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.

Luck of the Irish

Have you seen those cute Easter egg ornaments that they have all over the place right now? I like them and I bought a set, along with the tree to hang them from in the Target dollar section a few weeks ago. I decided that if I had some little shamrock ornaments, I could set the tree out now and have it work for St. Patrick's day and then change them out for Easter. Well, I looked all over for little shamrock ornaments, like my eggs, and couldn't find them anywhere. Being a DIYer, that wasn't really a road block, I just had to find 3D shamrocks and my glue gun and I were good to go!

I found them at Michael's at 40% off

Then I scored green glitter ribbon for $1 I will admit that this wasn't quite what I thought it was. I thought it was green glitter wire, instead of ribbon, but this was great too. I was kind of disappointed that they didn't have any other options (they were all too wide or too Valentine's) but green glitter worked for me :)

Shamrock ornament

Shamrock tree!

It took me about 20 minutes to make 16 of them, although most of the time was spent trying to peel the hot glue strings off my fingers and the shamrocks.

Emergency!

Today was my birthday. WF came running into my room and told me I had to get up because he needed me in his room. I asked what was wrong and he told me it was an emergency and I needed to come right now. He seemed a little shifty, so I went to the bathroom first and then joined him in his room. I asked what the emergency was and he yelled "It's a birthday emergency" and gave me jazz hands. Then he presented me with my presents. He got me a card and a small cutting board with a pairing knife. He also made me pumpkin bars with help from my mom. Apparently, they went to Dollar Tree to get me a card and young guy overheard him talking about getting his mom a card. The guy gave him a dollar and told him he also had to get his mom a present! After appropriate thank yous, they spent a long time looking for something that I would like. He eventually settled on the cutting board because I've been complaining that I want a new cutting board for the kitchen. :) On the way home he said "hey, now mom has a knife to cut her pumpkin bars with! Best present ever!" LOL All my presents have been hidden in the house since Tuesday and I had no idea.

RF complained that I don't ever want anything for birthdays so yesterday when my headphones broke, he had a fit when I tried to by myself a new pair. Instead, he went and bought the pair I picked out and had MF give them to me. I got a nice card from work and a raspberry mocha and a cake pop after school :)

But quite possibly the best part of my birthday was the fact that I did absolutely NOTHING after I picked the kids up at school. I bought KFC for dinner, put on my jammies and spent the afternoon/evening sitting in my chair. i didn't have to run anyone anywhere or do much of anything. It was the best night of the week! :)

What's for dinner

I'm really tired of answering the question "What's for dinner?" Even though I make a menu every week, my kids still insist on asking this question a hundred times, each, per day. I decided to take an idea from Pintrest and do something about it. On Pintrest, they took picture frames and made a weekly calendar, that you erase and write in each week to keep your family on track. I use my calendar on my phone so I just wanted menu boards.

First, I went to the dollar store and picked up cheap frames. The hardest part of this whole thing was finding frames I liked and it took some doing.

Then I went to the fabric store and scoured the remnant bin for an acceptable fabric. To do 5 8x10 frames, you need less than a yard, so there is no need to pay full price, unless you just can't find something you like in the remnants. To my great delight, our local fabric store in moving in a few months and have already started putting things on clearance, including 50% off remnants, so I scored a yard of flannel for $1.25! The best fabric for the job is lighter colored, solid or lightly patterned, fairly thin fabric.

RF ripped the tripod off the back of the frames for me, since they were just in the way and then I put them on the fabric and marked for cuts. I cut a little extra, to make sure that it would cover completely.

Then you place your cut fame in the frame and secure the back in place.

Here you can see how the extra fabric I left earlier leave the back looking a little lumpy, so you now you can trim that excess fabric, leaving it a little longer under the tabs that are holding the back in place.

The finished product!

Now you can get out your Command Picture hanging strips and hang your frames up. My frames were very thin, so I ended up cutting my strips in half and using one half on each side, instead of one full one in the middle.

Here they are, after RF took a lot of time measuring and hanging them all up exactly level

This is after I took them down, wrote on them and put them back up.

The best part of using the Command strips, is that I can pull them down to write on them each week instead of having to stand on the table to reach them.

Also, instead of trimming your fabric, you could use a bit of hot glue and tack the fabric to the back of the frame, to keep the excess from being in the way. I don't do well with commitment to decor, so leaving it loose works best for me. This way, I can change out my fabric for different holidays or as the mood stikes me for a change.

This was a pretty easy craft and didn't take a lot of time. Most of the time was spent measuring and hanging the pictures. It was also cheap (which is my favorite kind of craft). $5 on the frames, $1.25 on the fabric and I already had the Command strips and dry erase marker.

Hopefully, this will end the question of what we are having for dinner!

School update

You all know the WF has issues at school. We started talking about getting him real help in the spring but had to wait for school to start again this fall to have the actual meetings and paper signings. Starting in September, he finally started taking a battery of tests every week for math and writing. He also met with the OT several times and was evaluated by the speech path.

We had our IEP meeting yesterday afternoon and what came of it is that he has hyper flexible joints, which is causing some of his motor control issues. He also has low tone and needs core strengthening work. They suggested some kind of focused training program like Tae Kwon do, swimming lessons or gymnastics. I'm on the fence about forcing him to do something he obviously has no interest in, especially something that is going to cost me a fortune. The OT suggested that he needs a desk that allows him to stand and work, since he simply won't sit and ends up laying across the desk or kneeling in his chair and none of that is helping his hand writing.

The speech path said despite observing him in several situations and even trying to induce some stress to trigger his stutter, she was unable to observe any stuttering that impedes communication.

He ended up being labeled as having a specific learning disability, so he will now be getting 60 minutes of individual writing instruction each week. He is also going to start using voice recognition software and dictating all of his writing. Part of his writing instruction will involve learning to edit those dictated documents, since VR doesn't always have any idea what you are saying. We have crossed fingers that since he is using his own laptop (we bought it for him last year when he was supposed to be typing everything but it has spent most of it's time taking up space on his desk), it will actually learn his speech patterns and will get better as he uses it. He will also be allowed to use spell check on those documents, which was something his 504 plan prohibited.

The only thing I was disappointed about was that he isn't getting any accommodations in math. He scored within the normal range on all of his math tests, despite not knowing most of his math facts. He can find the answer but can't spit them out in speedy manner, so he isn't able to pass the timed tests they give. I was hoping for the ability to use a calculator on math work or at a minimum, a times table. Barring that, I was hoping for either additional time on timed tests or and end to those completely. In a couple of years, calculators will be available as a matter of course, so he just needs to hang in there until then.

So although it has taken FOREVER to get to this point (initial evaluations were discussed 2 years ago) I'm pretty happy with the outcome and I'm thrilled with his team. His case worker is super and the whole team is working hard to get him started on the right path.

Right now, he is struggling with the dictation because his VR program is flubbed up. It only picks up about every second or third word, which means A LOT of editing, which he has never really had to do. It feels like once he gets the hang of it, this will be a far better option for him.

Low Key Christmas

Last year, we went completely over the top for Christmas. We bought tons of toys and then Santa brought them a Band Hero set, including the giant drum kit and the grandparents got them a bunch of stuff too. And they didn't use hardly any of it in the last year. In fact, they had the band kit less than 6 months before they had completely destroyed the drums.

This year, we scaled it way back. They bought each other a few small gifts (I actually picked them out and bought them because they decided they wanted to do it on Dec 23rd after 5pm and I so wasn't taking them to Target with all the other crazies. He got her snowman slippers and sparkly peppermint flavored lipgloss.



She got him a space themed game similar to Chutes and Ladders and a Mario Kart Drawing pad



Santa brought her some pink DJ headphones so she doesn't have to borrow her brother's anymore.



Santa brought him Stratego and he was super excited about it.




At this point, they gave up on the hold up and smile portion of the gift opening so you can't tell what any of the other presents are. :)

She got Just Dance 3 fo the Wii



And he got Lego Harry Potter years 5-7



They also each got a complete book set. Her's was the entire collection of Junie B. Jones



And he got the 39 Clues



And thanks to the Girl Scout magazine sale, both kids got a magazine subscription for the next year. He got Dig, a magazine about archeology, which was funny because I picked it out without his knowing, then he brought home a copy that he bought at the used book sale at school. So they would have more to unwrap, I took his copy and wrapped it and put it under the tree for him to open.



She got Jack and Jill, which I borrowed a copy of from the library and wrapped for her.



Besides the other stuff they got from Nonni on Christmas Eve she gave them snow boards with handles that they are just DYING to use. Unfortunately, no snow means no snow boards.





A little later in the day, two small gifts were "found" under the tree. They opened them and were a little confused, since it was just a page of pictures of a waterpark.



On the paper it said "how about we go here" and MT figured out what that meant first.



Nonni asked her went she would like to go and she said "tomorrow!" Nonni said "how about right now?" The reaction was understandably excited.



Everything was packed and in the car and ready to go, all they had to do was put on real clothes.





Before they could do that, MF started to cry because she was "so happy"



So that was our version of a low key Christmas, where before noon on Christmas day, the kids took off with my parents and we had the house to ourselves for 3 days. :)