Work in Progress Wednesday!

Happy Hump Day!  Although, yesterday definitely seemed like a Monday so I'm a little thrown off! 

My kids and I (well mostly me) decided to do our first theme on oceans and sea life.  I got a few things from our local partnership and was pretty excited.  It did not go as planned.  I pictured a calm, learning experience where we played with the toys and I taught them all kinds of new things about the ocean as well as seamlessly incorporated math, early literacy, social studies, etc.  Instead, the boys were fighting over stuff (go figure) with the little one (H) destroying things and the older one (C) tattling.  C was using pieces of a gear set to make a gun, I'm sorry it was not a gun but it was still going to shoot something at the bad guys , to paraphrase C.  I was pretty frustrated and feeling like I was going to fail them.  But, after thinking about it I realized a couple of things: 1) It's going to take time for them to get used to doing more of these types of structured activities as home, and 2) While there is a set of Core Standards in NC for Preschools, it's not quite as vital I jam pack his growing brain.  It's still more about expanding his horizons and experiences.  So basically, I just need to keep doing what I've always done but on an all day level.  I need to make sure he has plenty of enriching things to do, create, and play with and make sure I keep my focus on him.   I'm not trying to brag, but I'm almost positive he could go to kindergarten this year and be fine.  While that takes pressure off me, I can't help but feel a little worried that I won't be as good as a preschool teacher.

Moving on to MY school plans (currently taking education classes at a community college but hoping to get into a masters program for teaching)-I am completely intimidated about teaching.  I'm not sure why this huge chunk of anxiety came over me about my future abilities as a teacher.  Maybe it's the amount of school work I have to look forward to, maybe it's the thought of being responsible for so many young children's learning, maybe it's the intimidation factor of having excellent teachers in the family.  Whatever is causing it, I don't like it!  For now, I'm just going ot keep pushing through my school work and see where it takes me.

Phew, now to the purpose of the WIP Wedneday post!
Here is the orange and black crochet dishtowel that complements last week's WIP:

I ran out of yarn last night.  Just ordered some more-hopefully it's the right orange!  Thinking of starting a brown and multi-color one in the meantime because I am that impatient.

 

Here is my fall table runner that I eluded to the other day:

I've got about half of the rows sewn together.  I was going to try to sew it by hand but just don't feel confident in my capabilities when it goes beyond embroidery or cross stitch.  I have a green fabric that matches the red with the leaves for the backing but am not sure if it would be too drastic of a color change as the binding.  Guess we will see.

 

 

I will be linking up to Freshly Pieced's blog where Emily from Mommy's Nap Time is a guest blogger.  Be sure to check out what she's got in the works as well as other crafty bloggers!

 

 

I had a few nice Etsy suprises yesterday:  I sold my small gingerbread pillows:

 



I'm very excited and hope the buyer loves them as much as I do!

 

I was also featured in a treasury by a fellow teammate from the Quilts and Heirlooms Team on Etsy:

Hmm, well I don't know how to get the treasury to show up so please click here to check it out.  It's a really cute back to school theme!  And if anyone knows how to get the treasury to display, please help!

 

Well, hope everyone has a fantastic day and let me know what you are working on!

 



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!

Finished Fridays!

Well, I am finishing up my first week as a stay-at-home mom.  Although technically it wasn't a full week, but that's okay.  I think I am in vacation mode-I just float around and try to do the things I really need to do.  But, the more interesting things keep stealing my attention.  I think one of the biggest challenges for me is going to be staying disciplined as far as keeping up with my responsibilities and not trying to spend my whole day playing on the computer and crafting.  :)

Next week, I am hoping to start preschool with my boys.  We have an awesome program that lends learning materials and toys for free and has materials you can use for a minimal fee.  I think I am going to take them there Tuesday and let them pick out a theme/unit.  Then, we can go to the library and find books on that theme.  I can design the rest of the week's learning experiences around what they pick out.  I really hope this works! 

Craft-wise: I am hoping to get some more crocheting done while out of town this weekend.  I'm thinking some orange and black washcloths and an orange dishcloth/kitchen towel with black stripes.  I cut out squares of fall fabric to make my first hand-sewn table runner, but you'll have to wait until Wenesday to see how that's coming. 

This post is called Finished Fridays, not only because we are finishing up the week (which is always fun), but I am hoping to have finished items to show.  This Friday, it is the black dishcloth that I was working on this week.  Here is the finished product:

 

If you would like to see the listing for it on Etsy, click here.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday weekend! 
I would love to see what you have finished this week-post a link in the comments section!