The First of Many Days

School's out and it's time to position ourselves for a long summer.

I dug through the pantry and candy jar this morning and got out all the little bits and pieces of stuff (1/2 bag of mini Oreo's, 1/3 bag of pretzel sticks, some crunched up granola bars, 3 bags of assorted jelly beans and jelly bellies, some left-over sour Skittles, chips, cheese crackers, . . . ) that we have left over from school lunches. I grabbed my big, metal mixing bowl, dumped bag after bag of "stuff" into it, mixed it gently, then dumped it into a Jumbo Ziplic bag.

Voila! Sweet, salty, cheesy and sour snack mix for the summer months and a much cleaner, neater pantry and candy jar, to boot.

While cleaning out the boys' room last week, I used two large decorative bins I purchased at Wal-Mart to use under the bottom bunkbed for sorting toys which, unfortunately, didn't fit when I got them home from the store, to pack away items that we wanted to keep but was unruly in the boys' closet. One whole bin is full of foam shapes and projects. The other has other crafts items that I've purchased over the years for the kids. I've probably invested $200 in crafts stuff for my children.

For some reason, I couldn't get an idea out of my mind last night. I even dreamed about it. We have a foamie blue cross that we bought a couple of years ago for Dane to decorate and give to Grandpa as a Christmas present, but nothing ever became of it. Neither Dane nor I had a vision for the blue cross. Then, I saw a brochure at Michael's with foamie faux stained-glass. We already had EVERYTHING we needed, so I described it to Dane this morning. We got out the cross and all the foam shapes and he designed a beautiful stained-glass cross for Grandpa. If we get some puffy paint from the Craft's Store, coat the cross in it, then insert the foamie pieces per his design, it'll look like the black metal that goes around the edges of stained-glass pieces. We just have to get to the store now and get the puff paint.

Yep! We're off to a great start. Cleaning and crafting, getting ready for Christmas.

I love summer.