This Little Pig Went to Market (And Got Herself a Makeover!)

Amazingly, when I brought up the subject of maybe painting the piggy to my daughter, she agreed. Her reasoning was, "Because pigs aren't white and red striped with blue and stars."


So, here she is:She is a little brighter (sheesh) and a little more salmon in color than this picture shows, but I would say that this is a definite improvement. Would you agree?

I am not really sure that I am done with her yet. I think that I will live with her for a while before I decide, though.

Getting The Behavior Under Control

I'm going to tell you a little secret. I'm a horrible mother. I let my temper get the best of me way too much, and I get so angry with my children sometimes that it really feels like I am going to bust a blood vessel in my eye one day. My four year old really knows how to push me over the edge. I have been holding onto the end of that rope so tightly for what seems like so long that I just don't know if I want any more kids at all. Then I feel guilty. We worked so hard to get our babies here that I feel so unappreciative of the miracles God has given me. I have to try so hard every day, and I don't know where I would be without Him, but I know it would not be pleasant.

So, last week I was on the computer and I found this Works For Me Wednesday post. I got so excited because I had seen the Dilley Six on TV and knew that their mom had some sort of really involved discipline method, but I didn't know quite how it worked. IFLC even referenced it for me (I mean her readers), so I was able to read it for myself! You can read that here.

I talked to my husband about it that night and he thought it sounded like a good idea, so the next day I set about creating the whole thing. We've instituted it with our daughter, and so far so good! I am praying that this is our answer.


Here are the two charts I made. You can click on any picture to enlarge it. Now the daily chores have to be completed before any privileges are allowed, even breakfast.
Here is the ladder side of the chart. The infractions will change, I'm sure, as we encounter different behaviors that need to be modified. We also consider any extenuating circumstances before we have her move her marker...

Here you can see she has already completed all her chores.

And here is the chore chart without the magnets covering the pictures.

For the "Little Apprentice Duties" she is learning how to do my chores alongside me. I don't expect too much out of her right now. She still pitches in and helps me with them, but I really just want to make sure she's paying attention and watching carefully how I am doing the tasks. As she gets older the chart will, of course, change, and I will change my expectations of her as well. But for now, I think this is enough for her.


By the way, I made the chart and magnets for free out of stuff I already had: scrapbook paper, a circle punch, and old magnet advertisements that I was just about to toss in the trash. See?

This makes me smile every time I look at it!!

A Couple of Silly, Little (But Finished!) Christmas Gifts

Well, I've finished some of those gifts I mentioned that I have been feverishly working on. I had a few that I deemed were safe to show photos without ruining any one's Christmas surprise... So here they are:


We made these butterfly ornaments (okay, so I don't have a hanger on them yet...), and there is a story behind this, but I want to wait to share it because it ties in with some other ornaments I made. I'll just say that both my mother and my mother-in-law love butterflies, so these are for them. Oh, and my four year old called dibs on the orange one...

No story to go with this one... it's a "garland" of Christmas-y houses for my sister-in-law. She has tons of bookcases in her house and we thought this could easily decorate the top of one. I got the idea when I was looking at some back issues of Mary Englebreit's Home Companion magazine (I'll edit this later to put which issue... I don't want to hunt it back down again right now...)

That's it. Pretty boring tonight... I'm wanting to figure out how to make one of those nifty buttons that no one but Alli would want. Oh, who am I kidding, she wouldn't even want one, but I'd hack into her account anyway to put it on her blog. *insert widely grinning smilie here*

Why have I been MIA??

Okay, so my best friend (she just started blogging!) calls me this afternoon to ask me what is going on because I haven't blogged since Tuesday. Well, I've been staying up way too late for the past two nights working on Christmas presents. So, Alli (or anyone else I know IRL), if you happen to get anything that looks eerily similar to something in these photos just know they took some effort on my part, okay so a certain four year old helped a lot! But since we have no money for gifts I had to come up with something... sorry, hope you like it!):

My "Lucy Tree" Angel

I realized that I didn't post a close up of the angel on my girls' tree on our tour, so I'm going to tell you all about her. Hmmm... Maybe I'll even name her St. Lucy. Huh, yeah, I think I will. Come to think of it, I put the "Lucy Tree" up on St. Lucy's Day! Or, maybe St. Lucy's Eve... I think that's a sign, or something. Anyway, here she is before I gave her a little wardrobe update:
Pretty, but I thought she needed some color.


I had a bag of various ribbon. Now, I've got to tell you, I have two hot glue guns in this house, one of which has gone into hiding. And I have, probably around 75 glue sticks for the guns. It beats me where they are. I ended up using all of the part of a glue stick I had left in my glue gun to do a mistreament for Guinevere, so thanks to my neighbor for letting me borrow her Super, Duper, Ultra Hot Professional Burn All Your Fingertips Off glue gun! Thanks Jo!!!

So, after cutting some ribbons to an appropriate length and arranging them to a pattern I thought looked okay, I hot glued them to another gold piece of ribbon.

Some onto the front:

Others onto the back:

Then I folded the ribbon over and over again to hide the edges where I glued. All I had left to do was to tie it around Lucy's waist like an apron, and there you have it!

I think this is a little more festive!

Bathroom Window Mistreatment

I'm going to try and make this short and sweet today. I'm busy making Christmas ornaments out of stuff around my house for gifts since we have no money right now... I'll try to get a post up of them soon.

Anyway I've had this fabric in my closet for a year and a half, I would guess. I was keeping it back to reupholster my chairs at some point down the road. There were maybe six yards of fabric, so I decided to cut it in half and do a mistreatment of my bathroom window.

I got some upholstery tacks from Home Depot, 20 for 97 cents (hey, I just realized there's no cent symbol on my keyboard... what is the world coming to when you don't even use the cent symbol anymore!)! Then I folded my fabric up several times. Then I just tacked it up with a few of the tacks! I didn't even need the glue gun, I just sort of tucked the raw edges in and was done!!

Here are the final results:

A little closer view:

Ah, the casualties of war!!!

Hope you enjoyed this post!

My Silly and Sad Little Ragamuffin Garland

Hooray, I finished my Ragamuffin Garland last night!! It looks a little sad compared to the Fabulous ones by Miss Nester (see this post: http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/2008/04/ragamuffin-memo-garland.html to take a look at some real ones!)

For some reason I misread her instructions and made my rag strips too, too, short, so I had to scrap most of them. Any ideas on what to do with those?? Also, Nester said she makes the base ribbon about as long as her arm and I must have really short arms or something 'cause my garland looks really short...

Anyway, without further ado, I give you my scrappy little ragamuffin garland:

Ta Da!!

Here is a closer look:

Then I decided to finally do something about these cute little cards I have had forever hoping I'd find frames to put them in and hang them for real (do you follow all that?). So, I remembered I had gotten some poster putty and ran off to find it. Alas, no poster putty ever showed up. Poo! Well, this morning I thought I'd just stick them up with scrapbook adhesive and see how that would do. End result?

Of course, Three of the four have since fallen. I put more adhesive on two of them and put them back up. Now I'm off to get the third one back up.

Itty, Bitty, Kitty Mistreatment!!

I've had this blog for how long? And this is my first post?? Who starts a blog without posting for, like, years??? Me. That's who. But I just had to post after being so inspired by theeeee domestic decor diva extraordinaire: The Nester, a la http://nestingplacenc.blogspot.com/ (okay, so I don't know how to do those nifty little things where the word is a hyperlink, yet. Hey, at least I know the term hyperlink!)

I would guess I've been reading The Nester off and on since early this year. But ever since I was laid off in July I just lost track of her. So this week I got all caught up, and I decided it was finally time to quit putting off little projects out of fear that they would not be perfect. The Nester's motto is: It Doesn't Have To Be Perfect To Be Beautiful (AKA: IDHTBPTBB).

With that in mind here is a photo journal of a project I did yesterday:

Before:
Okay, so I know there are SO many things wrong with this picture, but this little ol' house is a work in progress, so just pretend the walls don't really have that nasty ivy wallpaper and that the chair railing isn't about a foot too low, 'Kay??



I had this table that was in the way when we put up our Christmas tree in the living room, so I thought of this:
A little better...

(and, yes, Miss Guinevere is actually going to use her new digs as I'm snapping these!)

After:
So much better!!





Please don't click on the photos! They are soooooo blurry and I'm too lazy to get better ones!

Okay, now I'm on a roll...

Here's what I started working on last night:



Yep! It's the beginnings of a Ragamuffin Memo Garland! Yippy Skippy! I did have to quit because I was getting a callous on my thumb and the tip of my finger had lost all feeling from cutting the pieces. I don't' think I have enough strips cut just yet, but I have to tell you something: I have had these fabric remnants for ten years... TEN YEARS FOLKS!! No... wait... maybe longer than that; they are from samples I used while I was in design in college. To be honest I don't even care if it turns out because at least I've used the darn things!!

Yippy, Skippy, here we go!!