30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge 24

Day Twenty-four:
"And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord." Eph. 6:4

Children can be quite a challenge to the marriage relationship. A wise wife will support her husband's leadership in the home as much as possible, and will praise him for his fathering skills. Negativity makes a man feel like a failure, and may make him to want to give up.

Does your husband discipline your children wisely? Does he show them love and encourage them? Does he take an interest in their activities and dreams? Does he spend time with them? Does he take part in developing their character? Praise him for these important life skills.

If you don't have children - is your husband positive and encouraging around other people's children? Let him know that you have noticed.

If your husband does not experience positive relationships with children, you will needto figure out why. Perhaps he had negative experiences as a child with his own parents, and needs to learn how to respond. Perhaps you can lovingly and patiently show him how to parent - while still maintaining his authority in the home.

30-Day Husband Encouragement Challenge 23

Day Twenty-three:
"Let your speech always be with grace..." Col. 4:6a

You're moving toward the home stretch of your 30-day challenge! Just a reminder of what you've committed: "You can't say anything negative about your husband... to your husband...or to anyone else, about your husband. "Each day, say something that you admire or appreciate
about your husband...to your husband...and to someone else, about your husband! "In all things showing yourself to be a pattern of good works..." Titus 2:7a Does the "30-Day Encouragement Challenge" seem like hard work? Or is it becoming a pleasant exercise in genuine Christ-likeness in your home? You are only scratching the surface of ways to encourage your mate.Is your husband organized? Is he diligent? Is he persistent? These are all related to a pattern of personal disciplines that are worthy of your praise. Affirm him for one or more of these traits that you see in him.

Some men have not developed these qualities because they are naturally more spontaneous. You can praise his spontaneity! Perhaps God has called you alongside to help him with disciplines he has not yet developed - but this does not include nagging. You can keep him organized. Whatever the need, you can be your husband's cheerleader, encouraging him when he wants to give up.

Today... I sewed wool diaper covers (longies)

This is today's project. I have heard so many good things about wool diaper covers that I decided to make some from old sweaters and try them. I went to Value Village with my sister-in-law and bought 4 old sweaters, 2 for her and 2 for me. She was able to make 2 longies and 5 smaller diaper covers. I was able to make 2 longies and 4 diaper covers. We read about these online, it said to "felt" the sweaters before continuing. So we placed each sweater in a pillow case and tied a knot. Threw them in the front loader washer, with a few jeans, mild sun brand powder soap a few drops of Lanolin to help with waterproofing. Turned the cycle on hot, and as long as it goes, at as heavy-dirty setting as I have, to really rough up the sweaters. Then they went in the dryer for a few cycles, and it was perfect for making diaper covers! They were adult women size to start with and young child size when they came out! Definitely looked more like felt now than knit. This helps keep the wetness in and makes for easier laundering later, you don't have to worry so much about "shrinking" them latter LOL. Don't really think its possible at this point.
This is the first one I made. A longie. I started by cutting off the sleeves of the sweater making them square at top, turning one inside out, then putting the right-side-out one inside the wrong-side-out one, just like you make pants, to sew the crotch seam, front to back. Sorry I forgot to take a picture of that one. Then I sewed the feet closed, and added a waistband of elastic. I only rough estimated with all the measurements. It's better to make it a little big, try it on and be able to take it in a little than to make them a little small and it not fit at all.
This is where the sleeve would have been, I just forgot to take a before pic so I folded the longie and put it back where it was. (above)
I cut straight down the middle, top to bottom because it turned out to measure exactly right for me. Then cut straight across to make two little squares. The tan ribbing going to be the waist of the diaper cover.

The two measurements that matter here: around baby's hips, is how wide you want to cut this square (when its open obviously). And with a prefold diaper on, the distance from the baby's belly button, down under crotch, to back. (If you want add 2 inches for elastic waistband.) That in half, is the distance from the tan ribbing to the line straight across the sweater that I cut here. (above)
Then I cut the collar off the sweater, at a curve a few inches away from the tan ribbing. Then cut that in half, making two leg cuffs. Double check the size of baby's thighs here, you can trim off a little if they are way too big. Then I sewed down the side, making it a loop. See how the shoulder of the sweater is a fold, making the other side of the loop.
(above) Then I took the square pieces, sewed a seam down the side. Sew again to reinforce it. And you cant really see by my picture but as I got closer to the waist/ top/tan ribbing I made the seam angle in just by and inch or so to make a slightly smaller waist. If that isn't enough, you can sew elastic waistbands in, or braid a "belt" with yarn and weave it in and out all around the waits. Just look these up on the internet and you'll see lots of example pictures.
(above) I took that seam I just made down the side and "moved it" to the center of my diaper cover, still insideout. then sewed the middle third of the bottom opening, making a crotch of the cover. Then I cut out the leg openings, by making little round cuts up and out from the bottom seam.
Then I turned the leg cuffs right-side-out and placed them inside the cover which is in-side-out, lining up the seams on the leg cuffs with the crotch seam (which goes left to right, the little red line at the bottom of the cover, in the above picture). Then carefully sew around both leg openings, remembering to pull/ keep lots of tension on the material so it will be able to still stretch afterwards.
This is another picture, one for Kailey's baby. Same thing just has longer leg cuffs. I really like this one (above). Looks a little silly, but it is the most practical one we made.
This is a picture of the first 4 I made. Two longies, out of the sleeves of the sweaters, and two regular diaper covers out of the body of the sweater. The cover to the right, I had to use left over strips of the sweater to make the leg cuffs, I just hemmed them and sewed them right in.

I tried the longies on her already and I guess they stay in place better if the legs fit comfortably, not large and baggy. So I'll probably take in the seam down each leg slightly. That and the leg cuffs on the covers are a little small since she was sleeping while we made these, I thought I over estimated, but I'll have to take these out as far as I can, which isn't much, but they'll work or I'll just put them away in storage for later use.

I really like them so far, can't believe how good they work.

Pumpkin Bread

We made so much good food from that one pumpkin. Here is the recipe for the pumpkin bread.


wet ingredients:
2 C pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 C oil
3 C sugar
2/3 C water

dry ingredients:
3 1/2 C flour
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp cloves
2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp allspice

Mix the wet ingredients in one bowl, the dry ingredients in another bowl. Then mix them together. Pour into two greased loaf pans. Bake for 350' for 1 hour.

Pumpkin Cookies

I found this wonderful recipe on Allrecipes.com. It is wonderful. I only swapped out the white flour for wheat flour because I don't have white flour in my house, but you could swap it back if you wanted.

Pumpkin Cookies:

Mix in bowl:
1 C Pumpkin Pured
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1 1/2 C sugar
1/2 C brown sugar

Mix in another bowl:
2 1/2 flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cloves, ground
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt

Mix the two together. Drop by spoonful on cookie sheets. Bake 350' for 15-20 mins.

Recipe has this but they were sweet enough that we didn't need/ want the icing:

Icing:
1 T butter, melted
3 T milk
1 tsp vanilla
2 C powdered sugar

Today...We Cooked Pumpkins (Tuesday)

A good friend of mine gave one of her beautiful pumpkins. We left it outside for the past week or so for decoration, but I noticed that it feels like frost to me outside and we'd better bring it in and cook it up if we were going to get to eat it... yummmy....



So I showed them a different way to cook it, cut it in half. Scoop the seeds out. Peel it, chop it up in to cubes, boil it.
Marcus really enjoyed his job of scooping out the seeds. Which of course we rinsed, dried and are storing for next year's garden. I want to see if they turn out so beautiful for me!
These wonderful boys are growing into such good helpers!! They could do everthing but use the knife to chop them up. They scooped, washed, peeled and cleaned up! I just love noting how much more they can do this year compared to last year :)

So much fun working together, next up I'll tell ya all the yummy things we cooked up from this single wonderful pumpkin.

Today... We raked Leaves (Monday)

David had the day off today and I had no appointments to do with/for the midwife, so we raked leaves today. Lots of fun. The children really enjoyed playing in them more than putting them in the compost pile. David also was smart and threw in "if you help rake a lot of leaves, I'll give you a dollar". That was plenty of motivation for them!!! LOL
The boys thought Victoria would like to play in the pile too, but I think they got a little carried away and almost completely buried her... so I had to explain to them that she probably didn't want to get buried; she probably just liked to play in them :) She was VERY damp from playing in all those cold wet leaves, so I brought her in and gave her a warm bath immediately.