Family Rules

I have seen several of these family rules wall hangings on blogs I follow. I love them and have wanted to make one for a while now. However I kept forgetting to buy a canvas. Last night I found some Halloween signs from the Dollar Tree out in my garage and was suddenly hit with inspiration! I can't find any of the original posts at the moment but as soon as I do (I have about 200 ideas bookmarked) I will give credit where credit is due.

Here are our family rules!

 

They are:

Obey Dad and Mom

Tell the truth

Bless your food

Ask first

Say I love you

Hug often

Be Kind Always

HUSBAND Hug your wife

WIFE be on his side

Share everything...except bad ideas

Clean

Support your Brothers

Protect your sisters

Try your hardest

sing silly

Forgive

Listen

Love each other

Say please

Dance crazy

Use kind words

Thank God for this family

No whining

Say your prayers

Valentines crafts for kids

Decorating for Valentines day is so much fun for kids. After all who can't make a heart? There are so many easy crafts for kids for V-day. We made "stained glass" hearts last night. They were so easy and the only supplies we needed were tissue paper, construction paper, glue and scissors. I got the idea from Seven Little Monkeys, her post here, has instructions. Here are our hearts.

 

The other day we made crayon shaving hearts, found here at Skip To My Lou, also complete with instructions. Here are ours:

Next I plan on making some kind of garland for the stairs, and hopefully homemade Valentines cards for the kids to take to school. 

I Lost My Crafting Mojo

Its gone. I don't know where it went but I have lost it. I either don't follow through at all with my new crafting ideas, start and never finish them, or they don't turn out how I want them to.

I covered this old barn star with scrapbook paper. I forgot to take a before picture, but it was a typical barn star painted with an Americana theme. I have seen these all over the the craft blogs I follow. I classify this as a fail because I paid no attention to how I glued the papers down and I unintentionally ended up with a pattern, sort of. It just looks funny to me.

Then my big fail came from the white ceramic plate I wanted to monogram a large black B onto. Simple enough right? Wrong.

Here is the plate:

First I cut some contact paper in my cricut. (Yes I used my sons Cars contact paper, shhhh I was out of clear.)

Then I stuck on my stencil and painted it.

And I did not take a picture of my huge FAIL. When I peeled off the stencil the paint had bled underneath the paper and some of it peeled off when I removed the stencil.

So I decided to paint the piece of contact paper that came from my stencil.

And I stuck it on my plate. It works but has a lot of flaws. Thankfully I put it somewhere were people can't get a real good up close look at it lol.

I also moved some furniture around which left a large empty wall in my living room. For now I came up with the following arrangement (it looks a little weird because I took the picture at an angle and I still got a glare). I plan on replacing the middle 2 pictures with pics of all my kids (hello I have 5 now, slacker lol), and hanging smaller 4x6 or 5x7 black and whites of each kid in a row underneath. Here it is for now;

25 Random Things I Would Like To Do

1. Quit drinking soda

2. love myself

3. stop eating when I am sad

4. pray more

5. forgive

6. be a good wife

7. Raise my children right

8. become organized

9. lose weight

10. Be an advocate for fathers rights

11. read more

12. Have enough money, to not worry about having enough money

13. sponser a Compassion child from Uganda

14. Get rid of a bunch of our stuff

15. Go to Ireland

16. Buy my husband tickets to Wrestle Mania

17. manage my time better

18. be more patient

19. Go camping with my family

20. Sleep under the stars with my husband

21. Teach my children how to be less materialistic

22. Get a tattoo

23. buy a home

24. adopt my step children

25. Trust God more

Time for an Update!

I just wanted to post a little update to let everyone in blog world know I haven't forgotten about my blog! We have been really busy with the holidays, tot school (even though I haven't posted any updates on it either), and school work. We also had a very sad loss in our family. So things have been hectic around here. I do have several Christmas themed crafts planned for the weekend with the children and hope to post them next Monday or Tuesday. Next week our little man turns 1 and the week after that my old man turns 30! So between birthdays and Christmas I probably won't post much until January.

Tot School Week 3

Austin is 30 months old

We have been very busy lately! The week before last I did not post about Tot School because that was the week of fall break. With all 5 kids home, a birthday, and new art supplies, there just wasn't time for Tot School. We did a lot of open ended art and played lots of board games though!

This past week we followed a very relaxed schedule. We had out of town guests and a birthday party for Erik, he turned 10, and Alyssa who will be 6 in a few weeks. So Mama spent most of the week cleaning and preparing for guests.

Here are a few Tot School pictures from the week. I didn't get my camera out everyday because I ran around like a chicken with my head cut off most of the week.

We did a few activities with the letter F and the number 7 this week. I made some potato stamps for him. I had to make them twice because my brain was in over drive and I forgot to make them backwards so they would stamp correctly lol.

 We also worked on beading, transferring items with tongs, sorting, pouring dry objects, a few other art projects and he worked independently on his file folder games. I need to make him a few more challenging ones because he is so good at the ones he has and flies through them.