"Beethoven's Wig" CDs

Meta, our friend and neighbor in New York, introduced us to "Beethoven's Wig". The boys have been requesting "Tchaikosky's Cannonball Song" an average of 13 times a car ride lately. Myself, I enjoy the Can-Can song.

"Beethoven's Wig" CDs are 4 volumes of famous classical symphonies and songs put to catchy, silly lyrics. Here's the cover song above put to an animated music video.

I never really anticipated talking Stravinsky with my 4-year-old, but these CDs are a really fun way to get the conversation started about classical music and composers. I really like that the tracks without lyrics are also included, so they can hear the original song. (Or part of it, each song is just a few minute clip.)

Crossing our fingers it'll inspire these littles to take up some stringed instrument! Right now, they like the idea of the trumpet (fine) and cymbals (not fine).

Organizing the Pantry

I've never taken much pride in our pantry. I felt pretty good about having designated a "Box" shelf and "Cylinder" shelf in recent months. But I finally got the urge to kick it up a notch. (Items falling off the shelves might have had something to do with it.)

To the Dollar Tree we go! Forget that confoundedly spendy, yet oh so compelling, Container Store. Really. At least for small compartmentalizing needs. The selection of bins and containers varies at each dollar store. But I'm happy one nearby us maintains a fairly impressive variety. Some of them:

I bought 6 large flat containers. At home, I took everything off the shelves. I fit everything into my 6 container categories:
- Boxes: pasta or dinner items
- Boxes: snack items
- Jars
- Cans
- Bags: savory items (breads, chips)
- Bags: sweet items (shredded coconut, marshmallows, raisins)

Voila! For 6 bucks, I greatly simplified my food preparation life. And now have a calm feeling opening the once tumble-down pantry of craziness. It feels so good to organize!

My Quilt of Reckoning

My great-great grandmother Mary Malinda Hall was a big time quilter. Like, she made a quilt for every child (she had 18), grandchild, child in her primary class at church, and many people in her little community. I thought maybe, maybe I have some kind of quilting blood in me I just needed to tap into.

But, see, I don't sew. For instance, I feel proud to know what a bobbin is. (Not that I can confidently wind it.)

By some miraculous event I got invited to a quilting group and by chance a bit of a master quilter took me under her wing. So I began learning to sew by starting to make a quilt. 

I never knew cutting and sewing straight lines could be so(oooooo) frustrating and tedious. And time consuming. Each block represents hours. No joke.

Now that I have these blocks done though, and can see it all together, I feel pretty proud. And I can see how people find it fulfilling. And a little addicting.

Next tasks: 

- get the squares back out of my closet,

- piece this together with borders between, 

- back it, 

- bind it, 

- give it to my little niece for a very belated birthday gift,

- never look at it again,

- pick and start one more ULTRA SIMPLE pattern, so as not to have this quilt of reckoning totally put me off from sewing or quilting for all time.  

Items I'm Eyeing

1. Must-have wall shelf for boys' room

New friend, Kailee, had the boys over for a playdate this week. You bet I walked away immediately looking up their wall shelf on IKEA's website. ($14.99!) They use it for children's books in their boys room. Kind of in love with it.

2. Fresh DIY terrarium

I bought a fantastic clear glass...jar? pot?...container at a favorite thrift store and I'm kind of dying to have it become a terrerium centerpiece for my kitchen table. Note: I'm not dying to make it, just to have it. You remember my problem.

Thankfully, there is a quick and dirty, nondaunting tutorial out there on blog Gussy Sews. (And a few others on my Decorative Touch board.) So when I get up my 9 month pregnant gumption, it'll be easy breezy.

3. Clearly adorable kitchen table runner

I'm also envisioning a cute table runner under this gorgeous flora centerpiece. Thanks to Inspired by Charm for this no-sew burlap one with gold polka dots idea and great tutorial!

4. DIY Photo Coasters

For our living room. And--sssshhhhh--possibly our Christmas gift to grandparents, : ::whispered tones:: easy DIY Coasters with Instagram pictures using, more or less, Modgepodge. Thanks Click It Up a Notch!

(Photos all from corresponding blogs that I linked too. Except for the wall shelf, which I snagged at Kailee's house, with her consent of course.)

Strength of Women

I just don't seem to have the blogging time, or sometimes even the thinking time, to blog these days. I have yet to make the time anyway. But life is wonderful, meaningful, and autumn. I just had to post this video for safekeeping. Here's to women!

A Nice Note

I just found this cute note on the side of the fridge, constructed from our word magnets. That Ben, such a wonderful guy!

Learning Time

About 3 months ago I started looking online for lists of subjects that parents could teach their two-year-old. I got lucky and came across an entire 26-week teaching curriculum! And it was free! 

Since finding this website, Seth and I have added a daily "Learning Time" to our morning routine. 

The gist of it:

Mondays--   theme introduced; corresponding book(s) read, song(s) sung; these revisited each day

Tuesdays--  shape or color

Wednesdays-- letter

Thursdays-- number

Fridays-- nursery rhyme and fine-motor activity to celebrate week's theme

She suggests keeping a poster of what you do each week. When the weeks done, we've been taping each part up in the stairwell to our basement. It's awesome to see the ground we've covered. It's also a great visual reminder of the fun we've had together.

I love the structure and her ideas. Her ideas also spark my creativity. It usually ends feeling liked structured play time together. 

Some of my favorite things we've done so far:

 -   made up a "Cow Dance" to Copland's Rodeo
 -   learning shapes with play-doh (also love her idea of using cookie dough and baking it, need to try it)
 -   keeping track of numbers in his sticker counting book
 -   watercoloring drawn eyes for theme celebration
-    scavenger hunts of letters, colors and numbers throughout the house
-    playing letter games on starfall.com
-    him loving songs on youtube that follow the theme: "lighthouse song" (Brazzle Dazzle Day), "rainbow song" ("Somewhere Over the Rainbow"), "cat song" ("The Cat Came Back" by Laurie Berkner)
-   "tape the eyes on the face" version of "pin tale on the donkey".
-    listening and dancing to "jungle songs": Saint Saens' "Carnival of the Animals"
-    building our own lighthouse with Duplo blocks
-    reading new books together I might not have checked out otherwise

(said lighthouse)

It's also rewarding to be driving down the freeway and he suddenly identifies "letter E!" on the side of the trailer truck. Or to be in the grocery store and have him point out that the box full of oranges is an octagon. And it's rewarding, not just because he's actually retaining something, but because it wasn't Caillou or Sesame Street that taught it to him: it's something he learned from me. 

So consensus: fun, educational. Recommended.

P.S. She has lesson plans for older kids and several other subjects on the same website that I haven't looked into myself, but I'd bet are good.

Cypress Trees

Our 2012 family calendar highlights this photo in the month of March. Having recently flipped to April, I've found I missed seeing this beautiful work. And upon looking back at older posts, I found I have never posted about it!

We saw this cypress painting, and several others, when we visited New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art last March. Even for a novice visual art appreciator, such as myself, I found Van Gogh's works stunning to see in person: the texture, colors and depth of the paint and the motion it creates! I especially love the grass green in bottom right side here. You can tell he flung his paintbrush aside and got right in there with his fingers to make it look just so. 

According to what I remember reading at the museum (so very reliable information here), this landscape was on the property of the asylum he was living at. I hope to create something so beautiful from the bounds of my own asylum. (Ah-ha! Verified here under the "Saint-Remy" subheading.)

Detail:

First Prayer

Yesterday Seth saw Daddy's scriptures out and wanted to read them. He climbed up on the couch. He opened them up. I asked him what he was reading about:

"The sci-shures."
"Are you reading about Heavenly Father and Jesus?"
"Hevly Father, Jesus."
"Are you reading, 'love one another'?"
"Love one anuder."
"Are you reading, 'Pray always'?"
"Pray alwees," followed by an incessant, "Pray, pray."
"You want to pray?"
"Uh, yes."
"Okay."

"Heavly Father, thank-thank-thank.....Mommy. Thankee Daddy. Thankee Mommy.........Amen."

Pay day!

A new month

Leap year--that means you skip over February, right?

Good Health

I have excellent health. I have no migraines like my sister. I have no back problems like my brother. No psoriasis like my dad. No allergies like my husband.

Additionally, I am rarely sick. For instance, my little sister stayed with us over Christmas. Christmas Eve I finished her drink; Christmas Day she was throwing up; I never felt ill at all. I'm super lucky.

This week, however, I received a double whammy. Wednesday I had the crippling 24-hour flu. Monday I woke up with what I'd consider the milder, non-life-threatening version of cholera. I won't detail.

I lay on the couch while my poor son watched another show. And what was I wishing I could do? I wanted to scrub the floor. "Oh if only I had the energy and ability, I'd do the laundry and dishes straightaway too!"

Now I'm recovered. Energy back, appetite back, no pain! I just finished and thrilled in making banana bread and putting dishes away. How wonderful is good health!

Candle Warmer

I never want a smelly house. Sometimes I worry that my smelling sense stops working in my own house after awhile, so that I'm unable to detect smells unpleasant to visitors (i.e. cooked meat, musty, diapers, what-have-you).

In fact, I want not just a non-smelly house, but a good smelling house! That's why I'm thrilled to have recently purchased a candle warmer. And for only $8.97! Right now my house smells like Chocolate Peppermint Truffles. Sigh. Smile.

Patterns

 

Also found these on my external hard drive. Guess I have a thing for repeating shapes and patterns.

Blue Sparkle

I love this smell! 

Months ago I babysat/housesat for a friend for several days. I loved the smell of their laundry, so I snooped downstairs and smelled every laundry detergent and fabric softener they had. This was it! Snuggle Blue sparkle fabric softener. I bought some shortly thereafter. I've used it ever since, and pretty sure I've felt more content with my life ever since. 

Thrifting

Years ago when my mom's medium size mixing bowl broke she went to scope out what the local thrift store had by way of mixing bowls. She happened to find the exact same one there. Little flower trim and all. That's when we started saying my mom has a thrift store angel.

Needless to say, I look forward to thrift store perusing with my mom. It's a genetic hobby. While visiting there, we landed a 50% off everything in the store sale. Two favorite finds:

I found this shirt in green, $1.
My mom found these $120 Dansko shoes for me in my size. With the discount: $3.50.

Thanks again thrift store angel!

#1 Lipgloss

It's the best. Just had to say it.

I guess it's no secret because I just read on someone-er-other's blog it's the number one selling lip gloss in America. That makes me wonder who's job it is to sit and catalog each lipgloss sold in the country.

Truly though, C.O. Bigelow's minty lip shine stands head and shoulders above all other gloss.

Vacation

I haven't posted in awhile, yeah? Well, I'm on vacation with little Seth while Ben studies for Step 1 of the boards. We're visiting Ben's family now in Salt Lake and we soon leave to see my family in Portland. And I didn't bring a computer. That explains the absence I suppose. But so many places and things have been speaking to me. I hope to find time to catch up on them all!

And, in fact, vacation itself speaks to me. The planning and doing fun activities part, definitely. But also the being out of my element part; feeling haggard after a long late flight, making a new daily routine, having long phone conversations with Ben and deciding how to relate my day to him. The changes make me see myself in a new light. So it's good on many levels.

Happy trails.

Family Tree Book

I've been so happy with the book we printed for Seth.

He loves pulling it out, especially while sitting in church, and looking at pictures of grandparents, aunts, uncles, great-grandparents, and of course, himself. It makes me happy he can start to recognize his family when he's young, even though we live far from Oregon, Utah and California!

I've printed a few books through blurb and been happy with them, but I especially liked this one through shutterfly. Probably because of the subject. And probably because we used a coupon for a free book. :?)

Losing my grocery list

I don't know how I do it, but I'm in the store crossing off items, grabbing the bananas, finding the soy sauce and somehow my grocery list disappears. I look on the ground, in my purse, on the shelf, in the cart, in Seth's mouth, my pockets, and I look all those places again. No where, it's gone. This has happened several times and I never find the list. Weird? Yes, weird.

It reminds me of something my dad wrote once:

"I am now taking these keys over to the built-in desk."
"I will feel so proud of myself once I have successfully sequestered them there."
"These keys take precedence above all else until they actually make it to the desk."
"Nothing exists in my universe right now, except for these very keys, and that desk towards which I am walking."
"Neither sleet nor snow nor driving rain will keep these keys from making it to the desk."
"Whew! Now, that I am at the desk I am taking my... hey, where are my keys?"

Must be a Mower thing.

Anna and her art

This is our sister-in-law Anna.
I've heard she's in the Guinness Book of World Records under "nicest person on the planet". We love her. And her art; she's an artist. In fact, she's having her final show for her BFA degree in just 1 week. Go see it on BYU campus in the HFAC if you can.

Incredible painting of Ben's brother, Dave (her husband).

And if, like us, you can't attend :?( you'll just have to enjoy her paintings on her art blog.

Our cousin Nick. Her work is so amazing, yeah?

Congratulations Anna, the insanity is almost at an end!