All in Household
So last year we got a new patio set since our new house had an actual covered patio. We used it some but not as much as I would have liked since our yard was still a disaster, and we traveled a lot in the fall. Well even though we didn’t use it an incredible amount, it still had some mildew like stains on it. I tried numerous things to clean it until I found a perfect solution. Check it out below!
So this would have been Melody’s last week of school and her last week of dance before her recital this past weekend. Well we know the ending to that story, right? We actually get to go to her preschool this week and pick up her things since we unexpectedly stopped school. It will be through the carline and we won’t get to hug or see any of her classmates, but at least this does give us some closure. As far as her dance recital, it has been postponed until June. And she actually gets to go back to dance class next week! Yay! Anyhow, onto the week. We did school as usual, but Melody was not into getting dressed in her tutu and tights for dance, so we didn’t argue. Our biggest battle this week was learning to brush our teeth with fluoride toothpaste. Anything that involves change is a battle. But by the end of the week she wasn’t fighting us as much!
One of our big projects we planned this year was tackling our back yard. I love the room we have back there, and our covered back porch is AMAZING! However, the flower beds just were not our cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, if this is your thing, great. It just isn’t ours. I would MUCH rather have that space for Melody to run free, and we plan to eventually use that space for a grilling area. Well since we have been home during the COVID-19 pandemic, we have had the time to really devote to doing things all around the house. And that includes our backyard! LOTS of pictures ahead!
During the beginning of the quarantine, Melody was really missing her grandparents (and friends and anyone that wasn’t Brad or me, ha!). So I decided to make a coloring sheet that she could send to our parents. I hoped she would make it more colorful, but purple is her favorite color! And she decided to make the hearts faces, haha.
I decided to make a color mixing sheet using Microsoft Word to show Melody what colors make when mixed together. This is actually a really fun and semi-mess free “craft”. We have mixed colors beyond the primary colors too. When we do this craft, I let her go through all of my paint and pick all the colors she wants to mix together. We then use q-tips to do the mixing which makes this a pretty clean activity even while using paint!
So we are very, very close to what would have been the end of our school year. Preschool always ended a week or so earlier than the city schools. It is really bittersweet to be here, but that is where we are. Ironically Melody wore the same apple dress (as more of a shirt/tunic on Friday), that she wore a year ago. Next week we tackle new learning tools too! Below you can find pictures from our week this week!
So being told you have to stay home for the foreseeable future and you can’t see anyone else is hard. So to say we have had fun may come as a surprise. We do really, really miss our family and friends, BUT we have enjoyed the slowness and time together. Melody is a fun age where we don’t have to take things too seriously if we don’t want too, but she does thrive on schedule. So we have tried to maintain a schedule while having lots of fun too! And we are getting to FaceTime our family and friends which helps! Below are some of the pictures from our quarantine time in March and April!
One of Brad’s Christmas presents last year was a 3D printer. He has found lots of things to print, and I wanted to try and find something he could print as decor in our newly made over playroom/craft room. I searched and searched, but I could not find anything I loved. That is when we decided to just put letters on the wall and work with that. Brad came up with the letters himself, and we decided to spell out “CREATE” above my craft table since I do a lot of creating there.
So in the COVID-19 world, Alabama was released from our “stay at home orders” and now we are under “safer at home orders again”. Basically non-essential stores may open at lower capacities, but that does not include salons, massage parlors, etc. There are some other rules and changes, and you can find those online if you are truly interested. That all began on Friday, May 1. We don’t really plan to change much, if any, of our routine until we see how these next two weeks pan out.
One of the things we added to our playroom when we did a makeover to it last month was a dress-up storage solution. Melody just recently started getting into dressing up, but that is even still not super often. But she does have a few dresses from Halloween, last year’s dance recital, and a few gifts. So I wanted a better place to store them than on the back of a door. She also has lots of accessories like jewelry, wands, tutus, etc. So we needed room for that too. My best friend, Emily, recently came up with storage for her daughters dress up, and I decided to copy it! All you need a 9 cube storage system, a tension rod, and storage bins to fit the cubes if you want. Follow along below for the changes I made to the instructions.
So to start, I have used a purple crayon to show you what you do NOT want to install. Follow all the steps in the instruction manual unless noted below.
This week has been a really good week as far as school goes. Melody has actively participated, and we were also able to repurpose my old computer so that Melody can watch her videos on that without using mine. We accomplished a lot of crafts including some for Mother’s Day and a few “miss you” ones too. We took a break from dance on Thursday. I think Melody may be getting burned out doing it twice a week. So we may back down to the usual once a week and see if that helps her eagerness. Daddy was teacher one morning while I had a checkup at my doctor. We also had to rearrange things on Friday because we had to make an urgent trip to the local urgent care for Brad. A few stitches later and he is good. And we were able to finish the day up!
The playroom/bonus room/craft room has always been a difficult room for me. When we bought this house, we loved the size of this room. It offered us a space that both Melody and I could easily share between her toys and all of my crafting supplies. It even has a nice big closet with shelving installed. Well once we finally moved in and got everything up there, I realized we have a LOT of toys and we are lacking in the organization department when it comes to all of these toys. Christmas did not help this either! We did try to spread the toys between her bedroom, the living room, the kitchen, and the playroom. However, we found that doing this some rooms just were left out during playtime. So now she doesn’t have any toys in the kitchen (she has a cabinet with arts and crafts for downstairs), and we have reduced the number of toys in the living room and her bedroom. So now we have a majority of the toys upstairs in the playroom. But this has caused even more organizational issues.
Melody’s obsession during this quarantine has been bubbles. And while we found a bubble machine through grocery pickup early on, we have been having trouble finding bubble solution. I mean we can find small bottles, but every time I order bubbles through grocery pickup, they are out of stock. Well we opted to figure out a way to make our own! We tried two recipes, and both have their pros and cons.
So one of this issues during the current pandemic is food access and remaining safe. We have always kept a stocked pantry and freezer, but now we don’t have the luxury to just pop in and out of the store if we think we need something. So one of the things I did was go back through our freezer and get a good count of every single thing we have. This would make grocery planning easier and keep us in the know of exactly what we have at all times.
This week I am keeping it simple. We did school; we learned; we danced; we played; we crafted; we are still exhausted, ha! A few new things this week happened though. Melody did start riding her tricycle on her own for long stints. We did take a really long nap after this long, exhausting week.
During this quarantine, we have decided to take the time to complete some lingering projects since we are home 24/7. Brad is still working from home, and I am trying to keep a routine with Melody and continue teaching her preschool things. But we still are constantly seeing these uncompleted projects ALL the time. So the project that we see the most, and it is the easiest to complete was our dining room. We had everything but the paint, and we already had samples picked out that we wanted to try. And since it was the first thing you practically see when you walk in our house, it just made the most sense!
As I mentioned on Easter, it is a different one this year. We made the best of the entire weekend though. We spent a lot of time outside on Saturday since it was supposed to be stormy and rainy on Sunday. We ended up cooking a nice lunch and spending the day hunting eggs, watching church, and FaceTiming family!
This week has been a fairly quiet week as far as anything new goes that impacts us. We kept our focus on Easter this week, and we also spent a lot of time outside when we could.
Easter is definitely not the same this year as previous years. We won’t be spending it with family outside of the three of us. We won’t be having our lunch at Texas de Brazil. And we won’t be able to make it to our church. We are very thankful for technology though. We will still be able to FaceTime our families today. We will likely order a nice lunch. And we can watch church via our computers. Happy [unique] Easter everyone!
So this is another craft we did during our homeschooling days. It didn’t go quite like I had planned, but Melody wanted to do it her way. And it wasn’t worth the battle, ha! I will explain as I go along as to what I had hoped she would do.
