Child's First Embroidering

      I never thought I would be a mother who would be having her children embroider things, or even sew by hand at all until maybe one of my daughters asked to cross-stitch something when they were pre-teens or thereabouts. But, just to keep her hands busy, I started my eldest daughter on VERY simple lacing when she was 3 and she really enjoyed it. She was soon asking to sew, not understanding that lacing was a long way from sewing. And I, admittedly, didn't think that she would be able to grasp anything much closer to actual hand sewing until she was older. But, after much pleading, I gifted her with her very own sewing box at Christmas, which included her first metal needle, some old scraps of fabric, a plastic embroidery hoop, an old pair of embroidery scissors, and left-over thread from my finished stocking projects. 

      To tell you the truth, I wasn't sure how I was going to slowly approach sewing by hand with her, so I just tried something that I was pretty sure was going to be too hard for her. I simply had her draw a picture on the cloth, and I then showed her how to do a simple back stitch in order to cover over the lines she drew. And, to my utter amazement, she caught on immediately! All I did was thread the needles, tie the knots on the end of the strings, and fixed the occasional mistake where she went through two layers of fabric or got the string in a knot. She did amazingly and actually embroidered the entire picture! I now have it framed on our dining room table, and am so proud! It just goes to show that kids will often catch on much faster than we assume. It never hurts to try, as long as you are willing to step back if it is too early. Who knows... they may surprise you!

Here is Thérèse's embroidery. It is, from L to R, my husband, David (3), Me and Patrick (3 months), and Thérèse (4 1/2). Isn't it great!

-Maria

Thrifty Homemaking: Gel Ink Stains on Jeans

OK - so my husband has a 2nd love besides me.. G2 gel pens. Because I am not an amazing homemaker, I don't ALWAYS remember to check his jean pockets before throwing them in the wash, and as a result I had both his favorite (and only decent) pair of jeans and one of my only 2 decent pairs of jeans come out of the wash with very large ink stains on them last week. I, unfortunately, spent numerous hours (really!) strubbing his jeans and the large stain on my jeans before taking any pictures, so this before and after is only of the one stain that I was not very determined about getting out, since it is just on the very bottom cuff of my jeans. I was very determined about the other spots, however, since I had not built 2 new pairs of jeans into our 2013 budget! So... I headed to google to figure out how to get those huge black spots at least mostly faded so the jeans would be wearable again. I first tried rubbing alcohol, and that was decently successful, but nail polish remover proved to be the best tool. I soaked the spot, let it sit for a couple minutes, and then scrubbed and scrubbed until not much ink was coming out anymore. Then I repeated... and repeated... and repeated. Yes, I literally scrubbed one 3 inch by 2 inch spot on my husbands jeans for just under 3 hours! He will probably now soon have a hole there due to my intense rubbing, but at least it will hold off the purchase for a short time! 

Sorry that these pictures don't show the effect very well from before to after, but, as I said, I didn't put too much effort into this spot - only 10 minutes or so. I promise this process did work... but only if your time is not as important as your money! 

Before:

After:

-Maria

Sticker Advent Calendar for Kids

Before this Christmas in our little family, our only Advent calendar that the kids participated in was the basic, 8x11, open-a-door-a-day type with scripture passages about Christmas. Those are nice and all, but the scriptures are often "over their heads" and the kids can only be so involved and excited about opening a tiny door every day. So... I was really excited when I was unpacking stuff at our new place and remembered that my grandmother has given us a sticker Advent calendar for the kids every year! Since we have been given it for Christmas every year, by the time Advent comes around I had completely forgotten about it until now. So, I had a couple "saved up", which allowed both my 2 and 4 year-olds to have their own "calendar". We all really enjoyed it, because it involves counting down the days with the stars, but also adding characters to the Nativity scene every day. We saved baby Jesus for last, and it was quite fun seeing it all come together day after day. I'm sure it is a very low-priced set, seeing that it came from the Oriental Trading Company, so if my grandmother either stops giving them or is no longer around, I will definitely be purchasing these yearly. The only critique that I have of these is that they are cheap, so the stickiness of the stickers was not meant to stay in tact for over a year. We needed to reinforce each sticker that was added daily with tape to keep them on.

Now here is the fun part... you can kind of tell which is the 4 year-old's by looking at the Nativity scene on the bottom, but it becomes very clear when you check out the orientation of the numbers on the top... very telling!

-Maria

Review: Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons

I thought I'd do a quick review of the early reading program that I did with my 4 year old this past summer. We went through the book called "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons", and completed it in probably just over 4 months. 

To aid her in keeping interested and driven to finish each lesson fully, we did a simple sticker system. It was set to do 100 days in a row, but we ended up taking a month vacation in the middle (and it was VERY hard to pick back up when we returned, but we did actually do all 100 lessons!)

To sum up my review... I WHOLEHEARTEDLY ENDORSE this book! It is such a great tool and teaches children in a truly interesting way and is totally phonics-based, which I love. 

Now, to be honest, we didn't do it entirely as the directions say. Since we were doing it at such a young age, I did not stress her being able to sound out words in her head by he end of the book. We still sounded everything out loud and did not read through every story twice, as the directions asked. This was just our first, crash-course in phonics and reading and we treated it as such.  I didn't expect us to finish it at the first or second-grade reading level. I just wanted the basic phonics to be mastered and for the beginning of sounding out words to be in place. And this product delivered that excellently.

Some details about it that I loved:

1. It is TOTALLY teacher friendly. It actually tells you exactly what words to say when teaching. It also does a GREAT job of teaching the teacher how to properly say and teach sounds so that the student does not get confused or improper phonics.

2. From Day 1 the students are reading. This is both encouraging to the teacher and the student.

3. The lessons are short. The book says that lessons should be able to be finished in about 20 minutes a day. It took us longer than this often, but I was working with a young student.

4. A basic hand-writing course is also built in to the daily lessons. Awesome!

Some things I didn't care for:

Umm.... can't think of any. Seriously, I can't!

So... check it out! I will DEFINITELY be using it for all of my kids to introduce phonics and probably again a year or two later as a refresher if they need it.

-Maria