Pinning it Down, Valentines!

Every Tuesday, sharing a Pinterest project that happened in our homes this week!

Today at Amongst Lovely Things

For St. Valentine's Day, we had our homeschool celebration on Friday, so I had some extra days to help the kids put together their ideas (and treats on clearance!).  I believe all these ideas ended up coming from the Disney Family Fun website.

Mary Clare chose the iPod Valentine.  It's a box of conversation hearts wrapped in construction paper with the printables glued on.  We downloaded one on the website for the bottom, and I made the "playlist" at the top.  She put the whole thing together, using tape to put the yarn on the iPod and the Hershey's Kisses for "ear buds!"  She put each one in a plastic bag.

 Ellie is quite the indecisive one.  Finally at the last minute, she agreed to this owl Valentine made with scrapbook paper.  It says "I'll owl-ways be your friend!"  She too put the entire thing together.  I made a little template for her out of posterboard and she had so much fun making each card out of unique paper.  I'm so glad the girls can pretty much make these on their own now!

And Steven Joseph initially wanted to make a paper airplane card on that website, but ended up changing his mind and wanting a rocket ship.  We just wrapped a mini Kit Kat in the white paper, and taped the red posterboard to make it a rocket.

We all had a lot of fun putting these together last week, and the kids were so excited to share them with their friends.  Also for the St. Valentine's Party I made Party Popcorn, which I'd also pinned on my Pinterest board.  It was quite a hit!  I'll always think of "Neen," who first introduced me to this yummy treat!


And here are a few photos of the party.  It was a bit of a gloomy day, but the kids fit in a bit of playing between the little rainfalls.  A very happy St. Valentine's Party they all had.  Hope you all did too, thanks for visiting!

Monday Motivation

Monday Motivation Review

10 Goals for Feb 13-19

Prayer and Community

1. Attend a family formation night on Monday at the SOLT center.

2. Pray a decade of the Rosary with the children. No, but led a chaplet with the homeschool group at our Valentines party.

3. Visit the local nursing home with the homeschool group on Valentine's Day.

Health

4. Attend 2 Zumba classes. 

5. Take a nature walk with the children.

6. Plan weekly meals 

Mon-Chicken wraps. Tues-Pork loin, mashed potatoes, salad, Wed-Spaghetti and salad, Thur-baked chicken with broccoli, Fri-Pasta bake, Sat-Breakfast for dinner, Sun-grill? 

We did end up eating out several times over the weekend, I'm calling it my Mardi Gras weekend!

 

Home Management and Homeschool

7. Sort and prepare clothes for donate/resale (have these in 2 large baskets but need to iron and find out resale store's policies)

8. Start at one more sewing project on my list (camera case, stockings, pillowcases, girl skirts)

9. Kids in jammies by 8:30 and in bed by 9:00 on school nights, preferably earlier!  (A busy week ahead with the Family Night, Valentine's Day at nursing home, CC on Thurs, and Valentine's Party on Friday afternoon which I'm coordinating!)

10.  Read books with the boys once a day, start a new chapter book with the girls.

 

As you can see, I've done better with Prayer and Health, but not so great with the home management goals this week!

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Monday Motivation

10 Goals for Feb 20-26

 

 Prayer and Community

1. Prepare for the Lenten season and decide on personal commitments.  Also considering a family commitment/sacrifice to help the children to be successful.  The ideas they came up with at dinner tonight were rather lofty, so I think we might try a similar plan to last year's:

   Mon-No screen time
   Tues-No treats- this includes fruit snacks, candy, cookies, etc.
   Weds-Go to Daily Mass as a family
   Thurs-Learn about a new Saint
   Fri-Pray the Stations of the Cross, or at least a few
   Sat-Pray a Rosary
   Sun-Nothing- Sunday is always a day of celebration!

2. Read the daily mass readings 3x this week.  I was in the narthex during nearly the entire Sunday mass, so I should at least read those!

3. Plan a mom's night for our homeschool group.

Health 

4. Attend 2 Zumba classes.

5. Go to bed by 11pm and set my alarm for 6:45am!!!  

6. Plan weekly meals and serve them!  Also do some "pinning" of meatless dishes for Lent.

Mon-Pasta bake, Tues-Leftovers (grilled chicken), Ash Weds-potato soup, Thurs-Baked chicken, Fri-(Stations and potluck at church?) Caprese pasta or Macaroni & cheese, Sat-chicken sandwiches, Sun-grill

Home Management and Homeschool (let's try this again!)

7.  Sort and prepare kid clothes for resale/donate

8.  Start one more sewing project on my list (camera case, stockings, pillow covers, skirts, quilts for kids' beds)

9.  Start getting kids ready for bed at 8:30, lights out at 9pm!

10. Read books with the boys once a day, finish Robert E Lee book with MC, and find a new family chapter book to start.

Squirrel video

At almost 17mos, Thomas' vocabulary now includes squirrel (squuuurrrr), along with mama/mommy, dada, nono, uh-uh, Ellie, Joejoe, baby, dog, and apple, and wawa.  Here's a sweet video from when he was fascinated by the squirrel in the backyard the other day.

{pretty, funny, happy, real}

~Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life~

Every Thursday at Like Mother, Like Daughter

{pretty}

I've been on quite a roll with the sewing and crafting! Our plain white Walmart bed skirt was just not offering enough coverage. And we don't even have a bed frame so it's not like the bed is really high! So I decided to cut up a blue floral twin bed skirt and sew it to the bottom and corners of the white one. It was quite a quick hack job and isn't even ironed, but I think it works out pretty well. And the free price tag is always a bonus!

{funny}

We set up our new house without any dangerous things in bottom cabinets.  But now he likes to stand on tiptoe and try to grab things out of drawers.  You can never win with a toddler!

{happy}

Thomas was adorable today watching a squirrel outside.  We got a video I'll post on here soon.  He was talking and pointing and just too cute.  I love the way he said squirrel, it was more like "schwblalia!"

{real}

Miss Baby Alive decided to try to jump through a window in the sunroom.  Or maybe she was thrown.  Either way, it's our second broken window here.  Tee Ball can't start soon enough!

Happy Saint Valentine's Day!

I set up a fancy table the night before Valentine's Day with goblets for OJ, scrapbook paper placemats and namecards, and the fun Valentine's letter download from Hallie for Steven.

The orchid was from friends who came to our house blessing!  (Steven brought me a pretty pink flowered plant for the yard today :)

This was another Pinterest idea, to form cinnamon rolls into hearts.  I just used the canned ones, and unrolled them to make the heart shapes!

They turned out so cute!

We woke the kids up for a 6:30am breakfast with Daddy!  Everyone was tired, but not too tired for cinnamon rolls, strawberries, and OJ!

We let Thomas sleep through the breakfast party, but he was still thrilled for his strawberries later in the morning!

We went to the local nursing home down the street with our homeschool group to do some Valentine crafting with the residents.

The kids enjoyed it although not many of the elderly residents came in for craft time!

We had a pretty big group and did get some encouragement from some of the ladies on just how much they love having the children run around their home and how much it means to them that we visit.

We came home for lunch, and somehow I was able to snap a Valentine photo of our happy crew!

We had a restful afternoon, with one child feeling a bit under the weather.  Steven brought home Chinese take-out and I went to Zumba!  A fun Valentine's Day!  We're still looking forward to our homeschool group's big party on Friday where the festivities will continue.

Hope your Valentine's Day was filled with lots of love and laughter!

Pinning it Down Tuesday

 Pinning it Down Tuesdays, this week at Everyday Snapshots!

Last week I finally made a rainbow bunting/flag banner which I'd been planning to do for a long while!  I've had several on my Pinterest Boards, like this one, and I've also enjoyed the Giggleberry Creations blog; she sells them here on Etsy.

I have had all those kid clothes ready to donate/resale, and grabbed a few items from those baskets to use for the banner!

I made a triangle template and started cutting!  Each flag is two triangles of fabric sewed together.  I sewed both sides, actually some fabric I just folded and sewed one side (see below).  I waited to sew the top closed until it was sewed onto the ribbon.

You can see my quick job here, there's a stray thread sticking out!  Like most of my sewing projects, I just kind of figure things out as I go and don't ever make things even or perfect!  This was an adorable Gap t-shirt that SJ used to wear but got a hole in it.  He pointed up to this on the wall the other night saying, "I liked that shirt!!!"

I sewed each of the flags to some pink ribbon we already had, leaving about 3 inches between each flag.  These are 3 clothing items of MC's...a clearance Walmart shirt, a hand-me-down orange shirt with sparkles, and some adorable Gymboree floral biker shorts (found resale) that needed to be retired.  Grand total on this sewing project= $0!

Red, green, and wide stripes were all SJ's t-shirts; the pinstripe were some old sheets, the pink you can't see was from PJ shorts of Ellie's, and the floral is my current bedskirt alteration fabric Laura Ashley pattern.  Gotta know your fabric history, of course :)

And here's our colorful living room!  I'm considering painting some of the frames different colors.  What do you think?

House Blessing and Home Tour!

On Saturday night, the feast of Our Lady of Lourdes, our pastor came over to bless our home!  We had two families and their five children come to share the evening with us.  We started with the blessing.  Father blessed the holy water and then gave the most beautiful prayers as we walked through the house, praying for safety and comfort, God's angels to be with us, for joy and peace in our home.  It was a wonderful gift.  Steven grilled fajitas and we had a great time visiting with our priest and our new friends!  The kids all had buddies their same ages, so we didn't see much of them either.  So grateful for the gift of this special evening!

Starting the prayers

Blessing the front door

Blessing the girls' room

and the boys' room 

(the kids LOVED getting doused with holy water!)

and the final prayers in the kitchen.

Now I'm counting on some special graces, especially in the kitchen and the schoolroom!!!
Thanks to Fr. B and to the D and R families for joining us for this special celebration!

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 And since our entire home was cleaned up for the evening, here is a little home tour for all our friends and family who have yet to come and see it!

Entryway

To the right from the front door--our piano room/library/sewing room with prayer altar.  Just on the other side is the schoolroom, but it's still a work in progress!

I think I'd like to find a rug and some nice pillows/bean bags for reading.  Any other ideas?  The center of the room is so vacant! 

This is the hall to the three bedrooms, on the left side of the house.

Our master bedroom.  You can kind of see the bedskirt I made last week.  I cut up a twin bedskirt (the blue and white floral) and sewed it under the white one we already had that wasn't covering sufficiently!  Our duvet doesn't look like it's covering sufficiently either, but our white pillowcases were looking so dingy that I had to cover them with the comforter; our washer doesn't seem to clean whites very well!  You can also see the pink ironing board sticking out at the bottom of the photo...it's usually on the right wall, but I moved it for the photo :)

Our master bath.  The wall colors in all these photos were looking really bright, so I tried to mellow them out.  This bathroom color still looks darker to me than it really is.

Hall bath

Boys' room.  On the sewing or shopping agenda is a comforter for the bottom bunk that doesn't have ruffles :)  His Playmobil toys are all on the top bunk.  Maybe one day we'll even paint this room a color other than the rust/orange/pink-y color!

Here's the girls' room.  We have our eyes out for some new comforters for them, too.  They've had these since MC was a toddler and we got them from a garage sale across the street from my parents' house.  I put up a bunch of the "sister" photos on their walls.

The living room

The sunroom/playroom at the back of the house, these photos were from last month.  It's rarely clean during the daylight hours and was the last thing picked up the night of the house blessing!

Here's the kitchen.  I like the open shelves for all our white dishes, and the ones facing them are also open where we keep all our glassware.

So there's our house, minus the yard and schoolroom.  I'm working on the calendar and such for the schoolroom and we're also searching for some little school desks for the girls.  Hope we'll have some more visitors here soon!