I am a faithful listener of WAHM Talk Radio and a couple of weeks ago Kelly announced working with Carrie Lauth (of Natural Moms Talk Radio fame, another awesome show) to “Flip That Mom’s Website” - starting with Mommy Hobby! Mommy Hobby is a site of Carrie’s but in the coming weeks she, Kelly and a few others are going to be working on giving the site a makeover.

Check out the progress here at Flip That Mom’s Website and keep in mind that once the flip is done, Carrie will be giving the website away! I admit I’m very excited for that and hope I can enter the contest to win it.

I love being able to watch the progress of changing the website, it helps to get the views of someone on the outside. I have a site built with an expensive content management system and am debating switching to wordpress for easier management. Seeing Mommy Hobby switched over may definitely sway how I feel!

Keep an eye on Mommy Hobby - flip in progress!

Technorati Tags: mommy hobby, flip a website

I’ve been looking for more baby things to make and what perfect timing! I’ve seen it around a bit but Not Martha has a few copies to give away! It is softies! I love softies and the book has patterns by some well known bloggers. I’ve been collecting patterns for other baby items to make too. I asked Chris how hard he thought it would be for us to not buy things made in China, and we both figured it would be very hard.

Has anyone bought the Baker’s Edge brownie pan yet? I was wanting it but after Chris’ revelation of my liking the inside of the cookie (and thus the inside of the brownie) more then the edge, I decided I can wait. But they are coming out with a lasagna pan! I love making lasagna and am definitely going to purchase this pan. In fact, I think I’ll make lasagna tonight…mmmmm. I need to run to the store anyway.

Crafty Daisies is doing an embroidery lesson follow along and so far they are up to lesson three. Here is the first one which Alice and I are going to start today. She’s been sewing random things together - paper, small pieces of cloth, leftover stars we used for a curtain project.

I need to mail out my card swap cards today - and I seem to have picked the hardest card ever to create and send off. It’s a trifold card and I was off with my measurements for four cards! So I had to cut more paper as I was only making six cards to begin with!

Technorati Tags: lasagna pan, softies, embroidery, trifold cards, handmade card

Tomorrow is week two - already! Last week we started school so we would be able to take time off when the baby gets here, plus when my Mom visits and if anything else comes up. When the kids woke up last Monday Alice was excited about school while Jake looked like he wanted to go back to bed. Once I assured him noone was leaving the house, Alice was upset! Turns out they wanted to go to the place that had “white crayons” - and once they said you used them to write on the black cardboard, I realized they were talking about a chalkboard. But no chalkboard here, though we do have a white board and plenty of wipe-able markers.

We are using the first couple of weeks as a review just to see where we are. So far, so great! Alice is breezing through some things and makes me realize what we are doing is working, how we are doing it is working and this is the best for us. Jake is sometimes wanting to be involved in the school work but sometimes not. During one of the days he instead decided building a toilet paper tower was a lot more fun. Good thing we shop at Costco!

Blanket blocker at the top of the stairs:

Under the blanket was all of this!

The toilet paper was also used to block the doorway to my bedroom, to Jake’s room and to the hallway leading to their rooms. He had a great time over two days of playing with all of it. Of course it isn’t neatly stacked back in the hall/linen closet, but that’s okay.

I’ve found so many (more!) great resources out there - more homeschool books, curriculum, more great websites for us to try. Here is a great free clipart site, a spelling site and I found great pages on about.com for teaching telling time. I had to stop myself from buying the math curriculum I found - we have so many things here that we are using and that we will use this year.

Alice also learned how to hand sew a seam. She was so excited to see the outcome even though she didn’t really understand what we were doing at the beginning.

All in all a great start! Alice still thinks that school work is doing worksheets or sitting at a table and doing something - I’m not sure what will break her out of that but I’m not worried about it either.

Check out this great slit punch scalloped flower tutorial I found tonight. I don’t have any scalloped punches yet but they are so cute and so popular! Every time I see a card designed with one I feel the need to rush out and buy one that very second! My craft store doesn’t carry any though and I admit I haven’t taken the time to find them online, though I know they are all over the place.

But this tutorial uses a slit punch - which I do have! And I have other circle punches, a Creative Memories one plus the Creative Memories shape cutter thing (from my days of attempting to be a scrapbooker - yeah that didn’t work…) so I should be able to work this out with what I already have. I love super easy tutorials and can’t believe I didn’t think of this - I mean how obvious right?

Technorati Tags: stamping tutorial

Very cool Etsy BOGO sale put on by various PDXEtsy people (Portland, OR etsy sellers). I’m browsing there now and there are some very cool items! It ends tomorrow so head on over there!

Technorati Tags: PDSEtsy, BOGO

Alyssa over at Life From My Laptop is having a quick and fun contest on her blog! Head on over there to enter to win either a KitchenFolio or a MomAgenda Daily planner from the folks at MomAgenda.

I love being organized. When we were doing our back to school shopping I looked for a calendar everywhere we stopped - and walked away with nothing. My issue is any planner I use needs to start on Sunday - and everything I saw started on Monday. I used to have a DayTimer in college and I used that for years. My calendar slowly stopped having so many things and began to fill up with baby appointments or plans to get together with my girlfriends rather then classes or when my finals were.

I use Google Calendar now and love it - except when I am out and about and need to write down an appointment. then it stinks. I take the business card appointment reminder home with me, but usually lose it. Then I have to make a phone call to figure out the details, which is just too much time and I wait until the day before - or what I think is the day before.

I have plans to make a diaper bag for this new baby. I know exactly which pattern I am buying (this one over at Etsy from Craft Apple) and she just posted a quick tutorial on how to put on a magnetic snap. That looks so easy! Okay so I’ve never put a magnetic snap on anything, but doesn’t that look easy?

I’m not sure how I feel - boy or girl - so I haven’t bought the pattern yet because I’d like to get the ‘right’ material. Not necessarily pink or blue, but just the right kind. My Mom is coming to visit at the end of September so I may buy it before she gets here so she can help me pick material and maybe even help me make it. She’s such a great seamstress, she could probably get it done in a day.

Technorati Tags: Craft Apple, magnetic snap, sewing, diaper bag pattern