Author: monstauffer

For Another Day…

” I believe in the sun even when it is not shining. 
I believe in love even when I cannot feel it.
I believe in God even when He is silent.” 
– written on a wall during the Holocaust –

If there is anything I have learned time and time again in this world, it’s that there are so many questions without answers, so many hurts without visible justice, so many tears in what can feel like silence.

But when I open the Word of God, His love compels me toward faith. His consistency. His unchanging forgiveness. His character proves and has proven ore and ore that His promises remain.

When it feels hard, uncomfortable, and things here in this world hurt, our hope is found in Christ alone. And all we need to do to remind ourselves of the Hope in Christ is open the Word to Revelation. He wins. Justice takes it’s final judgement. And there are no more hurts, tears, pains and sins causing all those.

He wins.

So keep holding on for another day… cause that’s what it means to live by faith.

– Reminded lately.

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Last Piece of the Room Flip Puzzle

A little while ago now, I started a series of home decorating/organizing projects to use our space more effectively. It involved building the wall-mounted bookshelves and moving the toys out of our living room, remember?

Well I changed around our “office space” too and promised I’d let you see the finished product. That project sat a little more on the back burner and I finally finished it earlier this week. So….. drum roll please…..

Before:

After:

 
 Viola!

Our new office space has everything in it there was before (ta da!!!) hehe. PLUS all our “please ask Mommy” homeschooling supplies.

In order to avoid tempting disobedience, I went to the thrift store and purchased two sheer-ish curtains. I wanted them to be sheer-ISH because even the wonderful organization in clear tubs, etc behind them can begin to look messy with all it’s business.

So with these cute little curtains cut, reinforced at the top and stapled onto my bookshelves, it helps with the “no touchy, please” hint, keeps with our black/white “office” furniture theme, and makes it look not quite as cluttered. I also added a panel of sheer curtain to the underside of the desk to follow-suit and really section off the space.

And again, for my non-reading crowd, I added my stop signs as a reminder that while I don’t mind them standing around in this space, curious hands need to stay in pockets.

The girls have been very good and respectful of the privacy of the space/items in the space as well as their happy little welcome selves in sharing in electronic fun with me.

To give you a general feel for how “the office” falls in the layout of the room, here’s a pic to help.

I like how open the “office” remains despite the fact that I turned the desk to cut the room up a bit. And now I have this gorgeous sliding glass window to gaze out while blogging [Sorry in advance for the spacey posts. 😉 ].

It’s not ridiculously impressive, but I’m happy with the space changes and I like that it allows for function, some cuteness, and still being a part of family life while getting a few “officey” things done.

Thus closes the chapter on the living room/fireside room flip.

=)

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The Joy of Financial Responsibility’s Accomplishment

I sent this email to my sister this morning and I just wanted to share it with you all over here too because it really makes me happy.

God has blessed us with our financial situation and the ability to stay afloat through good budgeting (even with some mistakes) so that I can stay at home to raise our two (almost three) girls. Along with choosing the budget and for me to stay home, comes gradual financial decisions and less of the “eggs all in one basket” whims. While the later method sounds foolish, there are some cases (like purchasing a vehicle) where “eggs all in one basket” is really the only choice.

One way to “cut back” and be more financially responsible in our spending has been to cloth diaper over disposable diapers. One helper of that decision has been Abi’s skin sensitivity, but another has been the obvious money saver.

I must confess, I have been slightly jealous of those with duel income or at least a greater nest egg that have been able to make the cloth diaper switch all at once, purchasing their whole stash in one big chunk of a withdrawal.

But the reality has been for us that the slower building of our stash and adjusting our stash method has been the piece by piece and most responsible approach for us.

This may not sound like too much of a sacrifice until you see the behind the scenes of that picture. Adding 1-4 diapers per month to get to a 3 day washing schedule for Abi and build our stash for a newborn has involved hours of research, trial/error, craigslist hopefuls and failures, waiting on 3 week difference international postage, and much strategy of mine and the girls’ allowance money over an eight month period.

That being said, I give you my email to my sis this morning and share with you my domestic joy:

“So I’m dorkily excited because my last shipment of cloth diapers came in today. I got 6 more. I have been slowly picking at adding cloth diapers to our stash for the last, seriously, EIGHT months and we finally have a full stash from birth to potty training. I’m SO EXCITED to no longer be looking at, sewing, altering, and fussing with cloth diapers to build up our stash. As it is our newbie baby stash has me washing every 2 days, for the 3month to 18 month phase I’ll be washing every 2-2.5 days and for the 18month plus phase I’ll be washing every 3 days. YAY! This just gives me a REALITY washing experience (cause washing daily is not on my agenda along with managing 3 kids/nursing/house work/wifehood/outside of our house ministry oh yeah and eating, breathing and sleeping).

So as I wash the “fresh from the factory” 6 diapers, adjust our diaper bins to fit our new diapers in, and settle into the new washing machine routine just know that this domestic-happy me is smiling…. big time.

And after next month’s allowance money spend on 3 wetbags (one for Hannah’s diaper bag [since Sundays/Wednesdays Abi and Hannah will be separate and I’d like a “catch the dirty diaper and lock out the smell” bag for each], one for the living room changing table [new baby = CONSTANT changes] and one for the nursery changing table), I will happily put the cloth diaper thoughts aside and just coast through diapering 2 kiddos. [Sure some of these things are not needed, but there also is a “convenience” factor of diapering two kids 2 years apart that plays into my success on minimal hours of sleep. – Just being real.]

On our registry there are still 3 covers/prefold sets for the 3m-18m phase that could be quite helpful to add to our stash as night diapers (prefolds/covers are the only thing we’ve found that can hold a HUGE amount of pee and not leak all over the bed while the child does aerobics in the night), but nothing we couldn’t live without. So it’s possible that in the future I may purchase 2-3 more diapers, but it’s just nice to sort of close the door on the “building our stash to actually work for our lifestyle” phase and move on. =D

If we were Mr. and Mrs. Moneybanks, we would have dropped the money all at once (up to $300 – and that’s on the cheap side!), but that’s not the case with us, so purchasing primarily 1-2 cloth diapers from overseas and waiting out the 3 week difference between purchase and receiving we have done… for eight months. And now…. YAY! We’re done! YAY!

The washer never sounded so good.

=)

– delighting in domesticity. ;)”

Our financial situation is really good due to my husband’s hard work and great budgeting. So please do not think for one minute that I am complaining or in any way feeling oppressed. We are blessed beyond belief to be able to sponsor two (soon to be three) World Vision kids as well as serve the Lord in many ways with our finances. I’m just happy to see the fruit of our budgeting coming to a close in the world of cloth diapering. =D

– Thanks for sharing in my joy. =)

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Summer Water

This year as we pulled into the community sprinkler park (FREE!) Rachael and Abi started squealing from the back seat. A smile hit my face… maybe this year will be more interactive. A flashback of last year’s “we don’t do water” instantly looked brighter.

I had to do all I could to keep Abi from running across the street straight to the sprinklers. Rachael jumped in place, her patience and obedience displayed, while I got all our stuff from the car/applied sunblock. (Funny how much goes into a morning of water play.)

We circled the sprinkler pad a few times, soaking it all in. And then Abi let go of my hand and Ms. Assertive was off…

Rachael, Ms. Precautions, close behind her in a moment of boldness.

 JUMP!

I love how no matter where we are, they just love playing together.

 

 There also was a park attached to the sprinkler pad so we could dry off with joy on the slide. =)

 This time Rachael was the assertive one.
 But this one didn’t need a personal invitation. 😉
 Ms. Big Sister took it upon her own initiative to make sure Abi’s first trip down the slide was fun and secure. (Precious to watch her care for her little sister.)
 Then Abi decided it would be fun to ride on Rachael’s lap. 
Sweet sisters.
– We’ll definitely be returning again this summer. =D
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Wordless Wednesdays: Responsibly Fun!

Rinsing and putting dishes aside to dry…

 It’s simple, but it communicates such trust in her independence and ability.

 [FYI, no my three year old did not handle the knives. 😉 ]

Love her. 

– Proud Mommy.

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Sew Easy

Been working on a few projects here and there. One of which I made in a total of 40 minutes.

Every Sunday and Wednesday and on various babysitting occasions, we find ourselves taping a name tag to Rachael and Abi’s sippy cups before dropping them off. I use masking tape since it comes off of the cup easier than the nursery stickers provided. But each Sunday morning there is the “Oh right, we forgot, let’s find the tape, a permanent marker or pen and get the names on there.” Sure we could write the names on Saturday night if we were overly thoughtful parents, but we aren’t. LOL.

So I came up with a crafty solution that will eliminate confusion and can translate to more than just sippy cups.

After viewing a diaper strap tutorial, I modified it to work for us and to work with what I had in fabric.

I started out by measuring the middle of our sippy cups and kid water bottles. After measuring, I took the variance of 2 inches between all the cups middles to measure out the length of my soft-side of the Velcro (will explain more later). Then I knew from the 7inch to 8.5inch width of my sippy cups that I needed to make the strip of fabric at least 9 inches to accommodate the cups. I chose to make my base fabric 10 inches just to be safe.

I grabbed out a few scrap pieces of receiving blankets used for other projects, measured my soft-sided Velcro and cut it. I decided to place my soft-sided Velcro on the inside of my strap so the sticky part of the Velcro would only adhere to the strap and the soft-side would not adhere to clothing/etc if exposed by a fatter cup than the smallest setting.

I measured the sticky side of my Velcro to be 1.5 inches to make sure it’d stick really well, defying toddler curiosity, and the soft-side of my Velcro to be 3 inches to allow for further cup variance in size should we get other cups in the future. (Sticky side of Velcro is located on other side of fabric behind the button).

Then it was to work sewing the fabric, flipping the fabric inside out, folding in the edges and sewing them shut, sewing on the Velcro, and then the hardest part; stitching the names.

I free-handed with a pencil on the fabric the girls’ names (excluding the one pictures above. I just free-handed that on the sewing machine) and then sewed accordingly. I wasn’t worried about perfection, just readability and functionality with a little cuteness of course.

I added on a reused button from my button tin just for a little flare.

And voila! Our cup name tags (on three different sized cups):

 Front and back.
 Front and back.
 Front and back (see a trend?)

I made 2 for Abi since she’s the sticky-fingered/less neat child. That way one can be in the wash while the other is in use. Also, we’re carrying around cups less frequently for Rachael so I wasn’t as worried about making her two. If I find we need two for Rachael, I’ll make her a second one in 15 minutes (her name is long).

Abi also discovered while playing with one off of her cup that they can be used as bracelets. =) They can also be used as bag tags, luggage tags, and pretty much anything you need to label for kiddo that has a loop. Be creative. =D

Functional, cute, effective and fun.

Cost: No financial cost, total of 40 minutes of free-time during the girls’ nap time.

YAY!

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