Bad Manners Night

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Training children to exhibit good behavior includes proper etiquette and manners. This is best done when the family is gathered around the dinner table. From an early age children can be taught to say please and thank you, put their napkins in their laps, chew and swallow before talking, etc. I'm a big proponent of eating dinner together. It's during dinnertime that families talk about their day and really connect with each other.  It's also the best time to reinforce table manners and etiquette. As the kids get older it's more difficult to guard that time, but it's so worth it.

Here's a crazy idea that we did a couple of times during dinner... that in a fun but crazy way we taught good manners. We had a dinner called, "Bad Manners Night". By allowing all rules to be broken we made a case for why manners were important in the first place. As you can imagine it was total anarchy. Feet were on the table, hands were in the rice bowl, burps were expelled, and of course it soon descended into a food fight. So be prepared for a mess!

Do you know which family dinner they remember best? Yep... Bad Manners Night. It was crazy fun, messy, but certainly got our point across.

And now for a refashion:

I found a ho-hum but very cozy sweater at Goodwill for about $4:

 I decided to experiment with making a cardigan. So I cut up though the middle, but a little off-center.

The I cut off the cuffs and sewed the cuffs together to make a long facing for one side of my cardigan, where I will place button holes.

I cut off the collar, zig-zagged the edges (which gave it a wavy curl), added buttonholes and buttons.

The buttons are vintage. I love buttons!!
Blessings.