Today…

Outside my window: it’s a pretty basic August day – in the 80’s with some wind but mostly just more blue skies. I’ll take it.

This weekend we: took the kids to a local playground for a picnic with some friends from my meetup.com group. The weather was beautiful despite some strong winds and there was lots of good food and company. We also took another bike ride and of course lots of errands were run. We bought fabric to make some new cloth grocery bags an also a new purse for me since I have this idea in my mind for a new bag but haven’t seen exactly what I want in stores for a price I’m willing to pay. The fabric is very pretty – I think it will come out nice.

I also: made BB try on a Halloween costume that my cousin sent over to see if it fits her. It fits perfectly right now which means if she has a growth spurt between now and Halloween it may be too small, but we’ll see. She looks really cute in her little kitty costume but I also think a Minnie Mouse costume would be cute since her brother wants to be Mickey Mouse. Lots of possible ideas for sure.

I am reading: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows and I’m now about halfway through it already and just in love. Like if I could sit and read it all day, I’d seriously consider it – such a good book, I highly recommend it! It amazes me how funny and heart warming a book about post world war 2 can be but it really is a great, fun read and one of the better written books I’ve read in a long time.

This morning: MM and I made a daily schedule chart. My mother in law was talking to Dan last night about potty training and mentioned that some of the moms she knows whose kids potty trained more easily were on a stricter schedule and I decided to give it a try. Why not, right? I also thought MM would enjoy the structure and he’s very interested right now in times and when we do what – and also loves charts. I made a basic spreadsheet with times listed and lots of space to list what happens at each time – and then I made magnets with pictures of things we do during the day like lunch, brush teeth, bathroom, check the mail, etc. I wanted to be able to move the pictures so that we have some flexibility each day. I think it will work out okay, but we’ll see.

Some other links I think you should click:

• Simple Kids had this great post on goal setting charts recently and since reading it we’ve been chart making fiends around these parts. We’re trying a potty chart right now and I’ll let you know how that goes in a couple weeks.
• The little kid in me is infatuated with these doll house bookshelves featured at ohdeedoh. I love the idea of letting your furniture serve multiple purposes and these are just super cute!
• Did you see this post at Kottke.org about redesigning the US dollar bills? At first I was not very enthusiastic about this design but the more I looked through it, the more I actually kind of loved it. I really like the functionality of the design and I think the overall thing is just fun and very modern. I’d love to see something like this implemented someday.
• If I had a wordpress.org blog still I would be seriously tempted to try out this new theme Typominima – but honestly what theme am I not tempted to try out? It is really cute though – check it out!
• Mckmama just wrote this beautiful post about camping and living life to the fullest and how we only have one life to live… and … and ….and you have to read it right now!
• Another fun post at ohdeedoh – check out these adorable free printable sewing cards. I might try these out with MM although the idea of letting him hold a needle (even a plastic one) still makes me a little nervous. So cute though!

One last picture to share before I go: I love this sweet picture of Baby Blueberry with her daddy at the picnic we went to. I especially love that it shows off the hubby’s new beard which I may have mentioned once or twice. We’re big fans of the beard.