Mini-chairs

Picked these up at the thrift store, along with a 99-cent can of spray paint. This is what I ended up with:


Well no, not all of that, but this is what I have to work with. I want some kind of arrangement that looks cute enough to hang on the wall.

Combo #1, needed more color?

Combo #2, still not quite the razzle-dazzle I am looking for.

Combo #3???

Hmmm, any suggestions?? In my brain I have beautiful blue walls, like the ones you see in all the new cottage-style, coastal style magazines. And an unlimited budget with which to adorn my mini-chairs in glorious, exotic seashells and something covered in jute.

In reality, I am packing my house to move back across the country, and my husband is diligently repainting the fingerprints on the walls with the normal shade of white found in rentals. Is there such a thing as rental-beautiful magazine? We do live on a budget, so that we don't have to live crisis-to-crisis like most. And besides, isn't having everything covered in cardboard just as lovely as jute?? Good thing my kids are cute, and my husband is so handsome they sort of make up for my lack of home decor!!

On a side note, please forgive my photography. I have this super-cute, and super-ornery two year old that just figured out she is tall enough to reach onto the counter. On top of said counter she found my camera. And the rest is history, I found it, turned on, lens crooked, bearing that fatal message...LENS ERROR...ugh. So my phone is my camera for now, and yes for those of you who remember, it was about this time last year that I had camera trouble also.

Honorable Mention

Homeschoolshare.com put on a great contest this year, go check out all the new content up on their site. Click here to see my submission, a unit lesson about teeth. I planned it a while ago knowing Mikey would be losing teeth sometime this year and thought it would be fun to do with the kids. I didn't win the big grand prize, but received an honorable mention and the prize is 15 children's books! Next year I will try even harder, but the competition is pretty amazing!!

A boy and his teeth

(Papa Stordahl, this was not a prompted response, he came up with it all on his own!!)

I know this is a rite of passage that every kid goes through, but there is something about this kid and his teeth that makes me kind of nostalgic. When I found out I was pregnant with Mikey, I was terrified, there is no other way to describe how I felt. It wasn't elation, it wasn't excitement, it was sheer terror. Yes, I know there are more virtuous reactions to finding out such great news, and if I knew then what I know now there wouldn't have been a problem. But in my feeble-minded attempts to plan my life out, kids were an option several years down the road, not when I was 23 and still trying to figure out married life and college and work and finances and all that jazz!

So Mikey came and we had the life-altering, world-upside-down-turning, but greatest- experience-ever of having your first-born child. Then all of a sudden, right before my very eyes, he started growing up, and changing, and learning and one morning he woke up with a tooth! I cried my little heart out. This precious baby of mine, who I had been so terrified of, who had come and rocked me to the core, wasn't always going to be a baby. It was an awful realization, one that I am reminded of frequently as they go through these rites of passage from one stage to the next.

Now this precious baby, who is not really a baby at six years old, not even a toddler, not even a pre-schooler, but a full-fledged kid, (and almost pre-teen to hear him tell it, where did he even hear that?) is losing that very same first tooth. He is excited, he has big plans for his tooth-fairy money, his mind wrestles with the all important question of whether or not the tooth-fairy is real, big stuff for a full-fledged kid. And I am still crying about losing my baby, and trying to relish every moment and treasure every memory.

Two-tutes: Braided headband with ties

I have wanted to make one of these headbands from Heather Bailey's free stuff for awhile. Then I saw this cute this 5-minute headband from Lu Bird Baby and knew they would make a great combo!

What you need:
--scrap fabric, this is a very forgiving kind of thing, if your fabric is long then you need less elastic, if your fabric is short, you will need more elastic
--elastic
--thread
--sewing machine


What you do:
--Read both tutorials first.

--Complete step 1 on Lu Bird Baby's tutorial, which is cutting strips, instead of attaching elastic, just braid your strips together and then skip the rest. Do not do anything with the elastic right now.

--Skip steps 1-3 of Heather Bailey's headband pattern.

--Complete step 4 of HB's pattern.

--In step 5, instead of inserting anything into the band, you are going to insert the braided fabric into the ties. Also insert your elastic in the same way, at the same time. You can see in the photo below how the braided portion and the elastic go down into the tie. Fold the elastic over the top of the tie and sew it all into place.


Complete steps 6-8 of HB's tutorial, which is fitting the elastic and tying it up, and you have a super cute, braided headband with ties!

Project Rating:
--Supplies--Needed to buy elastic, got 2 yards of 1/2 elastic at Joann for less than $1
--Execution--Easy, peasy, rice and cheesy
--Fun factor--It was fun because I had an opportunity to craft something!
--Mess factor--Just scraps of fabric to throw away (unusable of course!)
--Side notes/learned by experience--my fabric was a little stretchy and I didn't take that into
account when I measured the elastic. Now the elastic is too long.

Other fun headband tutorials:
Reversible Ribbon Headband from Fabric, Family, Fun
Ruffly Headband from Heart of Light (this one is going on my to-do list!!)
One with feathers from Melissa (also going on my list!!)
Wide reversible fabric ones from The Long Thread
Cute one from Between the lines
Who could resist a baby one from Vermillion Rules?

Family Friday!

Big week at the Stordahl house! HUGE! TREMENDOUS!! One of those weeks mother's pray for from the time their babies are born, maybe even before your babies are born if you are really virtuous!

We had Vacation Bible School at our church this week. The theme was Ephesians 6:11 Put on the whole armor of God that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." Each day there was a clear presentation of the gospel message, lots of fun activities and crafts to go with the theme, and it all tied together very well. The WHOLE group of kids was great, a very well-behaved bunch, not a single trouble-maker among them.

Anyway, on Thursday Haley had a rough day. She did not do a good job showing self-control and threw a fit, and wouldn't share the ball at game time. (Poor girl, I guess she was the trouble-maker! ;) ) When we got home Michael chatted with her, and gave her the appropriate punishment. Afterwards she was whispering something and through her tears she told him, she was whispering and asking Jesus to save her from her sins! My heart is rejoicing for her even at this minute, and if you know me, you know the tears they are a flowin'! Praise God for His mercy and grace even in the life of a child, and praise Him that He got my sweet Haley Pie at a young age! Praise Him that Michael got to participate in such a tender moment in her life, what a treasure that will be for both of them.





This is just cute, had to share. She really liked having the glasses on and left them on for a long time. Usually babies just yank them off and then proceed to snap them in half or break a temple off.


This is one of Jeremiah's latest predicaments. I don't know if you can see it in the pictures very well, but he got the cap of a flashlight stuck in the roof of his mouth. And in the second picture you see the tools we had to use to remove it. He looks rather chipper in these photos, but trust me, it was not so easy, and he was not so happy...

This is my friend Sherry. She took me out for a girls' afternoon. We had lunch at a sushi bar downtown, she had sushi, I had a burger! Then we went to Harwin Street which is jam packed with little stores and shops, which are in turn jam packed with cheap junk for sale, but most of it is really fun cheap junk! And after that she took me to the Hong Kong Market. I have never seen so much weird stuff all in one place! I loved Harwin Street and hope to go back before we make our departure from Houston, but I don't know if I can stomach the smell in the Hong Kong Market again...it was very....fishy...rotten fishy.

Hope your week was as wonderful as ours!

This is serious, we must get busy.

Last night I was able to listen in on a webcast (I think the audio from the webcast will be available on their site soon.) put on by the pro-life group Americans United for Life. AUL rallied some big names in the fight for pro-life, and they came together as a united front to give us information, facts, and statistics about the healthcare bill being proposed by the current administration.

This bill and it's various components have some serious implications for pro-lifers. Not just for abortion, but for terminally ill, mentally and physically handicapped, and elderly Americans. I never thought I would see the day when our country was ruled by tyrannical, activist, Hitler types. But it is here, and we must stop it.

Please get informed, and then ACT on the information. This is not the time for any of us to be complacent, there isn't any room or any time left for us to "wait and see." We must rally the troops and fight before it is too late.

• start a club
  
• make milkshakes
• use puppets to tell a bedtime story
• make a hideout or clubhouse
• make a human sundial (scroll down a ways)
• memorize a poem
• go to an Imax movie
• play tag
• feed some squirrels
• your mall probably has a play structure, brave the crowds and go to play on it, AND talk to a stranger, you might make a new friend.
  

• Find a store that sells products made in your state and learn about some local industry
• Go fishing
• Lots of theaters have free summer movies, check out your local theater
• Give your kids a dollar each and take them to some yard sales
  
• Invite the grandparents over for dinner or out for a picnic
  
• Do a "Secret Summer Santa" where your kids secretly make little surprises or do sweet things for a secretly chosen sibling/parent, then reveal after a week...might cut down on the summer arguing.
• Go to an empty parking lot and have bike races, public school parking lots are empty right now.
• Play a board game that you haven't drug out of the closet for a long time
• Play hide-and-seek
  
• Watch a movie or read a book and then write a review, this would be good to brush up on some language arts skills/parts of a story/critical thinking this summer
  

Family Friday

Oh Ella! She is into EVERYTHING...ALL the time!! I know it is an ages/stages kind of thing, and she is just curious, but between the toothpaste, the tupperware, the crayons and the dishtowel drawer there is just no reprieve!! After a rather loud CRASH-BANG-CLANG sound I ran downstairs to see who did what and there she was bringing me a pot, and there were several others waiting for me on the floor! But boy oh boy, she is cute while she does it!

Her bangs drive me crazy, getting ready to trim them, but when I did it for Haley the first time, she ended up looking like Jim Carrey in the movie Dumb and Dumber with short bangs from temple to temple. So I am a little apprehensive this time!

Last weekend Michael was off for the 4th of July and we celebrated first with some friends from church. I made these super easy firework cupcakes to take. Afterwards we headed to the Giles house for swimming. And the night before Michael and I went to a tea party...no, not that kind...Michael wouldn't be caught dead at a real tea party, but an anti-gov't-spend-our-way-into-oblivion-kind. It was fun if you are into this kind of thing, we made signs. Mine said "Ask me about the FairTax." Michael's had a picture of a tea bag and some kool-aid and said "Which one are your drinking?" There were loads of funny signs, good speakers, a comedian, booths, food and it was good to see a bunch of like minded people gathering together.

Ignore my ridiculously large sunglasses. They are all I've got right now, and I can't go buy a new pair until these are gone or broken, which probably means they will last forever!! But my sister-in-law was kind enough to give them to me when I didn't have a pair at the park. Otherwise the Houston sun will bore large holes into your face where your eyeballs used to be!

Hope your week was as wonderful as ours!

Fun stuff to do with kids

• play store
• play restaurant at breakfast, lunch or dinner complete with menus
• give everyone crazy hairstyles
• have a carpet picnic
• have breakfast for dinner
• dress up fancy for dinner at home
• take bubble baths
• go get drinks at Starbucks
• go order some fries to share and play in the playplace at Chick-fil-a, or McDonalds with those who are unfortunate enough not to have a Chick-fil-a
• take a nap in the grass, or under the trampoline, or if you live in the south, you better take a nap on the trampoline or you will get eaten alive by the ants. On second thought, this is for my northern friends only. If my southern friends tried to take a nap on the trampoline, they would fry like eggs.
  

Mod Podge not Modge Podge

Yes, these are two totally different things...but I didn't realize it until TODAY when I had a craft featured at Mod Podge Rocks. Mod Podge is the decoupage medium that I have always called Modge Podge...geez. Go check out her blog, not because I am on there, but because there are some very clever projects on there. My crafty-to-do-list gets longer each time I visit Amy's blog!

Don't forget...

Click here for your free Hershey's chocolate!

Family Friday, with real photos!