We don't get over to the city very often, but the Exploratorium has a free admission day once a month. So the kids and I headed over this week for a break from book work.

I enjoyed watching the kids discover things together:

We then ventured over to Fisherman's Wharf and decided to tour the USS Pampanito. I think Kelsey really liked it:

Right next to the entrance for the USS Pampanito, we found a building with antique arcade games. The kids tried to beat the arm wrestler guy:

If you find yourself at Fisherman's Wharf and get your food from one of the sidewalk cafes, cover the food while you go to look for somewhere to sit. We lost half of our fish!

Our next stop was Lombard Street. We parked at the top, walked down along the curvy road, then walked back up. That was one hard walk back up!

Coit Tower was our last stop in the city:

We didn't go up in the tower, but we did enjoy the view before we headed home:

I had read somewhere on the internet this week that Wednesday was Chocolate Cake Day. Matthew thought we should just make brownies to celebrate, but Kelsey really wanted to make a chocolate cake. So we found a recipe in the Family Fun Cookbook and I let her do most of the work herself.

Enjoy the pictures of her work:

...Get a Disney Day!!

I don't know if you have heard about this promotion, but Disney is giving people a ticket to Disneyland or Disney World for volunteer service this year. There are some requirements which you can find at their web site here.

Initially, we tried to sign up to make Valentine's for the troops overseas, but they already had enough people for this project. The web site encourages you to check back since more services opportunities are being added.

Well, I did check back and found a service project which has each volunteer make blankets to be donated to children in need. The kids and I bought some fleece today so they could do their share of the project. They put in a movie and started making knots:

It was the perfect way to spend a stormy California afternoon!

Have you ever rediscovered an old hobby that you used to really enjoy? Years ago, I did a lot of counted cross stitch projects. Not sure when I actually learned to do this craft, but I loved using waste cloth to cross stitch little designs on onesies for baby shower gifts.

Just this week, Kelsey expressed an interest in learning how to cross stitch. She first did cross stitch on some gingham to get the hang of it, then we moved onto an actual pattern. Here is her finished project:

Not sure what we will do with it yet, but it has inspired me to finish some projects that have been sitting around here for some time now:

Here is a picture of what the kitchen looked like before we got started on this project:

The contrast between the bare wood and the stain:

And all of the indoor cabinets are stained:

Now, Kev and Matthew have been sanding all of the doors, getting them ready to be stained. The indoor cabinets still need to be varnished, but at least most of my kitchen items are back in the kitchen cabinets. The kitchen already is taking on a warm and cozy look with the cabinets being stained instead of being painted. Not long now and I will have a new kitchen!

I like to work on sewing projects and have accumulated quite a bit of fabric over the years. A couple of years ago, Kev put an additional shelf in the hall closet for me to help with storing some of the fabric:

With all the sewing that I do, I have a lot of scrap material that I haven't ever taken the time to organize:

I have been wanting to have strips and blocks already cut in organized containers, but haven't started on it until today:

By taking a little bit of extra time while cutting out material for projects, I want to cut strips and blocks with any extra material and place them in the containers. Then if I have a project come up that I can use some of these already cut up pieces, it will actually save me time down the road.

...on the kitchen project! All the blue and white paint have been removed and now work is being made on the sanding...

This has made things rather interesting in trying to find things to make meals since most of my kitchen items are scattered...

I am just thankful that Kev has spent so much time working to make the kitchen nice for me!

What do you do when your husband is given the week off after Christmas and you can't afford to go away??? You work on an unfinished household project!

When we moved into this house, the kitchen cabinets had all been painted white. I didn't really care for it, but we decided to start working on them later. After a couple of years, we decided to paint them blue, but we didn't prep properly and the blue paint started coming off. So the project sat for a very long time...until yesterday.

Here is what the kitchen looked like before we started:

After two days of work, here is where we are now:

The project is going to take a lot more work, but it should be really nice once it is all done!

My parents sent us the neatest Christmas gift this year. In a box, we received four blank composition books and a box with a large amount of slips of paper with questions on them. You can read all about this idea here.

We decided to personalize our composition books and here is what we came up with:

Our first question from the box was "What is your favorite book? What do books mean to you?"

I am looking forward to all the questions and reading back through the answers in the years to come.

While browsing the Lion Brand web site the other day, I found this really cute knitted sweater garland pattern.  I made one of the sweaters with some scrap homespun that I had, but I thought the sweaters would be much cuter if they were a little smaller. So I used some Red Heart Super Saver yarn with smaller needles and come up with this:

And I am going to give this away to one lucky reader. It could just be you!!

If you would like to win this garland, please leave a comment on this blog post. Tell me about your favorite Christmas decoration and leave your e-mail address so I can contact you if you win! I will let one of my kids draw the name of the lucky winner on Friday, December 18th.