excuses... excuses...

I am kind of MIA and plan to be for the next few weeks. Here are my excuses.

I am up every two-three hours in the night right now... Bee is desperately wanting to stay dry at night. She's five, but is such a sound sleeper and doesn't wake up at night for anything. She's been potty trained for a long time of course, but we've ignored the night time thing until now. I have to wake her up. I set my alarm and get up every few hours to take her to the potty. Good grief, it's like I have an infant. I am hoping only a few more days of this and then we can go to once or twice a night. Mostly, I'm tired. two hours must be the right amount of time to assure you never enter REM sleep.

There is a craft fair this weekend. My neighbors are letting me throw some stuff in, I'm trying to get a few more things ready.

I have several large projects in the works. It's a homemade Christmas here and I'm trying hard to keep up. Plus, the Christmas orders on Etsy are starting... I need to stay up on that.

It's dark and dreary out. It's this time in the year that I miss Florida. Motivation levels are low. It's easier to bundle up and hide inside. Sweat pants make me feel lazy.

I am on a new no-computer during the day plan. Between planning for school, blogging, regular email stuff, ebay, etc, it was getting a bit much. All computer use (ok, at least 95% of it) is being saved for after kiddo bedtime.

We are moving. It's not far, but it's still a move. Things are getting in that state where you don't want to put away laundry since it's going to get taken back out of the closet again in two weeks. It's starting to get messy around here.

And lastly, and maybe mostly, this boy! This BOY! He is... becoming so much more work... so much more trouble.... so much more. oh boy. I just finished up James Dobson's Bringing Up Boys... Now I've moved on to The Strong Willed Child, also by James Dobson. I was just thinking this weekend that he is going to be a teenager some day. I'm going to be one worried and crazy mama by then. I'll be gray haired and a frazzeled ol mess.

So anyway, I'll be hit or miss for awhile. I have stuff to write about, it just may take awhile to get it all here.

shoe boxes and braggin

The kids and I are working this weekend on our shoe boxes. Drop off week is November 13-22. You still have time if you want to join us. Not sure what I'm talking about? Find more information here.

unrelated photos: Lou had leader day at school recently. His favorite part of the day was leading the friends in he pledge. You get to stand on the chair... pretty cool. That's one of his sweet teachers, who he pronounces as Ms. Yuli. We're still working on some of the letters at our house. The other teacher went to my class for the day so that I could be with Lou.


Bee made us proud recently when she won the Collosians 3:23 award at school. One child from each class gets the award each quarter. She could use a little of that work ethic at home, but we sure can't complain. That's Bee's sweet teacher that she is with.

"Work hard and cheerfully at whatever you do, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people." Col 3:23

thanksgiving wall hanging- really now

I really have it now. Yesterday's post was titled Thanksgiving wall art, but I didn't actually have it ready to show, I just talked about it.

I finished it today. I love it, it makes we want to do more smaller quilty projects and never big ones. Two days is much nicer than a months long project.

I snapped only one photo before my camera battery died.


I had the orange as a fabric to be included in the outer part, but it was getting plenty big. I wanted to use only fabric in my stash, but I did go pick up the dark brown.

I said it all yesterday, but I saw this Thanksgiving wall hanging at AJ's Bow-tique and I love it and knew I wanted to make one up. It uses artwork from Bunch of Craft, which is where I saw the link to AJs Botique in the first place.

thanksgiving wall hanging

I saw this Thanksgiving wall hanging @ AJ's Bow-tique and knew I needed the supplies, like within the hour. It's a fun and quick quilty like wall hanging. It uses artwork from Bunch of Craft, which is really where I saw the link to the wall hanging idea.

I bought this printable fabric at Joanns. It's not what was used in the one at AJ's Bow-tique. It came on a roll so you can cut to size and not waste any. It essentially like this version that I made homemade awhile back. I do think it's really nice and worth the money.


The first two tries, I messed up. My fault mostly. So, I had some extra partial printouts. I cut some up and made up a coffee cozy. I sent it out to a customer this morning so they can test it out for me. I am hopeful that the ink doesn't run.


I do have a successful printout that is in currently being worked on for the wall hanging. In fact, that's where I'm off to right now. It turning out really well and is making me happy. I had to put away this quilt for a few days. The quilting is not going well. It may require me to rip out hours worth of quilting. hours. makes me mad just thinking about it. mad.

I'm a gypsy

I forgot to share my Halloween costume. I'm a gypsy. It's either because I move a lot or I buy and sell children. Either one.

Speaking of me moving a lot, this gypsy mama is moving again. The last move, about 14 months ago, was 745 miles. This time... boy oh boy is this a big move.... We are moving about 25 feet. Seriously, we are moving next door. This will be house number 18 for me. Cause I'm a gypsy.

Just because I dress up as one doesn't make me one. Last year, Hubby and I were Handy Manny and Kelly. We are no more handy now then we were then. Hubby maybe.


Since I brought up Halloween again, check out these spiderweb pretzels. They are on the list for next yer!

gone fishing

One of the blogs I follow is One Inch World. This week she did a post about some various kid activities that didn't fit into other posts. One of the activities she shared was such a simple little project, but one I hadn't thought to do before.


She used pipecleaners to make fish for a little magnetic fishing pole. We've done paperclips on fish cutouts, but that never goes well. The little clips fall off and the fish rip. Pipecleaners are perfect for the job, plus, Bee could easily make her own fish while Lou started fishing. I just hotglued the superstrong magnet on the end of a ribbon and tied the ribbon to a stick we had in the garage. There may be a kite come spring that is missing a part. I can't think where else this would have come from.


I had the perfect leftover super strong magnet from my magnet finger glove for preschool, the one with WAY too strong magnets on the finger tips. We had so much fun with this over the past few days that Pillow pet wanted to join in .

cosmetic bag

My sister suggested I sew up some cosmetic bags to give as gifts this year, specifically for her to give as gifts. She's sweet like that.


I've seen several tutorials for them so I knew the general construction plan. I did however consult this specific tutorial. It left unfinished edges, so I came up with my own solution. I have since revised that solution and now have an easier plan to hide the unfinished edges when I make a second. I also slightly changed the bottom of my bag which made it unnecessarily trickier.

I used some of the fabric my brother and his wife brought me from Japan.I've had a hard time deciding just what to use it for. I lined it with a vintage pillowcase. I felt like they were good fabric together until I was done. I would have used something different for the lining in retrospect. This is the prototype, so that means it's for me or for the kids, so it doesn't matter.

When I make the next one, I plan to take more pictures and make a tutorial showing the changes I made and different bottom.

turkey games- preschool style

This week is Turkey week at preschool. We've already done the Thanksgiving story, so it's all gobble gobble this week. Here are a few Turkey related games and songs I have ready.

I am reading Twas the Night Before Thanksgiving by Dav Pilkey. It's a cute little story about children going on a field tip and sneaking the turkeys out under their shirts. I thought after that book, we'd sing this song using pieces to go on my glove. I will encourage the kids to sing with me. It's always better than me singing alone. This is a counting up rhyme. Those are more rare and almost always preferred for three year olds.

"One little turkey running through the barnyard, farmer's looking everywhere far and wide.
Here comes Mr. farmer, don't let him see you. Stomp stomp, flap flap, run and hide. Two
little turkeys running...."

Then I have 6 turkeys cut out in different colors. I will pass out two feathers per child. The turkeys will lay on the floor in the middle of our circle and we will sing this little song to collect the feathers back in.

(to the tune of Mary wore her red dress)
"Turkey wore her red feathers, red feathers, red feathers. Turkey wore her red feathers all
day long."
(We will continue with green, brown, orange, red and purple)

When all the feathers are in, we'll count them and compare the different numbers. I may lay a fabric numeral on top of each turkey to show the number of feathers. With older kids you could add different sets of feathers, etc.

Then, I'll pull one color from each and make up this guy. We will sing:

"turkey wore his rainbow feathers, rainbow feathers, rainbow feathers. Turkey wore his
rainbow feathers, all day long."


Assuming I still have everyone's attention (frankly there may be someone under or on top of a table at this point), we'll play 'which one is missing.' I'll maybe sing the directions, because: 1. I love to sing and 2. things sung are more interesting to three year olds (only one of those is true).

"Turkey feathers, turkey feathers, green, purple, yellow - red, orange and brown. Close you
eyes and wait for me. Now open your eyes and tell me, which one is missing."

At a separate time in the morning, we will attempt this activity. I will give the kids a little cup of cereal. I would have thought to use bugles, since they look like cornucopias, but I don't always this that far ahead. Candy corn might have been ok too. I will call out specific numbers for them to cover up. We will work on colors too. You could easily program these with shapes, letters, number sentences, etc.


I made up a larger version to put on the flannel board while the kids have their own smaller one. I think this will be easy for a few, but there are just as many that will be lost, perhaps on a table somewhere. Last week we had a similar corn activity and there were a few spots for each number. That was very confusing to them. Hopefully this simplified game will go better.

Here are a few other activities that I found online that didn't make it in today's plans.

Turkey name feather game

Alphabet turkey activity

I've linked up at some of these fine blogs.