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.

a “happier” 2013 {book review part 1}

Posted on 2013/01/08 by daisyeyes

I’m trying to narrow down my goals for this year with home life, blogging, sewing, etsy and everything else in my life. I’m really trying hard not to have this crazy long list, but rather up to 3 goals for different areas…and in some places maybe only one.

One of my few goals for this space is to be more consistent about doing book reviews. I read all sorts of different books and I can be a pretty voracious reader. The problem is I don’t give myself time to digest what I’m reading either while I’m reading or even afterwards. Goodreads has been a good place for me to record the books I’ve read, but I needed to encourage myself to do something more than just list them. So, one thing you can look forward to in 2013 is hopefully some good honest book reviews. I can’t promise any kind of regularity, so if you are interested in following along this might be the perfect time to becoming a regular subscriber to this little spot (just click over there on the right or just happily add me to your reader).

Enough of that.

One book I finished right towards the end of the year was Happier at Home by Gretchen Rubin. The title and cover intrigued me so I grabbed it up at the library, only to find out this is her second book about happiness. Her first book was the Happiness Project which you don’t really need to have read before to follow along in this one (at least I didn’t).

Rubin pretty much lives her life by personal commandments that she has set for herself and is absolutely driven by the writers William Morris and Samuel Johnson. If you are on Pinterest, I’m sure you have seen this little illustration floating around with this great William Morris quote:

Source: lisacongdon.com via aimee on Pinterest

And in the book she quotes Samuel Johnson many times, but this was one of my favorites:
“To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition the end to which every enterprise and labour tends.”

To be fair to her, for all of you grumbling out there with the word “happy” I really think after reading this book she means “contentment”. At least, as I processed through her book that is the word that I kept saying in my head. I long for contentment at home, in my work, in my relationships etc and so much of that contentment (or lack of) stems from my issues…not the issues of those around me. As she states in the book happiness {contentment} is realizing how happy I am and how much I have to be happy for. Another way to think about this is gratefulness. So much, so, so much of our bah humbugness comes from just our lack of opening our eyes to the things around us we should be grateful for. In that comes happiness ~ contentment ~ joy.

In the book, she goes month by month through a year and chooses one area of her life to focus on and then makes a few goals for it. Some examples are: marriage, neighbors, family etc. She goes through month by month and clarifies her goals and then writes about the results. This was the part I loved…her honesty. In one example she tried acupuncture. It was something that she had wanted to do for a while and it fit into her month on basically getting healthier. She tried it, realized it didn’t really work for her and then stopped. And she was ok with it. I’ll write more on this tomorrow, but she just accepted what she needed to accept and. moved. on. That is SO not me! But so where I want to be.

While there were parts of this book and her philosophy that don’t really mesh with mine, there were many things I could take from this book. I think it’s a great one to pick up and use her definitions and her goals to frame questions for yourself. It was an easy read and fun to read at times. She is very whitty and honestly her struggles relate so much to mine in so many ways (oh…I am so selfish!).

So as you think about setting goals and framing your year, I heartily recommend this book.

Interested in more? Tune in tomorrow for my favorite quotes and some of my changes and goals for this year.

fantastic fridays {nov 9)

Posted on 2012/11/09 by daisyeyes

Hello friends! Time for another weekly wrap up of some great finds from around the web this week.
If you didn’t catch yesterdays post, I’m hosting a give away…check out this link for more info! Entries end tonight at midnight.

great FABRIC: More goodness coming from the Fall Quilt Market. Monaluna has a super great line coming out early next year called Modern Home. I really love the vintage looking appliances. If only it wasn’t so dang expensive!

to whet your APPETITE: Earlier this week I posted a recipe for the best baked pumpkin oatmeal ever. Kinda thinking it might be on the menu again this weekend! It was that yummy.

be NEAT (as in organized): Love, love this idea of using a tool caddy that goes over a bucket for storing art supplies!

a TUTORIAL to do: Totally loving this idea of using galvanized plumbing supplies for curtain rods. Check out this tutorial for everything you need!

becoming more AWARE: Ann Voskamp has a great freebie for a lovely Thankfulness Tree.

something to SEW: Sew Liberated has some really awesome patterns coming out in the next year! Check them out!

to TRIM my house with: I’m trying to come up with some new ways to decorate my banister besides fake garland. I’ve pinned a couple of options. Love this one with embroidery hoops and burlap “ribbon, I also love these white flowers with ornaments hanging in between the rods, and even just hanging a simple banner.

ILLUSTRATION to stitch: I really don’t need another project for my needle right now, but I do love this vintage looking Christmas tree. It would be a beautiful embroidery!

CUTE: Sweet, sweet embroideries at this site. And the guinea pig…adorable!

Have a happy weekend!!!

And don’t forget about the give away!!!

before & after {linen closet}

Posted on 2012/09/08 by daisyeyes

A while back I watched this video (the most organized home in America) and it prompted a great purge and organizing buzz in my house. While I was in my early days of recovery this August, I went around my house taking photos and writing up descriptions of some things I would love to do to the house that I could ACTUALLY accomplish without much help from the sweet husband (who is eating his own elephant of restoring, painting and re-trimming the windows on the exterior of our house). That said, I have zero budget for most of the projects so it’s going to be pretty slow going.

Nevertheless, today I tackled the upstairs linen closet.

Here is the before photo:

This closet primarily houses medicine stuff, bandaids, the kid’s sheets, extra towels, blankets etc. It’s a mess and has been a closet of chaos for a while. I really liked the idea from the video of using separate plastic bins for organizing all her medicine closet stuff versus these drawers that we had been using. (although I have to say…we have like 1/4 of the medicine stuff she has!)

Here is a glimpse at the mess that our medicines had become:

We had expired stuff in there from 2005, more floss than I can even begin to imagine or use, a cowbell (who knows?) among other crazy things. I sorted it all out and organized them into these snap containers that I found at Walmart. As much as I dislike Walmart, I have to say they have the best prices on plastic storage stuff. I think this whole lot cost me less than $15. (I do need to go back and get 2 more to replace the things in the green basket, so that might bring the total up to less than $20.)

After sorting through the kid’s sheets, cleaning out a bunch of mis-matched towels and moving the humidifier to another spot (under our bathroom sink)…

here is the after:

Here is a close up of the medicine stuff organized:

I ended up having to write/draw the labels myself because our color printer is on the fritz, but I’m sure you could google some great images and make some cute labels really super fast.

Overall, it’s funny how taking less than $20 and one hour can make a person take a huge sigh of relief when opening a door! I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

Next up…I’m hoping to take a little bit of wood trim, paint, scrapbook paper and mod podge to transform this medicine cabinet.

Here are a couple of my pins for inspiration:

Source: bhg.com via aimee on Pinterest

Source: marthastewart.com via aimee on Pinterest

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?

before & after {girl’s closet redo}

Posted on 2012/07/10 by daisyeyes

I shared a few weeks ago the before & after of the boy’s closet and today I finally put the finishing touches on the girl’s closet. As I mentioned in that first post, we live in a house built in the 50′s and the closets and bedrooms that our kiddos reside in are pretty darn small. When I saw this original idea from i heart organizing on Pinterest months ago I knew this would relieve us of the need for dressers and free up more floor/wall space in their rooms. Now that the closets are done and the dressers are gone I am even more pleased with the results!

Here is the before of the chick’s closet:

And here is the after:

The kids were in charge of picking out the paint color and this chick picked out this lovely icy blue and it looks awesome.

We only put 3 rods up in her closet, leaving the right side open for her as she grows and needs the space for longer dresses and skirts.

This chick is not the best at putting her things away so I opted to add some little labels for the boxes in her room. I don’t have one of those fancy cutting machines so it was just a little iron on fusible webbing, a pencil and some creativity and voila…

Overall, I am ecstatic we did this (and thankful for friends who brought these back from Ikea for us!). Yeah for organizing!

Here is one last look at the before and afters…

fantastic fridays {july 6 2012}

Posted on 2012/07/06 by daisyeyes

It’s Friday again. I was chilling at the beach last week, but am happy to finally be recovered from our trip, I’ve caught up on the laundry, vacuumed up more sand than I would like to admit and getting back into the swing of blogging again.
It’s time to share some of my favorite links from this past week.
Happy Weekend!

great FABRIC: If you’ve never taken a look at Cloud 9 fabrics, you need to. They are all organic cotton and are amazing. I’ve never seen a design from them I didn’t love and honestly if you are planning a nursery for a new babe in your life…seriously check them out.

to whet your APPETITE: I spent more time than I would love to admit doing a better job organizing my pinterest boards for food. Instead of one big board, I’ve got them all separated out into categories now. Here’s a link to my dinner board.

be NEAT (as in organized): This is a great photo of what I would love to do when (if) we ever redo our kitchen! A little nook just for brooms, dustpans etc.

a TUTORIAL to do: This is a lovely dress tutorial for the little chicks in your life.

becoming more AWARE: 10 ways to teach your child to pray.

something to SEW: A new pattern company is always a treat and Green Bee patterns is seeking to hit up all of us who have a love affair with Japanese patterns, but feel intimidated because of the language barrier. I can’t wait to see what all she creates in the coming months.

to TRIM my house with: I would so love to find an old cheap (free?) dresser to turn into a kitchen island. This green one is my favorite!

ILLUSTRATION to stitch: I’m constantly pinning illustrations and quotes I would love to design and stitch. Here is one of my favorites from this past week.

CUTE: fairy, elf and gnome craft ideas. too cute.

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!

introducing summer 2012

Posted on 2012/05/23 by daisyeyes

I gave a little hint at some of our summer plans earlier this week and also shared my summer 2012 pinterest board.
This morning I decided to get all blog official and made a little button
Introducing my summer 2012 series:

In an effort to give myself a little accountability with posting and being on the computer, I’ve made a little plan. Here are some of the things you can look forward to in the coming weeks:

Once a week I will post a general glimpse at some fun things we have been doing. Think rainy/hot day-inside fun ideas, summer schoolish things, art school, outside fun and even some planning for our beach road trip.

The weekends will be devoted to sharing some before-after projects I hope to do. The first up is redoing the kid’s closet using Ikea’s expedit shelves. The other project I hope to do is prepping and wallpapering our stair treads. The biggest project will be the painting and redoing of the exterior of our house. This will be the biggest before and after!

Thursday Threads will continue, but in addition to posting some embroidery, I hope to share some of the sewing projects I have on my list to do while my shop is on vacation. I’ve got a line of patterns to try out, some ottomans to cover, chair cushions to cover and a host of tutorials. Not to mention some mock-ups for new things coming to etsy in July.

And of course I’ll continue Fantastic Fridays. Hopefully there will be a June and July Martha of the Month thrown in there too!

Whew! It’s day one of our summer break…off we go!

summer 2012 {the plan}

Posted on 2012/05/21 by daisyeyes

My son has one more day of school left and I’ve got one more week of working the shop before summer vacation begins around here. I’ve got great plans, but the top plan is to be flexible yet organized! We are changing up a few things in the running of our household and also planning on doing a little bit of light summer schooling around here too. This is the planning week and hopefully over the coarse of the next 7 weeks of our summer I will be able to share with you some of the fun things we did!

First up in the area of summer schooling:

My hope is to lightly do an artist of the week, using this book as our guide. In our weekly library trips I hope to grab a handful of books on that artist to have in our house while we are studying.
Both my kids have completely outgrown those lovely 2 hours naps, but we are instigating a mandatory 30 minute reading time and a 30 minute play in your room quiet time. The rooster is working towards a backpack and a backpacking trip with his father at the end of the summer (more on his reading challenge in another post) so he has a stack of 12 books he has to work through.
The chick is entering Kindergarten, so we will continue working through all the Kindergarten sight words and also continue working through Explode the Code (my most favorite phonics books of all times!). I’m still not 100% sure what the Rooster is going to focus on. More than likely we will do some hard work on memorizing multiplication facts and some other grammar/writing maintenance things. We will also take at least weekly library trips (spending one of our one hour quiet times at the library) and also enjoying all the special summer stuff the library will be hosting.

Second up in the area of home maintenance:

We are changing up our chore & responsibility chart. I’ll go more into this in another post when it’s all complete. I pretty much used much of the ideas from this example and created one to fit with our family. The essential idea is that there are things we do as a family that are responsibilities and there are things we can do that are extra (aka contributions) that we can earn money for (we are using the word “commission” versus allowance). We will have a weekly payday on Sunday and the kid’s will be responsible for keeping a daily time sheet.

The other big change are the technology cards. My kids get about an hour of “free” tv time during the day. Typically Wild Kratts & the Electric Company in the afternoon while I’m cooking dinner. These cards are for those times when they are “bored” and are looking for something to do. They will each get a card every Sunday and each punch is worth 45 minutes. They won’t get a new card until the following Sunday, so if they use it up before then, they are basically unplugged until they get another one. These cards cover using the iPad, using the computer, watching a show on tv/netflix or playing the Wii.

Those are the two biggest areas of structure in our summer. Honestly, the reason I’m putting the shop on vacation is so that I can have fun with them this summer. We have a pool and a park across the street, a fabulous library within 5 minutes and the mountains within 30. I want to be with them this summer in a way I just haven’t let myself before. Enter the Pinterest summer board.

I’ve created a board on Pinterest with links to all sorts of things that have peaked my interest for this summer and another board for all those things we actually do.

If you haven’t subscribed to daisyeyes yet, this might just be the best time! I hope to show as many pictures and ideas as possible of our summer. Sort of a journal of summer 2012.

I hope you follow along!