It’s official. I’m pooped. This has been an incredibly productive and exhausting weekend. Beginning with my Grandma, Mom, and I painting the girl’s bunk-beds and then later that same day my Dad and I installed an extra shelf in my laundry room. Saturday, DD1 had her first dance class, and then today we resumed our remodeling efforts after church.

The plan is to tile the downstairs half-bath, install wall paper and trim as well as wainscoting. We even made some great headway. Dh and Dad primed the wainscoting, removed the existing tile, and my Mom and I hung the wallpaper. Tomorrow we’re installing the moulding around the ceiling and will lay the tile. Once the tile is down we’re going to add the grout, install the wainscoting and then put the trim around the doors. After that we’ll put the toilet, sink, and mirror back.

The goal is to have all this done before Dh goes back to work on Thursday. I’m keeping my fingers crossed, but know it’s no simple task to do these types of projects when four “littles” need lots of mama and dada attention.

Did I mention I’m exhausted? This project took on a life of it’s own. And now something simple promises to be quite consuming.

Last year, one of the projects I made for my folk’s Christmas was this neat little family tree. Reminiscent of an abacus, the tree is made from pine, a few dowel rods, and painted wooden beads. With each bead symbolizing each member of my parent’s family. Recently, I was contacted by CookieMag and asked if I would mind having my project featured in one of their online blogs.

So with kid like excitement, here’s the link: Nesting

Along with my own project they have a number of different family tree ideas. Go ahead, and check the article out.

I always feel terrible when I allow days to drift by between posting. I used to update daily, now I’m lucky to get something once a week. I guess life got busy? Who knows.

Anyway, I wanted to share a link to Faith Comes By Hearing. They have the entire New Testament available for free download to your favorite mp3 player. As I type, I’m downloading the dramatized NIV version to my player. The site also offers a variety of pod-casts. Including an entire page of stories for children. I just recently listened to one of the KidzBible podcasts and think that DD1 might get a kick out of them. Some of them are quiet and relaxing enough, that she might even be able to have the on to listen to before naps.

Speaking of naps, I stopped by the library today to pick up three books for this weeks theme. (”Eyes,” with the vocabulary word being “iris.”) Usually I bring in a list of 5 or 6 recommended books and then choose three of the most interesting options to check out. I limit our selection to three books because A) It’s an easy number to remember and B) three books is my pre-bed limit. The problem with today was that there was only ONE of the books on the list even available at the library. Which would have been fine if the book hadn’t been mis-filed. Dh and I searched that place up and down and never located it.

So then we decided to just find something that would work instead. Except, we couldn’t find ANYTHING that had anything to do with seeing or eyes. No “I Spy” books, nothing. It was so frustrating. When I asked the librarian for help she told me I needed to stop looking at the fiction books and go check out a book on anatomy.

Gah.

The whole point is to find three STORYbooks that follow our week’s theme. Not to go check out a textbook.

In the end we found three books that only sort of relate to our theme. One ended up being a horribly boring selection about “spectacles” and a little girl that found out she needed glasses. The other book was a book about dreams. The third is a book about “seeing” the moon. All three are quite odd. We probably should have just scratched the theme all together and just tried to find three fun books. Except, by the time I started thinking about that option, the girls were starting to get restless and we bailed.

About the only other real accomplishment for today was the fact that I finally picked up ringsling material for a sling I’m making for my cousin’s baby. (He doesn’t read my journal, I don’t think. So this shouldn’t ruin the surprise. I hope.) My plan is to make the sling tomorrow and have it in the mail by Wednesday. We’ll see how ambitious I get.

I have two more craft projects on my list. A bag for a friend and three heavy capes for the girls. The capes can wait, though. They’ve been waiting for a couple months already. So a few more days won’t hurt. I have a photo shoot concept that I want to do with the capes. Stay tuned for that adventure.

Oh, before I go. I wanted to mention that I just found out Sonlight is offering a Core A curriculum for 3 and 4 year olds? We’d thought about getting the Core B for DD1 in the fall, but now I don’t know. We’ve been trying to do the Letter of the Week Pre-school curriculum and may just continue on that course. I guess it just matters how far we get with LOTW.

I’m very aware of all the millions of little projects in this house that need tackled. It weighs on me sometimes. To the point where I do nothing. I just don’t know where to start! However, the new year is upon me, and at least for this moment, I am feeling inspired enough to actually do what I’ve been meaning to do for an entire year.

Organize my laundry room. It desperately needs it.

The laundry detergent tub sits on my washer because the shelf above the washers is stacked with random, unrelated household stuff. Mostly painting equipment, I think. I have no where to store my brooms and mops and I want a place to store hangers. So that when I am finished with a load of laundry, I can hang the items immediately.

So, yesterday, Dh and I wandered around Lowes brainstorming. Our conclusion is that we need to install an extra shelf, a hanging rod to store hangers, and something to organize my mops and brooms. I’d also like to have a wastepaper basket in there for throwing away lint and a three tier recycle bin system similar to this one. The three tier recycle bin is not something I’ll be able to do right away. It’s more of a “for when I have an extra chunk of change lying around dream.” So, instead I’ll keep using the blue ones from the city. At least until I figure out how to get myself a three tier system.

I’m getting really excited about the idea and as soon as Dh and I can get going for the day, I think we’ll start organizing my Laundry room.

P.S. My mom and I have grand plans for making ourselves one of these laundry hampers. We just have to figure out how to do the hooks on it.

Last year I wanted to buy the girls a wooden toy kitchen, but ended up unable to talk myself into spending the money for a quality toy kitchen. Not to mention, my mom found a really cool plastic Little Tykes Toy kitchen for free. And MIC or not, it’s really hard to argue with free.

Well, the plastic kitchen has taken a beating and really is on it’s last legs I thought about making play-stands… but didn’t really want to spend the money on the wood. Especially after I started researching play kitchens and found a whole host of DIY play kitchens that were truly inspiring. The idea of making something from recycled items, really appealed to the compacter in me.

So I started brainstorming and stalking freecycle & craigslist. I found an old solid wood cabinet in my garage that I’d salvaged from a dumpster five years ago and I scrounged up some leftover paint from when we painted our home. (lead free.) My mom found me a free faucet and some gold towel holder fixtures. I then donated a bowl from my kitchen and we purchased new knobs and a piece of wood for the back-splash.

The rest is essentially history. All told we spent just under ten dollars for the whole project.

I’m really thrilled with the results. About the only thing left to finish is the burners. I originally was going to just draw the burners on with a sharpie. (How natural is that? Giggle.) But apparently I’m not so great at burner drawing. My plan is to stop by JoAnn’s and pick up wooden disks. I’ll paint them black and then wood glue them to the top.

This kitchen will be sitting under the tree Christmas morning. And I can hardly wait to see how the girls react.

A few links to other DIY playkitchens:

A converted entertainment center.
Recycled Cardboard
DIY playkitchen directions.
A converted countertop.

And for those intending to fabricate their own kitchen from scraplumber, here is a list of toxic woods.

In a push to put a heavier focus on Christ in Christmas and an effort to cut back on Christmas consumer debt, our family does an all home-made Christmas. It’s something we started last year, and fell in love with. There are, however, a couple of factors that need to be considered when doing an all home-made Christmas.

1) It’s easy to spend as much money on home-crafted gifts as you would on store bought gifts. So, in order to stay in the spirit of things, you have to get fairly creative with your projects and realistic about the time and cost of each gift.

2) It’s easy to overload yourself with tons of awesome wonderful gift ideas.

I believe we’re doing pretty good with issue number 1. Most of our materials are coming from things we have around the house or things we’ve been able to pick up for free or near free. It’s issue number 2, however, where we’re struggling. With so many great gift ideas available to do, we’re finding that the work load is greater than we anticipated.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s been great fun. And I’d take an afternoon of woodworking over an afternoon of shopping in the crowded malls. Any day. But in an effort of full disclosure, I will admit that I’m EXHAUSTED! LOL. At this point, Dh and I would be happy to have one complete project. Just ONE. As it stands we have a large selection of projects all in mid-process. I think all the open ended, incomplete projects, are wearing on us.

My hope is that, by the end of today, I’ll have one major project finished and three smaller projects wrapped. I keep telling Dh that we’ve passed the halfway mark and that it’s all downhill from here. I think he’ll believe it when he sees it.

I will say, though, that despite all the covert gift-making that is going on in this house, we’ve had a lot of fun time to do things together as a family. Including salt-dough ornaments and other advent activities. If you are someone looking for an advent activity to do with your family, I suggest checking out this blog I stumbled across today. She has some really cool daily crafts to do during the advent season. Including this neat Christmas tree craft. I’m going to have to scrounge around the house for some old thread spools. A couple days ago someone on craigslist was giving a whole bag of wooden thread spools away. Too bad I wasn’t fast enough to nab them…

Santa’s workshop is in full swing and stocking stuffers are almost complete. (Yeah for an all home-made Christmas!) I’m feeling really excited about the projects I’m working on.

So many of them I won’t be able to share until after Christmas day. But, thankfully, my kiddos do not yet have flickr access… so I’m able to share some of the things in the works for them.

FWIW, the mice are not quite finished. I still need to embroider their eyes, nose, and teeth. But still… I can’t help but feel super excited about how close to finished they are.

Tutorial can be found here: http://mollychicken.blogs.com/my_weblog/2007/08/mousey-and-his-.html

I recently ran across a forum discussion about making rag rugs, and was instantly curious. I LOVE the idea of taking old t-shirts and bed sheets and turning them into something useful and beautiful. I did a lot of reading about the construction of braided or crotchetted rag rugs and decided that my best choice was to try to crotchet a rug.

So, I swang by a local thrift shop and picked up three single size bed sheets and I bought a size 10 crotchet hook at JoAnn’s for $1.50. I think my total expense was about $3.50 with tax. I’m sure I could have done it even cheaper had I used some of my own, old sheets… but I was wanting something that would match DD1’s room.

I ripped (i.e. cut with scissors) sheets apart into 1.5 inch strips and then joined together long lengths of the strips to create “rag” balls.

The instructions I had said to chain 6 stitches, join the chain with a slip stitch and then single crochet 6 stitches. Increase and then SC 12 stitches. Unfortunately, that’s where my directions ended. So I did have some major issues with knowing how much and where to continue increasing. The final product did end up a bit wonky/wavy. But my daughter seemed to love it none-the less.

The first night, after finishing the rug, we placed it in her room by her rocking chair. That night, when I checked on her, I found her curled up in bed, using the rug as a blanket. Snuggled against her chest.

I learned quite a bit about basic crochetting while doing this project and have a better idea of how to do another rug. Without the hazardous waviness. I did want to share the finished product, though, for those who are wanting an idea for an easy craft.

I hate to let this blog set unattended for too many days in a row… yet I don’t have much to say! On the nurishing traditions front we’re kind of at a wall. I need to go shopping, but I haven’t had the time. Not to mention I need to balance the check book before ANY major (even food) shopping. The word: “bleh” is about the only response I can think up to relay how I feel about balancing the check book.

Suzie Orman (Is that how you spell her name?) has a big spiel about how women should embrace finances and shouldn’t “run” from them. Obviously it’s been a while since she’s watched her bank-book drop as low as mine can go or she wouldn’t say such non-sensical things.

My kefir production is in full swing, though. I find that I’m really figuring out how to do it. And now I’m swimming in kefir up to my eyeballs! LOL. I need to borrow my parents blender and make some kefir smoothies for the girls and I. It’s one my list of things “to do” before the babe arrives.

Other things on my list “to do” include:
- Make the new baby a sling.
- Buy a water hose for the birth tub.
- Shave my legs. (No need to scare off the midwives!)
- Teach Dh how to make kefir
- Go grocery shopping and explain to Dh how the meals rotate so that he can take over that task when the babe arrives.
- Clean the kitchen. Again.
- Do laundry. Again.

It’s really not an impressive list. About the only thing on it that MUST happen before baby makes his/her appearance is to get the hose for the tub. Even the sling can wait because, let’s be honest, I have more than one sling lying around this place that can tide us over until I get around to making the new baby his/her own sling.

I would like to get my garden area plotted and staked out, as well. But it’s not a very urgent desire at this point. I just have too many little things to do around the house.

(Like clean crayon off my walls! Gah. Anybody have an natural and effective cleaning tips for such a fun project?)

Ah well. Such is life. 5 more days till my due date. And anybodies guess when baby will decide to arrive! lol.

I’ve been waiting forever to purchase a retractable clothes line for our back yard. Today, I just decided to “old school” it and string up some clothes line rope between two fense posts in our back yard. I had some rope left over from our last home. I need to tighten the line (as you can see from the picture) but I’m excited to have that “to do” checked off my list.

Next?

Find my clothes pins. They’ve GOT to be around here somewhere.

I’m hoping I don’t get in trouble for doing this. Our HOA has strict clothes line rules. The line can’t be visible from above the fence. Which it isn’t. It’s just that I can’t remember what the rule is about the line being visible from second-story neighbors.

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