Work in Progress Wed. and a very important Announcement!

I posted a while back about the Seed Exchange that I am taking part in... Well now it is time to actually send the seeds out! Originally I had planned on hand painting the front of each seed packet, but that idea flew out the window for a couple of reasons! #1 Time and Energy (or lack there-of!*) I am sending out more than 50 packets... that would be a lot of painting! #2 I decided that those seed packets where too small and I couldn't get enough info on them. So I opted for a simple template that I could put all of the seed's info on directly in Microsoft Word, and just printed out the number of packets needed. Then it was a simple matter of cutting them out, gluing them together and filling them with seeds!

To seal them I used my new Japanese Washi Tape! Rodrigo got it for me for Valentine's Day! Wasn't that a sweet surprise?! It's so pretty! I had been admiring it for a long time online, but have never bought myself any. I think these are just perfect!

 

 

And in other news I have been working on this sundress for me. I am making it out of some quilting weight cotton that I've had in my stash for a long time. I found this free pattern online from the fabric designer Heather Ross. (I love her fabrics... so cute!) I liked the pattern because it is so easy to make, even the shirring is simply done using elastic thread, and because it has pockets! I love a dress with pockets!  It still needs to be hemmed and to have the shoulder straps attached. I think I'll make a few more of them and maybe a couple for Claire as well... matching sundresses for Mama and tiny girl!

 

But most importantly I liked the pattern because it will work for me throughout the coming Spring and Summer with my rapidly expanding tummy!

I am very thankful to be able to announce to you all that we are expecting baby number 5 to join our family this coming September! Such exciting news, and truly an important "work in progress!"

* lack of energy... that has been my main pregnancy symptom so far. I am just so tired all of the time! I am 9 weeks along right now, so I should be feeling a bit more like my normal self in a month or two. But for now, this mama is taking things easy. 

Valentine's Day Card Exchange

Here are pictures of the things the boys received from participating in the Valentine Card Exchange over at The Fantastic Five.

 

First to arrive was this sweet little painted box. (Along with 3 bags of Valentine M&Ms for each of the boys, which were devoured before I got a picture of them!)

 Inside the boys found these adorable handmade magnets with their initials on them... 'L'ogan, 'M'atthew, and 'E'than!

 Next they received these sweetly hand stamped heart cards from some very young and hard working "Valentine" friends.

 They also received this beautiful heart transparency card from our sweet friends over at The Forest Room!

They really enjoyed participating, and Matthew and Ethan are already talking about what they would like to do next year. Maybe little Miss Claire will be big enough to enjoy participating next year!

xoxo

Books should be free!

Our family loves audio books! We listen to them while we do chores, in the car, the boys listen to them while playing with legos or coloring. Rodrigo likes to listen to them while working sometimes... if we are not reading, we are often found listening to books!

  
 
 


Most of our audio books we pick up at the local library. But yesterday I found this website through a fellow blogger and was so excited about it I just had to share! It is called Books Should Be Free.  They have have hundreds (possibly thousands) of 100% free audio books from the public domain. I have found them very easy to download directly into my itunes, but you can download the mp3 files directly to your computer if you don't use itunes! This is a great resource. I can't wait to listen to so many of the books, old favorites from my childhood... stories that I want to boys to hear... the possibilities! The hard part is choosing what to listen to first!

(*All of the pictures used in this post are from Books should be free website*)

Another of my very favorite websites for free audio books for kids (especially the younger ones) is Kiddie Records Weekly. Kiddie Records has hundreds of free mp3 files that can be downloaded. This is from their website:

 "Kiddie Records Weekly began in 2005 as a one year project devoted to celebrating the golden age of children's records. This period roughly spanned from the mid forties through the early fifties and produced a wealth of all-time classics. Many of these recordings were extravagant Hollywood productions and featured big time celebrities and composers.


Over time these forgotten treasures slipped off the radar and it has become our mission to give them a new lease on life by sharing them with today's generation of online listeners. Each week throughout the year we added a new recording and before we knew it, our one year project turned into a labor of love now in it's sixth year!"

My little boys love listening to these old record stories and songs! There are many stories found on this site that I listened to as a little girl on my record player. Such fun memories! There are lots of classic Loony Toons and Disney stories throughout the site as well as tons of dramatized bible stories. I'm sure if you take a few minutes to look around you'll find something your children would love to listen to!

Will you "Bee" my Valentine?

First off... Thank you to everyone who commented and emailed us during our recent bout with the flu! We are all right as rain now! Thank you so much for your kind words of encouragement!

This year we signed up to be part of a Valentine's Card Exchange.  The kids were really excited about making their own handmade Valentine cards to send out to "new" friends in blogland. So I thought about it for a while and we bounced ideas around and finally decided to go really homemade! We would make our own paper! Seed paper to be exact, so that our new friends could plant their Valentines and watch pretty flowers grow all summer long!


This is our seed paper. We made it pink by adding red tissue paper to the paper pulp. Once we spread the wet paper pulp onto the screens to dry we sprinkled it generously with flower seeds. We chose cosmos seeds because of how easy they are to grow! Even the littlest gardener can grow lovely cosmos!

Then we cut out a simple flower shape from our homemade seed paper.
 

I found a cute clip art bee and printed out several on card stock. We cut those out along with flower stems from green card stock. The boys glued everything together and we wrote on each valentine:

"Will you "Bee" my Valentine?"

On the back I included a little folded note explaining that the paper flowers could be planted, grown and enjoyed all summer long!

Valentine flowers for all of our new Valentine Friends!