365

One of my goals this year is Project 365. Take a photo every day for an entire year. We’ll see how I do. So far I made it through January!

January 1st~ Happy New Year!

January 2nd~ Spending the day with a good book, or two.

January 3rd~ Putting away some of the Christmas lights. It took forever!

January 4th~ New Lego organization that hasn’t made it to the proper spot. That never stops anyone from playing!

January 5th~ Sourdough dough bread that turned out perfect.

January 6th!~ My most wonderful Christmas gift from my Aunt. A hand carved nativity from Uganda.

January 7th~ The new Lego mini-figures came out. The boys had it written on the calendar so we took a trip to the Lego store to purchase some. 

January 8th~ Taking down the school room tree.

January 9th~ For Epiphany we celebrated with a kings cake and presents.

January 10th~ Time for winter decorations. Christmas is gone.

January 11th~ My girls pouring over the Hanna Anderson catalog.

January 12th~ My new enemy friend Bessie. We have a date every day for 30 minutes.

January 13th~ Wind so strong it knocked down the decorations inside the house!

January 14th~ Trying to keep the dreaded strep throat from visiting everyone. Sterilizing the toothbrushes!

January 15th~ The boys and their amazing Lego creations.

January 16th~ The start of another project. Something must be done with this mess!

January 17th~ Organizing the DVD’s into manageable storage. Still working on this project, but it’s all ready so much nicer than before!

January 18th~ The girls wanted me to take their picture, turns out it was the only one I took that day.

January 19th~ More organizing! I get bit by the bug every January. Hello happy closet.

January 20th~ Gweneth dancing

January 21~ My first born. Looking so grown up lately.

January 22~ My new favorite kitchen utensil. A bread box big enough to hold all the bread and other things I’ve been baking. No more bags of bread strewn all over the counter.

January 23~ More rearranging. Since the arrival of the piano the room has felt over crowed. I removed the sofa and the room works so much better. Someday some tall bookcases on either side of the window on the left will finish it off.

January 24~ A new improved, completely organized and labeled school room!

January 25~ Homemade soft pretzels for lunch.

January 26~ Art class.

January 27~ A cold and dreary day. We lit a fire and did our lessons by candlelight.

January 28~ Time to start planning the garden and ordering seeds.

January 29~ My Owen during school.

January 30~ More Legos. We spend a lot of time playing with them in the winter.

January 31~ Gwen helping me wash up after baking together.

There you have our month in review. I have to say I love looking back like this its so much fun and never to late to start.

How to spend a chilly afternoon

 

Earlier this week I was downstairs doing some cleaning when I realized it had gotten really quiet upstairs. While my children may be older that the age of creating major messes, they still can get into mischief.

When I came upstairs to check this is what I found and the reason for the quiet. They ended up spending almost two hours reading stories together. Such a pleasant afternoon.

Teeth!

 

Fiona is finally getting her front teeth! We are so excited!

Over two years ago her little sister hit her in the mouth with a small hammer causing her front tooth to turn black. Ever since then she has smiled without opening her mouth.

May 2010

April 2011

Well, I found one or two photos with a big smile in the past two years. I don’t think it ever crossed my mind that it bothered her until I started looking back and really noticed.

June 2011

The dentist eventually pulled the dead tooth and the one next to it quickly followed. She stayed toothless for over a year. In October we noticed them starting to come in. Although still no big smiles…

October 2011

Until yesterday!  It’s been a long time coming and I just love to see her smile!

Christmas Pajamas

 

I realize that Christmas was exactly one month ago, but I thought I would share the jammies I made for the children. I ended up not being able to finish the tops for the boys and purchased t-shirts that coordinated. It worked out fine, but I wish I could have gotten them done.

The children picked out the fabric they wanted, choosing green because they had never worn green before for Christmas. I just loved listening to them work it all out between themselves in the fabric store.

I finished them two days before Christmas, just in time for them to wear them for all of the festivities! Don’t they all look so excited?  This is what they think of pictures before opening presents. Then I remind them that the more they smile the faster we can be finished.

 

 

Pajamas are very easy to make, especially the boys pants. They only took me about two hours to put together. The gowns require a bit more work but are also very simple and I enjoyed working with the flannel. Much easier to work with than some other fabrics. Despite the fact that I was working like crazy to get them done I can’t wait to make some more and have all ready purchased fabric for next year!

School Room Updates

Hello there remember me? I am rejoining the blog world after a nice long break. Even if it was unintentional. Between traveling to my brothers for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Epiphany, sickness,  and life in general time just disappeared.

I thought I would show you one of the biggest things I have been working on the past couple of weeks. Our School Room and office! This room is rather small for 5 people to be in all day so having a place for everything is so important. I have been sorting, purging, and organizing and I am finally finished! It is so nice to be completely done! (Well unless we don’t move and then I will make more permanent changes)

Much is still the same. The buffet stores extra school games, science supplies, and the kindergarten stuff. On top of that is the children’s workbox. It holds their work books, Awana books, and other things they want to keep there. Hence the curtain it’s never neat and I can’t stand the mess!

On the top is office supplies, rulers, pencils, paint brushes, etc.

 

This is the other side of  the room. It has seen the most change. I added the expedit shelf from IKEA to gain more storage and the file holders from Ballard designs.

 

My brother and his wife gave us the map for Christmas. It just happens to be the perfect size to fit above the shelf, and perfect for our state studies. We had to switch to a dry erase board from the chalk due to allergies. I do miss my old board! The boxes on the bottom hold taxes, files, office supplies, and play dough. The basket is one that my husband made and the handle was broken. It now works perfectly for all of our flashcards.

My binders fit perfectly on the shelf. We use most of these daily.

I still love the jars of markers, crayons, and paint out of reach. I do keep some on the table within reach now that my youngest is 5, but I love having them up high as it keeps the messes controlled!

We store our science and history notebooks in these files where they are easy to access everyday.

This is my little corner or the Teacher’s desk and office.

Even the inside of the closet got organized! We keep our office supplies in here along with the printer and shredder. I like that my printer does not get as dusty sitting in the closet. My laminator sits on the top shelf along with more CD storage and school projects. The puzzles and games are on the next shelf. The middle shelf holds our paper and printer. The bottom shelf holds our state notebooks, computer supply storage and our file box of prepped lessons. Now when my husband comes in the room he doesn’t have to ask me where anything is, its all easy to locate!

So there you have the new and improved school room office. I don’t mind spending our days in here now that it is organized!