Our School Room in 2013

Yesterday's post included some photos of our book bins and shelves... so here is a little more on those, as well as some basic organizational changes I have made to our school room area.

Last year, I had some of our books up high in the den, above the TV/stereo, and that just wasn't convenient.  So this year, I got a few extra bins and sorted the books into them and put a few others on the shelf below the bins.  My thought is that Caroline can just pull down the bin of morning work and pull from it at the table and then put it all back on the top of the bookcase.  Having the bookshelves better organized with all the various books and resources we will use makes me feel less frazzled - and it also shows me just how many books we actually use!!  It really is a lot, yet we typically (if the day goes relatively smoothly, like only a few toddler tantrums, ha) only work from around 8:45ish until noon and then a little bit of finishing up between 1 and 2 while Lucy (hopefully!) naps alone.  We just cover a large variety of books over a week's time.

A few other things I did to better organize our school room... First, our school room is a central room in the house.  It connects to the hall, the kitchen, and the large den.  It was a former den before somebody added on the large den many years before we bought this house.  I like that it is close to the kitchen, the bathroom, and the couches in the den.  It also has a huge closet, which I love, because I store all kinds of art supplies in it, and the toddler hasn't figured out that she can open it yet! ;)  I use the large doors of the closet to hang stuff on... I hung up some bird number cards this year for Cecilia:

I also have a "computer desk" in the school room... with no computer on it.  My laptop lives under the couch, where its charger is, and where I can enjoy it while being lazy on the couch. ;)  But I often take it to the school table, the kitchen counter, etc.  So, the computer desk just gets used as a regular desk for me.  I still rarely sit and work at it - it is really more of a glorified bookshelf at this point!  The printer is on the top, along with printer paper and cardstock, and then supplies we use frequently like tape, pens, paper clips, stapler, 3 hole punch, digital camera... those are all kept up here out of Lucy's reach.

stuff I don't want Lucy to get!

I have some "master binders" here as well - one for Caroline and one for Cecilia which I keep documents in to show what they have done: lists of poems memorized, books read, chapters read in history books, and that sort of thing.  I hope these will be complete records to show what they have read and used over their school years.  Mostly, they are checklists, because I find it simple to type up a list of all the chapters in a history book, have Caroline check them off as they have been read/narrated, and then filed away in the binder.  We can keep track of where we are throughout the year and then also have a completed record of what was done.  I found this idea on a few homeschool websites/blogs and love it!  I especially love the idea of a record of books read - I now have Caroline write down the title and author and date when she finishes reading a book, either just for fun or related to school.

I also have my liturgical year binders here - one for Lent/Easter/Advent/Christmas, and one for Ordinary Time.  Any ideas, prayers, and recipes are filed in these.  The electric pencil sharpener doubles as a bookend, ha.

And this is as clean as my desk has ever been.  If my husband is reading this, he's thinking, "Ain't that the truth!"  I even figured out what to do with my collection of Emerson Hart autographs that was slowly growing on my desk:

I stuck them on the inside of the desk using adhesive photo corners.  See, if I was really and truly obsessed, I would have framed them in archival-quality frames and hung them on a wall alongside professional photos of my children, right?  The drumstick is in the cup that holds pens, permanent markers, and other non-Lucy items!  The cup is a pretty piece of pottery but is concealed (from Lucy, of course) by the little picture frame, which displays three drawings Cecilia made on a notepad in a hotel a year or two ago...

This is my Kindergarten file crate.  I tried using it again in first and second grade, and it just wasn't as useful.  In K, I do things by the letter, so this system works great for filing anything related to the letter A in the Aa file: angels, apples, St. Anne, etc.  For example, I have some fingernail decals and the book The Fire Cat in the Ff week folder.  I have some lima beans painted to look like ladybugs as a math manipulative in the Ll folder.  Some letters last 2 weeks... most of them do, actually... but some get finished in just a week, like Qq.

Here is Cecilia's shelf of "work activities."  I pull out puzzles, games, manipulatives, etc. that go along with the letter we are doing... so since we began Aa this week, we have some alphabet puzzles, an abacus and number cards, puzzles of America (comma United States of ;), an acorn letter file folder game, and our Plan Toys preschool alphabet activity.  Cecilia pulls these out at the beginning of the school day while Caroline does her "morning work" - you know, in that time where I am trying to finish my cup of tea and breakfast, clean yogurt out of the toddler's hair, maybe do a few dishes, and check email or print/look up last minute stuff for our school day...

My new system... I got this partway through last year to replace my "unfinished work gets stacked randomly on top of the unused file crate" system.  I just finally nailed it to the wall this week, ha.  It is out of Lucy's reach, and the front file is for Cecilia's work, the middle for Caroline's, and the back slot for joint work or art projects, coloring pages, etc.  Now they have a place to stash copywork papers that aren't finished... I like to have Caroline only work at copywork for 7 minute chunks o time to ensure it is her best, neatest work - the longer they write, the more tired their hands get and the sloppier the writing.  Cecilia only does 4-5 minutes, and hers is only tracing so far.  But this guarantees that they won't finish a page in one sitting, so having a safe place to store the papers is necessary. 

If they are working on a more complicated project (say, a lapbook with several smaller components that are cut out and assembled), then they keep all the papers and such in their own project boxes - just simple rubbermaid-type plastic boxes with snap-on lids.

 I know this photo was in the last post, but it shows our Circle Time/Morning Basket stuff... I printed up the list of what we do each day so I don't forget something like the monthly poem or to do counting patterns with both kids, etc.  All of the books plus this laminated cardstock list get stored in the orange basket by the couch where we do this after morning work/work activities time each day.

 

Here is Caroline's morning work list - also on laminated cardstock.  each day, she can get started right after breakfast because she can check this list and know whether to write in her journal, do a page in her maps workbook, or review Spanish... it is all right here.  I told her she can even check it off with an overhead marker if she wants, but she has opted not to so far.

I also have a laminated schedule for each child for each day of the week.  Here is Cecilia's Monday schedule.  It just lists the daily tasks and the general order.  No times listed because it is more of an order than a strict time schedule.  It ensures we get to most of what we should each day.

And here is Caroline's Monday schedule.  She can follow this pretty well on her own - I have put an asterisk next to each task that she is expected to be able to do alone, or at least with very minimal help from me.  I tried to stagger things so that I'd be working with Cecilia while Caroline was working alone and vice versa.  After her morning work, she is free to begin the daily tasks since I have begun each day with one or two things she does on her own.

So, that is just a little explanation of how I attempt to organize things so the days can go as smoothly as possible (since little kid interruptions are certain to throw us off here and there anyway, like when my 22 month old was pointing to the top of the closet, howling and saying, "Hidey hole!!!" over and over as we attempted to do Circle Time today).  So far, it has worked well for us.  If anyone would like to share how you organize your school room and materials, I'd love to hear about it in a comment or a link to your own post!

Saints and Holy Days Magnet Box

I have been loving making our magnets and using them on the magnetic calendar to remember various feast days throughout the liturgical year. What I wasn't loving was the storage... I had little plastic baggies for each month, and they seemed bulky and just not easy to organize. So I came up with this idea...

I bought a pill box from the pharmacy section in Wal-Mart... this one has 14 compartments, and I needed one with 12... this is as close as you can get. I also got out some cardstock and my paper trimmer, a marker, and some adhesive corners for scrapbooking (double-sided tape would work here as well).

The pill box is labeled already to show the days and times which the medicines are supposed to be taken... so I stuck the adhesive tabs onto each one and then put a cardstock label on top, so now each compartment lid is labeled with one of the twelve months of the year. I can stack each month's magnets inside in order... they are well-organized and safe in this sturdy box!

Caroline was excited... the compartment lids are fun to open... press the little purple tab part, and they pop open! I even sat around playing with them for a few minutes, ha ha!

Tweaking the Daily Rhythms and Routines for a New Year

With the start of a new year, many people make resolutions, and for most, those begin on January 1st. I may seem a little "behind," then, in that I didn't tweak our routines a week ago, but, being Catholic and all, I have a nice excuse there, because we are only officially ending the Christmas season this evening. So, the celebrating will be slowing down now, and therefore it is a good time to revisit our old routines and tweak them a bit.

Here is our basic daily rhythm as it will be (or as I'd like it to be!) on weekdays:

7:00-7:30ish: Get up and start breakfast (Ideally, I would like this to be closer to 7. Practically, it doesn't work that way!)

7:30ish-8:00: I get dressed and ready for the day while Chris eats and the girls play.

8:00ish: Chris leaves for work and the girls and I eat breakfast. I would like to streamline our breakfast time somehow (oatmeal in the crock pot, perhaps?)... it does end up taking a long time, sometimes almost until 9:00 to finish breakfast. When I start breakfast around 7:30, this means oatmeal or oat bran on the stove. But I like to add a protein as well, so I scramble eggs usually on days we have oat meal, and I serve yogurt with the oat bran. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so i like to make it nutrient-dense; plus, my girls eat a lot for breakfast! So, I add peanut or almond butter, flaxseed meal, a banana, and a bit of honey to the oat bran, and I add toasted wheat germ and maybe some fruit to the plain oatmeal. When I scramble eggs, I grate in some cheese and defrost a cube of pureed spinach to mix in. This in and of itself takes several minutes to add and stir these various add-ins, plus cook time for the eggs. Then, in addition to serving the girls and myself, I pour water or juice, I get out my own vitamins, I get out the girls' vitamins (liquid D drops, gummy vitamins plus C if we are starting to feel sick at all, cod liver oil, and elderberry syrup. That is lots of dosing, administering, and carrying stuff to and from the table. Writing it all out makes it seem even more exhausting than it actually is, ha ha!

So, after breakfast, I do the dishes and the girls have a bit of free play time, or they have some water play in the other side of the sink.

After dishes, I get the girls dressed and ready for the day: teeth brushing, diaper changing, hair brushing, dressing. We make Caroline's bed and I brush my own teeth.

We used to take a morning walk after this, but it has been too cold and our mornings were too jam-packed with that, so I have recently readjusted. We have been going straight to Circle Time instead, during which we sing songs, do finger plays, and do the calendar. It takes about ten minutes.

After Circle Time comes morning chores and snack time... it used to be snack first, but that may need to change without the walk happening. My daily chores have a rotation: Monday is typically nothing big, but doing small chores around the house that just need to be done. Tuesday is cleaning toilets and doing laundry (that is then hung to dry, so it gets folded and put away later ion the week), Wednesday is vacuuming, Thursday is cleaning bathroom sinks, and Friday is changing out the towels and washing towels or sheets if necessary. We change sheets on the beds on the weekends, and additional loads of laundry are done as needed here and there. I sometimes do some dinner prep during this morning chore time.

After morning chores, we have a focused activity of some sort. Mondays are usually baking day, although that gets switched up if we have a special occasion later in the week for which we plan to bake, Tuesdays are for art/craft projects, Thursday is for playing a board game or something like that, and Fridays are for doing an organization project or for visiting friends. Ideally, I would like to visit with friends once a week and help with cleaning or organizing at each other's homes.

After this, it is usually noontime, so we have lunch. I would like to have a weekly lunch rotation (shows how anal I am, huh?), but with leftovers not being predictable, that isn't too feasible. So, we have some general recurring meals and pick which ones work best for the day: leftovers, mac n cheese, "cheesy grains" (cooked bulgar with cheese melted in and topped with sunflower seeds), peanut butter and jelly, grilled cheese... those are our typical lunches.

As soon as lunch is done, Cecilia is taken for a nap while Caroline gets some free play time for about 20 minutes while I get Cecilia to sleep. Then we have rest time for an hour. I start Caroline's rest time by reading a book to her, and then I wash the lunch dishes. For my rest time, I generally read online and have a cup of tea. Caroline is in the den with me and does quiet play and activities. This has not been working well for us lately - she does not focus and ends up bugging me instead. So, she now has a weekly schedule for rest time that gives her some direction. She can read books or lie quietly on the couch for rest time any time she chooses, but otherwise, it will look like this (or be tweaked again after it doesn't work the first week!):

Monday: castle toy, "work activities" (various activities that I have compiled, like stringing beads, matching lids to various containers, and other manipulative-type activities)

Tuesday: puzzles, stuffed animals and dolls and their dress-up clothes

Wednesday: "special" rest time - watching a video

Thursday: Noah's ark toy, drawing/magnets at easel, "work activities"

Friday: castle toy, barn toy, drawing on paper

Saturday: dollhouse, Calico Critters playground toy, and maybe Play-doh or Model Magic

Sunday: listening to Glory Stories CD, puzzles, puppets

I plan to set these items out for her at the start of rest time and let her work through them at her own pace... and if she lacks direction, I may simplify it further to just having puzzles only one day, work activities another day, imaginative toys (castle, dollhouse) another day, etc. We will see how it pans out.

After rest time, and this is one place I need to get more organized myself and make sure that rest time is just an hour and that I don't get lazy on that ;) - we have our afternoon prayer time. We say the Chaplet of Divine Mercy. I don't require the girls to say it along with me, but I pray it out loud so they hear it (Caroline does know it and could probably lead it herself at this point!), but they must sit with me at the window seat, where we have a "holy box" full of books, rosaries, holy cards, etc, that they can look through. I also need to crack down on not letting them bring other toys up to the window seat at prayer time!

Next we have an afternoon snack, which I do have a loose schedule for... I am thinking I need to tweak this so that the morning snack is usually a fruit and the afternoon snack is the cheese and cracker, peanut butter on rice cake kind of thing.

Then is our outside time. If it is really cold, we just walk so that we can stay moving and warm, but otherwise, we go in the backyard. I typically take laundry out with me and fold it. We always check the chickens' food and water and refill if needed, and I gather the eggs. I also rake the chicken poop when needed (and when the ground is dry!). We try to stay outside an hour and a half, although that doesn't always happen if it is really cold.

When we come inside, we have reading time. I usually read the girls three books (sometimes four if Cecilia expresses an interest in a book herself).

Next is dinner prep and cooking time for me... often it is around 5:00 at this point, but sometimes it needs to be sooner depending on what I am making. I don't have a rotating menu, but plan the meals out weekly so that I can prepare in advance for what we will be having each evening. If the girls are getting wild and lacking indirection at this time, I often set them up with drawing or play-doh or rice, or I have them help me in the kitchen.

Then we have clean-up time while dinner is finishing... lately, Caroline does this really quickly if I pretend to be a dog catcher and all the toys are dogs. I scoop up any out-of-place toys and drop them into a laundry basket, and Caroline scurries around to gether up the "dogs" before I get to them, and she rescues them from the basket while my back is turned and returns them to their "homes." Any dogs left in the "cage" after clean-up time will be taken to the "pound" (up high in the closet). I also put away some toys here and there if there is a particularly big mess. I would like to have a few straightening up times throughout the day, but it doesn't happen now. There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the mornings to do it once before lunch. When I have older childrn who can do it mostly unsupervised, they can do it while I get lunch ready, perhaps...

Sometime around now, Chris gets home. He often does some playing or reading with the girls for a bit while I finish up in the kitchen, or he gives them a bath when needed.

Caroline sets the table, and then we eat. We say our blessing and our prayer fro priests before we dig in.

After dinner, we immediately have our evening family prayer time. We say a decade of the rosary while Cecilia has her night-night nursing. Then it is off to brush teeth and put on pajamas, bedtime stories and lights out.

Then... I want to start having my own routine for the evenings. We wash the dishes and sweep the kitchen, and then... I would like to start using Mondays for craft projects (either my own or preparing them for the girls, things like making the saint magnets for the calendar), Tuesdays for planning (Circle Time, LLL meetings) or reading, Wednesdays for blogging, Thursdays for organizing (I really want to purge and re-organize all the closets and bookshelves, make craft supplies more accessible, prepare practical spaces for homeschooling supplies... before I actually begin "officially" homeschooling in the fall), and Fridays for planning my weekly meals and grocery list. Then maybe Saturday evening will be "date night" where Chris and I rent a movie or play a game or something... and Sunday can be just for puttering. Of course, other things will be filled in on these evenings too, like if I need to cook or prepare anything for the next day.

Our seasonal/yearly rhythm is set for us by the Liturgical Year of the Catholic Church, so that is easy! We go to Mass every Sunday, and often we do crafts or baking associated with the season or with feast days.

Off to bed with me!

How to Make Elderberry Syrup

With cold and flu season here, I decided to make some elderberry syrup... much cheaper than buying the bottled stuff in the health food store! H/T to my friend Jessi for telling me how she made it.

First, you need dried elderberries and honey. That's it! Oh, and water, a pot, and a stove :)

Put 1/2 cup dried elderberries into a pot with two cups of water. Bring to a boil, then turn heat down and simmer until reduced, about 20 minutes. I removed any stray stems from the berries before I put them in the pot. I got my elderberries online for $7.50 for a pound plus shipping... believe it or not, Whole Foods doesn't carry them!

Pour elderberries and liquid through a fine mesh strainer.

I found it helpful to use a wooden spoon to press as much liquid as possible out of the berries.

Discard dried berry skins (or... eat them? make them into something else?) and add one cup of honey to the elderberry liquid. Stir to combine.

Pour syrup into a clean jar. Keep in the refrigerator and take a teaspoon or so a day as a flu preventative.

Ramblings on Staying at Home

By "staying at home," I mean physically staying at home - not just as a stay-at-home mom, but as a stay-at-home mom who is not leaving the house constantly for various errands, activities, playgroups, etc. I have been trying to stay home with the girls more lately and have mixed feelings on it. Mostly, I think it is a good thing. It keeps my young children in a stable environment where they are not overstimulated or exposed to things I'd rather them not be exposed to. It costs less money. It lets us focus on home life and doing things together in our home, like projects and baking. It is calmer and less hectic.

I used to try to leave the house often - playgroups, library story time, impromptu trips to Wal-Mart... as a way to get out and about. I thought that is what moms with small children were "supposed" to do. Where I live, the playgroups were all a half hour away or more. But we went anyway, Caroline and I. And we did have fun with it... I think it is a little different with just your first child. It is easier to go places with just one baby or toddler, and since that one child is the only one in the parent-child relationship with you, then it works very well to do these types of outings.

I began re-thinking all this several months ago once I realized that Caroline sometimes expected to go places daily - expected for there to be some planned entertainment outside the home. She'd ask, "Where are we going today?" I also thought back to my own childhood... as a preschool-aged child, did I ever go to playgroups? The McDonald's playground? Out to lunch at restaurants with my mom? I really did not. Therefore, the McDonald's playground was a special place in my mind... a real treat! I don't want my own kids to become "desensitized" to the special-ness of going places, and I want them to be able to really enjoy their childhood memories of making their own imaginative fun at home. I have great memories of this myself. I know that temperament will play into this some... and age... I loved going places as a teenager, but as a younger child, I was fine being at home (and I was as a teen too, but I also loved to get out).

But... I was also in preschool beginning at age three, and so I had that two or three days a week. If I homeschool my children, they won't have that, so we will be at home even more. And that's good, because we will need to be at home to do a lot of our homeschooling.

I think a lot of stay-at-home moms feel restless at home for a few reasons: one, because we are used to being rush, rush, rush, on the go all the time in our culture. The second reason is because we live alone - just our immediate family lives with us, no other relatives (this is true for most families, at least), and we live far apart from friends for the most part... most of us are not good friends with every neighbor on our streets any more, unfortunately, and many moms find that most of their neighbors are gone all day and nobody is at home. Friends who have the same interests and values may live pretty far away. So, it can be isolating to stay home a lot. I think having a big family would help with this, and having family and friends who visit regularly.

Lately, I have also wondered if Cecilia would do better being out and about more, like I was with Caroline, or if it is better for her to be at home more, or if there is really no difference. I think that being the second born plus her own personality come into play here as well. I had that special one-on-one time with Caroline, where she wanted to help me unload the dishwasher and such as a toddler, because there was nobody else around to interact with. Cecilia has Caroline to play with now, which she enjoys more and more as she gets older... but then I don't have as much of that special time with her helping me out with things in the same way. I wonder if this has to do with how crabby she's been since she was about, oh, 15 months old. She was not really a fussy baby, but she's become a fussy toddler. Usually she is fine playing with Caroline for awhile but then comes to me and gets fussy. A fussy toddler - especially on a bad nap day! - makes me want to get out of the house! We went to the park a few days ago after a poor nap and had no fussiness while we were there. It was a change of pace, and it was outside and not in an overstimulating library puppet show or something like that. The fussiness may just be her personality, or just being one. One was a very golden age with Caroline... it is different with Cecilia, but I think, looking at books and other kids around me, that it is a bit more typical this time around. Ones are not supposed to be reasonable at all - and I could reason some with Caroline at that age - but not Cecilia. "Mommy is going to use the bathroom before I pick you up." That doesn't phase her - Mommy's need to go to the bathroom doesn't register at all in Cecilia's mind! And that is the way it is supposed to be, at least with the second born child... I think. But it is certainly tiring!

But of course, it will change, and even if she has a fussy temperament forever, when she is five she will not demand to be held while I am trying to pee (at least I hope not!). She is also so sweet and funny... any time Caroline is crying, she will go find her and say, "Bline... cry... kiss." and give her a hug and kiss. Today, I overheard her singing to herself. She was singing, "Down by the Bay," which says, "Down by the bay, where the watermelons grow, back to my home, I dare not go..." and it has silly rhyming parts like, "Did you ever see a bear combing his hair?" Cecilia's version went like this: "Down... bay... mumehwons... gwo... back... ome... go!!" And then she started saying, "Jason... Mason!" because we made up a silly rhyme using these names, and she still remembers it and likes to sing that part. She can be so silly when she's not crabby!

Anyway, back to my topic... I think maybe there are both pros and cons to staying at home as much as possible. I like the slower pace and that my girls don't expect the constant entertainment and excitement of being out and about and busy most days. I do miss the days of just going anywhere with my one portable baby/toddler (I love how portable AP babies/toddlers are... can usually eat and nap anywhere because they can nurse!)... it is a much bigger challenge with two! I also hope that we can get involved in a Catholic homeschooling group as the girls grow - to give them a place to make like-minded friends and to have that larger Catholic "family" around us. Living closer to extended family would be nice too, although we don't live as terribly far as some (I know there are families who live across the country from all their relatives!).

Just some of my thoughts lately...

What we've been up to this week

It has been a dreary week, threatening to rain a lot but then not really raining much, yet horribly muggy even though temps have been in the 80s. Some of indoor fun this week:

This was a train and then became a tent.

Yes, it looks like a train, but Caroline insists it is an airplane, complete with two "sick beds" (yes Tim, you read that right!) in which Cecilia spent a lot of time being cared for by Caroline. No, she wasn't really sick - she just enjoys sitting in laundry baskets with blankets and pillows and stuffed animals and books piled in there with her...

We celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross

Caroline glues bark onto a shoebox house I set up for her

adding sticks to the house...

The completed project (I helped to color it!)

Wordless Wednesday: Mommy's Little Helper

Simplifying your Domestic Church

This looks like a great book for us Catholic moms... Simplifying your Domestic Church. Sounds very good from this review.

Yet another book to add to my Amazon wish list and my "to-read" pile... ;)

Our Daily Routine

I made these charts for Caroline. They show what our typical daily routine is like, so she has a way to follow along and see what comes up next each day. This is really for days we are at home all day... if we have an outing of some type, then obviously we don't stick to the routine as closely.The first chart shows our morning routine: Get up, Eat breakfast, Get ready for the day, Focused activity with Mommy, Morning chores (Caroline can help or do some free play on her own), Morning snack, Outside time, Lunch time, Rest time. Then the second chart shows the afternoon routine: Afternoon prayer time, Read aloud and Afternoon snack, Chores and Dinner prep, Outside time, Clean up time, Quiet activities, Dinner, Family prayers, Get ready for bed and Sleep.

I don't know where the time goes in a day!! We struggle to get in our evening prayer time, during which we say a decade of the rosary for now. If we are running late, we get the girls to sleep and skip our family prayer time. We also don't usually end up with much quiet activity time before dinner... I have noticed a little more calm in the house since I have made time for dinner prep, but I still sometimes can't get it together enough for whatever reason, and we eat a little too late to have our evening prayer time. I want to make that a priority... it is hard with little ones, especially with a baby whose napping is sketchy if she isn't napping with me. And if I am laying down with her, it is harder to stick to our routine when I am not free to move around and do things other than lay nursing the napping baby. I know this will change eventually... that is one thing that is certain, things always change with children as they grow!

Does anyone have any tips or ideas related to your daily routines? Feel free to share!!

We got a new (old) couch

Chris had been talking about finding a couch for the sunroom. We have some wicker-type furniture out there, and it's not comfortable to lounge on for long periods. So when he moved things around in his office and decided there wasn't enough room for the couch that was there, he asked if he could bring it home. It's in really good shape and is comfortable and not hideously ugly - thus meeting my lax standards for our household furniture (clean, decently comfortable, no more than moderately ugly :) While we have kids, I really don't care what my couches look like as long as they aren't fuschia or something like that. And slipcovers can come in handy in that case! Anyway, this couch really isn't even too ugly... it goes with the carpet, anyway. God really does provide ;)

A fellow Catholic mother and blogger has been doing "Thrifty Thursday" posts, which I love the idea of. Talking about money-saving ideas with other moms in single-income families is something I enjoy, because we can all share our tips! So, one of my tips: try to find gently used items whenever possible. I gt most of the girls' clothing from consignment sales, where I can typically find good quality stuff at a fraction of the cost.

Anyway... Caroline helped carry in the cushions - they are really firm, sturdy cushions that she couldn't quite handle, so she carried in all the small ones. The crown she's wearing is something that was handed out at a parade, I think... it's been kept in her collection of dress-up clothes.

Why didn't I think of this before?

We have metal closet doors in all our bedrooms and on a hall closet. They are heavy and were a pain to take off when we wanted to paint them all white soon after moving in to this house. But I came up with a use for them, too, and in this way they are so much better than wooden doors... magnets will stick to them! Caroline can work with her letter and animal magnets on this surface. I am envisioning further uses too - she has a magnetic calender that can hang on one of the knobs, and the extra pieces can stick to the door! They can stay out of baby sister's reach that way, too, if Caroline keeps them up high enough on the door!