shorties funny farm

Friday, February 19, 2010

::hey, soul sisters::

Imagine waking up at least three days a week before dawn, getting up your warm little snugglers, and taking them two houses down to a person that loves them and treats them with respect. Someone that they love spending time with and have known their whole lives. Then I drive for half a hour of pure selfish bliss. I get to listen to an audio book that I would have never had the time to read otherwise. And I spend that time in a state of semi meditation, knowing there is nothing else I are supposed to be doing at the moment. I then arrive at my destination to see a line of cars that I am joyful to see because I love their drivers. I walk in the building and from the second I enter the door I am surrounded by people that know me, that know my family, that patted my pregnant belly and felt that baby kick. These are people that have cried on my shoulder and patted me when I cried. People who’s engagement rings I have cooed over, weddings I have attended, and baby showers I have helped throw. Every time I see these people I feel this surge of love for them and acceptance from them. Kindered spirits. How lucky I am to have you.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

::chore charts for one and all::

this is a picture of lily exactly four years ago, she was two

Here is a copy of Lily’s chore chart. It hangs on the fridge and she checks off her chores as she does then. If we have a busy night a grown up can “ok” her skipping a particular chore if they see fit to do so. I did not assign her any chores for Sundays. Lily gets 50 cents a chore for a total of $3.50 a week. Half into a savings jar and half into her spending little hands. We had to add the savings jar when we caught her trying to buy 50 suckers with her stash. Every birthday I add one chore. She gets to give her input into what chores she thinks should be on the list. "Coming Home From School" did not make the cut this time, better luck next time. I feel like it is one of the things that works well in our house, but I we can always make it better. I would love to hear what idea's you all have on this.

In contrast - One of the things that doesn’t work at our house is the housework. I catch up, then don’t do any for awhile, then get WAY behind, then I spend a whole grumpy day frantically cleaning, then repeat. I want my own personal chore chart. I need one. I wish I had one. So I made myself one. It isn't a literal sheet on the fridge but I did rough draft it in my notebook. I don’t give myself an allowance but I do hope to keep myself better organized and less frustrated. Happy me = happy family. Frustrated/overwhelmed me = grumpy family. I made myself a “house time budget”.

Every day I am not working I:

-Clean one major room (family room, dining/art room,kitchen,or playroom for 45 minutes)

-One minor room (bedroom or the bathroom for 30 mins)

-2 loads of laundry

-One load of dishes

-Put away one basket of laundry away (20 minutes total for the last three)

That equal 1 hour and 35 minutes a day instead on one day entirely lost. I can live with that.

I think...

How do you guys organize the house chores? (If anyone says their husband does it all I will personally sock them in the jaw.)

::schaefer doings::

max - went in for his two year old doctors appointment, he is 40% for weight and 70% for height

lily - she went too. She is 90% for weight and 96% for height.

emma - she had to go all the way from the exam room out to the car and get the diaper bag for a pants filling baby boy that should remain nameless. She has become so reliable and self sufficient. Plus cute.

brooke - I was brought to tears by how cute my three kids were at the doctor. They just love each other, and they laughed and played the whole time. Such sweetness, such joy. I felt proud to be their momma.

josh - got a bag of snickers and a cute note from his hot wife in his truck

Friday, February 12, 2010

::be my valentine::

Lily and I were looking through the magazine Family Fun, which is a great source of fun kids crafts. She wanted to make her valentines for school this year. Her first idea was a 12 inch by 12 inch heart on red glitter paper. At $1.50 a sheet and 23 kids that was not going to happen. After some discussion we came up with a plan.

With coupons from Archiver's the paper for this project was free. You can sign up on their website for coupons that they send out every month or so. Usually they send out one for free card stock with no other purchase necessary. I will walk in with my coupon and walk out with my three free sheets.

We got blue card stock for the boys and pink card stock for the girls. We took my Cricut Cutter and cut hearts out of it. If you didn't have a cutter you could hand cut the cards. That might have been a good cutting exercise for Lulu, but she has got cutting nailed down so I used the Cricut. Plus I love a good excuse to use the Cricut, such a handy thing to have around.

The hearts were about 1.5 inches each. It took two full 12/12 sheets of pink for the girl and one sheet of blue for the boys. We then cut two holes in them at the top and bottom of each heart. With a small sized hole punch this took less than 1 minute, since we could do several at a time. Lily wrote her name on the back of the heart and her friends names on the front. We took our bag of suckers and threaded them thru the paper hearts to make quick easy handmade valentines. She was very excited to get on the bus with them this morning. I am one of the parent volunteers for the party, which is today at 11:30. Can't wait to tear up at the cuteness of a bunch of kindergartners expressing their love to each other. LOVE THIS CRAP!!!

Total cost: $3 for suckers

Total time with a six year old helping:

Cricut cutting and usage - 10 mins

Writing names - 15 mins with several candy breaks

Hole punching and sucker threading - 5 mins

Total time: 30 minutes

Thursday, February 11, 2010

mike wazowski cake bites

::cake bites::

I found the premise for these at bakerella.com. They look so creative and inventive on her site that I have been waiting for a good excuse to make them. So the little dinner party with my parents, which is to celebrate Max's birthday, seemed like the perfect time to make a big mess.

Ingredients:

Cake mix $0.94

Cream Cheese Icing $1.32

Gel food coloring $0.50
3 eggs $0.50

White chocolate chips $3.00
Milk chocolate chips $3.00

Total: $9.26

(I had the oil and Pam already)

Bake the cake mix as directed in a 9/13 pan. I used chocolate mix, but bakerella recommends red velvet. The store I went to did not have red velvet and Mr Max was not going to tolerate another store. He was already sitting in the cart with a newly opened and not yet paid for box of Cheesits, and even that will only buy 20 minutes of corroporation.

After the cake was cooked I set it outside in the FREEZING cold to cool for 45 minutes. I cut off the crunchest edges (just a little bit, my oven is 1,000 years old, cut it some slack) and fed them to the dog. I know - no chocolate for dogs. But she really needed it. Then with my freshly washed hands !!BUBBLES!! I crumbled the cake into a large bowl and mixed in the cream cheese icing. I started doing this with a spatula, but maybe I got a little lazy and threw my kitchen aid mixer at them. I only ran it for about 20 seconds and it did the job perfectly. That slop got rolled into balls, mine where a little bigger than a quarter size. I lined them up those balls on a parchment lined baking sheet. Bakerellla says that should make about 45-50, I got exactly 54. I then put the whole lot in the fridge overnight. From when I started the crumbling till I put the balls in fridge was 55 minutes. I don't think it would take that long the second time. Lily and Max did eat a few, and they were very helpful with the spatula afterwards. It was very messy on my hands, but it cleaned up quick and easy.

I left the little meatball look a likes in the fridge over night. In the morning I melted 1/3 a bag of white chips with 1 inch of green food coloring at a time and dipped the cake balls in them. I used a fork and spool to roll them around. If the chocolate was really hot the result was a nice smooth round ball, if it was starting to cool a bit I got a big spikey ball. (Which will be cute at halloween.) Right after I dipped the green ones I put a white chip in them, tip in to make the eye ball. I did about half in the white-green-tinted chocolate and half in milk chocolate.

I made a few, but once the girls saw the fun they had to jump in and help me finish them off. Lily put icing hair on every one and Emma wrote cute messages to the birthday boy. It was cute to watch them concentrate so hard on making each little cake guy look just perfect.

The final result was so tasty! Plus I think that the kids decorating made them even cuter. I took the leftovers to work and they just gobbled them down. I will do this project again, maybe at one of the kids birthday parties and let the kids at the party decorate them.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

::rocket ship invites::

I have always thought of vintage rockets as a quintessential boy thing. The bright colors and vintage charm has also always appealed to me, so this year I decided to make Max rocket ship invitations.

I played around with sizes and shapes till I came up with these templates. One for the body, one for the wings, and one for the flames. These three shapes make up the entire invite.

Then I used those templates to trace two blue wings,one red body, one white pocket (which is a tracing of the red body template with out the top third), three yellow flames, and I used some scrap red to cut out the pocket trim.

Tape or glue the wings to the back of the red body. Place adhesive around the inner edges of the white section. Attach it to the red body to make a pocket that is open on the top. Attach the red trim

to the white pocket. (I did this part to just add interest.) The last step is to add the yellow flames. I decided to do some stitching around the white pocket edges just to add more interest. Lily loved helping me do this. It made it take 5X as long, but the Lily cuteness factor was so high.

I then printed out the details of the party on card stock, roughed up the edges with ink, and folded it up to put it in the white pocket. I used a circle punch to make a porthole window on the front of the invite.

I wanted my family to have something of Max to put up on their fridge since the invite was so heavy. That led me to include this post card size collage of his two year old pictures. This was made on iPhoto. The program is so easy that it only took minutes to put together.

I liked how it all came together. It was a fun project, and I am glad Lily helped me with it.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

boots

Today was a great winter day. We played outside in the snow. I pretended to pull the sled around and Josh did all the actual work. The kids had a blast. I actually got the rabbit cages cleaned and did some good barn work - a hard thing to get motivated to do this time of year. Josh got on his tractor and got my horses a round bale out of the back pasture. They haven't taken their faces out of it for one minute since it got driven in. (What a nice guy - he hates my horses, but loves an excuse to use his tractor.) He plowed out the drive and even did the neighbors drive. Whenever we are out in the snow I set out an old towel and all boots dry on them. Lily just could not manage to get both boots on the towel. I walked by and saw this image and I just teared up. How great to be the mother of this family. (Maybe just another set of boots or two?)