**This tutorial assumes intermediate sewing ability***

This little stacker would make a nice gift, or addition to your nursery. I whipped this up without a pattern, from scraps, in about 2 hours.

Materials:

1 yd 54″ wide fabric
baby sized hanger
9″x12″ cardboard (back of notepad works great!
thread to co-ordinate

Instructions:

1. Lay out your hanger on a doubled piece of fabric and cut around the ’shoulders’, making a seam allowance of approximately 5/8″. Make sure to leave a small ‘neck’ approximately 5/8″ tall.

2. Cut a length of fabric 22″ long by 54″ wide for the body of your stacker.

3. Cut two pieces of fabric approximately 10″x13″ for the bottom of your stacker.

4. Press down the ‘neck’ of the ’shoulder’ piece and hem on a machine.

5. With right sides facing, sew each side of the shoulder piece, from the bottom edge to the neck edge, pivoting at the corners and leaving neck open. Clip corners. Turn.

6. Turn right side out and press.

7. On body piece, turn each each selvege edge 2-1/2″. Hem.

8. Take up body piece and make three box pleats as follows: One pleat measuring 5-1/2″ at CB, and 2 pleats measuring 3-1/4″ where the body will join shoulder seam.

9. With right sides facing, attach body to shoulder piece, matching side seams and CB. Trim bulk as necessary. Turn right side out and press.

10. With WRONG SIDES facing, take up bottom pieces and sew around three sides. Insert cardboard, sew fourth side.

11. Matching CB with the center of one long side of bottom, attach body to bottom using 5/8″ seam and clipping corners as you go. Pink seams, or use serger, keeping close to cardboard. Turn out.

12. Front edges will overlap considerably. This will prevent the diapers from falling out the front!

Of course, you might like to add emboidery, appliques, ribbons, etc. Make it your own! Send me photos of your finished stacker and I’ll post it here.

We keep our stacker on the back of the bathroom door - most convenient!

Oh, those sweet, munchy cheeks! Delish!

I’ve said that about a million times in reference to the sign above the imaginary basket on my doorstep. I am heartsick everytime I hear about a sweet newborn babe left in a completely unsuitable place. I pray that eventually the word will go out far and wide that I am more than willing to love and raise a foundling (or 100 of them). Please don’t laugh - my dear friend Mimi and her husband Bill have fostered over 80 newborns.

It is amazing that, even today, no matter where in the world, there are still women who can not find a way to keep their babies. Thanks be to God they brought them into this world. Who can say who that child may grow to be? Thank thanks be to God that someone, somewhere, has the good sense to erect these baby booths, just as Pope Innocent III did in the 12th century. Just as the Palna Orhanage does today, and has done for many years.

I’ve seriously got to get a foundling wheel built into our house. Friends of mine have assured me that a “safe haven” sign would not be allowed…

My grandmother was semi-orphaned at 13 years and sent away to live in indentured servitude to a ‘foster family’. She always had a special love for orphaned children, taking two (that I know of) into her care, at least temporarily. I inherited that from her. Born to love. When I say I need a foundling wheel, I’m only slightly in jest. There just are not enough places to safely leave these little ones.

This after an extraordinary article I read at Dawn Eden’s Blog.

Gosh, it’s nearly tea time here! The day has flown! We have completed the skeleton of the chore system. We have basic cards with chores and duties, and a description of the duties. Each child will get his or her chore cards (laminated, of course) in the morning. With each chore satisfactorily completed he or she will earn one marble for his/her jar. It should take 2 weeks to fill the jar. Infractions will result in marbles being removed from the jar. When the jar is full, he/she will receive their reward. Our eldest will get a $20 pre-paid card, which she can keep earning on, up to $1000. Our youngest will get a ’special treat’ card, the five year old will get a $10 card, the 10 and 12 year olds will get $15 cards. These will be redeemable on outing day (Saturday), when they may purchase a book, CD, or something from the gift shop of a museum we might visit. They will be responsible for keeping track of the balance on their cards (with help from us, of course). When Jack turns 13 in May, he’ll move up to the pre-paid card as well.

We will also have a “Deeds” jar. I’m not sure I like that name… maybe you all have suggestions? At any rate, this jar will hold gold marbles that are given whenever someone does a kindness, or when they have been complimented in public for good behaviour. When that is full, we’ll have a lovely family treat like a movie out, dinner out, special shopping trip or outing.

Here are the master agenda and the daily agenda that Brian so skillfully designed. Pretty huh? They match my scrapbook papers! I love, love, love the way he laid out my daily agenda page with space for notes and doodling and that neato little section that lays out what each child should be doing for schoolwork! He’s promised to make some blank template ones, too.

I still have to write up procedure sheets for the various chores, etiquette sheets, and that menu rotation. I’m not sure how many weeks rotation I should plan… 6? 8? If I do only four, it’ll get boring fairly quickly and we LOVE variety here.

AND…

I’ve added a handbell to my shopping list. Mrs. Heikkenen was my inspiration for getting one about 9 years ago. I love having a bell to call everyone together. We already have one mounted outdoors for summoning everyone in for meal times and for ringing the Angelus. This one will be rung at meal times and at bed time. Catherine suggested a wooden clapper for mornings. I did find these funny star-shaped ones. They come in sets of 12.

Oh, I’m still tired from yesterday. Today’s task is to formulate the menu rotation and put the finishing touches on the chore system. We are for sure going to need a shopping trip to pick up a few small, critical items such as my timer (this baby has a loud alarm and FLASHING LIGHTS!), magnetic clips for fridge notes, lanyards and more binders.

Pray for me… It’s going to be a killer day.

Of our Home Management Summit 2007.

The Grocery Checklist may still need some tweaking, as will the Medical Information Checklist. The designs need a little fiddling, but the font is reminiscent of Lesley’s lovely papers. If you like them, feel free to save them to your computer and edit at will. I hope these will be useful to you!

With a bit of help from Father Michael again today! The Feast of St. Benedict!

Whew! I’m pooped and we’ve still not plowed through it all! It took all day long to compile the grocery checklist! It is very humbling to see the length of the list of things we keep onhand routinely. We truly are very well off, indeed. I am ashamed that I complain about not having enough sometimes.

Brian has completed the master schedule. Next piece of business is to modify it for each day of the week, then to break out the children’s schedules. I think the Chore System will have to wait until tomorrow.

Next time we do this, we’ll hire a caterer to serve the meals and clean up so that we don’t have to stop!

Happy SPRING! Simple Gifts has a pretty new dress (there are still a few stray threads to snip)! And if you will kindly direct your attention to the right-hand sidebar… See? Right there under the new podcast logo… The all-new, never-before-been-used SIMPLE GIFTS FORUM! I hope it will be a lovely place for us to visit and share ideas! Please be patient with us - we’re very new to the forum thing, at least from an administration point of view. And I still have to load some important info in the Post Box… Please, do register and take some time to introduce yourself on the Front Porch!

Bananas Foster Muffins

This was an experiment for this morning’s breakfast. We were woefully short of breakfast items, so I had a rummage through the cupboards and came up with this muffin recipe! As always, make sure you use organic!

1/2 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. brown sugar
1 egg
1 c. self-rising flour (or 1c. flour plus 1T. baking powder)
1c. old fashioned oats
3 mashed bananas (quite ripe)
1T flax seeds
handful chopped walnuts (or your favorite)

Cream the butter and sugar together, add egg and mashed bananas and blend thoroughly. In a separate bowl combine flour, oats, and flax seed. Stir into sugar mixture with a wooden spoon until just incorporated (never over-mix a muffin!). Drop by large spoonfuls into paper lined muffin tin. Top with nuts. Bake at 400 for 20 minutes.

We ate ours with yogurt on the side. Delish!