As I started to think about what to share with you about our week I realized that I have accomplished more than I would have guessed. Happy thought.
First up – I am so excited that I am almost finished the blanket that I’ve been working on since last summer. I’ve grown so fond of it that if I didn’t love Ezra so much I don’t think I could give it up. I’m down to the last half of the last row, and I’m making a goal to have it completed by next Friday!
Secondly, I was able to take a couple of things off my mental to do list by working on projects I’ve wanted to do for months even years.
- A set of bowl cozies for some friends who are in self-isolation – I’ve been wanting to try making these since I first saw them in my Pinterest feed. They’re super easy and fun
- Putting together a prayer list on cards that I can keep stored in a box. I decorated a card for each of my children and tonight I’ll start writing my prayers for them on each card. I still want to do cards for friends, our church, people who are sick, etc.
My younger boys are supposed to be memorizing Hebrews 11 for their children’s church program. Right now we’re not having a children’s church because of social distancing, but I figured we could go ahead with this project. I’ve been printing the verses one at time and putting them on our fridge. Here’s my “aha” moment. I print what I know Jonah can read in green and the rest in black. This encourages him in his reading and to review the verse on his own. So far it’s working well.
This is the particular pattern/instructions I used for the bowl cozies.
I really shouldn’t make these, but I pinned this recipe and want to try it soon.
I’m thinking about doing the Winnie-the-Pooh themed tea party with my youngest son. We’ve always said he’s Winnie-the-Pooh’s twin, and he’s still young enough that he would enjoy this.
So with extra phone calls and texting with family and friends we’ve had a busy, happy week.
What are you doing to add fun into your life these days when the isolation feels like too much? We’re looking for new ideas.
Intentional Simplicity 
Oh, that blanket is so lovely! And I love your idea for putting memory work words in different colors according to reading ability. That’s so smart.
We’ve been finding a lot of fun things to do the last couple weeks. We went back to having a jigsaw puzzle up to work on at all times, which is a nice change for people who might be tired of reading or playing, especially since we’ve had a lot of rainy days. We built a cardboard maze for our hamster, and now the kids are collecting up odds and ends of things to build him a sort of tube maze too. All 5 of us are learning German via DuoLingo.com right now, so it’s been fun to encourage each other with that — I’ve started tossing German words into conversation to see who understands them. And we’ve been using things like Skype to chat with friends and family far away — especially those with kids. We’ve also gone on a lot of walks, which is so good for all involved.
One thing I want to do when the current rainy stretch is over is go decorate the sidewalk and our driveway with encouraging things in sidewalk chalk. SO many people are walking in our neighborhood now, and a Bible verse, a smile, some flowers, etc would be so encouraging for people. Also, I just learned about #rainbowofhope — people putting rainbows anywhere they can to encourage people not to despair in these uncertain times. I want to put a huge rainbow across our driveway with a Bible version, maybe just “Be still and know that I am God,” and then the hashtag.
I’m working on a blog post with lots of links to ideas of things to do during this time of sheltering-in-place, so I’m not going to link to lots here right now, but keep an eye out for that to be finished soon. Maybe even later today, we’ll see.
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I love all those ideas. I look forward to reading your post. I’ve been thinking about using something like DuoLingo to learn a language. Probably Spanish since the kids have a Spanish uncle.
I saw your hamster in his maze. Pets are so amazing in times like this because life just goes on for them. They have no idea the world is upside down.
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