Newest Rug

After a fun visit to my parent's house in the country and seeing all of the creativity, I was inspired to get back to my rug-making. This is my first round rug, but the seventh one out of production. Just finished it today. So far I have sold one rug and given away two as gifts. It is so much fun to give and receive gifts that are made by hand. More on that later.

My Braid Craze

In January, I decided to try my hand at braiding a denim rug. I had some worn out jeans and khakis with holes and lots of "hand me down" thread. Theron is sure that I cut up some of his good pants, though ; o Most of my braiding was done while listening to the Bible with the family. By the end of the month I had finished.

My first rug

Close up

I enjoyed it so much, I couldn't wait to start another one. I did not want to cut up my husband's good pants : ) , so I went to the Outlet Thrift Store on Highway 29 and bought $2.00 of pants for 25 cents each. This was the beginning of February, so I thought . . . "I will make one rug every month."

The beginning of a second rug

This rug got extra time, because I worked on it during martial arts practice and while at my mom's for a three day stay. It's done and February is not yet over.

Second rug

While at my mom's, she gave me three bags full of pants that were going to be thrown out (She and Dad volunteer at the Clothes Been in Dallas, Georgia). I brought them home and washed them and started cutting and began yet another rug.

My Third Rug!

It's fun doing these colors. You can almost see hearts swirling around it. It's going together quite fast, too! Every spare minute (while the kids are doing their workbooks, while waiting for the water to boil, before the kids get up, after the kids go to bed. . .  I think this might be an obsession!) is spent at the "rug table".
The finished size of each rug is about 30" X 37". They make nice accent rugs. I wonder if I will be able to sell any of them. If I keep this up, I could have 24 rugs made by the end of the year. It would be good if my hobby were a profitable one.

Week in Review

We celebrated the Light of the World.

We played Pente and Spin the Dreidel (per the kid's request).

I worked on my rug!

Hannah painted and wrote stories.

Josiah played with his dinosaurs.

And. . . we geocached!

(Ha, Ha, . . . it looks like a tiny Josiah balancing on the GPSr)

We logged the following:

1 failed attempt

9 found caches

1 mega geocoin

1 travel bug

1 letterbox

"Yes! I found two!"

Hannah's find

Interesting container

Interesting tree

Our first geocoin

Back of coin

Oh Lucky You, our first travel bug

Back of it

Peacock Place letterbox with mulitcolor stamp

Other tradable loot

"Where's the next one?'

Wordless Wednesday - Our First Attempt

Day Five - Fun Friday

We still have snow and ice, but today's post is not about that.
Josiah is on the fifth day of Creation in MFW First Grade and I found some bird books at the library for us to read. He found this one terribly funny and wanted to do the craft at the end, too.

If You Were A Parrot

We made a template first, using thin paper we could see through

Josiah, the parrot

The beak even opens to feed your parrot peanuts

Exploring Russia

Spring is definitely in the air and making it harder and harder to stay inside and do schoolwork. Some days we did take our lessons outside, but that just makes the call to come play that much stronger.
With the Jasmine blooming. . .


and the Money Plant making seeds next to flowers. . .

and the azaleas sparkling after a rain,

well it's hard to study about the Arctic and the cold land of Russia. But we did, and we learned alot about ice and snow.

The kids also made a marshmallow craft that looked like an abominable snowman. The idea was from Josiah's devotional book. The lesson was on not being selfish (don't eat too many marshmallows).

I found some really fun books at the library that you might also want to try with your young ones. The first was Come To My Party and Other Shape Poems.

Here's a sample of what you'll find inside. Maybe your kids will get some ideas to create their own shape poems.

The other one is EcoMazes, a fun book of mazes and find the animals. Each two page spread has a habitat theme. It's pretty easy, so even a Kindergardner could do it with you.

Have fun! We're off to the land of Oz! Australia, that is!

Exploring China

Ni Hao! Our two weeks in China seems to have flown past. We enjoyed lots of rice. We also used a Chinese tea set that some friends had given us, for the first time. And I adorned the table with a fancy table runner and placemats they had also given us.

We had to have the kids' favorite, Ramen noodles, and try using chopsticks. Not bad, Hannah!

My little chef also made some wonderful "egg flower soup", as it was called in her cook book. I like it better than what I get at the restaraunt.

Josiah started to get the hang of chopsticks. What? Ketchup with Chinese food?

One day we made paper lanterns. As you can see, I have one child who has learned to follow instructions and . . .

one that we're still working on. He came up with the idea of putting the ribbons on the bottom, though, which we thought was a good one.

There were so many good books to read on China. One of my favorites was the Empty Pot. A good story about honesty.

We had fun with this one- Grandfather Tang's Story. It mentions magic powers, so you might want to preview it before reading. There are Tanagram characters that you can try to make. It helps if you have TANGOES. After we read the book and made the characters in it, We played, using the cards in our TANGOES and Hannah got quite good at it.

Our read aloud is the Gladys Alward story, but we are not through with it yet. It continues for one or two more weeks.

To complete our study in China, we went out to a Chinese restaraunt and had fried won ton,

Egg drop soup,

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Hannah's favorite,

Spring Rolls,

and Spicy Chicken with Garlic Sauce.

When we got home, we watched a movie about Hudson Taylor who started the China Inland Mission. Then we let the kids put lights (glow sticks) into their lanterns and have some fun.
This is what happens when you spin it!

Josiah's didn't stay in his lantern for long.

Well, it was a yummy week. Thank you for reading. Xie Xie!