NEW LOOK 6805

Ever see a dress and go WOW?  Best yet you notice it is made with some of your favorite fabric that you have stashed away.  Well I did and then I had to chase here down for details on the pattern. No Shame Trish, here.  Here she is!  Isn’t here dress amazing, even better is how she dressed it up, honestly I am in envy because I would have never have thought to add the sweater and the necklaces.

She said
“It’s a great pattern, easy to use and goes together well. It’s a little short waisted.”
Short waisted is an easy fix.  You can typically find the pattern at Jo-Ann's.  I have noticed that they are no longer at our Wal-Mart.
 
Hopefully, my post baby body will be its more normal shape so that I can make one of these for my wardrobe.
~trish

Baby Shower Gifts

 

This is what I am doing on our week off, plus a dr appointment, and doing speech class!

I have a baby shower coming up this weekend and wanted to make some little things for the new mom.  All of these items I have seen on other blogs and got some great directions and measurements from www.makeit-loveit.com under her baby label.

I used the printed fabric and a light green flannel for all the pieces.

First is the 2 bibs.

Then the huggies wipe covered and the diaper pouch.

Then I made a baby carrier cover with a padded handle to keep the noisies away from the baby.

I had plenty of fabric, because I bought it with the intention of making a dress for me.  I think I like it surrounding a baby better.  These items took me about 5-6hours to make, including time to change dirty diapers, nurse a screaming baby, and break up the typical sibling rivalry.  I am hoping the mom to be will love it.  I really should have made one for myself.

 

DON’T FORGET I HAVE A GIVE-AWAY GOING ON THIS WEEK.  YOU MUST COMMENT (on this blog, facebook comments do not count) AND BECOME A FOLLOWER!

Homes-cool tidbits

I am really enjoying the My Father’s World curriculum. I have read about a few moms that are adding this or that to strengthen the study for their youngster.  At this point, I have no desire to add to it.  It is a good strong program that is not consumed in busy-ness.

The one thing I do think it lacks for our situation is writing. Mostly because I have a soon to be 6 year old doing kindergarten, because of where her birthday fell.  So I really want to have her active in writing daily.  So I got a great writing table from Staples.  And I have her write the day of the week, the date, her name, her phone number, and the letter we are learning that week.  I am also doing this as a way to teach her the days of the week and her phone number.  When she masters her phone number, we will move to the address.

Now I do not want it to be overbearing, SO I write everything with a highlighter and then she just traces it.  Sometimes I put dots at where to start for each letter.

 

Next, we keep all the library books in a basket.  This helps us from loosing them and accruing big bills at the library.

We have a lot going on this week.  One is that #2’s speech therapy will start again 2 times a week and we have a doctors appointment on a different day.  SO I decided that we would take the week off and resume next week.  So do not be surprised when you do not see a summary just yet.

2010 Summer Giveaway #1

We are finishing up the summer and I am de-cluttering.  To celebrate!  I am going to have 4 weeks of give-aways.

My giveaway item will be announced on Mondays and selected after Saturday at Midnight. 

How to play!

You must do 2 things! 

1. Comment on this post.

2. Become a follower!

Want to add your name in for another chance, Facebook this post and leave me a comment that you did it!

So, there you go, 2 chances to win.

 

So I am super excited with this give-away!  This is an 8.5 x 8.5 album for your school memories and in addition, a set of alpha stamps!  This is to celebrate our start of school and yours!

~trish

MFW –week2 Moon

we have finished the second week of homes-cool!  I love this curriculum! I have just as much joy doing the work as they do, so yes I sometimes photo copy a worksheet, so that I can color with them.  I am mostly amazed at how much they are retaining, even my 4 year old son.  So here is what we did!

Biblically: We will reflect Jesus’s light, like the moon does the sun.

we studied the different shapes.

We measured the distance of the Earth from the Sun.  You can barely see the chalked sun behind #1, I thought the chalk would have shown up, but it was a hard see.  #1 is holding a black piece of paper with a green dot for Earth (left side) and a white dot for the moon (right side).  As the “adult” I was shocked to see the actual size difference close up, talk about feeling finite, especially when you consider yourself the moon and Jesus the Sun.  I am tiny and insignificant, but like the moon, I can bring significant brightness to the world if I let my light shine!  WOW!  Who is getting the bible concepts here, them or me?  Well this might be a great curriculum for the whole family.

we also got perspective on how far away we are from the sun and 4 kids and 461 feet later.  I had had enough perspective.  So we joyfully ate Moon Pies on our neighbors front porch. (Just helping the Mmmmmmm sound out.)

     Now what really showed me the power of reading aloud was when the kids and I talked about making a spaceship the next day.  Well my son was elated about this and talked all about how we needed space suits that the astronauts wear because he was going on the moon and there is no air up there.  Wow.  I think he was somewhere between the ceiling fan and the wall bouncing when I was doing the reading out loud.  That cardboard box is still giving them hours of entertainment.  They have brought me moon rocks back from their adventures.

 

These are the books we checked out.

The first set is the non-fiction books and the second is our story books for Friday.  I am including a dvd for each theme.  It takes a bit of searching but it is well worth it.  I figure it is another way to reinforce of content and give me a chance to nurse the baby and still be schooling.  I also check out different dvds for sign language or Spanish.  I check out phonics prepping movies.  I know there are moms out there that might gasp at the thought that the tv came on during a school day, but with the littles all being so little and the littlest being really little, I need the help that I get from the tv and I feel as though it is good use of it.

 

Printables I considered

http://files.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/alphabet_notebook/m/m_book_primary.pdf

http://files.homeschoolshare.com/docs54478/alphabet_notebook/m/moon_prayer.pdf

Now I started a little bit of tot school.  I got the ideas from 1 +1 +1!  I was shocked at how well it worked.  I started with just motor skills on using tongs and moving tiny pom poms into an ice tray.  Then later in the week we did matching the pom poms.  Even the other kids wanted to play with the tray.  The pom poms and the ice tray came from the Dollar Tree.  The rest I had.

I can’t wait to do the exciting things for this next week.  I am loving the homes-cooling gig!

~trish

Anniversary gift

This beautiful dishcloth was crocheted by my mother in law.  I love it.  It is hard to express all the things it makes me feel and think, especially since it is such a least thought about item in our homes.  I want to say for such a simple item and tool that we use, it feels lavish and warm and comforting, like the days I would hold my great grandmother’s warm soft wrinkly hands. [That would be a whole other topic about being a child and craving those soft dish worn hands to touch my childish face.  And how I am in shock that so many women are more concerned with the youthful appearance of their hands than the tenderness and wisdom that their hands can bring to comfort a child. another day].

A beautiful dishcloth can go unnoticed among a sink and counter full of dishes. Even worst, a beautiful dishcloth can be kept up for safe keeping away from the stale food that sits on those plates from the previous nights dinner.  A beautiful set of dishcloths that were made with tenderness and love can be hidden away and forgotten about by a clutter hound. A beautiful dishcloth like this can shine like a ruby at the top of a crown when it is left on a cleaned counter, next to a polished sink.

You see, I love yarned dishcloths, but I found them greatly impractical because I never wanted them to be dirty after all that time was spent on making them.  Well, I have finished about 3 weeks of Fly Lady training.  I am far from mastering a routine and a beautiful kept house!  But I have the most beautiful sink and never knew it.  My sink is a double white cast iron sink that was filled with stains from onion peels and such.  Well, working slowly to create a routine, I have managed to keep a base point of my kitchen sink cleaned and pretty much the surrounding counter top.  Well, my mother in law blessed me with this beautiful dishcloth and for once, I was excited to have it at my sink like a badge of honor.

Then the dishcloth started to linger in my heart.  Have you ever read The five Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman?  Well this book was given to me a couple months after our honey moon ended.  As a side note, two head strong personalities can quite literally end the honeymoon period of their marriage on the way home from the honeymoon AND we did.

So back to the 5 love languages.  My husband’s love language is acts of service, mine quality time.  Well, in the beginning of our courtship or something like that. In retrospect I would like to think of it as courtship, in reality it was not.  Alright, I was a little too well know for my huge DISLIKE of dishes.  When I lived alone in college, I would let them pile for days and then scornfully do them, when the last dish was gone.  I just know grasped the concept that I do not have to have the dishwasher bulging and it has a button that allows it to run more than once a day, hmm!  So one day I come home and I get a strange feeling something was wrong/different.  Not a comforting notion when you live alone.  SO I look around and realize after walking from room to room, there WAS something missing, MY DISHES!  They were gone and the sink was clean?!

Wow!  It was like the tooth fairy had shown up with the money truck.  My darling husband had stopped by to find that I was not home and decided to let himself in (I believe at this time we were not dating but just friends and he was there to gain access to my fridge.)  Well with the lack of anything to do, he did my dishes.  Wow! Should have know then that he was the one I was going to marry, NO MORE DISHES!  Well, I married him anyways and during the first few year he did the dishes often. 

{{5 Love languages comes in here}} Well during a typical heated argument for my need for love, still didn’t get the whole love thing, I was a new Christian and well, new to marriage. 

I demanded that I wanted time with him because that is what people who were in love do. 

Well, he argued that he did love me, because look he did the dishes. ((enter weird scooby doo sound)). 

My ignorant response was, why do I care about that, I can hire someone for that, but I can not hire someone to LOVE ME!

Yes folks, I was that naive.  So we read the book, the light bulb turns on and my mouth makes the sound “OOooooooooo.  Wow?  Really???”  Who would have thought that one?

So this next month will be my 8th  wedding anniversary to my wonderful strong headed husband. In the last 8 years, I have learned a lot about him, but mostly me.  In fact, there are days that I realize he could have chained into an entirely different person and it really does not matter.  Now I choose to love him.  And honestly, since I am being too honest, I sometime love him, while I am on the phone telling him about why I find it ridiculous that I have to love him in “that way” (insert whatever task I am doing at the moment)  and can’t he just put his socks in the basket, instead of me stumbling onto his secret stash of dirty socks.

In the past 3 weeks as I am taking the beginning steps to become a better person, no not really, just a better help mate to my husband, a better mother, and the tick-tock of our home’s rhythm, I am embracing my role at the sink.  I know I am working on a deep change that is unlacing every bit of my internal fiber, to be woven new by only God’s hands and I am letting him.  I will be an orderly person, I will keep my home kept, and I will not live among clutter.  The eternal chant that reminds me of God’s truth, is that He is not a God of chaos. (I am an engineer, so please realize that even spell check does not work for me, when I use caios, I really mean chaos, I spell it like it sounds not by the American language change of rules policy)

oh, back to my thought, so I am using flylady to become a person of order and it is going to take everything I got to surrender to God’s will for this to happen.  But that little dishcloth and the comfort of my great grandmother’s hands reminds me that I have an ultimate love given to me and I can simply keep my home kept, to give that love to others.  To celebrate this and surround myself with this knowledge of surrender to love my husband as he needs to be loved, I plan to have about 8-10 dishcloths made by my anniversary so I have one daily (with a few backups) to keep me in constant acknowledgement.

So I made my first 2 here

 

And I am working on my next one here:

 

Then just last night I was reminded by God’s Power and how he gives to us through the love of other people that He surrounds us with.  Because last night, I was given these 2 dishcloths out of the blue.  WOW!  I was so excited!  She had no idea how such a simple and often overlooked tool in the kitchen that she took the time and love to make, could mean so much to me.

What I love about them the most is that each one is different.  Some are crocheted and some are knitted.  They have different stitches and different yarn.  They are different sizes.  Together, they remind me that each season of marriage is different and will feel and look different from the others.  Enjoy the beauty of the good seasons and the survival of the hard seasons and no matter what, this too shall pass, like it or not.  And most of all, I CHOOSE to love, I do not feel love.  Love is not a feeling or emotion, it is a job.  Which means, I will not ever worry about falling out of it, I either choose to love or I don’t.  Now falling in and out of lust, is a given.  I just hope the Good Lord doesn’t mess with that until we can both no longer………

 

Well, good night you all! :)

~trish

The hooks I love!

 

 

I love these hooks!  I love how easy it is to put them up and be able to hang things out of the way so easily.  One of the

reasons I love them, is that my walls within my house are concrete.  I am not just talking concrete blocks, I am also talking concrete coated.  So to hang ANYTHING! I need a hammer drill and a 20 page commitment contract with my husband that I really want a hole there and that I will keep something hanging.  Because those holes are not easily patched.  But having these hooks makes a huge difference. A double pack of hooks this size cost me about $4.  I also get smaller ones for hanging garland in the house.  I have even thought to use them for clothes line affect with the kids master pieces.

I am really impressed that they can hold a lot of weight.  My purse typically has a wallet, calendar, and camera; along with all the other stuff that attracts in it.  I have no fear that it will stay up.

 

So this is an option, especially if you do not want to wait on the hubby to hang something.  (Mine has intentionally hid the hammer drill on me)

 

~trish

Skim or Whole Milk

I thought this was going to be a post on hind milk and fore milk, but instead it is turning into my personal milking it pity party. I have nursed all of my children.  I amazed myself with the first one and with my husbands constant support, I nursed her for 6 months.  I had the same success with the next.  Well, #2 came along with such dissatisfaction that I could no longer take the heartbreak and aggravation of it all and we ended at 4 months.  It took 1 week to figure out that there was no way my body could have kept up with her appetite.  Still to this day, she out eats the first 2.

So sweet #4 is now 10 weeks old and I AM TIRED.  I mean completely exhausted.  My poor child is gassy since day 1. (I have tried changing our diet, but man, we eat a lot of onions, garlic, beans, and greens.)  SO I am really not eating good enough for her.  I feel like I am being tugged in several directions with the other children and emotionally I am not keeping up, because I am so wiped out with exhaustion.

So I chinned up and bought some formula today.  I will tell you, I feel like a quitter!  I am not a good quitter.  I have stuck through more things than I ever wanted to because I did not want to be a quitter.  I am having a bad mom moment.  But in my heart I know I need to do this for her and the rest of family and for myself too.  for me, because it takes a lot of energy to play fair and when I am wiped out, my snappy aggravated side comes out for everyone to play with, not very pretty.

What has me most heart broken is that I know that I am “just” supplementing to take some pressure of my body to produce.  But it is a slippery slope for me.  My supplementing usually only last me 2 weeks and then I am done nursing.  I am hoping to nurse from after dinner to morning and then supplement during the day.  If I can grab a nap, I will probably nurse her again.  I hope this plan helps me from completely stopping.  We will see!

 

I think this is in my make things easier category of life right now.

~trish

A New Blog

Well, I am starting my next blog.  I am not sure if it is crazy to operate more than one blog, but I am hoping to meet a specific need with this particular blog.  There are a lot of moms in this town and there are a lot of things to do and opportunities to do, but there is not one place to find it.  So I am hoping to bring the connection between the parents in the area and the cool things to do.

hmmm, lets see how this goes.  I have no plan to slow these blogs down, just focused.  If you are not aware, this blog is my daily musings that go on in my head.  Diapers and backpacks is more impersonal and more informative of the local opportunities.

www.diapersandbackpacks.blogspot.com

~trish

Goodbye clutter, HELLO functional!

This post is to celebrate less!  Less stuff that is.  Background, please! I really have a big house with lots of little rooms that is filled with lots of littles and according to my friend and lots of furniture.  So I have in my house a couch and a futon, because my darling husband won’t let me get rid of the futon, in case, we have company.  Well, I agree with said friend, too much stuff is really hard to live with.  So I am slowly replacing things.  Like remember the once loved ashtray chair that was in hopes to replace, but couldn’t due to obnoxious smell.

Well, I am saying good bye to these two items.

I am picking up this tomorrow:

because it does this:

(side note: new sofa is 4 inches shorter than the old one because of the lack of huge arms)

And the most awesome thing about it, is I am using this to help pay for it!

Do not stress, I have already purchased its replacement a couple weeks ago for $20 at Goodwill, right here.

   Look familiar, yep, a pretty version of the ashtray and probably more comfortable since I don’t have to hold my breath.

Confetti going everywhere!

~trish

MFW-K Lesson 1 – Sun

Jesus is the light of the world.
We are off and running on our Kindergarten program.  The week long unit study proved to be a hit.  We kicked it off with the library to collect our material.
We did 2 of our lessons late at night because we spent the day at the theater or mimi’s.
Books we used:

Field trip:
Cinderella Play
 
Crafts we did:
 
Projects:
Raisin
This is after 3 days.  We have been having some cloudy days.  The kids have been noting that they are getting soft, smaller, and changing color.  I have been keeping a fresh grape to compare.

Sundial
we did 2 different sundials to see which is better, strictly for mommy’s curiosity.  Instead of using a pencil and clay as the instructions said, I used a skewer stick and a hole on cardstock paper. You can see the shadow on the paper, this is at 2 pm.  I made my paper 6 in by 6 in and was able to cover it with a 5 gallon bucker.
 
I did this style from the instructions on eHow.com The shadow was not as defined as the stick. Plus it was 12 in by 12 in and not easy to cover.  As you can see, it was no longer affective after the rain.

Noodle art

Printables I used/considered:
http://0.tqn.com/d/homeschooling/1/0/e/d/colors2.png
http://www.coloringcastle.com/sun_coloring_pages.html
http://www.starfall.com/ni/download/level-k-bl/bl-s.pdf
http://homeschooling.about.com/od/langearlyread/ss/letterscolor_5.htm

Handling the other littles:
#2 (age 4) did the first 2 days and the today’s, but sat out the rest of the week.  Mostly because of being too tired.  When he is joining us, he is loving it.
#3 (age 2) For this first week, I made sure she was sleeping. Sometimes she was up to allowable craziness.

#4 (9weeks) fussed here and there.  On day 1, while we were going through information about the sun, she started a screaming fit that lasted an hour.  I had only been through 1 book, but I had a VHS from the library about the sun, so I popped that in and excused myself.
Summary
I am grateful for this week and that we did get started.  We are not entirely prepared with being organized yet but we will get there.  I had several defining moments of ohh, yes, this is why we are homeschooling and a meltdown by mommy when I found the mud on the side of the house.
I was terrified that my children would be uneager or even unwilling. I think the change up on activities and not doing the same phonics montra day after day was a success.  The phonics is about 10-15 different activities that only have you doing about 5 each day and they change  on the day.  I like that we will have a routine with the phonics with our activities and after a while it should feel like an old hat for me.
I am really happy to finish the week  positively.  I am extremely tired and fussy with trying to implement a cleaning routine, homeschooling, and nursing the baby.  I am even considering to start supplementing just to have more energy.  She is not keeping me up at night, but I keep waking up more exhausted everyday.
Wheewhooo!
~trish

TV ruins a good education

I am in the beginning of reading The Educated Child  by William Bennett, et al. and he states that TV ruins a good education.  He list all the background  to which he determined that statement.  all made sense to me, so I am emplimenting no TV from Sunday to Friday.

Here is the result, some good fashion playing is taking place.

MUD!  Not shown are the muddy children.  Not stated this is what and where I discovered them as we were to be walking out of the house and into the van. Obviously, my morning is going long than expected.

~trish

A new routine for my kitchen.

   So I have been using FlyLAdy to build a new routine to clean with. Who am I kidding.  I hate to clean, I am building my first routine of keeping house.  I hate to keep house.  I work so hard and it feels like I am running in circles and getting nothing accomplished.  Well, I decided to try FlyLady. Well, my kitchen is very quickly coming together pretty and clean. 

Just to recap, I did clean my sink on the first day, but this was my counters.  And there was nothing special about that day, this was my counters everyday.

 

I promise that I did not move things around the room to make it look good.  Here is another day and the entire kitchen.

suddenly, my kitchen is feeling spacious.  I take up the whole counter when I make dinner now, because I have the entire counter to use.  I am not getting stressed when the kids bring their bowls to the sink, because there is space to put them.  So what if food gets on the counter, I am going to clean it off no matter what. 

What I am liking about FLY LADY:

First, it is not “go clean your house and then keep it up”.  Her way is start a routine a little at a time and before you know it, your house will be sparkling.  My attitude has always been to exhaust myself and scream as I would try and deep clean a cluttered house, then be exhausted and never keep it up or get back to it.

Second, you start with manageable accomplishments and somehow I always do a little more.

Third, I have been working hard but the good kind of hard.  I put in 100% and got 100% accomplished. Usually, I feel like I put 100% towards my goals and got 10% accomplished because I was moving with no direction and just mostly chasing my tail everyday around this house.

And forth, I like the smell of bleach and never knew it. I can’t believe how good my reflection looks in my sink. I didn’t know a toilet could be pretty. I love the look of shock when my husband comes home.

~trish

Have poop, will travel.

 

Me sitting on the bench watching the kids play on our our little trip!  I glance up and ponder to myself

“Hmm, I wonder why #3 took her bathsuit off in the park. Oh, no, not here! Are you kidding me! #3 what are you doing?”

#3 says, “pooop, mooommmyy, pooop”

‘ahh, this is why I do not have dogs! Really? I hope I have a garbage bag.  I haven’t had to do this since college, when I had my little dog.  Aha, the is why I do not have dog! Really?  Please, baby, we do not poop on the grass, we go to the potty.”

#3 – “#3, poooop in gasss”

[side note: #3 loves to speak in the third person.  She is the only one that has done this.  Also, the kids is an amazing squatter when it comes to going potty outside.  When I was her age, my dad would have us sit on a log with our butts over the side or make us lean against a try.  The later once resulted with me getting redbugs all over my butt and my underwear sapped to my _ss, oh sorry it just kind off rhymed.]

“Well, I guess it wouldn’t feel right, if there wasn’t any crap to my day” (I say this with my hand in the air with defeat)

 

Adding to my pissy vacation. My children managed to whiz their way through the state of Florida, quit literally.  In fact, as we stopped to eat at a Cracker Barrel, my son hoped out of the van to pee on the first tree he could see.  Unfortunately, to me it was the one directly in front of the porch about 20 feet away.  There was a chorus of chuckling and pointing as I walked up.  I looked to discover, OF COURSE MY SON IS SHOWING OFF AGAIN WITH THE DISTANCE HE CAN PROJECT.

Next trip, I am logging all of our pit stops.  My husband had a deflecting moment, when my son chose to stand in the van and take aim at a guardrail.  To my poor husbands dismay was that he standing outside the van as the pee splash off the guard rail and showering him.  See, I need to have that camera ready!

~trish

Bulk Produce

  

I might be guilty of having a love for buying in bulk.  There is just something about buying 100 tomatoes that gets me giddy!

 

So the other day I went to the farmers market.  It is like a whole other world there. You can buy from market stands.

Out of the back of trucks

you can buy in quantities of one thing or 1 box.  So I got excited and went shopping.  A little too much.  Thankfully, I only had one kid, I had to rearrange the seating.

I bought 2 boxes of corn, 5 boxes of tomatoes, 1 box of peppers and 5 watermelons for about $60.  Let me say!  WHAT WAS I THINKING!  Way too much to put away.  I ended up putting up the corn and 1 box of tomatoes.  The rest was handed out and I did buy 2 boxes of it for my MIL and mom and split the peppers.  BUT still, I got 4 kids and one on a ninni!  How did I think that I could put food up.

 

Oh but I loved the smell of those peppers and tomatoes. YUM!  But at the end of the week, it made me realize that I needed to keep things simpler.  SO no clothe diapers, no homemade wipes, no bulk preparation.  I am going as easy as possible and maintaining health.  So SAM’s Club here I come.

~trish

PS I think I am going back, I love the freshness.  Maybe neck week.