Get Out Your Sparkly Shoes, It's Monday!

 Aren't these just the happiest little shoes you've ever seen?  Perfect for Monday morning at daycare.  I think so anyway.  When the sweet little owner of these shoes showed up this morning, I was immediately jealous.  I need to get a pair of hot pink sparkly shoes to wear on Monday mornings in my daycare.  They set the perfect mood :)  (Incidentally, this little sweetheart has more cute shoes than Imelda Marcos ever dreamed of. And shes obsessed with them too lol.)

 This is a typical picture of my eight year old.  He is always drawing something.  See the rotten condition of the table?

Here's a better picture of it.  We're working on peeling off the laminate finish so we can sand, prime, and paint it white.  Then we're going to turn him loose with sharpies and then put a clear coat over the top of that.  It'll be the most awesome table ever! :)

I'm finally back to working on my hexagon quilt.  I got inspired when Karen over at Quilts, etc. started working on one using the same pattern.  She is a real inspiration to me in how much she gets done.  Hers is the only blog I read faithfully every day.  I had started sewing red hexagons onto the sides of the blues but realized that I'm going to have a problem if I continue that because half of them need the middle red one not to be sewn on or it will mess up my overall pattern.  So now I'm just focusing on sewing the blues together and then will join them all together once I get that done.  I only have 600 hexagon papers (and pretty much all of them are sewn into fabrics right now.  So I will have to connect a good portion of these so I can remove the papers and make more.  I forget how many thousand I figured I would need for the king sized quilt this will eventually become.  Suffice it to say it's gonna be a bunch.

 Strawberries were on sale the other day so I picked some up.  They go quickly around here - especially when I use them for the daycare.  My eight year old was pretty excited to find this giant one.

It completely filled his palm.  More like the size of a plum, with the bonus of not having a pit.

The baby is really into hats these days.  He tries to put on his brothers' football helmets, but always gets them backwards...

And they're really heavy.  My husband and I nearly fell on the floor when he tipped himself over trying to get this one on.  I was in the process of taking his picture, and just happened to get this great action shot.  He hit my daycare file box, but thankfully he had on a helmet *wink*.

He can't seem to get the hats on straight...

This one cracked me up.  We have these little prairie girl bonnets I had made when my daughter was young. They're in the daycare dress-up box now.  But, since they're a hat, I guess they're fair game.

Peek-a-boo!

 A second before I snapped this picture, he had the basket he's holding on his head like a hat. Everything becomes a hat for this kid :)

Oh, and he's figured out when he's getting his picture taken too...

So has the four year old.

Poser :)

 So after seeing several versions of carb-free pizza crust, I had to give it a shot.  Pizza is the thing I miss the most on this diet.  Well, really, it's the only thing I miss.  So I made some, using mashed cauliflower, egg, and cheese as the crust.  I have to say, it was pretty good.  Pretty close to the real thing.  But I do still miss a good deep dish pan crust.  Someday... But until then, this is a really good substitute.  I ate half last night, then reheated the other half for lunch today.  I put it in the skillet to warm it up, which made it even better than it was last night because it made the "crust" a little bit crispy. It was more like a good pan crust.  Next time I'm going to let it set, then cook it in a skillet for a couple minutes to get the crispy crust.

 He's also been all about reading books.  (The four year old has too).  The baby will come in my room, snuggle up on my lap, then say "get book."  I have a basket of our favorites next to my recliner in the bedroom, where we read stories before bed most nights.  All my kids love to read.

Speaking of reading, it occurred to me the other day that I have read four books in their entirety in the past week alone.  And it's not like that's all I've done either.  I've also kept up with the daycare (which is full now), kept the house clean, the family fed, and the eight year old on schedule with homeschool.  I love reading that much, but figure some of that time could be used to make progress on some sewing.  It has to be hand-sewing at this point, as it is what I do while the daycare kids nap, and while the eight year old and I work through homeschooling.  I haven't figured out how to get time to sit down at the sewing machine in ages.  So that's why I'm working on the hexagon quilt.  I have several more I'd like to do, but for now I think I'll stick with the hexagons and see what I can accomplish on that front.  I think it would be amazing if I could finish this top this year.  I may have to make that a goal.

Speaking of goals, I was thinking how funny it is that we create all these self-imposed rules.  Or I do at least.  For instance, with my reading, I'm forcing myself to finish one book at a time, and alternate between fiction and non-fiction each book.  I'm not allowing myself to read two of the same kind of books in a row.  It's a form of self-discipline I guess, because sometimes that's a really hard thing to accomplish.  And now I'm trying to make myself finish at least one blue hexagon each day.  Shouldn't be too hard, but it's just funny that I'm making myself do these particular things.  Okay, enough rambling.  Talk to ya later ;)