Monday, November 21, 2011

Introducing Inspired Moments Gifts!

I have been busy.  

Really busy.  

I’m not one to sit around and wait for things to do, so being busy is nothing new to me.  But being this busy is and I’m exhausted.  And elated, because the launch of my new business, Inspired Moments Gifts has gone really well and I’m enjoying the work immensely.  I’ve sold a number of my purses, gift bags and hot/cold therapy packs already and I’ve had a number of requests for more!

Give me just a moment to show off a few of my creations.

Construction of my very first purse – The Hold Everything Wallet

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My second purse, The Everything Bag

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My Fabric Reusable Gift Bags (various sizes and styles)

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My Hot/Cold Herbal Therapy
Made with 100% flax seeds and dried lavender

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My Sunday Afternoon Bag (not so secretly my favorite)

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Most of these items have already sold, but I still have a few available (hint, hint).  I’m already spending my few last available brain cells on ideas for new styles coming up this next year.  I’m absolutely thrilled to admit that I have enough orders right now to keep me busy until the end of this year.

Happy sewing to me!

Sunday, November 6, 2011

F Week and G Week

I can’t find my camera.  I can’t find the pictures I downloaded.  I can’t find more than five minutes at at time to post our weekly homeschooling lessons from the last two weeks.  So this week you get Week F and Week G and you get no pictures.  Boring, but necessary since I will be working 26 hours a day every day for the next week in order to be ready for our Christmas Shopping in November Event at St. Albert the Great Parish on November 14th.  That means I’ll be somewhere in the vicinity of minus 14 hours at the end of this next week (hours that don’t even exist…which doesn’t make much sense).  Point is, I’ll be exhausted and posting on the blog won’t even be a blip on my internal screen until sometime after I get caught up again. Of course I’ll probably be well into the New Year before I am back on board with my boring old every day routine (I wish I could accurately convey my sarcasm here), so I hope I’ll think to blog again before that.

 No promises. 

(And for those of you here in Austin, don’t forget to come and shop on 11/14 at St. Albert’s! You don’t want to miss out on my super-awesome homemade crafts!)  Enough blabbering and advertising…on to our last two weeks of homeschool. 

If you are actually interested in following along with our homeschool curriculum (and you’re not just reading the blog because you love me and I’m such a hilariously funny writer) then email me for the real details of Week F and Week G so I can pass them along to you.

Week F

This week we met Fuschia and St. Francis on our walk along the alphabet path.  St. Francis was interesting, but we just CAN NOT get away from St. Bernadette.  I’m going to have her picture hung right alongside the rest of the family on the picture wall.  We talk about her as if we are the best of friends.  (May her blessings be plentiful for this little boy who adores her).  We read some great stories this week:
  • The Fire Cat
  • Adventures of Dick & Jane
  • First Tomato
  • The Bravest Fish
  • Mrs. Wishy-Washy’s Farm
  • Stories From Around the World – The Four Brothers
  • Children’s Book of Virtues – The Stars in the Sky
We created the Jesus Fish Craft from Lacy’s Catholic Icing crafts page.  We also made Squeezing Rainbows from First Art.  I thought this craft was particularly fun and easy to do and both Alex and daddy had fun squeezing the rainbow bags.

For our Montessori Lesson this week we practiced pouring rice.  It was really exciting to see how much better he has become at some of these kinds of skills.  I sometimes have a hard time remembering he is only 2 1/2 years old.

We are still studying the five senses for science so this week we covered touching and hearing.

For geography we learned about people in different parts of the world, and we found Florida on the map.

We decorated part of his classroom with a fish border and started putting up Halloween decorations around the house.

And guess what.  I found pictures for you!  Just a few of our Squeezing Rainbows craft, but now my post will not look naked.

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Warning: There really are no pictures of G week.

Week G

Week G was short and sweet.  Too bad it isn’t S week.

Alex had “g”ood times with his cousins during G week, so we didn’t complete everything on 0ur schedule.  But he’s only 2 1/2 and I’ve become fairly relaxed at homeschooling so I’m not sweating it.  Besides, he won’t remember years from now that he didn’t make Rubbery Flubbery Dough again (we made it earlier this year) or that he didn’t practice ordering things from shortest to tallest (he can already do this pretty well anyway).  He will notice that he did not do his G Week Do-a-Dot (but we’ll just add it in this next week) and he’ll get an extra Montessori lesson on how to set a table during another slow week.  

So what did we do for G week?  What we do best, of course!

We read.

About the Gorse Fairy and St. George and the Dragon.  About the Grumpy Goat and The Grumpy Morning.  About the Glorious Flight, and how George Shrinks.  And a story or two about Dick and Jane.

And then we read about Halloween.  17 books in total.  All about “g”hosts, and “g”oblins, “g”raveyards and “g”oo.

The highlight of this week for school?  Nothing related to G, naturally.  An introduction to It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown.  I watched it just as many times as he did.  It’s not Halloween without it!

We did finish studying the senses this week.  I’m glad we only have five.  And we did learn a lot about the weather and the seasons.  Not bad for such a busy week!