Lincoln picked the snowballs just for me! He did play with them for a while first, but sort of smashed flowers picked by little hands are the best kind of flowers. The thrift and the euphorbia were picked by Lucy the day before. Such a lucky mama I am to have lots of little flowers on the windowsill lately! Makes doing the dishes so much nicer.

{Sunday’s heartfelt tradition. A time to slow down, to reflect, to be grateful. A list of gratitudes.}

This week I’m feeling grateful for:

- Little reading buddies with noses in books

- Cool rainy days when I don’t have to leave the house

- That my houseplants are perking up (funny what watering regularly does for them, ahem)

- When hard things happen and you find out exactly what people comprise your support system. Unexpected, sometimes. In a good way.

- The generosity and friendship of “internet friends”. I’ve gotta say, I do think technology can help people to connect – even complete strangers.

- Our new kitty! Kitty purrs, kitty paws, kitty midnight crazy runs around the house. We adopted him on Mother’s Day and are all so in love. The kids named him Mouse and he is the sweetest, most gentle, lovable thing. We had a really mean cat a few years ago and he sort of turned me off cats. I’m so glad I listened to Lucy in wanting a cat and was able to open my heart to getting this guy. He’s only been here a week and we can’t imagine life without him now.

I’ll try & get a better photo this week; we’ve been too busy trying to get him used to our house and to us to mess with the camera during the past week.

What are you feeling grateful for today?

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

My hard working husband. See those wood shop hands? I got him this cool heirloom tomato at the local veggie market for making burgers with. We both thought it was funny that I’d get him a tomato as a gift.

We got rocks and glass gems from the fish section at the pet store. The rocks are built up on one side so the frogs have “land”. The grasses are from the fish section too! For the lilypads, I cut up a foam sheet into lilypad shapes. You can get those in the children’s craft section at craft stores. We put a bunch of frogs in there and also this frog life cycle set, which they love. It’s come in handy several times over the past homeschool year.

They’ve been using fish nets to scoop up frogs, rocks and gems!

One of my favorite things about this sensory table is that after the initial investment in the frogs, rocks, etc., you can dry them off and reuse them all year! Lucy and Lincoln love it, they’ve been playing with it all afternoon/evening.

I’ve been planning what I want to do with Lincoln next year, education wise, while I’m homeschooling Lucy. I decided that I won’t be doing preschool with him formally yet (he’ll be 3), but will instead set up a Montessori inspired shelf with activities to keep him busy. One of the other things I really wanted is a sensory table. Have you ever looked at prices for those online? They start around $80 and go all the way up to $400. Definitely not an option for us. We decided to try our hand at making our own!

I know we make wooden toys and all, so making things out of wood should come naturally to us, but we’re so focused on the small hand held things that large projects throw us off a bit.

I started out by taking Lucy and Lincoln to the hardware store and picking out a large tupperware box with a large lip around the top, and a bunch of 1 x 3″ poplar boards.

Dustin designed a plan for making it, which was essentially a frame for the tupperware box, and got started! Lucy helped.

The finished product!

I put some of those water beads in there to start out, but have plans for lots of other things…water, sand, dirt, rice, beans…

They really have been enjoying playing with the water beads, and honestly – Dustin and I can’t keep our hands off them either.

I’m so happy with how the table has turned out and with how much use it has gotten! It was pretty simple to make but if anyone would like instructions or a tutorial let us know, I’m sure Dustin could come up with something. It cost us around $35-40 to make but we used hardwood (poplar), you could definitely make one with more inexpensive wood or recycled wood, and even a secondhand tupperware box.

I will be spending Mother’s Day with Lucy, Lincoln, and Dustin today – having a mellow, casual day. Nothing fancy. I wouldn’t want it any other way!

Wishing you a wonderful Mother’s Day!

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo – no words – capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Lincoln had his first dentist checkup that morning and wouldn’t stop brushing his teeth all day! He took it very seriously.

Working on her project…

It’s an apron!

I love how she added a pocket. Nice detail. I am also loving all the aqua & turquoise in these photos. If I remember correctly, she picked her outfit to match with her mermaid doll this day.

She is very proud of her first sewing project! She wore her apron to help Dustin make lunch for her and Lincoln.

And check out that missing top tooth! My Lucy is getting so grown up. She may just need sewing machine lessons from mama in the near future, it’ll be so fun to see what she comes up with to make.

Enjoying the sunshine and some dandelions, of which he ate a couple…

His fur is all uneven because I use scissors, and while I’m decently good at it, it ends up looking like a hack job regardless.

Here he is mid-shear, with a big fur tutu:

Isn’t it crazy how long their fur gets?! I’m going to keep this batch for spinning myself as opposed to selling. Will post photos when I spin it up.

This week’s fantastic featured sponsor is Heather from Ozark Mountain Mama! She makes really adorable 100% organic cotton cloth diapers, re-purposed woolens, covers and shoes. She is also a wife and mother to five children. We really enjoyed reading her story about relocating from an ordinary life in Florida to Arkansas where they build their own home and have an extraordinary life! To get to know Heather and Ozark Mountain Mama even better be sure to check out her Etsy shop and her Facebook page.

Here is Heather’s story…

I am a stay at home mom to 5 children, ranging in ages from 1 to 13.  My husband and I have been married FOREVER

Our adventure began about 6 years ago, when we sold our suburban home in central Florida, and purchased 40 wooded acres in the Ozark Mountains.  In a nutshell we had become increasingly frustrated with trying to live a “normal” life and longed for a simpler home, community, and life in general.  We designed and built our home ourselves, over the course of several years.  My husband has many years of remodeling homes under his belt, so we were well equipped with the know how and tools to accomplish this.  Our home is small and simple, and honestly still needs some finishing touches, but we don’t have a mortgage, which has really freed us up to be quite creative in how we make a living.

Of my five children, I’ve cloth diapered my last three.  It was with my 4th child that I discovered the joy of diapering with wool.  He has very sensitive skin and could not tolerate diapers containing PUL or microfiber, both components of some very popular diapers.  After many months of trial and error, I determined that 100% cotton diapers were the only solution for him and cotton prefolds are the simplest, most affordable way to cloth diaper a baby, in my opinion.  I designed my very first snapping wool cover, because I wanted a simple snapping cover to hold prefolds, like PUL covers, but I wanted wool.  I used felted sweaters because I couldn’t afford to buy wool interlock.  After many, many covers, I finally perfected my pattern!  I figured there had to be other moms battling the same diapering problems I was, and that there might be a need for covers like mine, so Ozark Mountain Mama was born

Over the last few years my love of all things recycled wool has grown.  I, of course, couldn’t stop at covers, I had to make longies and shorties and shoes to

I am able to run a small but fairly successful business from home, entirely because of our “group effort” as a family.  My husband works from home as well and we split parenting duties 50/50, most of the time.  We home school  although our method is pretty loose and open and would be considered by many to be more of an “unschooling” style.  We all participate in maintaining our home, on a daily basis.  Everyone has daily chores, we all cook a little, clean a little, help out the smaller kids…… It’s kinda like we’re our own tiny village  People ask me everyday how I manage it all, and it’s quite simply because I don’t manage it all…..  Everyone pitches in and it just sorta works!

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Giveaway
Heather has generously offered to giveaway a custom pair of shoe’s to one lucky Wild Armadillos reader! She will ship them anywhere in the world, so entries are open to anyone.

You can enter the giveaway up to 5 times…