My project for today was to complete part of our chore organization system.  I’ve got about one more week to get everything together and ready for the start of the school year.  I incorporate chores into the school schedule because I feel that being able to clean out a toilet is one of the most important parts of growing into a adult.

Our chore system is basically the same as it has always been, I’ve just tweaked it a little because as the kids grow, situations can change a bit. Plus, we tend to get bored around here and a new system always seems to get us back on track for a little while.

I have our chores separated into two main categories.  Daily chores and weekly chores.

Daily chores are done without pay. This is important because throughout life there will always be jobs my kids will have to do without any sort of reward.  They have to learn that some jobs simply need to get done and nobody is going to pay them to do their own laundry.  Well, nobody I’ve ever met before anyway.  Wait…  Will somebody pay me to wash my own laundry? Are their people who do that? Cause that would be a pretty sweet deal for sure.

Our weekly chores are assigned a monetary value.  It is important for my children to learn how to work for a wage, how to keep their money in a safe place, and how to spend money responsibly.  I want them to feel what it’s like to receive a paycheck for a job well done.
It is also very important to me that my children learn from a young age that money is not a toy.  For some reason all of my children, when they hit the age of 6 or 7, want to start playing with their money as if it’s a toy.

Today I just worked on the weekly chore cards.

I made them on the computer, printed them, cut them out, then laminated them with my super sweet laminator.  I cut them out again and rounded the sharp, pointy corners with a little corner rounder gadget my sister gave me a long time ago.

I think I’m going to put magnets on the back of them and have them hanging in our chore center.  When a child takes one and does a job I’ll mark their initials on it with a grease marker so the other kids know it’s been done, and so I’ll know who to pay at the end of the week.  On Monday, when the chores are reset, I’ll wipe off the names and hang them back up so we can start over.  Not all of the weekly chores really need to be done each week so I’ll only put up the chores that need to be done.

Now that that’s done I’m going to try to come up with a daily chore schedule that I’ll laminate and keep posted in our chore center. If it turns out awesome I’ll post about that one too.

The other day I told you all about the ABC rocks I made for Jesse.  He’s been playing with them pretty steadily for 4 days now. They’re a big hit. He definitely needed a sack to keep them in so on Tuesday I sewed him the little stuff bag that I mentioned in the rocks post.  It is a super easy bag to make and requires no pattern at all.

Jesse is super happy and carries the bag everywhere.  Even into the bathroom sometimes.

Do you like how I made the picture antique-looking so you wouldn’t notice the blurriness?  It didn’t work.  In fact, I’m pretty sure I made it worse.

How ’bout we just not talk about it, okay?

I let Jesse pickout the fabric he wanted from my stash. Lucky for him I have an abundance of fabric with cars and trucks and trains. He picked the one with work trucks. He’s very into Bob The Builder Right now.

The bag was so easy to make - I just followed Delia’s directions here. I liked it so much that I decided to sew a second one for myself out of some cute canvas owl fabric I’ve had for a while. I didn’t know what to do with it because it’s just a yard so this bag was perfect.

The bags aren’t as blurry as they appear in the pictures. I’m going to change the title of this blog to, The Blogger Who Can’t Take a Good Picture To Save Her Life.

But really, it’s not my fault my camera is crappy. Besides, as my daughter likes to say, It’s not the person behind the camera that makes a great photograph, it’s the equipment the photographer is using.

No. Not really. Kait doesn’t really say that. Ever. In fact, she’s probably going to be mad at me for writing that she says that. She may be divorcing me as her mother now.

I’m tired.

Lucy.

She’s darn cute but her favorite thing to do right now is keep me awake at night and have happy time.  I’ve tried to tell her that this is not working for me but that’s not working for her.

So, as I’ve had all I can handle with my coffee and brushing my teeth, I haven’t been much for blogging so I’ve kinda gotten backed up in everything going on around here. So here is your regular Saturday Tuesday week-in-review post.

• First, Kait’s phone broke. Like, forever broke. She had a modest time of mourning and now she’s in denial, asking her dad often when he thinks she’ll be able to have her phone back.
• Sam(4) busted his lip two Saturdays ago and it got infected so now he’s on antibiotics. We had quite the interesting morning this past Saturday at the Navy clinic trying to convince the doctor that Sam did have a busted lip, not a really awful cold sore. A blood test confirmed that it wasn’t a cold sore and might I add that when they took Sam’s blood he didn’t even cry? He’s one tough cookie.  
  The doctor also told me that you should never put peroxide on a cut and I began to wonder what planet he was from. Or have I just been misinformed for pretty much my entire life?
  Why do I have such bad luck with doctors anyway?
• Rabbit and I went to the squadron Christmas party. This was one of the most disappointing nights and I would go into why but this blog is mostly G. It was like being at a seedy dance club and that is all I have to say about that.
• Rabbit has been feeding a stray cat. Which has turned into 4 stray cats. And two raccoons. I’ll definitely have to blog about that. Also, Raccoons are really quite adorable and are very hard not to try to hug.
• They have made one too many Pirates of the Carribean movies.
• I have continued my sewing adventures and came up with these (pattern found here), which I promised my sister pictures of 4 days ago. I am fail.And this crackly-crinkly owl to put in Lucy’s stocking:
  
  I followed this tutorial to create it, using left over fabric from the hats I have been sewing. And because Lu loves the crackly sound of heavy plastic bags, I put a couple of cleaned out potato chip wrappers in it. I think she’ll like it.
• Sometimes when I can’t remember what I was going to blog about I’ll go back through the pictures on my phone because that’s part of how I take notes. And for the life of me I cannot recall why I took a picture of my vacuum cleaner. But I did.
  There was probably an amazing story behind this that will never be told because I can’t remember anything. I’m sorry, okay?
• We’ve lived in this house for only 5 months and I moved the couch last week to sweep under it and $#%@ is all I have to say about that.
• Three weeks ago I put out the Nativity set my sister got us a bunch of years ago. It has a bunch of people with it and some sheep and the baby Jesus. Within an hour after setting it up, however, this:
  
  Every single one of the figurines was gone and in their place stood a small My Little Pony. We managed to find the people and the sheep a few days later but the baby Jesus and his manger are still gone. I even offered a nice prize to the finder, which almost always works. Still, the baby Jesus eludes us. I’m not worried about it but I can’t help feeling like it should be a big deal so I’ll keep you posted.
• We watched The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra Returns Again. Pure genius, people. Though not as pure genius as the first one because I’ve seen a bear do things, well… even things that even a bear wouldn’t do.”
• MUST HAVE for Lucy and Jesse’s bedroom.
• And why does this even exist?
• I am having trouble finding a way to end this week in review so I will just go now.

We had a vomiting child the other night and you know what that means in a house of 10 people. It means mommy doesn’t sleep and the smell of regurgitated food permeates EVERYTHING.

And the laundry. Oh the laundry.

However, said vomitter just happened to be one of my boys who actually understands that where we go to do that stuff is NOT mommy’s side of the bed. Also, that was very early Monday morning and nobody else has been sick except that my insides have been violently stabbing themselves. This may or may not have anything to do with the 8 Krispy Kreme donuts I ate Sunday afternoon. I don’t eat much sugar and I think my stomach has gone into shock or something.

Still, I have presents to create and have no time for such things as intestinal civil war so I got back to sewing.

Over the last couple of days I finished up two more winter hat Christmas gifts…

…and one other project I’ll show you guys tomorrow and I realized that I’m like a follow through superstar, yall, and I’m finding it quite necessary to start at least 7 more projects now.

So, since I don’t have a whole lot of extra cash to run out and buy a whole lot of crafting stuff,  I stayed on this train by using my motivation to clean out the laundry room. I’ve done this twice since moving into this house 4 months ago but haven’t really been all that purposeful about it.  This time I cleaned and organized like I meant it. I took before and after pictures and I’ll write up a post on it later. And since I’m now a super-duper-follow-througher you know I’ll do it too.

I would post where I got the tutorials for the hats from but, again, I completely made them up. I guess I’m a genius now too.

Wow.

Another appropriate title for this blog post would be, How to find a new obsession and make something giftable at the exact same time. I dyed clothespins with RIT dye the other night and now I WANT TO DYE ALL THE WOOD! I almost feel like a crazy person about it. I seriously want to go buy wood just to dye it.

I tried dying them because of this post over at kojodesigns. I thought the colors would be perfectly cute on the tea wreath I was making, which, coincidentally, I also found at kojodesigns. Though I tweaked the design quite a bit. I used fabric instead of paper to wrap the wreath because it’s what I had laying around. It took me about 1/2 hour start to finish. Seriously, It’s like the fastest craft ever. 

It’s like an insti-craft, people.

How to make one of your own:

1. I just took some cardboard and cut out a  circle using a ginormous mixing bowl.
2. I cut out a smaller circle from the middle using a regular cereal bowl.
3. I wrapped it in some fabric I had laying around, hot gluing it in place.
4. I hot glued my clothes pins on. (got them from the Dollar Tree and soaked them in Rit dye for about a minute)
5. I hot glued my braided hanger onto the back. 
6. Hot glue is like the best invention ever. After duct tape.
7. I added tea bags.

I’m not actually going to use it as a tea wreath though, even though that’s what it looks like in the picture. I drink coffee and I have a Keurig. Nuff said. The tea on the wheel is for demonstration purposes only.

And the picture does not do it justice. You all know I lack the picture-taking gene. So you’ll have to just trust me. It’s a ten.

I made the wheel for my three adorable little neices that I imagine would very much enjoy a tea wheel but not with tea on it, but maybe with candy or something all over it (I hope) so I made this one just for them and Rabbit and I will be stocking it with little square packs of Skittles and M&Ms unless I come up with a better idea before then. Any ideas Sister Carrie?

Also, Becky, guess what?! I found some nursing mother’s tea. IN MY PANTRY. Go figure.

Kait: Mom! I thought this was MY project!

Me: Oh yeah. Sorry. Again.

34 seconds later…

Kait: MAAAWM!!! Where are you? How am I supposed to cut this?  OUCH! MAWM! I neeeeed you!

I’ve homeschooled Kait since the first grade and forgot to teach her how to use scissors properly, apparently. But this might have something to do with me being forced to take her only pair of scissors away when she was little because she thought she could trim her own hair (which, as it turned out, was a very bad idea) so I guess we could say this is her own fault. 

However, yesterday she managed to push through her handicap and create this unique gift for one of her friends.

It’s an old hardback book made into a purse. It cost her about $4.50 and turned out just about perfect. We found the book at a thrift store, and she got the handles and the button for the closure on sale for about $4 at Joanne Fabrics. The fabric she used to line it with was swiped from my stash. 
It took her a few hours but I think now that she understands the steps and everything the next one will take an hour or less.
You can find the tutorial she used here.

Kait has still not yet embraced her crafty side. It isn’t a lack of talent as much as a lack of desire.  But when she finished this project and saw how cute it turned out I think she gained a new appreciation for the hidden crafter in her and I hope now she’ll be willing to take on another project someday.

Today maybe.

Carrie (the one who tormented my child-self) this post is about a gift for Gracey. Read at your own risk but DON’T TELL HER!

First, Kait and I are both nursing burnt fingers because my little glue gun is the devil. This is what happens when we try to get creative around here. It hurts.

My adventure in homemade gifts and decor has been a long and painful one but today found success so now you all get to hear about it. Yay you.

To get everything done that Kait and I want to get done before we go visit my folks in a couple weeks we need to average about one project every day. Some of them are for the home, some of them are gifts for others.  Today I made a winter hat for one of my neices and it turned out super cute if I don’t say so myself. I’ve never made a hat before so I’m quite happy that I didn’t ruin it, because error seems to be a running theme around here when I get out my sewing machine.

It’s a cat-hat and even has a tail and it’s on my hand because my 4 year old, who was okay with modeling head size for me, was not okay with wearing a pink hat and having his picture taken. He kept saying, I so wish it was a blue hat.

I’d point you to a pattern or directions but I totally made this one up in my head because I accidentally bought a quarter yard of fabric instead of a half yard and had to get creative.

Are you creating this Christmas? I’m always looking for inspiration so show me what you’re up to!

Also, take a look at these burlap stockings my friend made. They are SUPER cute.

I had this wonderful idea, as I do sometimes, that my older children would enjoy putting together a gingerbread house with their younger siblings.  Apparently my older kids are much smarter than me, however, and immediately ran screaming from the room when I pulled the kit out of the cupboard. 

Dang.

But the younger children were jumping up and down with magical ideas of a giant house they could munch upon while they played in it and so I melted because they’re really cute.
Also, I was tired of them asking me when we could build the gingerbread house. It was making me crazy.

So we started the process of by following the directions exactly and mixing 5 TBS of water with the bag of icing mix, which produced a white rock-paste that had a consistency like that of rock-hard, red clay that isn’t really usable for anything.  We had to add water. Then powdered sugar. Then more water. Then more powdered sugar.
Finally we got it close to being something we could work with.
Kind of.
And things got interesting.

We very clumsily put the walls on, which only took, like, 13 times. And when we finally got the right pieces in the right places and it was staying together somewhat my 4 year old commented that he really didn’t think this house was going to be big enough to play in. My 6 year old, with his brows pulled together, agreed that this cookie house was much smaller than he had thought it would be.

Finally we got it all together and the boys got to work eating all the candy they were supposed to be putting on the house.

And I realized that this was probably the dumbest idea I have ever had because bags of sugary candy in small hands is PURE CHAOS and the walls of Jericho came tumbling down.
Again.

After a rescue mission of acrobatic proportions I held it together for 10 minutes while the icing dried, because I’m a hero, just to have them admire the house for about 8 seconds and then ask to eat it, to which I replied, Didn’t you see what I went through to secure these walls together? Didn’t you witness me holding the roof up with my bare hands?
No. We will be keeping this gingerbread house FOREVER.

And so now it is cluttering my kitchen counter and I’m wondering how long I have to keep it because I really just want it gone.

Also, I’m pretty sure that if I didn’t have a serious brain injury I could have avoided this all together.