Friday, March 18, 2011

H2H Challenge - From Your Heart to Ours







This week H2H is hosting their From Your Heart to Ours challenge. This is an opportunity for you to share not only your artwork, but also a little story or information about your artwork and yourself. The theme this week is Home Decor.

Well, short & sweet about me since it's Spring Break here and I have four very busy boys underfoot ... and I can barely get out of the kitchen for five minutes let alone into my scrapbook room! They are eating me out of house and home!

I am a stay at home Mom of 4 wonderful boys. My two youngest boys are twins and both have Autism. They all keep me on my feet and running but I feel so incredibly blessed, constantly, to have such an amazing family and such beautiful and loving boys. They are my life, my inspiration, my motivation and everything in between. God has blessed me greatly and I appreciate every challenge, every opportunity and every triumph with all my heart and soul.

For the challenge this week I will share a "white board" that I made about a year ago for the twins. We constantly focus on the positive around here. I try to always give my attention to whom ever is doing the "right" thing instead of giving negative attention to whomever is not. So if one child is focused on their work and one is not, I don't say, "so and so, please do your work" I say instead, "so and so, I love how you are so focused on your work!" to the child that is, and the one that's not doing what they're suppose to catches on super fast. Clear as mud? I do this with my teenagers too ... and my husband for that matter ;) Anyhow, my little guys, with ASD, are 6 and one of our "maintenance" skills we work on are the days of the week and the months and the weather, and neat printing. So I made this that they write on with dry erase markers. I use the right side to "surprise" them each day with some positive things ... "I am proud of you for sitting nicely", "You impressed me today by using your 5 point scale", "It is wonderful when you clean up on your own" ... You get it I'm sure.

The paper I used was "tinkering" I think ...and I'm sorry, I can't remember the Stamp sets ... it looks like I used 3 sets here. The words and sun were cut out with the Cricut. It's big, over 2 and half feet wide. It was just a quick thing I quickly made up to serve a purpose ... I'm afraid I don't really have anything else that would count as "decor" as I only really make layouts and cards ...

Thanks so very much for looking.

Oh! I completely forgot! I have made something else; although, it is not 100% CTMH ... Is that okay? :)
A good friend of mine sent this message to me by email and it really hit home with me ... so I decided to make it into this, see below, and put it up right where I walk in and out of my laundry room/mud room. It's on an old wooden framed chalk board and it looks really cool! (this is before I stuck it to the board) Gorgeous message isn't it!?!?

6 comments:

Lorrinda said...

I think your write-on board is right ON! And I enjoyed the positive parenting tips too! Nagging just doesn't work for boys (men), but they do love to compete with each other don't they? Thanks for sharing with us at H2H :)

Melinda Everitt said...

Love your write-on board. I also love your positive reminders. My son has Asperger's and my grandson, who lives with us, has autism. This would be a great idea for us to incorporate into our household. Thanks for joining us at H2H this week.

Karen Day said...

Two really great pieces! Your dry erase board is such a super idea - glad you could share them both at H2H this week, Michele!

Melanie said...

oh i love that so adorable

Lisa Stenz said...

Michele, I LOVE your board. What a wonderful way to help your kiddos. It was just confirmed (on Friday) that my 7 year old is on the Autism Spectrum. (Something that I have suspected for a while.) We are just about to start a long journey down the road of finding out what we can do to help him. I really like your board as a positive way to reinforce good behavior and, if you don't mind, I'd love to borrow your idea and make one for my kiddos too.

If you have any suggestions as far as the ASD goes, I'd love to hear them. My email addy is lisa@myctmh.com.

Thanks so much for sharing your wonderful work with us at H2H! *Ü*

Corina said...

Hi Michele,
What a wonderful way to show your boys some love. Positive reinforcement is for everyone!!!
Thanks for sharing with us at H2H!