Gray Day Inspiration

It's gray and yucky today as it has been for much of April, and this day that was supposed to be empty just got full... so how about a little inspiration?



: : Sarah Mackenzie started a new podcast, the Readaloud Revival! Her first guest is Andrew Pudewa of IEW and they talk about reading with older kids.


: : I've been looking for a few pieces of equipment for my knitting/spinning studio- a bobbin winder, a ball winder, a swift, a niddy noddy.... and I was referred to Fiber Artist Supply. Their pieces are so beautiful and I'm loving the price range! Now to acquire what I need before Tour de Fleece starts.


: : I just keep pinning embroidery things. Maybe if I pin a lot I won't buy a lot. I have so many other projects to do before adding embroidery to the group... but there are so many beautiful things!


Follow Erin @ Midnight Fiber and Fabric's board Stitches on Pinterest.


: : I think I'm choosing to do hats and mitts for the new little niece due soon. Now to choose the patterns... Hat Options include: Lacy Julian Hat, Baby Amanda Hat, Barley, Simple Newborn Hat


: : I cast on toe-up socks last night and watched Cat Bordhi's video on the figure 8 "magic" cast on. It's a little rough, but hilarious and her little saying to remember the steps did stick in my head.


: :  I'm trying to decide on paint colors... colors for the studio, for the kids' bathroom, for the laundry room, the inside of the coat closet- four places that need brightened up. What color do you paint the inside of a coat closet that gets banged up with cleats and shoes and random stuff the kids throw in there? I'm about to paint the whole house white, but that's not good either.

Fiber Tour

It's Tour de Fleece time! This is my first time participating, since I just learned to spin in February. I'm spinning for practice still, but this is my progress as of Saturday. This fiber is Mauch Chunky (wool) and my goal for the tour is to spin for at least 15 minutes a day working on consistency and gaining more experience. I am getting more flow to my spinning and not having to park nearly as often so yay for progress! I'll try to share pictures of my tour spinning here every few days. 

After drooling over Nerd Girl Yarns and their clever names for both yarn bases and colorways for some time, I put an alarm on my phone for the day the Who's Your Doctor club sign-ups would open. I wanted in. I've never participated in a club like this before and to be honest the mystery of the colorway was a little scary- after all, what if it wasn't really my taste? I decided that I knit for many people that like different things and I would surely find someone to knit for if the yarn wasn't to my personal taste in colorway. 

{Nerd Girl Yarns. Base: w00t. Colorway: Stringy, But Tasty All the Same.}

My first club yarn arrived June 21, and it's that pretty green and silver skein up above. I had the hardest time photographing this green accurately. It has so much more depth and vibrancy than I captured here. While I don't tend to pick out greens, I really like this one and I like the way it is going to expand the colors I tend to knit. I plan for this yarn to grow up and become a Kernel as soon as I get my hands on some appropriate beads.

The kids and I went to Makers Faire over the weekend and came away with so much inspiration! There was a pretty exhaustive collection of artists, craftsman, inventors, and anything else that involves making. We ended up hanging out for a long time in the robotics area (definitely an opportunity we need to check out for Ender in the near future!) but we also got to explore all the other booths- we watched a potter at his wheel for a long time working on a small bowl, we watched a spirograph at work, we learned how to make our own paper, we watched wood workers, tried rubber band guns, and stood for a very long time with a paper artist who shared a few awesome tips with the boys about how to make moving parts in their paper art. Both of the boys talked all the way home about how to make different things and some supplies to add to our art cabinet (I never knew straws could do so much!)

We also found our way to the Nerd Girl Yarns booth where two women were spinning at wheels. It was kind of awesome to hear my boys talking to each other about what she was doing since they know a lot of the terms. Some NGY fibery goodness may have followed us home.

Ezra's choice:

{Nerd Girl Yarns. Base: <3 Heart You. Colorway: Fantastical Fascinator.} 

[He doesn't yet know what he wants, but mittens are likely.]

My choice:

{Nerd Girl Yarns. Base: Bounce and Stomp. Colorway: Blue Box Exploding.}

[This yarn is intended for socks]

Ender's Choice:

{Nerd Girl Yarns. Base: Polwarth Wool, 4 oz. Colorway: Firebending.}

[I told Ender he may have to be the one to knit this after I spin it. He looked shocked and pleased at the same time.]

Inspiration

My brain has been just about everywhere this week- the studio recital is fast approaching, we're almost to Ellie's first birthday (!!!), I'm working on the planning for our next school year, the baseball season starts next week- leaving us with a month of soccer/baseball crossover... April has suddenly become a super busy month just 4 days into it.

On my mind...

  

:: Collecting School Materials 

{Loving Half-A-Hundred-Acre Wood}

:: A little girl's birthday

:: What to knit next...

        {1}  {2}   {3}

More Cake

A thought I've had rattling around in my brain: Too Much Frosting, Not Enough Cake.

I have found this to be true with my knitting. I am trying to focus more on practical colors for a few cardigans that really do go with my daily wardrobe. My February Lady Sweater is a navy blue and I have a sweater's worth of yarn in both black and a chocolate brown. I know those colors aren't extremely exciting, but it does make for cardigans/sweaters I will wear very regularly because of how they'll fit into my wardrobe!

So where does that leave the fun colors? After all, there are sooo many great and colorful yarns out there to knit with!

Well, the truth is that my daily wardrobe is very simple. During the winter I frequently wear jeans and a black shirt. (Read frequently as five days out of seven. Yeah. I know...) I'm just not comfortable wearing anything that makes me stand out, but I know I need to bring more color into my life. I've been trying to find ways to liven up my style without having to go out and buy a new wardrobe and without pushing myself to a place where I'm not comfortable being. So I'm focusing my color knitting into some scarves, cowls, and shawls right now- accessories that will add a bit of color and excitement without screaming, "look at me!"

My accessory plans include:

Wingspan (currently in progress)

Annis

Bitterroot

Infinitude

Color Affection

Any other favorites in the scarf/small shawl genre you can recommend to me?

Making Stuff

I had plans for this week.

I was excited to have extra time to write, to photograph and share a few recent knitted FO's, and perhaps start to get the kids back to our normal schedule.


The thing is, there's regular life, plus unexpected life and then there's "wow- I can't even believe how tired I am..." that leads you to fall asleep the second the baby does at three in the afternoon but be wide awake from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m.


Can you tell it's been awhile since we've had a new baby in the house? I mean, I knew this is how life with a little one goes (after all we've done it twice before...) but I forgot exactly how it is each day.


What we're all needing right now is some creative time, so we decided to completely ditch the plans for getting back to regular life and start today on a long weekend dedicated to "making stuff". We spent this morning making some lists of potential projects to choose from, getting organized and printing off a few things to start with.

A bit of our inspiration:

Monster bookmarks

Cubbees (starting with Wall-E for Ender and Batman for Ezra)

Avengers bookmarks

Zippered pouches (for project bags)

Yogurt pops

Inspiration

A few bits of Inspiration from the past weeks...

:: Mama-made pajamas... I'm imagining making several of these tops next fall/winter for baby girl

:: Reasons Why I Hate School... why our homeschool doesn't really look much like real school....

:: An easy to make scrub for that winter skin...

 

:: Ginny's art post provided me with inspiration for our baby girl's room

and a potential source for art prints.

:: Practical ways to establish prayer in your Home

:: A great art supply list (and a giveaway if you get in on it today!)

:: Homemade playdough - I'm planning this for a fun first project in the new house next month.

Inspiration

:: Getting ideas for our school room from this gorgeous playroom/studio.


:: A printable packing list for kids- perfect for my kids ages and a little older!


:: A brilliant post on exactly *how* to go about planning an education full of living books.


:: A mosaic using colored egg shells that we plan to try out soon.


:: A rhubarb syrup recipe I think we might try making tomorrow afternoon to use up the rest of our rhubarb.

Intentional

I was going to post something completely different this morning, but after reading Rachel's post this morning I changed my mind.


As I was reading her post Keeping It Real or Why I Make Things Myself I was nodding along and feeling yet another push down the path to our more intentional life.


It seems like all around us (in real life and online) people are making serious life transitions to work in a way that allows them to truly provide but still be more available to family. One of the great things about my studio is that I've been able to choose great families to work with and they have been more than understanding when lessons must be canceled because one of my children gets sick or when we have a  family emergency. It is a business and we don't cancel often, but when it has been necessary everyone has been more than gracious.


And while we have been very blessed with this business, there is still the fact that our boys are away from us for several hours each day and the fact that my brain is often taken up with work things in the evenings instead of really being able to spend time with my husband and taking care of our home. We've made our first big steps forward.


:: Brian finished school in 2010 and finally found a great job a few months ago.


:: We've gone on a bit of a food journey, now making a lot of things ourselves and not buying pre-made meals. (This is still a work in progress, somewhat contingent on my working fewer set hours)


:: We've made changes to the studio structure that will help with downsizing it in the next two years.


:: I'm looking at some other business options that will let me work from home without such permanently set hours.


But of course the next big thing is to actually jump- to work really hard to get another business off the ground so that we can really live the way we want to live.


It's kind of scary to be standing at the edge like this and knowing we have to either turn around and go back the way we came or carve a path all our own. And at the same time this might be the potential of my 30th year.

Inspiration

:: What You Need to Teach Your Child to Read. This is pretty much exactly what we do, minus the actual books. We make our own cards, silly sentences, and learn phonics rules on the handy little white board we use for everything. For readers we totally take advantage of the library. The only thing we are a bit different about is the text for readers- if my son will read a whole book about super heroes instead of just one page of another reader I will totally go for the superhero book.


:: The super awesome Sorbetto Top by Collete Patterns. I'm trying very very hard not to start this in keeping with the summer pledge to not start new things when I'm still looking at a stack of old things.




This book has acccompanied me this week to three baseball games, one hospital visit and even to church, y'all! Okay- not into the actual service, but for the car ride to and from.


There is serious goodness in here and I have a strong urge to make it ALL this summer.


I've been told this serious craving for progress in creative areas I've been feeling lately is because there is so little we can do to help my mother-in-law right now. So I'm over-riding that helpless feeling bying doing as much as I can elsewhere.



:: We haven't made butter since last fall. I'm not really sure why, but oh it is so good... Another thing on the "to do" list this summer...


:: Ahhhhh the summer fun list. We haven't made one yet and it's already June 9th! We need to get moving on this one!



Have you run into any inspiration this week?

::Inspire::

We work all semester in the studio toward this one weekend, and now it's just a few days off...

 {Ezra folding laundry}

So there is extra time in the studio for me, more time for the boys with their aunt and grandparents and daddy too...

  

 {he takes it very seriously}

And the homeschooling conference is this weekend too...

  

 {Seriously, guys- he *loves* folding laundry- he didn't get that from me}

So I'll leave you with a little inspiration as I finish putting together composition books, finalizing and printing the programs, holding hands, rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing...

:: April's desktop image by Geninne

:: A sweet little baby hat tutorial

:: A free weekly gratitude journal from Ann Voskamp

:: Lesson plans that are inspiring our own for next year

:: Lots of art projects we plan to try over the next few weeks...

Inspiration

On my mind this weekend:


:: Writing a Family Purpose Statement


:: Muffin Tin Printing


:: First Grade possibilities


:: Rhythm of the Home's Spring issue


:: Looking for inspiration for accent colors when we paint the living room gray. I think I'm going to be rocking an electric blue, but maybe yellows? Ender votes yellow (his favorite color), Brian votes blue, and Ezra votes for nothing- all gray, all the time. I just can't do that! Maybe a crisp apple green? hmmmm...

Bringing Winter In

We've been working our way through the winter craft list. My boys are kings of scissors and glue during this season! Basically I printed a bunch of things for them and they have free time in the morning to make whatever project they'd like. Ezra cuts very well for his age so he's able to do most of these projects on his own, but some 3 and 4 year olds would not quite be ready for this with their own skills, but you could still cut for them!

Here are some of the crafts currently on the school table in some state of progress:


Snowman Dress-Up

Make a Penguin

City at Night

Snowman Card

Handprint Wreath


And of course there is the entire winter section at The Crafty Crow that I haven't yet dived into...



We also have a few more wintery foods in the works this week:

Peppermint Cocoa

Snow ice cream

Pioneer Woman's Mac and Cheese

On My Mind

:: Ann Voskamp's guide to Simple Homeschooling



:: The Spring Pallette Sewing Challenge hosted by Colette Patterns



:: Potential Valentine's Day Projects to do with the boys



:: Designing Your Own Masters from Simple Homeschool



:: Have you met Princess Lasertron and her "Have this Party" series? We have plans to try out the popcorn bar party if we can actually find a night when it's not pouring snow!

What is on your mind lately? Share the link love in comments!

Collecting Christmas Links

I know it may be a bit early for some folks, but I'm deep into planning for advent- if I don't start planning now we would be half through the season before I pulled myself together.

I have a habit of collecting seasonal links for the next year- we never get to every idea, but we do get to a few every year (last year I made these stacking Christmas trees) and I really like having the abundance of new ideas- you never know what will spark new traditions!



Here are a few we're looking at including this year:

Elizabeth Foss's HUGE list of links- reading lists, crafts, baking... seriously, you could spend hours looking through it all!

Fun and Easy Garlands to make with your kids

We are sooo trying this Peppermint Bark this year!

I love this Coffee Filter Wreath, and Ender agrees, so we added it to our craft list for next weekend.

I am also researching Jesse Tree options- this will be our first year using the Jesse Tree to structure our advent season. Ann Voskamp may have a version ready by the 27th- I'm sincerely hoping so! Her materials are amazing.

*****

What do you do to prepare for the season? I'd love links to your family traditions, favorite Christmas books or favorite projects and crafts!

Seven Quick Takes

This has been an exceptionally weird week so I thought I'd share a few links that have been on my mind and a little story from Ezra. If you'd like to read more Quick Takes, Jen has all the links!

~1~

Ann's post about the importance of memorizing Scripture is now printed out and hanging where I can see it throughout the day.

~2~

Kara wrote about Woodworking with kids. We've been thinking about a few projects Ender might be able to handle soon and I think those blocks might be a great father/son project.

~3~

I'm a fairly new reader to Teacher Tom's blog, but I *really* love the environment he and the parents at the cooperative preschool set for the students. I love this post about Letting Kids Learn. It is so easy to be too careful with your kids in that attempt to make sure they are safe, but it's important to let them take on risks themselves so they have a chance to discover their limits. I'm thinking about printing this post too to hand over to a certain someone who gasps every time I let my boys climb playground equipment more than 10 feet away from me.

~4~

I can't stop thinking about what A Gorgeous Quilt this is! Everytime I see work like this I start to think I am actually a serious quilter who could accomplish something like this. Thank goodness I'm married to someone who reminds me that I'm already spending my time the way I know I should (and it doesn't leave much room for yet another hobby!).

~5~

We've had our first mornings below 40F this week and that made me already think ahead to spring sewing. My brain is kind of crazy that way! I've been watching the Green Apples blog closely for ideas- I love her style! Maybe I'll find a bit of spare time to sew over Christmas break after all the Christmas gifts are knit.

~6~

Our most successful art projects this year have been from the Deep Space Sparkle blog. There are so many ideas there for various ages that this is going to be a great resource for us all through elementary!

~7~

And finally the story.  Earlier this week I hopped in the shower as I usually do before the boys get up. I was almost done when I heard 3-year-old Ezra come out of his room. He knocked on the bathroom door and said, "Is that you, Mama?"

I told him yes and said he could go get dressed while I finished getting ready. I heard him go back in his room and I finished gettting ready. When I came out of the bathroom Ezra had 1 pair of pants and EIGHT shirts on, and he was trying his best to struggle into a jacket as well! As I helped him take them off I asked why he'd decided to wear so many shirts and he told me it was in case he needed to change clothes later.

Always thinking ahead, that one!

Today

We search the world for truth. We cull

The good, the true, the beautiful,

From graven stone and written scroll,

And all old flower-fields of the soul;

And when seekers of the best,

We come back laden from our quest,

To find that all the sages said

Is in the Book our mothers read.

- John Greenleaf Whittier

Away

We're going to be away from this space til next week- as soon as I finish teaching tonight we're headed to the land of no internet and nary a cell phone signal for our last adventure before settling in to the school year.

In the mean time, won't you check out some of the other great places around the web?

What You Don't Want to Do

Ann Voskamp's upcoming book

Memorization

Need Inspiration?


We'll see you Monday!

Mama Inspiration

I've been reading (and re-reading) educational philosophy again as we start our first official year of home education. Not a lot has changed for me this year. I find myself nodding in all the same places but I'm leaning even more decidedly toward Charlotte Mason's methods for my boys.

On my Mama Home Education Inspiration reading list right now:


Laying Down the Rails

Jen's Considering Language Arts series

Sending You Elsewhere . . .

I have a busy weekend ahead of me- spring cleaning, the big recital, my mom's birthday . . .  so I'm going to focus there and be back in this space on Monday.

So instead of reading about my busy-ness, would you like some links for the weekend?

:: Read what Sarah found about self-directed education. I spent much of the last few evenings reading though those links and it definitely gave me some new insight into our homeschool and also confirmed some long-held beliefs.

:: To get back into some sewing I'm making shorts for Ender and next week I'm planning to get back into some quilting with the blocks I've been drooling over on Sew, Mama, Sew.

:: I'm keeping an eye on these Montessori sandpaper letters and waiting until I have a little bit of school money to put toward these letters for Ezra.

:: Have you checked out the Kind Conversation community yet?

In My Thoughts

:: A great project "planning" post.

:: Ruth Beechick reminders.

:: Finding the Way Up.

:: Great books for outside.

:: Living Simply.

:: Container Gardening.