Summer Chaos - Controlled?

We've been working with the large calendar on the left since Mr. H. was in school, but this is our summer control center. We have it all hanging between the kitchen and the dining room right at the kids' eye level. The top checklist in the middle has everything kids are responsible for doing every morning: make their bed, brush their teeth, get dressed, eat breakfast, put dishes in the sink, etc. The bottom checklist is what they have to do before bed.The dry erase board on the right is our daily note that the kids read to us each morning. H's teacher had this in his classroom, and encouraged us to continue it to help with reading, days of the week, scheduling our day, etc.

Since we have started using the checklists, the kids are SO GREAT in the morning!! The run downstairs to check things off, and buzz around making sure everything is checked off. No more nagging them to do this and do that, and asking them if they've brushed their teeth or not... I LOVE IT.

Every morning after they've finished everything on their checklist, we sit down and do these Summer Skills Daily Activity Workbooks by FlashKids. They really love to do them, but just to ensure enthusiasm, we picked out all of these stickers to go in their sticker books. After each day's activity, they get to pick out a sticker (or five...). Their sticker books are just spiral bound sketch books that they can draw or paint in as well. (the bottom photo is Miss Mae looking through an entire book of LISA FRANK STICKERS!!!! Oh how I remember how my heart would pound at the thought of a new Lisa Frank sticker when I was young!

I can't tell you what a difference our little scheduling has made in our mornings! Everyone knows what to expect, and what will happen next. I REALLY hope we can hold on to this into the school year!

Community Supported Agriculture - LocalHarvest

I’ve been wanting to do this for years, and have never gotten around to it.  Sunday's Oregonian had an article about the difference in prices for a bag of fruits and veggies from the farmer's market, a discount grocery chain, a local Wholefoods, a CSA or Community Supported Agriculture subscription.

You can find one near you here: Community Supported Agriculture – LocalHarvest

They concluded that of course the retail chain store was the cheapest, but you won’t get organic, and who KNOWS where your food is coming from.  The farmers’ market and Wholefoods were basically the same price, but the lowest was the CSA!  The food is coming straight from the farm – often picked that morning – and the money is going straight to the farmer.  LOVE IT.

I’ve had friends who have done this over the years, and they’ve always loved getting the fresh surprise basket each week. 

I’m making the call.  Have you done this?  Were you happy with your surprise grocery basket?  What did you do with all of the LETTUCE in the spring??

Feltique

Oh my do I want this book!!! This fall when it is cooler out, I'm going to felt again. I ADORE felting.

What to do with the kids when you are trying to organize the house and they want to play? Give them your scalloped square paper press cutter thing and show them how to make tiny books! Miss Mae was happily pressing, drawing and folding for almost an hour and a half!

Happy Fourth of July!

These are my $58 paper pinwheels. I have a knack for making things myself to save money and spending twice as much... In this case we could have bought pinwheels for about $1.00 a piece, but it was great fun making them! The $58 was not JUST for the pinwheels - I can't seem to stay on task in the craft store. We found great stickers and sticker books for our summer activities, and so many beautiful papers!

For the pinwheels, we used Martha Stewart's instructions. I think this is aimed at a little older children. My kids are 6 and 4, so I did most of the steps. They did do the cutting parts, and loved the final products!

Happy Birthday America!

The Bright Side Project - Sunshine Delivered Daily

The Bright Side Project - Sunshine Delivered Daily

I just found this site and LOVE IT! They give away something truly lovely every single day!!

Daily Candy 100 Day Giveaway

Daily Candy 100 Day Giveaway

This started on June 15, but goes through SEPTEMBER! Be sure to remember to enter every day, the prizes are GREAT!

good luck!!

Rag Curls

Miss Mae has been asking for curls for weeks. We tried to curl her hair up with a curling iron for a Fancy Nancy party last summer, but her sweet, soft, baby hair simply won't hold a curl that way. My mom used to curl my hair at night with rag curls, so we gave it a shot! She ADORED the entire process, and it went pretty quick. I used these disposable things I found at the store, and tied up pretty curls in her wet from the bath hair. (I'm going to use cotton ones from now on, these were actually pretty difficult to use.) She slept on them all night, and then this morning we woke to these lovely curls!! She was preening and posing in front of the mirror for EVER! It was great fun. She's decided we are going to do this every single day... We'll see!

Lego Guggenheim

Lego. Guggenheim.
genius.
Perfect for Mr. H. Although he is NOT allowed to go into architecture....

A Fairy Party.

Miss Mae and I went to the MOST lovely party EVER last weekend. It was a Fairy Mud pie party! Miss Esther and Miss Anna were the birthday girls, and Esther's parents and little brother were the hosts. (They were also kind enough to share their photos with me!) We walked into a gorgeous backyard (that has inspired me to work on our sad, barren backyard) filled with spaces. I don't know how to say it better than that - it was filled with SO many spaces! A little place to sit here, a garden there, a path over a hill and through the bushes here, a tree swing there... It felt like ten backyards. The center piece of the party was the fairy tree. Little baskets and pails were strung from the tree with pretty pieces of ribbon. Each basket had a different tiny fairy building material: tiny pine cones, little bits of sticks, feathers, sunflower seeds, flower petals, pine needles... At the base of the tree sat flower pots filled with more supplies. Everything looked like it had been there for ages - settled by the fairies themselves. I wanted to plop myself down and build some fairies a HOUSE! Instead, though, Miss Mae and I chose the perfect little bits for her pail and found some perfect little shells in the sand box and oo'ed and aah'ed over each tiny addition.

Here are he birthday girls in THE tree.

Miss Raven choosing her fairy mud pie supplies from THE tree.Some finished fairy mud pies. Really, they are the most beautiful mud pies I've ever seen!

The party favors (apart from the sweet buckets filled with the building supplies) were handmade washcloths - each one different - bundling a darling little shaped soap and tied up with a strip of ribbon. Perfect for washing up after an afternoon of playing in the mud. This was so much more than a birthday party! We were transported into another world for the afternoon. Thank you for the gift!

ReadyMade - Projects - Miss Modular

ReadyMade - Projects - Miss Modular

Shared via AddThis

How stinking cool is this? As a mom who spends a good amount of every single day making spaceships and space stations out of Legos, I'm impressed! Love that she has taken such a utilitarian toy and made them into ART!

Well done!

Fabulous New Laura Gunn Fabric at Michael Miller

Michael Miller has a new line by Laura Gunn!! YUM! I don't usually like the painterly quality in fabrics - I tend to like solid colors, know what I mean? I don't like the scratchy/sketchy quality on fabric. But OH MY, these are LOVELY. and inspiring. And have changed my mind. The colors are insane.

And wouldn't you know it? She is the sister-in-law of Heather Bailey!! Whose fabric I also love. So how much do you have to pay to get to be part of THIS family?! i mean, REALLY.

A Lovely Little Tea Party

Finally, I am getting the photos up from Miss Mae's birthday tea party! Everything takes so much longer these days with baby O. in the picture... We had SUCH a lovely day! Maggie invited her friends from school and they came all gussied up as the "little ladies who lunch" that they are. My mom sewed these amazing fabric garlands after we saw them at party perfect! I adore her blog, and when I saw them, I immediately emailed my mom and showed her. I thought, "maybe when Miss Mae is older I'll have time!" But grandma set to work and made them all! She turned hers on the diagonal and went with a pink theme. They are made from her stash of fabric, sheets, and even clothing she cut up. If you want any more info about how we did it, just leave me a comment and I'll be happy to fill you in. I'm posting more photos on flickr, too.

My awesome mom also dug out a box of tea cups and saucers and hunted for the perfect silver spoons for months.I really, really tried to scale this party back after the huge productions Mr. Henry's parties have been in the past - again, I'm not talking about pony rides or anything, but I like to throw a party! The little cream puffs are from COSTCO - I love them - my kids call them ice cream balls because they are just as yummy frozen. We also had fresh strawberries with whipped cream, and jam and butter sandwiches: one side wheat and one side brown for a checker board effect.

The first order of business was decorating hats. They were waiting for the girls at the kitchen table so as the girls arrived, they could all sit down together. I searched high and low for hats to decorate, and ended up finding them in the target dollar bins! perfect! Because the girls were little (3-5 ish) I hot glued the marabou boas to the hats before they arrived. (I was having images of tiny fingers covered with wet glue and boa fluffs stuck to them, and glue takes WAY too long to dry.) I had sticky back jewels ready for them to adorn their hats.Next we all moved to the living room for an old fashioned cake walk revamped for the tea party theme. Pink, blue, yellow, and white tea pots and tea cups were our circle, and when the music stopped, I called out a color or a shape, and whoever was standing on the said color or shape would get a little bead necklaces or stickers or smarties or glittery pencils. Mostly I just filled every one's little buckets as full as Icould get them.

In order to be able to set the "table" (the floor in our case) we had all of the little ladies go back to the kitchen table and make bead bracelets. Here is miss Katie working intently on hers.

And finally the tea party!! I used lemonade, just in case. And lemonade 'cream'. And pretty pink and purple sugar. After having 6 years of Mr. H. parties, I was prepared to do so much HERDING! I had my game plan and was ready for those little girls to be running all over the house. I put sheets down on the floor so clean up would be easy and nothing would have very far to fall. The girls were perfect little ladies and not a drop was spilled!

I went with my favorite cupcakes in the world, St. Cupcakes. Every year I threaten to make a cake, and that still hasn't happened! These cupcakes are SO good, no one ever misses anything I might attempt.

It was a perfect day! I can't believe my little Miss Mae is already 4 years old. She is a treasure and has chosen the best friends!

The Art Potential of Elementary Students

Mr. H's school put on an art show this week. Their art teacher is PHENOMENAL! Look at these! These are just a tiny sampling of what these students did. I didn't know who Georgia O'Keefe or Matisse were until I studied art in college, and these kids are studying them like professionals!

I wish you could have seen the whole show! Every wall is covered with amazing pieces - and all done by kindergartners through eighth graders! I know when I am drawing or painting, the world looks SO beautiful to me. The colors are brighter, the shadows scream out, the poetry of the visual world is so obvious after hiding for so long. Just imagine how these kids are going to look at the world when they are taught to be so observant so young. YUM.

Genius Father's Day Gift

This is the best idea I've seen in SO long! www.memolio.com makes a fan book of your uploaded images - SO easy to drop in your purse or wallet and have photos of the fam with you where ever you go. They are advertised as "water resistant and impossible to tear"! The interface is brilliant, and no application to download to your computer. It is as simple as dragging and dropping your photos into position. The books are only $20, and they even ship for FREE. Perfect for fathers day. I'm going to get started....