Organizing, Needlefelting, and an App…

First of all – how creepy is this plant! It’s called “Living Stones” and I can’t stop looking at it and being grossed out. Of course I bought it – it gives me the shivers!

 

Simple organizing…I took two mushroom cans, cleaned them, covered them with double-stick tape and some scrapbooking paper. They rest nicely in my medicine cabinet…all clean and cheerful in the mornings!

A started snowman. I was going to make something else but when it didn’t turn out a snowman was born. I think it’s funny that the first snowman I made took hours and this much bigger snowman takes me a fraction of the time. Practice, practice, practice!

A started bird…the reddish color on both of these is made from Kool-Aide. I can’t even remember all the colors I used. I went into a dyeing frenzy last week and dyed a good half pound of roving. And I’m not thrilled with the results but am determined to use it up anyways! I have to say the color is starting to grow on me and was one of the better results…

OK now for the app. I spent HOURS on this last week. Having a child with special needs is time consuming. Not in a bad way. The time consuming aspect came into play for me when I wanted an app to use on her iPod Touch that would break down tasks and keep Abby on track while working. For instance if I tell Abby to clean the front entry I never know what to expect. To Abby that is a huge job! There’s shoes, coats and mittens everywhere! Seems simple to me because I know what to do…Abby just sees a big mess and where to start? Then what’s next?

There are many fabulous apps out there for kids with special needs, especially for kids on the autistic spectrum. But they can cost big bucks and there is no guarantee that they will even work for your child. Every child is so different! What works beautifully for one may not for another. So after cruising the autistic websites for a few hours I had a good idea of what I wanted. And I think I found it in this app – Note It Do It

This is a free app kinda like Evernote or OneNote.  After installing this app I very quickly cleaned the front entry and took pictures of the entire process so I could record the steps. Please excuse my pictures…geez this is almost embarrassing…but this is what I ended up with- and what it looks like on the iPod touch screen -

 

 

Part of the beauty of this app is that I can email the list to Abby. Abby has a tendency to mess around with her iPod. Her fingers get busy! She can delete things almost faster than I can enter them. Well, she can delete this list all she wants, cause I can keep sending it to her! lol! And, I can install this on her touch and I believe I can password protect it. I can’t remember exactly right now, I looked at so many different apps…I still want to try OneNote…it seems pretty awesome but to be able to share the notes you have to be able to get into “the cloud” and I have an earlier version of Windows Live Essentials installed on my computer. Have to uninstall and reinstall. And that kind of stuff scares me. Why in the heck they can’t just offer an “upgrade” I don’t know…or maybe they do and I haven’t found it yet. Sometimes all this stuff makes me feel stupid. But there are some wonderful tools out there that as a parent of a special needs child I need to take the time to figure out!

Happy Crafting!!

OK - we're back. For those of you who didn't know we were at the University to have a Geneticist look at our daughter. It has been about 12 years since we saw a geneticist and since science is advancing all the time, it was past time for a check up. We really don't care what label gets put on our daughter - she'll be the same to us regardless of what "condition" she gets labeled with - but we do think it is important to know what that label is. Here's why - let's say she has "abc syndrome" well, doctors know that people with "abc syndrome" tend to have eye degeneration in their thirties. Or maybe she has "def syndrome"? Well, those people tend to have heart failure by the time they are 25. See? If we know what to look for we can take preventative measures. That is why we want to know what is going on. Anyways, we didn't get any answers yesterday. They did take blood and will run some tests though. When the chromosone test was done years ago they told us there was a "blip" (picture fuzzy black and white) on a chromosone - well, now the test will come out in basically high-def color!! (By the way she sat still for the blood being drawn - was a real little lady!) We won't have answers about those tests for several weeks. I really don't expect answers until the end of the summer - so we are just going to forget about it - we have been down this road before and I've gotten myself all worked up for nothing. Not going to happen this time. Really. If and when we know anything I'll let you know - I'll call and then maybe blog. Take care and it will be back to crafting for me soon - like maybe today????