Roses. Beautiful, beautiful roses.

A week or so ago, I got tired of waiting for the HOA to replace the dead bushes in our landscaping. We live in a townhome, so the HOA takes care of everything outside the house. I've asked, reminded, and finally joked to the sales office that I was going to simply plant rose bushes instead.

A few days later I got an email giving me the go-ahead for the rose bushes.

Woohoo!

So I went to the garden center, found the roses, and wavered back and forth between two different varieties. I bought one bush of sunshiny orange roses and planted it next to our door. There are two blooms on it at the moment and they are gorgeous. So amazingly gorgeous that I had to post pictures.

I love the bright orange color of this one. It's a beautiful, perfect rose shape.

This one is my favorite. It's large and a little fluffier. The pink edges just make me giddy.

It's an incredible thing to me that one bush can produce two such different blooms.

I edited the post to add the Tuesdays Unwrapped button from my friend Emily's blog, Chatting at the Sky. What? You don't think I know Emily? I do! I helped her order bloggy business cards at She Speaks last year. She's a lovely person and has a fabulous blog and you need to go check her out!

There's a light at the end of the third grade tunnel

Today I will send off a large manila envelope with the next to last set of grades for K.

Today K started the very last grading period. I love this grading period simply because it is short! We have 19 more lessons to go, but we don't want to do school for 4 more weeks, so we're doubling up for the rest of the "school year". That basically means that we'll do all the work for one lesson plus the tests (+reading +spelling) from the next lesson each day. This way, all the stuff is learned, but we're not doing a bunch of busy work on stuff we've already covered.

And we'll be done before Memorial Day!

The state asks that we do 180 days of school. I have 170 days of lessons with A Beka. By the time the school year is over, we will have far exceeded the 180 days with all the extra stuff we do - Bible study, field trips all over, visiting student at Grandma's school, etc. (After all, we started our school year at the end of July.) You have to love the flexibility of homeschooling. We can cover subjects not taught in traditional school settings and we can learn our lessons in varied locales using methods that simply aren't an option for most teachers.

Yep, homeschooling is great. Now I just need to remember that on days when the girls spend the day fighting and I want nothing more than to drop them off at the nearest elementary.

WFMW: How to clean your car mats for free

A week or so ago, I took advantage of the warm weather and tackled a task that must be done semi-regularly around here.

I cleaned the minivan floor mats.

And yes, it was as scary as it sounds.

I sent the girls outside to empty everything out of the car that wasn't bolted down. I worked the vacuum as hard as it could go, then I pulled all the floor mats out. Thankfully, our van has mats that cover 90% of the floor because the designers were obviously moms with small children.

I laid out the worst mat (the one that goes under the girls' feet) and felt compelled to document its grossness.


Impressed? Wait, here's a close-up.


And this is the part that's under the *oldest*, who should be past all the drips and spills.

If I were made of money and knew a good car cleaning place, I would have just surrendered the whole van for disinfecting. As neither of those are true, I had to come up with my own solution. I soaked the mat with the hose, poured laundry detergent over it, and scrubbed it with a hard scrub brush. I scrubbed and scrubbed. I then hung it over the trunk of the car and sprayed it with the hose for a long time. This was the final result.


Isn't that awesome? It's not perfect, but it is an infinite improvement over what it looked like before. Now my car looks better AND smells april fresh. You can't beat that.

EASY fancy paper pockets

Last weekend I took L with me to do a little shopping and we ended up going to a family festival at the local shopping center. Many of the stores had booths with crafts and activities for the kids and coupons for the parents, so we both had a good time.

A new paper craft store is opening and they had a table set up where they made these awesome little paper pockets for the kids. I watched as the lady spent approximately 30 seconds and went from a square sheet of paper to a cute holder for a business card and a bag of candy. It looked ridiculously simple, so when we got home, I took L's apart to make sure I knew how it was made.

Don't worry, I put it back together.

Then I sat down and made a few more. With some variations. Because I can. And I'll show you how to make your very own paper pockets.

If you scrapbook or have ever scrapbooked in the past, you probably have the necessary supplies on hand. You need:

paper (double-sided card stock works best)
hole-punch
ribbon or brad

And that's it.

1. Take a square sheet of paper and fold it into a triangle. You'll want to make sure you crease all your folds well.2. Fold one side corner in so that you get a fairly straight line across the top of the folded section.
3. Fold the other side corner in just like you did the first one.
4. Fold down one layer of the top point.
5. Punch a hole through every layer except the back.









6. Put a brad through the hole. You can poke the brad through a couple of flowers first to jazz up your creation or you can leave it plain and classy.You're done!

Now, let's say you want to get a little fancier with your paper pocket. Maybe you have single-sided paper and you want something besides just white showing on the inside. Maybe you don't have any brads, but you have lots of ribbon. Here's a little variation on the basic one shown above.

1. Take two square sheets of paper, one slightly smaller than the other and fold them both into triangles.2. Position the smaller sheet inside the larger one and fold the pocket as shown in the example above.









3. Fold down both the larger outer point and the smaller inner point.
4. You will need to punch two holes through all the front layers of the pocket, but a normal hole punch has a hard time with this. Use the hole punch to simply mark where you want the holes in the topmost layer.5. Punch holes in each layer starting with the top. Once you have a hole punched, use a pencil to mark where to punch the hole in the next layer.6. Continue to unfold and punch until you get each layer done. When you get to that last layer, just fold the top over and punch through the top holes.7. Refold everything, thread the ribbon through the holes, and tie it into a bow.









Now you can fill your paper pockets with whatever you can think of! You can put in gift cards, gift certificates, notes, candy, flowers, toys, pictures, business cards, etc. These are perfect for giving little gifts for Mother's Day or Teacher Appreciation or end-of-year trinkets for the ladies at your MOPS table. You can do little thank yous or Valentines. It's incredibly easy and incredibly impressive.

Where you will find the rednecks do on a hot April afternoon

One recent Saturday morning we piled into our car and headed to K's softball game. It was a morning of civilized, all-American fun - pigtails, root beer, a thrilling game with a big rally on our girls' part to pull off an amazing win at the last minute, and snow cones for the winners.


Doesn't she look so wholesome and innocent?

As soon as the game was over and with snow cone in hand, we got back in the car and headed down country lanes to our friends' home back in the woods. We parked alongside a few other vehicles and made our way over to this.


What IS that?

That is a contraption only a country boy can build and was made for the express purpose of hanging a whole pig over a large fire so that it can slow roast to pure pork perfection.

Since Cousin Swine was not quite ready for dinner, the girls were directed to the back of the yard where they were to take a right at a certain large tree and follow a rough path down to the creek where the other children were playing.

Now I was expecting a small creek with copious amounts of mud. Nope, this was a real, true body of water.


Soon K had her shoes off and was gingerly making her first foray into a backwoods creek. It wasn't long before she was splashing and screaming with the rest of the kids. The Princess L, however, stood quietly on the side of the creek and was not putting one foot into that muddy water, no way, no how.


It was a fabulous afternoon filled with friends, laughter, country music, and more food than an army could have eaten. And just in case you might have forgotten that this was a redneck gathering, this was a favorite play spot.

Quick update on the schoolwork situation

K has been diligently working on all the schoolwork she skipped. There is still much to be finished, but she's completed a very large stack. I've also stayed on top of her regular daily work - checking every answer, requiring extra copying of spelling words, and making her correct every mistake.

Do you want to know the difference it has made?

Today I graded her latest stack of tests and quizzes. She made six 100s, a 91, and a B+.

Looking over my gradebook, the past few weeks have brought Bs and Cs up to As and Bs. There are fewer incorrect answers on her daily work. K's handwriting is smaller and neater. She has not once asked to watch TV and she's generally pretty good about sitting down at the table and working through her papers without being reminded. She's been less irritable and more interactive.

It's made a huge difference.

Spring cleaning! It's going to happen!

Between Mr. at Home's busy work schedule, my busy "work" schedule, K's extra schoolwork schedule, and my being sick (which was NOT scheduled), the housework has fallen by the wayside. I've spent some time this week trying to catch up some, but it's daunting, not to mention just flat depressing, to look at the big mess and calculate how much time it's going to take to get it all back under control.

I love having a clean house. I hate what it takes to get it there.

When I was reading blogs today, I came across a little challenge. A blogger is organizing a spring cleaning party. For 2 weeks, she's posting her own efforts and challenging others to join her by posting their own before and after photos. She promises to break things into manageable chunks that won't take too much time each day.

The timing is perfect! My house is in need of cleaning, my motivation is in need to some motivating, and my pastor has asked each of us to hold a garage sale this summer to raise money for missions. Having someone tell me what I need to do each day will help me to get everything done. Having the accountability of telling you all about it will help me get everything done.

So I spent my $7 and bought the e-book with its task lists and explanations. And it looks awesome, by the way. I'm adding a couple of cleaning supplies to the shopping list and getting my boxes ready for Mondays declutter.

Who's going to do it with me?