The Crocheting Mom

I love the series of "If You Give A...." books.  Whenever I was teaching in a classroom, I always knew these would be a hit with all the children.  I decided I would make a parody of these stories and had a lot of fun creating it.  

I'm not huge into writing up recipes mainly because there are so many out there written by people who cook for a living, and also, because I don't usually use exact measurements when I cook for my family.  This meatloaf is a game changer though, and I wanted to share it with the world. This meatloaf is loved by everyone in my family, and has been one of the go to meals for many years now.  I think I saw a recipe online a few years ago, that spurred the recipe that I use now.  The secret ingredient:

My daughter is almost 9 years old, going on to a 13 year old.  I swear she's already acting like a tween.  Besides her attitute, the fact that she loves sports, and that she's already developing her taste in music, she also gets caught up in the "it" thing, the current Fad if you will. Right now she loves all things IU (Indiana University - since we live in the college town), Minions and Emoji's.

If you are looking for a place to travel to with your kids, and you even remotely close to Indianapolis, I highly suggest you make a trip to the Indianapolis Children's Museum.  It is over 400,000 square feet and spread out over 29 acres.   It is THE largest children's museum in the world.

Anyone who works with yarn know that there are a couple of ways to use it.  You can either take it from the middle of the skein and hope it doesn't get all twisted when you get to the end, or you can roll it in a ball to start, and hope that the ball doesn't roll all over the pace. To help you with the latter, I've designed a yarn holder that you can use to keep the ball in one spot.  There are some cute ones out there made of clay and such that you can buy, but a true crocheter likes to use what they have.  This is a yarn ball holder, made of yarn!

For the past couple of years, the Easter Bunny has brought my children little flower pots.  Each year my children hope that they will get them again.  They really have fun with the process of planting, caring for, and watching their flowers grow. The Easter Bunny finds these particular starter pots  which are only a couple inches high, at Target in the dollar section.  The Easter Bunny loves target for filling easter baskets!  LOL

I finally got a goodie box!  I have been commenting on their Facebook page for a couple months, and I finally lucked out and got one sent to me.  They said it would be about 3-4 weeks before I got it, which was fine by me, because I actually won one!  I feel like it took a while, but in all reality, a couple of weeks isn't that long. Anyways, it came in the mail the other day, and it was like Christmas morning for me, checking it all out, excited about trying everything, all the while swatting away my children who were trying to grab it all from me.  LOL.

When you think of summer you think of 4th of July, the cookouts, fireworks and good food are something to be remembered.  This year, why don't you add a little bit of crochet to those amazing memories with one of these amazing patriotic items!

I've used Craftsy for years to buy and sell my patterns .  I always knew there was another feature to it, but had never really looked into it.  There's a huge part of Craftsy , where you can find classes, in video form, for so many different mediums.  There are classes for crocheting (of course), knitting, cooking, quilting, jewelry making, photography, wood work and more!  Seriously, there are so many classes here, that you are bound to find a few that you are interested in!

I started blogging way back in 2014.  January of 2014!  So it's been a while.  When I first started, my husband kept telling me little tidbits of what he was reading here and there about blogging, but for some reason, it went in one ear and out the other.  I basically just wrote about my kids and what was going on in my life.  I did it pretty regularly for the first few months, and then I faded off doing only a few here and there.  In 2015, and 2016 I probably only did a handful of posts.  I wasn't seeing much come out of the blog, so I wasn't as motivated. Then in February of this year, for some reason I started to look into it again.  I wrote a few posts, did some research, wrote a few more and did some more research.  Then, all of a sudden it clicked.  After reading through lots of articles about blogging, and reading LOTS of books ( I'll write about my favorites in another post), I was finally starting to get the hang of this bl...

My 8 year old daughter LOVES to play games.  It started way back when she was younger with memory.  A great game for her, because she found something she can always beat Mommy at!  She was drawn to most games, naturally because her parents are also very competitive. Board games, card games, mental games (I spy...) and physical games (basketball) were all fair game for games.  Lately, she really enjoys playing card games though.  Maybe it's because she's realized that I will say yes more often than not to card games, because I love them as well.  Playing cards reminds me of when I used to sit and play double solitaire and cribbage with my Grandfather.  So when she asks, it's usually a YES of course!

One of my regular posts now is going to be a list of fun crochet patterns for different holidays.  I did it for Mother's Day, so of course, I have to do it for Father's Day too! That being said, do you know how hard it is to find crocheted things that a guy would actually want?  It's hard.  I mean, yes, they would probably go for hats and scarves, but not in JUNE!!!  So after digging for a while, I think I came up with a pretty good list.  I know not all Father's may go for these, but I think they are pretty cool, so here they are.  The 7 coolest items to make Dad for Father's Day, and where to find their patterns! Bonus: All but one of the patterns are free!!!!

As a fellow parent, we all get lost in the monotonous daily chores and routines.  Even if your not a parent, sometimes days will go by before you even realize it's the next month.  We get so busy with our lives, and our children, that sometimes we forget about taking care of ourselves.  It's just as important to make sure that YOU are taking care of, even if its just for 15 minutes at a time.  I realize that even 15 extra minutes can be hard to find in your day sometime, but for your own self satisfaction, I urge you to find it.