We’re taking the plunge tonight – we’re moving C to the “big boy room.” Our boys will be sharing a room now. I’m not sure how this will go, but I’m hoping they’ll be ok. We plugged in the baby monitor so hopefully we’ll hear C before he gets too worked up if he starts crying.

Here’s a picture I took yesterday of the boys. Aren’t they cute?

My bloggy friend Christina is having a giveaway – she’s giving away three different tea bundles. They’re all so pretty!

To enter her contest, you have to blog about it. And since I entered her giveaway, here I am blogging about it. :O)

Christina has a wonderful blog – I find it incredibly uplifting and encouraging. Even if you don’t enter her giveaway, her blog is worth checking out!

Christina’s blog

Last night I finally finished my quilt top. I’ve been working on it off and on for quite a while now. Lately, I’ve been doing bits and pieces when the boys are in bed. And last night, I finally finished. This morning I laid it out on the backing and the batting and pinned it. I was hoping to machine quilt it, but I’m not 100% on that and since I can’t make up my mind, I’ll probably give it a few more days before I decide. That would be a LOT of stitching to pick out.

This is kind of a “bits and pieces” quilt. I used leftover squares from my last quilt, and made them into stars. The sashing I already had too. I did end up ordering material for the red and white border and the backing, but that’s it. I wasn’t going to add the blue floral fabric on the very outside border, but it just didn’t look right with just the red. I would have used the same blue as in the sashing, but I didn’t have any more of it so I used the closest navy that I had.

The background is a white floral on a cream background – very pretty. I have a TON left over – I ordered 108″ fabric, and that was plenty wide. But there’s enough of it left to make some really interesting projects later, so that doesn’t bother me a bit.

The binding will probably be a solid blue. I have a lot of binding left from my last quilt, and I’m hoping it’s enough to finish this quilt too.

Here’s a picture of my last quilt – it’s king-sized. I made it that large so it would still fit our bed if we ever get a bigger one. I like that even though both quilts use the same fabric, they look totally different.

It took me two years to hand quilt this top, so that’s why I’m thinking of machine quilting this new one. I would like to be able to use it a bit sooner than two years from now!

We’re almost done with Phase 1. I am so excited. It’s not that I’ve missed my carbs – I really haven’t missed them much. But the meal planning is HARD. I was surprised at how difficult it can be to do Phase 1 on a tight budget. Oh well. Our last day of that is tomorrow. Then it should get easier.

Some of the things on this week’s menu are from last week. Things got changed around a bit, so since we already had the things to make those meals in the house, I moved some of the meals to this week.

Here’s our menu:

Sunday – turkey ham over tossed salads
Monday – ground beef, peppers, onions, and cabbage (it was really good!)
Tuesday – Crockpot Taco Chicken Stew (adapted to make it SB-friendly)
Wednesday – vegetable soup with multigrain rolls
Thursday – Chinese-style chicken with broccoli and brown rice
Friday – beef tacos with homemade multigrain tortillas
Saturday – hot dogs with sweet potato oven fries

Breakfast for us is usually eggs somehow. I also found a SB-friendly muffin recipe (no flour or sugar!) and a SB custard recipe. I think they’re great, but Stephen doesn’t like them as well. I like them because it’s easy to get tired of eggs (even with changing the veggies in them) so this is a nice option for some variety.

For S – it varies depending on what’s in the house – cereal, oatmeal, grits, pancakes, eggs, etc.

Lunch is either leftovers, tuna, salads, or beans. Tuna salad is a favorite of mine – and served in a garden-fresh tomato – yum. It’d be even better with chicken salad.

Snacks are fresh veggies, cheese sticks, etc.

We’re eating tons of veggies (which I am absolutely loving!), but I’m not planning all those out specifically. I am thankful that our garden is still producing – that really helps.

You can read more menu plans over at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

I saw this over on Susan’s blog. I thought it would be a neat thing to join in – and if nothing else, a place for me to record some of our homeschooling information.

The theme this week (which I’m really late on, but that’s ok, I guess, since I just saw it today) is All About You. So here’s the all-about-me, homeschooling version.

I’m Melody, married to Stephen. We have two boys. Our oldest (S) is 4 and our youngest (C) is 7 months. We started K4 with S two weeks ago.

We’re using the A Beka K4 cursive curriculum. Stephen and I both attended PCC (that’s actually where we met) so we were already partial to A Beka. Then after we were married, we taught at a local Christian school that uses A Beka. I worked as a teacher’s aide in the Kindergarten classes, and knew that if we ever homeschooled, I wanted to at least use their phonics program.

A few years later, Stephen taught at a different Christian school. They used Switched On Schoolhouse, and we got a pretty close look at that curriculum while he was there. We may use it when the boys get older, but since we’ve not seen their curriculum for the youngest kids, we’re sticking with A Beka. That may change later, it may not. We’ll see.

My friend Jessie and I have been discussing cloth diaper sewing on her blog. She’s expecting a new little girl soon via adoption, and she’s trying to find last-minute things to do while she waits. She mentioned that she’s sewn some cloth diapers, and the discussion began.

We really have an odd assortment of diapers for our cloth diaper stash. I have two dozen (I think) Rita’s Rump Pocket diapers (RRP), several dozen prefolds of varying weights, a variety of fitted diapers, and a couple covers that were given to me.

We used some Mama Bird pocket diapers when C was a newborn. I loved those, but he grew out of them and since I had the RRP diapers, I didn’t sew any Mama Bird ones in bigger sizes. They were my favorites, but they’re not one-size-fits-most like the RRP diapers are.

The Rita’s Rump Pockets all have fleece on the outside and flannel on the inside. There are four different kinds of fleece that I used. Two were given to me, one from Walmart, and one from our local fabric store, Mary Jo’s. The thicker fleece is more waterproof, but not drastically so. They worked fine at first leak-wise, but now that C is bigger we need more than just one layer of fleece. We were stuffing them with homemade doublers – a cheap washcloth folded in thirds and encased in a “pillowcase” of flannel. Those work fine just like that for shorter periods during the day. Then we added some waterproof pieces – an old waterproof crib mattress pad cut into pieces slightly larger than the washcloth doublers. I zig-zagged around the edges of the mattress pad sections just to keep the layers together better.

I’ve also been using the fitted diapers with the fleece covers I sewed when S was tiny. I used the instructions from diapersewing.com. They are all two layers of fleece, and work pretty well at containing leaks. For nights I like to add another waterproof layer though. We might not really need it but the waterproof layer is really thin and doesn’t add bulk, and I like the extra peace of mind.

We also have quite a few contour diapers. The thin ones we use to stuff the RRP diapers, and the thicker ones we use inside the fleece covers.

We still wash a load of diapers every 2-3 days, but that’s because our diaper pail is really small. If we had to, we could probably go a good 5 days between diaper washing.

We’re almost halfway through with Phase 1. I’m thrilled – I’m down 3 pounds already. With pcos, I was NOT expecting that.

Meals for us are going to be a little looser than the traditional Phase 1 menus I’ve seen. Our budget just doesn’t allow for steak three times in two weeks for the three of us. Some of the things we eat will be higher in fat than the recommended meats, but we’re trying to do the best we can with what we already had in the house while still keeping our budget low.

S will not be following the Phase 1 – he needs his carbs and fruits. I’ve made some wheat rolls for him to help round out his meals and for sandwiches for lunch. He eats salads really well, but he does tire of them quickly so it’s nice to have sandwich-making supplies in the house for him.

Here’s our menu:

Sunday – chicken breast over tossed salads
Monday – chicken and green pepper stir fry
Tuesday – meatballs and yellow squash
Wednesday – crockpot pinto beans
Thursday – Crockpot Taco Chicken Stew (adapted to make it SB-friendly)
Friday – hot dogs (no buns) and cabbage
Saturday – split pea soup

Breakfast for us is usually eggs somehow. For S – it varies depending on what’s in the house – cereal, oatmeal, grits, pancakes, eggs, etc.

Lunch is either leftovers, tuna, salads, or beans. Tuna salad is a favorite of mine – and served in a garden-fresh tomato – yum. It’d be even better with chicken salad.

Snacks are fresh veggies, cheese sticks, etc.

We’re eating tons of veggies (which I am absolutely loving!), but I’m not planning all those out specifically. I am thankful that our garden is still producing – that really helps.

You can read more menu plans over at I’m an Organizing Junkie.

We started K4 last week. It was a little bit earlier than I had originally planned, but this will allow us to take off for busier days like studio recital days.

It’s official – I love it so far. S just loves learning new things, and I love seeing how quickly he catches on.

Here are some pictures:

All ready to start

Hard at work

My friend Karen and I went shopping today. I had a blast. It was so fun! We took my monstrous blue tank because her vehicle wouldn’t fit 3 carseats in the back, and my 8 passenger van would. LOL! We went to the mall (which was actually the first time I’d been in over 2 years), and then stopped at Walmart to buy another can of formula for C.

Apparently Walmart has their prices different than the shelf reads – but tonight that ended up being a good thing. There was none of my usual brand on the shelf, so I asked the lady behind the counter if there was more. She went to check, but returned saying they were completely out. Karen pointed out that the organic formula was only a couple dollars more. I grabbed the organic, figuring it was the closest to the kind I had been buying.

Then it rang up $.88 cheaper than the plain ‘ole regular kind. Ok – I’ll take it – organic cheaper than the regular.

If only that applied to everything. Wouldn’t that be nice!

I do hope that it’s close enough to the other kind that C will tolerate it well. He’s done okay on formula, but we have found that some brands agree with him better than others. But the price break was nice, even if it was a small one.

Kelly nominated me for this award – thanks for thinking of me!