Another day

Did some sewing today and not much else. One of those days. It is what it is! (Just read Loz's post here)

In other news, Mr 16 has learnt to juggle. Not all of my kids can juggle, but they all have some sort of circus skill. (Unicycle riding, stilt walking, tumbling...) It's important for them to have something to fall back on I think and we're planning for them to run off to the circus if all else fails. (Homeschooling humour here! Did you know that we have homeschooled all of our kids? We do have a wayward child who goes to school at the moment, but we can't all be perfect and we love her anyway! Every morning I try to coax her to stay home with me, but every morning she goes off to school. Her school friends don't understand her because they try to stay home from school whenever they can!) Mr 16 decided it was his time to juggle eight days ago and now he juggles. He had instruction from Miss 24 (another of my jugglers) and the internet! Times sure have changed. When Miss 24 decided it was her time (10 years ago) she went to circus school! The world sure does change fast! My Bradley and I were just discussing that this evening. We watched an ad for the new "Tron" movie and I marvelled at how I sat through the original "Tron" when we saw it together some 28 years ago. He was surprised because he thought I liked it. I explained that things were different then. Nobody had a wall of dvds at home that they could watch whenever they felt like it. Seeing a movie was not an everyday occurance! Besides, we were both poor students when we married 28 years ago and we had free tickets!!! Such a long time ago, but it seems just like yesterday!

Homeschooling - covering all your bases.

Just incase you want to run away to the Circus your mother arranges Circus skill lessons for you at Cirkidz. You need something to fall back on and for this homeschooling family - it's the Circus! You get to Cirkidz and meet your trainer. He wears funny clothes and his hair is... well....... shall we just say, 'different'. But he looks somehow familiar, and you know you're going to really like him. Then he gets you to run around like a mad thing and you know for sure you're going to love it!

Well, that's kind of what it's like on Thursday mornings. When our older children were younger, and we were homeschooling them, we took them to a homeschool Cirkidz class. We enjoyed joking about the kids needing something to fall back on. They had great fun and learnt life skills like juggling, stilt walking and unicycle riding. Mostly it was a chance for them to hang out with homeschool friends. Very often we would go for a picnic or to someone's house to play afterwards. Some of the kids took it more seriously and formed their own Circus troupe and became trainers for Cirkidz. In fact, one of those kids now runs the homeschool Cirkidz class that I take our younger children to. We kind of thought that we should offer our younger children the same educational opportunities we gave the older kids. Afterall, everyone needs something to fall back on! They enjoy the Thursday morning class a lot. They started this term and will be finishing this term too. It is just so expensive! I don't remember feeling that the classes were expensive last time. Maybe it isn't the classes, maybe it's everything else. Food is so expensive and fuel keeps going up every week here. Anyway, I'm here to tell you that having the Circus as a backup is a lot less affordable than it was before! Hmm....... gotta go find another backup!

Lego

It was a lego kind of day today. I love a lego kind of day! It's one of the great joys of homeschooling. Having the time to spend a whole day building, dreaming, imagining, creating and playing.

A Ritual at our House

Are you taller? It's an important question that needs answering at our house. Everyone who is still growing delights in being measured every now and then. Mostly when some parent has said, 'Are you taller?'
Not much is happening here on the craft front. I am still sorting and organising my craft room, along with all the extra things that are required of Mothers in the school holidays. (Even Mothers who homeschool! That's when all sorts of things kids are interested in are concentrated! It's also when their schooled friends are available to play, and sleepover, and play, and play.)

This time last week I had seven extras for dinner due to all the comings and goings of friends. They love it, so it is all worth it, but it keeps you busy! The younger kids and I went to see 'Horton Hears a Who' at the Semaphore Odeon Star last week too. They enjoyed it (especially the 7 year old!) and I love taking the kids to Semaphore to see a movie because they have an everybody $7 a movie policy. It just makes movie going so much more affordable! Miss 11 is keen to see 'Nim Island' now (darn those trailers!) so hopefully that will be on the cards this week. Tomorrow I'm planning (translation, desperate) to get my sewing room finished so that I can sew again! Watch this space.

Labour Day Holiday

I'm not sure why we have a labour day holiday, but I have been hard at work today! I'm painting that very red/pink room from the previous post. It's taken two coats of undercoat to cover it, but now my "orchid" will look beautiful. Today is the first day of the school holidays. You might wonder how that affects us because we homeschool, but this is the time my kids can catch up with their schooled friends. We have quite few activities set for this week so the crafting and painting might have to take a back

seat! I thought I would share some of my front yard with you because everything is just so beautiful at the moment!

Green apricots, daisies and apple blossoms.

A Busy Week

Isn't every week a busy week? This week saw some more of that renovation stuff happening. I painted doors this week. Twenty-three of them! The doors in the photo are some of the ten doors I am working on at the moment. I utilise an unfinished hallway to paint doors for the storage George builds me. I love the look of painted MDF and George loves to build with it, therefore I love to paint it! My colour is Wattyl Orchid. (Hey! It's lucky I haven't finished the hallway, huh? It was a plan!!! Really!!!)
This is another room in my unpainted house. We call this the "big couch room" at the moment. It is the original lounge room in our early 1950's timber frame house. Some previous occupants opened this room up and it is now a large room with living area, dining and kitchen incoporated together. We have a corner couch in this room from Ikea's "as is" department, hence the name - big couch room! George has built toy cupboards either side of a large window and window seats inbetween. He still has a little building work to finish (really) before I can paint. This week I sewed the first cushion covers for the window seat. I'm very pleased with them because I think they look like someone else made them! I guess I was nervous about doing this job because I have never sewn anything like this before, but they fit and everything! I am now working on the remaining four sets of cushions. I guess the fact that the texile part of the job is more advanced than the painting part tells you where my passion lies!!! Although I do really enjoy painting too.

The same cushions again! I don't know why I put this one in. Perhaps just to show you that it is a sunny window seat. It's going to be a great place to read on a sunny winter's day! The fabric is not my favourite, but a $3 a metre special from spotlight a couple of years ago. It's 1.5 m wide upholstry fabric and a great bargain. I knew I wanted a window seat somewhere in this house so I snapped the fabric up. George always says it's not a bargain until you actually use it, so I'm really pleased to be using it! Renovating on a budget! Such fun!

This photo shows off my cushion yet again (must change the title of this post to BORING! or Guiness World Record Attempt-to talk about a cushion for the longest time in a blog!) and is proof of our homeschooling status. For those of you who don't homeschool I will explain. We in the homeschooling community know that to be serious about homeschooling you need to have a seriously large lego collection. All the drawers under our 2.9m long window seat contain lego of some description. Okay, maybe it's just the geeky homeschoolers who have lots of lego, and if you are considering homeschooling please don't think the first thing you have to do is buy lots of lego. Not unless you are a geek, anyway.

For mother's day Picklestick sent me a fabric postcard. She sent one to all the mothers in her life. It's so cool to receive a fabric postcard! I was discussing the joys of it with her this week and she said "Well, I wouldn't know. No-one's ever sent me a fabric postcard!" I was crushed. Here was proof that I had neglected my parental responsibilities. Imagine a mother who had never sent her child a fabric postcard! So this week I resolved to right this wrong. I have made a stack of postcards and the first one is going off to Picklestick as we speak. You can see it above, along with the back of the one she sent to me.(On my Ikea bedspread. I love that fabric!) I'm off to sew more cushion covers, to save more money, and to right more wrongs! (This post feels so superhero at this end! Can you tell I haven't been well and feel a little outta touch with reality? Here I come, to save the day!!!!!)