steph's stuff

Summer school and summer fun

 
As I've mentioned before, the kids all do some type of education project during the summer. We call it summer school but it's not an organized routine type of thing. It's simply one of many summer activities that we do when we feel like it.

Lately, though, we've had a lot of rainy days and we've been inside a lot. Which means that the kids have done a lot of work on their summer school projects. And it's actually been a little bit tooooooo much time spent on summer school. We're ready for better weather.

And, dare I say it out loud, but the weather looks to be turning and we're going to have some wonderful holiday fun around here - outside, on the water and in the sun. Can't wait!!

But I would also be remiss if I didn't mention that our fun has been overshadowed by the very unexpected death of a friend's mother. The same friend whose mother was just here visiting and I took family photos for.

 
My heart is breaking for their entire family. Our thoughts are with them and we hold them very close in our hearts right now.

The first of many

The kids and I had a weekend full of friends, laughter, hugs, pools, and a few fruity drinks. Well...the fruity drinks were all mine. ;) Tom, unfortunately, had a weekend full of illness. He spent the weekend on the couch, sick and missing all the fun. Soooo hoping he's on the road to recovery and that he can join in on the fun next weekend.

This felt like the first "real" weekend of summer and I'm hoping it's the first of many. I've done 4 photo shoots in the past two weeks and so this weekend, I didn't even touch the big camera. Instagram was all I needed. :)

The weekend started with a party at a friend's house for her former neighbors and the middle-school girls. Em and I crashed that party. LOL! What a great group of girls Em has found for friends. Love all of these girls!!! (Thanks so much, Linda!)

Saturday was a low-key day, hanging out with wonderful new friends at their pool and getting a sunburn on my chest. Ouch!

 
 
Emily and the littlest neighbor are quickly becoming close. But, alas, Emily is just one of many girlfriends Austin is gathering. ;) (I stole the photo from his mom - thanks, Dana!)

I didn't take photos of the next party because that's where the fruity drinks were consumed. ;) One of the best parties I've been to in a long time!

Sunday morning was perfect. Sun, coffee, the sunporch, a husband who was out of bed, and a neighborly chat.

 
The kids all spent the weekend swimming with friends, riding bikes, playing outside, and staying up very late. By Sunday afternoon, they were all allowed some TV and I love that they all piled on the couch on top of each other to watch the show. :)

Our evenings are usually even busier than our days and Sunday is no exception. AJ is a fixture at our house and we adore him! Em and AJ are in choir together and they sing constantly when they are together. Watching them choose songs from the ipod and dancing around my kitchen is such a great way to spend an evening.

Backgammon games with Daddy are another one of my favorite things to watch.

And then the best part of the whole weekend - snuggling with my honey under a quilt on the sunporch after a long weekend. :)

 

So far, so good

Sawyer is doing a great job with boot camp training this week. He's learned to stay for long periods of time and, more importantly, learned to stay on command when the doorbell rings. It's not easy for him and he's miserable because he can't run and knock over the new person at the door but he's listening and doing a great job. He's such a sucker for treats and praise - so easy to train.

The one part of no longer having our kitchen gates up that bothers him is what to do when we go upstairs - either during the day or at night. In the past, when we're all upstairs, we've always put him in the kitchen and put the gates up and he immediately goes to his rug and sleeps. Well, with no gates anymore, he's not sure what to do when we all go upstairs. (He's not allowed up there at all because he eats all of Andrew's Legos, the girls' stuffed animals, and wants to sleep on our beds.)

He's trying his best to give me the 'ole puppy-dog eyes trick in hopes that I'll relent but that's not gonna happen. He sure is cute, though.

 

The Germans are coming!

Our new neighbors used to live in Germany and Tony still works for a German company. Every couple of years, some of their German friends come to the U.S. and we were so lucky to meet them on this trip. They had a party last weekend and we had so much fun and had the BEST food prepared by the Germans. Yum!

I took a lot of photos for Dana and Tony and wanted to give them a sneak peek. I'll have the photos ready for you in another couple of days, Dana!

 

 
 

I think he'll survive it

As I mentioned in the post below, our crazy puppy, Sawyer, started boot camp today. Mommy boot camp. Our goals are to stop his crazy, frantic race to the door with wild barking when the bell rings, to stop him from mouthing everyone's hands, and to greet visitors calmly instead of bowling them over.

Judging by the photos taken today, I don't think he's suffering too much during boot camp, do you?

The gloves are off

The gloves are off and the gates are down. Sawyer is going through boot camp training this week.

And, yes, this is Sawyer, aka the crazy puppy. He's had his summer shave and no longer looks like this (his winter shave):

Or this (when he's not groomed at all):

 
 
Anyway..........back to boot camp. We've always had some sort of dog/baby gate up in the house to give us a place to corral him. He's not the quiet couch-potato golden retriever you see in ads. He's a hyper, bouncy, Tigger-type of golden retriever that we had never heard of. So, we've always had gates up to give him a spot to stay when we needed him out of the way.

But, no more. The gates are down, the gloves are off and it's hard-core training camp at home this week. Our primary goals include no barking and frantic racing to the front door when the bell rings, no "mouthing" everyone's hands, and learning to stay in a lay down command for long stretches of time.

I have dog treats for him and tequila for me. Wish me luck!

Our new allowance system

School has been out for over two weeks now and I refuse to spend the summer listening to the kids say, "I'm bored." So, we have a lot of ongoing projects right now in an attempt to keep them active and engaged.

A lot of our activities are just fun - going to the zoo, playing in sprinklers, having friends over, going to the beach. It was a long school year and we all need to unwind.

But, we're also working on some learning activities.

One of the big things we're doing is partially copied from a friend. (Thanks, Theresa! By the way, she copied a summer school idea from me so it's all fair. Plus, I broke her fence and Libby broke her butt at Theresa's house so we're doing well on the swapping/fairness issue.)

We've given the kids a weekly allowance for a few years now after Tom and I were lucky enough to see a noted child psychologist speak about many issues facing kids today and he truly impressed us. We refer to his ideas often, including allowances. If you're looking for a great book on raising kids, I highly recommend this one:

 
You can find it here.

Our goal with giving the kids an allowance is to teach them how to manage their time, money, and responsibilities. They have to do certain chores every week to get their allowance and are able to earn extra money by choosing to do extra chores. We've always had a chore chart typed up but never really used it. They all knew their responsibilities. But the extra chores were always...well...a chore. For me. Because they would ask what they could do and I would give them some choices but if they didn't like them, they complained or whined or chose not to do them. It wasn't working for anyone and we were all frustrated. It needed to be more organized and they needed to understand my expectations a lot better. I was not being a good communicator much of the time.

And then I heard about Theresa's stick idea. To be truthful, I really don't know exactly how she manages the "sticks" each child receives except that the kids know that they can turn in their sticks for rewards after doing chores and/or having good behavior. And the parents can take away sticks. Love that!

So, I took that idea of a system that had a hands-on component and ran with it. And came up with our own version.

Each child gets a jar.

 
And there is also a chore jar.

 
At the beginning of the week, the chore jar will have all the sticks in it and their individual jars will be empty.

 
They have mandatory chores and then extra chores listed on a sheet of paper. (We're still not quite done with week one and the list has changed a lot since I took these photos - it will be a work in progress for a couple of weeks, I'm sure.)

 
In the chore jar, there are three sticks (just cardstock really) with ribbons on them that say "All Chores Done." They can put this in their jars on Saturday mornings, provided that all of their mandatory chores have been done for the week. They will get their usual, age-appropriate allowance for this stick.

 
And then there are many other sticks. The ones the kids laughed at was the "Minus 1" stick. It's a stick that Mommy or Daddy can put in their jars if we are truly frustrated with their behavior or they are not doing their chores. Getting the Minus 1 stick taken out of their jar requires a conversation with us and each one will be handled on an individual basis. I honestly don't anticipate needing it much at all but it's there in case.

 
And then there's the "Rub Mom's Shoulders" stick. :)

 
The rest of the sticks are for all the extra chores listed on the chart, such as dusting the downstairs, vacuuming the stairs and the hallway, cleaning bathrooms, etc... And then an "Extra" in case we come up with something else.

 
We are 5 days into it and so far, so good. The kids LOVE it. Really, truly LOVE it. Which kind of shocked me. But they like seeing what there is to do and they all appreciate getting rewarded for doing extra work.

The next step will be opening individual bank accounts for all of them and working on activities that show them the benefit of saving money rather than spending it.

DIY Jewelry Organizer

I've gotten the DIY bug. In a big way.

It all started with Pinterest. Pinterest is a website that allows you to collect links and photos from all over the net onto one web page. The best part about Pinterest is that the site attaches the original link to the photos you pin to your page. According to their About page: "Pinterest lets you organize and share all the beautiful things you find on the web. People use pinboards to plan their weddings, decorate their homes, and organize their favorite recipes. Best of all, you can browse pinboards created by other people. Browsing pinboards is a fun way to discover new things and get inspiration from people who share your interests."

I have been on Pinterest almost since the beginning and it's an obsession. I check it multiple times every day. I use the iPhone app most of the time but you can actually see more on a regular computer.

A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled upon this photo and immediately pinned it to one of my boards.

 
The link to the original photo and idea is here: http://gratefulprayerthankfulheart.blogspot.com/2011/05/necklacejewelry-organizer.html

I have a pin board called "Projects I Want To Do" and that's where this link sat.

Along with a bunch of other projects. But I couldn't get this idea out of my mind and I just HAD to do it. Because I also knew that my dresser looked like this and something needed to be done about it. And that's only about 1/4 of the jewelry mess. I have it scattered everywhere.

So, I ran to Home Depot and came home with these three items:

A laminate white shelf measuring 8 x 36 inches for about $4.50

 
Command Picture Hanging Strips (a brilliant invention that I use everywhere in the house!)

 

And silver upholstery tacks.

The original idea involved cutting trim and painting and I didn't want that mess. So, I came up with the shelving idea and, once I priced it, it was so cheap that I didn't even consider another option.

I started by measuring out two lines on the top of the shelf. I wanted staggered tacks on the shelf to allow me to fit more jewelry on it.

 
The lines were very faint and made with pencil so I could easily erase them later.

And then I simply started hammering the tacks in.

I quickly found out that my fingers are too big to hold the tacks so I grabbed some tiny pliers I have and used those to hold the tacks so that I could gently hammer them into the shelf.

I didn't measure anything but I'm guessing the rows of tacks are about 1.5 inches apart and the tacks themselves are probably 1 inch apart.

And here it is after I used the Command hangers to hang it in my bathroom and after I had loaded on some of my jewelry. You can see that at the far end of the shelf, I added much larger gaps between the tacks to allow more room for the chunkier jewelry and bracelets. The original link suggested that and I loved the idea.

I keep moving things around just a bit so that the lengths don't tangle but the tacks are far enough apart that it really doesn't matter.

 

So, there you go. A DIY jewelry organizer for under $10.  Now, I have to make something for my earrings. :)


 

DIY week

School's been out for over a week and the kids have all been in a theater day-camp this week. And I have gotten the cleaning and organizing bug. BIG TIME. As in cleaning out closets, moving around flower beds, building things, and reorganizing closets. I have a bunch of blog posts that I need to finish about all the projects I've done this week but I haven't posted my digital layouts in a long time, so I thought I'd post a few of my recent ones while I finish writing about the projects. 

As always, my product and supply list can be found at DesignerDigitals in my scrapbooking gallery. These are all a bit softer than my usual style but I'm liking it.

 

For Michele

A dear friend of mine has a milestone birthday today and I was able to do a mini-photo shoot for her today. Her mothers and her three sisters traveled all the way from Alabama to be with her for her birthday and I was honored to spend a bit of time with them this weekend.

Here's a sneak peek of their shoot. My friend, Michele, is on the upper left in the white shirt. Michele, I am honored to be able to call you friend and I love you dearly. Happy Birthday!