Daybook for September 29, 2014

Outside my window... cool temps and humidity.  We had rain this morning.  It is damp, but I think I will get the kids outside after rest time is over so they can enjoy the cooler air.  It will be back in the 80s tomorrow, supposedly.

Look!  Jeans and light sweater-type thingies are possible now, because of the cooler weather!  And Lucy can wear her favorite fall outfit (the one that 2 year old Caroline referred to as "my ensemble") that I have been finding her wearing at least three times a week for the past month... finally, she might even be comfortable in it most mornings!

This was outside my window last week... Chris's homemade ham radio antenna fell out of the tree.  See the pine tree behind my hand?  If you look closely you can see the rest of the rope dangling from the tree up there.  We don't know if a squirrel chewed through it or what...

 
I am thinking...  how Cecilia is learning her father's sense of humor.  Those of you familiar with Kerrygold butter may get this joke.  We had recently also had packages of the salted variety, and the one she is holding here is the unsalted.  She picked it up and said, "Hmm, shouldn't this kind be called Kerrysilver butter?"

   
I am wondering... why Lucy gets colds so easily... she has the first one of the season already.  Warning - discussion of childbirth ahead, for those who don't like to read about that (I know you exist, even if I don't understand, ha ha)... Here's my possible theory... based on what I know of childbirth, the baby gets colonized with the mother's bacteria as it passes through the birth canal.  Since Lucy was still enclosed in the membrane as she passed through, I am assuming she had less contact - or no contact - with any of that.  Here is just one example of an article about how c-section babies miss out on these microbes.  So could it be that a baby whose face (and Lucy's whole body was encased still!) is covered by the membrane also misses out on these beneficial microbes?  I want a study on this!  Then again, I am going to guess that babies born "in the caul" used to be far more common... many OB/GYNs and even more naturally-minded midwives will sometimes prematurely rupture the membranes on purpose.  Eating lots of protein during pregnancy is said to create stronger membranes, and I have experienced that myself.  I tried to eat at least 80 grams of protein a day while pregnant, and my membranes did not break until I was pushing hard with the first birth, and then not at all with the third birth.  Keeping the membranes intact as long as possible makes for a smoother birth because the contractions are less painful - you still have that cushion of fluid.  So, all that leaves me wondering... which is better?  And could Lucy have benefited from being colonized?  Of course, she has also been getting all the good bacteria and living enzymes in breastmilk for three years now, so I know that is helpful.  Her colds are always very mild... she just always seems to have a runny or stuffy nose every few weeks unless it is summer.

I am praying... for this family.  Such a beautiful story, such a positive example of the beauty and value of every human life.  They need prayers as their daughter is moving towards the end of her life.

I am thankful...  that I have a handy husband.  He can fix so many things... like our refrigerator/freezer.  It has been having issues and he has been able to fix them all.  Plus car issues he has recently fixed, and the blender, and several other things.  Good for money-saving! 

He was doing work on this computer for somebody last week... so it was sitting here by the door for him to take with him to get it back to the owner.  Lucy came up to it and said, "Mommy, what is it?"  I asked her to guess, and she said, "I don't know!!  It's Daddy's."  Cecilia guessed it was a printer.  Then she said, "It's a computer case."  As in, a case in which to carry a computer.  When I told her it was itself a computer, she said, "Where does it open?"  She was thinking laptop.  I had to explain that it has a separate screen and keyboard that are not attached to it.  I guess these things are rapidly becoming dinosaurs...

I am hearing... Lucy moving around in her room over the monitor... she is having rest time in her room, and I am just hoping when I go get her in a moment that she will not have emptied out every drawer of Cecilia's side the dresser again...

***She was wearing a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved shirt under her short-sleeved pajamas, but those were the only things she had taken out of the dresser.  Yay!  She loves to dress up!***

Learning at home... we are studying birds in-depth this year and have been reading through the Burgess Bird Book for Children, which we all love (free version online here!).  I have saved some old milk jugs to make into a few bird feeders to place around the backyard, hoping to attract more of whatever birds may be migrating through the are this fall, so we will probably get those made and hung up this afternoon.  This weekend, Cecilia and I noticed two birds we had never seen before, but by the time we got the camera, they were gone, and we were unable to find them in a bird guide.  We thought they looked like woodpeckers, but one had yellow on its breast (but no red head), and the other had red on its breast (again, no red head), so maybe they were females, or juveniles?  No woodpeckers in our field guide looked like either one.  Maybe I will do an in-depth post about our bird studies this year at some point... 

From the kitchen... made kale chips yesterday, and some of this coconut flour pumpkin bread.  I told Cecilia we'd make peanut butter balls since we are learning about Georgia and which of her relatives were born/lived here... but I might not have all the ingredients right now.  This weekend, we had this chicken enchilada soup, except I made it by using the broth that was made in the crock pot from this recipe and the extra shredded chicken from it as well... both were winners, and a great way to use one whole chicken to make two meals, including the broth for the soup.  Yum.  The soup was great topped with sour cream and guacamole.  

I am obsessed with grilled eggplant.  This was our dinner last week - very Italian.

I am reading... Sweet Sleep, the latest book published by La Leche League.  I bought a copy for our Group library and am pre-reading it before sticking it in there for the moms to check out.  I have also been reading the Couple To Couple League magazine, Family Foundations, that came in the mail several weeks ago.  And I have a stack of books I need to skim through that I got for Caroline... she will be ten in March, so that means we have to start having certain talks soon.  There are a few Catholic resources on these "growing up" topics: Wonderfully Made - Babies, All Things Girl, and The Joyful Mysteries of Life.  I also got a copy of the American Girl book The Care and Keeping of You, and will look through it as well, in trying to decide what to read with her and when.  And I have also been reading through Tea and Cake with the Saints, which is such a sweet, fun little book - a generous friend sent it to us a few weeks ago!  It had been on my wish list for the girls for awhile, and it is even better than I had hoped!

To live the liturgical year... today is the feast of the archangels, so we are having angel hair pasta for dinner, along with carrots (because St. Rafael is the patron of eyesight, and carrots are supposedly good for vision), and a chicken and apple dish.  Later in the week are St. Jerome, St. Therese, and St. Francis's feast days, as well as the Guardian Angels - Lucy was baptized on that day, so I am going to make angel food cake with whipped cream for her baptismal anniversary.  St. Jerome's symbol is a lion - so we are going to make pita pizzas for lunch tomorrow to look like lion faces and read St. Jerome and the Lion, which we reserved from the library.  And we will have Swiss cider fondue for dinner on St. Therese's feast day... isn't fondue French?  It sounds French.  Boom - feast day incorporation.  I want to also do meat fondue... where you put the raw beef into the boiling broth to cook it.  I need to figure out which cut of beef is best... I have a rib steak and a loin tip roast.  Not sure which to use...

One of my favorite things... hmm... coffee.  Now that Lucy is three, and not a baby at all anymore, the possibility of another baby is on my mind, and so I have thought about how I would want to decrease my caffeine consumption if I am pregnant again.  And apparently my emotional response has been to drink MORE coffee than usual, and black tea, to get it while I can!  Oh, and more beer, too.  I guess I will end up going cold turkey if I become pregnant again.  For now, I am thoroughly enjoying it all.

I am creating... I need to be creating a few checklists... I need to pick some poems for Caroline to learn this year and make a list of them and a checklist for her to keep track of them.  I tried letting her choose her own this year, and she picked three and then asked me to pick the rest for her.  We use Favorites Poems Old and New and The Harp and the Laurel Wreath to choose most of their poetry work... both have a wide selection of classic poems.  They have also learned poems from The Child on His Knees and When We Were Very Young by A. A. Milne.

Around the house... almost time to put away summer clothes and get out fall things.  I hate doing that - and now I don't have an extra bedroom to stash the winter clothes boxes while we are in transition and the weather is still fluctuating.  I will have to get out about four fall/winter outfits per child and then switch everything else once cold weather is here to stay.


Pondering these words... "Even when children go to schools taught by qualified persons, some insight on the part of fathers and mothers is useful as hindering the teacher from dropping into professional grooves, valuing proficiency in this or that subject for its own sake, and not as it affects the children." - Charlotte Mason

A few plans for the rest of the week... 
* No PSR at church on Wednesday - fall break.
* Dance class on Thursday.
* Celebrate Lucy's baptismal anniversary on Thursday with angel food cake and the relighting of her baptismal candle.
* Noon Mass followed by lunch and October Homeschool Group at our church.
* Moms' Night Out on Friday evening - going to meet at a restaurant for drinks and maybe snacks/desserts with a few other Catholic homeschooling moms from our group!
* Mountain Day at Berry - BBQ lunch on Mountain Campus and then Marthapalooza Faculty/Staff Family Hour... they didn't do this when I was a student, boo.  I would have LOVED it... they bring in carnival rides and open them up for students from 10-2am... and they have funnel cakes and that kind of junk, and games, and one year Mr. Belding from Saved by the Bell made a guest appearance (weird, right??)... anyway, for $5 each, we can go for an hour in the afternoon, since Chris works on campus.  Anyway, Mountain Day is Berry's big thing every fall, and it really isn't as exciting as it sounds (my friends and I actually skipped it most years because we were antisocial, ha), and this year is the 100th Mountain Day... so, that is pretty cool, so we figure we should go to part of it, anyway, seeing as we still live nearby. 

A picture thought I am sharing...

I still haven't put photos from our beach trip on the blog... only on Facebook.  I hope to get a post done one day with them... this was way back at the beginning of August!

Lucy is Three!

Lucy turned three on September 12, and we celebrated her birthday the following day with family.  I can't believe my baby is three - she is not a baby any more! ;(

The birthday banner... I made this for Lucy's first birthday and have added a section with each girl's name, so it has gotten plenty of use and has been a very versatile decoration!

I typically ask my children what kind of cake or theme they want to have for their birthday... both Caroline and Cecilia have had a fairy castle cake, Caroline had an Irish "Lucky Seven" birthday since her birthday is right after St. Patrick's Day (her due date was actually March 17th and she has a semi-Irish middle name... and she's about 1/16th Irish, ha)... Cecilia had a "Favorite Things" Sound of Music birthday that I copied the idea from another blog since my girls were obsessed with the Sound of music at the time...

Well, I usually don't ask my three-and-unders what theme they want for a birthday because they just don't quite get it yet.  When Cecilia turned three, she requested a "candle cake," so I cut it into the shape of the number 3 and told her it was a candle shaped like a 3.  I think Caroline had a cat-shaped cake when she turned three because she liked animals a lot at that time.  So, I was thinking of what things Lucy is interested in when trying to decide what kind of cake to make for her.  Since I figured nobody else would really be up for a strip-off-all-your-clothes-and-run-naked-in-the-yard party, I decided to focus on another interest of hers.

I bet Lucy is the only child who has had a One Morning in Maine birthday party.  I actually looked online for ideas, and apparently if somebody has planned a party with this theme, it was never shared on the interwebz.  We discovered this book several years ago when Caroline was a Kindergartener and were checking out library books from a list that corresponded with the alphabet.  One Morning in Maine was one of the M books.  We had checked it out again at the beginning of this year when Cecilia was doing M week in Kindergarten.  I bought us a copy of our own finally, and Lucy - quite to my surprise - has requested it to be read to her again and again.  It is quite a long book for a two year old to sit still for - it probably takes a good 15 minutes to read the whole thing through.  But she sits attentively for the whole book every time (and that is saying something for this firecracker of a toddler!).  I guess that is a mark of good children's literature!  If you are not familiar with the book, you probably know the characters from the book Blueberries for Sal.  The author, Robert McCloskey, also wrote and illustrated the classic Make Way for Ducklings, which I remember enjoying as a child.

I loved how easy the cake was for this... no cutting it into a cat shape, making castle turrets out of ice cream cones... In the book, Sal and her father are digging for clams on the shore.  They also take a boat ride across the harbor to the local store, where they get ice cream cones - chocolate and vanilla.  After contemplating how I was going to turn a cake into a boat, and then being unwilling to use nasty blue dyes to make the icing look like water, I had an aha moment of simplicity: a chocolate cake, with some mini chocolate chips and cacao nibs sprinkled on top to resemble the rocks they were digging in... and then a printout of an image from the actual book.  Then, serve it with vanilla and chocolate ice cream cones.  What could be easier?

The cake... with the ubiquitous coffee maker in the background.  I think that thing has been photo-bombing since before the term was even first invented.

I scanned in this illustration from our book and then printed it at high quality on cardstock.  After cutting it out, I taped some craft sticks to the back and stuck them in the cake to make it stand up.  It is fun to sometimes make elaborately decorated cakes, but this one was perfect for Lucy when done in this simple way - it was something she instantly recognized!

Super-amazing tutorial photo: tape on three sticks.  Insert into cake.  At least I didn't share 83 different angles of the same thing like some of those annoying recipe blogs do.  Just get me to how to make the food, is what I say!

Lucy was ready to dig in, with her cousin Julianne looking on!  But first, we had...

CLAM CHOWDER FOR LUNCH!!!

Just like in the book.

Lucy enjoyed it... she had tried clams at the beach and didn't like them plain... but she had also tried clam chowder at a seafood restaurant and loved it, so I made some for our lunch... yes, I realize it is probably weird to say, "Come to a three year old's birthday party for a clam chowder lunch followed by cake and ice cream cones!"  I cheated and used canned clams since this was my first attempt at making it - and it was very easy.  I followed this basic recipe with some adjustments like some of the reviews suggested - like pureeing a bit of the soup in my blender and then stirring it back in, because apparently a good New England clam chowder is never thickened with flour or cornstarch - according to the internet, that is.  I wouldn't know personally; I have never been north of Washington, DC.

Clam chowder, fruit with dip, sourdough bread with butter, and arugula/fennel salad

Then Lucy opened her presents... she got some new books, clothes, and dress-up tutu made by her Aunt Crystal, some animal finger puppets, a Winnie the Pooh bedsheet for her new bed, and several handmade and found items from her sisters... they even gave her one of their old American Girl mini dolls.  I also bought her the downloadable audio version of One Morning in Maine, which she can listen to while she looks at the book.  it says it costs $4.95, but I was only charged $1.95 when I downloaded it...

And she also got...

...a mini trampoline!  That climber and slide in the background in the first photo has since been disassembled and put away, and the trampoline is now in its place.  She had pretty much outgrown the climber and slide.  The trampoline can hold Cecilia's weight too, so they have both been enjoying jumping.

I have to embarrass my little brother by putting in this photo... Lucy will still jump on her trampoline, a couple weeks later, and say, "Uncle Tim lays on my trampoline!"

And here's a sweet one to make up for the silly one... aww, almost 26 year old boys still love their mommies.

After presents, we served the cake and ice cream!

Happy birthday dear Lucy, happy birthday to you!

Cousins Julianne and Chloe opted for ice cream cones.  The birthday girl had some cake plus a tiny ice cream cone!

Hers was mostly vanilla (so the drips won't spot).  She didn't ruin her appetite for lunch since she had already eaten her lunch - in the book, they have their ice cream cones before lunch and don't want to have more so they won't ruin their appetites for their clam chowder!

Another thing we got out for the party was a basket of items I have collected from around the house so that Lucy can act out the story... I had this idea to let her play with these while I was working on school stuff with the older girls each day, kind of like her own preschool-related book activities.  So I got some rubber ducks with baby ducks for her to play Make Way for Ducklings, and I gathered a bunch of stuff for One Morning in Maine and put it all in a basket... here she is playing with everything a few days before her birthday party:

Sal pushed back the covers, hopped out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and hurried out into the hall.

Then she squeezed some toothpaste on her own brush and when she started to brush her teeth something felt very strange!  One of her teeth felt loose!

"May I help you dig clams?" Sal asked.

"I found a tiny baby one!" said Sal.  "You certainly did," said her father.  "But it's too small.  We just keep the large ones, like this.  Let's put the baby clam back in the mud so he can grow to be a big clam some day."

"Then I'll make my wish on this feather," Sal decided.  "Perhaps the sea gull has already made a wish on that feather and the wish is used up," suggested her father.

When they reached home Sal's mother and sister Jane were waiting with a box of empty milk bottles to return to the store and a list of things to buy.

Sal was just about to ask how long it would take for a new spark plug to grow in when Mr. Condon reached up on the shelf and picked out a new spark plug, and put it into the motor.  Sal picked up the old spark plug and handed it to sister Jane.

They walked down the path to the harbor and down the runway to the float where their boat was tied.  They all climbed aboard, carrying the outboard motor, the box of milk and groceries, the feather, the spark plug, and the ice cream cones.

I am always on the lookout for ides for self-directed play for Lucy to do while we are reading and doing other school things... especially using items that we already have lying around the house or that are multi-use.  Chris had the old spark plug already, we had the glass jar for a "milk bottle," the plastic rake and the boat float came from our beach and pool toys, the blue water was a large piece of fabric from the girls' dress-up clothes, the seagull feather came from the beach this August... and the slide was the perfect ramp at the boat dock!

Happy Birthday, Lucy Marie!

The New and Improved Winnie the Pooh Bedroom!

I always knew I wanted to decorate a child's room in Classic Winnie the Pooh decor since, well, I cannot remember when.  A long time.  I had an old Classic Pooh calendar that I saved intentionally for this purpose, and when I was pregnant for the first time with Caroline, I framed many of the pictures from it for the walls of her bedroom (she didn't actually live in her bedroom until she was well over two, but hey, first-time parents, all we knew was that you just HAD to decorate a baby bedroom!).  I also bought a Classic Pooh lamp, light switch cover, and a few porcelain Pooh picture frames, as well as some stuffed animals.  We got a crib bedding set at a garage sale... and then never got a crib, so that has since been resold.  Caroline had a Classic Pooh themed room, and then the years went by, and when Cecilia moved into the room and furniture got shifted, I took down some of the frames and planned to redo it later.  Well, it is much later, and Lucy was ready to move in with Cecilia, now that Caroline is in her own bedroom.  So I came up with some ideas and set them into motion, starting with getting a used IKEA Kura bed to use like a loft so that Lucy could sleep on the bottom.  I decided that I wanted to make a tree to attach to it.  More on that below...

If you have read Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner by A. A. Milne, then you know that many of the animals live in trees, and some of them have signs on their homes.  If you have never read these books, then shame on you.  Stop reading this right now and come back after you have read them! ;-P  Pooh lives 'under the name of Sanders,' and the drawing from the book shows it written with the backwards letters as above.  I decided to make several signs so that Cecilia and Lucy can switch them out if they want to pretend that the tree is a specific house.

This one is for Piglet's house, of course.  Trespassers W was his grandfather (it's short for Trespassers William, or Trespassers Will for short).

This is the sign for Owl's first house, which is named The Chestnuts.  As you can see, Owl's spelling needs a little help.  We love how he tries to spell 'Happy Birthday' in the book and have great fun trying to pronounce it.  After The Chestnuts blows down in a big storm, Eeyore accidentally gives Piglet's house to Owl.  Piglet is too gracious to object, and Pooh lets him come live with him.  Owl names his new house The Owlery but spells it 'Wolery.'  There is a great debate in our house as to how this misspelling would be pronounced.  I actually misspelled Wolery and have not yet made a new sign, ha!  I don't own a copy of The House at Pooh Corner, which is where I could have checked the spelling.  Whoops.

Above the dresser are the six large calendar pictures that I framed when initially setting this room up as a child's bedroom. 

And here is the view of the four directly above the dresser.  I love that they have little blurbs from the books in addition to the illustrations.  Clockwise from the top left we have: Tigger and Roo stuck in the treetop, Pooh and friends trying to get Eeyore out of the stream by throwing a large rock near him, Christopher Robin coming downstairs with Pooh bumping behind him, and Pooh at Owl's house when he is looking for Eeyore's lost tail.

On the sides are one of Eeyore to the left and one of Christopher Robin and Pooh to the right.

The bookshelf next to the windows has the Pooh lamp on it, as well as a picture frame and a music box.  I need to update the photo in the frame - that is a picture of one year old Caroline!  Now that it is Cecilia and lucy's room, I need photos of them in this frame and the one on the dresser of Pooh reaching to get a honey pot off a shelf.

 The music box, sadly, had an accident of an unknown nature.  It happened one day long ago when we had lots of kids over.  Nobody could tell me exactly what had happened, but poor Piglet and Tigger lost their ears. :(  But it is still adorable, so it is still on the bookshelf!  The tiny set of Winnie the Pooh books are from BP.  Yes, the gas station.  I have no idea how we got them, actually, but they have the BP logo on the backs.  Lucy really likes them right now.  They contain excerpts from the actual book.

This is above Cecilia's bed.  Hers is the top of the loft, but as you can see from the photos, it is not very high.  I didn't want Lucy to climb up and do acrobatics up there and then have a six foot fall.  Cecilia's crucifix is above her head.  I have to figure out where to put one for Lucy - attach it to the bed itself, I guess.  There are also these two smaller framed pictures from the old Pooh calendar - it had a section in the back with tear-out postcards.  They were the perfect size for smaller frames... there are also two above the lamp in the above photos.

Three more postcard-pictures in frames beside the closet door. 

And here are the stuffed animals... I had the Eeyore since I was in high school.  He came to college with me.  The kangaroo is from some random place and is not actually meant to be a Winnie-the-Pooh stuffed animal, but it works for Kanga.  The other three were bought when I was pregnant with Caroline - same brand as Eeyore (Gund), but they had changed them to a fuzzy style.  Piglet was one of Caroline's favorite stuffed animals when she was two.  She called him "Me" because of the part in the story when he wrote the note that said, "Help!  Piglet (me)!!"  She also insisted that Piglet was a she and also gave "her" elaborate extra names: 'Piglet Me Plip Ditz' was the longest and funniest one!

The chair they are sitting on belonged to my mom - it was in her kindergarten classroom!!  They redid the furniture in the school and gave the chairs to the parents or something along those lines... so cool!  We repainted the chair pink - it used to be painted a dark brown.  I think my mom made the cushions on it.  It was in my room when I was a child.

The bed came still partially assembled from the previous owner... you can switch the slats so that they are either all white or all blue.  That was a hassle, so we just left them.  For Lucy's birthday, she is getting a vintage Classic Pooh flat bedsheet and pillowcase from eBay.  I love eBay!  I'll just use a plain white fitted sheet with it.  We have some other flat sheets that were my brothers' when they were little.  Apparently old fitted sheets don't hold up too long.  Although those green sheets on there in this photo were mine in college, so... But the fitted sheet from my Snoopy set is long gone.  Yes, I had Snoopy sheets in college.  My kids still use the flat sheet and pillowcase.  Old sheets are the best - they are so soft!  We even have one that from the 80s that has Snoopy playing what looks like an Atari-style game, ha.

The tree was a blast to make.  Well, it was for me.  You can ask Chris if he had fun cutting it out with his jigsaw in the thunder.  Making big trees out of paper was almost a pastime of mine... I made several for my mom's preschool, and Chris and I made one together when we first started dating, awww.  (I tried to put a heart here, but Blogger apparently sees the little pointy thingie as being code and it messed up my post and gave me a long section of html saying "Blogger data escaped you."  Oops!!)  The trees I have made in the past typically had each individual branch cut out, and leaves could be attached, but I figured that Chris and the jigsaw would not appreciate all those curves and points, plus I was going for stability.  There is a separate panel of branches/leaves that is attached to the end of the bed - I initially wanted to make a trunk on that part too, but I ran out of wood.  So it is just the leaves on the end, to keep anyone from falling off the end of the bed, or so they will break the leaf section off if they do fall, ha.  You can see just a little bit of blue above that leaf panel on the end - that is a tent that came with the bed.  Cecilia doesn't like how dark it is when the tent is pulled down the entire length of the bed, so it is bunched up at the end for now.  When the tent is fully extended, I bet it will look kinda like a treehouse sticking out of the treetop!


I don't recommend spray-painting an entire six foot tall tree.  Maybe they used to make spray paint cans easier, but I thought I had given myself carpel tunnel or something for a few days afterwards!  It was cheaper to get spray paint than a can.  The leaves and bark are just acrylic paint that I sponged on after cutting some old sponges into the shapes I wanted.  I was hesitant about the bark; it is not quite the look I envisioned, but it is better than a bare, flat-color trunk all the way down.

The tree is screwed into the wood of the bed in a few places, and we plan to get an L shaped bracket to attach the two panels together on the backside of the leaves, just for added stability.  I freehanded the tree and then adjusted it a bunch until I liked it before Chris cut it out.  Maybe I should sell templates, ha. 

You might have noticed the pictures above the bed... these were Cecilia and Caroline's addition, completely their own idea.  Cecilia drew each character from the book, then Caroline wrote names on them and colored them with watercolor pencils, and they painted over parts of them.  They really wanted to help decorate the room, and they spent a long time on these.  I love when they come up with ideas like this... I only wish they'd mentioned it to me so I could have given them watercolor paper.  Chris suggested that we laminate them so they would hang flat.  I put them up above the bed with a strip of ribbon to connect them, making a sort of border along the top of the wall above the bed.

Cecilia put the drawings in the order in which she wanted them to be hung along the wall.  Below Tigger, Rabbit, and Owl, you see her Guardian Angel craft she made at some point.  Caroline made one for Lucy, too, so it is hanging on the underside of the bed on one of the inside panels.  That awesome framed picture is an amazing, huge cross stitch picture from my college roommate, Aura Lee.  It is a gorgeous fairy tale scene with the alphabet and numbers in the border.  Caroline pointed out that it is actually hers... it does have 2005 cross stitched into it, after all... but for now it will stay in Cecilia and Lucy's room.

Here are close-ups of their artwork, taken before I hung them up:

 

Piglet and Pooh are my favorites of their drawings here!

Above their Pooh and Piglet lightswitch is their little "shrine" area, ha.  Except it might be sacrilegious to put Anne of Green Gables's house and a cross stitched baby bootie picture in a shrine, so...  Really, I just put little breakables up here out of reach.  The St. Clare and St. Cecilia statues came from my brother Tim, who bought them in Italy for Cecilia, his goddaughter.  They are her patron saints since her name is Cecilia Clare.  The little one of Saints Francis and Clare is one he got in Assisi, and we decided to make it be Lucy's.  I think my mom might have made the baby bootie cross stitch; I will have to ask.  It has my name and birthdate on it.  The three crosses belong to each of the three girls: the Noah's ark one was given to Caroline as a baby, the small one with the girl praying was for Cecilia from Uncle Tim on her baptism, and the baptism cross was given to Lucy by her Gran and Grandad.  Caroline has another pink cross that I think is hanging somewhere in her own bedroom now...  At some point, I have thought I might put pegs on the underside part of the shelf for them to hang up rosaries (or, let's be realistic, push pins or nails are much more likely!).

Some varied views of the room....

My grandfather made that wooden circus wagon when I was little - it is a great place for keeping stuffed animals.  It used to be in my bedroom and has survived over the years, maybe because my mom got on to us whenever she found us trying to sit in it and pull it around!

The frog organizer on the closet door was something like $5 from IKEA many years ago... their socks, tights, and bloomers/cartwheel shorts are stored in there.  The fairy picture on the wall was made with a tracing kit by Caroline as a birthday gift for Cecilia one year.  The "Child of God" wall hanging was given to Lucy by my parents (and her godparents) for her baptism.  The Holly Hobby-type hooks were in my room when I was a kid - Cecilia keeps her dance bag hung there as well as a couple little purses and bags.

 

Cecilia and Caroline also drew this Pooh scene, so I hung it on the back of the door.

These two are my favorites of all the framed Pooh pictures... Christopher Robin nailing Eeyore's tail back on, and Pooh meeting Tigger in the candlelight... so sweet.

So, the room is a mixture of my favorite way of doing things: reusing/repurposing old items, secondhand furniture and such, and handmade pieces and touches. 

Hope you enjoyed the tour of our Classic Winnie-the-Pooh bedroom!

Update: The sheet came in the mail - here it is!

 

And this evening, Cecilia showed me the setup she had created in the tree... All I can think is that Tigger has some amazing skillz to be staying in that position by himself!

And she made an elevator too - Pooh is going up into the tree to join the other animals: