It's Not All About Me

Sometimes I like to highlight people in my life (or people I don't actually know) who are doing things I think are cool, amazing, or interesting. Today is one of those times. (Note that I have highlighted some of these folks before, but if they continue to do things that impress me, why not?)

1.  Creative juices are flowing for my daughter. She has been writing, creating games, crocheting, and sewing of late. This morning she created a blog post about a recent creation.

Cute unicorn gift

2.  I've post before about our first-time beekeeping experiences. My beekeeping son has really put some effort into his endeavors. He's created a YouTube channel, Baroque Beekeeping, to post videos of his bees and to document what he doing and learning. (This is not a homeschool assignment.) I particularly enjoy how he's merged his love of classical (and baroque) music with his love of bees. If you want to try out his videos, choose one of the more recent ones; the quality is better. There's something to be said for experience.

I love the logo he created!

3.  My brother-in-law knits, crochets, and paints. Other people in the family do other crafty things. Last week they created an Etsy shop, Bakerz Dozen Creations, to sell their goods. (This last year wasn't good for the craft fairs they normally frequent.) They don't have everything in the shop the way they want it yet, but if you have a request, they probably can meet it-- especially if you are into amigurumi (that's his expertise).

4. I have two more friends' Etsy shops that I want to share. The first is from a virtual friend, Karen, who I "met" on The Frugal Girl. I love Karen's ability to repurpose and make beautiful, classy, and useful items. Her shop is called Fabric Speaks. (I really love repurposing!)

The second shop also brings to life old things in a different way. I hadn't expected I would enjoy buying, learning about, and selling vintage items so much, but it is another way of repurposing, don't you think?Anyway, my friend in real life, Ann, finds the coolest vintage items and sells them at Annie's Vintage Nook. She takes clean photographs of her items, and I've noticed she has excellent reviews, especially with regards to packing her items carefully. I'm so excited Ann is doing this because she has an eye for beautiful things. (She is artistic and crafty, too, but, to my  knowledge, she only sells her creations at craft fairs.)

And that's all for now, folks! 

Lately (Few Words, More Pictures)

Bear vs. compost bin made of pallets

Just one step of fixing up the former guinea coop-- soon-to-be chicken coop

Soon-to-be chickens (I'm trying not to count them!)

Little boy fun

Little boy self-portrait

Warning-- if you have no interest in our new little bee endeavors, scroll no further. It's all bees from here on out.

Bee loaded with pollen

Wax comb-- a little wonky

Wax comb-- a lot wonky

Bees

Bees, a little bit closer, since you're brave

My son holding bees-- pretty stinking brave (I want to do it next time).

The replacement queen (the one with a bit of blue paint) and her attendants

The end. You made it!

Five on Friday

1. Bees!  Okay, so not yet. But soon. Soon we will have bees. My eldest son has been obsessed with interested in honeybees for a couple of years. He saved up money, bought supplies, and ordered bees. He also set up a webpage for the whole endeavor. I'm a bit of a partner with him in this, but we've changed roles because he is the boss while I am the underling.

Son-created website

So, if you're interested in following along on our latest adventure, check out Sideling View Apiary's webpage. He will be updating the blog there to document our adventure in treatment-free beekeeping. I'll also put a link in my sidebar.

2. Instagram. I signed up to Instagram today so I can follow my friends. But. I haven't figured out how to post things yet. Someday. (I think a big problem is that I don't have a cell phone.)

3.  Dress. I made a dress for my daughter for Easter. I learned a lot. Unfortunately, I had to learn a lot the hard way. For example, store-bought patterns can have multiple mistakes (I'm talking to you New Look #6427). But my sweetie was absolutely thrilled with the results.

Hand-dyed scarf was made at homeschool group.

I spent a lot of time on this, so I haven't made much headway on the Great Clothes Heap Challenge. However, I like to think I learned skills that will come in handy when I try to repurpose that huge pile of unwanted stuff and make it useful again.

4. Soap. Remember how pioneer-y I was feeling a few week ago?  Well, the soap didn't come out perfectly. In fact, when we flopped it out of our primary mold, it wasn't ready and cracked and generally looked ugly. But it'll be okay. Today we cut it into bars. We put all the ugly ones and pieces into a container; these bits and pieces will become "hand-milled" soap later because my daughter wants to make "flavored" soap. (By "flavored," she means "scented.")

Ugly soap

5. Spring. It's still a bit chilly out sometimes, but spring is here. It's fun watching spring creep up Sideling Hill.

I'm looking forward to getting more things planted outside. One of them is this beauty a friend gave to me.

I have just the spot for this on the east side of the house.

That's all for now. How's your week been?

Kid-Created, Mother-Approved

One of our little girls started doodling this all over church bulletins.

We thought it was just too cute and asked one of the (barely) teenagers to scan it and digitize it and fix it up so it could be printed out (because evidently crayon doesn't scan and print well). He did, and I just uploaded it to our Etsy shop as an instant download to print. 

It's not made by a professional graphic designer, but we're pretty proud of their youthful collaboration. 

Recently we found more of her lovely doodles when we were cleaning her room, so big brother is working on them. However, they actually are on church bulletins and overlap with some of the words, so it will be a little more challenging of a project.

At the beginning of our homeschool journey, I was worried about teaching the children technology, but I've found that the children teach themselves. I certainly don't know how to do what my son is doing with all the digit image manipulation. 

Anyway, if you know somebody who likes this sort of thing, send them a link!

It Happens Every Time

Today was our first day back to school work, and it happened.

The kids love to giggle at Mom's mistakes.

Also, does anybody else have an Epiphany tree this year? 

. . . In with the New

Can you guess what I was doing today on this first day of a new year? Well, I'll bet you won't guess that I was cutting some spinach and lettuce from a raised bed. We've had a few good spells of freezing weather, but these greens are still growing!

January spinach and lettuce

Other than taking care of sick children and trying to keep the regular house work going, I've been thinking a lot about the new year. I have a lot of accumulated stuff in this house because I always see a use for something. However, after bringing to our home lots of similar stuff my mother felt the same way about, I have realized the time to deal with the stuff is now. 

The easy way out of this stuff conundrum would be to donate or throw away. But I still see the use in the stuff. I've decided to tackle one issue at a time. First is the pile of clothes/unfinished projects in my sewing space. Now, don't you think for a second there aren't other piles elsewhere! One baby step at a time for me.

First clothes heap to tackle

So, starting today, January 1, 2019, I'm attempting to make myself accountable by beginning my Great Clothes Heap Challenge. What is in that great clothes heap? Well, some of my mother's clothes, some materials for specific projects, and a whole lot of clothes that were piled up for mending (but were never mended). 

My challenge is to keep up with my regular daily housework and homeschooling AND, little by little, make my way through this heap of stuff. Some things will be donated, some will be mended, and I'm hoping a fair amount will be used in projects for my family and some upcycling of items to sell on Etsy.

Additional stuff which has overflowed into the game closet

If you'd like to come along for the ride, I'll be attempting to keep myself accountable by posting updates every week or so. If it's been a while, send me a nasty comment to keep me motivated to get this space cleaned up and organized so it's more fun to use and prettier to look at.

Easter Eggs

Ever since I was a teenager, I've wanted to dye Easter eggs with natural dyes, with foods and such from the pantry. This was finally the year. Although I faced opposition from some children, they eventually got on board when I assured them that it was only for this year, that it would be a fun experiment. I also showed them tons of cool pictures on Pinterest. 

These are the results.

I was quite pleased with the results. I'm not sure I'd get the exact results again because I used a few different methods and didn't measure the time or the ingredients. 

I used, starting at yellow and going clockwise, turmeric (yellow), coffee (brown), onion skins (rust), beets (tan on the outside, light pink on the inside), purplish gray (blueberries), and purple cabbage (oh-so-pretty blue!). 

The epic fail was green; I used spinach, green tea, and nettle which produced an almost totally white egg. My son, who was in charge of the green, made the executive decision to dump a good bit of green liquid food dye in because he wanted green. I agreed because there was just nothing appealing about that non-green egg.

The other experiment of the year was trying to get the imprint of flowers on the eggs by using pantyhose/tights and rubber bands to hold a flower down while in the dye bath. The results were mediocre (at best), but we think the little girls' tights were too tightly woven. However, the neat egg effect you can see below was produced where the tights were twisted and rubber-banded on the opposite side of the egg from the flower. It was a fun discovery in our little experiment.

If I were to do this again, what would I do differently? Well, I am wondering if the eggs in the beet dye were in the bath too long because they were light pink for a while. Same goes for the blueberry one; however, it was a deep, dark purple when it originally came out of the bath and changed later. I would completely avoid attempting green.

Which were my favorites? That's easy. I loved the colors that resulted from the purple cabbage, the onion skins, the turmeric, and the coffee.

Have you ever experimented with Easter egg dyes?

New Wheels

After much consideration, price-checking, emailing, and weeping and gnashing of teeth (by a child who didn't want to give it up), we sold our old car. I bought our 1998 Civic fresh out of college so I would have a reliable car to get to my first teaching job. And reliable it was. Until it wasn't quite as reliable. It's not that it didn't work, but lately it was a lot of nickel and dime fixes. And then it was a little bit more than nickel and dime things.

The good old days-- the Civic holding shirts of kids working outside

So the decision was made. We have our van (the whole family vehicle) and our Suburban (the vehicle to haul things), but we felt we needed something that got more than 18 miles per gallon.

We bought a Subaru Outback.

Shiny and new

Ooooh!

Aaaah!

The only problem so far for me (which actually hasn't been a problem for me since I haven't yet filled it up) is that the gas tank is on the right side of the car. I've never had a vehicle with the gas on the right side. I guess I'll get used to it.

Wrong side

I guess the new car smell makes up for it. Here's to hoping this car holds up at least as long as the last one!

Merry Christmas

May each of you enjoy every blessing God showers on you this Christmas season! 

Our tree surrounded by the Lego train

Our new homemade tree topper

Close-up of our Lego decorations. Check out the fireman rescuing the Grandma from the tree.

The foil nativity which will hang no more, no matter how much masking tape is added

Special ornaments plus one fine-looking man (in his youth)

A long-time favorite from Oma

I finally felt comfortable putting a glass ornament on the tree (the bird).

The children were ready with blankies yesterday to open presents.

Merry Christmas!

Five on Friday

1. First Egg. We didn't think we'd get any eggs this year since April 15 came and went (that's been when the guineas started laying in years past). But on Tuesday my son found the first egg.

First guinea egg 2018

Since then we've only found 3 eggs, so I still think the hens are slowing down. I still love watching those crazy birds making their rounds about the yard.

2.  Boys' Room.  I asked the boys if I could show pictures of their new bedroom in the addition. They agreed.

Calvin made it in this shot, too.

The green walls and brown carpet make me think of mint-chocolate chip ice cream every time I walk into their room. The room is quite cozy.

3.  Walk Across Maryland.  I've been spending some time this last week organizing an event for homeschoolers to walk across Maryland in Hancock where the distance is only 1.8 miles. If you happen to be a local homeschooler and are interested in taking part, send me a note.

4.  May Listing Challenge.  My oldest son challenged me to list one new item on Etsy for each day of the month of May. Since I am busy with other crafting/mending projects, it looks like all new items will be either craft supply or vintage. So far this month, I've met the challenge.

My favorite I've listed so far this month is this vintage postcard.

Saucy little postcard!

5. More Construction.  I know I posted just on Sunday about the completion of the project, but look what showed up in our backyard this week.

Yesterday the masons showed up to prepare the site for a new concrete pad for the back patio. This morning the concrete truck came and delivered. The masons are now waiting for it to set up to put on the finishing touches. I'm not sure how the rain clouds coming in will help.

Have a lovely weekend.

Little Boy

My little 4-year-old is so cute sometimes that he makes my heart melt. Sure, he still thinks he's the boss; he and his sister had an argument about it just the other day. But. . .

Our memory poem for February was Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken," and little boy memorized it, too. I wish you could hear him recite those words I'm not sure he even understands: "Two roads diverged in a lellow* wood, and sorry I could not travel both. . . "

Those sorts of things make my heart do flip-flops.

Now. Last week my baby boy moved out of our room and into his own new big boy bed. The mattress came in a box, and it was a big family occasion to watch it be unpacked and expand. Kids were bouncing around so thickly in that room that a good picture with no kids in it was hard to come by.

The mattress-- all rolled up

Unrolled and mostly inflated

We let the bed air out for a night before tucking him in it for the first time. He half broke my heart and half cracked me up when he said, "Mom! I don't need you to tuck me in! I can do it myself!" We tucked him in anyways. 

Very Fun Box

He loves his new bed, but I think he's had a lot more fun with the box it came in. That box entertained the little ones for at least an entire afternoon. In addition to crawling in and out of it, they also used it as a slide. I heard lots of imagination floating around that day.

In many ways, my son is growing up, but the little boy in him still crawls in bed with us in the morning to cuddle. Thank goodness.

*I'm sure many in my family remember a time when my cousin Becky was similarly too cute for words when talking about her favorite colors-- "red and lellow."

Building Project-- Day 30

We have lots of pictures today because there were lots of workers and a lot of work done.

First off, I'll show you the most strenuous thing I did to help with the construction work. And here's the full disclosure--my son did most of the work; I just carried the jug and a few water pitchers.

Water for the troops

And now it's time to raise some walls!

First wall up

Boy, that looks like hard work from behind this camera!

I just liked this hammer picture.

 

End of the day picture #1

End of the day picture #2

End of the day picture #3

 

Standing where the entrance to the addition will be (from our living room)

This is what will be a new bedroom

Yesterday at the end of the day, I walked through the addition trying to figure out where furniture and such would go. It's getting even more exciting.