My Latest: Wool, Chickens, Crayons, and our New House

I've been too busy these past two weeks! Kid activities, packing, etsy orders, mortgage paperwork, schoolwork, impromptu house showings--I am definitely feeling the stress. I've managed to keep the kids fed, learning their math, and on time to extracurriculars with the correct gear on (that last one JUST barely...), but in the rare times when I don't *have* to do something, I've found myself just sort of zoning out for a minute to rest my brain. Otherwise, even when I'm working on something else, my brain is doing stuff like trying to figure out where the record player cabinet will go in the new house, or the mint bed, or when we should go mattress shopping.

I was running in so many directions last week, in particular, that I didn't even think to show you the other writing that I've been doing, so this week you get a two-week update in my paid writing! It's kind of silly, too, because along with sales from my pumpkin+bear etsy shop, my outside writing is THE way that I earn the money that I use to buy birthday presents and pay for tennis lessons and field trips, etc., so failing to promote it is not in my best interests. The sites for which I write earn money from advertisements on the site, and the money that we writers earn is based on how many people have been exposed to those ads--i.e. pageviews. So if you like what I do and want to help me pay for postcards at Cahokia and the limestone carving class that Will wants to take, all you have to do is click through to read the following posts

a write-up of the felted wool egg cozies from So Jane

a round-up of felted wool sweater crafts

an essay about urban chickens

a round-up of upcycled projects for the home

and a tutorial for recycled crayons

We close on our new house at the end of the week, so we get to start moving this weekend! I'm hoping we can camp out on the floor of our new house one night, perhaps to go the drive-in, perhaps start getting some of the DIY projects going and schedule the work that we need to have others do for us. I'd like to get the kitchen stocked a bit so that I can feed the kids if we spend an afternoon there, and we have many, many plants languishing in temporary pots that would like to get settled into their new garden beds.

This time, I am going to be VERY thoughtful about where I put the mint, which we do rely on, but geez louise, not as much as it seems to think we do! How on earth do you keep mint from taking over every single other living non-mint piece of greenery, anyway?