Encouragement

“A mother has the most important position in the world.  Little worldly acclaim is received and many times her work goes unappreciated, unnoticed and even resented. The magnificence of what she is building surpasses any architect that has ever lived.  Unlike those who build for this physical world she never sees the completion of her efforts but the foundation that she lays directs not only the physical but the immortal lives of her children and those after them.”

The Invisible Woman

Summer Projects

Daisy and I had a craft filled summer!  The first project was to put a border on a quilt that I started years ago.  While I was doing that, Daisy added strips to some log cabin pillows (made from quilt scraps) that I had started.  The pillows are finished and the quilt is ready to be quilted.

Daisy wanted to make a fleece throw, so we found some fabric she liked (of course it’s pink) and did it in two days.  These throws are so easy, just two pieces of fleece tied together by the fringe.

We had planned to make a back pack but Daisy liked this pattern for a bag better.  She uses it to carry stuff to volleyball practice and as a regular bag. She likes the long straps and the little pocket for her cell phone.

Our major project for the summer was the covered bulletin board.  It wasn’t hard, it just took a little planning, decision making and time.  I started by searching the web to see how others had made them.  I found this site with a video which was helpful.

We had to order our cork because we couldn’t find any here.  We didn’t want thin tiles so we ordered the 3/8″ thickness.  We realized later that two tiles can be glued together to make them thicker.  The tiles we got were dark and made of large cork pieces.  If I were to make another one I would look for lighter colored and denser grain.  The ones we used were very crumbly and because of the dark color, I had to cover them with a light fabric before covering with the colors we chose.

We used hot glue (low heat gun) to glue the fabric and ribbon to the cork.

I barely had enough of the green fabric (below) to go around the tile.  I wouldn’t recommend cutting it that small!

The site I found suggested gluing the squares to backing board (which is similar to peg board without the holes).  It also suggested cutting the backing board into separate squares and hanging each one separately with sticky Velcro.  We preferred gluing them to one large board and hanging it on a wall anchor.  We chose peg board instead of backing board because the holes gave us an easy way to hang it.  We just ran a wire through two of the holes several inches apart and twisted it together.  We put this wire about three inches down from the top so it would not show above the board.

We bought a 4′x4′ piece of pre-cut peg board and my husband cut it to the size we needed.  (Some stores will cut it for you at about a dollar a cut if you have no way to cut it yourself. )

We drew the squares on the peg board and started by gluing the first piece in the center.

Since we did not plan to frame the bulletin board, we cut the peg board a little smaller than the total dimensions of the squares so the peg board would not show from the sides.

We used Elmer’s school glue to glue the squares to the pegboard and glued them to the rough side of the board.

Magnetic squares, peg board squares or chalk board squares can be interspersed with the cork tiles but Daisy didn’t want them.  The large daisy (below) is machine applique and the small daisies are “iron ons” but I hot glued them.  Buttons can also be used.  The middle square at the bottom has two extra layers of fabric to form “pockets”.  We were able to make it for under $35.00.  Of course we already had the glue gun and most of the fabric left from other projects.

Cute and fun!

The last project is a Kleenex box covered with fabric for Daisy’s bathroom.  I cut out the bottom of an empty box and opened the ends and re-folded, glued and taped them so that it would just fit over new box.  Then I wrapped the box in fabric like a present and hot glued it.  I’m sure this is not an original idea and it was really quick.

Now…time for school!

Cooking With Daisy

This summer I decided to change the approach I had been using in teaching Daisy to cook.  Daisy has a lot of energy and likes to do things herself.  When she knows how to do something like scramble eggs, or make an omelet, I just stay out of her way.  However, there are still many “hows” and “whys” of cooking that she doesn’t understand.   My hands have lost some dexterity and I move more slowly now because of Parkinson’s. Daisy, on the other hand, is like a small tornado!  We are quite a contrast!  Many times she starts doing things before I can show or tell her how and, therefore, sometimes gets the “cart before the horse”! She might heat the oil before the ingredients are even out, much less chopped, or start before she has read the entire recipe.  In other words, it’s sometimes frustrating for us both!

After receiving a DVD of Ratatouille for her birthday, I noticed how she enjoyed watching the live cooking segment in the features section.  Since she is very much a visual learner, I decided to try some cooking DVDs.  I searched through the DVDs on Amazon and came up with a couple by Rachael Ray.

She loves them!  She watched them several times and copied down the ingredients for the things she wanted to make.  By watching the food being prepared she can see the order of ingredients, hear and see the techniques used and see the finished product. They have been a really great way to add to her knowledge and capability.  Now when she starts a recipe, she has an idea of what she should do and how to do it without waiting to be shown or told.

So far, from these DVDs she has made: fresh green beans, fresh asparagus, white beans with roasted bell peppers, crab cakes and a shrimp and scallops recipe. She has learned that getting everything out, chopped and measured before starting to cook speeds up the process…and that neither one of us can chop things as fast as Rachael Ray!

From my recipes she has made waffles, salmon patties, and meat loaf.  I wasn’t even in the kitchen for the waffles and she did most everything for the other recipes by herself…just needed some explanation about the “how to” on some things.  We also made lasagna together. The only thing I remembered to take a picture of was the meat loaf…before it was put in the oven.

We did make a small mistake on the meatloaf…we used cilantro instead of parsley! In the whirlwind that is “cooking with Daisy”, I didn’t noticeI She told me it smelled funny but I have lost my sense of smell and I just figured she wasn’t used to the smell of parsley! Granddad and Daisy said it tasted really good anyway and I didn’t know the difference!

Parkinson’s

About two years ago I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease.    Most people think of Parkinson’s as “that disease that makes you shake”.  I really did not know much more than that myself even though my mother-in-law had it.  A young friend who is only 38 was also recently diagnosed. She said in an email to me “I knew what it was, but I really didn’t know…”  I think that sums it up pretty well.  Until you dig into the symptoms and what follows, you really don’t know… and even then, until you live it, you can’t imagine or “really” know.

People who have Parkinson’s usually are, or will be, dealing with more than one symptom. People often ask how I am doing and rather than go into the whole list I usually just say “pretty good”.  Parkinson’s is called the “designer disease” because it manifests itself a little differently in everyone.  Even the medicines for it work differently in different people.

Daisy knows I have Parkinson’s.  She cried when I told her because she heard of someone at school whose grandmother had it and died.  She thought I was going to immediately die.  I explained to her that the doctor told me mine seemed to be progressing slowly, that there were lots of medicines and people can live for a long time with it.  I talked to her about the symptoms that she could see, which were the tremor in my right hand and the fact that I am walking and moving slowly.  She was embarrassed at first for anyone to see my hand shake but over time has realized that people don’t laugh and that many realize why it is happening.  Our relatives and friends know and she has been able to tell her friends and talk about it with them.

Having Parkinson’s has started to affect some of the things I do in my day to day living.  Nothing gets done fast and I am tired quite a bit of the time.  It also changes some of the things I choose to do with Daisy.  We don’t go on shopping trips anymore outside our little town (without Granddad along), as I now do not drive on the highway. I realized not too long ago that my depth perception is off and my arm shakes until it hurts when driving fast in busy traffic.  The list of things I want to accomplish with Daisy is just as long but sometimes I go about it differently than I would have before.  However, to come up with new ways of doing things is not necessary a bad thing.

There is still no cure for Parkinson’s but quite a bit of promising reasearch. The little tulip at the top of the page is starting to be used as a national symbol to promote Parkinson’s awareness and the urgency for a cure.

Growth Spurt

Daisy has a cousin a few years older who gives her outgrown clothes.  We spent about an hour Thursday trying on what I have been storing in the top of her closet.  There were two pair of size 16 jeans that were a little long and big in the waist and I figured she might be able to wear them soon. But we needed to have something to start school in, as she had only one pair that fit.

We shopped this past weekend and found three pair at Old Navy in a size 0 which I was told was equivalent to a size 14/16.  Yesterday as I was giving her a hug I had that feeling again that she was taller!  Then I started wondering why the 16s didn’t fit if the 0 was comparable!  You guessed it…we tried the 16s again and they fit! I am literally watching this girl grow!  I feel like I’m seeing a butterfly emerge from it’s cocoon!

Words For Wednesday

• Oh that God would give every mother a vision of the glory and splendor of the work that is given to her when a babe is place in her bosom to be nursed and trained! Could she have but one glimpse in to the future of that life as it reaches on into eternity; could she look into it’s soul to see its possibilities; could she be made to understand her own personal responsibility for the training of this child, for the development of its life, and for its destiny,–she would see that in all God’s world there is no other work so noble and so worthy of her best powers, and she would commit to no others hands the sacred and holy trust given to her. ~  J. R. Miller

• Before you were conceived I wanted you Before you were born I loved you Before you were here an hour I would die for you This is the miracle of life. ~ Maureen Hawkins

• It is only when we truly know and understand that we have a limited time on earth and that we have no way of knowing when our time is up that we will begin to live each day to the fullest, as if it were the only one we had. ~ Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

Do You Remember?

I was thinking the other day about memories and how uniquely our own they are.  Sometimes two people will remember different details of the same event and some won’t even remember the event.

I remember so many things about my children when they were small and so many about Daisy. Things I know they don’t remember. Times that we had together but are now mine alone.

My memories seem to start at around age 3.  Daisy has a much better memory than I do and I sometimes wonder what her “growing up” memories will be.

I remember a rolling pin planter similar to the one below in my mother’s kitchen window when I was a small child. My brother remembers a donkey with a cart planter…maybe they were both there and we remember the one that appealed to us.

I have had different things in the window in each house we’ve lived in. (We lived in a couple without kitchen windows!) This is what I have now.

What was in your mother’s kitchen window?

Out Of Sight

I have a friend who lived with her husband and two young sons in a very small two bedroom house. After several years they decided to add a few more rooms.  The original house had a fireplace on one end and they decided to make the addition by opening the area to the left of it.

In order to have privacy and keep construction dust from their living room, they decided to complete the addition before cutting through the wall into the original part of the house. They did much of the finishing work themselves and it took several months of nights and weekends. As it neared completion, it started to be inconvenient to go outside to get into the addition to do little things.

One afternoon after several tiring days, my friend laid down on the sofa to nap.  Her husband was still hammering in the addition but she was so exhausted she fell right to sleep.  A couple of hours later as she slowly came out of her sleep, she realized that a light was shining in her face from the wrong direction. While she was sleeping, her husband had opened the wall that connected to the addition.  She knew all along that it was just on the other side of the wall but to open her eyes and see it was amazing to her…everything had changed while she was asleep!

When she told me this story, she said she thought that someday that is how it will be with heaven.  Some day we will open our eyes and realize that it was right there all along, we just couldn’t see it! It will be amazing…and everything will be changed!

The Second Dress

Daisy finished her second dress before she left for camp.  We used the same pattern but left the ruffles off and used eyelet lace instead.  She tried to do the lace but it kept slipping, so I did it and the zipper.

She made a little bag to go with it and was really more excited about the bag than the dress!

She made the bag before the dress and it was really easy and fun to make!  She wasn’t as excited about working on this dress as she was the first.  It was a kind of “been there done that” thing and she was ready to move on to something else!

Rest

“Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer’s day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.”  ~ John Lubbock

I’ve taken about a month off from blogging and have enjoyed my little vacation.

Today is the one year anniversary of Bringing Up Daisy and I have been thinking how much Daisy has changed during this year.

This has been a good year for Daisy.  She started the 7th grade a little nervous and unsure of herself.  She is one of the youngest in her class and while most of the girls started the year with a new more mature shape, she was still her skinny little self!  But she was blessed with a new friend who was dealing with the same issues.  She soon discovered that even though their bodies were changing, her friends were still the same inside.

She was worried that 7th grade would be hard but for the most part, she paid attention and kept her grades up.  We have never rewarded or punished her for her grades and she has friends whose parents use both methods.  She sometimes wished we would pay for good grades but told us she was really thankful that we didn’t punish her when she brought home something less than an A like one friend’s parents.

One of the biggest issues she had to deal with this year was lying.  She has wanted to lie to keep from hurting feelings or from getting in trouble and we have had lots of talks about this.  It was hard for her when many of her friends were allowed to lie (or did so without their parents’ knowledge) to set up a  Facebook account by “pretending” to be older.  This summer she realized that one friend’s mom had lied about her and her daughter’s age when she went to eat with their family at a local pizza place. Kids 12 and under eat free on a certain night.  Daisy had taken money to pay for herself but the mom wouldn’t let her. Her friend told her they were “pretending” to be 12.  We had a long talk that night about how it’s okay to disagree politely with an adult in a situation like that, and to go to the cashier and pay your own bill.

We have had many discussions since around 5th grade about God’s plan for sex and this year she had classes discussing it both at school and in her class at church.  She is starting to notice boys more but she also is realizing that character plays a big part in who she will choose to like.  She told me about a boy who was at camp who was “so cute”, but then she heard him “cuss” and decided that it made her lose respect for him.

This summer I felt like I could almost “see” her growing taller so I measured her the other day, and she has grown almost an inch since May! She is still small, about 5′ 2″, but will be starting this school year with a little more mature figure.  I also have noticed her face is developing more adult features.

After much fence sitting she decided to play volleyball this fall and went to a volleyball camp this summer.

She is still happy to wear her clear mascara when she is “dressing up” and I am open to light makeup this year but will wait until she asks.

She accepted the responsibility of more summer chores.  She does complain some but we remind her of all the fun things she gets to do and that it only takes about an hour a day to do her work. She has realized and pointed out that many of her friends do not have to do all the things that she does. I tell her that she will be glad someday that she knows how to do all these things and she will know how to run a home.

We have about a month left here until school starts and there are several more things on my list for the summer.  I want to watch home movies with her, do some more cooking together, give her extra time on the computer to read through the modesty survey again, and talk with her about her goals for the year.  I also want to let her invite several of her friends for a sleepover before school starts.