Goodbye - Hello!

You can find me over on my new blog - The Full Circle Mother.



Why the new blog? I wanted something personal to record the happenings of our family, but I still wanted to keep the blog for my business as well. So I created The Cloth Diaper Blog and The Baby Wearing Blog to help educate and inform on those topics. Links to both are over on the Full Circle Mother now. See you there!



xo~Lisa

aka - the Full Circle Mother

Going Batty

Austin is just the coolest city - really. Lucky for me, it's only a short 40 minute drive. This weekend we packed up the girls one evening and headed that way to view something we've never seen before. See these people hanging around the Congress Street bridge?

As dusk approaches that same bridge starts to look more like this-

And below the bridge looks alot like this -

There's one of my twins watching..... and here's two more of my girls watching....

Finally, around 8:30pm or so what everyone has been watching and waiting for finally happens! The largest Urban Bat population takes flight out from under the Congress Street bridge! First, one little bat flys out, then a couple more, then over 1.5 million bats follow....amazing. We sat and listened to them squeak "talk" to each other for almost an hour before they took flight into the night sky. Such a neat summer evening. The exodus apparently can last about 45 minutes. We watched for awhile and the girls thought it was very neat.

This is what my camera was able to capture of them flying over our head.

Obviously, I need a much better camera to capture the millions of bats leaving their home!

If you look carefully, you can see a few of them here -

Amy's Ice Cream was the perfect ending to our summer night out in Austin. If you ever go, I recommend the Mexican Vanilla milkshake. It's rub your tummy good!

~Lisa

Sum-Sum-Summer Time

Those lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer are upon us. It is H-O-T! Hurricane Dolly is heading toward us today and I do hope she brings lots of rain with her. Our grass is dying from the heat and the garden has whilted.



However, the garden experiment took off with flying colors and encouraged us to try again with more plantings next year. We hope to bring in many more fresh veggies that have been home grown in the future. The book "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" inspired me greatly and opened my eyes to many things I didn't know about our food sources. My oldest reads food labels more than I do now and won't let anything with "high fructose corn syrup" enter the house! Homemade ice cream has become a staple now instead of purchased and we are getting really good at it. This recipe was a favorite and one that needs repeating! You just can't beat ice cream made with raw milk and cream.....it is so yummy and healthy.



We just returned from a trip to Dallas to visit family, attend the LLL of TX conference and (most important to the girls) go to the American Girl Store. Fun for all! As I unpacked the past few days and caught up the store, I realized how much the store needed to be updated. That was done today along with plenty of reordering of products.



BumGenius 3.0 is our best selling diaper and obviously a favorite among many families. I have a hard time keeping it in stock and if I forget to reorder one week, then it unfortunately becomes a back ordered item. So, I've bumped up the inventory on this again and hope to reach really good stock levels to keep this from happening in the future. We'll be rolling in the diapers once more very soon! Boxes of cotton prefolds arrived this week and are waiting to be unpacked. These are really big boxes and heavy. There is something about the smell of new prefolds being unpacked though - very earthy.



Some other shop updates - I've put a few items in the Clearance section to make room in my storage area. So there are some really good deals there if you haven't looked lately! Also, Zolowear Slings are on sale this month and Baby Legs. There are some fun summer prints for Baby Legs and it's a good time to stock up for the Fall when they are on sale - right? :)



I'll try to not be so invisible the rest of the summer. I'm actually thinking of starting another blog that would be more personal and keep this one for the shop updates - still just thinking on that though. Off to paint the spare bedroom - what better things to do in the summer than to paint inside!



~Lisa

Baby UP!

The Japanese Tea Gardens have reopened in San Antonio - just 30-40 min from our town of New Braunfels. The girls and I took Grandma there this Spring to view the wonderful flowers and waterfall. It's a little scary with a 1 1/2 yr old trying to navigate the many steps but the key was to just keep her up in the Beco!

Most of those who know me, know I'm a huge baby wearing fan and will wear my daughter most anywhere. I prefer having her on me than in the shopping cart or stroller. She's getting quite heavy though (she did enter the world at 10.3 lbs!) and at 17 months I'm sure she is closing in on the 30 lbs mark. I need to weigh her soon.... The Beco has been the best investment I've made. It's a soft structured baby carrier and oh so pretty! Dear Jeff even wore Miss Abbey on his back while hiking up (or was it down) the Enchanted Rock in Frederickburg, TX. I think I was the lucky one who wore her going up!!! Talk about a work out... It makes me sweat just thinking about doing that again. The Beco uses both shoulders and a nice padded waist strap to support the weight of the child. When you aren't using it or your child wants down, it folds up nicely around your waist and is secured with a strap (looks like a fanny pack at this point) so you don't end up carrying it around all day. Of course, I like the pretty prints it comes in too. We are working on adding this to our store since I'm such a huge fan of the product. The Beco company is small, but growing so hopefully we'll be an approved retailer soon. In the meantime, I know another wonderful company that carries them - Cotton Babies. As a retailer for their BumGenius! One Size Diapers, I can vouch for their supreme customer service and they usually have a nice selection of products to choose from.

Where will you wear your baby today? Leave me a comment and let me know the most unusual place you've worn your baby and what kind of carrier you use most!

xo Lisa

This just in....

Something fun! We're participating in the Baby Legs "Sew Golden" event which will run June 1st - July 15th. Every pair of Baby Legs is sewn with a golden overlock stitch to prevent raveling and enhance durability. During the event period, all packages of Baby Legs will be stuffed with prizes!!! Prizes include Buy 1 Get 1 Free coupons, coupons for free products from various children's companies and the grand prize of a trip to Seattle! Who coupldn't use a trip to the "Sleepless" city??? There are some super cute new prints out as well and they will be in our store soon. Names like Popsicle, Sweet Pea (that's in the pic above), Sherbet and more are on their way to us.

Watch our homepage at http://www.fullcirclebaby.com/ for the start of the Baby Legs event! Maybe one of my customers will win the grand prize! How exciting..... but you'll take me with you to Seattle won't you??? ;)

~Lisa

Permission to breathe

Days are passing into months and months into years. Is it too cliche to say "time flys"? I've thrown myself head, foot and tail into homeschooling my three oldest girls and we have been busy. Good busy though. Thus, my lack of posting on such important topics (see below)!

One day this week (I believe it was Monday), I gave us a permission to breathe day. There was filing to do, bills to pay, laundry to wash & fold (yes, put away too), and just general "stuff" that has been piling up. Feeling a bit swamped, I decided to take a day to take care of it all. What a blessing that was too. With it all out of the way, we were free again to plunge into schooling and life (thus creating more piles - but that's okay).

Is this not the cutest, most inventive thing you've seen in a long time?? Allie's been testing it out for us to see if it's something we should add to the store. She's given it her thumbs up so keep watch out for a listing in the store soon!
The weather is turning very warm here in South Texas (I think it's actually 95 today). Time to head to the wading pool..... the ducks are calling (at least my 3 year old thinks they are!). Quack!

~Lisa

On the horizon...

Many things to get to today, but I have a to-do list for this blog as well! Coming soon I want to write about the "greenest" way to cloth diaper. This came about after viewing this segment on Good Morning America by Dr. Greene himself.

Also on the list, a want to try and get a video up on how to wash wool. I get this question over and over again. I know it seems intimidating to wash wool for the first time, but it's really easy.
I've never attempted video online though so please bear with me on this one! I'd love to get up a video of one of our cloth diapering consultations as well. But let me start small first!

I just installed (okay - Jeff did it) Photoshop Elements 6 on the computer in attempts to start keeping my pics organized and hopefully make some cute digital scrapbooking pages. There's no way I have time to pull out supplies and pictures to scrapbook by hand, so this digital scrapbooking might actually be something I can do. Plus, it will be so cool to edit pictures for our website. The book says it can even edit out wrinkles....very cool.

What else? Maybe some peeks at homeschooling, new books I'm trying to read and some crafts we've finished. We're trying to plan a vacation for this Spring too. I'm torn between visiting family and an educational trip (D.C. and Williamsburg, VA) vs. a trip to the coast in a beach house for week. Okay - so maybe I'm really not that torn.... ;).

Happy Weekend!
~xo, Lisa

Dying Wool

So what was cooking in that pot in the previous post? Wool of course! "What?", you say? Yes, we were dying wool on the stove. Wool is an animal fiber and takes dye nicely. Kool aid dying is a favorite method to change the color of wool and very easy to do.

First, pick your colors. There are many websites/blogs that will give you good visuals on the colors that each "flavor" of kool aid produce. You will need several packets - depending on the amount of wool you will be dying in each batch. If you want a lighter color, then use less - use more for darker colors. If you want a tie dye effect - use less and see what fun project turns up!

Gather your materials: wool (fabric or yarn), kool aid packets, big pot, and spoon.

Wet the wool in the sink in lukewarm water while you dissolve the kool aid in the pot. Put a few cups of lukewarm water in the pot to mix with your kool aid packets. When the kool aid is dissolved, add more water (you will want enough to cover the wool once it is in the pot). Add the wet wool to the kool aid mixture in the pot. Set the pot on the stove and turn on high (like you were going to boil it). As the mixture heats, be sure to stir often and turn the wool around. You will notice the wool taking color and the water in the pot will turn clear. When the water is completely clear (this usually happens before the water actually boils), turn off the stove and remove the pot from the heat. Let cool. Do not remove the wool from the pot until the water is cool - room temperature cool. Once cool, take the wool from the pot and rinse it under luke warm water. You can wash the wool at this point with some wool wash too. We like to use Sudzndudz liquid wool wash. Squeeze the excess water from the wool and lay flat to dry on a towel or rack.

Viola! You've just dyed wool with kool aid! Perk - your kitchen gets to smell like pink lemonade or maybe kiwi strawberry! :) Oh, what fun project will you create with your new wool? Diaper covers? Wool pants for a little one?

Here's a stack of wool we dyed:

(top pink lemonade, middle grape, bottom was a mixture of black cherry, strawberry and pink lemonade)

Some yoga baby pants I made for our Sweetness - perfect for winter diapering and bedtimes:

I like this pattern but next time I might size it down as the pants came out a little larger than the size chart suggested.

I should be catching up on my bookkeeping, but this was so much fun I wanted to share it with you!

~Lisa