Busy Hands Homestead

Life has been busy - incredibly busy.  In between running errands, loading kilns and my monthly coop shift I sat down for a few minutes to make ornaments with Ivory and Sylvan.  These are quick.  They are simple enough even for Sylvan to remain engaged through out the duration of the craft.  Materials: assorted colors of felt pieces ribbon thread sewing needle scissors How To: I ask the kids to choose their colors and then I cut the shapes for them: 1 set of leaves (or more if desired), 2 flowers, 2 stars and 2 small circles. The flowers, stars and circles are cut while holding two sheets of felt together Make a loop out of ribbon and tack the open end together String the large flower, the star and the small circle onto the needle (Sylvan can do this with assistance, Ivory on her own) Scrunch them down against the loop and return the needle to the center through the flower, tacking the stack of felt to the loop String the remai...

Ivory threaded the needle up and down through the button holes.  Tacking down the tulle, sandwiched between the button and a layer of sparkling felt.   I stitched the whole thing to hair clips.  There they are:  We are ready to go to celebrate a birthday!

Our house looks pretty much like it always has. A drab white exterior, peeling paint on the windows and trim. Over a year of home ownership has passed and we are the only ones that know that things are changing ever so slowly. It is a constant balance of doing those things that need to be done and doing projects that are temporary but increase the immediate functionality of our house . While Adam had in his possession a borrowed sawzall, which he was using to cut through the old steal sewer plumbing under the house, I casually suggested that this might be the perfect time to cut away the wall of our closet. The opening into our bedroom closet was less than twenty inches and those clothes that hung in a neat row in it's confines simply stayed hanging.  It was too much of a pain to retrieve anything. The ceiling panel was a mysterious few inches lower than the rest of the ceiling and I had long decided it all had to go. The wall went, the ceiling panel went, the old layer of f...