Archive for the ‘motherhood’ Category

Sick… again

February 22, 2012

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We have been hit hard this season with illness.  We all came down with horrible head colds/sinus infections/coughing fits last week (only a few weeks since our last bout!) and just when I thought we were getting better, I was awoken by someone throwing up on me this morning.  Sigh.  My fingers are crossed that it was a fluke, as (knock on wood) that was the only episode so far.

Adelaide is toddling around more and more each day.  She’s still not sure of herself and seems to forget that she can, but she’s walked halfway across the room to get to me half a dozen times. She’s a hoot and we can already tell she’s going to be a hilarious little girl. She will grab a tissue and pretend to blow her nose and sings and dances whenever she hears music. She’s also gotten very adept at stacking blocks!
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At least one thing is healthy in our home right now. Our green onions are growing wonderfully! I’ve already harvested them a few times and they keep growing back in just days.
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We also started some seeds earlier this week in a mini tabletop greenhouse we made from toilet paper tubes and a organic spinach tub. Hopefully we’ll have spinach, kale and swiss chard growing soon.
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I’ve been knitting a tiny bit lately, so will hopefully have updates on that soon. I just purged more than three grocery bags full of yarn and rooted through my stash, so inspiration has started to hit. Next up is organizing my fabric stash.

Valentines!

February 10, 2012

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This is the first year we’re actually going to exchange valentines with friends, and we’re excited :) Once again, it was pinterest to the rescue for providing lots of crafty ideas from blogs all over the interwebz.
We have two different valentines to hand out, as we have our preschool circle group, as well as our home school playgroup to exchange with, and some of the kids overlap.
We found this neat printable graphic and paired it with homemade star crayons, using this tutorial and a star silicone ice cube tray. Eleanore also heart-stamped some cardstock with a toilet paper tube folded into a heart shape and I sewed little coloring books with her drawings as the cover and copy paper to color on.
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For our other valentine, we went simple. I got 3 packs of bouncy balls at the dollar store, printed out this nice label and Eleanore cut them out and stapled them to the perfect-sized bags I also picked up there.

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We decided Adelaide should give Valentines this year, too, so we printed out a few sheets of these adorable printables and Eleanore cut them out for her. Easy peasy and Eleanore got lots of cutting practice, as well as experiencing her artwork “published.” :) The little notebooks were fun for me to sew, and turned out really nicely, so they’ll definitely be on the list for homemade books for the future.

Keeping Busy

February 8, 2012

My laptop is currently dying a slow death, so my updates have been less frequent lately.  The past week it has taken over an hour to boot up.  Coupled with the fact that Jason is out of town (for 12 days!) and has very limited cell phone service where he’s at, we’re keeping super busy so we don’t wallow in our Daddy-missing-funk.  Normally we only schedule “outings” a few days a week, but we’ve managed to fit in play dates and lots of activities every day to keep us busy while he’s gone.

We’ve gone to the zoo, the roller rink, had a mini super bowl party (just the three of us with lots of fun snacky food), fed the birds at a local metro park, library story time, our homeschool prek circle group and have done lots of art and crafting. A few pictures to share:

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Winter “Garden” Harvest

January 27, 2012

The seed catalogs are pouring in and it’s time to start planning our garden for next year. I’m getting the itch to start a few lettuce seeds already, although it’s probably too early. However, we are growing onions in the kitchen!
Pinterest clued me in on this little tip… Did you know you can grow green onions from the grocery store after you use them up? Just throw your root ends in some water until they get going and then transplant them to soil.

Here they are the morning after I used them in our egg rolls:
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Two days later, look how much they’ve grown!
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Adelaide is not impressed… she just wants her milk.
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Remember the cool dragon craft I mentioned on Monday?
We made him yesterday and think he turned out ferocious!
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Bowling and Thrifting

January 26, 2012

We took a bowling trip with our local homeschool preschool group this week and had a great time. It’s our first time bowling, but definitely won’t be our last. Eleanore had a great time.
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And it looks like I’ll be channeling my inner Julia Child, as I picked up this nice enameled cast iron dutch oven, made by Descoware at the thrift store.
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Apparently, Descoware was Julia Child’s cast iron pan of choice. I have been thinking of picking up a copy of Mastering the Art of French CookingBeef bourguignon anyone? Think I may have found a recipe for next week’s menu. Of course, I didn’t find what I was LOOKING for at the thrift store (tap shoes or wooden folding chairs), but such is thrifting.

Keeping Busy

January 20, 2012

Enjoying lots of books this winter, even though it hasn’t felt very wintery. We finally got a bit of snow over the weekend, although this has still been a very mild winter snow-wise for us. We’ve been working our way homeschool-wise through Jan Brett’s The Hat and The Mitten, Snowy Day, Snow Music, penguins (including nap-time readings of Mr. Popper’s Penguins), and this week is dragons in honor of Chinese New Year today.
We made red lanterns:
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and cool dragon masks

Source: alphamom.com via Lisa on Pinterest

as well as a dragon puppet:

Source: krokotak.com via Lisa on Pinterest

This art project is definitely on the agenda:

Source: notimeforflashcards.com via Lisa on Pinterest

Check out my winter pinboard for more ideas and to see what else we have up our homeschooling sleeves.

We’ve also spent a lot of time baking in the kitchen. Everything from cookies to bread, pizza, bagels, pretzels. Eleanore is getting great at mixing dough.
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and Adelaide is gobbling it all up ;)
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A lot of pretend baking and cooking has been happening, as well. We moved the girls’ play kitchen out into our dining room this past week and they’ve both had great fun baking cookies and rattling the pots and pans.
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Organization and Vintage Sheet Sewing

January 20, 2012

I’m not very organized. I have good intentions, and will spend entire afternoons organizing an area in my home, only to have it demolished a week later and in complete disarray.
See this pocket chart?
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I bought it to keep our homeschool week supplies organized. Not very organized anymore. See the pocket chart on the other wall for our daily schedule? I had hoped to keep us on track using it, but it’s not very beneficial since Eleanore can’t read. It’s beautiful with the watercolor cards, but pictures would better serve our home.

See this shelf? It’s supposed to be a self-serve shelf for Eleanore for art supplies, puzzles and manipulatives. Now it’s just a catch-all.

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I could seriously go through my home and show example after example. What’s my point here? My extreme disorganization is one of the reasons I LOVE pinterest and ravelry. They’re both places to keep my projects, ideas, inspiration and recipes organized without adding more clutter to my home. I used to have piles of paper patterns, homeschool art and lesson project ideas and recipes printed out cluttering up my kitchen and bookcase, but now I don’t need to. If I didn’t have ravelry, I know I wouldn’t have been organized enough to complete my 52 projects in 52 weeks. Yes, you read that correctly. I successfully completed 52 knitting projects in 2011!
A few of my last projects of the year:

a simple wooden ring toy for Adelaide for Christmas
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a fae folk hat for Eleanore that she won’t wear :(
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a celtic neckwarmer for me out of madtosh yarn
Still need to grab a picture of this… (see above for comment on organization lol)

and a scrappy soaker for Adelaide
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I will not be attempting 52 projects in 2012. I have knit almost nothing so far in 2012, except for half the waistband of a pair of longies for Adelaide. I just do not have knitting mojo right now. We did get out the sewing machine today though and whipped up a few things. I needed to patch the patch on a pair of my favorite jeans. I’m just not ready to throw them out yet, and the vintage sheets I’ve been thrifting make the perfect patching fabric.
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I also used a vintage sheet to sew up a quick camera strap cover. Super simple and I love that I can change the look whenever I want to.
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I have plenty left of this sheet to hopefully sew up a summer dress for Adelaide.

Eleanore even got to help with her first sewing project! We used yet another vintage sheet scrap to sew a quick drawstring bag. She loved sitting on my lap, feeding the fabric through and doing the back stitch button.
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She immediately declared it her lego horses’ new home.

Rollerskating Fun

January 11, 2012

We’ve been meaning to try out roller skating for AGES, but it’s never worked out. Today we decided to give it a try and headed out for a preschool skate with some friends.
It was VERY tough at first to figure out balance, and there was a lot of apprehension.
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As well as a lot of falling.
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But after some tips from the teacher and her helper
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we were able to use the “t” to help our balance and were skating almost unassisted by the time we were ready to leave!
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Crafty and homeschooling updates coming soon! I have an update on my 52 projects in 52 weeks for 2011 :)


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