Motivational Monday! Even though it's Tuesday

Hope everyone has a great holiday weekend!  We visited with my family-always a good time and I still get homesick after visits.  Well, today seems like a Monday-bumping my head on lights, dead battery in my camera, computer refusing to work properly, but it will be okay,

So, this week is my first week of doing "preschool" things with my kids.  I plan on going over to the Onslow County Partnership for Kids to see if I can pick up some learning materials to work a theme around.   If there is time. I would like to swing by the library and get some related books. 

Last semester, I had to make activity lesson plans for various age groups.  For my preschool plan, I made a button board.  I believe I found it on education.com (they have a lot of fun ideas).  It's a great way for kids to practice actually making shapes by wrapping yarn around the buttons, grouping by button characteristics (size, color, number of holes), and practice creativity by making their own pictures. 

All I had to do was cut out a piece of cardboard from a box, glue paper onto it, and use pop-up adhesives (used for scrapbooking) to stick the buttons on.  You could probably use a hot glue gun instead.  I wouldn't recommend traditional glue only because it may be hard to get the buttons raised up enough for the yarn.  Well, Friday, my kids found it and of course started fighting over it so I let me 4 yr old make his own.  He decided to group the buttons by color which bothered me because they are supposed to be random.  But, really, it works because he was practicing grouping while making it :)

So, here are the button boards.  They were good in the car too, except my 2 yr old needs supervision because he's still in destructive mode and tries to pull things apart.

Switching gears, I managed to get 2 kitchen dishcloths/washcloths done over the weekend.  I made an orange and a black one to go with the black kitchen towel.  I'm also working on an orange kitchen towel which I'll prob feature tomorrow.

A while back, I ordered a pack of scrap triangles from a shop on Etsy, Kelly's Sewing Basket.  They're mostly fall and Christmas themes and I've been trying to come up with ways to use them.  It's such a beautiful mix of fabrics!  Here are some of the things I've been thinking:

With these fabrics I'm thinking either one piece for a potholder or a set of 4 coasters. I'm leaning more towards the coaster sets. What do you think?

 

For this one, I'm thinking of making these into squares for a table runner.  picture quality is not too great, sorry!

 

These are some Halloween Fabrics I have...quilted table runner maybe?

 

So, the purpose of this post is to try to get motivated for the week.  I wanted to show you some of the projects I would like to get around to doing and am hoping this will help motivate me to get moving on them! 

What are your goals for this week?

Check back tomorrow for WIP Wednesday!

I'm Back! WIP Wednesday

It has been a LONG time since I've posted.  So, here's the quick update:

I quit my job working in a lab for the city to go back to school to be an early childhood teacher.  I got a new job working at my sons' daycare because they would pay for my education.  I lasted almost 6 months there before I finally had enough.  Bad management, lack of support, etc.  It was not the kids AT ALL.  Which brings us to today.  I decided to quit work last night; today is my first day as a stay at home mom.  What I should have done was give my two weeks notice or even let them know yesterday when I left that I wasn't coming back.  But, I didn't.  And while I feel guilty for going about it the wrong way, it wasn't worth the trouble and hassle.  I feel more guilty for leaving my coworkers to more stress and for leaving the kids and their families.  But, it's time to move on.  For now, I'm going to focus on school and my boys.  My older son is 4 so I'm going to  look into doing preschool at home with him.  Hopefully in January I can start a Master's program in teaching.  So, there it is in a nutshell! 

So, now, I'm hoping to get at least a little more time to put back into my Etsy shop.  We'll see!  Here is what I am working on: 

It will soon be a kitchen towel in black and orange.  I'm hoping to do a range of colors, specifically fall and holiday right now.  Also, hoping to make matching washcloths! 

Feel free to link up your WIP blog posts-I look forward to seeing what everyone is up to!  Also, be sure to check out Freshly Pieced's blog to see what she and other talented artists are up to!