The Rhythm of Our Days is Over There...

I made this neat table, our rhythm/schedule thingy, and tried to post it here, but it didn't work, so here it is, on the homeschool site, even though it's not strictly homeschool....

We're off on a grand adventure this afternoon. I'll tell you all about it later!
Hopefully I won't forget the camera, OR batteries!

Project::Magnetic Chore Chart

After some fiddling around with different methods, different kinds of chore charts, we've arrived here, at the side of the fridge in the kitchen hall:

Both charts are simple- just 12x12 pieces of card stock, divided into a "To Do Today" column and a "Done!" column. There are a bunch of chore tags to the side- the focus area of the day (Living/Dining, Bedrooms, Family Room, Bathrooms, Kitchen, Garden, Outside) that we all work on, and specific chores or responsibilities (pjs on, empty hamper, set the table, clear the table, etc.).

It's working pretty well. Avery still tries to find things NOT on his chart to do, which is nice, and sometimes tries to negotiate out of the thins on his chart, which is maybe not as nice, and Miles is happy to see what his jobs are without needing help to read. He likes being able to see with his own eyes that he has jobs that are just his to do, but he also likes knowing that he and his brother have some jobs in common, too.

Anyway, another project down, and another tag moved to the DONE! side of my own mental chore chart. Hooray!

Organization::Library Thing

Oh, my! I LOVE Library thing! I only just started, but here's the deal: you input all of your books, add your own tags (toddlers, mama-aya, nature, borrowed, loaned....) and comments (loaned to so and so, chapter 3 great for plant cycle lesson....) and you have the option to rate books, give away books you don't want, write reviews and view other reviews, compare your library with others, all kinds of fun, I mean, organizational tools.
I've been trying for a long time to figure out how to organize all our books- not nearly enough shelf space to do it neatly and categorically, and, really, lots of books are good for more than one category, right? So I'm just starting out, but this will work, I think. I'm tagging books with subject and age-group tags, so, for instance, when I'm looking for books to fill out a lesson on animals in winter I'll be able to search my library by preschool and elementary groups as well as season (winter) and subject (animals). The math books I just loaned, well, I'll know who to look for when I want them back, and the stack of science books I've borrowed, well, I'll know who to avoid until I'm finished with them! Just kidding... if you want them back now I'm happy to return them.

Projects, Interrupted

You know Martha Stewart and I are a lot alike.
We both love cooking and baking. Of course, she never does her thing in a tiny rather ugly kitchen whose facelift is rather far down the list of important things to spend money on and so will most likely stay ugly for the foreseeable future, and I'll bet she doesn't have to make her way around two small wooden chairs her boys stand on to help, the highchair with the baby in it (the getting really hungry and already starting to fuss baby), and the other high chair the three year old pulled into the kitchen so that he could reach the upper cabinet where there might be candy hidden, or the sticky place from when he slipped climbing down froom the top shelf and dropped the jar of molasses. I've never seen her do that on the show, anyhow.
We both love crafts. I love finding that all of the fancy homemade card envelopes are gone because my husband was paying bills and I left my card-making basket on the table and there they were, easier than walking downstairs to the office and getting regular envelopes. I wonder if Martha and I are alike that way, too? I bet the people at the gas company appreciated opening that pretty, floral-paper lined envelope, anyway.
We both love making things look just so. But Martha doesn't have little boys taking her cunningly arranged vintage bamboo tray, smooth colored stones, perfect little blue bowl and single white blossom into a soggy mangled mess of crushed petals and shards of shiny deadly blue before she can even take a picture of her little lovely vignette.
We both like to talk about all of the great ideas we have, and all the lovely things we've made. She has people to actually finish her projects for her, and document how they were made so the effect can be recreated, and take pictures so that they'll be remembered long after a two year old with a sharpie comes through the room.
We both have houses full of servants to make everything pretty, just the way we tell them too, and clean up after us when we entertain our celebrity friends by teaching them crafts. Oh. Well, one of does.
But we both only need 4 hours of sleep a day. Really. And I don't even need to have them all at once. I only need 4 hours of sleep, just like my friend Martha. Of course, it is arguable that I might do a little better if I had a solid night's sleep more than once ever 4 years, but I bet Martha wouldn't falter and fail. No, I'm sure she'd finish the projects she started, or at least have them finished for her, no matter how distracted and delusional her sleep-deprived mind became.
And that's the problem, really. I can't give up on a project, and I can't quite admit that I'm not ever going to finish knitting the second little I-cord tie for that adorable little snowflake hat that is now too small for the person it was (almost) knitted for. I am too distracted by real life, and real messes, and these very real boys to finish anything but the essentials, and I'm too delusional to admit that it might be okay if I didn't try to every darn thing myself, by hand, from absolute scratch.

So here they are:
The hat, already mentioned.
The magnetic food pyramid inspired chart. How could I be out of magnetic paper? I bet Martha's never out of magnetic paper.
The magnetic chore management chart. Again, the magnetic paper. I swear I had a bunch of it before I started these projects.
The alphabet photo project I started with the boys a few weeks ago.
More blank cards to give as gifts. Two cards doesn't make a great gift, especially when they don't come with envelopes.
The DNC scrapbook I planned to put together after, well, the Democratic National Convention last August.
Miles' baby scrapbook. Enough said, I'm sad enough about that one.
There's more. Not including the projects I haven't even started, there's plenty more. But do you see how pathetic it is? I can't even finish a list about the projects I haven't finished!