William Morris Thursday - my children

 
Even though I start little organization projects every day, projects that don't always get finished, I don't always feel like I have enough to share when it comes time to link up with Jules' William Morris project every Thursday. Although this week isn't any different, I thought I'd share something I started that I'm determined to finish. In fact, my sanity depends on it.

I homeschool my 3 youngest children (all girls) and because they are home with me all. day. every. day. we're all going a little stir crazy waiting for summer to begin. I have said from the beginning that in addition to the regular schooling they'd be getting, I would teach them home skills, too. I don't want my girls to leave my house not knowing how to take care of themselves or their homes. At different times throughout the year, I've started some sort of chore chart system but for one reason or another because of my lack of discipline it wouldn't stick. Then I realized something. While I've been putting into practice the William Morris quote, "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." in the physical rooms of my house, I hadn't thought of applying it to my children. While they have always been and will continue to be a thing of beauty in my eyes, they have not started being, how shall I put it, "useful."

I'm crazy about them, but they're 6, 8 and 10 and they haven't ever done much in the way of regular chores. I go on occasional rants and give them things to do as consequences or follow them around reminding them of things they should be doing, but there hasn't been any system set up so they could learn to own their work and feel good about contributing.

Yesterday, I came up with all the chores I want them to be able to do on their own after some training, and put the steps in a list with a place to check them off as they're completed. I put those lists in plastic sleeves and put them in a binder. I haven't figured out yet how the specific chores will be assigned or how often, etc. but getting the binder done has already made me feel like this is a do-able thing. And of course, once they've mastered the chores, the lists will need to be altered and probably more complex chores added. Of course that's a problem I look forward to. ;)

Just this morning, my self-motivated daughter asked if she could wash the dishes. She already had the binder opened up to the dish washing page and was ready to go. I just gave her a little direction to get started and she ran with it.

On the project front, later today, my friend and I will get started using this:

 To turn this:

Into this:

Source

Hopefully next week I'll have something to share!


Linking up with Jules' at Pancakes and French Fries.

My activist

As you may have heard, tonight is the big "cover the night" night for the KONY 2012 campaign. If you're not familiar, you can take a look at this video. It'll take you 30 minutes to watch it, but you won't realize it while you're watching it. It's very well done and compelling.

I'm not sure what all they've discussed at my son's school, but he came home yesterday saying he needed a red shirt to wear on Friday. And not only that, he wanted his shirt to have the KONY 2012 logo on it. I asked him if he knew what KONY 2012 was all about and he said they had watched the video and he thought it was a cool thing they were doing. So we went to Goodwill for a red shirt (hooray for $2 t-shirts), printed out the logo, made a stencil and painted the logo on the shirt. 

 
They ended up using black spray paint because it was the easiest and fastest way to do it. I made them go outside for that part.

My little activist. I'm so proud. Actually, there's nothing little about him.  ;)

William Morris Thursday - repainting furniture

I don't have much to report this week as I've taken a little bit of a break from the purging and organizing. I have a whole car load of stuff that needs to go to either goodwill, the consignment store or the recycling center, but we're conserving gas right now so I'm not making many trips into town.

This past weekend, I repainted a chest of drawers for my son's room and another one for the girls' room.

The chest from my son's room was a garage sale find from when we moved into our house. It was painted some other color and I covered it in a thick coat of glossy black paint to go in his camouflage-themed room. It probably wasn't the best choice, but I was just trying to get everyone moved in and it was the easiest thing to do at the moment. My son wanted me to paint it red so I took the leftover red from his walls and whipped up a batch of chalk paint. After painting two coats, I didn't like the way it was looking. You could still see the black underneath the red and it kind of reminded me of the glazing phase of the 60's that you see on lots of thrift store furniture. So I just added another coat and that did it.

When it came time to put the drawers in, I realized that it was kind of plain and since this was a piece for my son's room and not many people would see it, I decided to experiment. I'll blame Pinterest for that.

source

source

So I took the two grays that I had painted on the walls and mixed in a little black until I got 4 shades of gray for the drawers. They aren't a perfect progression from light to dark, but I wasn't going to mess with perfection on this one. I think it turned out nice and my boy likes it, too.

My next project was to paint the girls' dresser a color that would finally match their room. It went from this...

to this

I made some chalk paint out of the leftover paint from the nightstands in there and sealed it with a dark furniture paste. I just need to find some old mismatched pulls for the drawers and it'll be done.

And that's what I did this week.

Linking to Jules' William Morris project. You can join in here.

My baby girl is 10

She was born 3 1/2 years after my first born son. In those 3 1/2 years, I would have 2 miscarriages. I remember sitting in the living room of our 100 year old farm house crying and asking Elliott if this was it. What if I can't have anymore? He just held me and told me everything would be all right and we'd cross that bridge if we get to it. Then she came along. A ray of sunshine in the early morning. She was born at 6:45 am and Elliott has called her his sunshine ever since. She's a lot like Elliott's great aunt 'Iwie' who was a spitfire until the day she died at 92. She's developing quite the sense of humor and loves a good practical joke. Yep, she's a tween now, I guess. I asked her if she knew what that word meant and she couldn't really tell me. Just that she was proud to be one.

She mentioned that her favorite food was 'Chinese' and I just happened to have made it last night so I thought I'd share the recipe, if you can call it that. I first learned of this dish when I married into my husband's family. At that time, it was just hamburger meat, green beans, celery and spaghetti topped with soy sauce and it was called 'Chinese' food. I'll always refer to it with quotes because the only thing Chinese about it is the soy sauce. I've added more veggies over the years and it's become a favorite of the kids.

 Brown a pound or two of ground beef in a skillet. Set aside.

Next, you're going to take whatever vegetables you like or that your family will eat or anything that looks like it's going bad in your icebox, and chop it up. You might need to saute it in batches, depending on how big your skillet is and how much stuff you end up with. I started with onions, celery and bell peppers.  Then I continued with cabbage and broccoli. I let them brown a little in some spots and then I added some soy sauce because the broccoli and cabbage don't really sweat that much when you saute them and the extra moisture helps soften them.

 Then I added some shredded carrots and let them cook until semi-soft.

Here it is. All mixed together in a bowl. Oh, yeah, don't forget to boil some spaghetti while you're doing all that other stuff. It's served over spaghetti. Sounds really oriental, doesn't it? Believe me, I've tried to convert my family to rice, quinoa,  soba noodles, anything but spaghetti. They never go for it. They always complain and ask where the spaghetti is. I give up.

So there you have it. Anna's favorite meal. 'Chinese' food. And there's mine without all those silly, unnecessary carbs. ;)

Random Wednesday brain droppings

I've got some random brain dumping to do this morning. Feel free to stay and read it, if you want.

Get it here

I'm probably the only one who's noticed, but I haven't been reporting on my One Bite at a Time projects on Mondays. Probably because I haven't been keeping up with my One Bite at a Time projects. Instead, I've been doing William Morris Thursday and that is enough of a schedule for me. Sometimes, the projects coincide so I haven't totally dropped it.

That's my husband, in college. Foxy, right? He was a total babe! I, on the other hand, was a complete dork when he met me. And he married me anyway! I think I've gotten better over the years, though. So has he! In May, he'll be inducted into the sports hall of honor for his alma mater so we've been going through old pictures and newspaper articles. The kids are fascinated by this life their parents had before they existed. It's a funny thing to watch.

How 'bout these beautiful summer evenings we've been having? I love them. My kids go outside and I open the windows and can hear them laughing and playing while the evening sun streams in through the kitchen as I make supper. It's heaven. Well, I don't really want to be taking care of children and cooking supper in heaven, so that statement was a little dramatic. It's nice, for sure.

Speaking of my kids, my oldest daughter in particular, here's a birthday list that Anna gave me yesterday. She's very particular about what she wants this year. The one thing I'd like to point out is her last request. Ouch, that hurts. Upon further questioning, I found out that she doesn't mind being the recipient of a great Goodwill score, it's just that when it comes to her birthday she would rather get something 'new'! Fair enough.

Here's a bit of good news I got yesterday. Well, it's good news to me. And I'm kind of easily excited these days. These are the couches I bought off of Craig's List before Christmas. I'm planning on slipcovering both of them. I got rid of leather couches to make room for these plaid babies. I am really excited about this project. But, I still have a big, comfy chair that matches the leather couches (I used to own) that I haven't known what to do with.

It's kind of sentimental since my husband gave it to me for Valentine's Day several years back. The back cushion is really poofy and actually attached to the frame so I thought slipcovering it would be impossible. Then, I saw this blog post. It's by the same girl that wrote the e-book I bought on the subject, The Lazy Girl's Guide to Custom Slipcovers. She had me at 'lazy'. Now, I see that I might not have to part with my oh-so-comfy Valentine's chair, after all! I just need to do a little surgery and make her a new dress. Mr. Park isn't so sure about all of this unconventional altering of stuff. Either way, the room is coming together nicely, if only in my head. ;)

Tomorrow I'll be sharing the organizational progress in my house. We're on the laundry room, part 1. I've got a whole house to do so it seems like it's going slow, but I've also got all year to do it and I've got some pretty good momentum going so I'm hopeful. See ya tomorrow!

Overheard this morning

April: (singing) Bubblegum, bubblegum, in a machine

Autumn: April, it's not machine, it's dish.

April: Why would it be in a dish?

Moves her momma didn't give her.

This is my baby. But "boss of the world" would be a better title. She's got confidence in amounts I can't even fathom. I told her I wanted her to do a dance for me and she didn't hesitate before whipping up this little number.

P.S. Sorry about the quality of the video. We're having issues with Youtube.

Conversations with my kids

On careers.

This is my friend, Leigh Archer. His picture is in a real estate publication my daughter picked up at the store yesterday. She was looking at all the pictures on the back and when she got to him she said, "Whoah! I know that guy!" I told her who he was and she was awed. Rock start status, I tell you.

Then, later that evening, my 13 year old son picked up the same publication and asked me what I was doing with it. I told him that Anna had picked it up and noticed someone we knew. Here's how our conversation went after that.

John: Who's that?
Me: It's Leigh. He goes to our church.
John: Why's he on that ad?
Me: He sells houses.
John: Is that why he's so rich?
Me: What?
John: He has a nice car.
Me: Yeah.
John: He has a nice house.
Me: Yeah.
John: He has nice glasses.
Me: Yeah.
John: He always looks like he just took a shower and he's from Canada.
Me: So based on all those things, he's rich?
John: Yeah. He's cool. I wanna sell houses.

William Morris Thursday - My girls' wardrobe

I'm linking up again this week with Jules' William Morris project. Get the full scoop here.

I know I said I would be done with my coffee table project by now, but neither my schedule nor the weather has cooperated. My theory is that the two have conspired against me to keep it from getting done. The days it's been nice out, I haven't had time and this past weekend, when I had a full Sunday to get it done, it looked like this.

I don't know if you can tell by this picture, but that's some other town's dirt in the air. Not sure if it was Midland or Lubbock, but it wasn't ours. It doesn't do that very often, but when it does, I don't go out. For anything. I stood on the porch just for a minute to get a picture of the sun and my legs were stinging from the sand in the air.

So I stayed indoors and did some organizing. Not as much fun but so necessary. I have 3 girls and two of them are 19 months apart, so I feel like I am overrun with girl clothes. To make matters worse, both of the kid's grandmas like to pick things up for them now and then and I have a great friend that passes most of her girl's stuff down to them. That makes for mounds of clothes in my house. An unnecessary amount of clothes. I've known for some time that they have too much, I just couldn't bring myself to pare it down. Well, trapped inside my house this weekend, that's what I did.

Here's all the clothes they own. Well, I should say all the clothes they own that are in season. There's more in the attic for summer. The piles toward the top of the picture belong to my youngest daughter and the piles in the bottom half of the picture belong to my two oldest daughters.

Oh, wait, I went in their room and there were clothes everywhere. I mean, everywhere. I didn't get a shot of it, but I did get a shot of the big basket that I hauled out of there and then had to sort because I didn't know what was clean and what was dirty. In their defense, I haven't modeled very good habits when it comes to the whole business of clothes. They come by it honestly.

I put that into the wash and then sorted it. Then, I had the girls pick their favorite outfits. I probably let them pick too many, but we did make a sizable dent in it all. Some of the rejects will go back to my friend and some will go to the consignment shop in town.

Here's everything hung up in their closet. I have to admit, after the girls chose everything they wanted to keep, and we loaded that same blue laundry basket with it all, I felt like it was still too much, but once I got it in the closet, it looked normal. Normal, of course, by first-world standards. ;) I was thinking about buying a Martha Stewart closet system like the one Andrea posted about last week, but since I don't have the extra cash right now, I rummaged around my house and found cheaper, flimsier versions of the components I needed and that will have to do for now.

They're only 5, 8 and 9, but they are already showing a propensity for shoe hoarding. God help me.

All the usual dresser stuff, panties, socks, pj's, t-shirts and leggings, went into this dresser. Which I will be refinishing as soon as I can find a hole in my schedule to do it. It's a hand-me-down from my sister's husband, who gave it to us for our son's nursery 13 years ago. I haven't even begun to suck the life out of this thing. That's what a well built piece of furniture is worth.

This is the girl's other closet. Obviously, I have given them free reign to use it as they please. Eventually I will take it back and organize it. Not today.

And that's my completed project from this week. I've been so motivated by everyone's accomplishments, I think this just might be the catalyst I needed to get it all done. Thanks Jules!

The problem with choices

In our house, we've been trying to give our kids more choices. When they are acting up, I give them a choice between changing their behavior or continuing - with consequences. It works pretty well when I don't get lazy and resort to ordering them around like a drill sergeant.

My youngest, April, is pretty used to the drill. This morning, she was making noises at the table while we were trying to do school. I gave her the choice of making noises in the other room by herself or stopping the noise and staying with us at the table. She sighed and chose to stay with us.

Later on, I was giving her her reading lesson. She told me she had to go to the bathroom and when she came back she had this to report:

April: I was going to the bathroom and God told me I had a choice whether I wanted to wipe or not.

Me: Oh, great. Well, what did you choose?

April: I chose not to.

She later admitted that she was just joking. I didn't check to see.

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and anything else I missed

Wow, what a break! My last post was a craft project I did as a Christmas gift to my girls and I didn't even end it with a Merry Christmas! I guess I was thinking I'd be back before now. Oops, I took a longer break than I expected.

This past holiday season was a little different than any I remember. Everyone I encountered seemed to be extremely laid back. It was like the Christmas season was happening in slow motion. I decided early on not to stress about the things that I normally stress about so that meant some things inevitably fell off my list. Things like putting out my favorite vintage silver Christmas tree, sending out Christmas cards and making salt dough ornaments. Oh well, in the end I didn't really miss those things. I just enjoyed relaxing with my family and doing a whole lot of nothing.

I'm not sure what I want my blog to look like this year other than a meandering stroll through the daily minutia of my life right now. I'd like to post my 52 Bites progress and maybe a craft now and then. I'm probably going to just let it happen as it happens. I'm learning to be a better planner, but right now, this blog is not one of the things I feel called to be intentional about. In saying that, I'm giving myself permission to let it go sometimes. I don't want to be up late trying to get a post finished for the next day when I have lesson plans to work on. Or laundry to finish. I don't want it to be an afterthought, it's just not at the top of my list right now.

That being said, I'd like to start this year off with a list. You know I love lists, and evidently, I'm passing that on to my children. Here's a list I found when I was cleaning my daughter's room over the holidays. It's one that my middle daughter, Autumn, made.

I don't know if she got distracted and wasn't able to finish it or if that's it. If it were me, I'd consider it done. After eating fudge for lunch, what else is there?!?

A Perfectly Random Thursday

This past week has been a hodgepodge of activities. On Friday night, I wanted to take my girls to the movies since Mr. Park and my boy were hunting. At first, I planned on taking them to the dollar movie, but the only movie playing there was the smurfs. Thankfully, I remembered the historic theater in town that usually plays old Christmas movies around this time of year. I checked their schedule and sure enough, they were showing White Christmas. Oh, how I love that movie. And to see it at The Paramount really makes it an experience. Here's a shot of the girls before the movie started. This was taken right after April said, "Oh my goodness! This place is so romantic!"

I was really proud because the place was packed. It seems like so much is vying for our attention these days, especially with movies, so it was refreshing to see a theater almost completely filled to see a Christmas movie from 1954. And the audience ranged from little kids to senior citizens with lots of college students in between.

On Saturday night, our family had a date to watch Rudolph on CBS. Of course, we all know the words and say them out loud along with all the songs. When April was just 2 1/2, she cried at the part where Rudolph didn't get to play in all the reindeer games. We thought it was just a fluke, but when we asked her what was wrong, she said she felt sorry for Rudolph because he got left out. Now, whenever we get to that part in the movie, everyone looks at April to see how she's doing. This year she got a little irritated and said, "Stop looking at me. I'm not gonna cry this time!"

After Rudolph, we watched It's a Wonderful Life and I cried like I always do. It's such a good movie to watch to reset yourself if you're feeling overwhelmed with the commercialism of the holidays or just hopeless in your situation. It reminds me that I always have something to be thankful for.

Speaking of being thankful, I got my Christmas present early this year. And this is it.

As you can imagine, I've been making smoothies like a mad woman. I'm sure one of these days I'll get around to watching the DVD that came with it so I can get my money's worth out of it, but for now, I'm happy to make a delicious smoothie every morning for Mr. Park before work and have him tell me that it really hit the spot and he didn't even think about food until well after noon.

One evening this past week, Mr. Park played a game with the kids where he would hide a little elf ornament while the kids sat on the couch. Then the kids would open their eyes and try to see who could spot it first. It turned into a story time where Mr Park told the kids about the mean side of Santa's elves. And then my boy, who is always looking for an opportunity to liven things up, dressed up as what he imagines a scary elf would look like, quietly went out the back door, walked around the house to the front door and knocked. The evening ended in screams and running around and eventually a request to be walked to bed because they were scared. I always say our kids are either going to be the most well-rounded kids on the block or they're going to need therapy.

This is what I found when I walked in from taking a short trip to the store yesterday. I wonder if this is what the rapture is going to look like.

Here's some random things I've heard from my kids this past week.

On music:

(With Kenny G's version of Silver Bells playing on the radio)

Autie: Can you change this, please. I don't like jazz.

Me: I didn't know you even knew what jazz was.

Autie: Oh, yeah, I know about jazz and I don't like it.


On travel:

April: (with a sigh) I can't wait to go to France someday and see the awful tower.


On being efficient:

The kids' Papa came over to cut some wood and when April went out to see him he had his foot propped up on his truck tying his shoe.

April: Hey, Papa, whatcha doing?

Papa: I'm tying my shoe, darlin.

April: Why'd you come over here to do it?


On respect:

Me: Anna, I need a response from you. When you just shrug, I think you're ignoring me.

Anna: Yes, ma'am. (rolling eyes)

April: Ahhhh, I remember when I used to say, yes ma'am. Yes ma'am, yes mam, yes ma'am."