Life is such a chore

The kids have been asking for an allowance or at the very least, a way to make some money. WF had previously had an allowance that was tied to chores (above and beyond the regular things that he has to do as a part of the family), but was having trouble earning it and keeping up on it, so we let it go. I was browsing around the internet and saw some ideas for chore charts that I liked. I decided to make one, with extra chores and price value on each one. Some of them were chore sticks, that you pull out of a jar but I liked the magnetic ones, since our front door is metal and I don't need more stuff to sit somewhere.

I went to Michael's and picked up some large glass rocks (in the floral section) and some large magnets.

Then I took some card stock I had left over from old scrapbooking projects and traced each rock. Something to note on this step is that each rock is shaped slightly differently so each circle needs to be traced individually. When you cut them out, cut very slightly inside the pencil line, so that it doesn't show on magnet. I came up with a list of several chores that the kid could easily do and assigned them a monetary value. The price varied depending on the amount of work required to complete the job or the gross factor of the job. For example, vacuuming the family room is worth $1 because it requires the person to pick up all the toys on the floor and put them away first. Changing the litter box is also $1 because it is gross. I'm pretty cheap when it comes to labor, so make your own call on the values :) After I wrote it, I traced it in black Sharpie and then hot glued it to the flat side of the rock.

After the hot glue was dry, I flipped it over and glued the magnet to the back

Wash, rinse repeat for the other 16 chores I figured out and the kids now have a way to earn money, that they are currently very excited about. I'm not holding my breath on that lasting very long, but for now I have a little cheap labor. :)

Currently, they pull one off the middle and put it on their side to complete (magnetic letters denote whose side is whose). At the end of the day, they get paid for the chores they completed correctly. The operative word being correctly, because no money changes hands for halfway done work. They have to do their "family" chores, stuff like keeping their rooms clean, putting away their laundry, cleaning up after themselves, etc, before they can do the money earning chores. If I do a chore, because it needs done, they lose the chance to that chore until the next time it needs to be done. Some chores need done every day, like the dishes, but some are only once or twice a week, like mopping the bathroom floor.

I'm so egg-sited!

I've decided I want something on my front door for all the holidays. I didn't really have anything for Easter and the wreath I wanted was almost $20 and we all know I'm far too cheap to pay $20 for a silly decoration! After browsing around Pinterest, I decided that I could totally make my own for cheap.

I started at the I.D.E.A store where I spent no small amount of time digging through a huge barrel of plastic egg halves and matching them up. For my trouble, I got a pound of plastic eggs for $2

Then I went to Michael's and picked up a wreath form and some Easter ribbon. Surprisingly, 3 yards of ribbon was not enough to wrap all the way around the wreath form, so I have to go back tomorrow and get more to finish it off with.

I started off by hot gluing all of the egg halves together, so they wouldn't come apart, once they were on the wreath. Then, I hot glued the first end of the ribbon and then wrapped it tightly all the way around the form, putting a dab of glue on each overlap on the back.

Then I smeared some hot glue on each egg and glued them to the ribbon on the form.

After some discussion, it was decided that more eggs were better, so I added some additional eggs on the inside of the form.

Tomorrow, I'm going to wrap the rest in ribbon and finish gluing on the eggs. Then I'm going to make a loop of ribbon and glue it to the back so I can hang it on my door.

As you can see, I'm very egg-sited to have my Easter wreath nearly done.