A Constant Reminder {The Heidelberg Catechism}

I've had several people ask me about this sign in my kitchen.

I had it made for Chris as a Christmas gift last year.  It is a custom sign made my Between You and Me Signs.  Ordering it was a wonderful, clear, and timely process.  I'd highly recommend them to anyone.  They also have a shop with all kinds of other signs that are beautiful and ready to order.

This is the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism.  Aren't the words wonderful?  All of our kids already had this question memorized (because it's the first one!), but I love it's reminder.  We often remind our kids who they belong to.  I often have to remind myself.  These words... read them and be encouraged.

Working on the School Room... Chalkboard Wall!

When we first moved in, I had to get the school room up and going quickly.  We are blessed to have two rooms in the front of our house designated for school.  One is the dining room; the other an office.  We do school in what should be the dining room.  I'm just not a dining room kind of a gal, and we have a big table in there in case we need it for a family function.  After doing school in the kitchen for a couple years, I learned that it wasn't my preference.  Sure, sometimes the kids sit at the counter while I'm doing something in the kitchen, and I help them with a worksheet, but we don't have to clear all of our school stuff before every meal.  We can leave it where it is and then come back to it after lunch.  Also, after certain school days (you know, THOSE days), I just want to leave it all there, a complete mess... walk away from it.  And it's nice to be able to do that.  

Here is how phase one of the school room looked.  This was after I cleaned it out one night.  After our crazy fall, it had looked like this.

Like a tornado had come through.

There's a little closet in there too.  It has most of our art supplies in it.  This was a before and after.  Actually, right now, it looks more like the picture on the left.  We've been in project mode and it's been neglected.

Here is the wall before.  

We obviously had moved the books out.

My dad was nice enough to do the painting for us.  It took 3 coats, and as he said, black paint with white borders is not very forgiving.  He bought the most expensive tape and it worked like a charm.  His borders were nearly perfect.

I guess there's no turning back at this point.

Samuel got to put the finishing touches on the wall.

And the first coat is on.

As a side note, I debated using colored chalkboard paint.  A friend encouraged me not to, and I'm happy with the decision.  There's something classic about black chalkboards.

You had to wait three days and then color the whole thing with chalk... twice.

The floor was a chalky mess, but it actually didn't take that long.

Don't you remember loving to write on the board?

And there you have it.  Now I have a place to jot things up there as we are learning them.  

And keep passages of Scripture I want us to memorize. 

If I can ever make it to the fabric store, I want to make bunting to hang across the top.  I look forward to doing it, but the time... oh the time, it escapes me.   For right now, it's nice to have this messy project done.  Now we are working on doing shelving in the office to hold all of those books.  I made a trip to Ikea and picked up a *few* things for that project.

I'll keep you posted.

Around the House

I've been eyeing this cute little Ikea cart for about a year.  They've been out of it every time I went (until, of course, this last time after I had already found this cart).

When I saw this at a local antique store, I knew I wanted to take it home with me, sand it down, and paint it aqua.

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Now she has a home, but the school room is getting revamped so it has nothing on it yet.

I found this about a year ago at a garage sale and liked the style of it, but not the yellow flowers.  So I painted it with some of the leftover paint from our building process.

It found a home right next to the chair in our bathroom :)

I also saw this at the same antique store as the cart and texted a friend, "Is it great or is it ugly?"  I liked it, but wanted a little reassurance I was not crazy.  It was cheap enough, but not cheap enough to feel good about buying it if I changed my mind and didn't love it.  

With a little navy (thanks to all my instagram friends for helping me make that decision) spray paint, I'm loving it even more.  I need to find the perfect place to hang it.

My dad and I made a towel rack out of some old hooks I found at a store around here that sells parts from old houses.  I painted it gray from some leftover paint in the garage.  Each of the boys already had a color that was really just for school.  But those colors are creeping into other areas as well.  Emily at The Anderson Crew swears by this, and I'm loving that I know who left their towel on the floor.  If they were really smart, they would use someone's towel and leave it on the floor, but they haven't figured that out yet.  Shhhh.

Next up is the school room transformation... which very well may take months, but I'll show you what we've done so far.  We are slow around here.  I'll be the first to admit it's hard for me to get anything done.  It's hard enough just keeping up with the every day activity around here.  The boys are always home, which I LOVE, but it doesn't lend itself very often to home projects.  Slow and steady wins the race, right?  That's what I keep telling myself anyway.

Home Alone

So I had a fabulous weekend.  2 1/2 days of being all by myself IN MY HOUSE.  It was a dream come true.  There are certain things that are hard to do with the boys underfoot.  And home schooling means they are always underfoot.  Here is a summary of my time ... in pictures.

I spent most of my time organizing and trying to throw stuff away.  I was attempting to do Sarah's 40 bags in 40 days in a weekend.

Things like organized bathroom drawers make me giddy.  Along with uninterrupted time to do it.

Organizing also makes me nostalgic.  I was repacking home school stuff and look what I uncovered.  Where have these years gone?  I want kindergarten back.

I missed his noise.  The silence was quite loud (and nice).

I uncovered some of my childhood pics and discovered that Cry Cry may get his good looks from yours truly.  Is it just me?  Do you see some resemblance?

This makes me happy too.

And this.

And a trip to Ikea.  Who doesn't love that?

To be continued... where the boys were this weekend.  I was glad to see their little smiling faces when they got home.

A special thank you for Chris, Papa, and Tandy who made this weekend possible for me.

Toy Room Organization

We live in a relatively small space considering we have five children.  Our playroom is also the nursery.  I'm not complaining.  There are families with more kids who do great with less space.  And we have all we could ever need or want.  But it does keep me on my toes when it comes to toys.  We can only have so many before all the stuff makes me go crazy.  I do a lot of under the radar tossing into the goodwill box.  A couple of years ago, I came up with a system that really works for me.  The goal:  to make it orderly enough so the boys could totally pick it up themselves. Everything else is put away in a container and can only be taken out if they ask me.

  This is my toy shelf.  I think it was on clearance for around $25 at Target. The white bins are $2 from Ikea.  The bins are labeled as followed:  Little People, Lincoln Logs, cars & trucks, animals, guns & balls, airplanes, action figures, trains.  I go through these bins about every three months and get rid of things they haven't played with in awhile.

Our cars & trucks bin is the fullest.  Go figure.

We have a train table.

A basket of dress-up stuff.

A basket of stuffed animals.

These are the toys I have put up for special play times.  Mostly Lego sets and Playmobil toys.  These and any child under the age of 4 = disaster!

Oh, I also have some big lego bins right next to my kitchen table.  These legos are random and I don't mind if pieces are misplaced.  The boys play with those daily.

That is it.  My favorite part is that I can tell them to pick up the playroom and they know exactly where to put everything.  No more, "But Mommy, I don't know where it all goes."  No excuses.  And I haven't gotten on my hands and knees to pick up toys in a long, long time.