A mudroom! This space is one of my favorite places in our farmhouse. I’ve always wanted a mudroom. I grew up in a small apartment and never lived in a house until we bought the one in NJ that we left last year. Years of looking at design magazines, and my year as an interior design student in college, just left me with this picture in my head of what domestic living should look like. And one of those pictures is having a happy, functional space for the mess of everyday life. Not to hide it away, but to give it its own room to kind of revel in the mess of family life, without destroying the rest of the house. This is also the height of privilege, having an entire room in a home that’s basically for dirty shoes, but as a kid with limited privacy and space it’s just something I dreamed of. And here’s the before and after for ours.
Here’s a simple, quick, cute project to make with your kids. We made these googly-eyed love bugs for H’s class Valentines this year, but we’ve made them in the past just for fun. H’s party was postponed a week because of a giant snowstorm the night of my birthday that, combined with midwinter break, meant school was closed all of last week. It was the fourth snowstorm we’d had in just over a week, February has been wild around here. So one day while H was home and I was working, I set her up to work on these for school.
Whoopie pies are just the best, and they’re easy to make at home with kids. Whoopie pies, we’ve learned, just aren’t really a thing in Washington. And they’re H’s favorite treat, and something she’s been missing from NJ (Whole Foods made really good ones back east, but all the baked goods at Whole Foods here in WA are too…healthy). So, I’ve started making them. The Christmas batch was such a hit that she wanted to help me make some more this past weekend. Sunday night while my beef roast cooked we made them for dessert.
Last year was unlike any other year I’ve ever had. I think the silence on this blog kind of reflects that. Trucking along in a quieter-than-usual but other wise normal year, and then June 17th comes and off the grid I go. That’s when we finished packing up everything we owned in NJ (everything that was left after weeks of purging, yard sales, and donations), left the house we’d owned for 10 years, 7 months, and 12 days, spent a week driving across the country to Washington, moved into a rental apartment, spent three months looking at houses/putting offers on houses/buying a house, and then moved into our farmhouse on the 28th of September. It’s on six acres of forested woodlands, it’s beautiful, and I’m so in love with it out here.
This is a great experiment from our Learning Resources Deluxe Lab Set. It was quick, it wasn’t too messy, and H thought it was completely fascinating. You’ve got all these ingredients at home already, so this is a great one for a snow day (like tomorrow), a rainy day, or just when you need a quick experiment to do with the kids.
Read more on Tie Dyeing Milk Is a Fast and Fun Kids’ Science Experiment…
We gave H this Hape Puppy Pouch kit for Christmas, and we sewed it up this month. I haven’t seen it available anymore, I’m not sure if it’s just sold out or discontinued. But if you can’t find the puppy, here’s the fox kit.
Read more on Kid Sewing Project! We Made This Hape Puppy Pouch Together…
I love this time between Halloween and the full sprint of the Christmas season. It’s not quite time yet to scramble for presents and decorate everything in site. It’s cozy, November is pure fall weather, and the leaves are still bright and everywhere on the ground. But I feel crafty, and I’m in the mood to be out trekking around the neighborhood, and the woods nearby. I had a batch of leaves ready to go, so when my nephew came over last week for a playdate after school I decided to make some turkeys.
Other posts on this round robin: Our Quilt Block for the Kids Quilt Round Robin, Our Next Kids Quilt Round Robin Block, Our Last Kids Quilt Round Robin Block.
H got all of her blocks back from this summer quilting round robin back in September, and we love them. She’d asked for brown and rainbows, and that is what she got. We haven’t had a chance to sew this quilt together yet, but we will. She’s been less interested in sewing this fall, but she did just ask me the other day if we could make something, so I think we’ll pull these blocks out soon.
It took a while, it always takes a while. I didn’t go overboard this year, and if I’d planned better I would’ve put up more decorations. Unlike Christmas, which I start thinking about in July, I just don’t think about Halloween until October 1st. And then it takes me a couple of weeks to get it together, maybe next year I’ll get on top of it.
When the new year rolled around I got my usual urge to reorganize, but this year I really, really reorganized. We replaced the 9-year-old bedroom carpet in my studio with some office carpet that wears well, I completely moved furniture around, and I threw out…quite a lot. I wanted the space to feel more open, and even though I have a LOT of craft supplies…I wanted it to feel as contained as possible.