This is actually NOT a halloween costume, but I’m putting up the pictures now in case you have a little one who wants a postal carrier/mailman outfit. Tuesday has been super into mail and notes for a long time. I need to do a post about how we utilize that for learning, and her cool notebook she uses to send her own mail. But for now I want to show you this amazing mail carrier outfit. It was a collaboration between her nana and me. If by collaboration you understand that I bought the fabric (at Jo-Ann’s) and pattern (Sketchbook Shirt + Shorts from Oliver + S) and begged my mother in law to make it for me. I did get it out once to think about making it and the first part of the shirt directions talked about a placket and I was like, “I’m out!”. I know my limits. I did make the hat, and the bag (so easy, from this tutorial).
When we got to my in-laws this summer the outfit was hung up and waiting for her. Oh man oh man did we have a happy girl on our hands!!! We walked around and pretended to deliver mail. She was so excited about this open package mailbox.
My father-in-law told their local mail carrier that they had something for him at the house and could he please come over? He was in another area of the development and we were set to leave but my in-laws wanted him to see Tuesday… and she wanted to see him! She was so excited. I mean like over the moon.
He was pretty tickled too. And Tuesday even got to sit in the real mail truck!
I believe my mother in law followed the pattern pretty much to the letter (if not I’ll edit this). She added my mom’s beautiful velvet ribbon down the side. For these we used the 16mm Black Velvet. The only kind of velvet I’ve seen in stores is really thick, and would look weird on this. I am totally of the mind that if you are going to spend this much time on something why skimp on the details. The velvet made these pants. I found the patches on eBay. I still love it when she comes downstairs in this, it’s just too cute.
That Moment
I still have so many un-blogged photos from our wonderful summer I thought I would do something a little different than my normal “this moment”. A beautiful summer day at my in-laws.
How I homeschool in my mind vs. reality
I am going to let you in on a secret. I can read and plan and buy supplies with the best of them only to have our days spill out like a box of crayons never to be put back in the right order. I often crawl into bed at one AM happy knowing I have set up a great activity, cleaned up our learning area, and that I actually know what we are going to do the next morning.
This set up was one of those times. I found this great vintage magnet book at a book store in Corvallis (do a ton of people homeschool there? Because they have a top notch new/used kids section complete with a homeschool specific area). Earlier this year I snagged a couple magnetic wands and balls from lakeshore learning (via Goodwill). Then I really hit the jackpot and got this cool magnetic building set at Goodwill new in the box for $2.50. Here is a pro thrifting tip: ignore moldy boxes. Open those suckers up and douse yourself in antibacterial spray when you get back to the car. The box on this was NASTY, but inside was a styrofoam tray, totally enclosed with these in pristine condition inside.
I digress. So I collected all this stuff from my perfectly organized homeschool stash hovel of a basement storage room. I read through the magnet book and got out everything it talked about so Tuesday could recreate the experiments. I cleaned up the learning area (total misnomer, we learn everywhere really), and went to bed.
Five days later when Tuesday actually showed a brief interest in this I of course had a cranky Bennet with me who could not be near the magnets.
Bennie Blocker
So it ended with a few minutes of Tuesday sticking screws into the ends of straws and not caring at all about what’s magnetic or not. And Bennet mad on the other side of this turned over table.
Was this a total failure then? I’m not calling it one. This was a setup I wanted to do. I saw the book and I made the connection with all the fun magnet stuff. Tuesday did not. She did not care about magnets and a book from the 70s with awesome illustrations, but I did.
I actually started this post over a month ago. I decided then I had to stop doing this to myself. Tuesday learns the best when we follow her lead. When she is interested in things she soaks up knowledge like crazy. As much as I want to be the homeschool mom with perfect projects and unit studies it’s just not meant to be with Tuesday. We have no formal school time, no worksheets, nothing. Tuesday does not know all her letters, she can not read, she does not really understand how much bigger 60 is than 6. Why am I telling you this? Do I think she has a learning disability? Oh no I do not. I think she’s brilliant, though I’m always scared to tell her so and instead focus my praise on how hard working she is.
I’m telling you this because she is four and a half. And she plays great. She imagines the best stuff ever. She plays like it’s her job to get a gold star in playing… Because it is. She does not need to know how to read. I don’t care that she doesn’t count to 100. She is 4.5. And if your four year old doesn’t know any of this stuff either here is my official recommendation that you don’t worry about it. Let them be kids. Read to them, read to them some more, and then tangle your tongue one more time on Fox in Socks and call it good. And when they have questions answer them. And if you don’t know the answer figure out together how to find it. And don’t compare your kid to anyone else… I’m still working on that.
Because if you’re homeschooling you are learning all the time. And when your kid wants to know how to write your their name you can show them right then. They don’t have to wait for any other teacher. My new goal is not to have the best most Pinterest worthy trays. It’s to be present for my daughters, gauge their interests and respond appropriately. I’ll let you know how it goes.
The easiest knitting
This summer I needed some seriously easy knitting. No pattern, no fuss. But I wanted it to be interesting. Enter the copycat blanket. I made one of these for Tuesday way way back, here is the Ravelry link. I call it the copycat blanket because I got the idea for it from another blanket I saw (details on the Ravlery page). I did it just as she said for the first one, starting with a few stitches and increasing at marked places. For this second one I wanted a cleaner middle so I used a special kind of cast on made for starting in the middle of things.
Oh man this was a tricky start. But I’m so happy with how it worked out.
It isn’t done yet, but it’s so easy I wanted to share in case you need a project like this. I am using two skeins of Socks that Rock in medium weight. I alternate the colors every other row. I also increase on either side of four stitch markers, evenly spaced, every other row. That’s it! And I think this project just gets better and better as it gets cooler and cooler.
Have you cast on anything this fall?
Making used toys like new
It’s no secret that I love to thrift. I have a hard time passing a Goodwill by without stopping in. Usually I don’t know what I’m looking for and end up with lots of random things. Sometimes I find something on my wish list that I wasn’t expecting to and that is even better. My best find to date was probably a children’s book about home birth that is out of print and was like new when I got it. I kept looking around waiting for someone to snatch it out of my hands! Lately my favorite find was this awesome tree stacker from Plan Toys. I remember putting this on my Amazon wish list when Tuesday was a baby.
It retails for $24 and I never brought myself to spend that much on it. So I was super excited when I found it at a Goodwill… in the box! But then I opened the box and it was missing a piece, and another one looked like it had been chewed on by a dog. I took a chance and bought it anyway. And Bennet and Tuesday have been having fun with it even with missing pieces. But I guessed that Plan Toys had a replacement parts program, and I was right.
For $2.87 I had the two new pieces shipped to me. Not bad! The toy was $2.99 at Goodwill so I’m into it $5.86, over 75% off the retail price. I’ve done this quite a few times. Games often are missing pieces (you can take a game to the front to have it opened if it’s taped shut and you want to check pieces). Sometimes it’s hard to track down who to contact, but usually when you find the right person they are happy to help you. I have sent in money for pieces (found a form in the game box) and had it sent back because they were out of pieces and the game was no longer produced. Usually when I get an incomplete game it’s from Goodwill, where there is a 30 day return policy. So I have time to take it home and investigate my options.
In this case I would have kept the toy anyway, but I love that we now have a complete stacker. And so does Bennet. I really like this toy, and I think it’s one I’ll keep around even after the girls are grown.
Equinox
I’m so in love with this colorway from Southern Cross Fibre. I used to belong to a few fiber clubs and it put me over the edge into crazy stash land. I love the idea of getting wonderful fiber mailed every month, but I couldn’t keep up and jewels like this just got lost in the stash (October 2009 colorway).
I started pulling this into pre-drafted little clouds on July 9th 2012…. Hmm what kind of baby did I think was in my belly? 🙂
I finished spinning it up a while ago, but never washed it, which you must do to get the springy body that handspan yarn has. I was pulling out a pile of wool pants I’d crammed under the sink in the spring to wash someday and came across this and another skein.
A little dip in the sink, a stretch and some hanging to dry and suddenly I’m dreaming about scarves and sweaters… Maybe a hat?
I also had another skein waiting to be washed. This one was from another fiber club: Hello Yarn. Good thing fiber doesn’t go bad, this was from November 2008, the Buckland colorway and is a Finn Wool top.
Yes, yes I think it’s time to get back to my needles.
This Moment
Joining in on Amanda’s this moment project. A moment from the last week. A slice of life.
Mapping the Seasons
Tuesday loves to talk about when her birthday is. Anyone else have a child like this? I’m betting so. “When I’m five mama…” I told her she had to wait until winter, and she asked if that was after summer. No, I said, fall is first. How frustrating this was for her to understand! I had been thinking of doing some kind of chart for her after coming across a vintage illustration. When I said I would participate in the 100 days of Tombow I thought of this idea initially, but I thought it too boring. Maybe it wouldn’t show off the products enough. But I really love the end results, love the simplicity, so I thought I would share it too.
The basic idea is to show our seasons in relationship to our trips around the sun. Within those seasons I’ve divided the next ring into months, and inside of that the ring is representative of our birthdays. So I am showing her how we all started at different times of the year.
Here you can see the vintage illustration where I got the idea from. I was able to equally divide the circle into 12 sections using this method. You can also see one of my favorite Tombow products, their MONO eraser. I read that they now have a more environmentally friendly plastic eraser and you can be sure I’ll be trying that when I’m through my current stash (if you’re thinking, so what an eraser you need to try these, they are so soft and work fabulously).
All of the marker work here was done with the dual brush pens. See how wonderfully you can write with the thin tip side? I swear I’ll stop gushing about them, but if you look at this set you can see that they are stored straight up and down. I don’t know exactly how they do it but both tips share one reservoir so the colors are an exact match and the ink never pools in one tip or the other no mater how you store them.
To show her how the months correlate to the dates we use I made these tokens up with old game pieces (another post for another day, but I have been buying games and using them for their parts). I think it would be even more fun to make little cards with various seasonal things on them for her to place around the map (snowmen, Christmas tree, buds on trees, fall leaves, etc.).
So there you have it, mapping the seasons. How have you taught your little ones about seasons and time? I’d love to hear. And thanks again to Tombow for having me participate in their 100 days of Tombow program!
Supplies Used
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Easy Bean and Corn Salad – dairy and gluten free
I had some friends over that are dairy and gluten free. I needed to make them something with things I had on hand, since it was during my no spend September month. I asked another gluten free mama for ideas and she suggested this salad. It looked perfect for a last sunny day picnic in the backyard. So I got to work making it, glancing at my iPad for directions. Only somewhere along the line I clicked on something that took me to a completely different recipe, and I started integrating that with the other before I realized what I was doing. And so a new recipe was born.
Easy dairy and gluten free bean and corn salad:
1 (15 ounce) can black beans, rinsed and drained
1 (15 ounce) can dark red kidney beans, rinsed and drained
1 (15 ounce) can cannellini beans (or navy beans or great northern), rinsed and drained
1 (15 ounce) can garbanzo beans, rinsed and drained
1 8 ounce jar salsa (I used home canned from a few years ago)
1 bag frozen corn (I used a quart sized ziploc I had frozen myself – since I had so much!, I think a 12 ounce bag from the store would work great instead)
handful of fresh chives
1 cup chopped bell peppers
1 clove crushed garlic
1/2 cup olive oil
1/2 cup white vinegar
3 tablespoons lemon juice (fresh squeezed would be good, but I only had bottled and it worked fine)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 tablespoon ground cumin
1/2 tablespoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1 cup fresh chopped tomatoes (optional, I set this on the side for guests to add to their bowl as they liked)
Mix all the beans, corn (still frozen, or only slightly thawed), salsa, peppers, garlic and chives together. In a separate bowl whisk everything else together. Pour on top and mix to combine. I made this right before my friends came over and it was a huge bowl full of food, easily enough for eight. She brought corn chips to eat with it, but I dipped some bread in it the next day and that was good too. Serve it chilled. You can make it up ahead of time; it was great the next day, so I think it would be easy to make up ahead of time.
Side notes: how annoying are half tablespoons? I bought this handy thing when I was doing freezer cooking and love it. I added a couple other pertinent links below: the tomato knife that I love, love, love and use for all my tomato canning too. The jar is how we decant our olive oil, it makes it so easy for Tuesday to measure out, I always have her do the olive oil now. And freezer quart bags. If you don’t can, or even if you do, putting up extra produce (or leftover portions of meat to freeze) in these is quick and easy.
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No Spend September – the final numbers
If you’ve been following along on our no spend (well really low spend) September you might be wondering how we did (if not you can catch up here and here). Well September is over and we outspent the $400 budget we gave ourselves by $12.49. All in all we’re calling the month a success for re-setting our spending and, more importantly, our goals and values. Since I last checked in we only spent money twice: Groceries $11.12 and I bought a month subscription to inLinkz so I could make those little lists at the end of my posts showing you what supplies I used. That may seem random but going over our finances I was once again reminded that blogging can be a bit of an expensive hobby. I do use affiliate links, though they rarely get clicked on. I’m hoping that a list of supplies at the end of posts will be helpful for you and me (with affiliate links you don’t get charged anything extra, and I get a tiny percentage of whatever you buy on the site).
So here is how the month totaled out:
lawn mowing $10
dance clothes $50
food (including produce for canning) $132.82
canning accessories (lids, jars, gauge) $94.18
haircut $11
comedy tickets $47.50
girls night out $20
gas $42
inlinkz $4.99
Total: $412.49
I think I’m most proud of the gas amount. We still have 1/3 of a tank left, and we started the month 2/3 full 65 miles from home. I got my bike out and dusted it off after two years of not riding. And not only did I haul my ass around but I loaded up my two munchkins and hauled them around as well. We went to dance class, the store, and the library.
(Tuesday pretends to sleep and Bennet has a fit because she hates the trailer)
I am determined to keep this habit up. I mean if I could take the girls the library in this crazy storm I should be set (though I am buying or making rain pants ASAP) Coincidently I lost five pounds this month. Hmm, I’m trying to decide if there is a correlation between no fast food/eating out and biking around town…
I think we had a lot more family time this month, I loved that we were not running out to “run errands” or “shop” vague terms that usually equal a money and time suck. I made some amazing meals. I cooked almost every one, some I just assembled or we ate leftovers. I am happy with how we ate, it was very healthy and I loved canning, or course. However I still have not come to love cooking. I will do it because I know it’s best but I just don’t have the love for spending all day in the kitchen. I think it will grow on me and I’ve learned a lot this last month. I even browned ground beef last night for the first time (mmm 13 bean chili). I’m trying to do things that make it more exciting for me in the kitchen, like render my own lard (oh yes I did), put up fresh fruits and veggies when they are in season and can. If you have any other tips about learning to love cooking I will take them!!! Having Tuesday measure out the olive oil and fastidiously level flour helps for sure.
Bj and I have new goals now for our family’s financial future, and I’m excited to see how this jumpstarts our savings. In addition to saving, being less consumer driven and more environmentally conscious are also goals. We are looking into LED lights, solar panels, maybe even an electric car! Have you thought about a no/low spend month? Have you done it before? I’d love to hear about it!