Be Ready

Lately I have been enjoying reading Max Lucado's book "And the Angels were Silent". He has a neat way of writing and a neat way of making you see stories in the Bible in a totally new light.

 In one chapter he talked a lot about these verses (and the rest of chapter 24 and 25):

   Matthew 24:42-46
  "Therefore be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is coming. But be sure of this, that if the head of the house had known at what time of the night the thief was coming he would have been on the alert and would not have allowed his house to be broken into. For this reason you be ready too, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will.
  Who then is the faithful and sensible slave whom his master put in charge of his household to give them their food at the proper time? Blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes."

Chapters 24 and 25 of Mathew are Jesus last sermon and He spent that sermon telling the people over and over again (in various ways) to be ready! Jesus would be coming again and Jesus doesn't want people to put off getting ready until it is too late.

I really like some of what Max said about this and so I will quote part of the book:

  "His return is certain.

   His return is final.

   Upon His return "He will separate them into two groups as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The Son of Man will put the sheep on His right and the goats on His left."

    The word separate is a sad word. To separate a mother from a daughter, a father from a son, a husband from a wife. To separate people on earth is sorrowful, but to think of it being done for eternity is horrible.

   Especially when one group is destined for heaven and the other group is going to hell.

    We don't like to talk about hell, do we? In intellectual circles the topic of hell is regarded as primitive and foolish. It's not logical. "A loving God wouldn't send people to hell." So we dismiss it.

   But to dismiss it is to dismiss a core teaching of Jesus. The doctrine of hell is not one developed by Paul, Peter, or John. It is taught by Jesus Himself.

    And to dismiss it is to dismiss much more. It is to dismiss the presence of a loving God and the privilege of free choice. Let me explain.

    We are free either to love God or not. He invites us to love Him. He urges us to love Him. He came that we might love Him. But, in the end, the choice is yours and mine. To take that choice from each of us, for Him to force us to love Him, would be less than love.

   God explains the benefits, outlines the promises, and articulates very clearly the consequences. And then, in the end. He leaves the choice to us.

    Hell was not prepared for people. Hell "was prepared for the devil and his angels." For a person to go to hell, then, is for a person to go against God's intended destiny. "God has not destined us to the terrors of judgment, but to the full attainment of salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ." Hell is man's choice, not God's choice.

   Consider, then, this explanation of hell: Hell is the chosen place of the person who loves self more than God, who loves sin more than his Savior, who loves this world more than God's world. Judgement is that moment when God looks at the rebellious and says, "Your choice will be honored."
   

So what do you think? Are you ready for Jesus return? We don't know when it will be but He is asking us to please get ready!

Bunny Rabbits

 We have had so much fun at our house this week enjoying a small part of God's wonderful creation- baby bunnies. A week ago Saturday my dad had run over a nest of them while tilling his garden, the mother left and there ended up being 6 babies that needed care. My sister Keren has 3 and they brought us 3 on Sunday night as well.

We are trying to care for them as best we can until we are sure they are able to go off on their own. When they told us about them I figured they would be cute but I wasn't prepared for how cute they are and how easy it would be to get totally attached to them! I have never been a animal lover but baby bunnies could possibly change me.

We have to feed them milk replacer with a medicine dropper several times a day. When we first got them they would jump all over, especially if we touched their whiskers, and not eat to much but now they are just like a baby with a bottle, they latch on and eat for all they are worth. Mara feeds them most of the time and I do it some too.

The second night they were here they were in a fairly shallow box (about 10 inches tall) and during the night they got a bit restless- they have a tendency to be more active at night. The next morning Jonathan checked their box and reported that it was empty, where were the bunnies?!

 We looked all over the entry way (in our split level house it is in between levels with stairs going both directions) but no bunnies, then Mara checked downstairs and sure enough there were the bunnies. The were right at the bottom of the steps, all lined up (shown in the picture above). Somehow they had all tumbled down and ended up together.

The next night 2 of them burrowed under the rags while the third one would climb on top of them and the rags and then try to jump out over the top of the box. We had changed them to a bigger box so this one was now about 15 inches or so tall. He never made it over but he tried over and over. Ken and I enjoyed watching and laughing for some time.

The next night after Mara had given them their nighttime feeding Aaron and Megan took two outside and Megan sat hers down and left it for a bit. When I found out about it and we all went out to look for it we couldn't find it anywhere. I felt pretty bad but it did have a tummy full of milk, it knew how to eat grass and clover and such and it could run fast so I am really hoping (and yes I have been praying!) that it is okay. I just feel bad that it is separated from its siblings as they do so love to cuddle and snuggle and care for each other.

  The other two are enjoying eating greens more and more too. I suppose it won't be long before it will be time to release them too.

They are learning how to hide.

They like to munch on Dandelions.

But we are going to miss them!

A "swimming pool" for a warm day

The saying "Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without." has long been a favorite of mine. I love the challenge in that saying and I love how contented I can feel with what I do have. I have always hoped to pass on to my kids the enjoyment of making do and just being happy with what we have.

  Yesterday provided a fun example of their creativity and fun in making do. We have been having warm weather recently and I have been thinking that it might be nice to buy a wading pool for this summer, that hasn't happened yet however and yesterday was rather hot. I was busy planting the garden and I had a tarp laid out that I planned to plant tomatoes through that had gathered some water in it. The girls thought it was rather fun to play in but since I didn't really want them jumping and compacting my garden soil I showed them another tarp they could use.

  My intention was for them to just lay it out, spray some water on it and have fun with a few puddles, they however thought that making a swimming pool would work better, so they made this:

This really isn't a long term solution (Ken had them put everything away yesterday evening) but it provided a lot of fun for one morning and cooled them off in the process.

Every little project like this is helping them to realize how much fun we can have simply using what we have and a little creativity and that is something I am pretty happy about!

For more Frugal Ideas visit Life as MOM.

Parenting with less stress {Bedtime and Co-sleeping}

Concerning my children and bedtime and sleeping I feel very blessed. I have known of other families that seem to have a lot of trouble in this area and we haven't. I think we got a good bunch of kids! :-) (God also knows what we can handle I think.) Anyway today I thought I would share our methods in case they might be able to help anybody else as they raise their kids.

 So concerning bedtime....

For our Babies:

We did have beds for each of them. With Mara we were given a little bassinet which I had fun getting all set up before she was born and then I don't think she ever slept a night in it. I do remember putting her in it for a daytime nap a couple of times. :-) Obviously she was sleeping somewhere and that somewhere was our bed. We are blessed with a California king size bed so there was plenty of room (But my parents had all of us kids sleep with them when we were babies and that was in a double bed, so a king size bed is not essential). For the rest of our kids we did again set up a crib or bassinet and I did start using it a little more because we placed it right next to our bed rather than in another room but generally I would just put the baby in it when they first went to sleep and then later on when they woke up I would pull them into bed with me.

  What I liked about Co-sleeping was:

• I could nurse them easily without having to get up and be wide awake. Mainly- I didn't lose as much sleep. With sleep being a precious commodity for a young mother this worked very well for me.
• Being near my babies and being able to be sure they were okay.
• I have read that is reduces the risk of SIDS because the baby follows the parents sleeping pattern and heart beat.
• We had more bonding time.

   Co-sleeping isn't without its interesting moments. Generally when I would bring the baby to bed I would nurse them (while lying down) and then slide over closer to Ken again and give the baby space. While we slept Ken would slide over a bit to have more space and then the whole process would be repeated with me pulling the baby over to nurse and then sliding over towards Ken after which Ken would slide over towards the edge. I don't know how many mornings we would wake up to find Ken on the very edge of the bed and the baby would have 1/2 of the bed to him/herself.

  I know some parents have many concerns about this method such as:
~"They might fall out!" I'll be honest, this did happen a couple of times but it was when they were bigger (and rolling), it was on carpet and they didn't get hurt- we just both got scared.
~"They'll never want to leave your bed." We chose to "kick" them out at around 1 year and never had much difficulty with that, none of our kids sleep with us now.
~"We won't be able to have physical intimacy as a couple." This doesn't need to be unless you choose it to be, and if that is so you need to get creative and fix that problem.
~"We'll crush them." As long as you haven't been drinking alcohol or are on drugs (which Ken and I never did and I hope you are doing that either!) this is very unlikely to happen. I did prefer to keep the babies over on the other side of me (I slept in the middle) since I would bring them to bed in the middle of the night and with Ken being a pretty sound sleeper he wasn't necessarily aware of it.

I never had a baby who slept through the night but with co-sleeping I was able to survive even with middle of the night feedings. It worked quite well for me. When our babies were still under a year they were pretty much on the same schedule as us, going to bed when we did and then getting up a little after us but then they would take many naps.

For our toddlers:

Around 1 year of age Ken and I chose to train our children to sleep through the night and the co-sleeping ceased. I remember there was a couple of tearful nights but I would go to their bed (which was in our room) and pat their back and try to help them get back to sleep without nursing. Those couple of nights were a bit of a challenge but they were soon over and then they would sleep through the night. We did try to make sure that all of their needs were met before we ever put them to bed. That they had just been fed (if they were still nursing) or had a drink, they had a dry diaper and were warm enough.

  At this point in time we started putting them to bed a little earlier and they started napping a little less.

For our kids:
We don't have an early bedtime for our kids compared to many families that I know. Our kids go to bed around 9:15-9:30pm. This works for us as generally they don't have to be up super early either as we eat breakfast as a family at around 8 am. Since Ken doesn't have to be to work super early and we home school we can be a bit more flexible. Going to bed a bit later works well when we are out in the evening for church or any other event.

Ken is in charge of bedtime with the kids. This started when Jonathan was a baby and Mara was 2. At this point I was getting both kids ready for bed and then I would take my shower and by the time I got that all done it would take quite a while and Ken would be waiting for me to finally be ready for bed. So he ended up taking over making sure Mara was ready for bed (though I would do the bathing when necessary) and then read her a bedtime story. Each time a baby was added Ken would have another kid to be responsible for though then they could take care of themselves fairly well.

 Our routine now is that the kids dress themselves for bed and brush their teeth (at this point they are all fairly self-sufficient) and then Ken reads a bedtime story to them. After they are in bed I sing a song and pray with them. We both kiss and hug them all and tell them goodnight.

  One thing we have been fairly firm on in our training is that once they are put in bed, they stay in bed. Otherwise bedtime can turn into a very long drawn out process with children popping out with a new need every few minutes. Sometimes our kids do forget to go the bathroom or get a drink and we aren't inflexible but they know better then to get up and mess around.

  Now that Mara and Jonathan are reading a lot we do allow them most nights (they request it each night from Ken and he gives them a limit) to read with a lamp on for a bit. Usually he allows around 2 chapters.

Over all bedtime has gone pretty smoothly for us. We have had to do some training but it has worked well and bedtime is pretty stress free. I do really like the traditions that have developed with reading, singing and praying to help them get ready for sleep.

  What works for you all when putting your kids to be? Do you like Co-sleeping or not? I would love to hear your opinions too.

The wool skirts project

A while back a friend from church asked if I would like a box of old wool skirts and slacks that she had. Since I love projects and remaking things and didn't really have any wool things on hand but had seen some neat projects using them, I said "Yes!". The picture above is what she brought to me.

  I have had fun making things out of these and have a bunch more ideas of things I would like to do and so I thought I would have a bit of a series on Tuesdays for a while showing off some of my projects that have used these wool clothes.

   When I got them my thought was that I would use the wool, and I have some and intend to do more, but I have ended up having a ton of fun using the lining to make things too! Today's project makes use of the lining material.

These are just a bunch of different sized circles cut out and then we melted their edges over a candle, stacked them up and then I sewed them together in the middle with some little beads. I found instructions for it at 100 Layer Cake.

I have had fun coming up with many ways to use these pretty flowers. A couple of them are:

A headband for my niece (Megan is modeling it).

I added them to cylinder vases and then used them to hold candles for centerpieces at our Republican Dinner.

I have had fun using those flowers in other ways too, I think they look cute in many different places. I will have fun showing you some of the ways in the coming weeks. I am also having fun with the wool parts so be sure to check back to see some of those projects.

Now I am curious.... what would you do if you had a bunch of old wool clothes? Do you have any things you have done or would love to do? Please share!

These projects are linked to:

DIY day at a Soft Place to Land

and

Trash to Treasure Tuesday at Reinvented

Humbly Grateful

"Therefore, since we receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us show gratitude, by which we may offer to God an acceptable service with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire." Hebrews 12:28 & 29

This past week has been so busy. We had things to do that took work and strength and knowledge. Several times we simply didn't have those on our own (in fact we never do, God gives us every breath that we breath!) and we needed help. I feel so humbly grateful from the help that God gave by giving us strength and wisdom as we needed it and so often sending others when we needed them too. God is so good!

Here are some of the things that I am thankful for:

#590 My parents! I always had this thought that when I grew up I wouldn't really need my parents help any more. Of course I would still want their love and friendship but I would be able to take care of everything else on my own. This past week was one in which I felt so very humbled in how much they do for us! First we were having some tree fort troubles, it was coming off one tree and wasn't safe. We didn't know how to fix it so Ken called Dad who is very knowledgeable in those areas. Dad didn't just explain it over the phone, he came over and looked at it but Ken wasn't home then so he came back the next night to explain his ideas and then they came up with a plan and Dad went and found everything we needed and then came over the next night to help fix it. My mom and sister came along too but I already had a meeting planned that night so while I was away mom did dishes and laundry for me.

  Then on Wednesday night a bunch from church were going to watch a christian comedian. Mom encouraged Ken and I to go to and of course then offered to watch our kids!

  Then on Friday we had our big Republican Dinner. Mom offered to watch the kids (the younger 3, as Mara was helping) while we cooked and had the dinner. Dad even came to pick them up so I didn't have to drive out there. Then I was going to go get them when I was done but since we were having overnight company Mom thought it would be better if they brought them in again so I didn't have to make the drive. And then Mom and Dad proceeded to wash up a bunch of the dirty dishes we had used at our dinner.

I feel so very humbled when I think of what all they do for me.  I am so thankful to God for such loving, giving and godly parents!

#591 Fun ladies who are willing to tackle the big job of cooking for 200 with me! I know some of them thought we were a little crazy to attempt it so I appreciate their willingness to try!

#592 A toad in a tulip and my daughter's sense of humor.

#593 Lilies of the Valley outside our bedroom window and the absolutely wonderful smell that comes blowing in! I love it!

#594 My sense of smell. Sometimes I don't appreciate this so much but lately I have been thanking God for it often. There are so many sweet smells in our yard just now!

#595 Beautiful clouds and the rain that they brought.

#596 Purple flowers. I love this color!

#597 The promise of apples for the first time on our little tree! (And I can't believe that I missed taking a picture of the blossoms!)

#598 Oh so cute baby bunnies! (I'll tell more of the story later or you can go here)

#599 Learning responsibilities.

#600 Beautiful dirt all ready to plant!

Reading Revelation

I have been doing what seems to me some rather deep biblical reading lately. Four of us from church are in charge of teaching the kids from the book of Revelation for the next 3 months so we have been preparing for that and then also next month we are planning on having Bible Baseball (at church) on the books of Zechariah and Malachi so I have been reading Zechariah aloud to the kids and reading Malachi currently on my own. Though I have read all of these before (and studied them in Bible College) they still are not easy for me to understand, they require some serious study. However it is so cool how much can be gained from studying them! If you haven't ever read them I would greatly encourage it, it certainly makes me so very much in awe of who God is!

  I thought it would be fun to share with you some of the verses that I have really enjoyed in my reading of Revelation.

 "To Him who loves us and released us from our sins by his blood- and He has made us to be a kingdom, priests to His God and Father- to Him be the glory and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, He is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see Him, even those who pierced Him; and all the tribes of the earth will mourn over Him, So it is to be. Amen. "I am the Alpha and the Omega," says the Lord God, "who is and who was and who is to come, the Almighty." Rev. 1:5-8

"Be faithful until death, and I will give you the crown of life." Rev. 2:10b

"And when the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to Him who sits on the throne, to Him who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders will fall down before Him who sits on the throne, and will worship Him who lives forever and ever, and will cast their crowns before the throne, saying,

"Worthy are you, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for you created all things, and because of Your will they existed and were created." Revelation 4:11

There are so many neat verses and in the book of Revelation. It will make you think and it will make you want to worship.

When we were studying for our class Mathew reminded us of a article I had read some time ago by Matt Proctor. It is titled "7 Reasons why I read Revelation". The whole article is really neat but I wanted to share at least the 7 reasons with you. They also have chapter numbers with the reason as those chapters are the ones that prompt the reason that he names. The reasons are:

1. I approach Jesus more humbly (Chapt. 1)
2. I love the church more honestly (Chapts. 2 & 3)
3. I enter worship more completely (Chapts 4 & 5)
4. I endure suffering more confidently (Chapts. 6-9)
5. I speak God's truth more courageously (Chapts 10 & 11)
6. I see evil more clearly (Chapts. 12-18)
7. I love Christ's return more deeply (Chapts. 19-22)

 Do you enjoy reading prophecy in the Bible or do you skip that part? I would love to hear your thoughts!

A Giveaway winner and other odds and ends.

Things have been a bit busy around here lately which made me rather delayed in drawing a winner for the Canvas Print Giveaway, but I had Ken draw a name tonight and the winner is Martha, my lovely sister! I hope she is able to figure out a very fun picture to get printed on canvas.

Today I am feeling more than a little tired. Yesterday some other women and I worked here at our house to cook enough food for 200+ people. We made Pork Roast, Chicken Breast and Seasoned Potatoes. We had 8 roaster pans, the oven and crockpots all going, spread all over the house so we didn't blow fuses. I was amazed at how well 7 women were able to work together in my small kitchen. I had also made (with the kids and a neighbor helping) 300+ butterhorn rolls on Thursday. People also brought desserts and green beans but they didn't have to be cooked at my house (well Jonathan did bake some desserts earlier that we did take). After cooking we loaded it all up and transported to the high school where we then served it to around 200 people. It was the biggest cooking project that we have ever tackled and it was a lot of work but it went pretty well so that was good!

 We were cooking for a Republican Fundraiser. Ken had lined up all but 2 of the Republican candidates (12 in all) that will be on our areas ballot this November to come and speak. We also had a silent auction and bake sale that we made things for (I am looking forward to sharing some of the projects I made soon!) that went pretty well. We put together a cookbook recently as well which had just arrived so we sold copies of that. All in all it was a very successful fundraiser.

 We tried to make the event a bit elegant so a couple of violinists were asked to play during dinner and then I made/brought candle centerpieces for all the tables and we asked a bunch of people to help serve the meal instead of doing buffet style.

 Last night after the event (and the cleanup!) the candidate who is running for US house in our district and his campaign manager came and were our house guests overnight as well. Others from his campaign stayed with another family. It was fun to get to know him better. His name is Lee Byberg and he is hoping to unseat a democrat that has been in office for around 20 years. I think he can do it! He has an interesting story as he was born in Chicago to Norwegian missionary parents. He spent much of his childhood in South America - he told us stories of his pet monkey, anteater and parrot. The parrot had learned parts of some hymns which I guess he liked to sing, he died a martyrs death when  drunken neighbor decided he had had enough of the hymn singing bird and shot him. (the bird, not Lee). He lived a while in Norway too but when he turned 18 he had to chose whether to be American or not (since he was born here) and after some thought he decided that he did want to be American and ended up coming over here to college. He was very impressed by the freedom that he found and he wants to go to Washington DC to help preserve that freedom.

 
 I had to included a photo of my handsome husband he MC'ed the event and as usual did a great job!

Anyway, that is the reason that I didn't blog much this week. It was fun to do but I am glad it is over! :-)

Parenting with Less Stress {Breastfeeding}

     Breastfeeding has been a very important part of parenting for me. It was something that I never questioned whether I was going to do or not, it was simply the plan. My Mom breastfed all of us (6 kids) and it seemed like the normal and right thing to do.

   I do remember being surprised after Mara was born that it wasn't quite as easy as I thought it would be. I had watched my Mom nurse babies (My two youngest siblings are 9 and 14 years younger than me) and it seemed like you just stuck them up their, they grabbed hold and ate. End of story. Well when Mara was first born she wasn't all that interested in eating at first (I wonder now if some of the staydol had gotten through to her as she was pretty sleepy) and then when she did she often didn't latch on properly. So it took a few days to get things all figured out which I hadn't expected but things went pretty well after that. My lesson from that is to not grow discouraged, it might take a little work but it is worth it!

   I was overall very blessed with my breastfeeding experience with my four babies. I always had plenty of milk (which is normal for most people but I know that isn't the experience of everybody and I am grateful!), pretty healthy babies and I was very blessed to be able to stay home with them. I also never had to avoid any food because it bothered their tummies (though of course I never drank alcohol or smoked- I never have at any time), and I know that hasn't been true for many of my friends so I am quite thank-ful. Here are some of the things that helped in my breastfeeding experience:

• Start them nursing right away. In the hospital I kept them with me in my room and they only breastfed.
• Drink a lot of water! I was always amazed at how incredibly thirsty I would get as soon as I sat down to nurse. Of course half of the time I would have forgotten to get a glass of water ahead of time. It can help to have a water bottle filled and sitting by the place you usually sit down to nurse.
• Find and buy easy to use and comfortable nursing bras. Buy more than you normally need as they tend to get wet with milk every so often and unless you want to smell like sour milk pretty soon you might want to change.
• Enjoy your time of resting while sitting down and nursing. I always liked to have a book handy and I got a ton of reading done while nursing. My reading time got greatly reduced after the baby was weaned.
• When you get engorged a hot shower can help to let a little of the milk out and relieve the stress. I don't recommend pumping a lot because then your body will just make more and you will be constantly engorged because the baby just can't keep up.
• I didn't have that much trouble with leaking except for the first couple of weeks. I liked the cloth pads for when I did need them. I know that some people (I am remembering my Mom and others) leak a lot. If you are that sort of person you might want to take a change of shirt when you go out somewhere or wear a dark printed shirt that isn't so obvious when you have had a milk leak. :-)
• Eat a healthy diet. You want to make sure that you are sending good stuff through in your milk!
• Plan plenty of food to eat. I ate a lot while I was nursing! 3 good meals a day plus a few snacks.
• One thing that I did was keep my baby with me. When I was breastfeeding I went almost no where without them. There was one major exception to this and that was with Aaron I did teach violin lessons one evening a week and I was gone for a few hours. I tried pumping at first but I was never able to get that to work very well and so I ended up having formula available for him that one evening. Other than that even for times like special anniversary outings our baby came along. Those days will be over soon and then you have plenty of time to go places without them.
• Co-sleeping was very helpful in breastfeeding my kids. I will address this more later in a post all of its own.

  A huge help for me in being able to breastfeed and not feel stressed was being able to nurse the baby where ever I was. I thought I would address this in more detail as I know this in an issue that some have a hard time with or questions about. I would like to first make it clear that I am a very modest person, I don't like to wear low necklines much less any of my cleavage or breast I also don't like to make others feel uncomfortable. That being said I found that being modest is perfectly compatible with feeding your baby where ever you are, in church, at the store or restaurant or on the plane.

    First you have to think about how you are going to dress. When nursing a baby it doesn't work well to wear dresses or jumpers (unless they have been specially designed with a concealed nursing flap and I did make a couple of those) or tops that are really tight. I usually wore pants or skirts with a fairly loose and a little long shirt. Then you can just sit down, pull the baby up and carefully get them situated under the end of the shirt and they can eat. Often I could feed them without showing anything and not use any blanket or anything else to cover. I would however always keep a blanket (it can be very light for summer) handy and I would usually cover them with it when I was out in public. When you feed them in such a manner most people don't even realize that you are nursing. I have had people come up to me and visit with me and want to see the baby (the head being covered) and are completely surprised to find out they were eating. When I was nursing I don't remember even knowing about nursing covers but they are very common now and I found they are quite easy to make. I have made a couple as gifts and I have a tutorial to show you how.

  As babies get older they do start getting more curious and they like to pop their little heads out or grab your shirt and lift it high so I just found that it helped to keep my free hand kind of just holder my shirt down and ready to pull it all the way down if the baby decides to pop his head out. When doing it in public you just have to be a little more aware.

  If you have been afraid to nurse in public I really recommend giving it a chance, maybe start around just women and practice. I found doing it in church to be quite easy especially If I had Ken or one of the older kids sitting on one side to help shield any views from the side. During church nobody is paying attention to you (or they shouldn't be!) and you can quietly listen while feeding your baby. It is so much nicer then having to go sit in a nursery somewhere! I would not have enjoyed nursing so much If I felt I had to go off in another room every time they needed to eat. Learning how to nurse modestly wasn't that hard and was very valuable to me!

 I wrote another post a couple of years ago on the benefits of breastfeeding. You might enjoy it as well.

  

Breastfeeding was certainly something that worked well for me and I greatly recommend it!

For more works for me Wednesday posts visit We are that Family.

Don't miss the giveaway that I have going on for a 16 X 20 Canvas print! It ends tomorrow.

Rag Rugs!

I have been on a major project making kick lately. I am really trying to get my craft room cleaned out before I start a long run of weddings in June and so I have been working hard to get things used up and old projects finished. Another thing that has been prompting me to get projects done is because our local Republican group is having a fundraiser and I have been making things to go on a silent auction.

  I have made/finished several rag rugs lately. Here they are:

These are crocheted. I had started them a while ago and it was fun to get them finished. The big one headed out to make the tree fort more comfortable and the other one I am putting on the silent auction. I love the way I can use up lots of rags and scraps with them.

This one was a totally new kind of project for me. I had a bunch of little double knit squares (that had been given to me) in my craft supplies and I had seen a similar idea to this on a blog a long time ago (but it was rectangular and it was done in rows) so I wanted to give it a try. I was wanting some instructions to follow and after some googling I found these telling how to make a rug like I did above except with denim (which I think sounds really cute and I want to try someday!).

Here is a close up of the rug. I folded a bunch of little squares in half to make them triangular and then sewed them on in a spiral onto a sturdy piece of fabric. This is a fairly fast rug to make and I thought it was fun. It is a great way to use up all sorts of scraps.

This is linked to :

 A soft place to Land

and

Reinvented