I cannot believe

I drove to work in this (this was taken headed down 1-71 at 45 mph from West Salem to Ashland):

Really, I cannot believe we had school today. Although it appears to have let up a little, we are supposed to be hit with another 4-6" of the white stuff. We are headed for some frigid temperatures later on this week. High of 5 degrees farenheit for Friday. The chickens are being wuss's and will not go out of the chicken coop. But, who can blame them? I don't want to go out either!

I'm plugging away on my Seeing Stars Quilt A Long Quilt. I've decided to use the brown I have - as Todd pointed out - the intention for this is to be a king sized quilt to fit our bed. No one will notice if the border is a shade or 2 off, especially if I toss a pieced border (or 2) of some sort in there. I have just a little bit more to go, and I just may make it for the top (minus the large border) on the first round of brown that I found in the back of my closet. It will be close.

And, if you want to play Pay It Forward - head on over to my Mom's blog - she signed up when Angie did her round, and got the most beautiful cross stitch pattern. She's doing something knitted for her 3 participants...

Today I go talk to the principal at Jessie's school about tutoring in the dreaded subject....math. Although thanks to a comment left on 1 of the math posts, I found out about a possiblity of online tutoring for her. We'll see what the school says. I got the paper from her teacher about what they are working on this week, she says they are working on more of the same type of problems....Jessie brings home a paper with multiplication on it. Grrr.......

And our dinner out - it was good. Especially since we had a gift card to use that covered our meal but for $2.00 of it and the tip. Not as good as my cooking, but seeing as how we haven't gone out to eat in over a year.....I was glad to not have to cook for once....

Later,

Kris

I screwed up.

Last Spring, I took part in AmandaJean's Quilt A Long. I got most of the blocks done before starting a new job, summer hitting and spring soccer hitting.




Since I couldn't finish any of the projects I wanted to, I pulled this top out to see if I could finish all the stars and setting blocks and get it into quilt top form. The problem is, I used a good bit of my brown fabric to make a shepherd's costume for the church play. I thought I had plenty of brown, but.....I don't. I will have enough to get this last row done, and that will probably be it.

I would go buy more brown, but....I brought this fabric years and years ago. I found some similar brown at JoAnn's in their quilters cotton, but the shade is off just enough that I don't want to use it.



Okay - I'm going to have to look at it in the daylight tomorrow - here the color doesn't look that bad....maybe I'm daydreaming and freaking out over nothing!!!

Why in the HECK did I use it for the Shepherd's costume? I could go to my church and get the costume and cut it up but.....that seems like an awful lot of work. And my church paid me for my time and supplies for making the costumes, so I feel funny taking it back. And I went into this quilt knowing I was making it to fit our king sized bed and that I would be adding borders to it. So I'm thinking I need to finish the stars and do some pieced borders around it to get it big enough.

I have to stop working on it for a little bit - the kids are at my BIL & SIL's spending the night - so Todd and I are going out to eat at Bob Evans. Whooo Hooo (and we have a gift card to use there that he got for Christmas).

Kris

PS - and if you would like to play Pay It Forward - go to my Mom's blog - she joined up from Angie's blog and is doing knitted items for the lucky recipients!

Snow....and DUH!

We aren't snowed in yet, but I sure ain't going anywhere else!

Last night, Jessie broke the nose pad off of her glasses. Her old glasses the prescription is so far off - she can't wear them. And the metal on her glasses was scratching her nose. I thought about super gluing the nose pad on, but figure the optomotrist wouldn't like that. And as much as these glasses cost us, I don't want to be buying new ones anytime soon.

So this morning, we drove the 14 miles to Wooster just to get her glasses fixed. But, it worked out, we got her glasses fixed, a quick stop in the grocery store for peanut butter, dish soap and bbq sauce, and we were on our way home. The roads weren't to bad going in - but it was reasonably early (9:00 ish) and I was the only one on the road. And they hadn't been plowed yet.

On the way home - I'm behind a semi driving right down the center of the road at ....15 mph. I don't think the roads were that bad but......

The snow is pretty - especially since I'm inside looking at it!!!

So this afternoon I thought I'd work on 1 of my finishes for January. I have everything planned out what I want to finish each month, I have new stuff I want to start but I'm not letting myself start anything new. But I don't have enough of anything that I need to finish any project. I made this quilt top the other day:

But am totally out of batting so I could get it quilted. This is for a baby gift for a shower coming up here in a couple weeks.

I have this felted wool table runner to finish - but don't have the ecru DMC floss to do it:

I have this table runner to put more stars on, but am out of gold wool.

I could clean, but that's not very fun on a snowy day. So I guess I will go and try to start on one of next month's finishes! And then I talk to my Mom, and she rubs it in that she has 2 of her finishes for the challenge done. UGH.

Todd told me he would take me back to Wooster to go to JoAnn's, but I cannot see wasting the gas to drive there and back, when I have to go there after work on Monday.

Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!
Kris

Hooded towel and burp cloth tutorial

Okay - here goes. I've had several people ask in the comments how to make a hooded towel. This is so incredibly simple, it's not even funny. So I think I can do a tutorial and explain it well enough.

Start with a bath towel (full size) and washcloth:

Fold the washcloth in half, right sides together (and if you were Todd, you would ask me - washcloths have right and wrong sides? To me they do - at the endges where they are finished - the nicer edge is the right side, the thicker edge is the wrong side - my OCD is coming out here - hehe). Sew up 1/2" to 3/4" to one side of the center (from long edge to long edge).

Cut the smaller of the 2 halves off (in this case, I cut off the side of the washcloth that had the tag on it). Zigzag the edge you just sewed.

Turn "hood" right side out (so seam is to the inside of the hood). It helps to visualize it if you plan on the seam being on top of the baby's head, the bottom edge in this picture is what you will sew to the towel. The opening for baby's face to look out is to the left.

Find the middle of one of the long edges of the towel. Pin the washcloth to the towel. I always pin the edge of the washcloth that has no seam in it. I like the seam on the top of where baby's head will be (because if you were a baby, would you like that seam running up the back of your head?)

Sew the washcloth to the towel. Then go back and zig zag the edge.

And voila - you have a hooded towel. It's a full size bath towel, not one of the rinky dink hooded towels you buy in the store. Plenty of coverage for the wee little ones. And, if you are Tyler, you still use your hooded towel when you are 5 1/2. And, while I don't like shopping in Wal-mart, I paid $3.50 for the towl and $2.00 for the washcloth today. Sometimes you can get them even cheaper.

**On Tyler's towel - there were decorative bands around the towel - you can sew ribbon around the edges of the towel. Just DON'T use ribbon with wire in the edges. Trust me. You'll be cursing up a storm as you pull bits of wire out of the ribbon after you wash it the first time... and the 100th time....and 3 years later if you didn't get all the wire out from the first go round. It's not pretty.

Then, of course, you need to make a burp cloth for said baby:

Take a cloth diaper:

Sew 2 ribbons (or in this case, 2 pieces of fabric) up each seam on the diaper. Get as frilly or as cute as you want.

For this one, I took a strip of fabric 2 1/2" wide, ironed it in half, wrong sides together lengthwise. Opened it back up and folded each edge to the center and ironed it so there were no exposed raw edges. Sew it to the diaper around all sides.

And - voila - you have a burp cloth for the wee little one (excuse the pins in this one - this picture came out better than the finished one).

You can put lace under your fabric, lacy ribbon, plain ribbon - get as creative as you like. Ribbon is cheap - and 1 package of cloth diapers goes a long way as you are making burp cloths.

Hope this helps give you all some great ideas for inexpensive, very nice baby shower/new baby gifts. If you have any questions, I'll answer them in the comments for everyone to see. If you make one of these - let me know - I would love to see them!!

Enough about Math - on to FUN stuff

Thanks for all the funny and kind comments. Jessie breezed through 2 of the practice papers tonight once I explained (about 3 or 4 times) just how to do these impossible problems. So that is something. We'll see if she remembers how to do the problems tomorrow night.

I finished another doll quilt and little pillow and pillow case over this last weekend - Sunday to be exact. These are so quick and a great way to practice a new quilting technique - they aren't very big at all. And when I am in the mood for an instant gratification project (which seems to be happening a LOT lately), these fit the bill. This one just might be my favoritist one yet.

And I have a good friend who just had a baby girl. So I quick whipped up this diaper bag and stopped today to buy the towel and washcloth. Tonight I will turn the towel and washcloth into a hooded towel and send this present on it's way tomorrow. What an inexpensive present for a new baby - and it will look fantastic once I am done with it. Yes, the towels are not exactly girly colors, but believe me, these hooded towels last for years, and if their next child is a boy, it can be used again. Tyler still uses his hooded towel that I made him when he was 1 for every shower (and he is almost 6 now).

It's been freezing again here today - 10 degrees at noon. And we are in with a nice toasty fire going. Todd is at a fire (house fire - I hope everyone is allright and got out of the house on time) so the kids and I are sitting down to eat dinner, play a little Wii and wait for daddy.

3rd grade math saga continued

Thank you for all your comments on third grade math. I did stop in before school (so I wouldn't embarrass Jessie) to inquire of her teacher 3 things:

1. They started learning this mental math 2 weeks before Christmas break. Jessie had no clue. We never saw a math homework paper come home before Christmas. We first found out about it Tuesday night, which the paper was actually a REVIEW for a test on Wednesday, and then she had the homework last night. Of course, she had no clue – why would you wait until the night before the test to clue us into the fact that she is having problems with this. If she had sent home some practice papers for over Christmas break – we could have worked on this.

And I have been asking her teacher if she needs a tutor or some extra help in math – she gets it, she is just very, very slow at it.

2. Why are you waiting until 2 weeks before this grading period ends to inform us that you think her math grade is going to suffer for this 9 weeks?

Again, I have been calling her at least once a week to see how Jessie is doing in Math – oh she's doing average and about what I expect of her is the response I've been getting for the past 6 weeks….

3. They have to do timed Math papers in each of the 4 basics – addition, subtraction, multiplication and division – 100 problems in 5 minutes that they have to get them all correct. Is this for a grade or for practice? I wanted to know. The last one Jessie brought home, she got 82 problems correct, and didn't answer the last 18 problems – but the ones she did answer were all correct. I would have come unglued if it was being done for a grade at this point. Nothing like putting a little pressure on these kids…..

No, it is not for a grade, this is a tool they use to improve their memorization of the math facts.

And I wondered why we hadn't seen any graded papers, or why Jessie had never said I'm having problems here. Turns out, the papers from 2-3 weeks before Christmas break....weren't graded til this last weekend.

So I spent about 30 minutes with her teacher, learning myself what they are doing in Math and what they are going to be doing, and getting about a million practice sheets so that in the evenings, I can help her with these (as her teacher still doesn't think she needs extra help – Hello – the child is getting all A's in everything else, and a C- in Math. Don't tell me that she isn't struggling). Personally, I don't see why they need this mental math and all this estimating. Talk about adding extra steps in there. You end up having to do 2 addition problems before you can even think of doing the subtraction problem. And I made it known that I want on Fridays a general idea of what is going to be covered the next week in all subjects, and when tests were coming up so that we could study at home and prepare ahead of time. Having a Math Test, a Social Studies test and a spelling test on the same day is Just. Not. Right. Especially when you find out about all of these the day before the tests.

Don't get me wrong – I love her teacher, and I think she is doing a great job. I just get the feeling (and I know from seeing the other kids in her class) that there are other kids who are struggling worse than Jessie, so Jessie is getting left by the wayside a little bit. But she needs some help in some areas (ok – 1 area mainly) and I don't think she is getting it. And if she doesn't get the basics now, she really won't get it in a couple of years.

I don't know if I got the answers I wanted but…..at least now I have an idea how to help her over this hump. I'm thinking when I stop in later today to get the outline for her subjects for the rest of this week and next week (and I was not pushy about it – but I think as a concerned parent I have the right to know about what they are studying. Just because I mentioned talking to the principal and superintendent about my concerns about the difficulties of the stuff they are learning….), that I'm going to have Jessie do different projects at home based on what they are studying in school – not a lot of projects but maybe 1 or 2 each week. And her teacher is just awesome enough that she is lending me a math book, a social studies and science textbook so we can go over them together at home so that Jessie doesn't have to drag them back and forth from school to home and back again every day (because, ironically, her teacher thinks she is still doing ok in Math (remember, c- here) and she is worried about her social studies grade (98.5% here)).

Go figure!

PS - anyone have any good ideas for a science fair project?????? All help appreciated!!!!!!!

3rd grade math

Why in the heck are they making 3rd grade so hard?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Jessie brought home a math paper for homework tonight (in addition to working on her spreadsheet of presidents and important facts about them (online) and studying for 2 tests tomorrow). Want to know what the questions were?

"Solve the math problems mentally. Show wich number you would add to both, and then find the answer.

49 - 38 = _____

71 - 29 = _____

97 - 47 = _____"

Huh?

So I call a teacher from the school, whose daughter happens to be in Jessie's class. No answer.

I call another parent, whose son is in Jessie's class. The parental response I haven't a freaking clue in h*** what they are doing in math. She puts her 9 year old son on the phone (who incidentally finished his math homework in school and so didn't bring it home).

After much roundabout talking between him, his mom, Jessie and I, you have to take the smaller number, add to it to get it up to a whole number divisible by 10, add the same number (that you added to the smaller number) to the other number and then subtract them.

So 49 - 38 becomes 51 - 40 = 11. And 71-29 becomes 72-30 = 42. And 97-47 becomes 100-50=50.

Now wouldn't it be simpler to just teach them how to solve the stupid problems????????

The good one though was when we got 2 calls from other friends in the class wanting to know what the heck they were supposed to do......

This ranks right up there with the problems from the other night: Estimate 789 - 543 = ___. Which we found out the answer is 300 (800-500).
UGH.