thankful thursdays 3/11

* Today we had the privilege of taking 170 books to F.A.I.T.H. – what a remarkable experience! I started the day off still agitated, impatient, and rather snarly, but delivering the books changed all that. I am filled with gratitude for the families that participated, the sponsors that gave generously, and the children that came today with big smiles on their faces to fill a bookshelf. I am grateful for the opportunity to make a difference in the world. I am grateful for fellow homeschoolers that came together to benefit our community and to change lives. I know the children at F.A.I.T.H. are going to LOVE these books. I can’t wait to do this again next year!

The empty bookshelf:

Posters about homelessness in America:

Putting labels on the books:

All filled up!

Some of the amazing home schooling children who donated books to F.A.I.T.H.:

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* Fisher Eli is an adorable boy. Today he said “I wonder if I will do colloquia when I get big?” I asked, “Do you want to?” He excitedly said “YES! When I am as big as Keziah! Do you think I can?” I love homeschooling and I love that we are to the point of seeing results. Having my younger children look forward to learning experiences that they have seen their older siblings and parents participate in is so fun!
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* I have finally completed Book One of my cello program! Woo-hoo! I am starting Book Two this week and hope to get through this book much faster!
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* My sweetie turned 40 and our children made him some presents from their hearts.

Fisher’s giraffe for his papa:

Fisher’s whale for his papa:

Keziah’s card for her papa:

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* I get to take Blythe and Keziah to Fiddler on the Roof on Saturday. It was their Christmas present from Richard and I and they have had to wait a while to get it fulfilled. We are all super excited to see this favorite play in person!
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* Razor blades and metal spoons are simply amazing cleaning tools. The drink holders in the suburban had melted crayons, stuck-on gunk, old food decaying into solid rock, and more flower petals than I care to think about…after soaking in Purification essential oil and scrubbing with these magical tools, all the grime is GONE!
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Time to go read Jerry Muskrat to Fisher…it is his new favorite book.

joy pillow give-away

Dear readers,

My children are participating in the First Annual Idaho Homeschool Read-A-Thon and are reading to earn money to buy Usborne books for themselves and for F.A.I.T.H. – Families in Transitional Housing. They have been reading non-stop for the last 10 days and have been trying to find sponsors for themselves. I hatched up an idea to do a give-away to help them raise funds.

I made a pillow…yes, me the sewing impaired mama made a very cute pillow to give to some lucky soul!

Isn’t that cute!

If you post about this on your blog and link back to this post and then leave me a comment with your website’s post, you will get one entry for this adorable 8 1/2″ square pillow. For every dollar that you paypal to the read-a-thon, you will earn two entries. All entries must be in by Saturday night at midnight and the winner will be announced Monday morning. Let’s spread this far and wide! Just think, if 1000 people donated $1, they would reach their goal of $1000. Let’s help them do it!

To paypal, my account is mom2bmw@aol.com.

If you prefer to mail a check, email me and I will send you our home address.

Thanks much! My little ones are having great time reading and earning books and are so excited to give books to the children at F.A.I.T.H. – Families in Transitional Housing.

orphan miracle story

The amazing people at Utah Hospital Task Force gave themselves a mission of delivering food, supplies, medical professionals, and hope to the Haitians and bringing an airplane full of orphans (whose adoptions were in process long before the earthquake) back to the United States on the return trip. They DID it! This is a miracle story that had me crying the whole time I read it this morning. If you need some hope in your life, read on. You will see that God is turning bad things into good on a regular basis.

haiti

My heart is aching for those in Haiti. My family just watched this video and are going to be making receiving blankets and sending our meager donation to help those who are suffering. I encourage you all to do the same.

Help Haiti

Please.

If we each do something it will add up to something big.

All my tears aren’t going to do anyone much good, so instead I will sew some blankets and send some money and say some prayers and hope that we can be God’s hands to work a miracle for this poor country.

If you want to give to my church, 100% of your money will be used to help the Haitians. Our humanitarian services is run by well-trained volunteers who know how to get supplies and help to those in need, not through corrupt channels that end up taking supplies before they are used to help the ones who are suffering most.

give.lds.org

pencil rolls on their way!

Hallelujah! The pencil roll project has been a huge success! The pencil rolls have been coming in all month long, but the last few days have been the jackpot with 70 coming in on Sunday, 132 coming in on Monday, and 66 coming in today! Simply amazing!

The families that have participated in this project have given their time, money, materials, and hearts to the children of Katie’s school. They have shown me what a small group of willing women can do…I tell you we can do anything! We can make a difference. We can work together. We can touch lives, soften hearts, and bring joy.

There are people involved in this project that I have never met, people that I know and see regularly, and people who live far away. We have volunteers from Idaho, Utah, Colorado, Wyoming, Alaska, and England! We have seamstresses of all ages, from girls under ten to grandmas over 70, and all abilities, from beginner all the way to professional. We have papas that watched babies so mamas could sew. We have people that donated fabric, sewed on buttons, delivered pencil rolls, and created patterns. We have a small army of volunteers who have taught me how to be give more selflessly. I counted up our volunteers and there are over 60 people who directly helped. One small blog, written by one mother in Idaho, has brought all of this goodness together to create something magical!

Here are some pics of the 516 (yes, we made it to 500!) pencil rolls:

Look at this cute inside fabric! It is pencils! Isn’t that adorable? You can get it at Hancock Fabrics.

And here is one of my pencil rolls I did by my very own self. I truly am sewing challenged and I’m sure my rolls took me ten times longer than they would have taken someone who is not inept in this area, but I did it and did lots of them. It was a wonderful project for me to overcome my fear of sewing and I improved a lot by the time I was done. Thanks to my mom, I learned how to sew buttons on with my machine!!! Hoorah!

I just took them to the shipping office and after repacking them into one big box from my three boxes and then repacking them AGAIN into a slightly smaller box (It was quite the sight, to have me inside a huge box on the floor, surrounded by pencil rolls, as I loaded up stack after stack of them! Why so many repackings you ask? Well, my three boxes would have cost about $120 with FedEx and $160 with the USPS with UPS somewhere in the middle, so we tried to save moo-lah by repacking them into one box, which was then a tad too big, so we repacked again, and got the price all the way down to 90 buckaroos.) they are on their way to Tennessee and then on to Uganda!

Thank you to all of you. Thank you for your sacrifices, your love, and your generosity. I pray that you will be blessed. I ask that you join me in prayer that our gifts will make it to Uganda in safety and that they will bring happiness to the children of Katie’s school.

pencil roll tutorial!

Drumroll please

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(doesn’t that look like a drumroll?)

Here are the long-awaited directions for the pencil roll!

Go to Kat’s website and you will find step-by-step instructions for our 500 Pencil Roll Project for Katie’s children. After hours of brainstorming, reading other people’s tutorials, and basically making myself crazy, we created this easy, step-by-step guide that anyone (even me!) can follow. I am telling you, if I can sew these, truly, anyone can!

We are not doing them with the different colored pockets for each pencil – they are WAY cute, but also time consuming, and we are trying to make these as quick as possible. These ones are made with one piece of cotton fabric for the outside, a different piece for the inside, and flannel hidden on the inside to give it some strength, or you can use interfacing if you have that.

Each person can sew from cotton fabric they have on hand or if you are willing to purchase some that is great as well. If you are willing to donate money to the cause for others to buy fabric they don’t have, that is wonderful as well…or donate fabric!

I have about 20 yards of fabric I bought at Home Fabrics $1/yard sale, so if you need some, let me know.

If you want to do them with wool felt or a wool felt blend of 35% wool/65% rayon or 20% wool/80% rayon, you can and I will give you those directions below. DO NOT USE craft felt found in stores!!! It is garbage and will not hold up to even a week of handling. You can buy the wool felt at prairiepointjunction.com and get a 20% off coupon by entering here. The discount button is over on the right hand side of the page about 1/2 way down. You can also get it at Joann.com and use a 50% off coupon or 40% off coupon. The 20/80 blend is $7.99 and the 35/65 blend is $9.99, so with the coupons, it would be a great price! It is not available here in our local stores, but may be in the larger stores, just call and ask if you are interested. Caution though, if you do not know much about wool felt, call me before you purchase it so I can help you know if it is acrylic/polyester/eco-felt garbage or if it is the good stuff.

Now, you may be wondering why using wool felt is easier than using your leftover cotton scraps. If so, let me explain. Wool does not fray and does not need to be sewn right sides together/wrong sides out and then turned. You just sew right on to your piece of felt!

Wool felt tutorial:

Your finished product will be 10.5″ wide x 8″ tall.

Cut a piece of wool felt 11″ x 17″ and position it so the 11″ side is running side to side and the 17″ side is running top to bottom.

At the top, measure in 1.25″ and 5″ down the side and cut.

Fold up the bottom 4″ and pin in place.

Lay a thin no-damage ponytail holder on your table and hold it flat. Wrap a thread around it 1/2″ from its end.

Insert the 1/2″ side of the ponytail holder at the almost 4″ mark of your felt (where you folded up the bottom) and pin in place just below the top of that pocket. The big loop of ponytail holder should be hanging out of the fabric.

Top stitch at 1/4″ all the way around the wool felt, making sure to back stitch over the ponytail holder.

Measure and mark 7/8″ pockets on the part you folded up.

Sew pockets going a titch past the top of them so the stress point isn’t right at the top of the pocket and back stitch at both ends.

At the spot where the flap starts, fold it down and top stitch at 1/8″.

Put some tester pencils in and roll it up so you can figure out button placement for where the ponytail holder will attach. Mark where a button should go. Unroll, take your tester pencils out. and sew a big button in place.

If you want to make it super-cute, use pinking shears to cut the edges, making sure to not cut through the elastic.

Voila! You are done…now isn’t that easy peasy!

You may choose to use two piece of wool felt to make it more colorful and add to its strength. If so, just do everything identical, except insert the ponytail holder in between the two pieces of felt.

These are some pictorial instructions, but they don’t have the “cut the flap at an angle” step, and they use a ribbon instead of the ponytail holder/button attachment. The ribbon attachment is easy for adults, but not so easy for little children to wrap it around and tie, so we are using the button method. It also doesn’t have the top stitching, so make sure you do that. As soon as I make one out of felt I will post pictures, but it will probably take me a day or two to get to that.

Now you have everything you need to get to work. Thank you so much for your willingness to help and please, please, spread the word and enlist the women in your life to sew with you! Right now, we are at 21 women, so that means we each need to do 24 rolls to make it to 500. As word spreads, the per person roll can decrease…so step out on a limb and encourage others to sew with you.

Also, there has been some confusion about the pencils. Amazima has a lot of colored pencils and we do not need to provide those. We are doing the sewing and they are gathering the pencils.

If you have any questions, let me know at tracy@wetoatmealkisses.com.

call to arms…er, i mean machines!

Remember my post back in September about Amazima? Several of you said you were willing to help and now is the time!

I feel called to make colored pencil rolls for these children. I cannot get it out of my mind. I know this is what I am supposed to do, but I cannot do it alone. I need your help and I need it now.

There are over 400 children in the program. There are over 300 families. They said we could make one pencil roll holder for each family, but I want to make one for each child. My goal is 500 rolls. That way, every child can have their very own set of colored pencils that they can take care of and have a way to keep them safe…and they are cute! Any new children that are accepted into the program will be able to be given their own set of pencils.

The best part is, they have been overrun with donations of colored pencils. I have been wasting my time trying to figure out a way to get colored pencils in a huge lot for way cheap, when what I really needed to be doing was sewing!

So, we need 20 women to sew 25 rolls each…or 30 to sew 17…or 40 to sew 13…or 50 to sew 10…or 500 to sew one! Let’s do this! The sewing is easy…I know because I can’t sew hardly at all and I am taking this on! The difficult thing is time – but I know we can do this. A woman is going over in early December and she is going to take our rolls with her.

My goal is to have them shipped to her on December 1st, so they need to be to me no later than November 30. If we have 20 women sewing 25, that means we could sew 5 a week for the next 5 weeks and presto, they are done!!!!

I am still working out the details on the fabric, I have a lot of fabric I am donating to the cause and people are welcome to start with what I have. But donations of money to buy more fabric would be greatly appreciated. I am working on typing up step-by-step directions that anyone can understand. I am also considering switching plans to go with wool if I can get it for a great price, because those rolls would be MUCH quicker to sew. If anyone has any info for me on any of these fronts, please share!

So, what do YOU need to do? Write in the comments section that you are willing to sew and I will add you to the email list that will get updates as they are available. Enlist your mothers, sisters, friends, and neighbors in the project. You could collect them from everyone over Thanksgiving and then bring them to me on Monday the 30th. Spend the month of November sewing to bring JOY to some very destitute children in Uganda.

We can do this…I know it.

Here is some inspiration from April at By Small Means:

or the wool one from Skip To My Lou:

oompa loompa outfit

I really cannot sew. It hurts my brain. It tries my patience. It drives me batty. But for some ridiculous reason, I am drawn to sewing. I buy fabric. I buy patterns. I dream of creations. I long to be able to whip out something adorable for my children to wear. My dear friend, Kat, taught me how to make this outfit and then she insisted that I sew each and every stitch of it. She practically held my hand through the whole process and it took at least three times longer than she thought it would, but I did it! I think it is absolutely precious and I love, love, love it. It is super-wide, especially on Annesley who is the skinniest thing ever, and so we named it an Oompa-Loompa outfit.

Isn’t it cute! Aren’t you so incredibly proud of me?!?

If you can’t tell from the picture, it is reversible and the bottom is supposed to be folded up so you can see the contrasting fabric, but, of course, I forgot to do that for the picture.

I have more fabric to whip up plod my way through some more, but I don’t know when I will get to it, as now I am thinking of making LOTS of colored pencil holders for the children in Uganda that attend Katie’s school. Anyone want to join me in making some of these?

These are the beautiful creations of the super-talented and creative April of By Small Means. Notice how each pencil has color-coordinating fabric? Notice the handy flap to keep all the pencils from falling out? Notice how bright and colorful and adorable they are? Don’t you want to help us make hundreds??? If so, or if you would like to donate fabric, buttons, flannel, or $$ to buy this stuff, please put it in the comments section and I will get in contact with you and work out a plan.

servant-hood – a call to action

Last night I discovered a blog that touched me to my very core.

Before you read the rest of my thoughts, go and read (If you are like me and hate music blasting out of websites, turn your sound down before you you click on the link.) this blog post.

Done?

Do you see what I mean? Worms? 10 lbs.? Lifeless? Cardboard box-house? I knew this was out there, but now I KNOW. I know and now that I know, I cannot turn my back from them.

This girl is in Uganda trying to save lives AND save souls. She needs help. More help than we can imagine.

Go read this post of hers as well.

She is a normal American girl who has given her heart to Christ and to the children of Uganda.

Now go read her organization’s website.

Did you go to the “stories” link? If not, go back and read them. All of them.

I want to do something to help. I am pondering what it is that I am to do. What God wants me to do. I invite you to do the same and then let me know if you would like to be involved in a group effort.

I am a Christian woman. I want to serve my King. I want to serve His children. I want to be a force for good in this world. I want to bring all of these babies home with me, but since that is not possible, I need to figure out what I can do. What I must do to help my heart feel better about my service to my fellow-man.

Please post your thoughts and how you would like to help in the comments section. I will develop a plan of action and we will make a difference. I know it.

p.s. When I read the posts to Richard he asked if this meant I was going to Africa. He so knows my passions run overboard. So to those of you wondering this as well – no, I am not going to Africa. I am however going to figure out a way to help.