Pink Tower Work

I presented the pink tower to Ezra a few weeks ago and it is his favorite work right now. You'll notice from the pictures that he's only working with five of the blocks. I chose to leave out the  3 smallest blocks since he still puts small things in his mouth and I left out the 2 largest blocks until he has a little more control over carrying the blocks to and from the mat. He's doing a great job carrying the blocks back and forth.

Each day when he pulls out the pink tower to work I re-present the work by stacking it properly one time. I then take it apart and he practically starts rebuilding before I'm finished. He constructs the tower at first by picking up whatever block is closest to his hand, but quickly notices that it isn't stacking correctly.

Try to ignore the gigantic amount of static in his hair. He has looked that all winter long, no matter how much I try to get his hair to lay down.



Once he notices that the tower isn't going the way it is meant to be stacked, he usually knocks the whole thing over and tries again. In the last few days though he has been trying more careful and only removing the blocks that need to be changed. It's been fun to watch the progression in his thinking, but at the same time it has been hard not to help him along the way.

Sighted: Table-Top Toddler

I'd love to say this is a rare occurance in our home, but this is where we find him at least three times a day. And yes- he's usually stuffing his face.

March Goal Check-In

1. Plant a garden this year and hopefully end up with edible produce. Everything is ready. We're planting seeds for cooler weather plants in the next week or two (spinach, lettuce, broccoli) and we have all we need for our summer plants. I can hardly wait to start tomatoes in May.

2. Eat at-home prepared meals only for a week. This really is going to happen sometime, but not until work slows down for me- probably over the summer.

3. Read 20 fiction books this year. I'm almost done with my second fiction book of the year. Why do I keep picking gigantic fantasy novels? I need to remember to choose a page count for next years goal or pick lighter reads.

4. Start Bible memory with Big Kid and build it into a habit. We got this off the ground last month then promptly stopped with all the illness around here

5. Keep my nightstand area completely clear for 30 days except for vitamins, Bible and 1 current book. This hasn’t happened yet. I'm starting to doubt it ever will for even a week, much less 30 days. Current contents of the nightstand: 4 books (3 non-fic, 1 fic), 1 giant basket of knitting, wireless mouse, number cards, baby monitor- oh, I lied-- there's another pile of 5 books hiding behind the knitting, my lamp, cell phone . . . and in an effort to be honest, 5 abandoned cheetos and 2 cans of coke. The coke cans are mine (SHAME! I know) and the cheetos were collected off the floor earlier. I'm not sure why I didn't throw them away, but for some reason my nightstand seemed to be the proper place.

6. Keep/Toss/Donate 15 items each day for 30 days. Finished in January/February! And the house feels lighter.

7. Move systematically through the house to declutter and re-organize. I made it through the living room/dining room in the last month. We moved things around, and I think we finally settled on a good way of working my sewing area. Because Ezra has access to my desk I'm forced to keep it picked up at the end of every crafting session, so that has helped the tidiness tremendously. I had planned to move on to the master bedroom this month, but with the way my calendar is shaping up this month I'm changing the plan- April is going to be about getting our closets in shape. I need to get out and wash the boys warm weather clothes and then pack up their winter things, and do the same for my own clothing. I also need to change out the coat closet. I'm going to add a little bonus goal of taking care of the laundry room- it seems to be growing extra clothes. Something must be done about that.

8. Drink water. Make juice an occasional thing and soda a rare thing. Um, wow. Can I say I forgot this was on here even if that's not true? Does it make it better if I say I feel *really* guilty every time I have a soda? This is the goal I really need to make happen for health reasons, and I'm such a weakling when it comes to Dr. Pepper. And if it's vanilla Dr. Pepper? Heaven.

9. Move to using as many fresh ingredients as possible in our cooking. I've been really happy with this goal and our progress here! Superman is eating homemade things for lunch each day, we're all getting good amounts of fruit and veggies every day, and I'm finding that it doesn't take much time to make from scratch what I made out of a box before. I'm learning a zillion things about cooking- I'm loving Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for the Food.

10. Re-evaluate my goals every 3 months. I still need to check in monthly- I need the accountability!

Ta Da!

I'm so glad to have a fully functional computer again! Expect about a million pictures between now and,well... FOREVER.

These quilt pictures are the pieced front and back. The borders and binding are not on in these pictures, and the quilt is currently in my quilting hoop for the actual quilting. I'll be posting final pictures when the quilting is done. You'll be able to see the quilting detail, the borders (which are the same blue-green that are around the center square) and the binding in those pictures.

I had a pattern in mind when I original cut strips down and when  I laid everything out for the pattern it just wasn't working. So I sat with the pieces awhile, obsessively rearranged things, sewed a little and ripped some out until it came together. I settled on keeping like colors together in each triangle then putting the different triangles together to make dark or light squares. I was trying to find just the right way to use Gardenbug's fabric, and this was the perfect display.

FRONT



INDIVIDUAL BLOCKS ON THE FRONT





THE CENTER SQUARE



The back was a different story- putting everyone's muslin blocks together made for an interesting jigsaw puzzle. You may notice that at the top of this panel the edge is not even- I promise it is now! Some blocks were sent in a slightly bigger or smaller size than others, so piecing this was interesting.

BACK PANEL



A FEW CLOSE UP SHOTS





And this is where I currently spend my evenings- quilting on the hoop.

We're Still Here...

Welcome to the first new post in a few weeks- just let me dust the cobwebs out of my bloggy corner . . .

I'm still computer-less. Superman spent quite a lot of time on the phone with the computer people Thursday or Friday (days are blurring together; more on that in a bit), and it looks like they'll be sending a fresh computer "soon". No promised shipping date yet, but if they haven't let us know by Tuesday my husband promises to call and threaten them soundly.

So what have we been doing for the last 12 days?

Mostly holding one very sick little boy all day, every day. Little Bit has been very sick again- I've been out of the house 3 times in the last 2 weeks, 2 of those trips were to take him to the doctor. He's been running a low temp for 12 days, but he spikes to 104+ every so often. I think we'll be going back in later this morning since he spiked again a few hours ago.

Since I've had practically zero computer time and a lot of "sitting around" time (Little Bit is pretty much laying on me around the clock, but currently snuggling with Daddy) I ordered several crafting book from the library. I've been looking through so many sewing and knitting patterns my head is spinning thinking about what I'll be able to work on once the school year is through and I'm working much less over the summer months. I've started a mighty project list, but I'll save that for another post.