Late April Updates

Last week turned out to be one of those 'work on Snorzy's sweater' weeks, since Sweet Hubby was on vacation from work and we were too busy having fun for me to want to plan or execute a new craft.  I'm totally okay with that because since I can knit only a few rows at a sitting, this sweater is going to take forever to complete!  For this week, I'm going to sew a plastic bag caddy as my project.  I found a bunch of tutorials on Pinterest, now I just have to narrow down which one I like best, and get to work.

This is our last full week of our April break from lessons, we'll get back to it next Thursday when May begins (can't believe it's already almost May!  This year is flying by!).  I've previewed most of the curricula that we're going to use, and I'm cautiously optimistic that the kids will like the new things.  Primo will be using History Odyssey, which references Henrik Van Loon's Story of Mankind as a textbook.  Last night I started reading reviews of SOM on Goodreads, and overall they were positive but some people criticized the book and said they would never use it with children.  I've started reading it myself, but I'm not enough of a history buff to know if the history is accurate and comprehensive (I guess I'll have to get Sweet Hubby, history teacher that he is, to read it too).

I'm still in the 'product testing' phase of looking into starting a home baking business.  I tried out biscotti but found them too fussy to make, with too much waste (added to that, I noticed that there is another small business that makes biscotti just a few towns over, and I think that not having an Italian name or heritage might be a drawback).  Now I'm planning to bake some chocolate oatmeal cookies, costing out the recipe and giving it to testers to see if it would be a tempting enough product to sell in local shops.  Lovely Mother suggested I make something pretty, but I'm not sure I want to sell quantities of things that have to be carefully crafted and fussed over.

 

April Update

We are on our 'April Break' from lessons right now, and I think I agree with Radish that this is the best of our three annual breaks, because it falls in the spring.  The idea of taking a break in changeable April is that we can pick up and run out the door whenever the sun comes out, instead of having to finish math or some such.


So, you might think that since we're on break, my craft challenge projects must be humming along.  Um, no.  Last week I did *nothing*-- just couldn't get inspired to make anything.  This week was in danger of being more of the same, and derailing my challenge, until I had a conversation with Lovely Mother about crafting and inspiration, and remembered that 'when in doubt', I can always work on Snorzy's rainbow sweater.  I was stuck on that one, once again, this time just because it was time to switch from the trim color to the main color.



 

Once I worked a little on the sweater (and I mean a *little*, I picked it up near the end of nap time so I had about 5 minutes before I heard Snorzy crying), I got out of my rut and the next thing I knew, I had two ideas for sewing projects.  I can thank my friend Jen F. for the first one: she repinned one of my Pinterest pins, from my Sewing board, and I realized this is what I want to make, next week!  It's a 'shirt skirt', made from a men's XL t-shirt, from the blog Sew Like My Mom (I feel like I've made something from her blog before, but I can't think of what).  This skirt involves shirring and elastic thread, two things I've never done/used.  Here's my sweet spot for sewing projects: things from tutorials that don't require paper patterns, about which the writer of the tutorial says something along the lines of "this can be made in an hour!", yet which also involve techniques or materials that I've never used.  This project hits that spot.

 

Also, I was reading the free magazine from Hannaford supermarket, Fresh, this morning while on hold with the phone company about our lack of dial tone, and found inspiration there, too (it comes from the weirdest places, and at the unlikeliest times)!  I haven't looked up a tutorial yet, but I know I've seen them-- for a cloth bag to hold plastic bags from the store until we can take them to be recycled.  Dull, tiny, simple, yet useful and will reduce the clutter in the house rather than adding to it-- fits the bill for my craft challenge.

 

In other news, the Big Homeschool Buy is done and delivered-- I had to move books around to different bookshelves to clear out a shelf in the dining room for all of this coming year's homeschooling materials.  I'm excited about some, intimidated by others, and realizing I need to take some time this month while we're on break to read, and write some lesson plans.  The best part was that the boys spontaneously picked up a few of the books each, read a little, and declared them good.  The one I'm currently the most intimidated by/excited about (yes, both) is a unit study called Microscope Adventure.  It's like nothing we've used before.

 

Pesky Inch

I wasn't feeling inspired about the craft challenge this week, so I decided to allow myself to use it as an incentive to finish something that had been plaguing me. While I was pregnant with Snorzy, and before I knew if I was having a boy or a girl, I bought a few skeins of really lovely Lorna's Laces yarn, rainbow colored. I started a sweater, knitting the back first, which had to be knit to 14 inches high. For awhile I was going along well, knitting two rows at a time, once or twice each day (any more and my hands hurt me). Somewhere along the line, though, I ran out of steam and put the project aside. It was a good thing I changed my mind about making it size 6 months to one year, as I originally intended. Thank goodness for smart knitting friends like Ariel, who suggested at the outset that I size the sweater up quite a bit (I ended up with the 3T size) both so that I could knit it slowly, and so that Tiny Baby (as I called Snorzy before I knew him) could wear it longer. The unfinished back panel has been dormant for months, while Snorzy himself is creeping up toward one year old. I just couldn't get myself to knit the last inch and a half of the panel. Here it is, about 12.5 inches, just needed a few more rows to hit 14 inches and allow me to put this dull plain knitting part aside to work on front panels, sleeves, etc.   Ten minutes of knitting interspersed with resting my hands and rolling a hot rice pack on them, I finally hit 14 inches and can move on to the more interesting parts of the project (this will be, incidentally, my first sweater). Now, where did I put my stitch holders? :)

Craft Challenge 2014

I’ve decided to make something every week of 2014, starting this past week (I’m writing on the 10th, but I swear I finished the first project on the 7th!)  I have a Pinterest board or two filled with things I want to make ‘someday’, but the other day I was looking at my ‘Snorzy’ board and was horrified to see several cute, simple things that I meant to make for him for which he is *already* too old!  Ever since I had to virtually give up knitting due to hand pain, it has been hard to always have a project on the go—it’s so much easier when all you need is two sticks and some yarn.  I find that once I get started on a project it’s not hard to stay motivated and finish in good time.  It’s just the beginning that is the biggest obstacle for me.  So many of the things I do as a homeschooling mom are either consumable or never-ending (cooking, laundry) or have such far-reaching consequences that I don’t get a satisfying ‘ahh, I’m done’ feeling (teaching the boys lessons, manners, how to live in the world).  It’s nice to have something to point to at the end of a short period of time, about which I can say, “I made that”.  Hence, this New Year’s challenge: I will ‘make something’ – complete some kind of multi-step craft project—every week of this year for a total of 52 projects by year’s end.  We’re several days into the second week and I don’t have an idea on tap yet, so we’ll see how I do at sticking with this challenge.  I’ll also have to figure out the rules for myself as I go, in regards to big projects like quilts—can I count each part of the process as a mini project?  But I give myself permission to count *very* simple crafts, as long as there is more than one step involved—for instance, see my next post, on my first project of this challenge—a Wipes Box toy for Snorzy. 

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Habits

I recently read the book The Power of Habit and it has me thinking a lot about my habits, and how they are forming my life.  According to this author, every habit (which includes much of our behavior) consists of a cue, a response, and a reward.  Sometimes it’s hard to tease the three apart, to figure out what the cue is that triggers the habit, or what the reward is from a seemingly unrewarding behavior (for example, why do I yell at my kids?  it doesn’t make me feel any better when I do, and it rarely elicits a good change from them).  Today I noticed that by changing my habits just a little—taking a shower before eating breakfast rather than after, switching up the order in which I do things in other, even smaller ways….I ended up feeling energized by the change, and found myself changing other more damaging habits (usually I somehow end up sitting on the couch all morning, instead I was up playing with the baby, cleaning, and I came up with six different ideas for blog topics too).
Another habit I’m trying to change is my tendency to do things unrelated to the boys’ lessons during lesson time, in the between minutes when no one needs me.  I get swept up in reading my current book, checking Facebook, trolling Pinterest.  I want to try to only do things related to lessons during lesson time (in terms of reading, writing, using media)- I have been less successful at making this habit switch so far, but when I do succeed with this to any extent I find that I’m more patient with the boys when they get frustrated at a difficult lesson, or when they lose focus.  Instead of having to pull myself away from something wholly unrelated to lessons straight into a crisis already in progress, I find I either sit thinking quietly and notice right away that they are getting into difficulty OR I read or do research related to lessons, and their crises don’t feel unrelated when they interrupt what I’m doing, it’s all part of the same project.  It was easier when I could still knit, that was something I could do with half of my attention and I never felt the need to ask them to wait longer than it took me to reach the end of my row, before I was ready to help with the tricky bits of their work.

Small Bites

It's not ideal, but better than nothing- many Mondays this fall, I've had a little taste of help at home, in the form of my lovely niece D coming over for a two hour window after school.  She watches all three boys while I get things done around here, the kinds of things I would otherwise let slide, and the kinds of things I must do but usually have to do in a harried, hurried, start-and-stop fashion.  With two straight hours of uninterrupted (well, sometimes a little interrupted, but not as much so as usual) time, I can get a lot done.  So far today I've planned tonight's meal (no mean feat on grocery day) and written a grocery list and meal plan for the week.  Now I still have an hour left, and nothing else I need to do.

Sometimes it's hard for me to remember that it's better to spend a little time on a task, than to let it go undone.  I tend to think that if I can't devote a long stretch of time to one activity, then it isn't worth doing it at all.  This is how I end up with a small rainbow sweater started and set aside for *months*, untouched even though I enjoy knitting and actually *can't* do more than a few minutes at a time without damaging my hands further.  And this is how I find myself going back over my day when Snorzy falls asleep at night and realizing that I didn't read to him once, all day.  I'm pretty sure that never happened with the older two, I always read to them in the little in-between moments in our daily routine.  I don't know where all those moments get to these days, though I have my suspicions (I'm looking at you, Pinterest!)

Those moments add up though, running into each other, combining and solidifying into the fabric that makes up my life thus far.  Those chunky board books read to my bright-eyed boy will become the foundation for a lifetime of literacy for him, and memories of chanting the stories to him will stay with me as he grows up and away.  And those bright eyes are always watching, his and his brothers' too- I want them to see a mama who is (almost) always intentional in how I spend my time.  I reserve the right to sometimes laze in front of the tv or page through pins in search of something pretty or fun to look at.  Most often though, I want to be able to close my eyes at the end of the day with the satisfied feeling of having done all the work that presented itself to me- in teaching my boys, being careful of my relationships, creating beautiful things, and nourishing my family.