school’s out for the summer…almost

Posted on 2013/05/19 by daisyeyes

Now that I have the roaring head banging song in your head, I present to you our summer plans. I do a great job of making it look like I have it all together and this summer is no different. This is the last week of school and so I’m hurriedly trying to paste all my last minute ideas together so that next Tuesday (because Monday is a holiday) we are ready and going.

One thing we will do this week is have a “yes” day. I implemented this day as the first and last day of any vacation that we have. It’s a no holds bar kind of day where you can cram your head with as much technology and anything else (within reason) because after that we are on a schedule.

Last year we had this crazy magnet thing that I had come up with. While we kind of held it together in the beginning, it pretty much all fell apart after a few weeks. It was a little bit too lax and the follow through wasn’t happening.

After spending Christmas vacation with one child who seriously needs some sort of schedule and me realizing that I am going to have to still work on the shop this summer, I knew we would have to have some sort of framework.

So this is what I came up with. A loose schedule filled with assigned days for things and different themed hours in our house. One thing I know that could easily overtake us is technology, so we are going to be very rigorous on this one. Both of my kids are getting to the age where if they are bored they want a screen. Not gonna happen this summer. We also have this Apologia science book that we’ve been talking about doing for at least 2 years and I swear we are going to do some of it this summer. So this is the lay of the land.

1. We have a family calendar hanging up that we will mark off the days as we go. This gives everyone a heads up for what is coming up that is planned for.
2. We have assigned days for things: Monday mornings we will have a chore time. They will be assigned one weekly chore that they will do on Monday mornings. Wednesdays is movie afternoon. Hopefully this helps with the “I want to watch a movie” whines. Friday mornings we will hit the library.
3. We will be unplugged between 8:30 and 1:00. No questions asked. I’m also trying to get rid of the t.v. as soon as you wake up habit. If they do wake up before 8:30, then PBS is totally fine, but if you wake up later than that….too bad.
4. We will have a loose structure to our day: breakfast, school time, work time for me with play time for them, lunch and then the tech hour. During this hour they are free to have whatever screen they desire: Ipod, Ipad, computer, Leapster, Wii…whatever. And then quiet hour. My hope is to have 30 minutes of reading time for all of us and then 30 minutes of quiet time in their rooms. This is more for my sanity than theirs! Then we will hit the pool
5. Obviously there are days where this won’t happen and to be honest we only have 4 weeks this summer that are totally open (we go to school year round so we have a pretty short summer). But these weeks we are “down” I hope will be pretty routine.

The second thing I did was our bucket list. I have a bunch of things I’ve pinned on my Summer2013 board and many of these ideas came from there. The idea for the mock chemistry board came from here.

I did ours a little differently and color coded the post it notes for free activities (pink), those that involve money (yellow), those that involve planning (blue) and a couple of open spots (green).

I have a tendency to be too structured and then never follow through, so I tried really hard to make this whole thing be a system of guidelines for us. Giving us all space for summer life to happen, but also a little roadmap for those of us that crave that sort of thing.

thredUp beware

Posted on 2013/01/14 by daisyeyes

A few years ago I saw a review of a company called ThredUp. The concept was simple. Fill up a box of gently used clothing and then list those items and other parents were able to review all the different boxes and chose one. I did this at least 3-4 times and never had a complaint about the clothing that I had sent in. And while I had a few duds in some of my boxes, for the most part it was all represented accurately.

Recently their company decided to do away with the swapping boxes idea and become somewhat of an online consignment store. The idea is you send in a bag of clothes to them, they go through them and then chose the ones that meet their criteria and give you credit for them. You can go to their website, use their iPad app and shop for clothes online. Simple right?

I thought I would give it a try. I have a local consignment store that I love, but it’s 30 minutes from my house. The idea that I could just fill up a bag, leave it on my step for the postal worker was rather appealing. I ordered my little green dotted bag, filled it up with clothes that I would have normally taken to my local shop and waited.
And waited. And waited.

Finally I heard back from the company that I had received a whopping 80 cents for the one shirt out of 20+ items that they decided met their criteria. I was told the rest of the items were stained or ripped. Totally untrue.

After doing a little nosing around on the internet, I found blog after blog where people had written great reviews about the items they had received from ThredUp (for free to review), but comment after comment about situations like mine. They even have a multitude of complaints to the Better Business Bureau for the same thing.

So, while ThredUp may be a great place to buy clothing…DO NOT send in your clothes there. Support your local consignment store, do a clothing swap with friends, heck give that bag of clothes to someone in your community that needs them. But stay clear of that little green polka dotted bag.

fantastic friday {1.11.13}

Posted on 2013/01/11 by daisyeyes

Hello friends! Fantastic Fridays are back! This was by far one my favorite series that I came up last year and honestly the only one I actually stuck with. Here’s to 2013! A new year brings a new little button too!

great FABRIC: A new year brings new fabric and while I’m still on my fabric fast, there are lots of new designs that are catching my eye. This group by Style Par Mo is especially fun.

to whet your APPETITE: Tis the season for soups (although it’s supposed to be 70 degrees this weekend. I’m beginning to think I live in Florida). I’ve got a few soup links on my dinner pinterest board, but my bestest past on this great recipe for chicken soup and it’s on my menu for next week!

be NEAT (as in organized): this tub toy storage idea is by far genius.

a TUTORIAL to do: I love this tutorial for a dopp bag for the guys in your life. Maybe this would make a great Valentine’s gift for my man?

becoming more AWARE: One of my goals for this year is to work on being free with creativity and I would love to start an art/journal. My plan is try and start something like this weekly with my kiddos during homework time.

something to SEW: Oliver + S has put out some new patterns for the new year. Check them out!

to TRIM my house with: I am getting ready to paint our foyer and upstairs hall. We are also going to demo a stupid coat closet and make a temporary “mud room closet” until we can move our back door and make a permanent one. I love this idea for a mud closet although I’m not sure this would be very temporary.

ILLUSTRATION to stitch: I would love to make one of these grateful signs to hang up.

CUTE: These vintage style, embroidered pennants are just amazing and super cute!

Have a happy weekend!!!

going green experiment {wool dryer balls}

Posted on 2013/01/07 by daisyeyes

So I have a few boards on Pinterest that I have decided that I am going to tackle this year. One of them is my “living green” board. While there were a few standard things I adapted to in 2012 (making my own handsoap for example) there are many other things I’ve wanted to tackle. My goal is to take at least one pin from my board (or any other place that I end up seeing something) and try that out once a month.

This month was easy. A while back I pinned this idea for making dryer balls from Jillee (who is hands down the queen of DIY stuff) and while I was making a run to JoAnns one day I grabbed a skein of 100 percent wool yarn. And then it sat in various places in my house staring at me until finally I decided to sit down and do it (back to back episodes of Parenthood on the iPad helped; I must admit).

So, I started winding and I only came up with 3 balls (she got 4). It was hard to tell from her picture how big hers were. (This whole conversation is making me giggle to be honest…I have a 9 year old boy in my house so any conversation with the word “balls” in it makes him erupt. I digress).

I threw my into a pantyhose (finally a use for those things laying in my drawer) and washed them and dried them. And so far, the jury is out.

My clothes still came out with gobs of static. So I am really just not sure. Maybe I need more than 3?

Has anyone else out there tried these with success?

before & after {beginnings of a family message center}

Posted on 2012/07/28 by daisyeyes

I’ve complained about our kitchen before and honestly this one corner of our kitchen has driven me crazy since the first time we walked into our house. The door is the back door and the one we use 95% of the time. The microwave in that corner and the 12 inches of usable counterspace under it did much to make me nuts!

We’ve been attempting to use this as a sort of message center and drop all for keys, mail, school stuff etc. But looking at the microwave all the time was making me nuts.

My resident handyman demoed the cabinet and voila…instead space! (We moved the microwave to a small counter on the other side of the kitchen.)

This is a temporary fix as the current plan this winter and spring is to start taking down this whole wall of cabinets and remove the soffit and replace them with open shelving. This is step one in the redoing of our horrible welcome to the 80′s kitchen! Knowing we were going to start repainting in the next 6-9 months, I bought a sample size of paint that matched and painting the soffit and the corner.

I’m still researching a few other options for this space, but as this is temporary it’s nothing I can invest lots of $$ in. I did find a couple of inspiration photos I found this morning…

Source: imgfave.com via aimee on Pinterest

We also have a couple of tall cabinets that used to hold our calendar etc and I’m thinking of combining a couple of these ideas for that space

Source: theclayfamilyblog.blogspot.com via aimee on Pinterest

Especially once we start taking down the soffit and remove our little temporary space.

Source: landeeseelandeedo.com via aimee on Pinterest

I am thrilled with out this turned out and I’m thinking of getting a piece of sheet metal for the wall to the left to hang school reminders etc on.

How do you organize your family message/drop all spots?

responsibilities, contributions & expectations

Posted on 2012/05/28 by daisyeyes

I was a special education teacher for nearly 10 years. One thing that was constantly remarked to me was that I never gave up trying something for something better. If something wasn’t working, I modified it or scrapped it and tried something else. That tenaciousness has carried over into my parenting and home life. I’m constantly drafting and changing all sorts of things in our house. (which drives my husband crazy) Sometimes it’s because it’s not working, sometimes it’s boredom and sometimes it’s because I saw something that might work better.

I came up with this if/then chart a while ago and I’ve tweaked it many times since. Lately some things have happened in our home that have made us realize that this chart really wasn’t working for us and we were going to need to radically change some of the consequences. We’ve really figured out what consequences were working with our children, what were exacerbating the situation and not helping and what areas we really needed to focus on. The primary consequence that works with both our children is a removal from the situation. They both just need that time to collect themselves before they can listen and enter back into family life. My husband and I also just needed help with being on the same page. I came up with some key phrases (maybe like our family mottos?) and verses that would match. (these verses come from Desiring God’s children’s memory verse system we’ve been working through). So here is our updated version:

The next big thing I worked on was our new responsibility/contribution system. It will be a few weeks before we get it hung up and all the kinks worked out, but here is a broad picture of it:

Like I mentioned before, I used the idea from here and tweaked it for our family. We basically divided home stuff into two categories: responsibilities (you do these because you are a member of this family with no “reward”) and contributions (these are things you can earn money for).

Every day they see their chart:

There might be extra responsibility things that I add daily and for the contributions there might be specific things they need to do that day (mow the yard) or it might say “pick 2″ and they get to choose.

When they choose, they are choosing from this list of contributions:

As they finish a contribution, they put it on their cookie sheet. At the end of the day, they add up how much money they earned and put it on their time sheet. On Sundays, they are paid their commission for the week.

Hopefully by next Sunday (their first payday) I will have 3 change purses for each. One for saving, one for giving and one for spending. For my son, who is almost 9, he will be working towards his first savings account deposit. When he saves enough to open his account, he will start putting all his save money in the bank towards a car when he turns 16. For my daughter, who is 5, we are going to decide on one large item that she is saving for. She desperately needs to learn that in order to get something big, you have to wait for it. (patience is not her strong suit!)

The other thing on their cookie sheets are their technology cards. Each Sunday they get a new card with 10 punches equally 45 minutes of plugged in time. When the card is punched out, they are done for the week. No new card until Sunday.

Like I said, we just unveiled the system today, so this week is going to be a trial and error. They’ve known about the tech cards for a while so they thought it was kind of fun. They probably won’t be laughing come Thursday when they are punched out! But I won’t be either!

playing with scraps

Posted on 2012/05/13 by daisyeyes

You know the whole parenting frustration where you spend all this money on great toys and the kids just play with the box? I think there was a post a while back floating around the net that gave the top 10 toys for kids and it was like a cardboard box, pieces of wood, a rope etc. Simple things.

Our house is in a constant state of remodeling. My husband has stuff lying all around the house for all sorts of projects. I admit that most of the time it drives me nuts and I want to chuck it all, yesterday was one of those days I was glad for it.

Introducing the world’s most famous toys: the tube and the stair tread remnant

We have a million of these cardboard tubes lying around 1. because my husband works for an engineering firm and he brings all of them home from work and 2. he is planning on entering a cardboard boat race and is in it to win it this year. The stair tread remnant is from the finally accomplished stairs into our basement (We are like 2 steps from being done with remodeling our basement…yippee!!).

The kids and I were outside yesterday and I realized these would make amazing balance boards. I wondered if the tubes were strong enough to withstand the weight of the kids and even me and they were! We had a blast playing around with our balance and found out that it works much better on the grass versus the driveway (I nearly had a major bust when the tube started rolling under me…can anyone say “lumberjack racing”?)

Then my son, being the boy he is, decided to make it into a catapult and starting launching things off of it.

So, when you start to get board this summer (no pun intended) just take a look at all the junk lying around your garage or carport and you never know what you might find!

fantastic friday {04.20.2012}

Posted on 2012/04/20 by daisyeyes

On Fridays I recap some fantastic finds from around the world wide web. I’m feeling kinda cruddy today, so this will be a short and sweet version.

Happy Weekend!

great FABRIC: I posted about the Flea Market Fancy line by Denyse Schmidt being reworked and re-released and Fabricworm has put all her bundles on sale. Now you can get your hands on a stack of fat quarters for less than most places right now!

to whet your APPETITE: We had this Crock Pot Chicken Taco Chili last night for dinner and it was awesome. I actually used a cup of dried black beans and a cup of dried kidney beans in place of the cans and it worked out just fine.

be NATURAL and NEAT (as in organized): This thread and bobbin organizer is amazing. This might be on my birthday wish list for next year.

a TUTORIAL to do: I’m slowly ticking off the things I want to sew for the shop list and this is next on my list: some hand embroidered headband wraps

on AIMEE’s to do list (that’s me by the way): I’m working on a big embroidery project for my son’s retiring teacher. If you missed yesterday’s Thursday Threads post, you can click above and read all about it.

something to SEW: I’ve been tossing around buying the Family Reunion dress pattern by Oliver + S and this version of what you can do with it makes me want to get it asap!

to TRIM my house with: My kid’s have pretty much outgrown the sandbox years, but this backyard play area and this awesome play garden would be perfect for them

INSPIRATIONAL: This is a great list of books to read for girls. We are actually reading Pippi Longstocking as a family right now and loving it.

CUTE: Laundry stains and I don’t mix. I usually give them to my mother and thank goodness she lives close. She is like the stain wizard. I need to get some of these labels to put in my clothes in honor of her.

a soap experiment

Posted on 2012/03/27 by daisyeyes

There are lots of things I choose to do for our family that are homemade and hopefully healthy. I won’t buy Little Debbie cakes (which makes my husband oh so sad) and kool-aid (gasp!). I pretty consistently make bread every week for us (yum!). That said, I’ve never been excited about jumping on the soap making wagon. I longingly look at recipes for homemade dishwasher detergent and laundry soap, but I’ve never been able to justify the time and expense of gathering all the materials when I can just buy some detergent at the store (or actually lately I’ve been buying it off a friend who buys it by the caseload).

But, when this recipe for handsoap crossed Pinterest, I thought “this could be a good starting point.”

I gathered up all the materials: glycerin (from the bandaid aisle at Walmart for $3.50), a bar of Vermont soap (from our local food co-op for $3.50) and water (from my kitchen sink).

I kind of combined the two recipes/procedures I had pinned. One from The Farmer’s Nest and another from The Rasmussens.

I honestly don’t know how many ounces the soap bar was. It was a typical handmade soap size. Probably about the same size as a bar of Dove. I ended up using 2 Tbsp of glycerin and 10 cups of water. When I was done, it was pretty watery. I let it sit all day and overnight. This morning it was pretty thick, but not snotty, like I had read so many reviews. I decided to beat it a little with the electric mixer and it thickened up a little more, but still wasn’t very snotty. It’s kind of the consistency of soap when you mix some water in the bottom of the bottle to get the last of it out. Maybe a little thicker. I have read too that it will continue to thicken up as it sits.

Here are my results. I filled up 2 soap dispensers and 3 jars. Not bad, but this first round I wouldn’t say it saved me any money. If I keep going at it, all I’ll have to buy is the bar of soap and that will make it all worth it.

Does it work? When I washed my hands with it, it did suds up, smelled great and left my hands feeling oh so soft. We’ll see what the family thinks when they come home and start using it!

happy luv day

Posted on 2012/02/14 by daisyeyes

For once, I feel like I actually planned and followed through with doing some special holiday things. I’m horrible at this and I’ve longed for years to be one of those mommas (well just people in general) that made a special breakfast and other little treats throughout special days. This year I’m so happy that I did.

We started out our morning with baked donuts. I found this recipe via Pinterest and although they are good, they look better than they are. I blame this completely on the fact that I was lazy and I made the dough in my breadmaker. I think if I would have done it by hand they would have been more doughy than they are.

We have a tradition of making our own valentines. I really thought this might be the year that my son realized that you could just buy them in a box, but we breezed right past that section of Walmart/Target and I’m so happy that after doing this for so many years he just automatically associates Valentine’s with something he makes himself.

We saw the viking valentine on Pinterest and he decided to draw it. I took a photo of his drawing, used Picnik (oh please don’t close!!) and doctored it up and voila! A super funny valentine for his friends. The chick’s is another pinterest inspired valentine with a ball and a kiss.

For his teacher he decided to do a little embroidery pillow with the initial of his school. I’m so proud of him for finishing it (he was getting a little tired when I suggested the chain stitch around the outside) and he helped me sew it and stuff it last night. So crazy to think he is big enough to just sit at my sewing machine and pretty much do it himself (gone are the days of him sitting in my lap!) The funniest thing about this is the switch of colors on the chain stitch. I asked him why he decided to put grey in there and he said, huh, I thought it was the same! (he is colorblind and I so often forget that)

I decided to make a secret treat for their lunchboxes today and made this snack mix yesterday. It’s been a loooong time since I’ve made this kind of snack mix and now I know why…it’s too addictive!! I found myself walking past it cooling off yesterday and snagging handful after handful. The recipe calls for peanut butter, but we have a peanut allergy in the house so I had to use almond butter. Because of that I ended up having to add probably a tablespoon of canola oil to the melting mixture to help with the spreading ability. It worked out great and tastes divine I also threw some raisins in there for good measure.

For the kids this year we decided to make this little mailbox with a “year of valentines“. Each month they get to scratch off a card and see what that month’s special event would be. This month we are going to go to breakfast at a local coffee shop. Next month we are doing a special little overnight trip during spring break. There is also a bowling trip, mini golf, giant picnic with friends, going on a hike, dessert at a restaurant among a few others thing.

And last is the husband. I made this little book of love tickets and also bought a box of hershey kisses and made this little card for the top. We are putting the kids to bed early (haha) and making a special dinner together tonight instead of going out.