7 Quick Takes Friday

I have a whole lot of little random things rattling around my brain lately.  I keep thinking I should write a post about that.... but it would be one sentence.  When I saw 7 Quick Takes Friday over at Conversion Diary, it was a little gift of brevity from God!

1.  I've been getting ready to start our home school year all week.  The curriculum I'm using is ordered, and I'm very excited about it, so our actual timeline will likely depend on when it gets here, since we'll probably just dive right in.

2.  I'm contemplating, after these many years of using children as an alarm clock, getting my own.  I KNOW!  It sounds terrible.  But there may be some relief in having my coffee before there are three little voices at the side of my bed making their imminent starvation my problem.

3.  I've also been working on Brenna's quilt, and as I've mentioned a time or two, I like to make things harder than they were supposed to be.  Due to my overestimation of my own abilities, I'm having a problem with the dimensions of the quilt.  The style I chose moves around a lot.  Anyhoo, I also don't really love the way it's all coming together.  It makes me glad I'm getting all this learning out of the way while my children are young enough to think everything I make is THE COOLEST THING EVER!

4.  Isaac is killing me.  He is loud, insistent, obnoxiously stubborn, LOUD, he hits, he throws, he screams, he's fearless to the point of injury, and he's loud.  All the time.  If he's awake, I'm stressed.  Definitely my hardest toddler.  Then he smiles, and oh.my.word.  He's beautiful.  Charming.  Such a gift.  Then he throws his shoes at me.

5.  It's been hot.  Big surprise, right?  So we've been traveling around the area finding things to do on the weekend just to get out of the house.  We figure it's better to be hot someplace interesting.

A few weeks ago we went to Oak Alley Plantation.  It was beautiful.  The tour probably would have been better if the above mentioned toddler hadn't felt it was imperative to be louder than the guide at all times, causing the two of us to have to leave, much to the relief of the other paying customers.

This weekend we're going to New Orleans Museum of Art.  It'll be the kids' first time at an art museum.  Yay for culture!

6.  I can't figure out what to do for the Brenna and Nathan's birthdays.  I'm a little wary of inviting three or four six year old boys over to climb my walls for a couple hours, but it will be too hot to do anything outside and I'm not willing to pay several hundred dollars to rent a birthday party venue for a total of eight children.  Anyone have any ideas for me?

7.  Ummm...

We got a good coupon for a set of tires, which we will need reasonably soon.

Or,

I can't find a picture I like for the place of honor in my wall of pictures, so the frame is still empty.  It's starting to bug me.

Oh, I know! 

This week I wrote my to-do list on the white board, really big.  It's awesome, because I can't ignore it!  I have been so productive.  Of course, that means that my children REALLY, REALLY need to use the white board that they've been ignoring all summer, because clearly it's the most desirable space in the house.

THE END

That's What the Promise is for.

Found this today over at BooMama.  Love her.  Love this.

Heart to Heart

Nathan and I were having a little chat tonight in bed about some things on his mind.  I was explaining what an addiction is, and how someone doesn't feel normal unless he's had whatever he's addicted to.  He immediately understood:

"Like you're addicted to coffee?

"Yes." (smile)

"I think I'm addicted to TV.  And scones."

Practice makes... well, hopefully at least better.

I planned on quilting Brenna's quilt by hand... which would take approximately twelve and a half years.

But then I came across this and this.  So fabulous.

And I also love her free motion quilting.  Which is faster.  And hard.  So I started looking for directions, tips and tricks.  I found directions, but as for tricks... well, most everything I read said practice.  Practice, practice, practice.  I hope no one paid money for that advice.

So I have been practicing.  Since good quilting fabric is expensive, I went to my handy local Giant Discount Establishment and bought a couple yards of cheap fabric.  But even then, batting was still more expensive than I wanted to pay for practice materials.  So upon consideration of the materials at hand (meaning, spread across the floor of various closets) I decided to quilt one of the "mess" towels we keep around for cleaning up the plentiful spills around here.  Brilliant, right?  Well, sort of.  Not really smooth, and TONS of lint, but it's doing the job.

Free motion quilting is basically using your sewing machine needle to draw pictures on the fabric.  But instead of moving the pen, you move the paper.  So the key is to keep the foot pedal at a steady pace, while also moving this huge, heavy quilt around under the needle... and make it look nice.

 

I divided the quilt sandwich into squares, and I'm practicing a different style in each.

I love spirals.  And I suck at them. You can see here how moving the fabric and the pedal at the wrong speeds really impacts stitch length.  It's totally like learning to drive a car again :).  One of the tips that I keep coming across is "don't look right in front of the needle.  Look where you want it to go."  I think I heard that a time or twenty when I was learning to drive!

I think this is the one I'll use on Brenna's quilt.

How cute are these guys?

This one is Nathan's favorite.

I'm not ready to start on the quilt yet... I really want to get my stitch lengths under control, but I think I might be able to start next week sometime.  Yay!

Just had to share...

Isaac OWWW! from Miranda Stewart on Vimeo.

A couple notes:

This display was after a pillow fight, which is why Isaac didn't think anything of Brenna popping him in the nose.

There are shoes everywhere because they are Isaac's latest obsession.  He carries them around and throws them at whomever he thinks might be in need of a pair of shoes (and he always carries the pair).

Poetry

I've never cared for poetry.  I don't really get it.  As a kid, I couldn't write it, and well... there just was no reason to try.  Except Shakespeare, because actually, I love the sonnets.

So it has come as a fun surprise to me to read kid's poetry.  I love it!  A.A. Milne is a favorite, sweet, personable.  And to be honest, one of my favorites was a bit of deja vu:

Spring Morning

Where am I going?  I don't quite know.
Down to the stream where the king-cups grow-
Up on the hill where the pine-trees blow-
Anywhere, anywhere.  I don't know.

Where am I going?  The clouds sail by,
Little ones, baby ones, over the sky.
Where am I going?  The shadows pass,
Little ones, baby ones, over the grass.

If you were a cloud, and sailed up there,
You'd sail on water as blue as air,
And you'd see me here in the fields and say:
"Doesn't the sky look green today?"

Where am I going?  The high rooks call:
"It's awful fun to be born at all."
Where am I going?  The ring-doves coo:
"We do have beautiful things to do."

If you were a bird, and lived on high,
You'd lean on the wind when the wind came by,
You'd say to the wind when it took you away:
"That's where I wanted to go today!"

Where am I going?  I don't quite know.
What does it matter where people go?
Down to the wood where the blue-bells grow-
Anywhere, anywhere.  I don't know.

The first time I read this to the kids it sounded very familiar.  I read it through again and realized where I've heard it before- one of my favorite movies as a kid: Kindergarten Cop.  As silly as it is, every time I read it now, I wonder what it is about this particular poem that the writer's of that movie wanted to share it.  It is definitely a read-aloud.  If you're not a fan of poetry yet, try reading it aloud.  It has the most beautiful rhythm.

So that's what I'm thinking about today.  Poetry, and starting back at the beginning to learn to love something.

Splash!

Rainbow Making

To make a rainbow,

light must learn to paint

with beads of water

mixed with air

just right,

and master every color 

row by row

to shape a bow.

It seems to take 

a lot of stormy tries

to watercolor-paint

on misty skies.