Love One Another and Be Kind

Sometimes it's hard for my children to spend time together without getting on each other's nerves.

It may be hard to believe, looking at their sweet faces, but it's a daily struggle for each of them to remember that the other one is a person with feelings, just like them.

O.K., this one is doing just fine, I just had to add a gratuitous cute baby shot in here...

So we implemented a couple of family rules at the beginning of the Summer, which we repeat daily, sometimes many, many times. 

Love One Another & Be Kind  and 

Treat Others Like You Want to be Treated.

 This week we started making a poster that we can hang up in the house to remind ourselves of the first rule (which is useful in nearly every situation)

Beyond the end outcome of having a poster to remind us of our family rule, the making of this project has been great for the kids.
Having something that they can do together that is creative, ongoing, and quiet has been invaluable to the sanity of the house.

A Fifth Lamp Kind of Morning

Yesterday I woke before dawn to nurse the Youngest, and since I have been having a tough time falling back asleep I went for a walk.
The walk turned out to be about 4 miles; I crossed one bridge into mainland Saint Paul, and came back across the other one.
I did a cursory search for the camera, but since it was 5:45, and I hadn't put it away, we didn't connect.
I was a little sad about that, because the moon was huge and pink and beautiful.
Flash forward to this morning, waking before dawn with the Youngest again, who was having tummy troubles and I decided to take another walk, this time with a tiny, sleepy pal.
We didn't make the loop this morning, just a quick jaunt over to the fifth lamp to see what we could see.

I could make this a habit.

Perfect Day

After the whirlwind of the last two weeks of working, and then some truly atrocious weather, we haven't had much unstructured time outside lately. Today the dewpoint was so much lower, and there was even a little breeze, so we headed to the playground for some much-needed vitamin d and just being outside.
There was monkey barring, swinging, knitting, reading, running, and giggling.

Follow that up with a delicious lunch, some time in the wading pool (which is looking comically small with these two in it)

And it turned out to be the perfect day.

Yarn Along

Joining Ginny, though I think I may be cheating a little...
I haven't been doing that much knitting, but I did do a little hand-sewing tonight.
The Youngest is growing like a little smiley, chubby weed, and she has grown out of a bunch of her clothes.
I was a little sad when she grew out of her latest sleeper, so I decided to convert it into a little dolly so we could hang on to it.
This little star baby is inspired by a pattern in Nature Babies.
I like to use baby socks for doll heads.
They come in great colors, and I always seem to have a big pile of single socks when I finish folding the laundry.

I started reading a new book this week too.
My parents gave me Animal, Vegetable, Miracle for my birthday.
It's a great read so far.
What's on your needles tonight?

Homemade Noodles

 With some help from my sous chef home made noodles made it on the menu for lunch today.

Fresh Pasta
1 cup flour
1 egg
small amount of water

Pour the flour onto your counter making a well in the center.
Break the egg into  the well and using a fork mix the flour and egg together.
Sprinkle water over dough and knead into a dough for about 30 seconds.
Let dough rest on the counter for a few minutes.
Knead the dough a second time and run through pasta maker.

When I use my machine I start with the largest setting and run the dough through, then fold in half and run it through again.
This dough is pretty shaggy and sending it through the pasta maker smooths it out.
After it has gone through at the widest setting a few times, send it through at narrower settings a click or two at  time until it's thin enough to run through the cutting rollers.

These noodles cook really fast. It only took about 2 or 3 minutes to boil them.

They were delicious.

Keep Calm and Craft On

It's time to Keep Calm and Craft On again, and I just realized that I haven't posted at all this week!

I have mentioned before that I work at a local yarn store, and this past week I taught my annual childrens' fiber camp.

We dyed yarn with Kool-Aid, knitted, crocheted and needle felted. 

It was lots of fun, though a little hot for wooly endeavors.

I made this little wall hanging as a sample for the kids, to show how easy and fun it is to needle felt.

 As I was demonstrating I remembered how easy and fun it is for myself! I bought this book, and I am inspired to try making some little needle-felted friends for the kids.

In my quiet evening moments this week I was also able to do a little spinning on my new wheel.
It's not perfect, by any means, but it is making yarn! I wound off my first ounce or so of single spun, and I am working on some more to ply with it.

I had a few hiccups getting the wheel to run smoothly, mostly from my own neglect in following the directions, but it mostly does what its supposed to do now.

I have a few fun things to try out today with the kids (one of whom is feeling low with a cold) so I may post later on to share that.

What's on your creative to-do list today?

I'm Finished!

The Elder and I worked on this for a couple of hours yesterday, and today it's finished.
Now to learn to spin ;)
Joining in with Keep Calm and Craft On.