Fun with Tire Tracks

A friend and I have been getting together roughly twice a week to do some pre-school activities with our kids since neither of us enrolled our kids in preschool.  It's been a fun excuse to play with friends and some needed motivation to actually pull out some fun preschool activities.  (I've been long on ideas and short on motivation lately.)  Between us there are four of our own kids, plus another little boy who she babysits.

Since both boys LOVE cars, I decided to dust off some car books.  I'd seen an idea several months ago for using wheels from toy cars to make tracks, and been wanting to try it.

We started out reading What Do Wheels Do All Day? by April Jones Prince and My Big Truck Book by Roger Priddy.  They're both fun books and ones we already had on our shelf.  Any similar books would work just fine too.  I pulled out a bunch of our kids toy vehicles and we talked about the jobs each one would do if they were real.

Burp Cloth Cupcakes: Tutorial

A few weeks ago, I went to a friend's baby shower.  Even though I had plenty of warning, the day came, and I hadn't come up with a gift.  You can't exactly make a quick trip to Target for a gift around here, so I whipped up my favorite baby shower gift...super easy burp cloths...with a fun twist.
Don't they look almost good enough to eat?

Seriously, burp cloths are one of my favorite gifts because they're so easy...and I've never been to a baby shower where the new mom received more than one or two other burp cloths.  I always feel like they'll be put to good use...and these burp cloths make the BEST nose wipers when baby is no longer spitting up.

Sights Like this Warm my Heart

Sights like this remind me what a blessed life I lead.

Firecracker on her 2 minute walk home from school...

Overwhelmed...and I Need Your Tips

So we're finalizing plans for building our own house.  I know...crazy exciting, right?!?  Seriously...I'm super excited.  Sometimes I tear up a bit just thinking about how totally blessed we are to be able to do this in this crazy economy.  We've been married 11 1/2 years and saved our pennies, and we're finally going to be home owners.  (This is pretty much what it will look like.

It's also a bit overwhelming.  There are so many decisions (big and small) to make about the house plans, and the bulk of the built-in ones (walls, windows, lights, electrical, etc) need to be made in the next week or so.  We're hoping we'll be in this house for the next 20-60 years, so we want to get it right, but of course...my husband is a high school teacher, so we have to keep things simple.

I'd always assumed we'd buy an older house and fix it up...because you know that's what I do with everything else...buy used and make hand-me-downs work.  Well it turns out, this totally awesome tiny town where Hubby got a job last year is gradually growing and once people buy a house here, they don't move out.  There was no housing boom and bust here, so there's actually a shortage of housing.  There have been very few houses (as in only 2 or 3) even on the market during our time here, and those just didn't fit our needs.  We lucked out and some friends are putting in a small housing development right next to Firecracker's school...and since Firecracker's school is also right next to the high school where Hubby teaches, it's the perfect location for our family.  So we're building a house (or rather having it built for us...remember our front-facing bookshelves...that's the most building experience we have) just a couple blocks from where we live now.

We've been trying to think through things carefully...but we're up against the weather now.  The concrete for the foundation needs to get poured before it gets too cold, but there are still a few steps in the process before we can get the permits and everything going...rather importantly changes to the floor plan, so the modified floor plan can be drawn up.

The trickiest thing about this for me is figuring how we're going to use the space in a house that's not built yet...and trying to figure out how we'll use this space in 2, 5, 10, and 15 years as our family ages and our needs change.  I have an awesome friend who designed her own house and is helping us think through all of it, so that has helped a lot.  Figuring out where we want windows and how it will work with our furniture...made even more difficult because our living room furniture is nothing to write home about and will probably be replaced in a couple years.  (You know...we've got the free hand-me-down sofa sleeper with a rip in the seat and one in the side curtesy of our last move...if it says long term, I'm going to have to learn how to re-upholster.)  How do I figure out how the windows will work with furniture we don't have yet?  And of course even though we don't have to decide about window treatments yet, they do have to play into consideration a little at this point because I've been warned my several friends that the cost for the treatments after construction blew them away.


Then there is figuring out the electrical...they told us we can have another week or two while the engineer is looking at our floor plan changes.  The lighting, I think we'll leave mostly alone...although we are going to add overhead lights in the living room because I NEVER understood the craze to only use lamps to light your living room.  And I'm still trying to figure out who we know if we want extra electrical outlets if they're not shown in the diagram anywhere.

And of course every change comes with a little price tag, that while not huge individually, they add up.

I won't even start on picking paint colors...because that thankfully...doesn't have to be decided for months...and we'll probably do that ourselves after moving in.
 
Ugh...I know...there are a lot of people who would be thrilled to have my problems right now, so I feel a little bratty even mentioning them.  If I'd read this post 3 years ago when Hubby was in grad school with no immediate end in sight, I would not have been very sympathetic and probably wouldn't have read this far.

By the time you read this, though, the bulk of the changes in floor plans and window placement will most likely have been emailed off to be sent on to the engineer, so you can't be much help there...but I'd still love your ideas and feedback on lighting and decorating end.
If you're still reading this, though...and are interested in this sort of thing, I'd love to hear your comments (the good the bad and the ugly) and input on some of the ideas I've been pinning on Pinterest.  Feel free to send me more pins (@Polly Carlson) if you come across fun ideas.  I'll probably post about each topic separately later. (because honestly right now I should be looking at the floor plans instead of writing about them.)

You can see some window treatment inspiration here.  Overall, I'm looking for cute/classy but simple/inexpensive.  I'm thinking of cafe curtains in the dining area off the kitchen and most of the bedrooms, although I'm open to suggestions.  I'm still totally lost as to what to do with the windows in the living room. 

Some lighting inspiration is here.  I haven't found anything that really calls out to me yet.  I'd especially love to hear from you if you have some living room or kitchen lighting in your home that you just LOVE...and didn't break the bank.

Or if you're more into color, you can see my color pins here.  I'm warning you though...I've been pinning things I like AND things I hate because I was pinning these with a post in mind that I haven't had time to write.  Right now, for the downstairs, I'm thinking of going for grey.  I really like this room.  I already have some red accents in my kitchen.  I think grey is versatile enough that I can use different accents in the living room and still have it work.  I also like that this grey is light, but still contrasts nicely with the white trim.  You can see the source here at Live Your Life where Brittany shows you she made that awesome table.  (Maybe this picture will give you an idea of which of those pins are on my "good" list and which are on my "cool...but not in my house" list.

I have no idea yet, about the upstairs except that I want to have fun with some color in the kids' rooms.

I also have a For the House board, which has some fun ideas, but nothing I'm currently planning on.

Custom Sketches of your Cutie...

There's nothing better than having family members with talents...especially talents that I don't have...like my brother-in-law and his drawing. 

Anybody notice this Little Guy peeking out during my last post?

I got a phone call a while ago from my sister, Katie.  It went something like this.  

• Katie - "Bryan starting an Etsy shop to sell custom sketches."  
• Me - "Ohhhh...perfect.  He's awesome at drawing."  
• Katie - "Well, he drew Olivia, but he wants an example of a little boy.  Would you mind if he drew one of Seth, and we gave it to you?"  
• Me - "Uh...are you kidding?  I'd LOVE one!!!"  

Seriously...Who says "No" to free awesomeness like this.

So I sent Bryan this picture of Little Brother hanging with Henry Huggins...and this is what I got in the mail about a week later.

I love how this sketch captures the perfect combination of sweetness and mischief that is so characteristic of Little Brother. 

You can see other examples of Bryan's work in his shop, but here are some of my favorites.  My super adorable niece Olivia...

 ...and I just love this sketch of this little red head.

Bryan's sketches are done in pencil and ink.  Then the background is painted your choice of colors and a fixative is applied to prevent smearing.  Bryan can work with any clear picture of the face, even if the background is cluttered like the one we chose.

Wouldn't this make an AWESOME Christmas gift, addition to your home decor or your child's room?!?  Bryan's starting optometry school in a few weeks, so now is definitely the time to order before he gets busier (cause I have a feeling he'll raise the price.)  Right now he's offering them for the insanely low price of $30.

How it works:

• Place your order
• Receive a confirmation e-mail
• Reply with the photo that you'd like to be used for the custom portrait
• Receive a custom portrait of your child!

Of course now that I have this one, I think we're going to have to get sketches of Firecracker and Sweet Pea too.  I think it would make a really cute display to have one of each...but that whole thing will wait until we're in our new house in 6 months or so (more on that in several upcoming posts)...sigh.

Melted Crayon Art and Pointillism + Books

A couple weeks ago, I saw this Round-Up of Melted Crayon Projects on Be Different, Act Normal.  I was intrigued and we have a whole box of not-quite new crayons that have been crying out to be used for something for a while.

So last Saturday, while Little Brother and Sweet Pea were napping, Firecracker and I pulled out the crayons and went to work.

Updated Jan. 2012 to Add:  You might also want to check out my newest Melted Crayon Art...Letter Tiles.  They're done pretty much the same way, but you can see more details and pictures here.

Walking a Tightrope Between the Twin Towers?!?

It's true.

Sometimes I happen across the perfect children's book at the perfect time...and sometimes I happen across them a few days late.

Monday is the day books on hold come in to our little library, and today a I picked up another stack of books.  Among them was "The Man Who Walked Between the Towers" by Mordicai Gerstein.  (We were recently introduced to Mordicai Gerstein when we read A Book...and so far I'm very impressed.)

It's the amazing and true story of Philippe Petit who walked and performed a number of stunts on a tightrope stretched between the Twin Towers in 1974.

Remembering 9/11

I was driving to school a few weeks into my second year of teaching high school, when I heard the news.  It was an interesting day teaching to say the least.  It's hard to believe that we've come 10 years from that point.  Here are a few inspiring videos I've seen around the web.



And I love this video...because I love Les Miserables and the video has been dedicated to those who fight to protect our freedoms.



I hope you're having a peaceful Sunday as we reflect on these tragic events and where they've brought us, and are grateful for our many blessings and the sacrifices of so many who have brought them to us.

More Twig Books and Giveaway Winner

I just thought I'd show you all how much Little Brother loved his Twig Book when we gave it to him the next day.

He's not really up to writing stories yet, but he's really started loving practicing his letters during the last week or two...which is a great first step.

He' loved filling up the pages with whichever letters  caught is fancy.

And we have a winner of the Playful Learning Giveaway!  Congratulations to Erin who left this comment:  "following you on facebook! we love the silly book "diary of a worm"...thanks for doing the giveaway!"

You're going to love the book!

Twig Books for Early Writers from Playful Learning (& a Giveaway)

Some of you may remember that at the beginning of the summer, I had aspirations to write at least a weekly post for a Summer Writer's Camp series to get young kids writing...but life got busy and it never really got off the ground.

So you can imagine how excited I was when a copy of Playful Learning: Develop Your Child's Sense of Joy and Wonder by Mariah Bruehl showed up in my mailbox.  The whole first chapter is titled "Nurturing Young Authors" and features 7 different projects with somewhere around 14 different children's books to go along with them for inspiration.  It also has chapters about reading, math, science art, social studies, and citizenship, each with lots of projects and books for inspiration.  As far as I'm concerned, the only thing better than a fun kids' craft/learning idea is one that also goes along with an excellent children's book.  I didn't even make it through the second chapter before my hold list at the library filled up (seriously...we need to be able to put more than 25 books on hold at a time!), so you can bet we'll be doing more of the activities from this book in the coming weeks.  There are seriously so many great ideas in here.  For more information about the Playful Learning, Mariah Bruehl, and an upcoming E-course she's having, you can see her website here.

Family Pictures

I have a constant debate with myself about family pictures.  I much prefer more relaxed, outdoors family pictures to ones taken in a photo studio...especially the cheap photo studios like Wal-Mart.  Of course hiring a professional photographer to shoot on location is ideal...but often expensive.  I usually compromise by taking my own pictures of my kids with our own camera.  We have so many family members (grandparents, birthparents, etc...we send out around 15 cards for Mother's Day and Father's Day) who want copies of pictures of our kids, that it can get pretty expensive even buying pictures from the school photographer or Wal-Mart because the standard photo packages are never big enough.  That's one of the reasons we invested in a good camera...so we can be our own photographer.

However...I can't often get a great picture that good of the whole family because that means handing the camera to someone else who may or may not be that great at framing the shot, checking for distracting things in the background, keeping the kids attention, etc. 

We actually got a decent family picture several months ago when we were at my mom's house.  (Thanks Mom and Vati...can't remember who was manning the camera.)

But it really can't hold a candle to these more recent family pictures we've had taken.

It's been years since we had a really good family picture taken (as in none since Sweet Pea was born), so I was excited that even in our tiny rural town, we have a good professional photographer.

These were taken by Jessica Greenfield of Jessica Greenfield Photography.  Jessica was super flexible about the shooting location (Don't our friends' have a charming yard?!?) and spent extra time with us, even though we'd just booked one of her "mini-sessions."  She even gave us a super reasonable price to buy printing rights for our pictures since...as I mentioned before...standard photo packages are just never big enough to supply the pictures we need.  (I know Jessica will travel to your location, so you if you live in central Washington (the Columbia Basin) and are looking for a good photographer, I can highly recommend her.

I was just hoping for a few good pictures of the whole family...

...but we were also able to squeeze in some individual shots.

These shots of Sweet Pea are a near miracle because she was not very cooperative.  We'd given up for getting this one on the bridge, and then at the last minute she decided to cooperate.

It's hard to pick the best ones...but I think these of Little Brother might be my favorite.

It's not often he cooperates this well for pictures.

And of course you've got to love this toothless smile.  Hard to believe she started First Grade less than 2 weeks ago.

And we got a sweet picture of me and my sweetie.  (Not sure what it is about him, but he's always had a hard time smiling for pictures.)

So thanks for letting me show off my beautiful family.  I promise I'll have a fun kids' activity for you tomorrow to really get back in the crafty swing of things.  (And if you're one of those relatives who's expecting some of things pictures to show up in your mailbox...I'll get them ordered soon.  If you have preferences of sizes and which ones then send me an email. ;)

And if you missed yesterday's post about what we've been up to all summer, you can scroll down or see it here.

Busy Summer & Getting Back to the Routine

Yes, we're still alive and well.  I knew I wouldn't be blogging as much over the summer...but I didn't know I'd barely be blogging at all.  We've been having fun though.

Playing with bugs...

A few family outings... (This one was to the Grand Coulee Dam.)

Riding dinosaurs...

And some camping with Grandparents... (If you want to see more camping pics, my mom has been a much more dedicated blogger than me this summer and you can see her post here.)

Along with plenty of other fun things...

I worked for 6 weeks teaching math classes for a summer school program.  It was a fun chance to get back into teaching a little.  It was a program for highly motivated high school students at our local community college.  (We live in a rural area, so local means a 1 hr drive each way...M-F)  Throw lesson planning and spending time with the family in there and there wasn't much time left over for crafting, must less blogging about crafts.  Oh yeah...and we're also looking through house plans and getting ready to build a house...or rather have someone else build one for us.  (I think we've finally chosen the floorplan, so now we just have to figure out how we want it personalized...I'm sure you'll be hearing more about this as the weeks go buy.)

I didn't even get on the computer to keep up on my favorite craft blogs.  That's right...a whole summer of craft blogs went by and I have no clue what was going on...and my life was still full.

A week or two, I started browsing through projects again, and adding a few projects here and there to my boards on Pinterest.  The creative juices are going again...and Firecracker is back in school and Hubby is back to work teaching...so I'm going to start updating things again.  Probably not daily posts, but hopefully at least a couple times a week.

So stay tuned...