July

The Christmas in July sale is officially over at Mama Made Them. Now I just need to get everything made in before I go on vacation in a few days.

Yesterday I was feeling the crunch of time and the weight of my orders, when my son asked me if we could go to the pool. I said, no, we have too much to do, but I’m planning on a pool trip tomorrow. Today we were going to the farmer’s market (he loves going to the farmers market because we can see our farmer friends). He pouted.

But as I went down to the basement, sweating behind my dust mask, I fell prey to the siren song of summer: “just relax, don’t work so hard, play!” So I cut out a sheep for a puzzle, but set it down, went back upstairs and said, “we’ll go for an hour.”

And that hour was lovely. Then we went to the market, and came home to cook up a feast.

But I never made it back to work in the evening as I had planned.

But I don’t regret skipping out to go for a swim on an oppressive day in July.

But I need to find a way to get back to work in the evening on busy days. Because despite the peace and tranquility of the days when my business was not requiring as much work, I prefer the peace and tranquility of not worrying how I’m going to pay the electric bill. I prefer having a car. I prefer having money in the bank.

Working from home as a single homeschooling parent is a constant balancing act. I had to laugh at this article on Simple Homeschool last week. It is about homeschooling and working from home, and how it is the hardest part of her homeschooling. Her solution was to work less.

I was disappointed with the article, because it seemed to sell her kids short. And it didn’t really address the issue of balancing work that you have to do with the work of your home life. It just said work less. Which is a great solution: if your husband already has a job, if you aren’t in need of all the money (and more) that you can bring in, if you want to work less.

But if you really would benefit from working MORE, it didn’t offer any solutions.

When I get back from vacation in August, it’s going to be time for me to put my nose to the grindstone preparing for Christmas. And I’m going to come back to this issue of balance again and again. And I’m going to blog about it here.

If you are curious about how I “get it all done” (as I hear people wonder frequently) or about things kids can do while you are working or about productivity strategies for working parents, I’ll be talking about all that. If you have specific questions, just post them below.

Summer, Sailboats, and Craft Shows

 

 

Finally the long, lazy days of summer are here! So far this summer, there hasn’t been much time for laziness.

First we were at the WYEP Music Festival in Schenley Plaza, which is always a fun show. This year it rained, but we still showed up, and customers still shopped, and fans still cheered for the bands.

The following weekend, we staked out the 6th Street Bridge for the weekend to sell our toys at the Regatta. There were three sold out Pirates games. The stadium is right over the bridge, , so let me tell you, I was a busy sword maker that weekend!

This past weekend, we were in Southside Works, right across the Hot Metal Bridge (awesome name isn’t it?), for Southside Works Exposed.

There has been so much rain here in the Pittsburgh area, that all the water activities (boat races, jetski shows, etc.) were cancelled during the Regatta. The current was 4 times stronger than normal, and there was all kinds of floating debris in the water.

But I debuted my new Sailboat, and it did just fine at the show.

I’ve been wanting to make a sailboat for a while, but every prototype I made wasn’t good enough. You see, I wanted to sell a sailboat that really sailed. And I also didn’t want to be sewing sails all the time, because sewing is not my forte.

I found plans for this sailboat, and with a few modifications, it was perfect. The keel is weighted, which makes it very stable in the water. The sail is wooden, which means no sewing for me, and no nasty stained up cloth for you next summer.

You can purchase the sailboat here: https://www.etsy.com/listing/239016525/floating-sailboat. We’ll be taking ours to the lake today, so I’ll have more pictures tomorrow.

Coming up next week, I’m going to be doing my annual Christmas in July Sale. It starts the 20th, Monday, and ends the 25th of July. 25% off of everything in my shop. Don’t miss it.

Bedtime Games

My son doesn’t like to go to bed. Really, really doesn’t ever like going to bed. So we’ve developed a routine with lots of things to ease us into sleep. There’s the bedtime snack, the teeth brushing, the story-time, tickle-time, and finally a bedtime game.

These games started years ago and have evolved as my son’s knowledge base evolved. Originally, we started out with very, very simple addition, subtraction, and multiplication problems when he was around 4 (what’s 2 4’s, how many is 5 and 3, etc.). They gradually evolved into more and more difficult questions.

Caleb called this the “Math Game,” and often asked to play with the grown-ups he hangs out with (who inevitably chuckle uncomfortably and protest that they are no good at math). What we used to refer to as Word Problems in school are now the primary questions in this game. And this one definitely goes both ways. He comes up with just as good problems as we grown-ups do.

The “Word Game” began simply by seeing whether or not he could determine what the first letter of the word was. He enjoyed the game, but it took a while to evolve beyond that, since he wasn’t much into words and reading. Eventually it morphed into the first two letters, and then to spelling only very short words. Now (at 8 years old) it is spelling any words, and it is called the Spelling Game.

The Geography Game started sometime after we got a few GeoPuzzle map puzzles (Asia and Europe are what we have so far). To play, you name a country in the world, and then name what continent it is on (or region like Central America or the Middle East). I can see this becoming more and more specialized as he ages as well: countries (and states) and their capitals, major exports, animal life, major rivers, mountains, lakes, etc.

We also play rhyming games— trying to get as many rhymes as possible with one word going back and forth between both of us. There is the homophone game (though we never call it that) where we have to come up with 2 words that sound the same but are spelled differently (I think that is a homophone!), and you have to spell each word if challenged.

I fully expect to come up with more games like this as he learns more and more about the world. A game works best when he has a tiny bit of knowledge about an area–like we couldn’t have played the geography game when he was four and couldn’t really even conceive of the rest of the world—, but not a comprehensive knowledge–like find the first letter in a word would be a joke now.

We call these games, because we’re having fun, but really they are tests. But unlike when your disapproving mother-in-law is quizzing your homeschooled children, there is no fear of failure here. We never play for longer than my son wants to play, and the games never push him beyond what he is comfortable with. There is no penalty for getting something wrong. It’s more like a game show than the bar exam.

But it puts knowledge into practice. Caleb has been exposed to various countries and where they are in wildlife/nature videos, puzzles, on our big living room map and globe, and in books, but these games put that knowledge into practice.

From the Blog Barking Up the Wrong Tree, he quotes The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How:

“One real encounter, even for a few seconds, is far more useful than several hundred observations.” Bjork cites an by psychologist Henry Roediger at Washington University of St. Louis, where students were divided into two groups to study a natural history text. Group A studied the paper for four sessions. Group B studied only once but was tested three times. A week later both groups were tested, and Group B scored 50 percent higher than Group A. They’d studied one-fourth as much yet learned far more.

Testing gets a bad rap. I always thought this, even when I was in school. I have always enjoyed taking tests. The problem with tests in the schools is that they are not for LEARNING; they are for judging, critiquing, labeling, etc. They aren’t for your benefit; they are for the benefit of your teacher, and often for your detriment.

The key is to have fun, be playful. Caleb treats learning as a game, because that’s all it ever is to him. Learning happens best when you are relaxed and engaged. Bedtime is the perfect time for learning (at least for a bouncy little boy that doesn’t like to go to sleep). 🙂

New Cement Mixer Toy

My new cement mixer is now for sale on etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/230570554/cement-mixer. The cement mixer really gets mixed in this truck–the mixing drum turns while the truck is driving.

This truck has been in the works for over a month. First I had to come up with a prototype, then I had to find a woodturner to make the mixing drums for me. I contacted a few Etsy artists, and settled on Hysun Woodturning.

First we tried using fir fence post wood, but it was too soft and had too many cracks in it. Finally he found solid maple pieces that were sold a baseball bat blanks, and those became our mixing drums.

It’s the first time I’ve outsourced a part of my toys, and it worked out quite well, since I don’t have lathe or woodturning skills.

New Police Car and Ambulance plus a coupon code for this week

I had an etsy message this morning from a loyal customer who wanted me to make an ambulance for her daughter. I’m pretty sure this customer has asked me before to work on an ambulance, though it could have been someone else. At any rate, I decided there was no time like the present, and I got right to work on it.

While I was thinking about how to make it, I thought that I really wanted to have a police car too. I’ve been contemplating these two vehicles for years, to be honest.

For the police car, I wanted it to have a back seat for the bad guy, but there had to be some kind of barrier to protect the policeman. It also needed to have siren lights. So after some consideration, this is what I came up with:

My customer suggested that I make the ambulance just like my mail truck, just with the back open. Years ago, I actually did make one like that, and I wasn’t happy with it. There needed to be something in the back, so the patient wouldn’t just slide out. It also needed to look a little more comfortable than just an empty truck bed. This is what I came up with:

                                                  The pillow just makes it seem homier, doesn’t it?

To celebrate my new toys, I’m going to be doing a coupon code for 10% off anything the shop. APRIL15 is the code.

Bedtime Tea Time (with sugar-free Peanut Butter Cookies)

This is a habit that we have gotten out of the past, well, 6 months. Stopping what we are doing an hour before lights out and making some herbal tea, is one of my favorite habits.

I’m not a huge fan of the tea, mind you (Caleb is, and he is the one that got us started on this by following my mother’s habit of tea at bedtime). It’s the Time that is nice.

We turn off the computer, make sure the room is picked up, and wait for the tea kettle to whistle. While we are drinking our tea, we’ll play a short game, usually a card game like Rook or, occasionally, Uno. Last night we played Quiddler, which is a card game with letters on the cards instead of numbers. You try to arrange all the letters in your hand into words by taking and discarding cards from the draw pile in order to get the highest point value words.

When we have some, we’ll have cookies with our tea. Generally these will be whole wheat cookies without any refined sugar, using honey or maple syrup or maple sugar to sweeten. The result is a mildly sweet treat with our tea.

Here is one of the recipes we’ve used:

Peanut Butter Cookies (adapted from Chocolate Covered Kate’s recipe)

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup peanut butter (with salt)
• 3/4 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 cup of white whole wheat flour
• 1/4 cup maple sugar (we get our maple sugar from Mansfield Maple)
• 1/8 cup of maple syrup or honey
• 1/8 cup of applesauce
• 1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Instructions

Mix it all together, and shape it into balls. Before baking, smoosh (even though smoosh isn’t really a work, apparently) the cookies down with a fork, making a criss-cross pattern. Bake them at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. It makes about a dozen cookies. They are best once they are cooled.

Enjoy! I’m going to go have some of our Oatmeal Cookies (recipe coming soon) and tea and a little game.

Never Stop Learning

The other day I was at my friends’ farm to help them start their maple syrup harvest. We were mainly there to spend time with our friends, with the added benefit of Caleb getting to bring one of his favorite parts of the book, Farmer Boy, to life.

But, we got firsthand experience tapping maple trees, and that firsthand experience is what can take an idea from the dream stage to the execution stage. If I had a maple tree on my 1/10th of an acre (or anywhere near it), I would have no trouble tapping my own tree.

When I started making toys for my son, I watch you tube videos, and read articles, but it wasn’t til I actually bought a scroll saw, that I really thought that I could do this.

But learning how to tap maple trees wasn’t the only thing I learned that day.

I’ve been having trouble with the cord for my miter saw (Dewalt, sliding miter saw, don’t go a day without using it). At some point in its history, before it came to live with me, someone had given it a new plug. After owning it for about 4 years, this plug wasn’t working right anymore. I had to jiggle the cord around regularly to get it to work.

I’ve been concerned about this, and unsure of where I would even take it to be fixed.

Well, at my friends’ farm, David, electrical/mechanical whiz, happened to be having trouble with some aspect of their power system, and close to the time we were going to leave, I realized that he probably knew what was wrong with my plug.

First he gave me a rundown on what was likely the problem, and how to fix it. BUT being the thorough and generous man he is, he went out to the barn and found me a piece of wire with a plug to get hands-on experience. He walked me through it step-by-step and had me do the work myself in order to cement the knowledge into my head.

I haven’t actually gotten around to fixing mine yet, but when I do, I will have perfect confidence that I can do it correctly.

Learning from other people is a highly underutilized resource. Youtube videos are great (I just used one to learn how to replace the belt on my dryer), but there is nothing like a real person there helping you out.

You don’t have to depend on the goodwill of friends and relations either (though most people are happy to lend their knowledge to help you, particularly if you don’t infringe upon their time). If you just pay attention to your repairmen, you can learn a lot.

That is how I learned how to do my own plumbing. Or rather how I got the confidence to glue pipes together (I had PVC pipes in my house). I just watched my handyman as he fixed the breaks and then next time, I just did what he did.

Another way you can learn without feeling like you are burdening your sources of knowledge is to volunteer to help them on their next project. This works best with friends, professionals would probably just feel you were in the way. If you want to get experience from your handy relative, offer to hold the tools for them when they put in their new ceiling fan, or prepare the grout when they are retiling their bathroom.

Most things that we need to learn how to do in life are not difficult, but they can be intimidating when you don’t know what you are doing. Rather than remain in your state of fear and ignorance, and forever paying the “expert”, stretch your limits. Ask for help. Never stop learning new things.

Oh, and Dave, if you are reading this, my miter saw doesn’t have a grounding wire. What??

Project Tuesday-Shields

We like to have nerf wars in the house and outside, and for a while we’ve talked about making shields. Finally we got around to it.

Caleb cut out a circle from a pizza box.

His idea, not mine. I thought we should have used a larger box, but it was his project. Once he had it cut out, he painted it while I worked on painting my peg people.

For the handle, he sewed a strip of fabric on the back. Sewing through cardboard worked surprisingly well, and I figured it was stronger than tape. My other thought was stapling it, but I couldn’t find the stapler.

After that it was ready to use!

New Toys! Forklift, Front End Loader, and Covered Wagon

I’ve got new toys for you today.

Do your kids like the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder? My son likes Farmer Boy the best. We’ve read it seven or eight or nine times. Way too many. But that was always my favorite too. I liked to read about all the good food they ate.

The covered wagon adventures always captured my imagination too. Imagine what it was like to travel over the prairie with all your worldly possessions, camping at night with nothing but the wolves to keep you company. Think of all the stars they could see!

My covered wagon (click on the link to purchase) will enable your kids’ wee people to travel all over the house.

The horse can slip out of his harness for Pa to ride her out on his hunting trips.

Caleb got kinetic sand for Christmas. It’s a nice alternative to real sand in the house. You can shape it without it being wet, and it doesn’t get everywhere like real sand, because it sticks together.

It’s also the perfect place for his Mama Made Them wooden toy construction vehicles. The latest edition to the crew is the Front End Loader (click the link to purchase).

Last, but certainly not least, is the Forklift.

This toy is just too fun. My son was so excited when I showed him the finished product, he promptly put it to work with the blocks. Given how often we go to Lowes and Home Depot and other lumber yards (A LOT), he’s had firsthand experience watching forklifts from a young age.

I hope you like them! I’ll have more new toys coming up soon. I’ve been feeling rather inspired lately.

Coming up: a cannon, a tank, a butterfly teether, and a cement mixer (I’m super excited about that one.)

Resist All or Nothing Thinking

When we are trying to follow healthier, more productive habits, it’s easy to think that it has to be all or nothing.

It’s easy to use setbacks as an excuse to indulge ourselves. You couldn’t resist the lure of making coffee cake for breakfast, so you snack on it all day, forgo your usual healthy lunch in addition to your normal breakfast, and by the time dinner comes around, you figure you might as well dig into the tortilla chips, because the day is pretty much shot at this point anyway.

Or is that just me who does that?

Or maybe you woke up late, like I did today, after staying up too late finishing your book. Rather than get right to business, you dally longer than usual on your computer. Then the kid(s) gets up, and you play all morning, instead of balancing work and play. Some work gets done in the afternoon, but you spend plenty of time reading and laying about. And by that time, you figure you might as well skip the gym and just stay in bed reading.

BUT you can stop at any time. You don’t have to be perfect. If you woke up late, wasted the morning, it isn’t all lost. If you ate the chocolate cake for breakfast, you don’t have to keep eating junk for the rest of the day. One slip shouldn’t ruin your day.

So you ate the cake, that isn’t an excuse to eat it for lunch and dinner too. So you ignored your kids all morning, that isn’t an excuse to ignore them all afternoon. Don’t worry about starting over. Just pick up your day where you are supposed to be. Even if it’s bedtime and you wasted the whole day, you don’t have to keep wasting time and stay up late.

There is no bandwagon. There is no perfection. Just pick up where you left off.

I haven’t been very productive the past couple of days in terms of the volume of toys that I made, but I did come up with two new toys that I’m very excited to share with you tomorrow, and I’ve got a couple more in the works that are coming in the next week or so.

There will be giveaways…. 🙂