Apparently even handsaws are dangerous.

 I know this picture doesn't do my wound justice, but just imagine a huge punture in my nail and just to the right of it.  Seriously.  A handsaw did that!  Who knew?

A while back, Parker grabbed a little bow and arrow set from the Dollar Tree.  It did amazingly well considering the quality.  However, yesterday after hours of abuse, all 3 arrows were broken beyond repair.  So me, being the awesome mom that I am, said "Hey, we can make some great arrows that won't break near as easily!"  Can't be hard.  Right? 

Everything was really easy and going pretty well.  I cut two dowels in half to make four arrows.  Then I glued a little pom-pom on the end to prevent any debilitating eye injuries(hopefully).  They looked pretty awesome!

 Then all I needed to do was cut a little notch into the tip for the string to go through.  I thought it seemed simple enough.  The first one went like a dream.  Easy-peasy.

But then on the second one, I cut my pointer finger.  Not too bad, but I realized it wasn't going to be as easy. Well, because I'm such a trooper (or stupid--one of the two), I kept on truckin'.  I finally got that one done.  But on the third one, I had a big slip and honestly, at first, I thought I might have done worse damage because there was a lot of blood flowing.  After I ran it under cold water for a while, though, I could see it wasn't really that bad.  But, dang, it hurt!  So, the fourth arrow has nothing.  I gave up.  Or got smart.  Hopefully it will work.  It seems to work okay when I try it out.  Hopefully it's good enough for four-year-old hands.

Lesson learned: handsaws are really sharp.  Yikes!

Office Chair Before and After

I scored this beautiful chair for free off of good ole' Craigslist.  I was hoping to be able to do a restoration to the wood (my first), but the caning was so disgusting, by the time I got it cleaned, I knew it wasn't going to work.  So I resorted to paint which, honestly, fits in quite well with our decor.  And I love the bright happy fabric I was able to pair it with!

Here are the sad befores:

 I had not touched the chair.  It was honestly this bad.  It was so disgusting to take apart because the cushion stuff (technical term here) was rotted and disgusting.


And the gorgeous afters!  I finished it last night at about 11 and I had to take pictures right then and there, so please excuse the horrible lighting.  Who am I kidding?  I just really don't know how to take pictures anyway, but we can blame it on the lighting.

Hmmmmm...sigh!  I'm so happy with how it turned out.  It was definitely worth the 2 hours it took to pull out all the staples. 

Doesn't that fabric make you happy!

Newest creation that we love!

This is one of my newest creations that both the kids and I love!

It is super simple.  It's just a cookie sheet that I mod-podged with some super cute scapbook paper.
Then I wrote the days of the week.

The circles and the stars I got as a free printable from **oh heavens, I don't know.  I just spent 30 minutes trying to find where I may have gotten them from**.  Either way, I did not make it, and some fantastically creative woman did.  *To that woman:  Thank you!*  I still have the files, and since they were free, I'm sure she wouldn't care if I shared.  If you want them, let me know and I can pass them on. 

Dang, I really don't like not giving the credit to the person who did this.  If you know, please tell me.

Continuing on...I just sent them off to Kinkos to print them. Then I spent hours (seriously) cutting them out.  Then I laminated them.  Then I spent more hours cutting the laminated pieces out.  Then put little strips of magnet on the back.  There's probably an easier way to do it, but I like to make life complicated. 

There are tons of different activities and regular routine things for both the kids and parents:  school, playgroup, park, swimming, library, FHE (Family Home Evening), cleaning, shopping, camping, Dad's Trip, Mom's Trip, vacation, church, and on and on.  

Parker really loves this and it has helped to teach him the days of the week and their order.  I love it because we can talk about how something is going to happen on a certain day in the week and he can tell how far or close we are to that activity. Overall, I'd say this little contraption is pretty much the bomb-diggity!

P.S.  I just spent about 2 minutes of my life contemplating whether I should write the b-o-m-b word on our blog.  I don't want to attract any creepazoids.    I hope that was 2 minutes wasted.

 The kids had so much fun doing this for their dad.  

We miss you Parley!  Have a happy Father's Day!

We've had the bird flyin' around

This morning, Parker held up his hand with just his middle finger up and asked, "Mom, what does this mean?"

Hmmm...okay.  *remain calm*  "well, normally it means something really mean and yucky, and it's something we never want to do.  If we ever see someone do that, we should ask them not to," I stated very calmly.  "Where did you see that?"

Then Parker, with tears in his eyes said, "Someone showed it to me and it made me really sad."

That's all the conversation that's really necessary to share, but as disturbing as it was to have my child flip me off, it was so sweet to see how sensitive he is to unkindness.  I honestly don't know where he could have seen that, and I'm not sure if he was actually even trying to do what he did. 

{momentary  thinking period}

Now that I think about it, he may have been trying to do some sign language (I guess that is a form of some type of sign language).  He's been learning a lot of ASL at church.  Man, now I feel like the worst mom of the year.  My child was probably trying to do some sign and I made him feel horrible.  oops.  This is a learning moment.  My poor children.

The point is...well, I'm not sure.   I just thought it was a little humorous. 

You can learn two lessons from me here:
1.  Stay calm (as I did)
2.  Don't assume (as I did) that your child is giving you the birdie when he holds up his middle finger.  It may cause great distress.