A First

Today I went to my first homeschool conference.

I'm tired.

High Fives at our House

We've always laughed at our house because although Hubby and I are nowhere near the same height, our hands are the same size.

Well, technically his hand is larger but my fingers are longer, thus making our overall hand length the same.

The funny thing we noticed tonight is his thumb is bigger, my second finger is longer, and his ring finger is longer. The middle and pinky are the same. Details stick out when you're taking pictures.

So the point of this was that Hubby keeps going on and on about Buddy's hands. He has been for a while because they're so big. Hubby keeps saying that if he'd had Buddy's fingers he could have palmed a basketball. Buddy obviously got his long fingers after me.

I think the wedding ring in the picture will be the hint on which hand belongs to Hubby, but the other one is Buddy.

Just for a little giggle, our softball player that has to handle a much larger ball than the baseball that Buddy does, has tiny hands. Tiny even before being compared to Buddy's:

She'll never palm a basketball, except for those little miniature ones.

Take Command

I love the Command Picture Hanging Strips. I love them so much that I've already blabbed about how I've used them here, here, and here.

There are two strips that attach to each other with a plastic velcro-like material. One of them sticks to your picture (or whatever) and the other one sticks to the wall (or whatever). I tend to have more whatevers than walls.

Here's my latest whatever:

I got these cute little pictures at JoAnn's super inexpensive around Valentine's Day. A key word there is little. They are too small to hang just anywhere, and hanging them from that wire would be a little dorky. Believe me, I held them up around different places in an imaginary way and tried.

Some little light bulb (or camera flash) went off in my brain one day when I was walking by our game cabinet. I thought they might be cute hanging on the side instead of having to look at it all plain every time we came down the stairs.

Of course I immediately thought of my handy dandy Command strips. I used the smallest ones for these. I usually adhere the whole strip put together on the back of the pictures (or whatever) first and then peel the backing off of the part that goes on the wall (or whatever) and just press it on. Then I don't have to try to match stuff up. It's already on there.

Here is a side view:

We played the "What's Different" game with the top of the cabinet once. I don't know if I mentioned that before, but I don't think I did. It happened on a small group night when I was dusting and I decided to change it. The only thing that was originally there is the house. You'd think the tree might be obvious, but I even had to tell Hubby where to look. Oh, well.

WFMW — Storing Decorative Flags

I used to fold up my decorative flags and store them in a plastic shoebox size Sterilite/Rubbermaid container (neatly of course, after laundering them when they came in the house from a long outdoor spell and hanging them to dry).

That worked while I had a few. Now I have many. While I lived in Virginia I started storing them in the front coat closet. I hang multiple ones together on a hanger that you get when you buy pants or a skirt from the store (like Kohl's or Penney's or a place like that).

The small garden size flags hang nicely just as they are. I store the larger ones this way too, they just require a couple of careful folds.

I fold them in half one way, and then in half again the other way. They end up being about the size of a garden flag. I hang them with the unfolded ends at the top. That way the hanger won't put a hard wrinkle where it's folded and the hanger clips on. The folded edges are all hanging loosely at the bottom.

I use about four hangers all together for quite a few flags. They can hang in any closet out of the way until you need them. Works for me!

For more Works-For-Me-Wednesday, visit Kristen at We Are THAT Family.

Zircon, Zircon, Sapphire, Garnet

I've wanted a necklace for the longest time with my kids' names, a charm type with one to represent each child.

I've loved so many of the ones from The Vintage Pearl. I never win the giveaways on other blogs.

So for Mother's Day this year, Hubby and I looked them over and picked one out and ordered it.

Yes, I know I don't say my kids' names, and I know you can see them. I figure people who read this regularly aren't stalkers and won't care, and this post will hopefully just bury itself among all the other craziness and go unnoticed otherwise.

I can just hear Buddy now when he reads it. "Mom blew our cover!"

Mother's Day

My first Mother's Day with four children, May 14, 2000.

As in four children six and under (January-February, 2000).

As in six just the previous month before the fourth one was born. We were homeschooling kindergarten then. Those were busy days at our house.

There's a funny story about my hair in that last picture. I needed a haircut badly, and I really didn't see getting out of the house for one any time soon. I cut my bangs by myself all the time (since college when I'd had a very bad experience with too short bangs one too many times), so I just used that layering technique a smidge on the sides to taper it so it wasn't so lumped at the bottom, then I had Hubby come in the bathroom and told him how long I wanted it and to cut it straight across that length. Obviously my hormones were a little off kilter still. But it worked.

May Clutter Update

I'm calling it clutter, because it is taking up space in our house and we are finding a way to get it out of our house. Most of it is all perfectly good stuff. It's just gotten out of control. I've enabled a certain 10 year old packrat in my house, but at the same time I don't want to warp him for life just getting rid of it, so we're taking steps.

If you read the end of my April clutter post, you'll probably understand a little bit better what I mean by that. To save you a click, by finding something he'd been missing since the beginning of the year that was very important to him, he realizes many other things are just taking up space and keeping him from being able to find items when he wants them.

He's also decided he's embarrassed when company comes over and sees how many stuffed animals he has. Not that he's embarrassed he has stuffed animals, just the quantity.

We'll be inviting company over even more often.

I've been listing items on ebay this month. So far I've had six close, five paid, and five shipped out. I have 29 current auctions still ongoing.

Of the five auctions that closed that I've shipped and gotten out of my house, here's the tally:

20 Homemade Gourmet items (wrought iron, recipe card sets, etc.)
3 Longaberger pieces
125 Imaginext items (sets and accessories - it's more than this, but I didn't count every single little piece) in two different auctions
45 Rescue Heroes and accessories

That's 193 things out of my house that were taking up space!

I'm not even done yet!

Picture courtesy of flickr.