The Big Bang Theory of paper crafting doesn’t work.  It seems as in real life, even if you have all the supplies, you still need an intelligent plan.

So, I looked for an intelligent plan.

I found one.  Busy bags.  You can find a ba-gillion of them online.  Here are my favorite sites are Montessori For Everyone and Money Saving Mom.

My favorite is the first.  It has a huge selection, and many are for older kids as well.

I made an obscene amount of these over the last few days.  You just print out the activities, put it in a bag, and wait for the kids to beg you for them.  It’s that easy.  I now see pom poms and colored paper clips in my future.  I made about 20 bags using only what I had on hand.

They work.  They’re cute. They’re cheap. They’re easy to clean up.  They’re educational.  They’re here to stay.

Busy bags…if you don’t have some, get some.

All the girls are layin’ again.  I can’t wait until they’re all laying everyday.  Today 6/10 earned their keep.  The blue eggs are back.  I simply love the colors.  Don’t you?  It kinda make getting up in the morning and making breakfast happier.  At least that’s what I’m telling myself.

Never did I foresee that the subject I so adamantly tried to avoid all my life is grafting itself into everything I love to do leisurely.  Mathematics.  What I have also deemed as mundane and exhausting has been creeping it’s ugly little head into my craft time.

At first it started with simple measuring and adding while I sewed.  Then, it escalated into pre-algebra while making a skirt.  Before I knew it I was finding products of 4 in knitting.  Now, I’m willingly submitting myself to percentages, fractions, adding/subtracting and multiplying/dividing in efforts to master pattern writing.

It seems you and I can tell our kids there is a purpose for all the madness.  Even if is takes being out of high school for 11.5 years before I realize it, I can use algebra in life.  Mathematics is important, useful, productive, and- whether I like it or not- the only way I can proceed in my desire to become a knitting pattern writer.

Now that I think of it, Math is the base of everything scientific, creative, and practical.  That’s a lot of stuff.

*sigh*

If feels good to admit that.  I’ve denied it for far too long.

The ending result of gluten-free baking isn’t always as satisfying as I expect.  These muffins were not like that.  So, I felt I must share them with you.  They were soft, spongy, moist, and de-lish.  I found a recipe for GF muffins at Gluten Freely Frugal.  Instead of using a GF flour mix, I decided to go a more frugal route.  Here’s my adaptation to the recipe.

½ C organic sugar

4 T butter, softened

4 eggs

1 C milk

½ t vanilla

1-1/2 C  brown rice flour

½ C oat flour (this is great for a moist spongy texture)

½ t sea salt

1 t xanthan gum

4 t baking powder

1-1/2 C blueberries

½ C pecan pieces

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2.  Beat together sugar, butter, and eggs.   Add milk and vanilla.  In separate bowl mix all dry ingredients well.  Add the dry ingredients to the wet mix.  Stir in nuts.  Fold in berries.
3.  Place mix in greased muffin pans.  Bake for 20 minutes, turning once.
4. Gobble them up before everyone else eats them.

Gluten free is still delicious!

Well, at least I did.  I finally decided it was time to take my most overwhelming chore and systematize to make run smoother.  I wash roughly: 49 outfits, 18 PJs, sheets from 5 beds, towels, napkins, 40 diapers and 14 covers each week.  Guess what?  I got fed up with scenes like this one…

Look familiar?  This is a corner of my bedroom filled with baskets of clean clothes.  They got thrown in there because we had company coming over.  They stayed there for days.  Since everyone dug around to find something clean to wear, and to find matches for socks…it looks like I never even folded it to begin with!

Laundry.  You can’t live with it, you can’t live without it.  Me and laundry have a love/hate relationship. I love when I have clean clothes in all the drawers.  I hate putting it there.  I love when laundry gets done in one day.  I hate stacking it in my room because the dinner guests arrived. Love/Hate.

I figured that there had to be a way to do laundry without it in our living spaces.  I did a little searching around to see what other people with large families do. Here’s what I found out.

1.  Everyone likes to show off their beautiful laundry rooms, but few show how they get it to stay that way.

2.  I have a very dreary and unattractive laundry room.

I did glean my main idea from another mom of five over at Clover Lane. The rest of the system is from looking at lots of pictures of beautiful laundry rooms that I don’t have. Some is even my own ideas. So, here’s my system:

1.  I used 4 rectangular baskets I already had for sorting baskets.  I labeled them with all the colors that go in each, and tied coordinating yarn around them.

Check out this original post on how to make a liquid soap using soap nuts.

I followed the laundry soap directions…mostly.

I boiled 12 nuts instead of 8.  After I boiled the 8 nuts in the 8 cups.  I then boiled the same nuts in 4 more cups. By doing this I made 12 soap nuts into 12 cups of liquid soap.  I use 2 tablespoons per load.

The original directions for using soap nuts in laundry is to put 8 nuts in a bag to toss into the laundry.  I usuallly reuse the bag 5 or so times.

Making the liquid has a two-fold benefit.

1.  12 cups will last at least a month but I’m thinking two (instead of 5-7 loads)  which makes this super cheap laundry soap even cheaper!

2.  The liquid soap provides an equally strong amount of washing quality vs. each load having less and less soap in it.

So there it is.  The absolutely least expensive laundry detergent ever.  The fact that it’s completely organic makes soap nuts a perfect fit for this frugal family.

We finally have a puppy in our home after weeks of searching and praying for just the right addition to our family.  Meet Luke, a cockapoo (cocker spaniel/poodle) we got from a rescue.

We are so excited to have this sweet and gentle guy to pet and love and play with.  He’s pretty great.

Sitting on my couch turning a heel on a sock, had me thinking about how far I’ve come in two and a half years of knitting.  You shall never see a picture of my first three projects because, frankly, they are the ugliest knitting projects on Earth.  A hat, a scarf, and a couple of holey wash clothes were my first attempts at the wonderful world of knitting.  This is not important, really.  What’s important is that instead of people saying “Did you make that?”  They now say, “I can’t believe you made that!”

The difference is huge.  If only that could happen with my sewing.  I would love to sew anything that looked so professional that no one could tell I made it.  That’s a whole other topic.  Though I know the mistakes exist in most my projects, and though I know I have a ways to go, I am pleased that I am to the point of socks.  This has been the scariest of all projects to me.  And here I am gearing up to turn a heel!  (Let us not even remember to pair I already attempted and frogged).  I have determination.

People often ask when I find time to knit “with all those kids” around.  Easy.  While watching TV with Nick in the evening.  While taking a time-out from overwhelming responsibility (nap time), and while Nick takes the driver’s seat–literally.  It’s true.  That really the only times I ever knit.  Okay, it comes with me to the Dr’s office, and to the in-laws’ for dinner and such, but honestly not much gets done that way.

People say I’m amazing.  That one always makes me laugh inside.  I would not consider myself an “amazing” knitting.  I classify myself as advanced beginner.  Amazing to me are intricate  lace and colorwork– not a garter stitch scarf.  Amazing to me is being a consistently great and innovated pattern writer.  I am not amazing.

People ask me where I learned to knit.  The answer is YouTube videos.

People say “I tried to knit but I couldn’t figure it out.”  Hey, me too.  It took me weeks to figure it out.  I was just very determined.  I also found great resources via the internet.  As they say “practice makes perfect”  so has my my journey with needles been.  I knit nearly everyday.  Certainly everyday if I am excited for the results or very close to the end of a project.

People say I’m too young to knit.  I say most of the great knitter and pattern writers– and yarn shop owners for that matter– aren’t grandmas.  Knitting is hip now.  Even celebrities do it– not that I care much what  celebrities do.  I’m just sayin’.

Since I don’t have any actual people to learn from here…at least not that I know of, I have learned to take bay steps.  I started with the most basic projects using only garter stitch.  Each project following I look up the abbreviation and watch videos until I feel comfortable proceeding with the needles and yarn.  I have yet to come across instructions I couldn’t find a video tutorial for.

If you want to learn to knit, or if you want to get better…then do it.  Use the free and awesome tools that are out there.  Join a knitting circle.  Become a better knitting by being determined.  Become a better knitter by knitting.  Whether it’s good, bad or ugly– you can’t be a great knitter if you don’t pick up those needles and cast on that yarn.

That’s how to become a better knitter.