Almost Wordless Wednesday: Best Birthday Ever

38 brought to you by
Raskog, Project Life, card made by T, breakfast cooked by TJ, Silhouette download card,
6 hours of uninterrupted mama time, dinner with family at Pomegranate and cake.

A space that now you hold: Summer Kid Schedule

T's preschool is on Summer Break until Labor Day. Thanks to my new "life of leisure", this wasn't a cause of consternation or a mad scramble to find camps and alternate arrangements to cover the time.

However, I realized about a month ago that I would need to plan *something* for our days.  We don't do well just lolling around in the house. T can play on her own a bit, but quickly gets bored and wants to play *with* me. While I love being home with the kids, I don't want to be drafted into the role of being their playmate and entertaining them all day long either.

We needed a plan. I've always been intrigued by homeschooling, partly just due to the structure and organization it requires to plan educational, interesting activities.

When T was a baby, I made up a schedule to hang on the fridge that outlined our activities for the week including my work days, our Toddler Group, and various meals and naps. It helped a lot by taking some of the "hmm, what's next" processing out of my brain, and also got us on a more regular eating schedule.  (Coordinating 3 meals and 2 baby snacks was driving me bonkers until I picked times and followed them.)

My imaginary Internet friend J (who I've actually met a few times in real life) posted a quick sample summer schedule on Facebook and it was *brilliant*.  The key items I hadn't thought about were having a couple of "activity blocks" like "art project" or "outside fun" or "game" where you could change it up each day, but still have an idea of what to fill that time with.

So I ran with it. Since we have T (age 3.5) and M's (age 8 months) schedules to contend with, ours is a bit tricky.  It was like a fun logic puzzle to fit in all the pieces.

Once everyone is up and has gotten dressed and eaten breakfast, we do a bit of reading time. I noticed that lately we've gotten out of the habit of reading during the day as T is *so busy* with her own playtime.  Consequently M isn't hearing as many books as T did when she was a baby.  Sigh, poor neglected second child.

As much as I can, I try to be hardcore about making sure we're home at the appropriate times for naps and not scheduling over them. M still takes a morning nap, so we're typically home until she wakes from that, which is around 10:30am.  While she sleeps, T and I do either an art project or work on some of her workbooks. (She loves them- I swear I'm not running an academic sweatshop here.)

The *actual* schedule

We then have a morning "Get Out of the House" activity, which on nice days would be a trip to the park to burn off some preschooler beans, or running errands. (Can I say how in love I am with places that have double shopping carts?!)

Next is lunch and both girls napping (or T having Quiet Time) until about 3pm.  (Divine, I know.) After that we have a quick snack, then our Afternoon Activity, which is T's swimming lesson twice a week, a park trip if we didn't go in the morning, or maybe some sidewalk chalk or playing in the rice bin on the deck.  When it's nicer out, we'll get out the Crab Pool and play in there.

Then we get into the home stretch - T watches some Spanish or educational TV while I cook dinner, then we have Cleanup Time (I have J to thank for this!).  By this time TJ is usually home, so we eat then everyone gets ready for bed. On a good day, the girls are in bed, lights out at 7:30pm. We don't always have Good Days, though. Such is life with 2 under 4, I guess.

But just a few days into Summer Break, this schedule is making me a lot less stressed out. I don't have to scramble and plan for each afternoon while the girls are napping - I just need to pick one activity for the days we don't have swimming.  If we get off track due to late naps or sleeping in, no worries - we just pick up where we left off and skip stuff as needed (except for naps. We try not to skip naps because that causes 2am BADNESS).

I printed a copy of the schedule to hang on the fridge (with cute fonts, of course). T likes me to read it to her each day, and has already taken to asking "what's next on the Mama School Schedule?". Definitely my kid.

That's it - very simple, but super effective. I'm looking forward to seeing how it evolves over the next couple of months!

Round and Round

While TJ and T were at the new Monsters University movie yesterday (she lasted an hour, which was longer than I expected), BabyM and I went to mail some packages from my Etsy shop. We visited a nearby thrift shop just for fun, and found an intact Spirograph set.

I knew T would like it, but wasn't sure if she has the manual dexterity yet.  I remember being pretty frustrated with Spirograph as a kid - the gears would always slip around and ruin whatever cool pattern I was drawing.

So I put it down and went to pay for the $3 bead maze BabyM had gotten attached to. The nice lady behind the counter informed me they had a $5 minimum for credit card purchases, so I went back to retrieve Spirograph, which I bought for $4.50.

Turns out that was a smart move. Vintage versions of this toy with all the pieces are selling for upwards of $20 on EBay. Ours is from 1986 and surprisingly the ballpoint pens still work!

We started our new "mama school" summer schedule today since TJ is away all day on his motorcycle.  To preserve everyone's sanity, and to limit the number of entertainment decisions I need to make on the fly, I drafted a rough daily schedule, modeled on one from a friend. (More on that in a future post.)

So our morning "art project" was learning to use Spirograph, and T kept going long after the allotted 45 minutes.  (The schedule is flexible like that.)

We discovered her cheap colored ballpoint pens from Daiso, the Japanese dollar store, work great, as do her glittery Hello Kitty gel pens from the Target $1 section.  She got the hang of placing the holder under the paper and poking the pins through it, and placing the outer ring and selecting which little gears she wanted to use.  (We're all about self-sufficiency here...)

I think I need to hack our Spirograph a bit - perhaps repositionable Glue Dots to stick the frame to the paper would be better than that cumbersome plastic holder (which I'm afraid we'll lose).  I also need to figure out a good work surface so the pens don't scratch up the table. A large piece of foamcore board might work well.

I realized that the original box/package is way bigger than it needs to be, so we put all the pieces into a smaller pencil box. I did save the original packaging in the garage on the off chance that we'll still have all the pieces once BabyM is done with it, and we can sell it for $$$ on EBay.  Or whatever replacement for EBay is around in 2020 or so...

This "new" toy was definitely a hit.  Have you unearthed any of your favorite childhood toys for your kiddos?

Wordless Wednesday: 18 years, 18 years

Tuesday Lovin': Fiskars ProCision Paper Cutter

Like the ubiquitous printer question, another one you'll see often on papercrafting forums is "what paper trimmer do you use?"

First, let me back up and say that before I got into paper crafts, I had no idea such a wondrous tool existed for cutting straight lines. I remembered the terrifying "guillotine"-style paper cutters in elementary school with the giant, heavy sharp blade, but didn't know there was a safer option that is an indispensable tool for scrapbookers and card makers.  My friend Jenn clued me in to this and I bought an inexpensive Fiskars Personal Trimmer with a replaceable sliding blade.

Cutting paper is hard on metal blades.  I found that my trusty trimmer would stop working well after a month or two and the edges would be jagged, it would stop cutting through photo paper, or cuts would start looking crooked even though I swore I had lined up the paper properly.  Switching the blade helped a bit, but didn't help the crooked cut aspect.

I got frustrated a lot so I started looking around to "trade up".  Some people raved (and ranted) about really expensive Genesis or Tonic brand trimmers that were hundreds of dollars.  I love me some tools, but just wasn't ready to invest that much in something I wasn't sure I'd love.

I found the Marvy Uchida Paper Trimming Buddy on Amazon and liked the idea that the blade was somewhat protected in the cartridge (not as dangerous for little fingers) and that the trimmer itself seemed more substantial than my small one, so it wouldn't slip around on the table.  I also LOVED that it had other blades to cut scallop edges, and score paper (but not cut through it).  So I took a chance on it thanks to the good reviews it had.

And it worked beautifully for a few months (don't they all!).  Then it started to cut jagged edges on my photos, so I tried to fix it by flipping over the rubber strip that the blade sits on.  No luck.  I tried a new blade, and still no luck.  Cuts were still crooked and uneven. Sigh.

People on the 2Peas message board were raving about the ProCision Trimmer, which has a "forever" blade, as in, NEVER needs to be replaced.  I looked it up and thought the $120 MSRP was more than I wanted to spend and just muddled along with my Marvy Uchida cutter and retrimmed ragged edges with scissors (grrrr).

While I was debating what to do next, Black Friday approached. All Fiskars tools were 60% off at Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft, and I got a coupon in the mail for an additional 25% off.  I couldn't get to the store fast enough. I snapped up that ProCision and paid less than $40 for it. (Seriously.)

It's huge and substantial, but not too heavy to move if I need space on my desk.  The cutting blade is anchored on a set of rails so it doesn't get squirrelly and move sideways unexpectedly.  When I'm cutting shorter lengths, I can leave it folded up so it takes up less space.

I've been using it a LOT since Thanksgiving and I LOVE it.  It can cut multiple sheets at once. The ruler lines are easy to see so I rarely have to measure and mark anything before cutting.  The blade is still sharp after 7 months of regular use. Fiskars products come with a lifetime warranty, which is pretty amazing.  Now that I've used it, I think it's well worth the MSRP to never have to buy new blades or deal with wonky cuts.  So it's even more of a bonus that there are good deals to be had on it.

There are just a few things I don't love about it.  The 6" mark is right where the unit folds, so it's hard to line up correctly. I believe there are workarounds for this on YouTube - I just haven't been annoyed enough to figure that out yet.

Sometimes, when sliding the blade away from me to cut, I get a slightly more ragged edge.  Nothing I need to re-trim, but it's just more "fuzzy" than cutting the other way.  I haven't figured out if that's just for a certain paper type, or if it's the way I'm pushing it.

My new craft space is small and this trimmer is big.  I need my trimmer to be handy most of the time, so I leave it out, but I'm always moving it to get the things stored behind it.  If I had the Craftroom of My Dreams, I'd have plenty of room to keep this thing unfolded on my desk.

But overall, I HIGHLY recommend it.  It's dreamy.  It might be my Forever Paper Trimmer.  And that's saying a lot.

(No one paid me to write this.  I just really, really LOVE this trimmer!)