How to Host a Craft Night for the Christian Mom

Man, doesn't that sound like a wild party waiting to happen?

step one: Bible on the table

Have you ever wondered why my kids are so obedient, respectful, gentle and kind, with impeccable self-control?  (HA!  Oh man.)

My favorite, favorite, favorite of all parenting books is Don't Make Me Count to Three by Ginger Hubbard.  Amazon shares a fine review so I won't do that, but this book has given me the most practical help on how to use the Bible in everyday life with my kids. It's helped me look past their outward behavior of whining, complaining, fighting, arguing, etc., and use God's words to encourage their little hearts to change perspective, and eventually, hopefully, change their attitudes, actions and responses.

(And I just saw that there is a Six Week Study Guide?  I could probably go for that.) 
 
Now the fun part...combining this great book with Craft Night! Craft Nights have been a favorite activity lately because I love the dual-purpose of them: a child-free night with friends combined with getting something accomplished.  All dependent on the level of multi-tasking skills of the attendees, of course.

(My personal skill level is low, btw.)

Following this book's method of discipline requires much diligence on the part of the parents.  For instance, it's easy to yell, "stop fighting with each other!" and much harder to have verses stockpiled in your brain to be able to instead say something like, "Remember that God's word says in Phil 2:5 that 'As you deal with one another, you should act and think as Jesus did.'  Are you treating your sibling/friend the way Jesus would?"  And then to have more verses that proove how Jesus acted.  Whew.

So we got together and made pretty cards and wrote verses on them to have in easy reach around our houses.  I'm so thankful for a table full of wise friends who willingly share their creativity, experiences, verbiage, and favorite verses/translations with me.  These women are great resources with large washi tape collections and font-like handwriting skills.   

I should've taken more pictures of finished products, but, you know, multi-tasking is hard.

I hung my finished cards in easy-to-see locations, above the kitchen sink being one since it seems 90% of my day is spent there.

hallway clipboard

Two more things:

1.  Crafty friends are good for many reasons, one being the amazing things they make for you.

sorry about hiding our last name under that discreet gray slash

Each of our names are hidden in an arrow.  I just love it.

*made by the talented Michelle.

2.  Daphne knew what we were working on last night, so this morning she made a card and asked for a verse to write on it.

These friends are treasured gifts who make excellent role models for me and my kids.

He who walks with the wise grows wise, but a companion of fools suffers harm.  Prov 13:20

The Family Room

Nine months later and our upstairs family room is finally painted.  Small victories!

This room is technically a part of the 'master suite,' but as much as I would love an extra room to set up as a sewing room, or a sitting room, or a leave-mom-alone-she's-eating-her-hair room, a family room seemed the most useable idea for the largest number of people. 

The room isn't completed yet because I still need to purchase bamboo shades for the windows and finish the curtain for the kid's closet kitchen.  (They have a closet kitchen and it's just as cool as it sounds.)  (Which may not be very cool?)

Oh! And I have this super great idea for David to build me a faux-mantle to set the TV on.  Something like this:

i have no idea the original source...i've seen this many places

Right now the TV is on a bookshelf, but I think a mantle would add some fun visual interest and help make the room feel even cozier.  And it would give us a great place to hang Christmas stockings since stocking-wise we're not quite sure yet how to utilize our funky wood stove alcove downstairs. 

jonas's opinion on mom painting

Lighting in this room is a little hard because I hatehatehate using ceiling lighting and there's not a lot of space for lamps.  Lights on the old window saved the day!  I added a boxwood wreath because my current hobby involves making more of those than I have room for.  So many wreaths, so few spaces to hang them.

In the absence of 'after' photos of the family room, here are photos of the room being used for what we consider valuable family time. 

fighting

staring blank faced at the television

lots of messes

At Least Jonas Has a Done-ish Room

I'm feeling brave enough to share two of our rooms that we have in fairly good liveable conditions.  If you think house pictures are lame, you'll hate this post.  If you happen to love a good 'before and after,' this one's for you. 

Jonas's nursery is the most completed room.  His car rug is in the big kid's room right now and I have at least one more thing to hang; other than that it's looking pretty swell.  I'm sure as he is in there snoozing he is appreciating the beauty around him.  He probably has really nice dreams.

His room required the most painting because I wanted to paint the trim.  Trim painting, especially going from dark red to white, is rather laborious.  It is not made much easier when done while home alone with 3 children. 

(My 'before' pictures aren't that great.  I took them while we were at the house for the home inspection, so was snapping quickly while trying to stay out of the way/keep the kids out of the way of the inspector.)

weird Dave

Daph needed to be in every single picture

We didn't mind the barn red trim in the room, but for a baby nursery I wanted white.  David liked the red closet doors, though, so we kept those for now.  The doors work for a baby boy room.  The beige was a bit darker than I wanted, and I didn't love the green above the picture rail, so the whole room got freshened up with new colors. 

David built this super cute rustic shelf

canvas + sharpie = 5 minute 'art' project copied from Pinterest

Hobby Lobby map

Christian doing unusual things

I didn't take a picture of the doorway, but this room has one of those cute little entry nooks that we're planning on doing this to:

this picture is everywhere but I can't find an original source

And that's the nursery!  Of course usually it looks like this: darkened, J sleeping in the rock-n-play, fan for white noise, random stuff on the dresser...perfectly imperfect, as our house typically is.

I was going to show the dining room, too, but this post is so huge we'll save that for another day.  Such exciting things to look forward to!

This LEGO Table is Amazing

Years ago I saw a fantastic idea for a DIY LEGO table.  The only thing holding me back from making it was that we didn't want another kid table around.  Daphne has that same cheap Ikea table, but since she uses it all the time for things other than LEGOs/DUPLOS, I didn't want to make any permanent changes to the table top.  Having a regular table and a LEGO table was just a little over-the-top crazy for us.  SO.  I came up with a fantastic idea.  (At least I think it was me.  It's such a great idea that I really want to take the credit.)

David built a 'lid' that fits perfectly over the top of the Ikea table, and we turned the lid into the LEGO part.  Then we can take off the lid for regular table use, and storing the lid takes up way less space than another table.  Obviously.

Isn't it so creative and cute?  And aren't we geniuses?  The kids love it.  Major points for spending $0 on this project and successfully using up spare wood that was laying around.  

With more DIYing came more pillowcase jammies dresses, plus one pillowcase turned into a regular summer dress.  I love that they only take maybe 20 minutes to make.  I would make more except the kids share a dresser and they each get just one drawer.  Sadly, it actually IS possible to own too many clothes.  

Christian really needs summer PJs too...do you think he could get away with wearing these?  (David says no.)

Speaking of summer PJs, Daphne asked me why God is making the weather so hot.  I made her a strawberry milkshake and told her to be happy about the sunshine.  The hot weather has made Christian start napping again, and there will be no complaining about anything that induces napping. (Or making milkshakes, for that matter.) 

I Think They Call This Nesting

Christian announced at supper that we're going to have a baby tonight.  I'm not really feeling up to that project right now, though, so hopefully not?

I got out my sewing machine today for the first time since we moved.  Both my fabric shears and rotary cutter have been missing since the move; very distressing.  Why is it that no matter how organized you try to be in your packing and moving, something ends up lost? 

Today I made Daphne a "jammies dress" (AKA nightgown), her favorite type of pajamas.  I was inspired by an idea I'd seen on Pinterest: found a pillowcase at Goodwill for $.99, left the opening as the hemmed bottom, cut off the top and added elastic and lace.  She is so pleased with it and would like many more.  And since we're trying to build a house and feel very poor, the kids are just going to have to be happy with clothing fashioned from thrift store linens from here on out.  (Because I totally choose wainscoting in the house over new clothes for them.)

The baby got some new bibs.  I had these cut out for Christian when he was a tiny spit-up monster but never got around to sewing them together.  Hopefully this baby won't be a spitter, but I guess we will be prepared just in case.

We brought baby stuff home yesterday from its storage spot in my parent's barn.  Daphne asked me to show her how to set up the infant seat so that she will know how to do it when she needs to babysit the baby.  So excited that she's already up for babysitting. 

Last week's weather was so drizzly, it's nice to see the sun again.  We've learned that this little house heats up like a sauna.  There are no big trees around to help keep it cool, I guess.  That one day it was 90?  It was like 88 in here.  After just one day! The kids acted like they were dying.  I guess this week we will all be dying some more.  (In the best way possible, of course.)

Speaking of dying, I had a thought the other day about whether or not spiders go to Heaven.  Because we like to think our pets do.  Imagine if every spider you ever killed was just waiting for you up there at the Pearly Gates?  Think about that one for awhile. 

bloody knees, always

one final ultrasound at St. V's

won't be needing rainboots this week

Playroom Reveal

We've had this little 'office' corner in the family room downstairs...kind of a random corner where we kept wrapping paper/craft items/old check registers.  It was a nicely used corner before we had kids, but since they joined the family, not so much.

We (actually it was totally me) had the great idea to clear out the corner and turn it into a play room.

The idea has worked out so well for us.  The kids LOVE being down there, which is a nice change from them not loving being down there.   Now I can do laundry and stuff while they play.  One time I even sat down on the couch with a magazine and that was really nice until 2 minutes later when Christian noticed I was sitting all by myself.  Apparently he thought I looked lonely and needed a friend. 

 

The extra space has given us a chance to expand on Daphne's kitchen a bit.  Fortunately for us, we had an old wooden filing cabinet painted in the exact same paint of the nightstand that we converted into the sink and stove.  We're turning the filing cabinet into an oven.

The only things we had to buy were the shelf brackets to hang that shelf above her kitchen.  That means this new play room conversion cost us $1.69 x 2.  It's nice to feel so frugal.

Our new space has helped make both levels of the house more usable for our little family, but it has also given us more room to spread out when people are here.  Our house has plenty of square footage but it has tiny rooms, which makes it feel like we have to sit on people's laps when we have more than 5 people here.  Awkward.

I heard from someone recently that they had a night where they opened up their house for a few of their friends to drop their kids off, freeing up the parents to go on a date.   Totally something we could do.  So this afternoon we had 8 kids, including our own, hanging out with us.  With half of them upstairs and half downstairs our house didn't feel full at all.  I even did dishes because the kids were all playing so well together.  No crying, no fighting.  Really, it was a very pleasant afternoon.  As soon as David recovers we'll probably do it again.

I feel so hemmed in right now, like there's not much I can do outside of taking care of my tiny and semi-helpless children.  I share that we did this babysitting gig not to make us sound like such outstanding people but because it was encouraging to me to hear about a way I could do a small act of service even while taking care of my kids.  I feel almost badly that it was so little of an inconvenience for us.  Clearly we should have spent the afternoon building someone a house or something. 

The Day of Love

Valentine's Day is so great.

David had to work today but the kids and I did plenty of Valentine-esque activities. 

Daph and I made these homemade toaster pastry things because they are David's favorite to take to work and have with his coffee at Starbucks.  My kids do not like them because neither of them like jam.  What kind of a person doesn't like jam?  I know some people in this family could eat jam off a spoon. 

(Not me, because that wouldn't be ladylike.)

(Except it's totally me because jam is so good.)

I've been wanting to learn to embroider for YEARS and finally used YouTube to learn the blanket stitch.  Lovely skill to have!  I also learned how to separate embroidery floss, because trying to separate that stuff has been a thorn in my side for far too long.

For Daphne's Valentine treat I made these little felt cupcakes using the blanket stitch.  I think they turned out so darling.

(I used this tutorial)

Daphne HUGGED the cupcakes when I gave them to her, so I think that means she liked them?  Because I'm not 100% on what this face means:

apathy?  love?  can't say for sure.

I'm looking forward to spending hours a day in the front parlor honing this new embroidery skill of mine.

Except that's my life as a princess and I forget at times that it's not reality.  Bummer.

post nap grumpies for the Love Bandit

Since Daph's love language is craft projects we did some Valentine themed ones. 

what a surprise to see him standing on a table

The day capped off when our mail lady filled our mail box with piles of Valentine's.  We did not do Valentine's this year and I apologize for not...we really should have.  Daphne was so happy with all her cards.

The end.  

It Was Fun Anyways

Some highlights from our afternoon:

1.   Just use your Pinterest account imagination and anything can be turned into footballs. 

whoopie pies

juice boxes

2.  Fantastic timing on turning the under-used office area in the basement into a play corner.  The kids were happy as clams.  (Why are clams so happy, anyways?)

 

















3.  Great time with great people. 

4.  David started out the day SO HAPPY.

5.  Daph just loves playing hostess and even gives out football treat bags to her friends.

Some lowlights from our afternoon:

1.  Sad for David that his team lost.

















2.  I can't really call this a low, since really a mess is just a sign that you got to have fun.  But I had to take a picture of Daphne's bedroom anyways. 

After everyone left, Daphne was with me cleaning up when she plopped herself down with a great sigh and said, "I'm tired of cleaning up."  I told her that it's a tiring job, but it's part of getting to play hostess, and of course, just a sign that you have people to play with.  It's not such a bad job after all.

We had a really fun afternoon, and while David is disappointed with the outcome, he's just happy his team made it to the Super Bowl. 

Although I think they should put me in charge of the halftime show.  I bet I could come up with something way better.