Living Life On Purpose!

I have a goal, I want to be a stay-at-home mom. I want to volunteer in my kids' classrooms or in the community. I want to go eat lunch with my kids on their birthdays or just because. I want to help my husband more with FCA. In order to do these things I need to be at home, although right now I love daycare and thank God for the opportunity, it limits me with my own family. And my daycare kids are really starting to hold a little place in my heart, so I'm going to stick with this profession until they are all in school. But once they are gone I'll have a decision to make, go back to teaching to have an income or get things figured out so I can stay at home without an income! I've already started buying the large majority of my family's clothes from consignment stores. And we hardly ever eat out. Now on to some more ways to save! I've decided to make my own dryer sheets, laundry soap, and hand soap refill.

DIY Dryer Sheets: Bottle of liquid fabric softner and white washcloths!
Put the washcloth in a small bowl and pour a capful of fabric softner over. Let it soak for a little bit then hang to dry! Super easy!!! I've been doing this for months now and still have lots of my bottle left. Make 2-4 of these to have handy. Once you notice the clothes aren't as soft wash the cloth and repeat!

 Here is the blog I got this idea from. I have been very satisfied with the results. DIY Dryer Sheets


DIY Hand Soap refill: Dishwasher soap and hot water!
Put about 1/2-1 inch of the dishwasher soap into a foaming hand soap container. Then turn the hot water on low and pour in. Leave a little room at the top to put the top back on. Slowly turn to mix! Worked great!! I've read that you could also use body wash or shampoo.

Finished product! I think I may have added a little too much dish soap this time around because mine is super sudsy! So next time I'll use a little less.

The dish soap I used, I like the idea of using a hand rejuvenating brand. I can't stand dry skin and I wash my hands a lot with little ones around!

DIY Laundry Soap: I haven't made this one yet since my bottle of Tide Sport isn't gone yet. I'm going to give it a try next week though!! Here is the blog where I found the idea. From what she has posted and people have commented it looks legit!! I'm excited to give it a try! DIY Laundry Soap

 

Preschool: Letter C

Since I don't have a printer at home and live in a small town where the library hours are not very convenient (I'm not about to take all the daycare kiddos into the library, not that brave yet!). I've decided to make tracing pages. This is also nice because the parents get to see what we work on every day/week. 

Sorry, couldn't figure out how to turn this one. But I changed up the tracing page a little so they have some independent letter practice.

Our letter C cloud! I cut out the C on some blue paper then the kids glued the cotton balls on. I didn't have enough cotton balls so I tore mine up, I think it may even look better than the perfect cylinder cotton balls glued on. We used a glue bottle for this project, I think it holds cotton balls on better.

Our C art page. Wish I would have been thinking ahead and checked this book out from the library! Next year ;) I wrote the words and the Husker N. Then the kids followed directions for coloring it. First I had them color the N red. This allowed me to check that they knew their colors and could pick out which color I stated. Then drew green lines on the bottom half of the paper, I did it first while they watched so they could draw the lines in the correct area and direction. Then drew some squiggles for leaves and added some yellow ovals at the top and around the leaves. A lot of them just colored in where they had spaces by their leaves, but it still looked good. Each kiddo had to write their name by themselves on the paper too! Can't believe how good they are getting already!!

Preschool: Letter B

Our letter B bumble bees! I cut the B out for them and the wings, then took a long strip of black paper the same width as my letter B and cut a bunch of little strips. The kiddos glued everything on.

Our fun Bb activity! I blew up a bunch of balloons and wrote "Bb" and "balloon" on them. Also the kids' names so they could take one home. They had a blast with this for days!