A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.
If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.
A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.
This is a little off topic from my usual natural mom content here, but I just have to warn, vent and tell about what happened to me on Tuesday.
I drive a 2009 Honda Odyssey, Touring model. It has all the bells and whistles like a built in GPS and DVD player. I like the GPS because I always get lost and my husband gets tired of me calling him for directions.
I like the automatic doors because I never have to ask my kids twice to get in the car or worry about them slamming the door into the car next to us in the parking lot. The automatic hatch is a gem too, when every finger is in use carrying the 401 items that get unloaded from the car daily, at the same time while balancing a toddler on my hip.
Other than that, I’d rather be driving an old VW bus or a new Prius. I’m not a mini-van lover kind of mom. It’s safe. So I drive it. We call it Betty the Bus.
With all the high rated safety features on my van, comes run-flat tires. Which is essentially a spare tire inside a tire, giving drivers the ability to drive on a flat tire long enough to get to a dealer where you can have it safely fixed.
The complete opposite scenario happened to me on Tuesday. Before I warn and vent any further, I’ll happily disclose that Honda, as well as Acura, stopped using these tires after 2009.
Lucky me! My van just missed the cut off. The time we looked into buying traditional tires for the van, we found out that requires a major expensive overhaul of the entire wheel system. So we are stuck with the tires.
And on Tuesday, I REALLY got stuck with them.
I was traveling from Knoxville, Tennessee where we live to my parent’s house in Canton, Georgia, just north of Atlanta. It was me driving, with my three kids and our dog Lulu.
Nearly halfway through the trip I pulled over due to heavy rain, and decided to take the back roads. It was a good thing. Because when I pulled back on the road the check tire pressure light came on. And then the light came on saying I was driving on a run-flat tire, with a warning to go 50 MPH MAX.
Oh great! Here I was driving with with three kids a dog, who was thankfully contained in her travel crate inside the van (we removed one of the bucket seats and that’s where she rides).
There was a Honda dealership in Cleveland, Tennessee less than seven miles away from where I was at. But it was 3:00. I know these things are not quick to have changed. I have waited up to two hours getting one fixed before, with a scheduled appointment. Plus, the service department closed at 5:00.
AND what would I do with my 55-pound dog? Surely she would not be allowed in the playroom while we wait….and wait….and wait into the dinnertime hour with half of our trip still ahead of us. That is not the scenario they use to sell their family friendly vehicle, with images of taking along the dog for a family camping trip.
The manual says I can drive up to 125 miles on multiple run-flat tires at a time. I just had one flat tire, with a piece of metal stuck in it.
I made the executive decision to stick on the back roads, not go over 40 MPH, let the kids watch as many movies as they wanted in the car, and putz my way along until I made the 90 mile journey to the Canton dealership.
My dad would meet us there. I would leave the van to be worked on the following day and get a ride back to his house with the kids (and the dog) in his giant SUV.
Sounded like a good enough plan. Not too painful. We would make the best of it.
I pulled off to the side a few times to let trucks and cars pass us who were obviously wanting to travel at a faster speed than us. Once a nice man driving with his wife and child offered to change my tire for me.
I WISH I could have said yes. He was befuddled when I told him the van didn’t even come with a spare tire. That it is not even possible to change the tire, without a high tech fancy system that only Honda dealerships and certified Michelin PAX service providers own and operate.
I double-checked the driver’s manual that displayed photos of the warning lights that could appear while driving on the PAX run-flat tire system. The first was a basic one I mentioned above, not to drive over 50 MPR. I got that.
The second had a warning saying Get to Dealer. The third one said in big red letters STOP DRIVING!
I left the mode on in my dashboard the whole 80 miles I drove, watching it to make sure the signal didn’t get more telling of a stronger warning.
The last 20 miles I had to travel on a small interstate – I 575. I began feeling like something was not right. The sound of the tire got louder, the road felt bumper. I had read a page in the manual that said these sounds were normal. So I kept driving, nervously, cautiously, and even more slowly.
Ten miles from the dealership the tire completely blew up. Smoke, panicky children, a mom trying to keep her cool.
Not the picture of what is touted as the safest family vehicle on the market. Especially seeing how closely I was following the directions of the manual.
The old VW bus is looking even better now. One that doesn’t even come with a manual. One where I could have taken the nice man up on his gentlemanly offer to help me change a flat tire.
I really wish I could say I knew how to change my own tire, and that I did so to teach my girls a lesson on self-sufficiency. But I don’t know how to do that. The last time I got stuck with flat tire I was in college.
I was, and still am, a Daddy’s girl. I remember calling my dad who was four hours way, and him saying, “What do you want me to do about it?
Then I called the fraternity house where I had a lot of friends, and they sent a freshman pledge to my rescue. Those were the simple car times with my little two door Toyota and a tire that costs about $100. Now mine costs $350 to replace.
Tuesday I did call my dad. And he came to my rescue, plus my three kids and my dog.
All in all, I think I did an okay job keeping my cool. Except in the five seconds I panicked that the van was on fire and I needed to get the kids out. I opened one of the doors and the burnt rubber stinky smoke filled the car. Then common sense told me the smoke was from the tire, not the engine. The tire was in the back, away from the engine, and on the opposite side from the gas tank.
We would be fine, as long as a car didn’t hit us sitting there on the side of the road. We WERE able to pull off pretty far, under a bridge. So we all stayed buckled up until my dad got there, who was sitting 10 miles down the road waiting for us at the Honda dealership.
I also called 911, to have a police car there to caution drivers of what we had going on. When my dad arrived we transferred car seats and moved the dog crate – with the dog still in it!
The police officer was SO nice. I called AAA but they said it would be an hour wait to have my car towed. Not so nice, seeing my kids had one bathroom break (and none for the dog) since this whole adventure began when we pulled out of our Knoxville driveway at 1:15. Waiting another hour would have made things even worse.
I originally needed to get to the Honda dealership by 7:00 to get my van checked in, to be worked on in the morning. I missed that deadline.
The police officer arranged a local guy named Nathan, who works through AAA – apparently – to tow my car.
So we drive off, leaving my van with the police officer that said Nathan would drop it off at the dealership and put the key in the drop box. I had no idea if they even had a drop box for keys.
“Sure. Sounds great at this point,” I said. Thankfully it all panned out the right way, and my van really IS at the dealership this morning.
I will be giving the Honda folks the FULL story I laid out here, and telling them exactly what I think about those so-called safety tires.
Maybe they’ll offer me a trade in, for a vintage VW bus. I’d take it in a heartbeat. And name it Good Tires.
A couple weeks ago I decided to make a batch of homemade laundry detergent. While on a shopping mission to find Arm and Hammer washing soda locally, I decided to restock our laundry room cabinet with homemade cleaning supplies, like vinegar, baking soda, hydrogen peroxide, lemon juice and essential oils.
I have to admit, the past few years I have gotten lazy about making homemade cleaning supplies. Instead I’ve been taking the easy route and buying products by Seventh Generation and Ecover. Even after creating the newly freshened up space to make the cleaning supplies, I still needed a little incentive to get me over the hump and start mixing.
Sunday I went over the hump, when I attended a Green Momma Party at the home of Anne Brock from Flour Sack Mama. She opened her house for a tour on ideas and ways to rid our homes of harmful chemicals. Anne invited me to give a presentation on some of the natural play ideas I feature on Simply Natural Mom. So I shared about our Montessori lesson shelves to simple ways to keep children busy using natural materials and items you might have at home.
To end the tour, she generously had her kitchen stocked with natural cleaning supplies, essential oils and piles of empty mason jars for us to fill up and take home.
Together us moms munched on chocolate covered strawberries, chatted about motherhood, and made creamy soft scrub to clean our bathtubs. This was a lovely way to spend a Sunday afternoon, in my opinion.
In addition to the jar of creamy soft scrub, I took home a jar of homemade furniture polish, and a jar of laundry detergent that uses powered oxygen bleach intend of Borax. Anne also treated us to a bag of dried lavender, mixed with dried rice and essential lavender oils, to use as a naturally scented drawer cache.
Other cleaning supply recipes Anne shared was an all-purpose cleaner using vinegar, toilet bowl cleaner and drain opener. All the recipes are available here, at the Women’s Voices for the Earth, the parent organization affiliated with Green Momma Parties. There are some other great recipes here as well, including a reusable diaper wipe solution, grapefruit sugar scrub for mom, and non-toxic bug repellant that Anne testified to truly work.
Here is Anne doing a demonstration on making laundry detergent, as she invited guests to jump in, grab a recipe and start making things to take home.
If you are not aware of the dangerous chemicals in most household cleaning supplies and the risk they pose to women, please read more about these issues over at Women’s Voices for the Earth.
“Certain chemicals in cleaning products have been linked to fertility problems, birth defects, increased risk of breast cancer, asthma and respiratory disorders, and hormone disruption,” is just one snippet it you’ll find on their site.
Part of me has heard this information before and believed it for a long time. A bigger part of me is thankful the information is it going more mainstream, with science-based evidence backing it up, and organizations like Women’s Voices for the Earth and Safer Chemicals Healthy Families taking action to make our envorment safer for our children. It’s alway nice to get a refresher course and a new dose of inspiration on ways we can do better for our children.
With three daughters in our house, and with early onset puberty on the rise for girls, I’ll make any kind of homemade cleaning supply, laundry detergent or bug repellant to help keep them safe.
Making your own cleaning solutions and laundry supplies is easy. And it even saves money. You just have to get past the initial change in routine, and get the right set up.
We have a cabinet in our basement set up with cleaning supply ingredients and containers to hold the concoctions. My toddler even enjoys helping mix up the soap flakes and washing soda to make laundry detergent.
The first laundry detergent recipe I started with was this one from EcoKaren. It uses Borax, which some say is bad. But it works, even on those stinky towels that sit damp for too long. When I got home on Sunday night I did a load of towels with the laundry detergent from Anne’s house, and it did okay – well enough to replace the recipe using Borax. Which is good.
I also made this dishwashing detergent recipe by EcoKaren that does not use Borax. When I followed the recipe EXACTLY it worked great. When I eyeballed things and sloppily threw it all in the dishwasher the results were not as great. But still, I’d love to not buy dishwashing detergent again. So I’m going to stick with this one.
To find more recipes on homemade cleaning supplies, I’ve been pinning things for weeks, on my Homemade Cleaning Supplies Pinterest board. So you can check out that for even more ideas and inspiration.
In true Pintererst style, I’ll admit I have not actually made any of them on that board, other than the ones by EcoKaren. So I can not vouch for how well they work. But if Pinterest is good for one thing, it’s getting us rolling on thinking about all the things we would like to make, while making the idea seem very attractive.
On the subject of homemade cleaning supplies though, I must say creating a non-toxic home for my family is my biggest motivator.
To read more about the Green Momma Party hosted by Anne, visit her post on the event with more details about how to host your own party and contact your senators to advocate for the Safe Chemicals Act. If you live in East Tennessee and would like assistance hosting your own Green Momma Party, you can contact Anne at floursackmama@gmail.com.
Stay tuned for another post soon, when I start making things from my Homemade Pampering Pintererst board. I can guarantee that grapefruit sugar scrub for mom will be getting added to it. So you don’t miss it, please subscribe to Simply Natural Mom – by Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, email or RSS feed.
A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.
If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.
Oops. I skipped right over Forth of July. I hope everyone had a blast! This is our annual neighborhood shin dig. Always a good time.
A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.
Last month I posted about my efforts to set up some Montessori lessons this summer, as a way to help keep my younger two girls busy – mostly my toddler. Because when she is busy, she is happy. And when she is bored, she just aggravates her sisters. Her stubbornness and determination must be channeled!
The post was Montessori lessons at home :: part one. Because I knew there would be more to come. Which is where we are at today.
It has been surprising how much all three of the girls have liked doing these simple hands-on lessons. I created them as an avenue of natural play while we pass the time of summer, and have fun through some very basic learning for my toddler. Thursday I stepped it up a notch by putting out some lessons that were more geared towards my middle girl. My oldest daughter enjoyed setting up some of the lessons and being a teacher to her. She also admitted she still likes doing some of these lessons herself, “just for fun.” And to be part of the sister gang too, I sure.
Here’s a run down of what is on our Montessori shelves today.
My middle girl, who in a normal school setting would be considered a rising kindergartener, has recently taking an increased interest in learning to read. The beginner Bob books are her favorite right now because she enjoys being able to read them by herself. This language lesson uses objects, with corresponding cards that she reads and then spells out the objects on paper.
Tomorrow I am (or my oldest daughter is) going to introduce a time lesson that teachers the basics of when things happen throughout the day. Time is a very hard concept to grasp and sometimes not recommended to teach this young. But she asks about the time a lot, and wants to know more.
We had this lesson with my oldest daughter. And I have to say I found it to be true, that while this lesson was in her 3-6 year-old classroom, it wasn’t until she was past seven-years-old when she really began to understood the concept of time. And that it clicked that it’s 4:00 and in two hours we eat dinner. Rather than I’m hungry, I know it’s past snack time and dinner happens at 6:00 but it feels like it’s 100 hours away. Time is difficult. But this little lesson makes it fun.
This color mixing lesson is a favorite with all the girls. It uses food coloring, droppers, small glass bowls and a plastic tray. I ordered this one from Montessori Services. But it could easily be made using things you have at home. However, I have wanted to do this at home for a long time and had a hard time finding dropper bottles made of clear glass that I could reuse. Mine were all brown. So I finally just ordered some. There are a lot of things in the Montessori Services catalog that are over priced and can be made at home. This was one set I’m glad I bought. The glass bowls, tray and droppers can be used to set up other lessons as well. The materials are versatile.
The next picture is a silver polishing lesson. I know the girls are going to be thrilled to find it on the shelf in morning (I stayed up late creating it and then writing about it here). They gravitate to the lesson shelves in the morning, before their play takes them elsewhere. Thursday morning the lesson activities lingered through lunch. This one is taken from ideas seen at my girls school and in the Montessori Services catalog. My girls love these silver coasters that migrated to our house, from my mom’s house, at some point for which I have no idea why. We are not nearly fancy enough here with our guests to break out the silver coasters, but the girls like to stack them.
For the lesson, I set up a homemade, non-toxic silver cleaning solution that works well enough to do the trick and get a shiny result on the coasters. (On that tarnished gravy bowl, I’m not so sure it could do the trick. Then again, what does a vegetarian do with a silver gravy bowl?) The white powder is Arm and Hammer washing soda and kosher salt, mixed 50/50. They’ll spoon some in the bowl, with a squirt of lemon juice, mix and use the cotton balls to apply the mix on the silver. Then they’ll have to take the coasters to the sink to rinse and dry. I know this will be a hit. Anything with mixing potions and a trip to the sink is always a hit. 
Next is a rock lesson using gems we had from one of those Appalachian gold mining tourist places. Placed next to it in the box is a magnifying glass, and a chart that came with the rocks to identify them.
This is a simple scooping for my toddler, using things we had around the house. The balls were stained with watercolor paint and found in craft stores for near pennies. The tray is from the craft store as well. The scooper is from a bath salt gift box and the bowls came from this Spooning Activity Set, which is worth the buy because off all the stuff you get in it, and all the ways the various items can be used. 
The red toped box shown on the shelf above is this red tower. I have a friend who set up a Montessori room for her girls one summer when her twins were not much older than my toddler. This was one of the many lovely items I ended up with, from her room.
Also from that friend, came this set of multi colored pencil holders meant to hold the pencils of the same color. Except I’m using them for my toddler to sort plastic beads, and put them in the matching color holder. I happened to have the beads left over from a birthday party several years ago (because I save everything, insanely) and the colors matched perfectly. The glass jar holding the beads is from the dollar isle at Target and is made to be a votive candle holder. The handles on the jars makes them great for kids. The spoon is from the scooping activity set.
My toddler’s teacher at the end of last school year told me my little girl likes the challenge of opening things and to put things in containers that require figuring out how to open them. Inside this tiny picnic basket meant for a tea set, are color tiles (also something I got from my friend). I’ll have my toddler open it, and hand the tiles to me or her sisters, while naming all the colors. Then we’ll count them all as we put them back in the basket.
Lastly, here is a part of our play kitchen set that has been transformed into a summer lesson shelf, with more lessons on it – including the bead stringing lesson in the chest from my last post. Because the girls still love it, as well the friends who come rolling through here. The rest that is shown are puzzles and things, that seem fairly self explanatory.
And for a few behind the scenes shots of these lessons being done by my girls….here you go. The first is the rubber band lesson shown on the shelf above, which could probably use a little explaining.
As you can see she is really concentrating. The smaller rubber bands are tough to do, requiring extra concentration, determination and dexterity. But when she sucseeded, she threw out her arms and said, “I did it!” This lesson is perfect for her right now – seeing she is stubborn as an ox! When I tell her she can not do something – even if it is saying no to a second cookie – her most often used response, in a calm and matter of fact way is, “Yes me can.”
Here is that color mixing lesson in full swing, being done properly and with some creative experimentation. The girls are wearing their aprons I sewed from this free Sew Liberated apron pattern, that I mentioned here. I suggest an apron for this lesson. It can get messy. And an apron, well, it always adds to the fun of things. Even for boys!
To leave you back where we started, here is my sweet oldest daughter helping my middle girl with that language lesson. Our middle girl was gone from home having some grandparent time for the early part of the week. We all really missed her – sisters included. Maybe that explains the sweet eagerness to help her Thursday. Either way, it makes my heart smile.
To stay informed and read about what we are adding to our Montessori lesson shelves each week, be sure to subscribe to Simply Natural Mom – by Facebook, Twitter, email or RSS feed. Also check out my Montessori Pinterest board.
It was oddly quiet at my house last weekend. My husband did a marvelous thing for me. He took the three girls out of town (to MY parents house in Atlanta) so I could have some “me time.” It was the first time my toddler spent the night away from me, ever! And the first time I had the house to myself for more than a few hours, since I became a mom. Pause, think again. Yes it is true!
What did I do? I did whole lot of nothing. I did little things. I went to bed early. I slept in until 11. I enjoyed coffee and read the newspaper in quiet (minus the dog barking who barks at a feather falling on the floor). And I shopped. Or well, I went to stores that I love, where I looked for hours. And I did so without anyone at home wondering when I would return or what they were going to eat for dinner. I had a friend stop over for an impromptu salad and glass of wine. I read my favorite magazines. I didn’t take a single photo or read a single blog, minus browsing for design ideas for when our upstairs is finished.
Presently, there is no drywall upstairs. But I bought new bath towels to wrap up the girls when they get out of their new bathtub. Because thinking about those little details help me see the light while living through a summertime renovation, with all the kids home – usually.
I did some sewing one evening. I made two children’s aprons from this pattern at Sew Liberated. They were for my two youngest daughters, serving as an experimental project for a bigger project I’ve committed to doing. Which is sewing 18 of these aprons for the 3-6 age students at my daughter’s Montessori school before school starts. Getting this started was the small step I needed to lift the job from my to-do pile, into the work-in-progress pile. And that little step felt very good.
I asked my toddler to pose while wearing her apron so I could put it on my blog. This is what she did. Just as I asked her to do.
After being separated from her for two days I think I could eat her little cheeks right up.
My middle girl stayed back in Atlanta for some special grandparent time. It feels very odd with her gone. I could not sleep Sunday night, feeling the void of her absence. Then my toddler snuggled up with me, and I went right to sleep. Her little warm body has a tremendous calming affect on me, just as a mother does to a baby. It really does work both ways!
Taking advantage of my middle girl being gone and having their room to herself, my oldest daughter had a very long play date. They enteretained themselves all day and into the night. Doing simple things around the house, like playing in the basement doll space, in a baby pool in the backyard (because we are never too old for that), and making mud pies in the Mud Pie Cafe. They are getting to be such BIG kids. They are definitely not interested in posing for pictures for my blog.
Meanwhile I enjoyed the company of my toddler. Doing little things together like picking blueberries in the backyard berry patch, watching bees, cutting flowers, and taking fresh picked tomatoes from our backdoor garden to the neighbor’s next door.
I love seeing these little hands doing big things. Even while we work on the lesson that we only pick the blue berries, not the green berries. Or that the vase was for the flowers, not for multitasking. Oh well!
Notice the brown crunchy looking grass? It’s true. We’ve hardly any rain in a month and the temperatures have hovered around a record breaking 105 degrees outside the last few days. We are lucky we got outside at all! But every little bit counts. And after being away from this little girl for two days, I must say I missed her BIG TIME.
I’ll be happy on Wednesday, when all the Simmons girls plus Daddy are under the same roof again.
A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.
If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link in the comment section for all to see and read.
At the lake, eating fresh watermelon dockside. And because I can’t decide on just one photo this week, here are two more.
My middle girl is always trying to measure up to her big sister.
Our cat Fruit Punch, right after the little girls finished playing on the front porch along side him. I missed the moment when they were playing peacefully on the porch, where so much of the best play happens these days. Playing trains on the front porch has almost become a daily morning occurrence this summer, while I enjoy a cup of coffee before we all officially start our day.
A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.
We have a small shady tree area in our backyard that is covered in mulch and a few bushes. I was looking for a project to work on during the first week of summer break, to get us off to a good start.
Therefore I tossed out the idea that we do something fun with that space. My oldest daughter suggested we create an “Enchanted Fairyland.” Great! I was so excited.
I helped get them started by providing some bones for the space, gathering some unused items from the garage, art supplies and various nicknacks I thought they might like to use. After that, all the imaginative details have been created by my girls and their neighborhood friends who stop by often.
Sharing this project here is not so much about showing the amazing results, but about displaying the process along the way.
The space has become a play area for children to decorate and create things for the fairies – like mini gardens, long strands of beads going from bush to bush that are zip lines, swings, beds, workshops with tools and so much more. The Enchanted Fairyland is keeping us busy this summer. It’s keeping the TV turned off, the girls entertained, and us having fun together outside.
One of my favorite things about the Enchanted Fairyland is seeing the creative process evolve as different friends come and go, and work on the project with us. They all bring their own unique energy, leave their own mark, and open ideas for more inspiration to come.
I have a few more things I’d like to initiate for the the space, like a treasure chest, homemade tie died fabrics and a banner for the entrance. The space sits across the yard from our Mud Pie Cafe and right behind our Easy Rope Tree Swing. Everything in it is reused, up-cycled or things we had on hand.
Here is a glimpse into what it looks like so far. I’ll do more posts on it as more bursts of creativity occur.
The space started with the path we created using sawed off pieces of wood from a fallen tree in one of my neighbor’s yards. I had a friend help me with this, who used his chain saw to cut the wood. However the girls did help carry and place the pieces of wood leading the areas they wanted to create.
The next photo looks like a tangled mess. But it’s really an old garden stake that was left in the garage by the previous owners of our house. I spray painted it and stuck it in the bushes thinking the girls might need somewhere to hang things they were making, since the low hanging branches in the space are too weak to hold much.
It worked out well. They use it to hang shinny and pretty things to “attract the fairies.” The purple hanging beads is a “swing for the fairies.” I had some old ring clips that were once used on a curtain rod to clip fabric. There are days when they use those and have the contraption covered in a special kind of hodgepodge they love.
A cool swinging shelf was passed on to the project by my neighbor who is moving and cleaning out her house. The girls were quick to use it. The painted fairy house shown on the ground was one of the first creations for the Enchanted Fairyland. The “beds” for the fairies are actually broken boats once featured here as bath toys, and painted by my two-year-old. The shelf has held books, mirrors and food for the fairies. The open ended play of the space keeps on inspiring the girls with ideas – which I LOVE.
The “Wishing Well” is one of my favorite things in the fairyland. It was an old bird bath we inherited with the house we lived in before we moved to Knoxville. I liked it enough to move it three hours away, when we moved here from Atlanta. It never found a good garden spot here in our shaded yard and it ended up living in our garage.
I pulled it out, painted it with a can of spray paint to give it a smoother finish, and handed it over to the girls. My oldest daughter and one of her friends painted it together. Sometimes it has water and play coins in it. But I removed them for this photo, to show off the whimsical artwork the girls worked so hard on. The green writing says, “Make a wish.” It’s so dang cute it deserves two photos. Which I went out in the dark and took because I didn’t get a good one the first time. The shiny paint is Kid Made Modern (click here if you don’t know about that) acrylic paint that you can buy at Target. I sprayed a coat of polyurethane on it so the paint won’t come off in the weather.
These chairs and table were in the Mud Pie Cafe. They were doctored up with a coat of paint by me. And the girls provided the details. They ran out of steam on the second chair. So I’m waiting for another friend to visit who wants to pick up a paint brush and give that one some pizzaz.
On a smaller scale, here’s the “door bell” the girls made by sticking an old marker top into the hole of a tree at the fairyland entrance. Seriously, how creative is that?
This is a mini garden they made for the fairies, that has one giant girl fairy foot excitedly running through it. The black tube is the gutter drainage pipe connected to the house.
This is one of the decorations I painted with the girls, which was found in the garage – dusty, brown and dingy.
Most recently, after I found the girls setting up painting supplies in the paved area of our backyard, I gave them an old box of wooden crafty things that have been living in our craft supplies for too long. Some of them had been painted before, or drawn on with markers. These were the new additions that came of that, made by four girls ranging from ages two-seven, who where left to their own devices with A LOT watercolor paints.
And just to show some things are totally nature driven, here is the “workshop” my oldest daughter created. Somewhere in there are “tools to build stuff.” The mushroom is a table for them to eat lunch, and the old fabric placemat borrowed from the Mud Pie Cafe is a “decoration.” It’s wonderfully simple and creative, I think.
If you stand back and look at the Enchanted Fairyland it doesn’t look so enchanting, from an adult’s perspective. But inside there are lots of treasures. It’s a nice lesson on seeing things the way a child does. Sometimes it can be a fresh look we all need. Or you can just look our cat Fruit Punch, who seems to like the Enchanted Fairyland too. He’s the resident fairy cat.
Don’t want to miss what we make next in the Enchanted Fairyland? Be sure to subscribe to Simply Natural Mom – by Facebook, Twitter, email or RSS feed.
Also, check out the sidebar on this blog titled Creative Backyard Ideas for more great stuff you can easily do in your backyard this summer.
So if you didn’t guess by the posts last week, we were at the beach. That’s because carpenters were demoing the upstairs of our house. And I wanted to escape being there, with the noise, the mess and the total craziness of the whole thing.
The carpernters, who are also the lead contractors from Clinch River Custom Builders, are top notch. I was emailing them from the beach about reusing old access doors, recycling radiators, and anything else that had me a bit nervous about my beloved historic house being gutted out while I was 500 miles away. But it could not have been left in better hands.
It was a good call on my part to leave it all to them. Because their team working here were in hazmet suits getting rid old nasty insulation that had been blown in through tiny holes in the side of the house – about 50 years ago. It took us all by surprise that it was there, behind the walls. The space seemed so inefficiant that we were all convinced there was no insulation in this old house. But there was. And lots of it.
Now it’s gone, as well as everything down to the studs and the windows. And there is physically a new house being built on the second floor of our house.
This is what we came home to Sunday, after I rolled up the plastic in our hallway to take a peak upstairs.
Somewhere behind the walls the carpenters found the original blueprint for the attic addition that contains two bedrooms and a bathroom. We are certain now that it was not part of the original house built in 1919. But how cool is this? It’s number 482 of the reasons I love living in an old house – symbolic of the things that get left behind us, and the old floors that creak beneath our feet.
On Monday there were so many contractors in our house I lost count. I think throughout the course of the day everyone showed up, from carpenters, HVAC folks, plumbers, to the crew blowing in the new foam insulation. The only person missing was the electrician. At one point the worker guy trucks lined my house from the front corner of the house, down the side street and around the back street where we now have a dumpster and a port-a-potty on site.
In all we are handling it fine. That is me, the girls and the dog (who is being helped with some anti-anxity meds), while we live through all this. My husband gets to escape to work. Meanwhile I’m sticking to our TV free summer and finding creative things to do in our basement, backyard, at friend’s houses, and by going for walks in the neighborhood. And contractor watching! The girls are getting a first hand lesson on what it takes to build their new bedrooms and bathroom.
This is a glimpse of the entertainment on the sidewalk as the HVAC crew built the new air ducts for the heating and cooling system. Before now there were steam radiators that brought HUGE gas bills and semi-permanant air conditioners hanging out of the windows.
By the end of Monday a large portion of the roof above the bathroom had been removed, and stayed that way over night, covered by a tarp.
After the carpernters worked all day Tuesday, which was a quieter day on the home front minus the sawing and nailing, we have a new bathroom dormer. And the beginnings of the girls’ bathroom is taking shape. YEAH!
After years of thinking about how I would design this space, today I went to the showroom at Ferguson’s and ordered the cast iron bathtub, toilet, all the water fixtures, and this super rad Kohler Brockway sink, which they had to special order for me. The link is to Pinterest where I’m drooling with inspiration. Our sink will have two faucets, will hang solo on the wall and I’m going to paint the bottom a super fun color – maybe even fushia! Just maybe. Definitely something fun.
I’ll leave you with this inspiration photo, from Veranda-interiors. This is seriously going to be the coolest kid bathroom ever. Can you tell I’m excited?
To follow how all this develops and read about us coping through construction, continuing into next month when our kitchen renovation starts as well, be sure to subscribe to Simply Natural Mom – by Facebook, Twitter, email or RSS feed.
Also check out my Pinterest boards, Renovation Inspiration and Craftsman Style Kitchen.
A Simple Moment is a post that appears here every Friday.
A photo I want to remember of a simple moment, with a few simple words.
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Summer nights at the beach. This is one I want to remember, when I realized they were actually going to swim in the ocean this year. My they are getting big!
A Simple Moment was inspired by SouleMama. Visit her site to see many more moments.