This week I have added two new earth muffin behaviors to my life. I mentioned one in my Picks of the Week post: making calcium supplements from egg shells. I added some shell powder to my smoothie today and it worked fine. Hooray for free calcium!

The other is attempting to go microwave-free. Our kitchen is on the smallish side, so keeping the counter top clear is high on my priority list. I'm not particularly paranoid about the microwave like the article, but if there is some truth to the hubbub, then bonus! We've long preferred our toaster oven anyway and decided we would hide the microwave in the laundry room for a month and see if we miss it. So far the biggest irritation is that I don't have a clock in the kitchen now, haha!

We had a nice weekend, chilling indoors during the rain and doing yard work and playing frisbee during the sun breaks. Pulling weeds is so satisfying! My parents were up for the NCAA games and we had a nice lunch with a bunch of family.

Quinn has a tiny little white tooth starting to make an appearance. Poor little thing. She's turned into a drool factory lately. She's also been a major chatterbox. Here's a recent photo of the sweet chickie, we're pretty proud of her forearms :)

Picks of the Week 3.16.12

I haven't done picks of the week in so long! Here's what I found interesting this week:

Make a Weekly Cleaning Routine - Small Notebook

Amazing Uses for Egg Shells - Frugal Granola (has anyone heard of these ideas? I actually am planning to test out the powdered calcium supplement idea)

God Loves Good Wine - Desiring God

My One Bite at a Time project for the week was to reduce the amount of mail that makes it into my house. As a new homeowner, we get a lot of junk mail. We manage our bills with online bill pay. I try to stay on top of the mail, but it's easy to let the pile grow. I need to find a specific landing spot for it. She also mentions not even letting it past your front door - go through the mail outside and throw what you don't need in the recycle bin. She also includes a link to a website where you can enter your address to stop junk mail being sent to you, I definitely signed up for that!

Here's to a productive weekend!

Well, I attempted round two of the doily ball this week. You may recall that the lace version from this past post didn't work out. I decided to try paper doilies this time since the lace ones had all stuck to the balloon when I popped it. I had the perfect crafting environment.

Quinn was contentedly playing with her toy and watching me, Shinobi was lying in a sunbeam in the sunroom, and if you look closely you can see diapers getting bleached by the sun. Perfect!

But, unfortunately the doilies stayed stuck on the balloon again when I popped it. I managed to salvage it, but it looked frightful. I laughed pretty hard at both of these projects, but I couldn't bear to take a photo of them. I guess a lace globe just wasn't meant to be.

Luckily, I came up with an idea for a mobile that I should have done all along. I was tired of wasting money on doilies, so it was nice to be able to make this third mobile from things I already had. I found a bird template from dear Martha to get things started. I traced it onto an old file folder since I didn't have any cardstock. I made three different sizes of the same bird and mixed some red and white acrylic paint that I had to make a nice swirly pink paint. After painting both sides, I assembled the pieces and hung them from white string. Then I found a nice branch from the mystery tree outside my kitchen window for the main structure of the mobile. Jonathan blew up two water balloons for me (my hero - those are tough) and I dunked white thread into glue and wrapped it around the balloons and let them dry. This is what it looks like assembled.

I'm pretty pleased with it and Quinn seems to like it too.

We have some little Spring surprises around our yard. These little guys are popping up all over (I'm talking about the flowers, not the weeds, haha).

And one of our trees is sprouting beautiful blooms. Does anyone know what kind of tree this is?

I'm excited to see what other little treasures pop up this Spring.

I got the rest of the photographs from the Emily Leeds Photography shoot. These three are my favorite, aside from the bunny and bee, of course. Emily was so fun to work with and she really captured the many moods of Quinn.

We had quite a fun week! While cleaning out the utility room, I found this photograph from 1943 of our house:

I wish I could go back in time and meet the people living in it and see how it was decorated! 

Quinn had a check-up with the orthopedist this week. They did an x-ray and her hips are still looking great. Praise the Lord! It feels like that stage of life was forever ago already. She's 21 weeks old today. She also had a playdate with some Varsity House/Azalea House offspring. 

We've been progressing with some house projects. My craft project failed miserably, but at least I had a nice lunch with my dear pal Amber. I was attempting to make this doily globe for Quinn's room. It's a lamp in the tutorial, but I just wanted a nice globe to hang over Quinn's crib and changing table to keep her entertained. I didn't buy nearly enough doilies but tried it anyway. Oops. So we'll see what I scheme up for round two. We met with our friend Kyle the other night to discuss plans for our dining table. He's building a table and bench for us and we're really excited to see how it turns out. I think that will be our first big furniture change. 

On the homemaking front, I've been cooking up dozens of these cookies lately for visitors. It's such an easy recipe and the gluten free aspect allows all of our visitors to partake. Plus, they are scrumptious! My One Bite at a Time project of the week was to downsize my book and magazine collection. Our magazines are pretty under control since the only ones we receive are the monthly publications from Voice of the Martyrs, but I did tidy them up in a little standing folder box. Our books are a little out of control, but we have analyzed our collection over and over, and even more so right before we moved, so I think we are at our resting spot.

Jonathan's birthday was yesterday and he celebrated by having a bunch of guys over for food and Dominion. It's a really fun board game, definitely worth looking in to if you haven't heard of it. And we're set for another busy and fun weekend!