Legos, Airplanes, and Work

Yesterday Steve had to travel on company business.  While he was away he sent me a text message.

This is what I did in my training today.

It was awesome.

Then he sent this a few hours later.

So cool that he gets paid to play with Legos!

Oops!

On Saturday the littles (what we call the 3 younger boys) came home from playing with their friends. Gabey came into our bedroom and was a little teary. He said he really doesn’t like being the youngest because sometimes he can’t do all the same things everyone else can. He was so sad and I pulled him up into our big bed and started to snuggle him. I told him how much I love that he is the youngest and how someday all of his big brothers are going to grow up and move out and it will just be us. I think I was talking about how much time we will have together when he started sobbing.

I don’t want my family to be separated! I love my family and I don’t want them to leave.

And then I started crying too because that’s exactly how I feel when I think about it.

And so we cried together for a bit.

And then I told him how I could understand how sad that is because someday ALL of my boys are going to grow up and move away and I’ll be the saddest for sure. But my sweet boy assured me he will come see me every day, at least 5 days a week, and that he wants to buy the house next door and be our neighbor. Oh how I would love to have my boys live nearby, but I’m pretty sure that one day each of them will leave home and Steve will be the one holding me when I’m sobbing in our big bed.

This time, I did a lousy job consoling my little guy. Oops.

Handmade Knitting Needle & Crochet Hook Organizer

I grew up crocheting, but only learned to knit about a year and a half ago.  I have been collected a lot of knitting needles since I learned to knit and keeping them organized has been a bit of a challenge.  A couple months ago I had dozens of needles in my knitting bag and they were constantly in my way.  Steve suggested a create a sleeve of some sort and we started talking about how to make one.  In the meantime I grabbed a pretty crystal vase and a small vintage milk bottle and organized my crochet hooks into the milk bottle and my knitting needles into my vase.  It worked great and my needles looked pretty sitting on my dresser.  But, I still wanted something portable because I’m always taking my knitting with me when I go places.

This week my friend Jenna gave me a bunch of fabric she was purging out of her stash of beautiful quilting cottons and I decided to tackle this project with her gifted fabrics on this rainy Sunday.  I rarely use a pattern for anything, preferring to make my own as I go, and that means a bit of figuring things out… and usually some trial and error.  I wanted to be able to organize my long 13″ needles, my 10″ needles, and my crochet hooks together in one place.  I settled on a 3 tier system that I can fold or roll and keep in my knitting bag.  I’m going to add a tie of some sort – still thinking about how I want to do that exactly, but I’m leaning towards something stitched to the middle of the back that adjusts to however big my roll is.  Right now I don’t have all of my needles in here because many are currently in use.

I cut my fabric base to 22″ tall and 17″ wide. I wanted my flap to fold over to cover the top 2 rows of needles so that I wouldn’t have to deal with things falling out if my organizer is turned upside down.  The tallest pocket was cut 11″, the medium pocket 8″, and the small pocket 5″.  All dimensions measure slightly smaller because of seam allowances.

I opted to stitch most of my pockets together for each row, besides the one wider pocket on the bottom section. I’m glad I did this because stitching each row individually is a hassle and I don’t think there is enough benefit to justify the additional work. I may store a couple circular needles in that bottom pocket, but more likely I’ll add a pair of scissors there. My circular needles (I only have 2 sets) come in cases that I keep them in for now. As I buy more circular needles, I will likely make another knitting needle organizer just for them.

I originally planned to roll this bag up, but I think it folds nicer if I fold the sides into the middle and fold in half. It just balances itself out neater.

I’m going to think on this project to see where I’d like to make improvements and I think I’ll make another one or two for gift giving. It wasn’t a difficult project and start to finish I think it took only about 2 hours to complete. I’m pretty happy with my new homemade knitting needle and crochet hook organizer. Making things myself is so satisfying and handmade things just make me happy.

Homemade Cloth Napkins

We started using cloth napkins several years ago, probably around the time I inherited a bunch of them from my mom.  It has been ages since I’ve purchased paper napkins – they just feel wasteful to me.  I hate buying something for the sole purpose of throwing it away. 

My original cloth napkins have suffered over the years and I’ve been throwing them away with the intention to make new ones with fabrics that I like. 

I’ve been in search of the perfect napkin basket for several years – I’ve just not been able to find the right one.  I’ve stopped bringing things into my house just because they are useful, inexpensive, free, practical, etc…  I only buy things I love. 

Last week my mom and I stopped by a second hand store and I found this wonderful basket and I knew it was exactly what I had been searching for.  It’s the perfect size and shape, it’s durable, and that metal handle is heavy and just makes the basket.  And even better, it was only $7!  I love second hand finds like this.

Two days ago we were visiting  friend and my girlfriend brought me a huge bag of fabrics and yarns she had purges from her stash.  She told me to take anything I wanted.  There was so much coordinating fabric and I knew it would be perfect for my new cloth napkins. 

Last night I cut it all and today I made dozens of lovely new cloth napkins.  They are fun and cheerful and so pretty.  I’ve set aside a dozen for keeping nice for guests.  I also made a bunch of smaller kids sized napkins.  It only took a few hours sewing today and I have a beautiful collection of handmade reusable cloth napkins.  It makes me so happy. 

I’m so appreciative of my friend who generously shared all of this beautiful quilters cotton.  I know she will love to see that these things have new life.

Google Reader is being retired

This news struck a blow when I heard it a couple of weeks ago.  I am in a committed relationship with my Google Reader.  We’re basically married.  We got hitched years ago, and as far as I was concerned our relationship was perfect…  so perfect I was at the til death do you part stage with my Google Reader.

And now my beloved Google Reader has a terminal illness. 

And a date by which our marriage will be ending:  July 1, 2013.  It is on my calendar, and happens to be one of only 7 open days in the month of July.  We’re busy people in the summer months. 

It’s going to be a very sad day for me. 

When I heard the news I panicked – I have years and years of tagged posts I can not lose.  But, in trying to find the silver lining of this dark, gloomy cloud, I came up with one positive: housekeeping.  I’ll take an afternoon and sort through those tags and clean up my categories.  I’ve saved things for years without ever going back to 90% of them – this is a good time to sift through it all.  This will also be good because I sub to about a dozen blogs I either ignore completely, or only read because they show up in my feed.  I’ll be glad for the motivation to part ways.  I’ve just left them be in case I tagged a post I might want to reference back to at some point.  Cleaning house is always good. 

But, I can’t find any other silver lining.  I’ve seen a lot of chatter around the blogging community about BlogLovin so today I  opened a Blog Lovin account.  Blah.  I’m not sold.

It has one feature I like, the ability to comment when I read a blog, but every single time I read a post I have to “mark as read” if I want to clear it, and it transfers over to the blog each time.  I don’t like that – too much of a hassle in my opinion. Also, it “gives clicks” to bloggers I don’t want to give clicks too.  And, for the sake of visual order, Google Reader just shows a list of blogs and blog titles, where BlogLovin shows a small paragraph with a picture and you have to scroll way down to overview all unread blogs. 

Without thinking about cleaning up my Google Reader subscriptions, I synced Google Reader to BlogLovin today… so much for cleaning up my subscriptions first.  Now I have to clean up 2 different readers.  And I’m a professional procrastinator so I’m probably going to be stuck with blog subscriptions I’m no longer interested in for pretty much ever.

Only I don’t want to be in another blog reader marriage.  I want Google Reader to conquer this cancer that threatens to steal it from me.  I want to live happily ever after with the reader I know and love.

I don’t even kind of like Blog Lovin from what I know of it.  Any other good reader options out there?  Anyone have any salacious photos of the Google CEO that can be used as blackmail to save my reader?  Is there a petition I can sign?  I’m not content to sit idly by as this just happens – I want to storm the gates, join the march, spearhead a movement… I want change!

I’ll hold out hope until Google Reader stops working, but I fear a replacement must be found and I am appreciative of any recommendations.

Book Review: You’re Made for a God-Sized Dream

I love doing bloggy book reviews.  Every time a book shows up it’s sort of like Christmas – by the time it arrives I’ve usually forgotten it was coming, or even what is coming.  So exciting!  Recently I was given the opportunity to review Holley Gerth’s You’re Made for a God-Sized Dream by Revell Publishing Group and I’ll just start by saying this book is fantastic. 

And I’m totally not saying that because I was given a  book to review, because I selected another book for review recently that I thought I’d really like and I just chose not to review it because it wasn’t going to be a positive review.  At all.  Seriously, I’m a total dreamer, a visionary, and I don’t think small.  When something grabs me I dream big – almost every time.  I stopped sharing all of my dreams with people years ago, because I’m pretty sure I exhaust them with my big ideas.

Holley writes about how God has made us to be dreamers and doers and how He is in our dreams, even if they don’t turn out the way we imagine.   I love this message.  

She writes about the Five Lies That Keep Us From Dreaming:

* Dreaming is selfish

* I don’t have what it takes

* It’s too late

* I don’t deserve to dream

* I don’t have time

And, you know, when I read those lies I don’t really connect to them.  But, when I read what she wrote about each of those lies, I recognized that I’ve believed each of them in one way or another.  We need to reject those lies!

She writes about how to identify if our dreams are of Him, the heart of a dreamer, what comes next and so much more.  She covers this topic in such a personal way and it’s so encouraging.

I love that Holley made this an interactive book.  She has areas to engage the reader through writing exercises, and she provides tools to “Dig Deeper” in each chapter.  

I love that she writes truth and brings our identity in Christ into all of who we are, and what we dream.  

This is the kind of book I could dig into chapter by chapter here on my blog, because it’s that good and I have that much to say about it, but I think I’ll save it for a book club selection.  I highly recommend this for all the dreamers… and we all have dreams.  

What is your dream?

* I was given this book in exchange for my honest review.  I was not compensated in any other way and all opinions are my own. 

Logic of English Cards

We’ve started using The Logic of English in our homeschool.  Actually, we started using it several months ago, but last weekend when I was at a homeschool convention I picked up 2 sets of Fundamentals and a few other things I needed to start LOE with all of our boys.

I’ll be posting more about LOE as we establish our new routine, but for now I want to talk about the cards used with LOE.  Logic of English uses a ton of cards every day.  We have Basic Phonogram cards, Advanced Phonogram cards, Spelling Rules cards, Grammar cards, and 3 different sets of game cards.  We use them every day – and that’s just for the Essentials curriculum.  You need another set of Basic Phonogram cards plus Tactile handwriting cards, and 2 different sets of game cards if you are also doing the Foundations curriculum, as we are.  Technically you could share the phonogram cards but it’s helpful to separate the cards in use from the whole deck and that would be difficult with the 2 different levels.

That’s a lot of cards to manage every day.  At first I thought I’d get an index card box, but I would have needed 3-4 boxes and I wasn’t really liking any of those options for a variety of reasons.

I’m a big fan of the colorful Really Useful Boxes, but they proved to be about 1/4″ too narrow.  I love those fun and sturdy boxes, but I could not find a way to make them work.

I tried a nice plastic photo sorting box with individual clear plastic cases I could have used to store each set of cards in, but those were also about 1/4″ too small.

I am sure there is a good reason these cards are the size they are, but making them just a touch smaller would open up a ton more organization options.  I figured out in one day that I had to have a system for organizing these cards.

I finally found a box I like at Office Max for $13.49 that is big enough to hold and organize all of the cards.

The downside being that the sections are roomy and loose cards will become mixed up and messy.  I needed to find a way to contain each individual deck.  Rubber band and baggies aren’t what I want, though I do have my game cards in individual baggies until I can find something better.

I looked everywhere for a package that would fit my larger cards, but everything I found was a touch too small and flimsy.  These cards are handled every day so whatever I bought needed to be durable.

I found these accessory bags at Office Max for $2.20 and they are made of durable vinyl.  Until I find something better, these should work well.  I may label maker them, but I can see what is in then easily enough.  If a container isn’t transparent then I think labeling it would be important in any system.

I’ve been thinking that possibly one of those pretty cardboard photo boxes at craft stores might work as well.  I’ll take my cards to Hobby Lobby next time I go and check if they fit.

In the meantime, my cards are now nicely organized and our school day was much easier because of it.

*** Update ***

Yesterday I decided to ruin back to Office Max and pick up a few more of these vinyl pouches. Though they aren’t exactly what I was hoping to find, they are durable and practical, and they fit nicely in this box. However, when I got back to Office Max they only had one of the butterfly pouches left, but they had a bunch of others in different colors and prints. So, I bought the last butterfly pouch for the 3 sets of game cards, and I’m keeping each set inside sorted into individual baggies. I purchased 2 blue polka dot pouches to store Foundations cards. I’ve got Rhythm of Handwriting Tactile cards in one pouch and Basic Phonograms in the other pouch.

Now that I have it all put together and nearly organized, I really like this system and I think these pouches are ideal. It’s neat, organized, durable, all in one place, and I like it.

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*** Jennifer asked in the comments for more information on this box. I am adding a close up picture of the label on the box into this post. It is made by Iris and on my Office Max receipt it’s called “Card Keeper w/ Dividers” (sku 762016428055). At my Office Max (Grand Rapids, MI) it was located on the back wall with all of the other plastic storage systems.