November 24th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

No deep thoughts to write today… they are floating around in my head, but my hands have been busy. My sewing machine and I have rekindled our relationship during the month of November! Starting with that pilgrim hat project and the pilgrim dress, we have plunged headlong into crafty wondrousness in anticipation of Thanksgiving.

I really love Thanksgiving and wanted to spruce up our decorations a little more with some nice things that I will enjoy pulling out for years to come. (Not that AG’s construction paper/feather turkey isn’t GREAT, but you know… we’re looking for classy.) :)

I started with this banner – I must say that I love how it turned out!!

I had seen an idea in Family Fun for making a glue batik banner. It looked easy and fun – so of course I made it more difficult. That’s the way I roll.

I wanted to paint the background of the muslin a darker brown, but didn’t have enough paint. We resorted to staining it with leftover coffee [grounds and all!]. My husband is brilliant! After we had finished step 2 of Family Fun’s project, we then went over all of the background area with strong coffee and let it dry.

It isn’t drastically darker but it did make it look more brown and weathered, which I like.

After I finished step 4 of the directions I ironed it flat, cut the edges more precisely, and then cut strips of 4″ wide fabric long enough for each side of the banner. Next, I just ironed everything, pinned the strips of fabric on, and sewed them with a 1″ seam allowance. Now I pressed the seams flat, and hemmed the outside edges with a 1″ seam allowance again.

To make the letters, I took a letter stencil we had and painted the letters on backwards with a sponge brush. I didn’t want the paint to show on the finished project, but this was way easier than trying to trace out all those letters with a marker or something on that dark felt.

I let AG help a little. Ie: long enough to take this picture. Mommy was having hard time sharing her project. ;)

After cutting out all the letters, I just glued them onto the banner with liquid stitch and then hot glued a dowel rod to the back to hang it from! Time consuming, but easy project considering how much I like the results!

I liked it so much that I started thinking about placemats!

We all trooped back to JoAnn fabrics (affectionately known as “the green store” at our house) and I got 3/4 yard of dark brown, 3/4 yard of heathered brown, and some pumpkiny orange thread and embroidery floss.

I cut the dark brown to the finished size I wanted using another placemat I had as a template, and then cut the heathered brown rectangles slightly smaller. Then, using my paint/stencil technique I stumbled onto with the banner letters, I painted leaf shapes onto my leftover medium brown felt (from the banner project) using a leaf template my husband drew. I covered the paper with packing tape so that the paint wouldn’t bleed through while I used it. Drawing the leaf was a bit of a pain, so if you want to make these, feel free to download our leaf pattern here.

After painting the leaves, I ironed on some two-sided heat-n-bond to the back and then cut them out. Then we adhered them to the heathered rectangles with the other part of the heat n’ bond, and then I hand stitched around the leaves with embroidery floss.

Yes, that was more work than I had anticipated. [Hence, no thought provoking blogging coming from here lately!!] :)

After the leaves were stitched on, I pinned the heathered rectangles onto the dark brown rectangles and stitched around the edge with my sewing machine. I don’t know how to describe these stitches… so – to make the edges look like this:

I used my machine’s D and G versions of the “SS stitches” – D around the heathered, G around the edge of the dark brown.

Now, I must say that I am not good at cutting out rectangles that are perfectly square and even. Just doesn’t happen. The stitches around the outside not only helped these look more finished, but they also helped camouflage my weird shaped placemats.

While sewing around the dark brown edge, I kept my presser foot lined up with the edge of my stitches around the heatered rectangle. Sometimes I was right on the edge of the fabric, sometimes I had almost an inch to spare. :| After I had stitched around the entire perimeter, I carefully snipped the edges even with the outside of my stitches, being cautious not to clip the threads. So, my rectangles might be a little wonky, but visually they look good since the width of the dark brown is even all the way around.

I have enjoyed having a home project to work on, and I love how the banner and placemats dress up the dining room for Thanksgiving.

And don’t they look stellar with my new fabric napkins my sister made me?

Hope you’re enjoying your Thanksgiving prep! God has blessed us abundantly – give thanks to Him and praise His name!

To see what others have been tackling, click over to Tackle it Tuesday at 5 Minutes for Mom!

November 18th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

As I discussed in Radical Discipleship, Scripture memory and comprehension is something I am convinced must be the center of the training of our children. We cannot content ourselves with teaching our kids about God and His Word – they need to know God and know His Word for themselves.

In the summer I shared the Scripture memory system we started to use. I love this idea, but we don’t sit around the table and use it at this point. With a 3 year old and 1 year old, quiet time at the table with focused attention just doesn’t really work!!

Another part of this equation is that I am a big believer in learning and teaching chunks of Scripture rather than focusing exclusively on short verses with small kids. This summer AG learned all of Psalm 23 and could rattle it off by herself. For the past week as we’ve been discussing Thanksgiving, AG and I have been learning Psalm 100 – she already has it most of the way memorized and only needs prompting for the words at the beginning of the sentences. She most definitely can handle learning long passages like this, but she cannot handle sitting perfectly still and quiet to learn these and recite them!

God gave us the solution to this problem in Deuteronomy 6:6-9-

These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Teaching God’s Word to our kids is one of our main jobs as Christian parents. To do it effectively:
• You need to know it yourself – “these commandments are to be on your hearts”. Study it, meditate on it, memorize it yourself. Are you a newer believer or just never learned much Scripture? This is a great time to start – nothing ingrains Scripture into us quite like intentionally teaching it to someone else. When I am pursuing God and studying His Word daily, teaching my kids is a natural outflow of that.

• Think seriously about how to “impress it on your children”. How can you make it memorable? Make learning Scripture into a game, make it into a song [doesn't need to be fancy!], use sign language, incorporate it into your craft time – do anything and everything you can to help it stick. If this isn’t really your area of strength, I highly recommend you check out Leigh and Amanda’s ideas over at Impress Your Kids – they do a great job with creative Scripture teaching ideas!

• Talk about and review your verse(s) all the time – when you sit at home, when you walk [or drive!] along the road, as they lie down at bedtime, when you get up in the morning or over breakfast. I have found that 3 year old AG (who is rather stubborn, by the way) will sometimes resist having a defined “Bible time”- she will clam up and not want to work on her verses or listen. But if I sneak it into our everyday life and conversation, she is very receptive to listening. For the most part, I don’t require her to sit still and listen – she often will be spinning around, playing dress up, playing with toys, etc. while we’re reviewing verses.

• Write them on your house! :) If your kids are learning to read or know how to read, surround them with their written verse. Yesterday we wrote Psalm 100 out on leaves I cut out with an Ellison cutter and artwaxed, and then we stuck them up on our dining room wall! It was a great review – I had AG help me remember the words to our verse as we wrote it, and then had her hand them to me and review it as we stuck it on the wall. She is so proud of it and loves to read it together.

You also might have seen our Psalm 19:1 craft we did a couple of weeks ago:

If you’re stuck on what verses to teach your kids, here are some suggestions:
• I definitely recommend that you teach your kids all of the classic “salvation verses” – John 3:16, Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Acts 16:31, etc. If you haven’t done much Scripture memory together, start there!

• If you are dealing with specific behavior issues, incorporate the Word of God into your correction process and review it frequently. For instance, if you’re dealing with complaining and arguing, work on Philippians 2:14. Sibling squabbles? Work on Ephesians 4:32. Does your child have a tendency to brag or try to “one up” other kids or adults? I’d recommend Proverbs 27:2. You get the point! Once again, if you are learning God’s Word for yourself, you will know what Scripture addresses the situation – teach it to your kids! If you aren’t familiar with Scripture yourself, acquaint yourself with a good online keyword search like this one – just please be sure to look up the verse in context and make sure you are using and teaching it correctly!!

• Be sure to incorporate verses that teach Truths about God’s character – for instance: Psalm 86:5, Psalm 57:10, Leviticus 11:45, 1 John 3:1, etc.

• Teach Scripture that makes sense seasonally and allows for more discussion of Truth. At Christmas last year, we worked on Luke 2:8-11. As I mentioned, for Thanksgiving we are learning Psalm 100.

• If you’re working on a verse that makes more sense in context (most do), don’t limit yourself to that one verse! Consider expanding it and learning a whole chapter or longer section together – your kids can do it, and it’s good for you, too! :) You will be giving your kids the gift of seeing scripture within its larger context, and that is a valuable treasure, indeed.

• Alright now… go get memorizing!!

If you have more tips that have worked for your family, please share!

November 10th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

We’re beginning a Thanksgiving unit for “school,” and as I looked through our books I knew there was one thing my daughter surely would love: a Pilgrim costume. I looked around online for a while and decided that the prices for ready-made costumes were ludicrous, so it was time to pull out the ol’ sewing machine and dig around for fabric scraps.

It took me pretty much all day, but it was worth it!!

Not too shabby for not having a pattern and using scraps out of the cabinet! AG is thrilled and wore her pilgrim hat all day. [Not surprisingly, hers took a quarter of the time that LB's did!]

I’m not going to lie: the boy hat was a pain. But, the girl hat was reasonably easy – even if you don’t have a sewing machine you could make this with fusible tape and a bit of hand stitching.

I started with a piece of fabric that was 15.5″ x 13″. I actually used a scrap of drapery lining – that ended up working great because it is lightweight but somewhat stiff. One edge of my rectangle was finished because it was the original edge of the fabric – if I’d needed to finish it I would have needed to start with a 15.5″ x 14.5″ fabric piece to end up the same size.

On all the unfinished edges, fold the fabric in approximately 3/4″, iron, and then fold it again to create a double folded edge. [A double fold keeps the raw edges tucked in so it looks neater and won't unravel.] Iron well and pin.

Sew all the edges, keeping the stitches as close to the edge of your fold as possible.

After finishing the edges, my rectangle was 13″ x 12″. Now I took one of the 13″ long sides and folded it back 2″ – iron and pin, then sew it down.

The rest of this project was a lot of folding and pinning to get the back to be fitted to AG’s head.

First, I marked the center of the other 13″ side with a pin. Then I folded each side of the fabric into two folds and pinned them – meeting in the center at the marker pin.

I sewed that down and tried it on AG – it still needed to be gathered more. So, on each 12″ side, about 1.5″ from the corner with the other folds, I made another small fold and tacked it down.

The back was still sticking out weird and floppy, so I joined the two corners together and tacked it again. Lo and behold – it ended up looking all nice and intentionally gathered into a little “poof” on the back of her head! :)

To make ties, I used 2 13″ long pieces of wide double fold bias tape. I just sewed the open edge together, and sewed it into the inside of the 2″ fold.

So, there you have it. With a little scrap of leftover fabric and some patience, you can indeed make a cute little pilgrim hat.

Are you starting to prepare for Thanksgiving? I’d love to hear what’s happening at your house! :)

For more motivation for tackling what awaits you today, click over to “tackle it Tuesday” at 5 minutes for mom.

September 16th, 2009 by Kristi Stephens

I see the skepticism on your face. Homemade dishwasher detergent… hmmm.

Oh, wait. That’s MY face reflected in the computer monitor!

Seriously. I was very skeptical. We have really, really hard water. I had trouble finding a commercial dishwasher detergent that worked, let alone making some concoction of my own!

Last week, however, the inevitable happened: we ran out of cascade action packs. I love those little things. So easy. And they worked! But buying them at Sams meant dropping almost $20… and buying them somewhere else meant a much smaller pack for more money in the long run. Boo. I have looked at nontoxic/green dishwasher detergent in the past, too, but that’s even more expensive. I try to be a good steward of the earth, but you know how cheap frugal I am.

Image by smysnbrg via Flickr

I started looking around the web a little more seriously for homemade alternatives. This one intrigued me. I decided to try it.

Now, sadly I could not find washing soda at any of the stores I visited. I also had no citric acid, and I haven’t tried the lemon jello he suggested, but it is intriguing.

This is what I mixed together:

2 parts Borax
2 parts baking soda [yet another use for my favorite household workhorse]
1 part coarse salt

Because of our super hard water, I still am using LemiShine, which I love. I’m sure it’s extremely toxic or something because it works so well.

So, here’s the plan:

•Into the main wash cup: about a tablespoon of homemade mix with a couple of teaspoons of lemishine (pretty soon I’m going to take the plunge and just dump the lemishine in with the rest of the mix… one less step)
•Into the prewash cup: a teaspoon(ish) of liquid dish soap (very nervous about this the first time… I’ve had some dishsoap-in-the-dishwasher tragedies in the past!)
•Into the rinse aid cup: vinegar

I watched nervously for copious amounts of bubbles to blanket my kitchen. When the washing cycle was done, I opened the door with hesitation….

Clean dishes!!!

Now, I have been pre-rinsing them a tad bit more, but really, they are coming out clean. Hooray for clean! Hooray for cheap! Hooray for nontoxic (well, except for the LemiShine… makes me want to try the jello. I am skeptical, but that’s nothing new.)

For more Works for Me Wednesday, jump on over to We Are THAT Family.