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Sh*t Crunchy Mama’s Say from MamaNatural.com has to be one of the funniest things I have seen in a long time!   There are so many of the things I do (and funny enough, my mom did too) that I literally was laughing out loud!  There are two installments… make sure you watch part 1 too.  ;)

I was thinking about it and there is bound to be a part 3 coming up here eventually….  other ones from just my kids and I:

"Antibiotics?  I just put garlic oil in his ears and nursed a lot."

"Mama?  Did these eggs come from happy chickens?"

"We haven't had cable TV since the 80's.  What's ‘Modern Family’?"

Three words for ya:

• "Active yeast cultures"
• “Braggs Amino Acids”
• "Probiotics. Google it."
• “Back yard chickens.”

LOL…  I can’t think of any more on the spot, but wow… I am sure there are at least another minute or two’s worth of funnies for her to play with.  Her site is wonderful too.  It is set up for the more affluent natural mama, but it seems like an amazing resource!  Enjoy!

MamaNatural.com

A birthday party for Luke

It was a wonderful party!  Just dinner with a few friends and a few babies.  Nothing super planned, because as often happens with babies, plans changed several times.   

A few pictures for you.  About half way through the party we had to switch to flash… which makes pics not so great.  But the over all, the pictures are still pretty darn cute of my little man’s celebration!

Good night sweet baby!!

Happy Birthday Beautiful Boy!

Luke is ONE today!

Sweet Sweater Slipper Tutorial!

It is COLD in our house.  About 66* on a good day.  Every time I pick up my sweet baby his tiny feet are so cold!  And he will not keep socks on.  So I decided to make him some slippers today.  This is how I did it:

I got my felted sweater scraps and found the thickest one I had. I figured the bottom would be best made from a really thick sweater to keep the cold floor off his little feet.  (And it’s nice to have something to do with those ones that won’t make monsters, or hats because they have just felted up too thick!)  Other things I needed: a pair of really good scissors, some 1/4 inch elastic, my sewing machine, buttons, puff paint, and tags or ribbon.

These slippers do not require turning.  They don’t need lining.  They are just wonderfully warm, natural slippers for your kiddos feet!

First I cut out the pieces.  I made a pattern from the bottom of Luke’s foot (you could also use a shoe), and then cut a piece of the bottom edge of a sweater (the ribbing part) for the back of the slipper.  I made sure it was wide enough to reach from the floor to Luke’s ankle so it would cover the entire heal of his foot.

To keep it on his chubby little legs I used the 1/4 inch elastic cut just a little bit smaller than the ribbing.

I attached the elastic first, stretching as I went to the top edge of the ribbing (it doesn’t need to gather much, as you can see). 

I folded the ribbing in half to find the center.  I pinned that to the back center of the soul and  using that as a point of reference, I sewed the piece onto the soul of the slipper.  It doesn’t have to be perfect.  In fact, it doesn’t even have to be precise… it will cross and gather where it needs to and will not show if you make small mistakes here.

 

I used a pattern for the top of the shoe.  This pattern in fact, modified so that I didn’t need seam allowances (so a bit thinner, and a bit shorter) because I didn’t need to turn the shoe at all.  I cut the piece and then trimmed it until it looked right pinned on to the slipper. (Seriously, that is my favorite part about working with felted wool… it doesn’t fray at all.  So you can use it like you would craft felt, but it’s oh-so-much better!)

At this point I added little tags I had back from my clothes making days to the side of the slipper. 

I thought they were cute and it makes it clear which slipper goes on which foot. 

I trimmed everything down a bit almost to the seam. (Again, the best part about felted sweaters is that they are felt!  No fraying!)

The next step was to connect the back with the top.  I found the spot where they all crossed over and then safety pinned it and tried it on Luke’s foot.  It worked perfectly!  I then hand sewed the spot really well and trimmed any extra spots inside the slipper.  I added a button to cover the anchor spot:

The last step came after I had tried them on him.  I put them on his feet, let him walk around and the second he stepped on the wood floor his legs came out from under him like he was on ice and he fell down hard.  Poor baby!  So while he napped today I put puff paint on the bottom of his slippers so they didn’t slip on all our wood floors. 

It worked great. 

I think I am going to make them for my bigger kids too… They turned out SO cute! 

And here are my ‘in action’ photos… which are horrible… cuz they are from my iPhone in the dark before I put this little guy to bed… but here you are anyway cuz he’s just SO cute!

On his feet (don’t you just love those chubby legs??)

Him walking back and forth. 

After he kept falling the first time I tried them on him, he was really nervous about trying to walk in them again.  When he finally tried and didn’t fall he was SO excited he ran back and forth in across the living room over and over again. 

He would stop, lean down and inspect his new duds and then get up and run across the wood floor again.  It was adorable!

Happy crafting!!

Spontaneous Gratitude for a very long week

My husband’s mom had a stroke this week.  We don’t know much, but she has recovered a bit so that is a good sign that slowly she will recover some of what was lost.  We really know nothing beyond that.  We are praying hard and visiting often… but it will be a long road. 

On top of that everyone but the hubby has been sick.  The baby and I seem to have gotten the worst of it.  Sniffling, sneezing, coughing, stuffy nose, fever… basically every symptom on the back of a box of Niquil.  Yuck!

And on top of all that… our furnace isn’t working right.  It will not keep the house at any sort of normal temp.  I think our high has been 66* for the last couple days. 

I have been grumpy, sick and feeling kinda hopeless. 

So I just need to be grateful for a moment… just a moment in this hectic-as-all-get-out week that will not end for a few more hectic weeks…  I just need a few minutes to count my blessings.

(Here is the History of Spontaneous Gratitude.)

So this week I am wonderfully, amazingly grateful for:

My wonderfully warm fireplace that is keeping at least a couple rooms in the house at a temperature that will help us get well.

Projects to make feet more snuggly.

Evidence of warmer weather on the horizon.

 

And this sweet, precious little guy who, although he has a cold, still will put up with me carrying my camera around instead of him.

For a minute at least.

Valentine’s Mantel

I know that it’s too late for this to be inspiration for anyone for this year, but I am really enjoying pinning ideas for NEXT year on my boards on Pinterest.    So just in case you are a Pinterester like me, here are some sweet inspiration pictures for next year’s Valentine’s mantel.

These were all printables I modified to frames I already had.  The LOVE printable was from Betty Crocker Wannabe and it has 1 Corinthians 13 behind it.

I am enjoying subway art right now.  This one from Simple Crafter really struck me as the cutest Valentine’s one I saw. 

The last one I printed up for my holiday décor was from Sprik Space.  Isn’t it cute?  I just love it in the black frame next to the grape vine hearts!

I added those along with a frame with pics of my kids, a red candle holder, the oil wood kissing statue, and a few red cardstock hearts.  I thought it was a really cute effect for absolutely nothing!

the week of documentaries ;)

We have all been sick this week.  Don got a nasty cold last week and then we picked it up.  The baby, Cyan, and I have it the worst.  Sinus headaches, body aches, ear aches, nose plugged or dripping, etc.  It’s just a yucky full body nasty cold.  So I have spent some time perusing Netflix for new information about food on the ‘play it now’ section and I found some really interesting documentaries that you may want to check out.

Forks Over Knives.  A very interesting, if somewhat dry, fact based movie about the benefits of a ‘whole foods, plant based’ diet.  Some of the studies sighted in this movie lasted 40 years and researched entire countries (like China!).  It was fascinating!  They were talking about the coloration between animal proteins and cancer and had amazing amounts of facts to back it up.  A really good movie that doesn’t use sensationalism to get it’s points across, making it more dry than most of these movies because it lets the facts do the talking… and yet, I truly enjoyed it.  It wasn’t hard to watch, because they facts they were presenting were absolutely fascinating.

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead.  Awesome, uplifting movie about an Aussie man’s road to health and recovery from a debilitating autoimmune disease (and about 100lbs) by drinking nothing but plant and veggie juices for 60 days.  It was like watching a season of the biggest looser without all the sensationalist that goes into that show.  Just the uplifting bits were left behind.  It was a really cool movie to watch and the information about micronutrients was presented in a way that even my kids were nodding their heads to.  The best of the three for sure.

Food Matters.  The driest one yet, but it had a lot of really neat links between cancer and food.  The doctors sighted were definitely not actors.  They were dry as toast.  But the facts they were presenting were the types of things that I have wondered for years… is chemotherapy really as beneficial for cancer as it seems? Why are they not using diet to combat disease?  What kind of nutritional education do doctors get in medical school?  (I’ll give you that one… almost none.)  It reminded me of collage and a good seminar in the science of food.

Logan’s Valentines 2012

These are yoda finger puppets which we folded from this tutorial.  So cute!!

Valentine’s Day Lunch

Quite simply I added a ring of cardstock, hot glued around the edge of the candy box so I could add a second layer of cardboard wrapped with pink cling wrap to put a sandwich on a top layer.

The lid just fit over the cardstock instead of the plastic ring down below.

I filled each tiny compartment with treats and lunch things:

We took them to our Valentine’s Day party on Tuesday.