DIY Un-paper Towels

I’m sure many of you have seen the cutesy cloth “paper” towels with the snap-together sheets and, while I am not in any way knocking them--they are super cute--I am just way too lazy practical to take the time to snap the sheets together each time.

Without another choice, we have been going through paper towels so fast it feels wasteful and I wanted something that felt a little more self-sustaining, but didn’t have the ~$30 for a single roll of cloth towels which might last us, um, I dunno, half a day?

Meanwhile in another part of the house I had a problem which screamed a solution to my paper towel dilemma. I downsized clothes and some of the boys’ and DHs shirts were too far gone to donate, but I felt bad just throwing them out. Then it hit me… cut them up in paper-towelish-sized pieces, toss them into a basket and use them like paper towels. Yes! Just what I was looking for and didn’t know it.

I quickly was able to fill our rag basket with unpaper towels and I love my new rags! They bring me so much joy. They work. They are almost endless, we almost never run out (ahem). They are wonderful for drying hands, cleaning up spills, drying dishes (if you just have a few to dry)… I totally recommend this no-skills-needed project. They have successfully replaced 95% of our paper towel use (I still use paper towels, for example, when I season my cast iron skillet, cleaning up oil oopses, or really icky pet/child messes, you know the kind.).

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things

Here is a list of tools that I use/need quite often for fixing my washer/dryer (Kenmore Elite 90 Series from the late 90s). I’m writing it down here in case I need to be reminded of tools required for the job.

You might find this helpful too, who knows.

Affiliate disclaimer: This post is not sponsored by any of the companies/products I am listing, these are just products (or product types) that I actually use, a lot, and if I misplace mine or need to replace them, I have a handy list here I can order from. If you choose to purchase any of these items from these links, I will receive a little reimbursement from Amazon which would be a help to our family and we would really appreciate you for that!

• Shallow 1/4” drive 1/4" socket or a Deep 1/4" drive 1/4" socket (for dryer disassembly)
• 1/4” Quick Release Ratchet
• Shallow 1/4" drive 1/2” socket or a Deep 1/4" drive 1/2" socket (For washer transmission screws…)
• 1/4" Drive Extension Bar Set (This is helpful in hard-to-reach places.)
• Screwdriver (Phillips and flat)
• Precision Screwdriver (This might be overkill, but it looks awesome!)
• Needle Nose Pliers
• Multimeter
• 9v Batteries (For the multimeter; ask me how I know.)
• Joint Pliers
• Work Gloves (To avoid the two cuts and a scrape I received fixing the dryer.)
• Wire Cutter (This one strips and cuts wire.)
• Flashlight (I usually use the light on my phone, but this one has a nice clip feature.)
• Hammer (This one is short-handled to fit into tight spaces. Also used for building.)
• Drill/screwdriver (Also used for building.)

These are things I used when building our chickshaw:

• Yardstick
• Measuring Tape
• Speed Square
• Miter Saw (when I make things out of wood, this is my go-to saw)
• Circular Saw
• see also Drill/screwdriver and Hammer above

These things come in handy in our garden:

• Pruning Shears
• Bypass Loppers
• Digging Shovel
• Square Point Shovel
• Pitchfork (the one I have looks like this and I like it better than our other garden forks)
• Gorilla Cart (these get used extensively! so worth the investment, imo)
• Crocs (for chicken and/or garden chores)
• Leather boots (love love love my Justin Gypsy boots)

The Washer Felt Left Out

Almost as soon as the dryer was working again, the washer decided that it was done spinning the clothes dry and went on strike. I did a quick search online to remind myself what might cause that and was reminded that it might be the drive coupler. I was hoping that would be the problem as it would be a relatively easy fix.

It wasn’t the drive coupler.

Then I thought maybe it was the clutch so I took a look at that and it did look a little worn so I ordered a new one. I thought I’d be back in business when it arrived, but no.

When I got it all back together, it was behaving strangly. The tub started rotating a little bit with each turn of the agitator during a wash cycle. That was different. Also, when it started to spin, I was able to stop the drum by just putting a little pressure on the tub (erm, don’t try this at home). I thought if I could stop it that easily, a load full of wet clothes wouldn’t spin out well. I asked the helpful folks over at Appliantology.org and someone suggested that I might have put the inner ring of the clutch in upside down. So a little while ago I checked and, sure enough, it was in the wrong way. I flipped it around, reassembed the washer (no easy feat in my tiny laundry room) and did a test load of towels. Hooray! It’s running quieter and better now than it has in a long time and boy did it spin the towels out “dry.”

#thankful

Fixing the Dryer

So the dryer decided to stop putting out hot air last night. Right after Geo said he needed clean jeans for piano lessons this morning. Oops. I always inwardly groan a little when the appliances need tending, but I still rolled up my sleeves and got started with the troubleshooting last night. I was SO hoping it was going to be the fuse as that looked like the easiest fix, but, no (and I’m actually thrilled it wasn’t the fuse). This is the video I watched that pointed me in that direction and gave me the courage to tackle the job.

As soon as we got back from piano lessons, Eli (11) and I set to work. We watched another YouTube video about the different parts to test to hopefully determine the problem. Bill was not as clear as I would have liked about what a normal multimeter reading looked like (vs. abnormal), but I think I figured it out enough to rule out the timer as the culprit. The next thing he suggested testing was the thermostat on the heating tube. He also said that if it registers as “bad,” that there’s a way to reset it. His trick made us laugh… Throw it really hard on the floor or bang it on a hard surface. If at first you don’t succeed, try again (and again if necessary). You know what? It WORKED! Eli enjoyed banging the daylights out of the thermostat, but after we tested it (after 2 or 3 bangs), it registered normal. Woohoo!!! Thanks, Bill, for that wonderful tip!

We hooked up the front door panel and plugged it in and turned it on and… the heating coil glowed red! I’m so thrilled it was a relatively simple fix (Eli did most of the unplugging (not of the power cord) of connecting cords, unscrewing screws, reassembling the drum cable… So really it wasn’t that much work for me at all. The dryer also got a good cleaning out while I was at it which is always a good thing! Now I’m off to dry some clothes.

UPDATE:

Ok, so sometimes when something seems too good to be true, it is. After a load or two, the thermal cutoff shut off again. I “reset” it and tried the drier and this time nothing happened. No heating, no turning on, nothing. Um, … now what?

So I went to my favorite appliance fixit blog to see what they’d say. 

I checked all the connection, everything was connected properly. I was getting power because the door light came on when I opened the door.

I tested the starter, the relay switch, circuit board, couldn’t find anything wrong with those. I tested the thermal fuse, it was still good. I tested the element, it wasn’t shorting out.

Finally I found a wire that had come unplugged that I had missed. I plugged it back in and voila, the dryer now turned on. But…

It still wasn’t heating. I did some internet sleuthing and found a site that said the felt seals on the drum get old and that might let heat into the cabinet causing the thermal cutoff to trip. Sure enough, my felt seal was very worn and hanging in strips. So I replaced the felt seal.

I took the lint screen out and scrubbed it with soap till it looked almost new.

Finally after taking the dryer apart and reasembling it more times that I can count, the new thermal cutoff arrived in the mail. I installed it and it hasn’t tripped since. Thank you Lord!

Yarn Baseball

So we had a baseball mitt, something of a bat, but nothing in the line of a ball. My darling children made a ball from yarn and a plastic bag (complete with huge piece of gravel inside! ), but when it hurt my daughter’s knee, I told them I’d make them a ball. The rock idea, as it turns out, wasn’t half bad, but I knew it would need to be well padded. Here is what you’ll need if you want to make your own yarn baseball:

Small rock or stone for center weight

Newspaper to coat the rock (remember rock, paper, scissors? … paper wraps the rock, lol)

Polyfill

Yarn

Yarn needle

Baseball stitching pattern (optional)

Begin by wrapping the stone(s) with newspaper, then cover the newspaper with a layer of polyfill or quilt batting. Wrap snugly with yarn and keep wrapping, turning the ball constantly to keep the shape nice and round until you reach the desired size. To keep the yarn from unwinding, string some of the yarn onto the needle and sew in and out all around the ball to anchor the layers of yarn. Optionally, you can print out a baseball stitching pattern and stitch along that to make it look a little more authentic looking.

The kids love their new ball. It’s a little bouncy (but not overly), it is a good size for playing catch, and it’s soft enough that it won’t cause any injuries to inexperienced ball players. Mission accomplished.

Washer Update…Fixed!

Well, in spite of my high hopes for the agitator dogs fixing everything, the washer was still behaving insanely. The bottom agitator was only spinning in one direction which is why the clothes had gotten so tangled.

So I posted to my favorite appliance DIY forum and in an hour and a half, had a diagnosis that I needed a new transmission. Ugh.

If I chose to DIY it this time, I’d be on my own, DH wouldn’t be available to help me, but on the other hand, we’d done this once before so I figured with my awesome SIL’s help (and a video of the steps), we ought to be able to avoid the trip charge and hourly fee of a pro.

I decided I could do it, so we ordered the part day before yesterday, it was in yesterday and I think I had the part installed in less than an hour from the time I started. It was a nerve-racking few minutes waiting for the washer to fill up to see if I’d done everything correctly, but it came on and did what it was supposed to do… whew!

It’s kind of good that I had to do this because in the process of everything I discovered the agitator dogs needed replacing and when I got the motor off the transmission, I saw that the rubber drive coupler gasket was just about to self-destruct. One hole had already broken through. Thankfully we had an extra from another repair so I was good to go in that department.

So… here’s hoping we can go for a few more years without any major repairs.

Next on my list… putting up a clothesline to keep up with all the clothes I’ll be washing.

Replacing Agitator Dogs

Our Kenmore Elite 90 series washer has served us well for the last 14+ years. We have replaced (diy style) the clutch (iirc), the lid switch and the drive couplers.

Yesterday night while a load was washing I noticed a noise from the washer that was getting louder and (I think) slower too for some reason. I turned off the washer and found the clothes all tangled around the center agitator. I thought maybe something had gotten stuck underneath the agitator so I took the clothes out and drained the water (in hindsight I would have reversed that order, lol), but there was nothing there.

I went online to try to diagnose the loud grinding noise I heard and what might be the cause. I couldn’t find much consensus, but did see agitator dogs come up more than once and I kept reading that it was a cheap, easy fix. I figured it couldn’t hurt to rule that one out so I took the top cap off the agitator, unscrewed the plastic thingy in the center with the square end of a long ratchet wrench piece (don’t you just love my oh-so-technical vocabulary? lol) and was able to easily pull out the agitator dog assembly.

Sure enough, the teeth were looking quite worn. They were still able to engage the agitator under low pressure but when DH gave a mighty turn, they slipped and gave the nasty loud noise I had been hearing. So God be praised, we will once again avoid an appliance man’s trip charge and fix this old beauty for near nothin’.

Copying the Bible

Not long ago while browsing Anne Elliott’s blog I read how she has her children copy the Bible (not just verses, but the whole Bible) for their copywork time. This is an idea she got from the Klein Family who got the idea from Art Dappen who got the idea from the book of Deuteronomy:

When he [Israel’s king] takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. (Deut. 17:18-20, NIV)

Art Dappen wrote a book, a compilation of some of his thoughts on the subject, called The Education of Kings. (pdf / mp3)

His thoughts on the matter (very basically) are that if we are called priests and kings (Rev. 1:6), and if we are called to imprint the word of God in our minds, teach them to our children, and talk about them all the time (Deut. 11:18-21), and if Jesus directs us to seek his kingdom first, then all the rest will follow… (Matt. 6:33) then we should put God first in everything, including our homeschooling, give him the first, best part of our day and spend time imprinting his Word in our hearts while we copy it down in a book. He does a much better job of explaining this all so read his book (or listen to the mp3). It’s not very long, I found it very enlightening.

This sounded pretty good to me so we’ve started. The first day flowed really well with my normally change-hating child actually loving the idea. All was peace and quiet at the table… it was wonderful!

Then the novelty wore off and we’re now dealing with more noise and time-wasting, but I’m sticking with it. I think everything will normalize at some point and we’ll find a happy medium and hopefully my children will all learn to love it as I love it because…I love copying the Bible. It’s so relaxing and it gives me time to think about what I’m writing as my writing speed is much slower than my thinking speed. Try it, you might like it.

Fleece Mittens tutorial

My kids needed some mittens and I figured I could make them some from some fleece scraps I had "lying around." I found another tutorial online for fleece mittens and I really liked them. But I looked at a pair of store bought fleece mittens that I had and I liked the way they were constructed a little better so I altered their pattern to work the way the store bought mittens did and I really like the results.

You don't have to use this pattern, but it will give you an idea of what it's supposed to look like. I actually made patterns for my 3 older ones by tracing their hands, drawing an upside-down U about 1/2" all the way around their hand (fingers together, not spread out), marked where their wrist was (for the elastic placing), and finished the pattern using this as a guide.

The original tutorial said to enlarge the patterns till the grid was 1 inch square (for adult size), maybe 3/4 inch square for a child's hand. Play around with the sizing, find what works for you.

I trace the hand 1/2 inch in from the fold (on a piece of paper folded lenghtwise), make the upside-down U, fold it in half again and cut the rounded part off the top (to make sure it's nice and even on both sides). Then I fold the thumb side in half to the middle fold to get the thumb width. Fold the paper in half from top to bottom to find out how far the cutting line for the thumb should go. Then about 1/2-way from the top of the thumb cutting line to the bottom of the mittens, start drawing the curve for the thumb-tip. Fold the paper in half again from edge to thumb cutting line and cut the curve for the rounded thumb-tip. Fold the thumb part up and make the pattern piece for the thumb. Make it a little longer than it calls for, then cut down if need be. I discovered that the thumb pattern piece runs a bit short.

To cut out the pieces, fold over a piece of fleece, line the pattern up on the fold, and cut the rest out. Then open the fleece, lay the opened pattern on top of it and cut out the thumb flap. If there is a right side and a wrong side to the fleece, make sure to flip the pattern over when cutting out the other thumb flap.

To sew, line up the thumb pattern piece with the thumb flap, sew from the notch around to the other side of the thumb. Stop. Line up the long edge of the thumb piece with the long part of the main mitten piece, and sew together. Sew some elastic to the wrong side where the pattern indicates (or where you noted the location of the wrist). Place right sides of mitten together and sew mitten together. Hem the edge. Turn inside out, enjoy :)

CDing again

I had planned to cloth diaper Missy, but really wasn't looking forward to having to do an extra load of laundry ever 3 or so days. I used 'sposies for the first few weeks to get me back in the groove again and still use them for overnight (till I get my courage up, lol). But getting back in the CDing saddle again wasn't as hard as I anticipated. It's really rather fun to cloth diaper and you get to be so much more creative than you can be with "go 'n throw" dipes (which really have zero room for creativity). And while babies are 100% breastfed, you don't have to "scoop-the-poop" as there are no solids, everything gets nicely washed away, so it's really no trouble. I wash about every 3 days, and have an ever revolving supply of soft, fluffy non-landfill-clogging diapers. And as far as the creativity side of things, here's what I've gotten to do so far:

The diapers are made from a large, soft sheet using the Rita's Rump Pocket pattern (I managed to get 10 from one large, flat sheet; queen or kin size, not sure). They were so fun to make and super easy too. This tutorial helped immensely when it came to adding the elastic. I can't wait to get a hold of some more flannel to make some more! I'd like another couple of sheets' worth at least. I stuff them with a trifolded small prefold (I have used premium diapers as stuffers too, but they're kinda big!, might be good for overnight) and they aren't too too bulky, easy to get on and off (just use one pin), I love 'em!

Update, here are a few more:















The pink (acrylic) diaper cover is my rendition of a Flapper Bottom soaker which turned out nice, but I still don't like it as well as the Warm Heart Woolies plain wrap that I made from recycled red wool. It's so pretty and so easy to get on and off, also is a good fit (this pic is so far from doing this soaker justice it isn't funny. It's a much deeper, darker red in real life and the color is nice and even, not faded looking like in this sub-par photo).








I also made an Ottobre soaker (.pdf; the Ottobre is my favorite pull-on soaker, very quick and easy to make, easy on/off, contains wettness well...) out of some chunky recycled wool which is my bullet-proof diaper cover (the blue and green one above is an Ottobre soaker, but the one I made most recently is a cream color). That with a premium stuffed RRP might be the ticket for night time when I run out of disposables.

Crash!

Went my data hard drive. Grrrr! It was working fine one minute and the next it was giving me an error that a file was corrupt or something so that I couldn't access the drive. Then when I rebooted, Windows told me the drive wasn't formatted, would I like to format the drive, Yes/No. Nooooooo!!!!! So all day I've been researching ways to get to my files that I'm sure are all still there. Not sure what happened. I don't think there was a power surge or blip, the computer wasn't dropped or otherwise damaged... All I can think is maybe a virus did this, but I do have an AV program on my computer and it's up-to-date. Sigh. The drive is listed in the Windows Explorer tree but doesn't do squat when I click on it. Just gives me the "not formatted" error.

So I'm running a free program called TestDisk and it has finally told me that my boot sector is bad. I'm in the process of trying to repair the boot sector. It also told me that my backup boot sector is ok so if this doesn't work I'll try to copy the good boot sector over the bad, see if that works. I just want my files, people! A word of caution to the wise (let them who have ears hear!), please back up your data! I was "this close" to copying a zip backup of my important files to a dvd when this happened. Wish I had gotten around to this sooner! If I lose everything on my disk I will be very discouraged. I did backup the documents a few months ago, but I've made a lot of changes to files and created new files since then, I would really hate to lose those. I'm praying that this works!

For backup, I'm using Back2Zip to backup my important files to .zip every night (or at least once a week!) and Cobian Backup (or I will be when/if I get my files back!) to back up my zipped files to an off-site FTP server. We do have a backup disk, but it is somewhat out of commission as well at the moment.

To reformat or not to reformat, that is the question.

My computer has some major issues, possibly virus related, we're trying to rule that out (i.e. I can't load McAffee, Adaware crashes when I run it, the keyboard layout that I installed is gone and I can't reinstall, can't do a windows update...). If DH can't find the cause, I'll probably be facing a reformat tomorrow. Lovely.

Gj;ukd... I mean typing on a new layout

I've been doing a bit of reading on alternate keyboard layouts and how they can increase speed and productivity while cutting down on errors and reducing hand fatigue. I compared a bunch of alternatives including the second most popular Dvorak layout, and after much thought, I've decided to try Colemak. I don't think I'll go cold turkey as I would like to retain my qwerty ability; ideally I'd like to be able to type in both formats as needed. I do expect my qwerty speed to go down as a result, but in the long run I think it'll be worth the effort in light of my future career in medical transcription and all the typing I'll be doing. So far this is my first attempt at typing in Colemak and it's taken me forever to do, but I can also see it's getting a little easier as I go along. And my fingers are doing a lot less traveling (my backspace key is getting a workout, that's for sure; trying to get used to the new "backspace key" [the old Caps Lock key]. I'll have to remap the Caps Lock key to a seldom used key (such as "right Windows key" or "Scroll lock.") I'll let you know how it goes.

Added 7/30/2008... I just tested my speed and was able to type an agonizingly slow 18 words per minute, but this was without looking at the keys (99% of the time). I'd love to see it up to 30 wpm by next week. We'll see.

Oh the joys!

I've started potty training Eli and it's going slow. The first day we had both #1 and #2 accidents, yesterday he didn't have any pee accidents (I don't think) but had about 4-5 pea-soup poop accidents in his underwear (the kind that dribbles down legs and trickles down on the floor/carpet, whatever). Yuck! He was so hesitant to even sit on his little blue potty that I finally resorted to bribing rewarding him with "sweets" when he does manage to do anything on the potty. He gets about 3x as many sweets for #2 as for #1 since the former is less frequent and also he seems to be more hesitant in that department. So.... this morning after I got him up I had him sit on the potty and, whatd'ya know, he pooped! A small pile, but it was something. I was very happy, clapped my hands, got real animated and gave him a small handful of sweets (raisins, carob chips, stuff like that) as a reward. I really do hope that starts a nice trend in that direction. He also went pee in his potty all by himself this morning, without my having to remind him so that was pretty cool too. I saw him in the kitchen trying to move a stool over to the counter where the "sweets" are kept so he could reward himself. I didn't catch on right away, but finally did see his deposit in the potty and paid him his dues. He's keeping dry for at least an hour between pees, maybe more, so he's doing well with that. I'm hoping to have him mostly trained by the end of this week. We'll see. I will still probably put him in pull-ups for going out, but for now, at least at home, he's in big boy pants and seems to be finally catching on.

I'm in school!

Yup, after years and years in the real world, I'm finally in school again and lovin' it. Uh-huh, I'm a nerd, a bookworm, what can I say, I love school, or probably more accurately, learning. And I've never stopped learning, but now I'm officially enrolled. I'm going to be a Medical Transcriptionist when I grow up, lol.

After much research and indecision, trying to decide whether I'd go with the cheepest of the "big 3" MT schools, or choose another school which seemed to offer as much and more, if not the designation of being one of the "big 3." In the end, due to prompt replies to all of my emails and honest answers to all of my "difficult" questions, not to mention an awsomely awsome discount which brought it within range of the other school I was considering, I chose MT Advantage (Medical Transcription Advantage Career Center) and I'm so far very happy with my choice. The school boasts a 100% job placement rate which is very encouraging and so far, in working thru the lessons, I really feel that there is a lot there for me to learn. I feel that I'll come out with a lot of knowledge and practice that will translate well to the real word. It will probably take me at least a year to complete, what with homeschool, a new baby and the possibility of my having to pick up some part-time-at-home work while DH is in school, not to mention just staying on top of the running of a household... Sometimes I think I bit off too much, but I'm having such fun with this program and the good thing about it is that it's a do-at-your-own-pace course and they are fairly flexible about how long it takes you to finish. Right now I'm just trying to perfect my grammar, spelling, and my attention to detail (or occasional lack thereof), finish a few non-required, but helpful computer classes and improve my typing speed... I just found my old Harbrace College Handbook so I'm going to look thru it and hopefully pick up some helpful pointers in the grammar department. I don't think I'm horrible, but I think I definitely could use some improvement. And MTs generally have impecable grammar and spelling.

For note taking I'm using a dandy little feeware app called KeyNote. It's a wonderful little notes program that supports tabs and an unlimited tree structure within each tab. It's marvelous; I'm sad it's not being updated anymore, but I'm really mostly fine with it how it is.

Also, I downloaded a flashcard freebie called CueCard which will help me drill myself either online or via the printed version of the flashcards (will do either, or so it says).

So far I'm on Module 4 of 30 that are in the course and I've been given the green light to start Mod 5 if I want (since Mod 4 is about computers and is not graded or required, but helpful and so far [for me] boring as all get out). I'll have to skip back to Mod 3 when I get my books (in 3-5 weeks, sooner I hope!), but at least I can keep up the forward momentum. I'll keep you posted as to my progress.

Projects

Here are a couple of my fairly recent projects that I hadn't had a chance to blog about yet. The first one is the bible cover I made out of old jeans for Geo's 7th birthday. I stayed up into the wee hours of the night the night before finishing it. Gigi has already requested one, but if I do, I'll start it months in advance, lol.


The next is the Cinderella Topsy Turvy doll (a la Jean Greenhowe) that I made for Gigi's 5th birthday. I'm really happy with how she turned out. Still need to make some little flowers to go around her bun, but otherwise she's done.


Here are a couple that Geo made for his sister's birthday. The bunny finger puppet was knit in the round using the magic loop method (ears knit by me, whiskers added by me), The pink bunny was knit in the round (magic loop) too, I think I did the ears for that one too, but pretty much everything else he did.

Chagrined

How could I drop the ball and forget to blog yesterday and Wednesday? I was doing so good. Here's what happened (it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!)... I went to a Pampered Chef demonstration last night at our pastor's house (his wife was hosting) and had a really nice time, but didn't end up getting home till close to 10. Then there were some stuff like laundry and cleaning out the sink (gotta leave that sink shiny, Flylady says, lol) and I just plain forgot. But hopefully it was just the one time. I have no idea what happened Wednesday [shrugs shoulders].

Today was lovely and sunny and beautiful and is supposed to be that way for the next day or two, nice! I managed to get most of school done even tho my night schedule (going to bed at 10, up at 6:30) was really messed up by Eli waking up a couple of times to nurse ("Baba, Baba... [very plaintively] Baba"; tho he actually started saying Mama and Mommy today which was so exciting to me. He also started saying Nanana so he's trying out his Ms and Ns now [from Bs and Ds]), and Gigi waking up crying around 11:00 or so because she was coughing and it hurt. I rubbed some Vicks on her feet, not sure if it worked, but I had to try, then I let her go to bed in our bed (DH was still up working) till DH came to bed and then he moved her to a little makeshift bed on the floor. So I didn't make my 6:30 wakeup time and that kind of threw my whole day off.

I did manage to do Kelly's Mission of the day (it's another Flylady thing) which was sweep and mop the kitchen floor. I also did the dining room floor as it was in dire need. I tidied up in the bonus room some, made a little more elbow room, did some vertical stacking of boxes so that things weren't spread out all over the place. I also moved the laundry sorting bins out of site (well 1/2 of them anyway) and moved the ironing board to where they were so it's not in my way when I come out of the laundry room anymore. The bins that show have lids on them and stack so they don't look too awful. Geo got into the cleaning and started sorting his toys. I think I'll introduce him to Riley's Challenges (yet another Flylady thing), see if he can get on board with that. I think I'm going to start listing the school subjects we need to cover every day on the white board so he can see what to expect and how much more we have to accomplish before we're "done" for the day and he can go do something else. I asked him if he'd like that and he said "yes." We finished reading a book about Ben Franklin today and I learned a lot that I never knew before. He was a very interesting fellow.

It was so much easier to clean up for Sabbath since I'd been keeping up with things every day rather than saving things till Friday afternoon. The bathroom, hallway, family room and kitchen aren't too bad. Now I need to start branching out to other parts of the house, but it's very gratifying to have those places staying fairly decent on a regular basis.

For the last little while, maybe a month or two, Eli has been jumping with both feet off the ground which is very cute to watch. He has good balance too for a little squirt.

Wednesday we went to the dentist because Geo has cavities. He had some acid reflux when he was around 3 or 4 (gone now) and it played havoc on his teeth. One of the cavities was so bad that it was giving him pretty bad toothaches (which we treated with oil of oregano & olive oil on a cotton swab which he bit down on, and tylenol) so now he's on an antibiotic as the cavity went all the way to the root (ouch!) and they want to make sure there's no infection before they take care of it. He's going to have to have a pulpotomy (what they do instead of a root canal for baby teeth) in a couple of weeks. I don't look forward to that!

Yesterday the septic guy came and took care of our septic problem and now we're good to go again. Still have a plugged toilet in the laundry room, tho; he hadn't been told that we wanted him to do that and he didn't have any tools with him. That toilet is being a sticky little thorn in my side.

Our cat is in heat and the cheapest clinic around ($20 to spay a cat!) is 2 months booked out. We've been keeping Charlie (our cat, and btw, she's a she [the kids named her]) in our laundry room as there were so many boy cats hanging around the house and we didn't like the odds. But I can't imagine keeping her in there for 2 months! I'm not sure what we're going to do. I wish I'd called a long time ago before she went into heat, but it's too late now. We can't afford a regular vet so we may not have any options. We like our kitty so it's not like we want to get rid of her or anything, but we also don't want kittens (or more accurately we don't want to have to try to get rid of kittens). Poor Charlie is talking to me right now, sounds like she's saying "Hello? Hello?" as in "is anyone out there?" Poor li'l chickadee.

And now for something completely different

Have to start this with a shout out to my friend, Nichole, who gave me the idea for this new little project of mine. After looking at the extensive instructions found here, I started making my very own case bound book (like a real hard cover book that you'd buy in the store). Here are some pics and my thoughts about the process. For my part I'm sure I'm doing this "all wrong" because I don't have the right kind of glue or board or paper for that matter, but I'm doing the best with what I have and I'm right happy with the results (so far).

The first thing I did was to make 4 signatures (a stack of paper folded in half in a very basic "book fold") of 8 sheets of regular 8.5 x 11 inkjet paper (16 pages) each, folding each sheet individually to insure a nice, sharp crease before putting the folios together to make the signatures. I had already printed out what I wanted in my book (in my case my homeschool planner), laid it all out in Publisher and printed the first 32 pages front-and-back, then the next and so on till I had what I needed for 4 signatures. I figured out what I was going to use for the cloth hinges (in my case that turned out to be some green bias tape I had on hand), and linen tape (bias tape folded in half). I prepared the endsheets as described. Then I figured out where I was going to put my "linen tape," (in my case I went with 3) and marked on all the signatures where to punch the holes. The kids helped me with that part by pushing a thumb tack into each marking. Then I found a needle and some bedspread weight crochet thread that I had, and started sewing the signatures together. Then I fashioned a crude book press with a couple pieces of particle board that were lying around and a couple of clamps to hold them together. I banged on the spine with a metal thingamabob that I had handy to flatten them down a bit and make them flair out. It stayed like that all night. I glued a strip of watercolor paper on the spine, then another piece of bias tape, opened up. I made some headbands for the top and bottom of the spine and glued them on (I think I got the order wrong, but ... who cares :). It stayed like that all night. This morning I made the case for my book. I didn't have board, the closest thing to the consistency was cereal boxes, but they are much too thin so I glued three layers together to make the right thickness. They sat piled under a whole bunch of Bible Story Books till they dried. Then I found some fabric for the cover, measured it like they told me to (forgot to add the 3mm for an overhang, bummer) glued the paper strip down the middle and the boards on either side, then glued the fabric up and inside the cover. When that was dry, I put my book innards inside the cover, and with the help of some wax paper (hope it works!) I glued the flappy parts (hinges) to the inside cover of the book, front and back. In the morning, if I want, (probably closer to tomorrow evening tho), I'll be able to glue the paste-downs to the front and back cover and voila... I'll have my very own hard cover book made completely by me. Pretty cool if I do say so myself. And very economical too. I had everything on hand so it didn't cost me a dime. Glue is cheep (especially this time of year with school sales going on), cereal boxes are free, I have tons of fabric scraps, the only thing that I have to pay for is the paper which is something I usually have on hand anyway. Now I think I'd like to print my cookbook and bind it :) The possibilities are endless.

Pics added 7/28/07
















Notice the signatures in the 4th picture, the last picture shows the importance of gluing the cereal box cardboard with the pictures in (you can barely make out part of the Weetabix logo on the inside of my back cover, lol). In the third picture you can see the stitching down the center of one of the signatures. Just for fun, go find a hard bound book and find the string at the center of a signature.