Daybook

FOR TODAY


Outside my window...it is very cold, windy, and snowy.

I am thinking...brrr, I do not want to go outside today.

I am thankful for...so many things but most especially my family.

From the kitchen...not much happening in there right now.  I need to get some ground beef out of the freezer for Hamburger roll-ups tonight.

I am wearing...jeans, an old softball T-shirt, and a sweater.

I am creating...not much at this time.  I need to make some time for that.

I am going...nowhere today, thank goodness.  It is not nice outside.

I am reading...a bit of this and that this week.

I am hoping...the weather co-operates and my cousins/sisters can come visit this weekend.

I am hearing...the wind howling outside.

Around the house...the kitchen is clean, now I need to work on the living room.  Hubby helped clean our bedroom on the weekend but I still need to go through my clothes in the closet and do some decluttering.

One of my favorite things...watching LK work on taking his first teetering steps.

A few plans for the rest of the week: get the house ready for company this weekend, play with LK, and work with girls on their confirmation book.

Here is picture for thought I am sharing...

Emptying the cupboards is so much fun and mom's pots make a great drum set.

http://thesimplewomansdaybook.blogspot.com/

Menu Plan Monday

Well it is a full back at school this week and we are getting back into our regular routines.  That means it is time to put a menu together.  I always do so much better getting supper on the table when I have a menu plan.

Monday: Today the girls have skating after school so a slow cooker meal is in order.  Roast Beef in the slowcooker, potatoes with gravy, peas.

Tuesday:  I am all out of homemade bread so I will make bread and use the leftover roast beef to make BBQ beef sandwiches.  We will have carrot sticks on the side.

Wednesday:  Hamburger roll-ups (recipe to come).  I will have the girls help me make this.  Broccoli will be our vegetable.

Thursday:  Leftovers.

Friday:  Another skating day so we will have Sweet and Sour Ribs in the slowcooker with rice and corn.

Saturday:  I think we will be having some company and I plan to make pizza.

Sunday:  Leftovers or soup & sandwiches.

That's it for this week.  Head over to orgjunkie.com for more fabulous menus.

Happy New Year!

Yes, I realize that New Years Day was a few days ago but today was the girls first day back at school after the holidays so it feels like now is the start of the new year.  I hope everyone had a good holiday.  Ours went quite well.  We ate too much food, got lot's presents, and played a lot of games.  It was great to have a lot of our family come and visit.  While nobody was able to stay very long, it was kind of nice to see everyone without having to travel.  We did travel for the New Year's weekend to my sister-in-laws place (about a 3 1/2 hour drive).  The roads were good and we made use of our vans DVD player so the trip was no hardship.  The girls really enjoyed playing with all their cousins there.  We did go skating a few times over the holiday as well which is always fun and it was good to get out and get some exercise to offset all the eating we were doing.

  Star and Sky at the skating rink.

            LK was happy to hang out and watch us skate.

So with the new year comes of course New Year's resolutions.  I don't always make New Years resolutions (and never actually keep them) but I do like to have some goals that I am working on and the new year does seem like a good place to start.  I did find it hard to pick what I wanted to work on for this year as there is so much I would like to go.  I decided to work on establishing 3 daily habits that always seem to make the rest of my day go smoother but they always seem to go undone when things get busy.

The three daily habits that I want to establish are:

1. A prayer/meditation time.
2. Exercise.
3. Doing the dishes each night so as to wake up to a clean kitchen.

At this point I am not worried about how long or productive #'s 1 & 2. I just want to establish the habit of doing these things daily.  I plan to keep track on a calendar the days I reach this goal. 

In addition I will be posting some monthly goals.  This month my goal is to clean and declutter the master bedroom.  This room is somewhat of a dumping ground and I really need to go through, get rid of stuff I no longer need/wear and give it a good cleaning.  It has gotten so bad that sometimes when I ask the girls to clean their room they say, "But your room isn't clean, so why do we have to clean ours."  Eeeek, time to get that cleaned up and lead by example.

Also this month I want to work on LK's first year scrapbook.  I can't believe that his 1st birthday is rapidly approaching.  I would like to get this book mostly complete this month.

There you have it.  My new year's resolution and some monthly goals for January.  I will check in at the end of the month and let you know how it is going.

Do you make New Year's resolutions?  What are you working on this year?

Water Bottle Slings, Christmas Trees, and Lasagna

Well a couple days ago I shared what the girls have been making for Christmas gifts.  I haven't done a whole lot of crafting but the other day I made these water bottle carriers.  Now I am not much of a sewer but this tutorial at Make It and Love It was very clear and made it very easy to do (I did have a few fights with my sewing machine as it continues to dislike me, but I made it through).  So the girls are getting new water bottles with nice slings to go with them for Christmas.  My husband works at a furniture store and came home with a big box of upholstery samples one day.  That is the material I used to make these which is why they aren't all done with the same material.

In other news, since we had put our tree up on a chest, I was hopeful that LK wouldn't be able to get into it.  However, at ten months old he has decided that climbing is a fun thing to do so he can now get into more stuff then ever before.  Here he climbed up onto the table that our Nativity set is on and pulled a star ornament off the tree.  He is really proud of himself.

And now I bet you were wondering about the lasagna in the title.  I just wanted to share this tidbit as I thought it was quite amusing.  As hubby was picking out some songs to sing in church this weekend.  Sky suggested that he sing the "lasagna" song.  It took as a while to figure out that she meant "Hosanna".

Well that's all for now.

Teacher Gifts

If your like me the last day of school is coming up and your frantically trying to think of a gift for your children's teachers.  I'm never sure what to get them and I am working from a limited budget, but I did want to give them a little something to show our appreciation for all they do.  After some debate I decided chocolate was the way to go.  They can serve it up at a holiday gathering, regift it as a hostess gift or to the mailman, or freeze it for a sweet treat when the holidays are just a memory. 

Then I came across this M&M nativity legend and decided that M&M's it would be.  I purchased a couple bags of M&M's and then printed out the M&M nativity legend and glued it onto card stock.  The girls made their teachers a card and then I tied it all together with some ribbon.  Hopefully they will enjoy it.

Homemade Fun

This Christmas the girls (Star especially) have been into making gifts for others.  Star has gotten into sewing and is enjoying it and Sky has even been doing a little bit.  We have the book Homemade Fun by Rae Grant and the girls have been getting ideas from there.  It has a good section on hand sewing.  (We have her other books Cooking Fun and Crafting Fun too and you can find many of her projects from here books at her website here.)   We really enjoy her books.  One thing though is they have no pictures of completed projects.  This can be a good thing in that you are not comparing your craft to the picture perfect one in the book.  However, when we first got these books Sky was not into them as she couldn't read much and without pictures she couldn't pick out what she liked.  Star has always really liked them and I really like the vintage graphics in the books.  So I would recommend these books for ages 7- 12 or so.

Sky made this purse for her cousin.  She came up with idea, did all the stitching herself, and made a crocheted chain for the handle.

Star made this stuffed bunny for LK.  She started this project when I wasn't even home.  She traced the pattern onto the fabric and cut it out all by herself.  Then I looked on YouTube to find a video on how to do a blanket stitch and she took it from there.

Now I realize that these are not works of art but they turned out pretty good for the girls having done most of the work themselves.  In the past they would have wanted to make these things but I would have ended up doing all the work.  This way they got to feel the joy of making something themselves and learned some handy skills along the way.  If you notice both projects involved sewing on a button and that is a something everyone should know how to do.  You never know when you will lose a button.

One other thing that Star made was this "I Spy Jar" for another of her cousins.  It is simply a jar filled with rice and small "treasures" that you have to find in the rice by moving or shaking the jar.  She just went on hunt for small items around the house put them in a jar and filled it almost to the top with rice (you want to leave some room so the rice can move around).  You can find more pictures and instructions here. 

So those are a few things that the girls have been working on this December.  It has been a joy to watch them create things to give to others.

O Christmas Tree

Star and Sky decorating the Christmas tree.

Today we put up our Christmas tree.  The girls have been asking for weeks to put it up.  It is one of our favorite Christmas things to do.  Daddy sets up the tree and puts on the lights.  Then we let the girls do all the decorating.  They love looking through the ornaments and finding their favorites.  Also we have a lot of homemade ornaments that they have made through the years and they always seem to remember who made what.  (Amazing considering they can never remember to pick up their socks even after being reminded a thousand times.)  Our tree is definitely not fancy but fun.

We have a small artificial tree that we put up.  I love the smell of a real Christmas tree but they can be a little pricey here on the prairies.  This small tree we inherited from my Aunt and it is really old but it still works.  It doesn't take up too much room which is nice as our living room is full!!  Also we can put it up a little higher so hopefully LK doesn't knock it over.  We may get a real tree again in a future year but this is working for us this year.

Last year I bought this Little People Nativity Set as our other one was quite destroyed.  If you have little ones I highly recommend this or some other nativity set that they can play with, without doing much damage to it.  Kids love to play with the figures and act out the Christmas story.

Star setting up the Nativity Set under the tree.

LK playing with the Nativity Set.

That really is the extent of the decorating we do.  We hang our stockings up and have a few other odds and ends that we put out; but the real highlight is the Christmas tree and Nativity set. 

Now that the decorating is done I just have to focus on keeping the place neat and clean which is always a challenge for me.