Book Review: Prayer Walk

My new book to review from Multnomah is actually non-fiction.    I reviewed PrayerWalk by Janet Holm McHenry.   Prayer walking was pretty popular ten years ago and I haven't heard as much about in recent years.   When Jason and I went on a short term mission trip to Guatemala ten years ago, we prayer walked several villages.  I was surprised when I was asked to review a book published ten years ago.  I am reviewing the re release with an epilogue added. 

PrayerWalk was a well written book.   The author is a high school English teacher who knows how to write a book.    I found that it was interesting.   Her personal anecdotes, mixed with practical advice, and know how made it very easy to read.  If you want to start prayer walking, she is very through in her advice.   She describes how prayer walking helped her physical and mental health.   She gives you practical advice on beginning, having a friend join you, and the blessings that flow from prayer walking.   I found the book encouraging as a book about the benefits and blessings of prayer.  I found the author real and forthright.   I enjoyed the book.

I received this book free for review purposes from Waterbrook Multnomah Publishers.   All opinions expressed in the review are my own. 

Ladybug Quilt

I finished my niece's quilt yesterday.   The theme of her nursery is ladybugs using a black, white, and red color scheme.  When my sister-in-law told me the nursery theme, I immediately had an idea.   Brenna really liked this.   I thought I could do better.  I wanted to do vertical columns of black and white fabrics with ladybugs walking across them.  I wanted a more modern look for the quilt.  I wanted the fabrics to match up at odd angles.  Surfing blogs I came across the type of quilt I had in my mind.   I figured out the name and publisher of it.  The book is called Denyse Schmidt Quilts.   I used the pattern called Hop, Skip, and Jump.  I modified the quilt slightly.   I wanted everything to be on a smaller scale since it was going to be a wall hanging.  The book recommended to enlarge the pattern template by 400%.  I enlarged mine by 200%.   I also added black lattice between the columns instead of sewing the column one to another.  I went to my local Joanns to find the fabrics.  

Constructing the quilt was not hard.   I stacked my seven fabrics on top of one another, pinned the stack to keep it from moving and traced my template piece on the top fabric.   I used my fabric scissors to cut the pieces.  Denyse Schmidt has some good suggestions for piecing and keeping your fabrics correct directionally in the book.   Once the cutting was done the sewing went very quickly.    

Here is it once the columns are done. 

 I used 7 different black/white fabrics and a solid white cotton.  I tried to vary the scale of the prints.  I also wanted most of them read as black.  One print reads more white, but it blends with the others.   After I completed this stage I started on the ladybugs.  

I made the decision to use five ladybugs because seven seemed too many.  I wanted to use an odd number.  Using what I know about design from photography, I strategically placed them in a couple of non symmetric triangles.   I used a circle cutter to cut a pattern from card stock so I could play with size and placement.   I used a red fabric for my ladybugs.   I ironed Wonder Under onto the backside of my red fabric.   Then, I traced the circle pattern and cut.  After cutting all the circles, I went back and cut out a small wedge on one side.  I planned to add black fabric in this space to give the look of wings.   I added the ladybug spots by cutting the circles out of the black and white polka dot fabric.  I ironed Wonder Under to the backside of the black and white polka dot fabric prior to cutting.  This is what my scrap of fabric looked like before cutting out the white circles:

I ironed them on the red ladybug body and used my zigzag stitch set to the very short stitch length to sew around them.  

I added Wonder Under to the back side of my black fabric so I could trace and cut out the negative space for the wings and the head.  For the heads, I eyeballed a crescent and cut it.   Next, I pinned the ladybugs to the quilt to take another look at placement before ironing them down. 

Since, I was happy with the placement, I headed over the ironing board.  I peeled the backing fabric off the red fabric circles and ironed them on.   Next, I repeated the process with the black negative space and the head.  I zigzagged around the black parts first and then the red ones.   When I was finished it looked like this.

I made tabs and the binding from the black and white polka dotted print.   Now, I was ready to quilt.   I typically do the stitch in the ditch type quilting.   This time I decided that I wanted to try something different so I free motion quilted this one.   I didn't draw any designs, I just quilted random squiggles and loops.  When I finished, it looked like this:

I think she likes it. 

Lego Organization

My son loves his Legos.   He has several small sets and one big set.   He also got three pounds of random Lego pieces from his grandparents last year.  Currently, we have all the pieces in one big bin. 

I wonder if it would be easier to rebuild his sets if he sorted the bricks by color.   I'm not ready to commit to doing that so I'll let the Lego free-for-all continue.   The little manuals that come with the Lego sets is truly what makes me crazy.   They are necessary because they have assembly instructions.   Unfortunately, they rip easily and seem to be scattered from one end of the playroom to the other.  Today, I tamed the madness.   My solution involved an old binder and sheet protectors.   First, I put each book/leaflet in a sheet protector.   Then, I sorted them by what type of Lego they were.  For example all the Lego "City" manuals went together.   The "Cars" manuals went together.  At the end of the binder, I put all his Lego Club Jr. magazines in individual sheet protectors together.  

I hope this works to tame the mess.   I showed him how to use his binder and put it at the base of his Lego table.  Will it tame the clutter?  I can hope...

Thankfulness!

I think I am in a post family visiting, post vacation funk.   I actually got teary dropping my daughter off at choir camp  this morning.   To combat the funk, I am going to list all the things I am thankful for.  These are in no particular order, just written as they rolled off my brain.

#1 For my husband who is a wonderful provider

#2 For Jason's stable job

#3 For a church that is growing and reaching people daily

#4 For a church that encourages me and my family to grow spiritually

#5 For children who are healthy

#6 For a house that has all the square footage I could ever want

#7 For the opportunity to do a missions project in my own city, which I treasure because I can't see myself 

going out of the country again until the children are older.  

# 8 To get to live near family again

#9 For a little boy who loves to talk to me nonstop after his sister talked to me nonstop while she was home this morning.

#10 To live in a country where we can worship Jesus freely.

#11 For a washer and dryer that work and I don't have to wash by hand

#12 & #13 For a computer whose hard drive has not died yet and for a husband who is taking care of fixing it

#14 For the opportunity to stay home with my children

#15 For the time to explore various creative outlets

#16 For running water and sanitation

#17 For a wonderful violin teacher

#18 For vacations that are relaxing

#19 For a spring garden that worked and allowed me to freeze some veggies

#20 For a blog that records slices of our daily life so that I can have a written record of our lives.  

Vacations, Missions, and Birthdays, oh my!

I have tons to write about.   While I was on vacation, I worked on several blogs, but didn't finish any to post.  I hope to get that done soon.   As a family, we did Houston Project last week.   Houston Project is a week long city-wide mission project.   My family is visiting right now and we have been on the go!   We celebrated my son's birthday yesterday at the Children's Museum.   I hosted a party with a friend of mine whose son turns five in a couple of weeks.   The boys have the same group of friends, so we had a joint party.  The museum was crazy crowded, but we had a really good time.   We had a guide that took the kids to various parts of the museum.  It was a play tour!   The playtime for the party flew by!  The newly renovated museum is really cool it makes me wish I was a kid again.   My sister-in-law and I are off to The Woodlands today.   She lives in a small town in Alabama and loves to come explore my big city after being raised in a big city.

VBSing done

We finished our week at VBS strong.   In my last post, I wasn't sure how the t-shirts would wash.  After some Internet research, I heat set my children's t-shirts from Day 2 before washing them.  The Staz-On did not bleed at all.  A couple of the blue/green sharpie colors ran slightly.  If I ever do any more T-shirts with ink, I will plan to tell the parents to heat set the shirts prior to washing.   The Staz-On also says it is not recommended for fabric.   I searched for the reason.   A post on a message board said according to Tsukineko it was due to the solvent ink.   It may deteriorate the fabric over time.

For the t-shirt project, I wanted to do something a bit different than what I kept seeing.   I saw, "I *heart* VBS everywhere.   While I do love VBS, I wanted to send a different message.   I truly *heart* Jesus.   I decided to put that on the shirts.   I needed 8-9 stamp sets with those characters.   After looking around, I decided to make my own.   I used foam alphabet letters for the I.  I stuck two letters together to build it them up a bit.  The next challenge was to make a block for it.  I wanted to be able to see through it, so the children could see which was they were stamping.  I brainstormed and looked for weeks.   One day in Michaels, I happened on these:

 I took them apart, took the pin out and attached the foam letter with foam tape.  I used both the front and back pieces for my stamps.  I needed handles and found large foam marshmallows in our resource room at church.   I used e6000 to glue the handles to the plastic name badge parts.  I repeated the process with foam hearts for my second stamp.   Finding the word Jesus was a bit harder.   At Hobby Lobby, I came upon the word Jesus.  It was a wood cut out in located their seasonal VBS section.  I bought three packages so I would have nine pieces and kept looking.  I never found anything else.  I considered ordering a Jesus die for the die cut machine at church.  To make my Jesus stamp, I attached craft foam to the back side of the wood cut out and used an Exacto to cut out all the nooks and crannies.  Then, I used foam tape to attach the front side of the cut out to wood blocks.  This way the word would be reversed and stamp correctly,   My husband cut the wood, routed the edges of the blocks, and then cut them to size.   Here are my finished products:

On Thursday, the children studied the story of the woman at the well with Jesus.  I used the literature suggestion for a reminder well.   Instead of using vegetable cans we used Crystal Light containers.  I also made the stamps for this project.  I cut sponges to look like bricks and then added small foam marshmallows as handles.   I found the marshmallows at Michael's.  That was a nice addition to the project because it kept the children's hands out of the the ink.   You can see them in the below picture if you squint.  There is a green and white object in the front left of the picture.  That is the brick stamp.  Here is the room prior to the first rotation of kids:

I used plastic sheeting on the floor to protect the carpet.   It was essentially plastic garbage bag material.   I used rolled plastic on the tables.   That was nice because it could be rolled up, thrown away and replaced easily.    

On Friday we made Jesus buddies.   It was a variation on the literature suggestion.   When my daughter was four, she was sure Jesus had purple hair because she loved purple and loved Jesus.   I told the kids to make their buddy look however they would like it to look.   Some kids made themselves, some made Jesus, and some just did their own thing.   I loved the creativity.   The kids really enjoyed the craft.   They worked really hard on them.   Here are a few:

I used precut tag board shapes I bought at Michaels.  We decorated with wiggly eyes, yarn for hair, jute cord, scrap fabric, and  heart sticker for a mouth.   

Each project we made had the scripture of the day on it.  I either used computer generated labels or we, the volunteers, wrote the scripture on them.  Each day after the children completed the first activity, I had a second activity.  This kept my early finishers busy.   I did a different project a day and repeated the watercoloring on Friday.  My activities included: watercoloring a picture for a child in Africa, license plate rubbings, gluing magazine pictures to premade box buildings, and drawing with sidewalk chalk on black paper.   

I had a blast doing VBS this year.   I had great volunteers with beautiful hearts.   I prayed through the projects and the Lord gave me some great ideas.   I prayed for help seeing potential problems and He brought them to my mind or my volunteers mind.  I covered the entire thing in prayer and the Lord blessed it.   Now pray for the seeds that were planted in preschool hearts.     I did *heart* VBS, but I *heart* Jesus more!

VBSing

We are visiting The Big Apple this year through VBS.  I  am the preschool crafts director for my VBS.  I should have about 350 threes, fours, fives, and Kindergartners rotate through my room in a day.   I have a great team to help me and I am having a blast!

I completed most of the prep work thanks a couple of workdays with my team in May.   I had a few last minute things last week.  One thing completed last week was making decorating aprons.   I started with a plain red apron.   Then using my Silhouette, I cut out Craftonista, The Art District out of freezer paper.  I ironed that on the front and painted the negative space.  I came up with the name because our room is the Art District of the Big Apple.  I am playing on the word Fashionista.  I orginally got the idea from my daughter who called me a craftist which plays on the word artist.  
Here is the step by step.   After using my Silhouette to cut the word on freezer paper, I ironed it on the apron.

Then I painted with Black acrylic paint.

After the paint dried, I pulled off the freezer paper.  There were a couple of mistakes which I remedied with red paint and no one has noticed.  

I decided it needed more bling so I added some fringy stuff.  

Done!   My helpers love them!   

We used Staz-On ink for two projects.   Our aprons kept our clothes ink free!

Day one project was graffiti bags.   I stamped in black Staz-on I heart VBS.   The kids drew in washable markers on the bag as well.   We sprayed the bag with water a few times.   I didn't work on mine as hard as the kids worked on theirs.  My pitiful example looks like this:

Yesterday was t-shirt day.   We used the Staz-on ink again.   We stamped I heart Jesus.  Then, the kids decorated with sharpie marker.  I did not heat set the shirts.   One of my volunteers said she washed her shirts and a few colors ran.   I am going to heat set and then hand wash the kids shirts to see what happens.  So the jury is out on whether that was a good call on a craft or not.  Here is my son's shirt before I wash it.

Today was picture frame day.   We used this craft from Oriental Trading.  It was super easy and the kids loved doing it.

Tomorrow is the reminder well and Friday is create Jesus puppets day.  I keep hoping to snap a few pictures of the craft room in action, but we get so busy I forget.

VBS is a ton a fun and I'm loving it!

Book Review: When Sparrows Fall

This book centers around a young widow, Miranda Hanford as she struggles to break away from a fringe church.  Early on in the book, she is involved in an unfortunate accident.   This accident results in her single half brother-in-law coming to help with her children while she recovers.  Throughout her recovery, she works through various issues concerning her church and specifically the pastor.  There is also a sense of coming-to-age.   You watch the character mature and take a stand for herself at the end.

The book grabs your attention right away.  The romance element was a bit predictable and somewhat forced.   I found this book to be interesting overall because of the various twists the plot takes.  I would recommend this as an easy summer read.  

I recieved this book free for review purposes from Multnomah Waterbrook Publishers.  

Parent Participation Day

May is finally over!   May is a rough month because tons of stuff happens in May.   School is out now and I hope to be able to blog more.

One of the fun things we did in May was parent participation day at my son's gymnastics gym.  My husband is awesome...let me just say that upfront.   On parent participation day, he left work, came to the gym, changed clothes, and participated with my son for parent participation day, changed his clothes back, and then went back to work.

Here is my son with his coach.

They also did some floor exercises.   This is my son demonstrating a handstand.   

Not bad!   He is improving his skills every week.   We have seen lot of progress over the past year and a half that he has taken.   His coach this year has been WONDERFUL!

Here is Jason doing some things with our son.

 

The Garden

This spring we decided to to turn half our backyard into a garden.   When we bought our house three years ago, half the backyard was planted with St. Augustine and the other half was planted with Bermuda.   We got rid of the Bermuda to start the gardens.  I've tried gardens in the past will little success.   Usually, I get to busy and don't water them.  I only agreed to this project with 100% participation from everyone else in my household.   We even solicited the kids to help.

My husband scoured Craigslist for a few weeks looking for a rear tine tiller.   We finally found one that met our requirements.  It a A) didn't require too much work B) wasn't sold before we called on it and C) didn't cost as much as buying one new.   Jason was looking as far as Austin and we found one less than 10 miles away from our house.  While searching for the tiller, we took a soil sample and sent it off to TAMU for analysis.   We added the needed nutrients and got started.   Here it is in process.

We pulled tons of grass and weeds out of the areas.   I researched on the internet what the best plant placement would be.   From my research, I learned we should plant the corn and tomatoes in the north most point of the garden.   The reason being that when they grew tall, they would not shade the shorter plants.  My husband then made raised rows and we planted.  We are using multiple soaker hoses to irrigate.   This has worked well considering we still have a garden despite the severe drought.  At first, we found the squirrels chewing into our soaker hoses for water.   We put out a five gallon bucket of water which we change every 2 days.  Now they drink out of it instead of chewing into our hoses.  A pond is in the long range plans to provide water for the squirrels and birds.  The pond will also encourage the toads to hang around and eat pests.

The garden looks like this now.  The corn is as tall as me.

So far, we have corn almost ready for picking.   We have picked and eaten: grape tomatoes, yellow tomatoes, green tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers, okra and tons of zucchini.
This was our first picking of zucchini.   They were so big, I sent one to school for my daughter's teacher.  The largest one measured 12" and it wasn't dry or bitter.   One was enough to feed my family of four as a side dish for one meal.

Here is the cucumbers I sliced for dinner one night.

I made some fried green tomatoes with some of the tomatoes.   I fried the okra as well.   The rest has been steamed, grilled, or sautéed and eaten.

We are making notes this year how to improve and plant for next Spring.  We plan to move the cucumbers to a less severely sunny spot, plant more corn rows and increase our number of green bean plants.   We also do not plan to raise the rows.   It makes irrigation a bit of a challenge.   It has been fun to do the garden.   My kids love going out and picking the veggies.  They have also eaten everything I have prepared out of the garden.  I firmly believe if they grow it, they will eat it.

We have been creative to keep the squirrels out of our garden.   I read on the internet we could make a spray with tabasco sauce, vinegar, and water.   It would repel animals.  We also set out a fake owl which we move around.  The animals ate a few things when our home made repellant wore off.   We reapplied and they have stayed away again.  We have used Neem Oil for some ant control.   A friend suggest Orange Oil, but I haven't gotten any yet.   Jason read coffee grounds work as well.  I'm trying that for the ants.  Since I love coffee guess where the grounds have been going.  :) Here is a view of the okra.  You can see a marigold we planted for pest control.  We have been able to grow without pesticides.

We are also thinking of a Fall garden filled with lettuces and cool weather plants.   There are many possibilities...