate pot with more vinegar, amount of vinegar depending on the size of the silk, most of ours were 30×30, but I got a few that were longer for the kids to have. I would say it was 1/4 C to 1/2 C.

It was nice, smart, to have one pot simmering water and other pots available for actual dying.

Once the water and vinegar was in the pot, it was time to add the Kool-Aid color.

We stirred the mixture till it was dissolved and then added two silks at a time.

It was pretty important to keep moving the silks around at first, our first two yellow ones turned out really light and white in a few bigger areas because I didn’t mix them while they were absorbing the color.  You can see the color leave the water and color the silks.  When there is no more color in the pot of water, they are done!

These were the colors we did at my friends house.  Yellow, pink, blue, and red.  I did not have pink lemonade at my local store, so she was kind enough to share for my little ‘princess’ who loves pink.  And for the blue, we used 20 drops of food coloring.

I still have a pot full of like 30 Kool-Aid packets!  We did not get all of ours done, I still have 6 left, but I am looking forward to trying some tie-dye versions and get a bit more creative now that I understand what to do, and don’t mind making a bigger mess in my kitchen than I would have wanted to make in a friends!  With Kool-Aid.  On counters and floors.  And kids.

I will update this project next week when the kids and I have gotten crazy with some dye!  I am dreaming of hanging them on a line and just watching them blow in the spring-ish breeze!

I have been wanting to try tie-dying shirts with the kids, but have been too afraid, I think this got me in the mood to try sometime soon though!  Maybe in the summer when we can dye outside…not on the white 1973 linoleum in our kitchen!

(Sorry for the lack of great photos, my camera is still MIA and I used my kids camera’s!)

Spill it: Have you ever done a dye project with your kids?  What things beside playsilks have you attempted?

“Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.”  ~Pablo Picasso

In homeschooling, there were two commitments I wanted to make to myself and my kiddos.  One, that we did science a lot.  Two, that we did art equally as often.

Only one problem with these ideals, I often run the risk of worrying about reading and math, and less about the creative forces that inspire children to really find out who they are at their depths.  Last years school experience and the fact that they wanted to hold my son in kindergarten again, has set a tone of catch up in my mind.  I worry more about whether he is on par than whether he is passionate.

Big miskate.  Same mistake I fear happens so often in school, regardless of the location in which it is taking place. The creative juices in humanity will be as important in solving the issues facing my children’s generation as knowledge of math will be.

With that rant in place, this is the art project we worked on this week!  We were doing a unit on the Arctic and Antarctica, when I stumbled upon this little gem from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge site, stained glass art. (click green link for full instructions)

We had to buy an array of permanent markers for this project, and they aren’t cheap, over $18 with a large selection of colors, but they were worth the purchase in the long run!  I am sure we will use them over and over.

Busily coloring their transparencies, I was pleasantly surprised that it cost me less than $5 to copy six pictures onto transparencies for this.

Mama’s first finished attempt, to see that this was all about.  I was a little worried as we colored the transparencies that this was going to be lame, but they are really quite cool when the aluminum foil went on the back!  They are so sparkly when the light is on in the school room!

My sons first finished caribou!

My daughters finished Kestrel…don’t tell her, but I totally wanted to do this one!

When all was said and done, they turned out beautifully!  And the kids loved this art project, they couldn’t stop saying how much they loved it as we were doing them!

Last month we were studying Africa and reading tons of books from the library.  To round out our introductory study, my kids are in preschool and first grade, we did an awesome papier-mache craft!

The initial idea came from here.

Ours did not turn out nearly as cool as the one in the how-to video I eventually found above, but we had fun none the less!  Truth be told, the kids did not LOVE the papier-mache part, surprisingly they didn’t like getting their hands dirty.

What?

Who’s children spend all summer playing with the mud in the back yard?

I did most of the mache part after the first day. They did their whole first layer, but when we started again on the second day, they each got to put on a strip or two before they decided it wasn’t much for them. Of course, the things need four layers, which we only did three of since our newspaper was already white we didn’t need the computer paper layer.

There is also a mistake in the video directions about the water vs. flour mixture. For me, I had to adjust their initial recipe. It was way too thick and way too much considering we had to wait a day to start again after drying.

It was still heaps of fun whether they did the actual mache part after the first day or not!  I am not going to lie though, making the shapes on the kids cheetah head, they had to pick African animals to make, was not as easy as it looked in the video.  Of course they don’t actually show it in the video…that is probably why.

But the kids loved, loved, LOVED painting them!  In fact they woke up the next morning and got more paint out and painted them again!

They would have painted them again, but I think the cheetahs made it out of revision number two looking fabulous!

Here is our final display place on the wall in the school room.  They look so awesome.  While they did take the whole week to make and ample amounts of flour it was well worth the works of art gracing our wall!  The kids are certainly proud every time they take a peek at their creations!

Spill it: What is the most hefty craft you have undertaken with your kiddos?  Was it worth it in the end?  Or would you have rather quit while you were ahead?

I finished my second scarf ever.

It isn’t much better than the first.

This was the first one I did two winters ago.  It is as crooked as can be, and I haven’t decided yet if I will rip it out and start over, or keep it as a ‘see how far you’ve come’ relic.

As you can see, I am far from an evolved homemaker in which I can knit in my spare time while educating two children and keeping a house running all while pursuing my own passions like gardening, knitting, writing, sewing etc.  My first scarf was two stinkin’ years ago circa January and my second attempt I finished a week ago.  And it is crooked too.  With a gaping hole to boot.

I didn’t bother to sew the ends into the scarf, due to the fact I am fairly certain I will dissect this thing and begin again.  It is unfortunate, seeing as how it will probably be another two years until I finish it the second time.

Which is a total bummer, because as you can see the second half was a perfectly knitted scarf!  It is the first half that was less than extraordinary!

Just for an FYI, the best site I have found for beginning knitters was sent to me by my mother-in-law.  You can find lots of information and videos to boot at Knitting Help.

Evidently, I am continuing to evolve…if ever so slowly…into an urban homesteader, knitter, mother, wife, sewer, handy gal, crafter, homeschooler, chef, baker, author, and whatever other bee in my bonnet may arise in the future, kind of homemaker.  I am so O.K. with it at this moment.  I, for once, am beginning to enjoy the journey!

Spill it: What crafting disaster have you had of late?  If any?

Except, not this year.

Every year, I make the intention that I am going to be creative for Christmas and everyone I know will receive some lovely, handmade, crafted, cooked, off the beaten path wonder.  Yet, every single year I put the actual ‘making’ of said items off until the last moment, and then race around doing the store dash along with everyone else.

To make matters worse, I spend countless hours deciding on what to get for my kids.  I search high and low for things I think they will like, some plastic crudola, some from the Montessori catalog, and some that come highly ‘recommended’.  And guess what?  The kids spend all year letting dust gather on those things I was sure they would spend days playing with, while they pull blankets out of our closet and boxes out of the recycle bin and play with THOSE.

It can all drive a Momma friggin’ crazy.

So due to the circumstance surrounding my year, here is the post on such, and the reality of children, my expectations, their expectations, time available etc, I have decided to make my life a lot easier this year.

I AM MAKING NOTHING.

Hear that everyone!?

I AM NOT STRESSING MYSELF OUT WITH GREEN AND RESPONSIBLE ONLY PURCHASES!

They don’t always exist.

I HAVE RELEASED MYSELF FROM KID-KID EXCHANGES!

And planned a quality time gathering instead.

INSTEAD OF TOYS, OR SMART GAMES, OR THINGS I THINK WILL MAKE THEM SMARTER, THE KIDS ARE GETTING THINGS THEY NEED FOR THEIR NEW ROOMS!

I won’t hate myself for buying stuff they will never use…a desk, they will.  A chair, they will sit their butt in too…

SANTA WILL BRING THINGS MADE IN CHINA!

Lego’s and pink will abound.

I AM DOING SIMPLE GIFTS OF PHOTOS FOR ALL THOSE TEENS ON MY LIST AND FAMILY MEMBERS!

No electronic gadgets or gift cards.

I AM GOING TO BE DONE WITH ALL OF IT BY THIS WEEKEND!

I don’t want it to drag throughout the entire season.

INSTEAD OF ALL THE STRESS OF PAST HOLIDAYS, I AM GOING TO SPEND THE SEASON WITH MY BABIES.

And I am going to enjoy all the small moments with them.  I am going to watch the magic of the holiday reflected to me in their faces, the wonder of it all in their eyes. We are going to have lots of hot chocolate and candy canes.  We are going to go to parades and lighting ceremonies and The Nutcracker all dressed to the nines.  We are going to read Christmas stories and snuggle under blankets.  We are going to do crafts I always want to do, but never have the time or energy to add to the holiday.

I am going to cry at the beauty of it all, cause I always do.

I am going to remember time with them isn’t infinite.

I am going to remember I am blessed.

This year, I am going to give my kids the gift of their Mom.

Spill it: Do you find present purchasing frustrating?  After so much time planning the gifts for your kids, do they actually play with the stuff?  Do you ever wish you could get moments back once the holidays are over? How much do you love watching holiday joy in the eyes of your babes?

Once a month I go to a woman’s house who lives in my hood that leads all those there through Spirit Journeys.  It is somewhat like meditation, except you call in animal guides and ask them for help or clarity understanding some aspect of your life you are questioning.

This week left a strong message deep within me, and it had nothing to do with my actual journey.

At the end of the evening we were talking about unhealthy behaviors and addictions, or how community dis-ease manifests in things such as depression, addiction, hoarding, etc.

Our faithful leader, mentioned that native peoples all over the world believe that treatment for people with any sort of these issues begins with community.  She started to mention things such as depression and then looked right at me and probably really wanted to say anxiety, but since I had set my intention on grounding my anxiety for my journey, she proceeded to say, “and other things” but didn’t take her gaze away until I began to chuckle uncomfortably.

‘And other things.’

I started to think about how much I have want a strong sense of community since I can remember, but my anxiety gets in the way of it!  I get terribly nervous in new situations with new people.  At most events with more than five people, I hope to blend into the wall as much as possible.  I don’t often call my friends to get together, because I continually am surprised that they actually DO want to hang out with ME when THEY call.  After most hang outs or play dates, I just hope that I haven’t said anything offensive or rude.  I second guess everything, and am riddled with past incidences that haunt me about my many inadequacies as a friend in the past.

Funny thing, when I started this blog I really wanted to have a group of ladies that got together to do some of these activities that I was wanting to learn and build sense of community in my own little urban way.  It was really hard to get dates that worked for everyone, there seemed to always be a conflict.  So I started the blog instead, to keep my focus on those things I wanted to try; a simple life, knitting, canning, gardening, etc. Yet what I have been hearing recently is that lots of people are feeling the same need for some strong community ties!

A sense of community.

I left the circle with the commitment to myself to work on community in my life.  To building stronger relationships that I can initiate and help continue, instead of using my fear as a way to wait for others to make the investment first.  Maybe I will start that group again of those that may be interested in cultivating a simpler life, crafting, cooking, and such.  I will certainly try and call my friends and plan time together.  I will probably join a Divine Feminine group at church that meets twice a month.

So many opportunities to create community that I have been too afraid to attempt because of my anxiety and shyness.  But maybe the native cultures are on to something, that community can make all the difference for so many of us, that often we feel like we are out there in this enormous world all by ourselves.  That no one understands, that everyone else has it so together and we are the only lonely ones stuck in a catch-22 between wanting community and terror at all things unfamiliar.

Community.  Yes.  Community.

That will be my mantra for the next month.

Spill it: Do you feel like you have a strong support community around you?  Do you live near family and they are mostly your community?  Or do you live far away from family and have successfully cultivated a sense of community on your own?

For once, and I swear it must be the first time ever, I am actually looking forward to this winter.

I hate the cold.

I hate the snow.

I am usually stir crazy by the end of the winter and ready for days at the park, picnics with the kids, hikes in the mountains.

Oh wait.  I have two small kids.  I don’t get out for hikes anymore…

With all the work that went on this summer in our side yard garden, our backyard mess, and extensive time away, I am ready to snuggle up in bed on a few cold nights and re-learn how to knit.  And this year I vow to make a hat.  I have always wanted to knit myself a hat.

I also wanted to make that straw hat I was all excited about, from Mary Jane’s Farm Magazine out of raffia.

I really want to sew something for myself.  A cute farm dress like Farmama has made on her site, check it out here. Maybe something pieced together from a couple thrift store finds.  A long, flowy skirt. Just one of those things would be nice to get to.

I would really love to get to that knitted item out of old t-shirts, and really would like to get to that wool recycled purse I ogled over last winter in a green craft magazine.

I would like to cook more from scratch.

I took my first ever drumming lesson last night and LOVED it. Can’t wait to score one from Santa and learn even more.

The number of things I find on other blogs I want to try to do too is endless.  Really. Endless.

And last night as I was laying in bed thumbing through this months issue of Mary Jane’s Farm, which landed in my mailbox yesterday, I began to look forward to long dark nights.  Time hunkered down and inside due to snow; evenings spent catching up on all the dream projects I have collected in my mind all year.   Projects I want to share with you, so you can try em’ too!

Yes.

I am ready.

To come in from the outside.

To come back to soul time.

To enjoy some homemade hot cocoa.

To dabble.

Spill it: What are you most looking forward to about the upcoming winter? Are there any projects you have been dying to get snowed in to try?

Just sharing a few photos today of some felt board projects we have come up with and actually finished.  I may have a gazillion ideas in my head, and just checked out a book from the library for even more, but these are the ones that have come to fruition!

Why is it that the number of things we want to create and the amount of time in a day don’t coincide?  God must have organized time on the same day as creating the mosquito and the tick, it was just one of those days…

Here we have an oceanic scene, complete with orca, dolphin, crab, starfish, clown fish, coral and seaweed.   Who cares if there are some discrepancies in size issues…I am sure there are some breeds of octopus that are the same size as starfish…I just don’t know about them…yet.

I am most proud of these little 3-D fishies!  Their fins jut out into space!

A number activity for the little ones!

And weather for the day that the kids can observe every morning and pick out the corresponding felt! Of course by three o’clock every afternoon it will need to be changed…this is Colorado after all.  My son insisted on the tornado, so a tornado he got.  I am sure it will be used more often with our farm scene than on our whether chart, but hey, you never know.

After I go through the library book and create more madness, I will update again, and then I will be on a felt hiatus for a few weeks at least! The uses for the boards in education are really endless!

Spill it: Name one thing that you have a gazillion ideas for, yet you have not the time to complete!  I know everyone has at least one area…what is yours? Recipes?  Scrapbooking?  Trails you want to run?

Man oh man. I got the greatest little surprise in the mail yesterday from my Mom. A care package of the living simply, re-using sort.

Ahh…opening it was even better than all of those camp care packages full of M&M’s and Jolly Ranchers I was always begging my sister to send in long winded letters written far from home when I was a kid.  Of course she never actually sent one of those begged for care packages…  She often surprises me nowadays with a little package here and there, a book or two since she is fully aware of my printed page obsession.  Probably pent up camp care package guilt…

My first surprise:

Two bags full of fake flowers.  Lame for some, but you have no idea how many things I have used plastic flowers for.  From afternoon tea party hats for my daughter to her fairy costume.  And if you have ever caught the price of the ‘fakes’ in the craft store for scrapbooking, you will understand the score I just made!

Then:

Sweet Hallelujah! Raffia.  Sounds exciting doesn’t it?  But for me, it is a gold mine.  I was telling my Madre on the phone the other day that this months issue of Mary Jane’s Farm had a pattern for making a straw sun hat out of raffia that I totally wanted to attempt to make.  With the scores of other things of course on my list of ‘I wanna’s’.

Of course there was the:

Sticks for rolling sushi?  Not 100% positive, but if I had to lend a guess, sushi rollers is what I would guess!  So fun!  It has actually never occurred to me to try making sushi from scratch!  Yet, this will now be added to the list of things I must try too!

And last but not least…drum roll please…no longer drum roll…a little bit longer….looonnngggeeeer…..ok….

Wallah:

Did you see the sky opening and hear the heavenly trumpets in their glory to my new cheese making kit?  Oh I so heard them as I got to this little diddy.  A CHEESE MAKING KIT!

My list is ever growing of the things I desperately want to get my hands dirty doing.  So much to do, so little time.  This Mama is going to have to start setting up one goal a week to achieve.  Of course, heaps of hours have been spent in my garden over the last few weeks, you will be shocked at the difference when you see a glimpse of some photos on Thursday, but once the garden is under control…hmmm…the dreams I have…

Isn’t my Mommy the greatest!?  This so beats even a camp care package of Newman’s O’s.

Spill it: Share a bit of the crafts you have yet to get to, or yet to finish for that matter!  All the blogs I follow have these amazing finished products to show and I am in awe at how these Mama’s have time to do it!  How do you make time?

I fell in love yesterday.  Utterly and completely, all at once, during an impromptu visit to the bookstore.  I stumbled upon a magazine I have never been privy to before, and it was awesome.

I perused it as my daughter was munching away on a dragonfly cookie.  Without the cookie, I wouldn’t have had a chance at reading it.  It had a hefty price tag at $14.99, so I wasn’t going to be able to actually buy it. But one day, I will most definitely be fitting it into the budget.

It is called Green Craft Magazine, and it is chock full of surprising and fun things to do while re-using items in the house or thrift store; even your junk mail.  It was really, really a fun magazine.

Hands down, my favorite things in the magazine were these purses made by felted sweaters and clothes from the thrift store!  I thought they were adorable, and I cannot wait to try one of my own.  Check out the purses at Grandma Peden’s Porch and if you can, support a fellow crafter by buying one!  If you can’t buy one get creative, head to your local thrift store, or hey head to your own closet and use your old clothes you aren’t wearing anymore!  Check out Marilyn’s blog too, she just had a workshop, so I can’t wait to see and read all about it!

I am probably the last person in the universe to have not felted a sweater before.  No surprise there.  So I went all over the net for instructions and ended up with a bunch of different advice.  One site says the sweater has to be at least 50% wool, others said 80%, and still another said 100%.  That is a big difference, and because I have never done it, I can’t really give you advice on that.  Do what I do, and experiment!  The journey is part of the overall enjoyment.  Right?  So throw your wool sweater into the laundry on hot, with a tiny bit of detergent and when it is done, toss it in the dryer.  Then cut, design, and sew your new purse or bag!

The world of possibilities this project opens, is just phenomenal.  Think about it, baby bags made from baby clothes, purses and messenger bags made from thrift store gems, fun bags and backpacks for your kids, gifts for your favorite gal friends…oh my goodness how I wish there were more than a mere twenty four hours in a day!

Get your sewing machines out and get stitching!  What are you waiting for?

Spill it: Please share photos/links in the comments or email jen@theevolvinghomemaker.com of your projects!  I think this is the funnest thing since sliced cheese and can’t wait to see and hear what you came up with and share them with the rest of the readers here!

I’ll be totally candid here…yes, I was turning on the T.V. for my daughter to watch Curious George on DVR, and on the PBS station at that exact moment was a woman explaining how she makes her own yarn for knitting from old clothes!

YES!

I had seen this once before in my all time favorite magazine Mary Jane’s Farm in her April-May 2009 issue.  The first issue of Mary Jane I ever got off the stand at our local natural grocers.  I ordered a subscription right away I was so in love immediately!  Mary Jane to me is the Martha Stewart of simple, organic, beautiful, and peaceful living.   The magazine is printed on recycled paper, full of amazing ideas and beautiful photos.  After your first read, you just might want to be her.  At least I do!

The magazine had a photo and instructions on how to knit old t-shirts into rugs.  The moment I feasted my eyes on it I knew I would try it…someday.  In all honesty, I am not the best knitter.  Chuckle.  As if you expected me to be!  In fact, the next time I do try to knit something, it will have been so long since the last time, I will have to jump on an online tutorial my mother-in-law sent me for heaps of reminders.  I have been feeling the urge as of late to find my knitting bag amongst the disaster I call a closet, maybe this program on T.V. was just the thing to wet my appetite for knitting again.

Basically you cut your old t-shirts, or ones you’ve gotten from the thrift store, into at least 1/4″ strips.  (1 inch for the rug) Then cut the circular strips at some point to create the long flat strips.  Then you can either tie the ends in a knot, yes the knot will show a bit, but it will add some character to your scarf or rug.  Or if you don’t want the connections to show as much, you can cut a one inch slit into both ends of each of the strips, lengthwise.  Thread one strip through the hole of one strip then back through the other hole at the other end of the one you are threading through.  Pull it tied.  (Mary Jane’s explains it as how you would tie rubber bands together.) Or, you can cut your t-shirt in a spiral all the way up the shirt to have less connections!  Roll all of your connected strips into a yarn ball!  SO easy!

The woman on Knitting Daily on PBS, and I so wish I had caught her name, had made a scarf out of an old skirt she got in Paris.  She also had an enormous ball made of old jean strips!  She was thinking of trying to make a rug out of them.  She did emphasize that often with working with homemade strips, she had to start over and change her needle gauges, or make the rows smaller, etc.  It will be trial and error for the first few tries!

So get thrifting and get knitting!  I can’t wait to find some of my husbands old shirts that have holes in them to cut to pieces!  Of course he still wears them, holes and all, so I might have to use physical force to wrestle them away from him…

Who knew I would be cringing about all the clothes I have passed on the Goodwill!  Oh what I could turn them into now!!

Spill it: Show us the photos of your recycled knitting project in the comments!  I want to see the attempts!  I will post mine in a blog post follow up!

No tutorials here.  I made this one up.  Even though, I have to admit, it wasn’t really that hard.  The hardest part has been trying to find time to finish them!

Pillows.

I made pillows.

Not pillows for the couch, or pillows for the bed; literally pillows for my butt.  Lucky for the other butt’s in this family, I made one for each of them too.  Our cheeks officially have a soft place to land.

And if you are a smarty pants, you have already figured out why me, the sewing imbecile, thought it necessary to overcome my intense fear of the sewing machine to make such a thing as a pillow.

And if you are not a smarty pants, I will give you a pass assuming that as an incredibly busy Mom, you didn’t have time to read my post from Wednesday.  I forgive you because I am hopelessly behind in so many areas of my life, I have no room to pass judgment.

The pillows I made are for the morning sage ritual my kids and I have been partaking in as of late.

I bought these beautiful colors of silk from the fabric store that I absolutely could not resist.  They reminded me of photos of Nepal and Tibet.  A world of bright colors against barren jagged landscapes.  The saffron of a monks robe, the blue of prayer flag floating on the breeze, they were all so beautiful I couldn’t decide.  Lucky enough for me, the kids have favorite colors, so the black and pink were easy choices.

Now our butts, well the kids butts at least, as there are still two pillows with pins across one side as Mommy hasn’t exactly had time to hand sew them closed yet, have some padding for our ceremonial mornings.

Success!

Ha!

I crafted.

Last week.

And it was great.

A few moths ago, I was Googling Montessori for the home ideas.  My son is going to a Montessori charter and after an afternoon visit for him to show me his works I was so utterly impressed that I went home and began my journey on how to incorporate those philosophies in the home.

During my search I came across this amazing website I have been dying to show you, and unable to, until now!  I feel Sew Liberated!  Here is Meg’s branch tutorial, and the original mobile and pattern at Spool Sewing.

I fell instantly and deeply in love with the tiny little creatures on a stick the moment I saw them hanging on the wall.

Birds.

I knew at once that my kids would have them as soon as they moved into their own rooms, and that for the upcoming baby shower for a dear friend, I would attempt these delightful gems.

It wasn’t exactly easy.  As I have alluded before, free flowing creativity with any sort of materials and young children don’t always get along.  And sure enough this adventure was no different.  At first it was all going very well.  My daughter sat and ate her lunch on the floor next to me as I meticulously cut out each of the nine feathered friends.  She helped me stack them neatly, even mentioning that when she grew up, both of use could make these together.

Then the sewing machine had to come out.  Sigh.

With the sewing machine comes all kinds of goodies for a three year old.  Thread that can be pulled in all directions and wrapped around heads, pins that can be happily flung to the carpet and left for the puppy to ingest, and heaps of already threaded bobbins unraveled across the floor with evil glee.

Exasperated sigh.

I decided after the second bird was done, I was going to be up late that night instead.  There is no use and no fun in yelling at my daughter so I can make birds for a baby shower.  Mommy can just stay up later, it would be more enjoyable for all involved that way.  And it was.

In the end, I only had to make four of the nine birds twice.  Each needed to be re-done for its own reasons.  One turned out looking more like an anteater than a bird.  One looked like a conehead from Saturday Night Live.  I suppose I could have passed it off as a cardinal.  One of my favorites the first time around looked as if Dr. Oz had just gotten done with her, her chest cavity bared a handful of stitches that could be seen from afar.  Oh, and the very first one had a less than desirable hand sewing job on his tail.  Mind you, it is the first time I have attempting closing an opening on anything by hand like that since I was ten.  I quite possibly could have done it in Home Ec in high school too, but I am not going to say exactly how long ago that was, and will say I mostly took Home Ec for the Orange Julius’s we got to make not the sewing.

The hardest part was finding a suitable stick.  I don’t think I actually found a suitable stick, but I was running out of time.  After all, I had stayed up late the night before the shower sewing a few tails, and had gotten up early that morning to finish a few more.  I will admit though, it was a task that created a lot of serenity in me and I secretly was really loving making every individual bird.  I somehow felt as if I had a relationship with each of them and was birthing each special one, for a very special friend, for a very special occasion.

It is true.  These little tweeters became quiet comrades.

So the stick wasn’t perfect, and I almost cried multiple times while trying to wrap the damn thing.  How do you wrap a stick anyway?  I had a good box a few weeks ago, and then my son sawed it into little pieces with his stocking stuffer tool set.  I ended up wrapping tissue paper around the whole thing, in different colors.  It looked terrible.  I was utterly embarrassed bringing it to the shin dig.

Seriously.

Everyone else had these beautifully wrapped gifts with delicate tags.  Special baby gift bags with hues of tissue paper that matched.  Baskets with all matching items inside…and then there is my stick…wrapped in mismatched tissue paper…cause one would need a lot of one color paper to have covered that thing…

But who cares?  My heart desperately loved them.  They were somehow so beautifully and perfectly innocent.

Geez, I am so proud of myself I can barely contain it.

This year for Christmas ‘Thank You’ cards I really kept going back and forth as to what I was going to do.  There is pressure here ya know?  My Mom, my Mother-in-law, and her sister all make these stunning homemade, out of card stock, with months in the planning cards, ribbons that match, with lots of sparkles and/or all other forms of card ‘booty’ attached.

For every holiday.

Even for faux holidays like anniversaries.  Most of the time if it wasn’t for them, my husband and I would actually forget our anniversary was even on its way.  I swear my Mother-in-law has figured that out so she sends the anniversary ones really early so my husband and I have time to scramble.

Needless to say, when it comes to ‘Thank You’ time, I really feel like I should lovingly make the  cards.  I would actually like to make some cards.  Come to think of it, the few times I actually have made cards, I think I was pretty good at it!

But if anyone else has ever tried to make cards with any sort of ribbon and card ‘booty’ with a five and three year old around, you know what a disaster that can turn into.  A disaster in a phenomenally short amount of time.  I spend more time yelling “Quit that!”, than actually doing anything.  Which can surprisingly take the fun out of cutting, pasting, designing, and punching, rather quickly.

And I will admit now, that usually I run to Target and buy the cheapest box o ‘cards I can find.  Twenty for $3.99.  And diligently fill them out.  I had that wish a few times over the last few weeks.  “Just go to Target and grab your box.  It will be relatively painless, and forgive yourself for shopping un-environmentally, you’ve been sick for cryin’ out loud.”

Yes.

I talk to myself.

I am a Mom.

There is no one else to talk to like a grown-up most of the time.

But then I got an idea.  A few weeks back a friend of mine had sent card stock white thank you cards with ‘Thank You’ in cursive with a black Sharpie across the middle.

Really?  That’s it? I can do that?

And I did.

Except, and here is the ‘I am so proud of myself bit’, I had the kids sit next to me and cut all the paper with the special paper cutter.  I painstakingly wrote across them in Sharpie, ‘Thank You’, then went to the cupboard, pulled out every sticker in our house, and had the kids decorate the cards!

I know right now you are thinking, “Wow, really brilliant.  Your a crafty Mom that had her kids do all the work.  I am so not reading this ladies blog ever again.”

But here is the deal.

Many years back, as our families and friends were branching out faster than our bank account, we decided that we would only exchange gifts for kids from now on.  So, my kids are the only ones who got gifts.  (Well, thanks for the two pounds of chocolate See’s heaven Mom.)

For five years I have been sitting there making and or buying cards and writing these little benedictions for my kids!  How exactly is that helping them learn to show gratitude too?

This little gem helps them learn to show their appreciation in a way that they can actually feel good about.  Deep down I think the Grandma’s will like getting these even better than anything I would do anyway.