Books, Books and A Sale

The Manitoba Families of Multiples is having their spring used toy and clothing sale coming up.  So that means that I have to get my stuff together.

It's a lot of work, but so worth it.  Today I decided to go through our books.  We have a TON of books, but as I was going through it, I realized that we have lots of little kid books.  So the majority of ours books are going in the sale.  I also realized that Clayton "loved" some of the books alittle too much.  He chewed the crap out of some of those books.  He's still a chewer now.  I'm always telling him to take this or that out of his mouth.

Look at some of the books we have

If anyone is interested the sale is this Saturday!
You will be able to find about 10 items of anything you are looking for.

Project: Jean quilt

So a friend of mine made a jeans blanket.  Although I've never seen it, but when she talked about it almost everyone would said "I love my jeans quilt" "It's the best quilt"  So I thought hey I'll give it a shot, why not.  We had inherited a sewing machine from Dustin's grandma after she passed.  I had a sewing machine downstairs but it's one of those ones that's in a cabinet, so you need LOTS of room to sewing anything.

So now I went searching for jeans.  Dustin is a pack rat and keeps everything, so all his old jeans were in a box downstairs.  It took me about 2 days to mark and cut everything.  I didn't want one with the pockets, although I kept the pockets for other blankets.

I cut the rectangles, I used part of a cardboard box. The rectangles were about 10.5" long. The cardboard box is actually part of a baby wipes box. 

So I needed 9 rectangles across and 11 rectangles down which worked to about 99 rectangles.

I sewed them together.  I sewed them about 0.5" from the edge.

 I also only had a few really dark patches.  I worked it out that they all fell in a pattern.  In one line the black fell into the 4th square, then the next line the 3rd square, and so on and so forth.

I laid the blanket out on the floor so I could visually see what it would look like.  On a side note, it was really hard to keep the dogs off this blanket.  Every time I went to adjust something there as a dog's body part on it.

Then I sewed everything in sections.  I sewed two rectangles together, then one line of rectangles, then I sewed a section of 4 together.  I was always double checking to make sure I had the right black rectangle in the right place.  Lots of work but it only took about 2 days to sew it together.

It measured about 68" by 84".  I measured in the center of the blanket to get a true measurement.  Then I had to put the quilt batten in.  That part was easy and quick to sew.

I bought a king sized sheet from Jysk.  It was about $11.00.  I know some people put fleece on but I thought that would be too warm for Dustin.  He gets really hot when he's sleeping.

This was a bit of a pain. As I had to make sure that the sheet wasn't wrinkled and was laying flat.  Then I sewed one side at a time, between each I would lay it out again and pin it together.  I also had to leave a long piece so I could make an edging.

So here is my finished product.

I'm really proud of this quilt.  As I've never done anything like this before.  The last time I sewed any project was in grade 7 when you had to take a Homeec class.  I have to fight my kids for this quilt there is always someone using it.  I think this will be a great addition to our cabin when we start using it on a regular basis.

Rainbow Loom

This is a new popular fad that is going around.  They are so popular even boys are enjoying them.  I got one for Christmas for Payton.  Well I actually bought the fake one, which basically broke within the first day.  Word from the wise, although the Rainbow loom is expensive, it's worth it to get instead of the cheap ones.  I found a some cheap elastics at the dollarstore, we tried them tonight and they work as well as the regular loom ones.  I found the loom ones are more pliable, they are easier to manipulate.  But the cheap ones work just as well.

Also at the dollarstore today we found a case to put them in.  It is actually a storage case for screws and nails, but works just as well for the elastics.

 Payton loves it and it is so much easier to use then the ziplock containers we did have them in.

Here are some of the bracelets we've made so far.

 So much fun and very addictive.
http://www.youtube.com/user/SoCraftastic?feature=watch 
 Here is a link to the girl she does wonderful tutorials.  She does many other things as well check her out.  I found she's one of the best tutorials and very easy to follow.

Payton has made many things, some of them are a minion, flowers, hearts, turtle and she tried a tuxedo; but had a bit of a hard time with it; she'll try again soon.

Rainbow loom if you're not in on the fad come to the darkside, you'll get a nice bracelet!

Netflix

Well we did it we plunged into the world of Netflix.

Dustin and I went over our cable provider and got rid of a few channels that we don't watch.  It was actually quite a lot really.  Netflix is only about $8.00 a month.  I have watched a few shows that only show up on netflix.  Orange is the new Black is one of my new favorite shows.  I can't believe they ended it like that!  Don't worry I'm not going to spoil it.

I think I'm going to enjoy this.  I like having movies that I can pick and choice to watch.  The "on demand" button doesn't always work, not the payper view one but the on demand one. 

I'll be wasting hours of time catching up on shows I haven't seen yet.

Christmas

 I take pictures of the kids every year.  This year, I talked them in to doing one with the mistletoe.  I think the picture is hilarious. 

 Don't they look so cute in their little hats?

 Nathan age 7

 Faith age 12

 Payton age 9

 Clayton age 9

 

 This year Christmas was nice.  We didn't over do it and we spent lots of time as a family.

 This is us getting ready to read the Night Before Christmas.  I read it to them every year, like my father did for me and my brothers.  This book was bought in 1977, my mom wrote our names in it.  I wrote my kids names in it.  I only bring it out at Christmas time and it looks just like new.  The jammies they are wearing is another family tradition, we opened them Christmas Eve.

I love my little family

Day 24: Gifts

Today the kids just thought that Ginger wanted some pancakes for lunch.  But on closer inspection there was a sign that said " I hid 4 small presents see if you can find them"

Tomorrow is the last day for Ginger for the year.  The kids really want her to stay and watch them open their presents.  But rules are rules.

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night.

Day 23: School

Faith made her a school room last night and wrote Ginger a note.

The note says, "Ginger, you need to go to school!  I packed you a journal, a snack and a pencil.  Your class starts at 7am under the TV and goes to 12pm.  Have fun!"

Faith wrote on the "whiteboard"  the timeline for what is going to happen.  Then Glamour the teacher wrote the other stuff.

Faith even wrote a times table for them to study.

Here is Santa and Ginger and Glamour (the pink and white cat at the top)  while at school.
They had to bring snacks to eat.  The Journal has one entry in it "Day 1 went to school"

I think they had fun at school.

There is only one more day with Ginger then she is gone till next year!!