Poems

Trees
In the spring leaves
Will bud with
Pretty flowers all in bloom.
A tree is pretty
In the spring.

It is summer. Leaves
Are green, fruits are
Nesting, bees
are buzzing tree to tree.

It is fall and leaves
are brown and
orange and red. Birds are
leaving from
from their nest.

Winter comes. The trees
are bare.
They are now sleeping
Hibernating
Waiting for the spring.


My Bike
My bike is red
It's tires are black.
I like to use it
It goes fast

My brother's bike
Is shiny blue.
He uses it
To go fast too.

My sister's bike
Is pink and white.
She likes to ride
In the light


The Grass
The grass is green
It goes woosh
And blows in the wind.
Then later
In the summer
The grass is brown.

Super S sat and wrote these poems at the dining room table, one morning this week, trying to stall starting on schoolwork. Pretty Good for just wasting time.

I want to know everything

Yesterday I taught a lesson on education and learning. I realized once again that I want to know how to do everything. I find it incredibly frustrating that I don''t have time to do it all. I find it frustrating that when I do have the time I am too exhausted to do anything. I see many women on the internet who are doing all the things I want to do and wonder how they can do it all? I am extremely jealous.

I've been studying how to be an effective teacher and one of the things I've learned is you should decide what you want your students to learn/feel/or do after the lesson. As a teacher, you must have a goal for your students and anything that does not support your goal should be nixed for ideas that will support your goal.

My first thought is to apply this principle, the principle of setting a goal and nixing anything that would not propel me towards my goal. Unfortunately, I live in a world where small people depend on me for almost everything. I am the center of their universe. My decisions affect their lives. Have I missed my chance for growth? Or is my growth intertwined with the growth of my children?

While it is true that my growth is intertwined in helping them grow and learn, I think that God expects us to keep learning about the world around us. He expects us to learn new skills that benefit not only us, but the community around us. I don't think the skills that we want to learn at the moment are always the skills that the Lord needs us to learn for the best benefit of ourselves or those around us. So, that leads me to this place. Right now I should focus on becoming a good teacher, to lead the teachers that I am responsible for and helping them to be the best teachers they can be.

I should stop pining over things I don't have time for, knowing that I will get back to those skills when the time is right. (Or should I try to fit them in 5 min. here 10 min. there?)

I do plan on taking a drawing class at a local community college in about a year and a half. I think I might have a spare evening then.

Homemade products

I've been making my own laundry detergent for while now. I started by using this recipe

Homemade Laundry Soap

1/3 bar Fels Naptha or other type of soap, as listed above

½ cup washing soda

½ cup borax powder

~You will also need a small bucket, about 2 gallon size~

Grate the soap and put it in a sauce pan. Add 6 cups water and heat it until the soap melts. Add the washing soda and the borax and stir until it is dissolved. Remove from heat. Pour 4 cups hot water into the bucket. Now add your soap mixture and stir. Now add 1 gallon plus 6 cups of water and stir. Let the soap sit for about 24 hours and it will gel. You use ½ cup per load.

But I didn't get really good results with it. (But I've heard that lots of people do, so give it a try if you're inclined.) And it takes a really long time to make and requires a really big container. I usually ended up using one big stock pot and whatever other large container I had at the time. I then found that it lumped up quite a bit in the month or two that it took to use it up.

I then tried a larger concentration of Fels Napa, Borax, and Washing Soda. It was a no go, so I did a combination of store bought and homemade.

A couple of months ago I decided to try this recipe:

Powdered Laundry Detergent

2 cups Fels Naptha Soap (finely grated - you could also try the other bar soaps listed at the top)
1 cup Washing Soda
1 cup Borax

• Mix well and store in an airtight plastic container.
• Use 2 tablespoons per full load.

It just didn't seem to work as well as people were saying.

Then I remembered reading that one person added 1/4- 1/2c oxyclean to this mix and had good results. I tried it and is works great. Still use about 2 Tbl. I love it and it is so much cheaper than store bought detergents!!! It does take a while to grate the soap, but if you have a food processor you can grate the soap and then use the blade to cut the soap into smaller pieces. Easy Peasy!! And Cheap.

This recipe seems to last about a month and a half. I made my last recipe 10/25 and will report back when I finish it. There are 6 in my family. I probably do 5-10 loads of laundry a week.

Preparatory work

I told myself that I would try to do 15 min. of work on the couch a day. I may have to extend the time. Once I get going I want to finish the job I started.

My first project was to remove the skirt. I used this tool (I don't know what it's called) that is used for pulling staples out of the floor (you now for when you redo your flooring.) It was pretty handy. If I could get the staples out just a little with a screw driver, I could rock the rest of the staple out with the curved part of this tool. I think it took me about 45 min. to get the skirt off.


Can you see the white spots? I think it may be some kind of mildew or mold. The whole skirt is spotted with it. I wonder what I'll find underneath the main body fabric.



Here's me taking off the back of the skirt, half way done.



Done. Here's the back of the couch. Look how much better the back fabric looks!! It looks new.



Here's the front. Hmmm...maybe I will keep the wings. I think it will look pretty cute once I'm done. I'm not convinced that the navy blue microsuede that I bought, to redo a couch a couple of years ago, is really the right style for this couch, but that's what I have. Can't you just see a sweet gathered skirt? I don't think the microsuede will gather. I can just imagine one of those new designer fabrics like Amy Butler's or Anna Corner's fabrics on this couch. On the other hand, a nice neutral will always go with different designer pillows. (Less expensive too.)

Next the back will come off. Then I'll be able to see what innards need to be replaced. I'm thinking just batting will need to be replaced (judging by the smell.)

Oh just so I remember the skirt was 65" in front + about 4" for folding the edges and 33" on the side.

Craig's List Couch

Here is what the CL ad said:

Ethan Allen Hide-a-bed couch, green.
Not ugly! No stains or holes. Mattress in good condition.




So if there are no holes in this couch just what do you call the lack of fabric on the cushions and right inside arm? Hmmmm...




We bought it anyway. It's not my ideal couch, but it is a sturdy and I don't know if any of you realize, but it is really, really hard to find small couches. This one is 69" and fits perfect in our tiny house. It's about 10 year old and smells like old cushion foam. The smell was undetectable at the house we bought it at, but at our house, when you are sitting on the couch it can be a little overwhelming.



So it is a little old fashioned. I'm not sure if I like the "wing chair" look, (the kids love this look and think it's the best part of the couch) but it's growing on me, kind-of. I found a couch on the internet exactly like this where the owner pried off the wing things and changed the shape of the arms to a more modern look. It looked pretty good. I kind of like the small arms so I don't think I'll change that, but I am thinking since I need to take off the back foam (remember it stinks) I'm thinking I'll change the back to loose cushions.

My second idea is to still remove the wing things, but instead of making loose pillows keeping the back flatish like it is now.

My third idea is to leave the wing things (since the kids love them) and .....haven't gotten that far yet.

One thing I love about this couch is the bottom cushions don't move. Since we put it in the living room Sat. night we haven't had to touch the cushions! I'm wondering if I do put loose cushions on the couch if this will affect that, but I doubt it will because I'm thinking the reason they don't move is because the foam is a tight fit.

I think eventually I'll replace the mattress. The guy told me in one of the e-mails that the mattress hadn't been used more than 10 times. WRONG!!!!! It has been more than that by evidence of the extra egg cart mattress added to the mattress and sheet and pillow stuffed in there. I wonder if he was just a clueless husband or a liar trying to offload this couch.

Anyway, that is neither here nor there because I bought the couch. (size, size, size and hide-a-bed meant everything to me.)

So opinions please. Should I keep the old fashioned look? (It will be harder to slipcover and I'm not sure I'm totally up for that) or should I pry of the wings (and go the easy route) and make it look a bit more modern? I will be replacing the bottom cushions no matter what. (One or two bottom cushions?)
Oh yeah, Even though I'll be taking the couch apart I won't really be reupholstering it, I'll probably staple on muslin to keep everything in place and slip a slipcover over top it.

3 month supply

For a while now, I've been trying to gather items for our short and long term food storage.(I'm not doing a very good job. We seem to go through our storage quite quickly.) I found this really great site called Preparedness Matters. It has recipes for food storage items and talks about how important it is to be prepared for life's temporal challenges. I've been checking the site every couple of days and have never been disappointed with the ingenuity of the recipes, like just a couple of days ago a recipe for chocolate chip cookies with white beans was posted. It looks like the white beans is a substitute for shortening. REALLY? Amazing! Did you know you could can butter?? Me neither. Lot's of helpful information on that site!

Well, today I was visiting and saw this link. You have to go and take a look!! Not only can you use it to help gather your 3 month food storage (which is what it's designed for) but you can also use it for a grocery shopping list and to list the price you usually pay for the items so you can get the best deal. It keeps track of the things you have and what you need to buy, your menu and the ingredients. You really have to check it out!!! AND IT"S FREE!! FREE!! FREE!! Did you hear me?? FREE!! It's ingenious! Be sure to watch the tutorial.

So I haven't yet checked out the rest of the site, but I will check it out tonight after I put the kids to bed.

It's October!

Yes, I know it's been that way for a while, but now it truly feels like October. The kindergartners have taken their annual trip to the pumpkin farm today.



The boys and I met up with Super L on her field trip and watched her get lost in the hay maze, had a hay ride, and watched as she picked out the perfect pumpkin. She found the pumpkin in less then three minutes. Pretty fast! Both Super S, and A took f o r e v e r to find their perfect pumpkins when they were in kindergarten.



Only Super L was able to get a pumpkin today. We have a planned date and time for our next family trip to the pumpkin farm and on that day we will all get pumpkins for carving.





Regarding the last post, The boys had absolutely no help coming up with their movie idea. Super S has been thinking about the skit for about a week and a half. We had no idea what it was about until they actually did it. Super Dad did the video while I went on errands. I just about died when I came home from errands and watched the part of the clip where economy eats the $700 billion. Super Dad and I now go around the house saying,"economy, economy...."