3 Days Left

I feel so bad.  I really was going to do a blog post almost every day last week, and then I sort of just ended on Wednesday.  And now it's been the better part of a week before I've posted again.  'Tis the Season to be unpredicatble, maybe?

I'm feeling the crunch now, the countdown to Christmas.  I have a few things I still need to get done, and only a few days left to do them.  I'm painting some wooden people to look like our family, that the kids can play with in their little car.  They've lost several of the people that originally came with it, so I wanted to replace them and do something fun with it.  But painting can be so time consuming!  At least Jesse was willing to help me out with the basics.  They're mostly done now - just need some smiles and some varnish, but that's still something I need to check off of the to-do list, you know?

Other things that need doing:

1. A special project for Jesse's Christmas that I'm not posting just in case he actually reads this blog without ever having mentioned it to me.  But I need to do that during the day tomorrow, while he's not home. It's the last day I'll have left and available with uninterrupted time to work on it. 
   
2. Dying some silk handkerchiefs for Alex... with the idea of putting them in a Kleenex-like box that he can pull them all out of.  We'll see if this one actually gets done... I'll have to devote an entire night to it, I think.  Which means, if I'm going to do it, it has to be Tuesday night.
   
3. Wrapping all the gifts, of course.  That'll be Christmas Eve.
4. We're heading down to the Washington, D.C. temple tonight to see the gorgeous Christmas lights, watch some Christmas films, and see a musical performance.  If, that is, we don't convince ourselves to avoid the night of frigid temperatures.  It's in the low 20's right now, with a gusty wind, so it feels about ZERO degrees, if you can believe that.  We woke up with thick layers of ice on the insides of our apartment windows.  Yikes!!  But the plan is to head down there and enjoy all the nice stuff before Christmas arrives... and that will take us till probably 10:00pm before we're home, so nothing's getting done tonight.  Except the last of the people painting, if I'm lucky.
5. I made some yummy fudge yesterday, but I still want to make some Pulla (a braided sweet bread from Finland), now that my mom helped me hunt down the recipe.  It would be perfect to have some on Christmas Eve, I think!
6. Uhhh... clean the house for Christmas.  My least favorite thing on this list.
7. I have to go grocery shopping.  Again.  It always sneaks up so fast... but I have to do get it done today.  In the freezing cold.   Ungh.
   
8. Make last-minute runs for stocking stuffers without the kids in tow.  Basic stuff like kid-sized scissors, coloring books, and treats... but I can't let them be there with me.  Yet another evening project.  

Jesse will undoubtedly get to leave half a day early on Christmas Eve, which will help.   But holy cow, how did the count down turn into just three more days?????  I should have worked a little harder on the get-stuff-done-early idea.

Randomness:  I made Jesse take some of the fudge to work today to share.  I sent three whole rows of it with him in a bowl, and it's still a lot.  We took two more rows with us to a friend's house this morning.  We still have more than half the pan left, and we need to give most of it away so I don't convince myself to eat it all.... which is likely to happen when it's both Christmastime and my hormones just happen to be at their chocolate-craving levels this week, anyway.  ;)

Also... Don't be surprised if I don't get another post up until after Christmas.  I just don't know if I'll have enough spare time for it.  Which is depressing, when I've got so many things I've wanted to share, and they're not going to feel share-worthy if they're a week or more late, you know?  Hopefully once the holidays are over, I'll be posting regularly again.

P.S. - Santa, if you're out there, I really kinda want some fingerless gloves that I can wear while I'm typing.  My fingers feel like ice.

Feeling Crafty

I feel proud of myself today. 

I just created an army of angels, all out of my own little brain.

Usually, when I go to make something, I'm working with a tutorial or at least someone else's creative idea that I just figure out on my own.  Not so, this time!  I actually made them all without anyone giving me the idea!  Now, I'm sure they're not the only peg-people angels in existance out there, but these are all mine!  :)

Well, they're not all mine.  I made them to give to our Primary class kids for Christmas.  I had been thinking and thinking what I could give them this year, and finally, it hit me - they're all such little angels.  Why not give them an angel ornament?  So we went out to Michael's, and found a fantastic sale in progress.  I got some tiny little peg people, some paints, and found the motherload of holiday ribbons for sale at 50% off.  Which is where I found the perfect thing for their wings! 

A couple evenings of painting and hot-gluing later, and I have 9 pretty little angel ornaments to show for it. 

I'm patting myself on the back right now.  Because I think I'm that cool. 

Really, I think they turned out just right.  I'm feeling very proud of them.  And myself, for making something so cute with only my own brain to thank for it.

There's more there than we need.  We only have 8 kids in our class, even when we get the rare visitor.  So we'll definitely get to keep at least one for ourselves, which Melinda and Jacob are happy about.  They think they're pretty cute too, even if Melinda is mad at me for not letting her paint one. 

Magnadoodle Tracing

Every now and then, it's a nice thing to have new ideas for quiet activities for kids, isn't it? I'd like to share one of mine.

I don't have my own ideas very often, and this one really came out of the blue. About 8 months ago or so, I was sitting with my two older kids, playing with our mini Magnadoodles. We did a lot of the typical things like tracing each other's hands, practicing letters, drawing our own pictures, and so on. Suddenly it just dawned on me how they like to sometimes trace things, and how it would probably work through paper on a Magnadoodle, since it's all magnetic anyway. I tried it, and it worked VERY well, so I instantly set out to make a full set of traceable papers to go with our Magnadoodles.

All I did was take regular computer paper, lay it over the top of the Magnadoodle, and press around the edges with a dull pencil to make an outline. I then cut it out, following the outline, and I had a piece of paper that fit perfectly into the Magnadoodle's face. Then I drew a simple picture on it. I also flipped the paper over and drew another picture on the reverse side. Then the kids can place the paper on the face of the Magnadoodle, hold it down, and trace with the magnetic pen. Take the paper off, and voila! You have a very magical-seeming tracing!



I made a whole set of pictures, including monsters, dinosaurs, flowers, mountains, rainbows, a house with a tree and sunshine, an apple, ABC's, traced hands, the kids' names, and quite a bit more. I store them all in a zip lock bag, and take them along with us wherever we need a quiet activity - the car, an office appointment, and especially church. The kids love that they can make more intricate drawings by tracing, and I love that they're practicing their fine motor skills while having fun! My son a bit older than 2 years old when we started this, and he would often just scribble over the whole paper, but still exclaim with joy when he "finished" the picture and saw the result underneath. He later started containing his scribbles to key areas on a drawing, and now, just turned 3, he often follows a line well enough that you can tell what he was tracing when he's done. And with a whole set of reversible tracing papers, this activity will keep both my older kids occupied for a good 10-20 minutes!

I'd love to hear more unique ideas for quiet time activities! What works for you?
More "Works For Me Wednesday" at Rocks In My Dryer!

Unfinished projects

I'm in the middle of yet another unfinished project.

I got the idea to make felt donuts, and decided it sounded really easy. Well, after a whole afternoon of embroidering sprinkles onto the frosting, and then sewing parts of the donuts, I'm taking a break. Next: Hand-sewing the inner circles, stuffing, and then closing off the outer circle. Melinda's really excited, I'm sure we'll work on them more tomorrow. But working on them makes me remember all the other things I'm wanting to sew:

• Diapers. Yeah, still only have those 2 done, plus a few that are purchased. I'd love to switch to cloth full time, but I only have enough for almost a full day. Then there's not enough time for washing and drying, you know? Plus, Alex is getting so big that I'm thinking it might make more sense to just make medium diapers instead of smalls, so I won't waste all that work once I do start them. And while I probably *could* just buy some more and be done with it, then I'd feel really bad about all the cute fabrics (as well as several functional supplies) I bought *just* for making diapers.
  
• Play mat for the kids. The one I sketched out a few weeks ago. Oh yeah, we went shopping for the materials to sew it with and everything. I just never broke out the sewing machine, so it's still waiting to be done.
• Pouch sling for my friend. She's expecting a baby very soon now, and I'd like to get this done for her! Oh yeah, I also keep tossing around the idea of making little baby shoes to match the sling.... hmmm...
• Not sewing, but cinnamon rolls. Got the recipe (whole wheat!), got the appetite, got the ingredients... now I have to plan the time to do it.
• Again, not sewing, but planning a Primary class party. I'd really like to plan a day for all the kids in our church Primary class to come over this summer to have a party. I've been thinking of activities and gathering supplies for a few weeks now, but I still haven't gotten around to calling the families to see what, if any, family vacations are planned so I can schedule around that. Running out of time, Becky....
  

I won't even go into all the things I've purchased patterns or fabric (or both) for, and just haven't gotten around to. I think I get over-excited about the start of a project, and then get frustrated when I can't finish it in, oh... about 2 hours. (rolling eyes at myself, over here...) I like quick projects, what can I say?

But honestly, if I had a dedicated space for my sewing machine (and supplies), I'd probably be a lot better at getting things done. It's always been a severe annoyance to me when I have to spend a lot of time taking equipment out and then putting it away again every time I want to do a project. One big reason I never really got into paper scrapbooking. Digital scrapbooking, on the other hand, is AWESOME, because everything is stored on my computer. Unfortunately, that presents a different problem, because sitting at my computer means getting tempted to spend hours drifting around on blogs and forums....

So yeah, you could say I have a problem with unfinished projects. I wonder if I got it from my dad? Hmm, yes, I seem to remember many a floor board never installed, bookcases never built, door frames left unfinished for years.... Maybe I'll go easier on my dad, now that I'm starting to feel what it's like to have a million projects piling up on top of each other. I think I need to learn how to finish one thing before starting another one. It sounds like a good idea, right? Then why can't I refrain from getting sucked in by the excitement of a new project?

Melissa, this is for you

Don't think I haven't noticed your comments, saying repeatedly that I should sit down and make those baby shoes! ;)

Since Jesse was home from work today, I went ahead and decided to do some sewing. I could have started my diapers, finally, but opted for the shorter project you've been bugging me about!

So here are the completed baby shoes, made from blue suedecloth on the upper surfaces, brown suedecloth on the sole, and lined on the inside with striped flannel. Not too shabby, huh?
And for good measure, I'm also showing off a different quickie project I did recently. I had some scraps left over from cutting strips and squares for the barnyard baby blanket that I did last week. When I told Melinda that I was making a baby blanket, she first thought I meant baby dolls. And she kept stealing scraps to cover her dolls with. So I decided to take the leftovers and turn it into a quick doll-sized blanket:

Baby blanket

Phew! After a few nights and afternoons, I've knocked another item off of my to-do list. Baby blanket #2 is finished! This was the tougher of the two. The first blanket I did was just a simple piece of fleece with a satin binding sewn on. Blanket #2 is a patchwork quilt.

Naturally, I had to first decide on a pattern. So I spent a few hours browsing some free quilt pattern websites before I found one that would be easy and work well with the fabrics I already had. Then, the cutting began. Thank goodness for the rotary cutter, board and ruler that Jesse gave me for Christmas! This job took a couple hours, with breaks, compared to the couple days it would have taken to mark out lines with measuring tape, and then cut each line with scissors. Here's my progress at the end of the evening: The barnyard print, cut into 32 6x6 squares, and 3 coordinating colors sewed into 31 6x6 squares.














The next afternoon, I ironed all the seams on the color-coordinating blocks. And after the kids were in bed, I sewed all the blocks into their appropriate rows.
That part was a little unpleasant. The pattern assumed a multi- directional print (which mine is not - everything has a "right side up"), and I didn't pay close enough attention - which resulted in me having to unpick 2 rows and reverse the barnyard print so that the whole quilt would have the prints facing the same direction. It wasn't awful, just annoying.

The next day was Saturday, so I went ahead and worked some more while Jesse was home. I sewed the rows together to make the quilt top. This is the nicest it looks, here. Everything all nice and flat and perfectly pressed. Once you wash it, since my fabrics were flannel, things get all pilly and a bit puckered, which is endearing, and how a loved flannel blanket should end up looking.... but it just doesn't look as crisp.

After I had finished the top, my plans changed a little. I had been thinking, up till then, that I would just sew the top and a backing together, and skip the batting for a lighter blanket. But, I ended up deciding it didn't look "puffy" enough, and wanted to do some backing. It was already 10:30 pm, though, and I had no batting. I called JoAnn's to see if they were still open so I could run over, but nobody ever answered. And I really hated the idea of leaving the project untouched until Monday when I could go shopping, so I compromised. I dug around in my closet, and came up with a piece of (leftover) white polar fleece big enough to serve as batting. And since polar fleece is also fluffy and very warm, I decided it would work perfectly. So the rest of my Saturday evening was spent cutting the fleece and pinning all the 3 layers together.

Sunday afternoon I treated myself to finishing the blanket. (I do love a good completed project!!!) I ironed and pinned the backing to form the binding, sewed it up, and bam! Things looked complete, and very nice to my eye. But, of course, I needed to quilt all three layers together. This is where I still need a lot more practice. My three layers were just uneven enough to make for a bit more puckering issues, which I kind of expected. So I skipped the pattern suggestion of quilting diagonally across the quilt (ultimately, criss-crossed like x's), and decided to quilt in squares around the "outlined" looking barnyard blocks. The spacing would end up right, that way, and the shape of a square would leave more room for error than trying to do a straight line all the way across a somewhat loose layer of flannel (which I've tried in the past, and only ended up creating huge folds and puckers in several different spots, yuck!). Anyway, I think it ended up working out pretty well. When it was all finished, I threw it in the washer and dryer so I could see the real finished blanket. And here it is:
























The quilted squares on back (poor picture taking on my part, sorry):














And, just because, here's a picture of my hand next to the barnyard print, for an idea of scale. It's a standard "crib" sized quilt.















So my to-do list is now down to these items:

1. Wash Ergo carrier and Ring Sling.
2. Wash car seat cover.
3. Clean out the fridge/freezer. (We were supposed to that yesterday, but ran out of time - next week, I guess!)
4. Sew Boppy slip cover.
5. Sew DIAPERS!!
6. Sew at least 1 pair of baby moc's (est time: 2 hours tops).
7. Review Bradley Method techniques with Jesse. (Not to mention- put myself back into a mental and emotional state of being prepared to go through labor again without panicking!)
   
8. Pull out the co-sleeper set it up next to the bed. (Heck, I could wait till I'm in labor to do that part!)
   

All in all, very doable at this point. Well, the diaper sewing might end up being a bit overwhelming, just for the amount of time involved, but again, it's not something that absolutely has to be done.

And if you read everything this far (hope I didn't bore you to death!), I'll share a bit more: Today, in Primary, the Relief Society folder was passed around, and it included a sign-up sheet for Enrichment night this month, which is, of course, the Relief Society dinner and birthday celebration. It's on the 18th- just about a week before my due date. I went ahead and signed up to bring my Potato Soup. I grinned inwardly, thinking how clever I am: Either I will have one of my most favorite soups to enjoy that night, or I just jinxed myself by signing up for something so close to my due date, and end up having a baby instead. A win-win situation, no matter how you look at it. :)

New bunk bed

Jesse got a raise at work, quite a substantial one. Honestly, he's be very underpaid for a while now, but not one to raise a stink about it. At any rate, it's quite the blessing. And there's something I've been wanting to get for the kids for at least a year now: A bunk bed from IKEA.

It's really short as far as bunk beds go. Standing up, the top railing of the top bunk comes to just under shoulder height for me.

Anyway, since we have a little wiggle room in our budget now, we decided to finally go out and get this for the kids. Up till now, they've been basically sharing the twin mattress on the floor, or sometimes separating themselves, with one of them in the crib-turned-toddler bed. (And it just so happens that Melinda had been complaining for the last several days about her mattress being on the floor. She wanted it up high, like Mommy and Daddy's bed is, now!)

So we made the trip down to IKEA this past Thursday night, attempting to squeeze it in between a Cub Scouts meeting that Jesse needed to attend. The traffic was horrible, though, and while we made our list of items to grab easily and quickly, the self-checkout was kind of a nightmare and took much longer than it should have, with only one attendant to help everyone who ran into a kink - which was just about every single person on 4 different machines. By the time we were out of the store, the kids were going nuts (well, Jacob at least - he missed his nap). And we had to take Jesse straight to his meeting instead of going home. He thought he'd be in there for 5-10 minutes, just long enough to get info on Day Camp. But guess what? The kids and I waited in the van for a full hour and 2 minutes. And this was after I had told myself that if Jesse wasn't back in an hour, I'd be going out to look for a disabled body on the ground. The night was dark and quiet enough to make my mind go there, especially since I didn't actually see him go into a door.

But he did make it back, grumbling about stupid meetings lasting 20 times longer than they needed to, for no good reason, and we made it home around 8:30 pm. Jacob had fallen asleep in the car while we waited for Jesse, so I tucked him into our bedroom. Jesse decided to go ahead and tackle the assembly that night, because he and Melinda were both excited about it. And since Jacob was out of the picture, it really was a good time for an involved furniture assembly project. I "helped" by sorting the pieces and reading the directions.

Here's the first completed side:



















Melinda was doing great at going through the different hardware pieces and picking out the right ones. I think her favorite part, though, was inserting the wooden pegs into the many, many holes. Nice and easy job! Then she got in on some hexagonal screwing action:

And before long, we had enough pieces to stand the whole thing up and put it together. Melinda was getting pretty tired by this point, and it was all we could do to keep her focused on handing Jesse one screw at a time, instead of jabbering in some sort of nonsensical language and just plain not paying attention to anything.

Finally, assembly was done. We even got the neat little tent set up on top! Then we quickly got out the new mattresses (also IKEA), threw some sheets on them, put the pillows and blankets on, and finished up at about 10:30pm!!! Whew! Melinda was more than happy to climb into bed on the top bunk, up under the canopy. Although she has mentioned that she'd like a window in the canopy. I think I can handle that easily enough, by cutting out a circle and sewing some clear vinyl on it.

I'll have to rearrange some pictures on the wall, but otherwise, we're set! Jacob was thrilled when he saw it set up the next morning, and he's been hard at practice to get up and down the ladder easily. Of course, it's been really difficult to get them to sleep since we've gotten it - the novelty of a bunk bed will take a while to wear off, I think. But hopefully before the new baby interrupts all of our night schedules. Neither one of them can decide whether they want to sleep on top or bottom, separately or apart, etc., so there's a lot of going up and down and whining and arguing before they end up falling asleep. Still, it's obvious that they love it. Melinda came and told me, after she and Jacob had been playing in the bedroom for a while, that they had a great "adventure". The bed was a boat, and they got sucked up in a tornado (that's a nod to The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker game that she loved to watch Jesse play on the Game Cube this past year), and then the boat ran into some sand, and on and on and on. It did sound like quite the adventure, and she was thrilled to re-tell it!

At any rate, this bunk bed will probably be our one "splurge" with the pay raise. Despite how badly I want a new set of couches, or how nice it would be to get Jesse a car that's not about to fall apart any second... We're hoping to get a good savings going, now, after so long of having practically nothing saved at all.

The life of plywood, part 2

I originally posted in the Just Life post, near the end, that we recently bought a cheap piece of plywood to use between our mattresses in order to get our bed back up off the floor. Well, when we bought the wood, it was bigger than we needed it to be, so Jesse had them cut it at the store, and he went home with two pieces. One, we used for our bed. The other has been floating around while we figured out what to do with it. It measures 2 feet by 4 feet.

It just so happens that when our bed was on the floor, we had the box spring vertical against the wall, since we had nowhere else to put it, and we didn't really want to throw it away. We covered it with a large blanket that my Grandma had made for me as a wedding gift. So we basically had a queen-sized box spring as our headboard and wall decoration in one. Follow me so far? Anyway, when we put our bed back on the frame, the wall behind our bed suddenly looked extremely bare, and white.

I finally had an idea come to me for that extra piece of plywood. And today, I put it into action! We headed out to JoAnne's Fabrics today, and took advantage of a President's Day sale: We bought a piece of upholstery fabric for 50% off, and then used a coupon for an extra 10% off the total purchase. The whole family made the trip, but Jesse wasn't up for offering opinions on which fabric to pick. He kept shrugging his shoulders and saying, "I don't know, I can't really picture how this is going to look in the end, anyway...."

So finally I settled on a fabric that I liked, despite the fact that it pretty much matches nothing in our bedroom. Because, let's face it, nothing matches in our bedroom, anyway. We've got navy blue cheapo curtains, a hand-me-down dresser that has chunks of veneer missing and a mish-mash of knobs on the drawers, navy blue sheets and pillowcases (although right now, we're sporting beautiful red striped and green patterned Christmas pillowcases that Jesse's sister, Rachel, made for our family), and a brown and cream quilt that a different Grandma made for us, also for our wedding. And then we have a rocking chair in a forest green color, and our "bedside tables" are covered in blue cloths. So, nothing matches. And as a result, I just decided to pick something that I liked instead of worrying about trying to match something in the bedroom.

I also grabbed some batting-by-the-yard, and then we picked up a couple packages of small flat thumbtacks. And at home, I went to work: I laid the fabric face down, then the batting, then the extra piece of plywood on top. And started thumb-tacking the fabric to the back of the plywood. After the first few, I could tell my thumb was going to get sore quickly, so I grabbed a hammer to help. But even with that help, I still had to get them started with my thumb, and boy is it sore now. Yes, a staple gun would have been immensely less painful, and much quicker, but hey- we're cheap, remember? We don't have a staple gun. So thumbtacks worked just fine.

Here is the end result on the back, with all the lovely thumbtacks that made my thumb nearly get a blister:














And the front, where things actually look nice:














And then I finally manage to drag Jesse away from his computer, so he could help me screw some wire into the back, and then help me hang it on the wall. And here is our new "art" above our bed. Yay! It's so fun to do a quick project that makes a nice difference in your room. I really do like the fabric - it's very peaceful and calming, and I'm really finding that I like green a lot. Maybe enough to make it my "favorite" color. Maybe my favorite house color, at least. I still love love love blues for clothes. Oh, and for the record, Jesse really likes it, too, even though he couldn't picture it before! He said, and I quote, "It looks great, Becky." and "Nice picking, hon!" :)


















































Sure, maybe it's not super fancy, as far as projects go, and it's certainly not an entirely redecorated room, but it was still fun to do, and I really appreciate the wall not being completely bare now. And besides, we used the extra piece of plywood and gave it a new life! Now it's not stuck in the back seat of Jesse's car, or relegated to become a junk piece of wood for Cub Scouts to practice their skills with screwdrivers and nails. Nope, it's become a lovely piece of art! :)