Support Your Team

Sunday was a good day. I stayed home with the children, wore my flannel pajamas, listened to conference on the computer and made these:


Yes, those are Twilight scrabble tile necklaces and yes, you can wear Team Edward, Team Jacob or even Team Carlisle or Team James. No Jasper because he did not look this cute in the actual film. See my review for details. I made a bunch of these last week and they have proven to be quite popular!

By the way, have you seen the photos of Paul from New Moon? Holy abs! I am actually really glad that they re-cast the wolves and love the look of the new pack.

By the way, I watched the DVD of Twilight with . . . Sophie. She thought it was a bit scary in parts and afterwards said she could never fall in love with a vampire because *eye roll* "they're not real, mom".


I also made more domino necklaces with different types of glazes .

I still have not managed to start up an Etsy shop but I hope to get to it soon-ish. I also made a slew of hair clips and plan on setting up a table at a community garage sale in a couple of weeks to see how things sell. The scrabble tiles necklaces with chain are $6.00 and the dominoes with chain are $8.00.

If you are local, do you have any experience selling at local crafts fairs?

Here are the clips I finished on Sunday as well. I kind of wish we had conference once a month.


This is what they look like on a 5 year-old head. These are $8.00 each.

I Hate Photos of Myself

Two reasons. 1. I am overweight 2. I do not like the fact that I never had braces. So, here are a couple of shots I took yesterday trying to show the new length of my hair. It is also darker (got to cover those gray hairs!).

Not Looking at Books

We tend to go to the library a couple of times every week. Usually we return lot of books, pick up the books we have on hold and fill a bag full of new picture books for the little ones. Calvin insists on playing games on the computer whenever we stop by (and gets very upset if there is not a computer available). Tristan prefers playing with puzzles and climbing through the walls.

Calvin also insists on checking out all of the books while Johnny enjoys returning them. One time he lost his glove while shoving books onto the moving belt. We had to find a librarian and ask him to go back there and search through the books for the missing glove.

My favorite thing to do at the library is find a cushy chair and read, but there are no cushy chairs near the computers - why is that?

A Little Bit of Happy

I did not get the memo.

Could someone please explain to me how we went from this scene on Friday afternoon . . .


. . . to this obnoxious scene this morning? Did I miss the memo? How did I not know this snow was coming? I just cut seven inches off my hair on Saturday in preparation for spring!! Does this look like spring?


The good news is - all of my weeds are covered in snow again. Out of sight, out of mind.

Friday Outdoor Activities

All week long, the older kids have stayed outside to play after walking home from school. If the little ones want to go out, I grab a lawn chair, the phone and a bunch of tissues for runny noses (it's still kind of chilly) and plunk myself out in the yard for a couple of hours to watch them play until parents arrive to pick everyone up.

We pulled out the bubbles per Calvin's request.


Bubbles are messy.

Friday Fieldtrip - Minnesota Zoo Farm Babies

On Friday we took an afternoon field trip to the zoo to see the farm babies. The zoo was PACKED. I start to get a nervous tick when I am around that many people. We met up with the Barringers and took the tractor ride out to the farm. The kids thought the animals were great and Calvin even touched a cow's nose. They all thought the farm had a very strong odor.


Look what's coming back this summer! Hooray! We love the giraffes and the zebras!

Happiness Is . . .

Yard Sale Season!!!! On Thursday morning I went to my first yard sale of the season. It's the cheapest therapy around - I spent the rest of the day smiling.


Here is a shot of my loot - a total of $4.50 (I'm smiling again). The vintage bottles and sifter are for a good friend who just had a baby - she loves old stuff. The wire basket now holds my collection of trims in the craft room.


This is a little vintage seek and find game with 30 little items hidden among the beads. The list of items is on one of the ends and for $0.75 it managed to keep the kiddos enthralled for several hours Thursday evening. They still have about 8 items that no one had found yet.


This great little wooden box already had the hanging materials on the back. It was a steal for $1.00 and is now hanging on my wall in the craft room holding favorite stamps and stickles.


I love a good yard sale - do you?

After-School Snack

Just make your favorite banana bread recipe (I used the one in the Betty Crocker Cookbook) substituting coarse whole wheat flour for the white flour. I also used 1/2 butter and 1/2 shortening instead of all shortening. Instead of walnuts, I used pecans and threw in some bittersweet chocolate chips. Yum!

Chipper Chicks

We pulled out the crafting supplies yesterday to whip up some Easter chicks. They are very simple to make and involve hand tracing. I'm a sucker for crafts that involve hand tracing.

First, cut out an oval from a piece of colored paper.


On another sheet of the same color, trace both of your hands and cut them out.


Glue on some googly eyes and a triangle for a beak. Attached the hands with two large brads.


When finished, your chick will look like this.


I added some hair.


Calvin decided to add another hand. His is a rooster.


The girls just kept on crafting and added legs, crowns, earrings, skirts and necklaces. Sophie wanted me to point out that the big yellow smiles are actually the necklaces. Theirs are obviously princess chicks.

Views from my window - April 1st

This was the beautiful warm view from my window this morning.


Were you fooled? Actually, THIS was the view from my window this morning.


I guess the joke's on us, huh?

There will be Cadbury Mini Eggs in Heaven

It's a good thing these suckers are only available for a few months each year.
Note to Cadbury: the dark chocolate ones are just not good - I don't know why, but they just don't float my boat. Plus, the dark chocolate colors are ugly.