Awesomesauce music stand

I recently found out about a hidden inbox that Facebook has, and found some lovely messages that you dear readers have sent in the last few months that I had received. Sorry about that! I have very much enjoyed writing this blog, and chronicling some of my journey as a music parents. When I started this blog, I had a 4 year old daughter who I was just beginning to teach the violin and piano. Now I have a 9 year old daughter playing the violin and piano, a 6 year old son who plays awesome piano, despite some physical challenges he faces, and a three-year-old toddler who threatens to destroy any practice his siblings attempt. :-)

By the way, lest you think I actually found some free time to sit down and write this post, I am dictating this into my phone while watching my son play out at a bounce town. Multitasking!

We are now living in Texas, which is a big change from our home in Wisconsin. It has been rough for everyone, although the positives outweigh the bad. It's a good lesson in knowing that wherever we go and whatever challenges we face, at least we've got each other!

I have been blessed to make some really awesome friends, but it's still very hard to engage my toddler all day long. I'm just not as interesting as other kids, and his siblings are at school all day. He's starting 2 day preschool next year, but there's still a lot of down time.

One of my more more ingenius ideas when we were living in Wisconsin, was to make friends with a homeschooling family who all played the violin. The reason why this was brilliant  was because they could have lessons anytime of day, and I had a toddler and then a baby who needed playmates. So in exchange for teaching their kids, they came over to my house and played with my kids. It was really a win-win.   A few months ago, I got lucky enough to make friends here with another homeschool family who was just as awesome and playful. I don't know about anyone else, but when I have school-age kids and one non-school-age kid, Mondays are one of the hardest days. If we don't have anything to go out and do, the toddler just ends up lonely and stir crazy. So these friends and I have a standing play date every Monday, where I get to teach the daughter (who is one of those super awesome kids you love to teach), and the toddler gets to play with somebody else and their toys. That's a serious win!

Because this family has a child who only just started playing the violin, and two rambunctious little boys, the mom was nervous about getting a music stand for practice so she came up with this absolutely adorable idea in her living room.

The basic idea, was to take a blank picture frame, and tie a string back and forth from two sides so she could use clothes pins to hold up any music for her daughter look at. And then of course her creative side had to kick in and she made it look absolutely adorable :-)

We are in the process of buying a house, and I can't wait to do something similar for my daughter's wall in her bedroom. She has so many pictures and doodles that end up in the bottom of drawers or under her pillow.

I have a few other survival tips that I have been learning the last few months, especially with my piano-playing middle child. I'm going to do my darndest to make time to share those in the future!