Should you decide

Should you decide to bring home a broken vintage Fisher Price truck from the thrift store because it was 79 cents and still quite sweet, you might decide it would do a great job of holding the bags of crayons that are always laying all over the kitchen counter.

 Which works and is much cuter than ratty Ziploc bags.

 Do yourself a big favor and run a piece of wire through the broken truck cab first. It is, after all, a dump truck and every time your three year old touches it, it will dump the crayons annoyingly all over the kitchen.

Then be sure to duct tape down the wire so no one gets hurt, just in case. (No one was hurt here, I think ahead about all sharp edges!)

Because as soon as you turn around the one year old honey badger will sort out how to climb on said kitchen counters and get in the crayons constantly and throw a huge hissy fit when he is denied this privilege.

 The children will enjoy some coloring despite the crying and spilling.

And then Ginty will be forced to wear a crown and be the queen of all things says his sister. (Of all things crying says the mama.)

The end.

Break on through

 Grant is TOTALLY into wearing glasses right now. Also totally into waking just shy of 5 am and then DYING of exhaustion by 8 30 am and spending much of the morning crying. This morning I plopped him right back into his bed at 8 30 to sleep for an hour. Sadly this will likely mean protesting about an afternoon nap and I have been up since forever. yawn.

Sam woke up at 2 35 this morning SCREAMING that she needed her pens and her papers right now. It was a first class coloring emergency up in here y'all.

 My solution to the gold pipe cleaner problem was to make the world's simplest leprechauns. They do the job. They will not win any crafting awards.

I saw some cute ideas to make with the kids to hang on that tree. Maybe this weekend we will try them since it is due to start back up with the snow. Again. Don't even get me started.

 I pushed on through with the geese and finished the top last night. I need to trim a gazillion loose threads. Scissors are not easy to use when referring a million toddler MMA fights.

It's smaller than I had hoped but I will be dead before I make another flying goose.

I only pushed through by allowing myself to dream of the next quilt I will make.

Total masochist.

Also, in theory, I LOVE it. I mean it is pretty awesome in these pictures.

But where in the heck am I going to put the quilting lines? OY.

P.S. I am thinking stacked coins next. Will I want to die again? Probably.

Who's zooming who?

 This  morning Sammi was crying about wanting to go to the playground, but it's cold again.

So I am letting her ride her bike in the house.

 On my hardwood floors.

And I don't even care nearly as much as I care about the sound of 10,000 cheerios hitting the floor while I try and list today's Etsy item* and blog for 2 minutes.

I had to buy milk in a gas station when we went to KC a month ago and I got this quart sized milk jug. I saved it and keep reusing it because it's PERFECT for Sam to use to pour her own milk.

*Lots of old inventory on Etsy has been marked down to make room for new stuff, I need some room for optimism on the shelves. Yes, optimism. Spring has to come soon, right?

I see a UFO in my future

 I am an odd duck crafter I think. I have no pile of unfinished projects. I start one and finish that one and then move on to the next one. If I decide it is unworthy I toss it or salvage it for parts.

But this bugger of a quilt is really annoying the crap out of me.

I think I actually despise every quilt at some point during the making progress but this one is earning the most cursing.

 

A few reasons why:

* I had to mark every single square with three different lines in pencil to get any accuracy. That took me a solid week.

*Ironing. God there is so much ironing required for this pattern.

*The randomness is killing me. I cannot walk away from it and come back to it. To get it "random" everything has to be carefully placed. If I walk away and come back it's all jumbled and I can't remember what I was doing or what piece belongs where and then it is no longer so random. As you can imagine with three kids needing stuff every 2.2 seconds this is really, REALLY a problem.

*The seams and the iron! Because it is "random" you can't iron all the seams one direction on the back. There is no inside or outside or left side or right side and I cannot imagine how it's going to quilt up with the back like that?

*The thread. I am going through spools and spools of thread.

*Given all the seams and all the thread, how much is this bugger going to weigh? Will I even be able to lift it to quilt it? LOL

Despite all of that you can see I have made progress today. I think I doubled it in size? (I still might only be halfway to the finish line though. WHY did I want to make a bigger quilt with this pattern of all things?)

Sammi keeps calling it "a beautiful rainbow", so I guess that counts for something too.

But MAN, oh MAN, I want to toss this into some UFO pile and forget about this plan forever.

I think the only thing stopping me is that I cut up feedsack squares to make it. Sigh.

Five plus a few on a Friday

1. Yesterday while I was changing Grant's diaper, Sammi started saying the Pledge of Allegiance. What?  Man, that girl learns some stuff at school!
2. Grant is totally into books suddenly. This morning he was lounging on the couch looking at a seek and find.
3. We had a few warm days this week, some thunder, some crazy wind and now it's chilly again. So over winter already.
4. I have spent the better part of this week working my butt off man. We are pouring all of our money into paying off some credit card debt which requires about a billion hours of effort on my part.  Between selling anything and everything not nailed down, touching base with every insurance company, utility, etc to make sure we are paying the lowest amount possible, listing things on etsy and ebay, calling every preschool in town to find cheaper school for Sam - exhausting. And hard.  I like Sam's school a lot, but I can send her to a different school for half the money (and frankly a schedule I like better). I just can't see spending twice as much money on *preschool* (which for my kids is totally play with friends time).
5. It's totally worth it to me to have this time with the kids, so I will keep working at it, even though I recognize that being cheap and living small is hard work sometimes!
5a. I am feeling especially grateful that I can always figure out how to make some money to add to the pot even while being with the kids. I should have started etsy a long time ago. I get to buy things I love and  make enough to send Sam to school? WIN.
6. In that same vein we are eating at home all of the time, shopping at aldi for 75% of the groceries and rarely leaving the house. I can tell the kids are getting bigger because I am almost able to do things like make spaetzle with no one dying (although there was much screaming and crying). I wouldn't have been able to do that a year ago because it simply took too long.
7. I was emptying some photos off my ipod and there was one of a baby Grant and a tiny Sam and I had a real moment of  "WHOA it is no wonder why this past year has felt so hard, look at them!"
8. Right now Grant has discovered he can tickle his own feet, too cute.
9. Dave is turning 40 in April and we are planning a big party for him. A party for a grown up? What is this you speak of? After 9 years of kid parties this should be fun. :-)
10. The kids and I did temporary tattoos yesterday. Mine is the wonder pets, which is appropriate for this week. "we're not too big and we're not too strong, but when we work together we have all the right stuff!"
11. That's all the puke in my head for today. You?


*I am not intending to start some kind of political war there, it is what it is. I do think some transparency around finances amongst friends would be useful though. I mean how on earth are people paying to go to Disney every year? Is it generational that people don't discuss this stuff? Did my grandparents talk money with their friends beyond can you believe the price of a beer? :-) (My grandpa used to tell us about buying beer by the BUCKET! LOL)

I recognize that some of this is the choice I make staying home with the kids, and I would not change that.

This and that

Around here:

I sold our high chair. I am having NO luck getting anything to sell on Ebay and I have to pay a rather large enrollment fee for Sam to go to preschool next year, so the high chair had to go. Grant doesn't mind, he is a big boy now! (Sam, on the other hand, cried for two days about it.)

When Sam came home from PDO with lots of lollipops (aka jollypops), she shared with Grant.

I am very slowly working on the flying geese. Progress is nearly non existent.

Sam rolled around in the purple quilt acting like a "sssss snake!" the other day. The kids are using (and often fighting over) that quilt quite a bit.

Our goodwill was LOADED with dance recital costume samples. Sam chose this sparkly number.

And then did a little dancing in it.

After being nearly the same size for a long while she has had a growth spurt and finally looks like the big sister she is!

It's warm today so I spent two hours taking 250 photos of 50 items for the Etsy shop. Ericka was asking how I was able to let the stuff go. Mostly I don't even care. Having bills to pay is pretty motivating. But there a few things that will be coming soon that kill me a little. Like this blanket. I have a purple version of it already. They are the softest, prettiest blankets ever. Sniff.

And this vintage dress. Won't this be great for prom for someone?

(Should have fixed that sleeve for the photos.) Its aqua and a pinky purple and just super fab.

Oh to have a prom to wear it to!

Off to go sit in the sun and cook my bones a little. :-)

Necessity is the mother of crappy crafting?

I took down the Valentines this morning and asked the kids what we should put up next.  I was greeted with cheers for the leprechauns, so up they went. I haven't put that stuff out in at least five years I think and I discovered my wreath is long gone.

It iced this morning pretty heavily (with thunder and lightening) so I had to just dig around here and find something to smack on the front door.

I stood on top of the ice and spray painted an old white wreath green, cut apart a glitter garland for the shamrocks...

glued it all on the wreath with some bright yellow plaid ribbon and called it good. (Sam insisted upon some rainbows. LOL)

It certainly will not win me any pinterest awards, but the kids enjoy this holiday stuff, so, it is what it is.  (Not to mention that I am in the midst of working really hard to not spend money on anything extraneous.)

My foyer tree looks so bare. I only had a few things from when we had a St Pats party when Jack was young to stick on it needs some gold.

I have a ton of these thrifted gold pipe cleaners but I cannot sort out what to make with them to hang on the tree? Ideas?

Flea Market Sundays

Oy. I have been working, working, working all morning and sitting down to blog have just discovered I never did clean that fingerprint off my camera lens! So all these photos have a big blur on the right. All the stuff is put away now, so we are just going to act like we don't see that, right? Six hours of work is enough already for this day.

Time to see what junk this week has brought my way:

Lovely, gauzy yardage.

It was the week of quilt pieces (the photos only show a few, but there are many of each kind):

These stars are really small!

I think these are for a pickledish quilt.

Is anyone besides me starting to wonder what am I going to do with all these bits and pieces of quilts? LOL

There are 5 of these curtain panels. I love them way too much.

A tablecloth for me instead of Etsy (finally!).

And four boxes of ornaments. I haven't bought four boxes of ornaments in YEARS.

Plus there is a HUGE pile of really good stuff for the Etsy shop. Now if we could just have *one* little warmish day with some sunshine so I could take another 1,000 photos for the shop I would be in business. Hopefully I will remember to do something about that fingerprint...

Happy Valentines Day from my three little loves

What I love most about this set of photos is how much Grant's personality is really starting to shine.

(And I need to check my camera lens and settings, it seems to be blurring out Jack on the edge for some reason.)

(Look at that cheesy grin on him!)

(Maybe the best one?)

(This one is suffering from blurry Jack on the edge)

(Sam is complaining that she is frozen. WEAR SOME CLOTHES CHILD!)

(Let the fighting begin.)

(If looks could kill.)

Happy valentines day to you and yours, from us and ours. :-)