All Things Colourful

I've been adding a lot of colour to my life lately. I guess I'm getting tired of the winter white & brown outside and dreaming about spring. Here is a taste of some of the colour in our house.

We coloured some rice this week. The girls had fun as we danced around the kitchen shaking the rice in a plastic bag to mix the colour in.

Both girls enjoy scooping the rice from one bowl to another, it keeps them busy for up to an hour. Yes it can get messy, I just have to keep my ears alert to the sound of rice being dumped on the floor or table and then we're done. Anyway dry rice is much easier to clean up than sticky cooked rice and the cookie sheet catches most of the misses.


I made some colourful ice cubes, and then.....

...we got to watch them melt and see how the colours changed when mixing together.

I sorted my buttons. They look so much nicer in separate colour jars rather than all mixed together. Seeing them all lined up like this makes me happy.

I hope you're adding some colour to your day.

Headband Finished

I finished my headband this weekend. It feels so good to finish a project, I should remember this feeling (I'm not much of a finisher). I am happy with the results, it looks really good, if I do say so myself. I did end up taking it all apart and restarting it after the first weekend. I really should have started with a practice knit of just a little swatch to get the hang of knitting before starting a project. The first attempt looked really shoddy and the perfectionist in me couldn't handle it. This is part of my problem with finishing things, I figure if I can't finish it properly why finish. I learned a lot from this project. How to tell a knit from a purl by looking at them rather than counting the 100+ stitches to figure out where you should be. How to un-knit and fix a mistake. How to use markers when knitting and of course how to cast on, bind off, knit & purl. It's a wonderful hobby and I think I will keep it. I love how portable it is, I could take it to playgroup, I knit in the van on our drive to the city and I knit in my rocking chair while Curt played video games or we watched a movie, and I didn't have to pull out a ton of stuff and then put everything away later, just place my yarn & needles in the basket & I was done.
I'm planning out my next project now. Marilyn brought over some yarn that used to belong to Grandma B. It's dark brown and I think it will make great cushions for our living room couches.

Note: Its really hard to take a good photo of yourself. If you have any tips please let me know.

Morning Walk

I went for a nice walk in the morning yesterday before the sun was even up over the trees. Along with me I had the girls, the dog and the cats. Why is it that I forget how amazing it is to get outside and just walk. I came back and felt completely invigorated, ready to show the day everything I had. The fresh air, the little bit of exercise, slowing down to just enjoy the nature around me. It was wonderful, I think I'll do it again today.

A Problem with the Horizontal

I have a problem with the horizontal. Every horizontal surface that I come across I seem to place something on it, stack things up until I can't even see the original space. I could make a million excuses, my house isn't organized yet, I don't have my closets done so there's nowhere to put things away, someone else put the stuff there. The truth is I've always been like this, the open space just calls me to cover it up. Sometimes when I try to tidy up I will put everything into a nice neat pile on the corner of the island (desk, dresser, etc). It does look better but the stuff's still there. It drives Curt crazy! I'm working on it, sort-a.

A table in my bedroom - a place things go when you don't want to see them in the main part of the house. Funny thing, the drawers are practically empty but rather than opening them up & hiding things I put them on top.

Craft Storage - Another case of why open the drawer when there's still room on top. My excuse here is I want to organize the drawers. You know get rid of some stuff, use my label maker etc so until then I will make no effort to keep it tidy. When the tower gets too high and things won't stay on top I will have to deal with it. Actually things have started to fall and I haven't' dealt with it, I guess that didn't work.

The spare bed. Atleast all of this stuff isn't no the floor.

The half wall that goes around our stairway - I knew this one would be an issue before we moved in. I put items I want to take downstairs there so that I can grab them on the way down (I usually forget) and various other crap just ends up there.

Flylady says to clean your kitchen sink every night but for me it has been my kitchen table. I think It is so pleasing to see a nice clean kitchen table every night before bed and every morning when I get up. Next I would like to add my kitchen island to the routine and we'll see where we go from there. Baby steps... (please ignore the ugly "curtain" hanging in the background that's a whole other post.)

Visiting

I had a great weekend. I got a chance to visit with a lot of my friends and family. Nothing like packing it all into a couple days. I guess now I can be a hermit for a couple months. We spent Friday visiting two of our best couple friends in Edmonton. The fellas went to the Oilers game while the ladies stayed back to tend the children. After the chaos of putting 6 kids to bed we even got to enjoy a game of cards (I love games). Saturday I got to visit my two best girlfriends from Uni. One on bedrest in the hospital awaiting her first baby. We're just hoping that baby will be well enough when he/she comes next week to go home soon after and not have to stay too long in the hospital. Send your prayers her way. Friend number two then came out to check out the new rancho-notso-relaxo. Sat evening was fight night so we all went to G. Lydias & G. Jody's because after a day in the city with your kids why not throw in some extra torture by keeping them up 'till 11:00pm. The UFC fight nights have turned into a bit of a tradition at the Martin House and even the simplest of get togethers is starting to get crazy. I guess that's what happens when you start at a family of 7. We've now doubled to 14. I can't imagine what it will be like in another 10 years.

All of the visiting meant that the shower didn't get completely tiled this weekend. I guess we have one more week of baths only. No big deal, this was much more fun.