It's been a really long time since I posted a time for me post here. Really, it's been way too long and today, I want to share with you something pretty special that I did with the boys today. I confess, it was mostly with Roger because Ben, while watching, was more focused on telling us just how gross this whole thing was. What was it? We made slime! Yep, I taught my children how to make slime. It's much better than the stuff you get for fifty cents and you can make it any color you want. I was asked to share the recipe, but before I do that, I want to show you a couple of pictures...



Roger made green slime and I made mine purple. Next time, I want to experiment with some darker shades. I wasn't sure just how washed out the color would become and as you can see, it's pretty pastel. Now, for the recipe:

Ingredients:
1 tsp Borax powder*
1 c water
4 oz white school glue
4 oz water (1/2 c)
Food coloring of your choice**

1. In a bowl, combine Borax with 1 cup of water and stir until the Borax is completely dissolved.
2. In a zip lock bag, combine the school glue, water and food coloring. The easiest way to do this is to empty a 4oz bottle of glue into the bag and then fill that bottle with water and pour it in.
3. Once the glue and water are thoroughly combined, pour in your Borax solution. The mixture will immediately start to look slimey and goopy.
4. Mix the two together. At some point, you will probably need to reach your hand in and start working it. For me, this is the best part! The more you work it, the more your slime will thicken up.
5. When you're done playing with it, store your bag of slime in the refrigerator. Borax is a natural bug repellent (great for use on carpet to get rid of fleas, by the way!) so you don't have to worry about bugs. If you live in a high mold count area though, it could grow mold. The biggest concern is it drying out, so when you're not playing with it, always keep it in a sealed container. Also food coloring can stain so be careful not to get it onto anything that it could mark.

* Borax is a laundry booster and be found in the laundry aisle. It's a powder and comes in a box.
** If you decide not to add food coloring to your slime, your slime will be white.




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I want to thank everyone who read and commented, though privately, on yesterday's post. I also want to encourage folks to comment here. Don't be afraid. This is a safe zone.

Yesterday, I mentioned the possibility of an upcoming post on being good enough. I've run into this a lot in my life. It started with my very parents. For those that don't know, they dropped me (and my sister) off with my grandparents and from that point on, they had minimal roles in our lives. I spent a lot of years trying to be good enough for them.

Then, one day, I realized I will never be good enough for them. My mother will probably always shriek at me that she wishes I'd never been born and that I ruined her life. My father will probably always be absentee at best. It took me a lot longer to realize that it wasn't my fault. I had done nothing to them other than being born and now you can't blame a baby for coming into the world. It took the parents doing something to make that happen.

In some ways, growing up like this helped to shape me into the people pleaser that I am today. Ask those closest to me and they'd tell you (or I hope they would cuz otherwise I'm about to lie to y'all.) that it's the little things that make me happy. I love to buy or make little things for people just to see them smile. I'm a helper. If someone needs something, it doesn't surprise me when I'm the one who gets that phone call. It's part of who I am to want to make other people happy.

Recently, I went through another round of I'm never going to be good enough for this person and that brought out a whole new reality to me. I don't have to be. I only have to be good enough for me. If there is something about me that this other person doesn't like, barring that it's a serious character flaw, that's not my problem. The only person I have to make happy is me. There are those in my life who accept me just for being who I am.

Yes, I'm goofy. I'm weird. I am a total geek, though some recently doubted my geek cred. (Yes, I'm looking at you, James.) I'm pretty. I can be funny. I can be silly. I can also be serious, quiet and shy. I can talk to total strangers about anything but there are few who I count as my closest friends. People see me as outgoing and rarely see the sometimes scared little girl behind the facade. I'm a people watcher. I'm a people lover. I am a lot of things and perhaps the best thing..I am open. If there are people who cannot accept me for just being all of those things (and more) then that's not my fault. Sometimes people just don't click.

And sometimes..just sometimes...there's a flaw within themselves that doesn't allow them to be open and accepting. That's something they need to work on. I'm not just the girl that most people see when they look at me. I'm not shallow. I have some serious depth. For those who don't want to dive below the surface, that's their loss. For those that do, I promise that it's worth the trouble and I can't wait for the adventure to start. No rolling a 1 with me, I may not be a natural 20 but with bonuses, I'm at least a 17. (Wow, how's that for getting more geek cred..lol)

For those of you out there who still feel not good enough, ask yourself who you're not good enough for. Unless it's yourself, let it go and if you have to, let the person go. It's not easy but it's a journey that's well worth taking.



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It's Thursday and you know what that means! It's time for me! Wow, that sounded egotistical, didn't it? Maybe I should have said it's time for us to do something good for us! Does that sound nicer? If not, well shoot, y'all know what I mean. It's time for all of us to do something nice for ourselves. We need to take care of ourselves because if we don't, we're no good for anyone else.

Today, I'm doing something a little bit different. I'm giving myself a reality check. As some of you may have read over at Welcoming Weight Loss, I've joined this fantastic group called the Mamavation Sistahood. They are some of the most incredible, generous and loving women you will ever meet.

Now, what you may not know is that a few times a year, they select women to become Mamavation Mamas. This is a huge thing! These ladies take trying to lose weight to a whole new level. A few people were encouraging me to apply but honestly, I'm just not ready for that. I was really worried that I was disappointing people by saying no or that maybe they thought I was making excuses. The truth is I'm not ready. This morning, one of their most fabulous mama's, Shelley and I were talking and she said what I'd been saying. She said yeah, you're not ready. This brought some serious mixed feelings. On one hand, I was almost relieved that someone else saw what I was saying. On the other hand it was a big time reality check. Let me explain why.

For a very long time, I had the worse self esteem a woman could have. In fact, I called it negative self esteem because everything I thought about myself was negative. For the past few years, I've been working hard at getting past that. One of the ways I was doing that was by telling myself that I was ok just the way I am. Now, that didn't just mean personality, it meant physically. This morning, suddenly the reality was right in front of my face. I'm not ok just how I am. I'm not. I am a beautiful person but what I have done to my body is not beautiful. It's dangerous. It's scary and it needs to change.

So, what am I doing for me today? I'm exploring this reality check. I'm working on some "assignments" to help me explore how I got to nearly 300 pounds. I'm going to write in my paper journal. Then, I'm going to spend a fun afternoon/evening with my boys. It's Family Reading Night at their school and we're going to go and have a fantastic time!

What are you going to do for you today? Are you going to find time to journal? Paint your nails a delicious new color? Curl up with a favorite movie? Spend some time moving that body to get your sweat on? Make sure you come back and let me know!



*** This post has been copied over to Welcoming Weight Loss ***
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Wow, long time no see on that graphic, huh? I've been a total blog slacker and one of the things I've slacked on is this post. That's pretty crazy since it's a post that I feel so strongly about. Then again, I feel pretty strongly about all of my themes or I wouldn't write them, huh?

Ok, well now that we have that covered, I need to tell you something. Are you ready? Ok, well here it is. I'm sick. Yep, me. I've been battle this for about a week and it finally took me down. However, I may be down but I'm not out. I'm not letting it defeat me or the progress I've been making for my health.

With that in mind, my time for me today is going to last all day because I'm making it my goal today to drink 4-5 water bottles full of water. This is going to take care of me. The water will keep me hydrated and help flush all the ickiness out of my body. Hooray for byebye to ickiness!

So, tell me, how are you going to take care of yourself today? What are you going to do to pamper yourself? Make sure you let me know by blogging about it and then coming back here to leave me a link to come check out! Just like with our Tuesday challenges, if I get a few of you regularly doing these posts, I'll add a linky for you.

I'm off to fill up my water bottle for the first bottle of the day!


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Happy super stressful Thursday, everyone! Ugh. I am so not ready for this weekend's super awesome fantastic wonderful incredible company or the camping trip next week. My house is honestly a disaster and I'm going to be honest and say that it really hurts my feelings when someone isn't even surprised that my house is a mess. I've been accused of being a hoarder. Maybe. It hurts though to hear someone say it with such disdain and without any kind of understanding. Instead, some understanding and acknowledgement of the fact that I've really spend the past year trying to get things under control would really go a long way. I am aware that I have a problem. I am also aware of why I have this problem. Please don't judge me or make me feel bad about it. Feeling bad just encourages the problem.

So, what am I doing to help with all of this? To help me feel better about me? I'm remembering how many boxes there were when I moved in. I'm remembering how many boxes of things have gone back out and the fact that I have a box almost ready to go and another garbage bag 2/3 of the way filled with clothes. Once they're ready, I'll list them and that will be a bit more of out of my house. I'm spending time cuddling my boys and hanging out with them. I'm going to read them another chapter of Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan's Curse. Then, I'm going to come downstairs and see what else I can do tonight to prepare for next week's trip. I'm not going to dwell on the negative but remind myself of the positives.

Wow, what a crazy week this has been. Today was the boys' last day of film camp. They had a great time but boy, were they exhausted by the time we got home at night. Luckily, they actually finished up 2 hours early today so we could be home by about 6pm. Granted, we would have been anyway, but by doing it this way, they had to go grocery shopping with me. mwahahahaha..hehe

So, what did I do today? I knocked things off of my to do list. That's what I did. It gives me great pleasure to be able to cross things off of that list. Plus, I got to spend/enjoy one last day at the library. I love libraries. I love to watch the people there. I love to be surrounded by so many books. It's just such a great atmosphere. Plus, I was lucky enough to snag a couple more really good books off of their free giveaway book carts. Yay! Of course, I can't really start reading any of them until I finish the first Snookie Snackcake (Sookie Stackhouse) book. I still can't make up my mind if I like it or not. It's the weirdest feeling.

Oh well. That's the way it goes, I guess. (Though it's never happened to me before.) I'm off to put a star on my calendar for finishing all 4 bottles of my water today! Yay! If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out our weightloss blog.

Ok, has anyone tried out this new Blogger editor? I switched to it so I could better use my Amazon Associates account but I'm just not sure that I like the actual editor itself. I guess time will tell. Maybe I just need to get used to it.

Anyway, it's Thursday and life still hasn't slowed down. I've already been outside and mowed more of the lawn and worked on catching up on some email and such. There's still laundry in my future and more writing to get done. Whew!

So what am I doing for me? Well, once the kids are in bed tonight, I'm going to curl up on the couch and watch one of my guilty pleasures...Ghost Hunters Academy.  It's just going to be some quiet me time while I ogle enjoy the work of Steve Gonsalves. Knowing me, I'll also be folding laundry at the same time.

Whew, what a day! Ben had an appointment with his orthotist in Grand Rapids so we were gone there for most of the day. We left the house at about 11:35 and didn't get home until after 4. It's an hour drive there, an hour drive back and we were there for at least 2 hours. It's tiring for all of us but it's a necessary evil. I feel bad for Ben though because he's gotten to the age where he realizes he's different. The poor kid sat in the office in tears because he didn't want another pair of afos. He doesn't want to need them. He got an encouraging word from Rex (the orthotist) and was told that there are a ton of kids who need to wear them.

Whew, what a day! I woke up feeling as if I hadn't slept at all. I really don't know what that's about. Then, after puttering around the house a bit, the boys and I loaded up for a trip into Grand Rapids. Ben had an appointment with his neurologist.

Whew! It's Thursday and it's still hot out! I thought the weather was supposed to cool down today. You coulda fooled me! I went outside to throw away some yucky cat litter and the heat smacked me right upside the head and had me scurrying back inside where I can sit in front of my little fan. It doesn't do much good but it's sure better than a boot in the butt!

I bet some of you were wondering if I'm alive out here, huh? Well, I am! In fact, I'm alive and mostly well, even! After an incredibly wonderful week in Canada, I came home to a bit of chaos. The lease here is up at the end of the month and the leasing agent "randomly" decided that he had to do a house inspection before he would renew the lease for us. So, start a few days of mad cleaning and organizing combined with some superduper omg yay company that came to visit from Thursday until Monday. Thank goodness he was here because my darn futon frame decided to crack and I needed some help getting it outside for some lucky freecycler to attempt to repair. We replaced it with a pretty nice couch that we found at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I did the best Time For Me in a long time. Today, I went over to the boys' school and watched them both receive Student of the Month. This is a big deal in their school and for the both of them. I was and am so proud of them. After they got out of school, I took them both to Dairy Queen as a treat and we had an hour or so of just hanging out and enjoying being a family before I took them back to their dad's.

Then, I spent the evening relaxing and crafting while I enjoyed some music on TrainREK radio. Days like this come too few and too far between.

I confess. I did my special time for me yesterday, but that's ok. It doesn't have to be on Thursday, it just has to be done. In this case, I went outside and I laid in my backyard. I closed my eyes and enjoyed the gentle breeze and the scent of Spring in the air. Honestly, I don't think there's anything better. Since someone, at some point planted some gorgeous flowers around the yard, I also snapped some pictures. Ok, the truth is that I laid on the ground, got all dirty and took these photos. Want to know the best part? I had a ball doing it!

Happy Thursday, world. Today is going to be a fairly busy day. I need to bag up some items that are being picked up to go to kids in Haiti. Those will be picked up sometime this afternoon. I also want to run the sweeper on the landing and in the boys room.

None of this sounds like anything for me, right? Well, that's pretty accurate. I do promise I'm going to take some time for me, though. I'm thinking that I'm going to go out and get a bit of a start on the garden and maybe even plant a few seeds to get them going. Oooh, I know! I'll get our strawberries going. Yummy!

What are all of you going to do for you today? Are you going to find some time to pamper yourself?

Woo! It's Thursday and it's been such a great week so far. The boys have been here and while we haven't been super productive, we've had lots of fun together. We've been reading book 1 of the Percy Jackson series and really enjoying it. We've also been catching up on our iCarly watching. We did some cleaning out in the garage and would have done more if the weather hadn't suddenly gone cold and rainy on us.

They don't know it yet, but I'm going to be surprising them on Saturday with a trip to Swede's for lunch. They're going to love it! I love when I can surprise them, even if it's just with little things like some of the most delicious wet burritos in the whole world.

Since today is nearly done, I think my time for me is going to be just sitting back and relaxing and enjoying the rest of my night with the boys. We've decided on spaghetti and garlic bread for dinner and it's time for me to get in that kitchen to make it!

Happy Thursday, all! The weather here is gorgeous and it's hard to stay focused on the things I ought to be doing. I have a living room that is calling my name but so is the sunshine and the lovely breeze coming through my open windows. I think I must be part feline because it makes me want to curl up in the middle of my bed, right in the sunshine and take a nice nap.

I don't know that I will, but I do know I'm going to use another "dose" of the lotion I'm currently trying out to review right here on the blog. I also may try out this new nail polish that I recently got. I wonder if it's a coincidence that the color is Pussy Cat. I don't know but it seems right for today.

Well, I'm off to enjoy the weather! I hope it's just as wonderful where all of my readers are.

Wow! I cannot believe how sleepy I was yesterday. I'm so thrilled that even though I was falling down tired, I still managed to get some stuff done. I did a quick tidy in my bedroom and hauled in the leather chair from the van. Then, I managed to get it upstairs. I still need to get it cleaned up but I'm hoping that will be on the agenda today.

For today, though, I need to take some time for me. The truth is, that's what I'm doing right now. The address to this blog is craftsbykatie and I so rarely post crafting photos because of the circumstances of where I was before these 8 months. Now that I have a nice home (in progress) and The Wall actually has functional crafting space aaaannnnd I got chosen as a Chocolatier for Crop Chocolate, I spent some time doing crafting and now I'm going to show off what I made! I'm seriously considering doing something with my Etsy shop so this is my first step in facing my fears of having someone tell me that my items suck.

Ok, enough chatter. It's time for some photos!


And that's what I've been doing! If I get the chair all cleaned up, that will be all for me! It's going to be part of my reading corner up on the landing. I'm so excited. I can't wait to have another part of the house done!