leap, leap hooray!

happy leap year! nothing much going on around here today. i did come across an interesting offer online from zappos. i guess they normally have a 365-day return policy for their products, but if you buy something from their site today they're offering a 4-year return policy! whoa. who is going to buy something and keep track of it enough to return in four years? i can't think of a scenario where i might do that.

something a little more interesting - i have been knitting up a storm around here lately, and here is the last thing i knitted...fingerless gloves for emma! lucas wants a pair, sans flower. he asked for flames instead. we'll see what i can come up with, but definitely no flames. i'm not that creative.

(here's the pattern)

cheap and easy DIY bulletin board

check out what i made a few months ago. it's a HUGE bulletin board to display the kids' masterpieces, and i love it! i have been wanting something like this for a long time, but everything in the stores or online were super expensive. after doing some research, i found this building material called homasote that makes an amazing bulletin board...and it is CHEAP. it's made of compressed paper and works better than a cork board, in my opinion. i paid $25 for an 8x4 sheet. $25! now that's a great deal. the one you see in the picture is 6x4, so i used the remainder of it for my office (which i will post pictures of soon!). i found it at our local home depot. but, a word of warning. it is not popular here on the west coast yet, so no one knew what it was. i had an amazing service rep help me. she called the distributor to find the local dealer of this material, then called him and placed a special order for me. i love helpful sales people. here's a quick tutorial in case you want to make one for your space:

materials

homasote

fabric

4 anchors

4 finishing washers

4 long screws

tools

scissors

measuring tape

exacto knife

level

circular saw

staple gun

drill

how-to

1. cut homasote board to your desired size using your circular saw. you may want to do this outside because it makes a bit of a mess.

2. cut fabric to size, leaving at least two inches on each side to wrap around the board. if you are making a larger-sized board, you may need to sew two pieces of fabric together. or, you can be creative and sew together various fabric designs to cover your entire board!

3. lay your fabric face-down on the floor and center your homasote board on top. if your fabric has a design or pattern, be sure it is facing the right way and that the design lines up with the edges. using a staple gun, staple the center of one side, then the opposite, and then the center of each of the other two sides. be careful to pull the fabric nice and taut before you staple. then, work your way from the center of each side towards the corners.

4. for the corners, pull the point of the fabric down over the corner of the homasote, making a 45 degree angle. fold down the two sides of the fabric and tuck in the excess along the sides (like you are wrapping a present). make this as neat as possible so that there is not a lot of fabric between the board and the wall when you hang it.

5. once your board is covered, use an exacto knife to make a small 'x' in each of the four corners where you will pre-drill holes. (making slits in the fabric will help prevent the fabric from ripping or torquing when you drill the holes.) pre-drill four holes, one in each corner.

6. have your hubby or a strong friend hold the board up to your wall where you want to hang it. level your board. using one of the long screws, poke through the pre-drilled holes to mark the wall. pre-drill for the anchors.

7. hang up your board using the finishing washers and long screws.

8. step back and admire your new bulletin board!

getting back into the flow

so, i had the best intentions of blogging and posting pictures from our trip to china and hong kong soon after our return, but getting back into the flow of things, especially with it being so close to christmas, was challenging. now that things have settled down a bit, i finally feel like i can (and should) get back onto this old thing and share a bit of what's been happening on the home front. in a few words, not much! december and january flew by. we had a relaxing and meaningful celebration of christmas with my cousin and her family, and my sister and her boyfriend and boyfriend's family. it was nice to have the house full of people sharing a meal, singing carols, opening gifts, and making another great christmas memory for the years to come. we scaled back quite a bit this year with our gift-giving to the kids. it was really, really nice. it was a bit odd at first because they opened their present from us (one each) and that was it. but in the end, and now looking back on it, it was freeing not to have so much "stuff" to deal with after the holidays. it felt a lot less overwhelming. of course, they still had gifts from grandparents and aunties and uncles to open. :)

a new sushi place called mizu sushi opened up in our city so allan and i checked it out last month. it's one of those places where the sushi runs on a conveyor belt throughout the restaurant and you grab what you want as it goes by in front of you. then, they tally the plates according to color to calculate your tab. it was okay. it was nice not to have to wait for your food, but we quickly realized that almost everything was a california roll. they just added things to the top to change it into a different type of roll. for that, we just made our own cali rolls at home, and they were scrumptious.

homeschooling has been the most challenging this year, mainly because both of the girls are no longer napping so i have the two of them to contend with as i try to school lucas. next year will be a new experience as well, since our plan is to start homeschooling emma in kindergarten. you can start praying for me now! i think the most challenging part of homeschooling is the parenting aspect that comes along with it. you can't get away from it. you play both the mom role and the teacher role, which i think is not as true in a traditional classroom setting. (teachers out there can correct me if i'm wrong here.) and all the interruptions of having a three- and four-year old running around you while you try to teach can get exhausting. this may all sound very discouraging, and i admit i've felt that way this year, but a phrase allan and i heard recently got me recharged again. we were reminded that the days with our kids are long, but the years are short. how very true. lucas is turning 7 this month, which means half of his home-time with us is almost gone! in another ten years or so, he'll be off to college and out of our home. thinking on that makes me realize how precious these years are with my kids. and seeing how quickly our little elise (our baby!) is growing is confirmation that time is passing by faster than we notice on a daily basis. sniff. to all my young mom friends, enjoy your days with your kids though they may feel long...for the years are incredibly short! (lucas is reading to the girls as i blog this, bless his little heart!)