Free Audio Books!

I'm really excited about the free resource that Kristi over at Clothesline Musing has shared!  Both of my kids like to listen to audio books.  Now that they both have speaker systems for their ipods, listening while cleaning, drawing, or just hanging out in their room is even easier...and now cheaper!

Check out www.booksshouldbefree.com!

My daughter is taking a literature class on Mark Twain and several of his works are available, among many other classics. The audio books will be a perfect supplement for her class!  This is definitely a site to be bookmarked.

Enjoy!

I need a cat whisperer

I need a cat whisperer.  My cat obviously has a 'tude.  Can't you just see it in this picture? Someone needs to whisper to her and tell her to stop peeing on my throw rugs and carpet, 'cause yelling isn't working.

This cat was my kids' first pet.  She arrived on our deck six years ago with her mama and sibling, all feral. We weren't able to handle the sibling and mom, but she came right up to us.  My daughter begged to keep her, and I quickly told her she needed to ask her dad when he came home.  Let him do the dirty work, I figured.  However, I did not expect a few seconds of eyelash batting to be so powerful, and we soon owned our first pet as a family.

All started out fine, until we began introducing more animals about five years ago, one more cat and two dogs.

Offender #1

Offender #2

Offender #3

Even then, things were not so bad.  She just kept to herself, occasionally gave a swat or hiss, and spent the rest of the time giving dirty looks.  Then, about a year ago, she started leaving little deposits "in order to keep the dogs away", according to the vet.  The dogs just thought she was leaving them treats (ew).  However, the last several months, she's been a bit more outspoken. All over my carpets. I haven't caught her in the act yet, but I know she's the guilty one. Each night she has been perching herself outside the laundry room, which contains her box and food, and guards her territory before the dogs go to bed, eyeballing them if they get too near. This cat is evil has issues.

I'm really desperate here.  The vet says this is purely behavioral. We've added new boxes where the dogs don't roam as often, to give her some more space.  It has only created new territories for her to claim and christen. I've tried containment at night in the laundry room, which makes her more angry. A few people have told me to cage her for 6 weeks to retrain her.  Does anyone have experience with this in a territorial situation?  She knows where she is supposed to go, she's just mad at the world.

She can't go outside as she has no front claws and isn't very "street smart", based on the couple times she's slipped out and returned 24 hours later starving. 

I'm afraid we are going to have to get rid of her.  However, I'll have two devastated kids. Suggestions?

Dragon-taming spelling lessons

Recently Denise over at Got Chai posted about a very clear and awesome dream she had. Even since, it has had me thinking about dreams. My dreams reflect my waking thought process...which is never in a sequential manner. My husband calls it "cave hopping" and that my thought process is like exploring caves. It never goes in a straight path and sometimes I get sidetracked when I'm exploring, prolonging arriving at my final destination. Often times, I never reach my final destination! My husband says he has a filing cabinet in his brain. He selects the well-organized drawer and pulls out the file he needs. BORING, I say!

Anyhow, as a result of my waking thought process, my dreams are always this strange and twisting series of events that may or may not be related. Often, they are just plain weird. If I think really hard, I might find rhyme to reason for them, but it takes a bit of digging. It makes for some interesting dreams, but sometimes I'd like to have a dream that actually makes sense with clear meaning!

My son is much more like me when it comes to how he thinks. The recent dream he shared with me proves it. He says he was in charge of walking a rather unruly dragon (he walks a neighbor's dog on occasion) and he was having trouble trying to get it to behave. Then, he discovered that having the dragon listen to a certain kind of spelling CD tamed the dragon!

We recently started a new CD-based spelling program to supplement over the summer. I can't say my son is thrilled with it, but he isn't thrilled with spelling in general. But what exactly does this dream mean? Are his struggles with spelling as challenging as a wild dragon and the new program is bringing about control?

Hmm...

Or, perhaps it was just a silly dream bringing together the days events. I'm surprised his fire-breathing dragon didn't end up eating the disliked spelling CDs. Now that would be clear meaning!

Back-to-School Sales!

I know it seems a bit early for back-to-school specials being only mid-July, but they've been cropping up all over the place. Staples has started to run weekly specials. I missed out on some great items that were only a penny last week, unfortunately. I've also spotted great deals on spiral notebooks (15 cents) at both Meijer and Walmart.

We don't need a ton of supplies this year, but one thing we use a lot of that is hard to find on sale during the regular school year is composition notebooks. My daughter uses these for her math work, stories ideas, music lesson notes, etc. The cheapest that I can normally find them is for $1, but Walmart currently has them on sale for 25 cents each! I purchased 40 and am debating on whether I should go back for more. If you haven't already, now is the time to stock up on those supplies that you use all year.

From little girl to teen

One of the projects that kept my June particularly busy was a remodel of my daughter's room. She's 13 and it was time to change her little girl room into something a bit more grown up. We moved into this house when my daughter was just four. She wasn't exactly thrilled with the move and, well, we weren't opposed to bribery within reason. (smiles) We enticed her with a new outdoor playset (which was on the agenda anyhow) and a loft bed, which my husband actually built. We topped it all off with a four-wall mural "garden room". I painted the sky, grass, and picket fence myself and then had someone come in to paint the flowers. I snapped a couple of pictures before we completely cleared out the room for the remodel. At one time, the loft bed had a canvas enclosure, which I painted to look like a brick house, that wrapped around the bottom. A little purple couch was kept underneath and it made for the perfect reading spot. I must say, the room was adorable and the perfect little girl room!
And here are some pictures after all furniture was cleared, which better show the artwork on the walls.




While adorable, this room wasn't exactly suited for a teen. The first step was to sand the walls because some areas had up to six applications of paint. We sanded. And sanded. Then, we sanded some more. There was dust everywhere. I spackled some areas (then sanded again).
Then we primed the walls with three coats. The whole prep process took us several days. (Guess what? You can still see the picket fence bumps in the finished room. Argh! Oh, well.)

This picture of the post-sanding sort of sums up how I felt about the project....our little girl was fading away.

All is still bright though. Very bright! Bright green that is!
I used two shades of green, one wall a bit darker than the others. It took three coats of each color and the humidity really slowed the drying process down. The color scheme was selected after finding the perfect comforter to suit my daughter's personality.
The homemade loft bed went to our 4-year-old niece, who was thrilled. I sold my daughter's old dresser and desk on Craig's List. She has never had new furniture and we thought she should be able to pick her own items out for once. Here is the finished room!



To keep within our budget, we shopped mostly at Walmart and Ikea. The couch (Walmart) is a futon that folds out on the sides, creating an extra bed for overnight guests. The shelves, shag rug, and green pillows were Ikea purchases.
The bed (Walmart) has extra storage underneath...for books, of course! The end table was an $8 purchase (Ikea). What a bargain! I was unsure about the globe light (Ikea) my daughter selected, but it looked perfect on the end table and looked great with the circles on the comforter.
This bucket chair and mirror (both Walmart) were last-minute purchases that ended up filling a corner nicely. The mirror has a wipe-off marker - perfect for making notes while doing work at the desk sitting next to it.
The shelves, desk, and magnetic boards were all Ikea finds, with the white lamp coming from Walmart. The shelves to the right had been in the room previously, one of the two existing pieces. The other was a magazine rack that came from another room, that can be viewed sitting in the corner in one of the earlier photos.

I tested my seamstress abilities and sewed the curtains myself, a $40 total savings from the store-bought variety and made with better quality fabric as well.
Our final purchase was a 6-drawer black dresser from Ikea (visible next to the closet in a previous pic), which replaced an old wide white one.

It definitely doesn't look like a little girl's room anymore. While my daughter helped pick out some of the items, we remodeled everything while she was away a camp and she really didn't know what to expect, including the final wall color. I'm happy to say she loved it!

And the cluttering begins...

Look Mom, it's still clean! ....not! It didn't take long at all. The Lego pieces first appeared yesterday. My son promised that when he was done with his creation, he'd clean up the remaining pieces.

He showed me the (really cool) creation this morning, and I reminded him to clean up the floor.

"Uh-huh," he said.

Still waiting.

What you can't see in the pic is the closet door open with dirty clothes on the floor two feet from the hamper. Did you notice the wipe off board that is now hanging from one side. Nice touch, eh?

Sigh. To nag or allow natural consequences, that is the question.

Look, Mom, it's still clean!

When my daughter went away to camp recently, we gave her room an overdue remodel. Just to be sure this wasn't going to cause any bad feelings with my son, I asked him if he was wanting something changed in his room when he went off to camp a few weeks later. I was relieved when he indicated he didn't want a remodel or any major changes. What he did say gave me a chuckle though.

"No, Mom, I just want to you to clean it."

Yes, my son was requesting maid service. Now, his request wasn't completely off base. I do tend to purge the "stuff" in my kids' rooms when they are gone. By not witnessing the event, they don't know what to grumble about missing! (wink) In the process, their rooms usually do get cleaned as well, since you have to remove the piles to purge. I wasn't so sure about him coming to expect this service, though!

Rooms are one thing I'm a bit lax on. They have to live in there and they all come equipped with handy doors to block it out to others. However, when they start to emit an odorous funk or the floor is no longer visible, I do demand action. Let's just say, the room cleaning couldn't wait until camp. For the past few days, my son and I have been slowly organizing and purging "stuff" from his room.

Here are the end results. Look! We found the floor! I have permanent proof that a clean room is possible.
I wish I had taken a before shot, but am sort of glad I didn't at the same time. It was pretty awful.

We finished the task yesterday afternoon. The funniest part is when my son came to me this morning and said, "Mom, come look at my room! I've done stuff in there and everything...and it is still clean!" Yep, 15 hours of clean. I think it might be a record.