You're doing so well! We, too, have family meetings whenever we have a problem, and I'm always amazed and impressed at how much ownership the children take when we come together as a team to problem-solve. Their solutions are rarely exactly the ones that I would choose for them, but we do always manage to come to a consensus, and because the children were active participants in the process, the solutions generally work better than ones that I would have tried to simply instill.

One thing we do that I think also encourages the kids to take risks in their solutions is that we also always schedule another family meeting in one week to revisit the issue. If there's a solution that's being proposed that not everyone agrees with, it's easy to agree that we'll try it for a week. If it's horrible, well, it was only a week, and if it's great--then yay!

Welcome back home, Bhakti! My most special, favorite cat was lost for two months a couple of years ago. We'd left for vacation, she'd gotten trapped in a bathroom and then jumped out of a poorly-secured window to escape, and our cat-sitter friend just assumed that she was shy, so she had been missing for two weeks by the time we noticed! I was terribly sad for the entire time she was gone, not knowing what had happened to her. Finally, someone who lived less than a mile away contacted us, thanks to a giant yard sign that I'd made, to tell us that his neighborhood had been feeding a cat like her. We drove over there, I got out of the car to call for her, and before I could even finish shouting her name the first time out she bounded from the bushes! It's the best feeling in the world when they come home!

I sew a lot, and when I saw that photo of the mug rug, I thought, "Oh, that is so beautiful! I want to make something like that!"

My daughter absolutely treasures her handprint, and she loves the sculpture that she made, too.

I'm kind of into this idea these days using vintage sheets, too. I really like the look of mismatched, busy (but sorta coordinating) bedding, and vintage sheets are GREAT for that.