Inspiration For The Weekend -12 (General Conference)

This weekend is General Conference where LDS members and others from around the world have the opportunity to receive instruction and inspiration from the prophet (Thomas S. Monson) and other leaders of our church.  With today's technology we are blessed to be able to watch it via the Internet from our own home.

One thing that can be a struggle is how to help young children find meaning in listening to the talks.  Or how to at least keep them quite so you can listen to the talks.

R-E-A-D

Well, Sweetie Pie and I finally got this little project done. It took us five days.  We mostly worked at night after the other kids were in bed so we could actually get something done.

After creating a toy and book corner in her room, I got the bright idea that I'd like to put up some letters that spell out READ.  I knew what letters I'd pick out and just how to decorate them and hang them.  But then I realized this is not for my room, it is for Sweetie Pie so I decided to get her input.  Luckily she was on board with getting the letters and putting them up.

I would have picked out these letters:



















But Sweetie Pie decided to do just two of the letters in that style and two in this style:

That was Saturday, day 1 of this project - buying the letters.

Sippy Cup Locater

Seriously, some one should invent a sippy cup locater, a GPS tracker on those things or something.  I'm sure I'm not the only one whose child has lost a sippy cup only to be found days or weeks later with spoiled milk or fermented juice in it.

The other night while I was making dinner and the Babes was at my heels, I filled up her sippy cup with milk in hopes of keeping her occupied so I could finish preparing dinner.  When dinner time rolled around, her sippy cup was no where to be found.

3rd Grade Logic?

My son is in third grade and he came home with a paper titled Fact Game Lesson #7.
I tried to recreate it on here.  It looked something like this:


Write true, false, or maybe.


Here's the only thing we know about the cat.
The cat climbed none of the short trees.

          1                   2                 3                  4




1.  The cat climbed object 4.             FALSE                                     correct
2.  The cat climbed object 3.             MAYBE                                   incorrect
3.  The cat did not climb object 2.     TRUE                                       correct



I didn't understand why he got #2 incorrect.
The only thing we know is that the cat did not climb any of the short trees (object 2 and 4).
We don't know if the cat climbed the tall trees or not, so I think the answer of 'maybe' would be correct - don't you?  I emailed the teacher asking her to explain the logic behind it so I could explain it to my son.  Really I just want her realize that he got it right in the first place.
What do you think? 

And  here's a sneak peak at something Sweetie Pie and I have been working on for her room.
Hopefully we'll finish it this week so I can show you the completed project.

Weekend Movies

My mother in law came up over the weekend and Kevin and I took the opportunity to enjoy free babysitting and go to the movies.  The Hunger Games was playing and according to a lot of my friends on Facebook, they were going to see it.  I've not read the books and for whatever reason it didn't seem very interesting to me.  I'll probably watch it when it comes out on video, but I just wasn't into seeing an action packed movie that night.

So we went to a small local theater and saw The Iron Lady.    Apparently a lot of elderly people didn't want to see The Hunger Games either as we were the youngest people in the audience.  And we are in our 30's!  Not to make us sound older than we are, but  Kevin and I both enjoy documentaries and history type movies so I thought this would be a good choice for us.



Spoiler Alert!
If you don't want to know about the movie, stop reading here.

Inspiration For The Weekend - 11

I saw this on Pinterest and have been thinking of making a similar one for the Spencinator's room.  He loves Star Wars and Legos so this would be perfect.

Stop on over at toileinthefamily.blogspot.com to see how Molly made this huge Yoda silhoutte from foam core.

If I ever get around to making one, I'll be sure to post about it so stay tuned and -
may the force be with you.
Sorry, had to throw that in there.

Creating A Toy and Book Corner

As I mentioned in this post HERE when Sweetie Pie got injured while reading in bed, I would have to rearrange her furniture to prevent further accidents.
Here is the before:

You can see where her books were right next to her bed.

Still not sure how she hurt herself putting one away, but I've never liked this Ikea trofast storage system with all her trinkets displayed on top of it being the first thing you see when you look in her bedroom.  So of course I took this opportunity to arrange something better.

Our Welcome Spring Party

Like I mentioned in this post HERE and HERE, Sweetie Pie had really be looking forward to the first day of Spring so we decided to celebrate it.  My Mom came up and we had ourselves a little party.

 We made a little gift bag for each kid

Happy First Day of Spring

 Today is the first day of Spring.  I finally put away my winter table runner,

 and put on my spring tablecloth:

Now I just need to find a Spring centerpiece.

Swinging into Spring

Tomorrow is the first day of spring.
Sweetie Pie has a calendar in her room and lets us all know when there is a holiday, or a full moon.

She has actually been counting down to the first day of Spring, see how she marked it with a flower on her calendar?  My Mom is coming over and we're going to celebrate.  We'll have some cute cupcakes and do some Spring crafts. 

Sadly over the weekend the rest of the family (except me) got sick.  We did manage to have a small window of wellness and we were able to complete a little project on our swing set.  Mostly I tried to do it, but couldn't and Kevin had to come do the entire job for me.

Nothing is as simple as it seems.  At the end of last summer, I bought new swings.  The old ones had the plastic coating in a tube covering the chains and the tube was cracking leaving exposed chain.  When Sweetie Pie and her friends would swing on them, their hair would get caught in the chains.  So I bought the new swings that have the individual chains coated in plastic.  I thought I could just unhook the old swings and hook the new ones, but no.  It wasn't that simple.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Thursday I mentioned about decorating your home for St. Patrick's day.
Friday I wrote about St. Patrick's Day treats and activities.
And today for St. Patrick's Day , I'll show you how my kids dress the part (actually this is what they wore to school on Friday).

The Spencinator, really the shirt says it all.

Sweetie Pie decked out in green.  She wanted her hair in pigtails, because she thought all girl leprechauns wear their hair in pigtails, right?

The Babes didn't have a green outfit, but she still looks festive wearing her rainbow pants:

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Inspiration For The Weekend - 10

St. Patrick's Day is tomorrow, March 17th.
There are lots of fun ways to celebrate.  Yesterday I showed you some fun home decor ideas, today I'm going to post about some fun kid's activities and treats.  Maybe you'll get inspired to use one of these ideas to celebrate.  I know we'll be doing a treasure hunt and eating some green treats.

Here are some simple, quick and easy treats to make.

Pot O' Gold in a bag


Another Pot of Gold


Lucky to have You - easy treat to make

Lucky Breakfast - start the day off right, I mean green

And some fun activities

Leprechaun treasure hunt -follow the colors of the rainbow

 

Lucky Bingo

I am lucky craft

I found these ideas on Pinterest.  If you are like me, you've pinned lots of cute ideas to make.  But how many of those ideas have you actually made?  Well, Sherry from Young House Love and Katie from Bower Power have come up with a Pinterest Challenge to help you stop pinning and start doing.  Click on over to their blogs and check out the winter edition of this Pinterest Challenge to see what they and other folks have done.  They've also teamed up with Cassie from Hi Sugarplum and Erin from The Great Indoors who are also in on the challenge.  So many great ideas, so start pinning and then start doing!

St. Patrick's Day Decor

The Meal Planning post I wrote about last week was featured over at Junk in their Trunk as one of their favorites for last week's Link It Up Party HERE.

And my Lego Organizing post was featured at The Uncluttered Lifestyle's blog HERE


 Thanks to all who stopped by to check them out!




And now onto some St. Patrick's Day decorating ideas:

St. Patty's Day is this Saturday so I thought I'd share a few fun ways to decorate for it.

Sick Again

The Babes is sick again.  Poor thing.  She is such a Daddy's girl, so when she snuggles with Mommy, you know she has to be sick.  I've been doing laundry and more laundry and more laundry - even in the middle of the night because I just can't stand the smell of puke.

Here she is all covered up sitting in the kitchen while I do more laundry and await her next puke-fest.

Oh, and here's a tip:

Seek Happiness

Ever since I saw THIS post over at House of Hepworths, I have wanted the "Seek Happiness" print by Rodney White.   Well I finally found one and although it was a bit smaller than I wanted I decided to buy it anyway.

 I got it at TJ Maxx for only $16.99

 So where did I decide to hang it?

Breakfast Was Driving Me Crazy!

That is until I changed up my morning routine.

I used to have the older kids get all ready for school (dressed, teeth brushed, hair combed) before they were allowed to have breakfast.  Sweetie Pie didn't have a problem at all.  I just woke her up and she got herself ready.  The Spencinator on the other hand was difficult to wake up, much less get dressed and brush his teeth.  I've mentioned before that he has a form of autism called Asperger's syndrome and if he doesn't want to do something, he can put up a real fight.  Since he pretty much hates school, he doesn't want to get ready for it either.  Needless to say mornings for him us are hard.  But since he always wanted breakfast, I made that his 'reward' for getting ready.   Even so, it was still a daily struggle for the Spencinator.  I'd wake him up earlier but he'd still be rushing out the door.  I'd let him sleep in, I had him wake up to an alarm, I would give him check ins every five minutes -- nothing worked and it made our mornings get off to a terrible start.  And then there was breakfast itself.  Sweetie Pie and the Spencintor would constantly bicker through breakfast and I felt like a referee.  I couldn't wait to send them off to school.

None of this affected the Babes who usually did not wake up until after the kids left for school and she got my undivided attention during breakfast.  See how happy she is about that.

 So, what did I do to save my sanity?????

Inspiration For The Weekend - 9

This weekend's inspiration is from Amy at Positively Splendid

She created these beautiful tiered terracotta planters for her home.  Click HERE to check out her blog to find out how she did it.  It's so easy and a great addition to your front porch just in time for Spring.

Anyone else getting antsy for Spring to come?



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Organizing My Food Storage - part 2

I linked THIS post about organizing my food storage to a couple of linky parties and it ended up being one of the most viewed posts over at:

organizeyourstuffnow

and at:

Junkintheirtrunk

Thanks to all who stopped by to check it out.

So here is what my food storage area looked like yesterday before I decided to cozy it up a bit:

Meal Planning

When I made my kitchen command center, I had the intention of using part of it for keeping track of and planning my dinners.   At first I just printed out my meals and slipped that paper into the command center.  

But I didn't know where at on the list I was, so I needed a better solution.  And remember it had to be something flexible since we usually have leftovers for the next night so Monday's aren't always Pasta Night. 

So here's what I came up with:

Reading In Bed Can Be Dangerous

The other night, shortly after we sent the kids up to bed, Sweetie Pie comes out of her room saying she needs a band aid. She sounded very upset so I ran upstairs to see what was the matter. She said she fell down and hurt her finger. After close examination, she had torn the skin off in three different places - ouch!   I put some band aids on it and then asked her what happened. She said she was trying to put a book away. Who knew reading in bed could be dangerous? Anyway, it wasn't until the next morning that I noticed a large bruise on her cheek.

She said that happened when she fell trying to put her book away. She didn't mention it because it didn't hurt as much as her finger. What a tough girl. So now I am thinking what can I do to prevent any more reading injuries. We can't ban reading in bed.  Maybe her room just needs a little rearranging. You know how I like to move furniture around......

What A Bargain!

I've been slowing, very slowing putting some finishing touches on our master bedroom. I am trying to find everything I want, at a good price of course. I got some new lampshades which kind of sparked this whole endeavor.

They have this geometric sunburst type pattern to them, so I thought it would be neat to find some type of mirror, maybe a circle or sunburst (they are real popular now) style mirror to hang above the lamps. 
Here's a little mock up of what I am thinking of doing....

Inspiration For The Weekend - 8

This week's addition of "Inspiration For The Weekend" is a simple and easy way to add color to a room.

If you are like me, you  have the standard white/off white lamp shades on your lamps.
Here is an easy way to bring some color to those lamps without having to buy new lampshades.
Just add yarn!

Check out what Mandi at Vintage Revivals did HERE

Desiree at The 36th Avenue made this cute lampshade for her little girl's room HERE

And Sara over at Forever and a Recipe made this Ombre lampshade.


What a great way to coordinate with the rest of your decor and tie a whole room together.

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Autism in the Classroom - on a good day

Found this video and just wanted to share.
For those of us with kids on the spectrum, you know there are good days and bad days.  This is a video of a high functioning child with autism or Asperger's syndrome in school.  This is what they go through - and that's on a good day with a plan that works and lots of support from teachers and aides and parents.  There are lots of people involved in these kids lives.  Whenever we go to a school meeting for our son, there is the principle, the special education coordinator, the special education teacher, the regular education teacher, the school psychologist, the autism support person, and our behavior support consultant, sometimes our TSS and MT and caseworker.  The room can get crowded.  But it is nice to know we are not dealing with this alone.  There are so many people working behind the scenes to help these kids.  We want these kids to succeed in school, in life.  It isn't easy but we do it because we love them.