Pictures, recipes and crafts...oh my!

We have been busy here by the mountain. With the Holidays on the horizon we have been trying to get everything ready and in order. I am typically a fairly organized person but...for some reason xmas always sneaks up on me! Cards have not been mailed, I am stil struggling with the xmas picture, gifts have not been mailed....oy! But, we have our tree up and decorated (a 10 foot tree, no less! Yay for high ceilings!) I am almost done with my shopping and I am actively getting cookies made and frozen :)

AND we have been a crafty bunch here :) Wanna see? We decided to make crayon cookes ;) Cool and fun way to use up your crayon *nubs* that end up sitting on the bottom of the crayon bin.

Step 1) Find all your nubs. Peel them if necessary and place them in piles according to color:

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Then, put no more than 3 colors into a greased muffin pan. We happened to have holiday muffin pans. :)

Put pans into the oven for about 10 minutes. Then, turn the oven off and open the door. We left our crayons in the oven to cool so we didn't mix the colors while they were liquid. They need to sit in the pan until completely cool, then you get these:

Fun, no? :)

We enjoyed it. We are going to give some with homemade art journals to a few friends/cousins :) in a little bag.

I also did some baking this week. I made the brown bread again, but this time I added 2 eggs and it made it less dense. MUCH better, I think. Dense is good, but the addition of the eggs made it a more versatile bread. I also made some cookies...the oatmeal I made before, and...

Chocolate Mint Chip cookies ala Martha Stewart

I added a bag of mint chips to this recipe, though the original recipe did not call for them.

2c plus 2T flour

3/4c dutch cocoa powder

1t baking soda

1/2t salt

1 1/4c butter, room temp.

2c granulated sugar

2 arge eggs

2t vanilla extract

1 bag mint chips, optional

Sift together flour, cocoa, salt and soda into a bowl. In separate bowl, beat together butter and sugar on medium until light and fluffy. Add eggs and vanila and beat until combined. Reduce speed, then slowly add flour mixture(and chips if you are using them) and beat to combine. Form dough into a flat disc, and cover with plastic. Refridgerate for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Form dough into 1 1/4 inch balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet about 1 1/2 inches apart. Bake 10-12 mins. Let cool on sheet for about 5 mins then transfer to a baking rack to cool.

You could also add crushed candy canes to the recipe if you fancy...:)

Today, we are making PB Kiss cookies...but you will have to wait for that recipe!

We have had a dusting of snow here, which the kids are playing in. Lilly made snow angels on the deck ;) and JD has been snowboarding down our back hill. Silly kids. I can't wait until we get a REAL snowstorm!

The chickens are not minding the snow/cold so far...which is pretty encouraging. I have been taking out extra treats/food for them to give them something warm to eat once or twice a day on the colder days as well as having the kids go out and poke through the ice to make sure they can get water. We also have been keeping an eye on Domino the Rabbit who lives outside now...she seems pretty content out there, though I am thinking she misses having free run of the deck. Well, rabbit...when you not only eat the deck but also the HOUSE you get what you get. She has extra hay in her little cubby and Hubby built her a shelter to protect her from the wind/rain/snow. We have to switch her water out more oftn as it freezes quicker! We are only getting about 3-4 eggs a day, and I decided to not light the coop for the winter. I know it can increase egg production, but I figured I'd let Nature take its course and let the chickens do whatever works for them.

School is moving right along. JD is having a bit of a challenge with Math right now, so we are spending some extra time practicing multiplication /division. He is doing really well with his reading and phonics though! Lilly is doing wonderful in math AND reading/phonics and is writing ALL the time. She is making cards, lists, etc and loves to read books. Max is...well, Max. He does his thing!

We are still working on Habitats and most likely will throughout the rest of the month. We finished Danny Meadow Mouse in the Burgess series, and are now on to Jerry Muskrat. We have really been enjoying these books as they are SUPER for learning about animals and their habits in the wild...in story form. We have had numerous conversations about deer, mice, fox, etc based on things we have learned in these books so far. :) Poems are continuing, we are sticking to the 2 we started this month as they are proving a bit more difficult to memorize! I will post pics next time of our art 'class' as well as other xmas/holiday crafts...

We are hosting the co-op Holiday party which is celebrating all December Holidays...we are doing Solstice and will have a craft and snack. We will cover xmas, Channukah and ??? Should be a good time :) Also hoping to get in some skiing with our neighbor-friends which is nice as the moms are slow, and the kids are fast...at least we will know they are together as a group, lol. I need to get pics of that... :)

I am thinking of some winter canning, quilt-making and an adventure in all things bread for next month. That is...if I make it through this one!

Happy Winter!

Heading into December...

OK, so far my once a week post is not once a week.... :)

We had a great time at our co-op Charlie Brown Thanksgiving! We watched the movie and recreated the meal, which the kids loved. Then it was outside to run and play. The kids get along SO well together and really include everyone. Even though we are new-ish to the group, the kids all act like they have been friends forever. Its so nice. One other family is part of the chicken world too, so we were able to talk chickens for quite some time, lol.

Speaking of chickens...we seem to be out of the woods as far as chicken casualties are concerned. We thought we might lose our sweet little Buddy as well, but she has rallied and is laying the CUTEST little blue eggs every other day like clockwork. Our other girls are through their molt and laying again as well, so we are back to getting 4 or 5 eggs a day. Finny is now laying this gorgeous olive green egg, where before she molted they were more pastel green...interesting!

Our wild bird friends are here, as we have put out our feeders for the winter....we LOVE to watch all the birds that come. We also have an owl 'couple' that come nest in the yard during the winter and last night they were VERY vocal! Some nights they wake us up chattering to each other...the cats enjoy the birds as well, and will spend their days in the window seat watching the birds eat...I am sure plotting how they could get at them... :)

I am down to my last 2 jars of tomato sauce... note to self: plant MORE tomatoes next year! I knew we wouldn't get through the winter on our sauce, but it was great to have it as long as we did. All our fruits/preserves will get us through until spring, along with all the things I froze. I am learning how much I need to plant in order to have enough to eat AND save. I will definitely be expanding the gardens next year! I am hoping to put up a small greenhouse as well...I have been looking at some plans...I just need to talk to Hubby and see what he thinks would work for us.

On the school front...
We are starting our December poems, which will be When All the World is Full of Snow by NM Bodecker and Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening by Robert Frost(one of my ALL time favorites!) I usually do T'was the Night Before Christmas too, and I may, but that one they don't remember...or they didn't last year. This year they actually might be able to remember the whole thing!

For Art, we are coming in to the Patterns and Mosaics section. Very cool. I am thinking of having the kids do some mosaic picture frames for the pics we will give to family this year. It would be a fun craft to do plus it will tie in to what they will have learned. I am so impressed with JD's participation in the art 'program' as it really isn't his *thing* however, I really think it will help with his dexterity and writing skills...which are not the best.

For Nature Study and Science, we will be working on animal habitats and what affects them. This comes at a perfect time for us in real life as they just completed a logging project out behind our woods that has impacted the local animals that live there...which we have seen the results of. The kids have a real-life situation to compare to what they will be learning. We will hopefully have a chance to get out and do some animal tracking before it snows to see what animals live near us, and I am planning to have the kids create some sort of 'display' of the local habitat we share with the animals around us.

Our Nature table will be transformed for winter, and we will decorate it accordingly. We have been collecting acorns and pinecones for a winter project, and may use the extras for our winter 'scene'...and, unbeknownst to the kids, I wanted to take an old dollhouse we have that is rarely used and add it to our Nature Table and have that become part of our display. Except....we will need a bigger nature table, lol...

History will be Egypt and associated civilizations, as that seems to still be on the table as an interest for the kids. We are also reading Native American Short Stories by Joseph Bruchac, which are great stories about Native American life with a built in lesson...like a NA version of Aesops Fables :)

I am also going to re-introduce some Spiritual pieces that have fallen by the wayside including some prayer/ceremony and meditation...I have some great kid's books on meditation for kids as young as 5 and well....I have at least 2 pretty intense kiddos who could certianly use it as a way to ground and get centered!

In household news...
I am bound and determined to get our last 2 rooms painted. I will hopefully pick up the paint this week and get 'er done. We usually have a holiday party in December and it would be nice to have it done by then. Can't say the curtains, and various other sewing projects will be done but if I could get the painting done...I also need to get the playroom/schoolroom floor done...seems the cats think it is an appropriate place to pee as they can smell the prior owner's cat smell....I need to get that floor sealed and painted as to eliminate that issue, thank you very much. Until then, the room has to be kept closed up, resulting in it being VERY cold in there! I think I can get it done :) Then its just curtians and a new couch cover and Phase One of our home remodel will be complete! Which isn't to say I won't STILL have eleventybillion projects left to do....

Well, that's the update from the mountain! (which has been making snow and now has 3 trails open! To say my kids are excited is an understatement...)

Charlotte Mason.

Man, I just LOVE this woman! I have been reading, or re-reading as the case is, a book written by a mom who has studied her work intensely called "A Charlotte Mason Companion: Personal Reflections on the Gentle Art of Learning" Now, it is for sure heavy on the religion, but asy enough to filter out if that isn't your thing. She was just amazing in the way she felt kids should learn, and bringing her into the present and realizing that CM is a way of life, not just an education system...sweet. I have always LOVED her idea of living books and we use living books almost exclusively for History, Literature even Science when appropriate. Through her, we found the wonderful author Thorton Burgess. He is long gone by now, but in my opinion his books are timeless. We first read the Peter Rabbit 'novel' last year as part of our Nature Study, where we learned at Mother Nature School all about different animals and what families they belonged to. I was lucky to *inherit* about 20 of Thorton Burgess' books from a friend of ours who read them as a child (these books have a copywrite date of 1921...not even sure if I could find these at the Library...) I have enough of each of the collections for us to read for some time. They are great stories with hidden moral lessons and teach kids about how different animals live in the wild. My kids are the perfect age for these books and I am enjoying reading them to them.

We are using The History of the World book for History right now, and have started at the begining, learning about evolution. The kids are fascinated. I taught about the Big Bang Theory last year, and I also told them the religious account of what evolution was believed to be. I told them they could choose which *theory* hey wanted to believe. Jeffrey AND Lilly picked the scientific explanation because you could 'prove it'. :) We learned about Darwin and the 'survival of the fittest' and could apply it to our little world in the backyard...the kids know if we did not 'save' Cookie our special needs chicken, she would have died/been killed as she is too weak to keep up in the *wild* ...this was a great real-life way to explain what we were learning about Darwin's theory.

Science and Nature involves learning about Habitats, protozoas, and different plant kingdoms. We will be taking a BUNCH of hikes and collecting 'samples' of different plants by way of rubbings and pictures or leaves that have already fallen from the plants. We have done the parts of plants and leaves as well as my annual talk about why leaves change color, which is accompanied by the book Why DO Leaves Change Color? which is part of the Let's-Read-And-Find-Out-Science Series. We usually do some sort of craft involving leaves and this year the kids want to press leaves for their nature journals.

We are reciting the poem The Woodpecker, by Elizabeth Madox Roberts which the kids have pretty much memorized inside a week. I am very impressed at how much quicker they are at memorizing the poems since last year! I should challenge them to recite some of the old ones ;)

Spending lots of time outside, exploring and just general runnin' around :) There has also been an increase in Lego creating going on in this house! All three kids, together, have created some amazing vehicles to use in their 'world'...this is amazing on many fronts- first, Jeffrey does not usually play well with Lilly and Max, and he is not one for imaginative play. He not only has 'tolerated' his siblings, but has not tried to micro-manage them...too much. He is also participating in their imaginative play as much as he is able...which isn't much in the grand scheme of things but more than he ever has in the past. I'll take it!

In other news...
I froze 18 eggs worth of beaten eggs in smaller containers, hard boiled at least a dozen and we still have a dozen in the fridge...some of which will be used tonite for peach waffles. We know why we haven't been getting eggs from everyone...as we found we have ANOTHER rooster! Pickle is not only NOT a Bantam Dominique, HE is not a she! I was suspicious when SHE sprouted a beautiful tail, as girls tend to be a little light on the tail feathers of beauty. Then I checked her neck and sadlde feathers...pointed. :( Sure sign of maleness. He has not crowed yet, and is still getting along with everyone so...we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. He is a mutt, and will be a BIG chicken. He looks like the kind of chickens my neighbor up the street has...maybe I will stop by and ask them what they have sometime...

Well, apparently waffles don't make themselves! I better get on it!

Happy Fall!

Fall is by far my favorite season of the year. The air is dry and cool, there is usually always a breeze blowing and the sky is crisp. Add some colorful, crunchy leaves on the ground and I am in heaven. I don't know if its the colors, or the cool air but I just LOVE it.

It has been getting cooler here at night which means the end of my gardening season is close. Hopefully next year I will have some sort of a greenhouse set-up(I found a how-to tutorial on making a greenhouse for $150!) but for now...I need to plan for the end. Potatoes had to come in due to some dadgum bug eating the plants, which leaves greens and tomatoes. I know the greens are fine for a while, but the tomatoes will have to come in. I will probably wait until this weekend to harvest as we are going to have great weather this week and I want the tomaotes to get as close to ripe and as big as possible before I gather. I am done making sauce, so these tomatoes will either be dried or simply cut/frozen for cooking...not sure which yet. A dear friend gave me a great tomato soup recipe so maybe I will just make up a big batch of that to freeze.

Its also time to clean out the other gardens one last time and get things ready for winter...I need to weed the herbs one more time, clean out the Medicine Wheel garden, and once the deck is done, I hope to t least prep the garden that will go in front of it.

Home Improvement 2010 is almost done...I have 2 more painting projects and general putting-of-things-back-together that needs to be done and then maybe I will do a virtual tour, lol :) I will say, Hubby's idea of a copper sink? Best. Idea. Ever. I absolutely LOVE how it looks, love the way its 'aging', and it looks fantastic with the counter.

Our chickens are finally starting to get back to laying...we are getting 5-6 eggs a day now...I am going to start freezing some for when they decide its too cold/hot/windy/sunny/insert chicken excuse here, so at least I have a back-up supply. I have plenty now to give away, and use/freeze. We don't eat eggs ALL that much though I do cook with them. Lilly and Max aren't huge fans of eggs as a meal-food, I don't eat eggs, so that leaves JD and Hubby...and they can't consume 3doz a week! (nor should they) Everyone is still getting along pretty good, though I have seen Sam and FancyPants get all up in each other's faces, it never amounts to much. My FancyPants is a pretty docile boy, and is nice to the girls, protective and generally just a perfect rooster. Sam is...well, Sam and Cookie are my *special* babies...Sam is doing well, and is pretty sweet. Angel Cookie is...such a sad case. We just love her so...Lilly would have her living in the house with us if I let her. Sigh...

Homeschooling has begun. The kids had a week of review, to see where they were at and get them back into the swing of things and then we jumped back in. They are enjoying being back at work learning, and did not forget nearly as much as I thought they might, lol :) Actually, they are doing really well. JD has been AMAZING me with his reading! It has always been a struggle, and we knew to expect this and the woman who was helping me from the Autism Center told me it could be YEARS before he could read a simple book. Well, he not only remembered his sight words from last year, he is easily learning new ones! It still takes him a bit to remember them, and he REALLY has to focus, but he has completely taken to reading! I can see the 'light bulb' has gone on and he is getting the concept. I am SO proud. He has been working on Frog and Toad books, and he is able to read AND understand what he has read. Narration is a big part of Charlotte Mason and I am a huge fan of her style. I have always used narration wih the kids as we do quite a bit of reading (I read, they listen) on various subjects. Since I do not test, nor do we do much written work (yet) the only gage I have for if they are learning/absorbing what I have read is by what they can tell me. Sometimes I will ask them to talk to me about what we just read, other times I will tell them to 'catch me up' on what we last read. For JD, this ability to narrate is a HUGE improvement over last year as it was such a struggle for him to red anything that by the time he got through it, he could not remember the subject matter, and he was spending so much energy on figuring out each word that the meaning fell by the wayside. Not so, anymore! AND he is excited about reading as he has made the connection that reading opens up his world to all sorts of information. :)

Lilly is doing well with her reading as well, but she always has been more at ease with reading. She loves to sound out words, write and talk about books. She is getting more confident with Math, as we are sticking with basics and repitition. Max is working on letters, sounds and basic sight words as he is desperate to read as well ;) He is taking after his big brother with his interest and skill in math, he likes to work in a first grade math book...and I let him. He can do it, so I am certianly not going to hold him back!

This week we added History and Nature Study into our routine and next week we will add Art and handicrafts. I found an awesome art book that will go along with our unit studies of different artists and I am hoping that after soccer is over we can hit the museum some saturday mornings as it is free :) I am also hoping to get to some of the art classes they offer at another local museum. Its a neat program for homeschoolers, once a month. Its a bit of a hike, but I think it will be worth it. Lilly and Max love all things art and crafts, and though JD could care less, I would like him to at least be exposed to it. He does like handicrafts though...he started to learn to knit and he likes to sew, but I think he will continue with his model building that he tried out last year.

I have yogurt brewing, and plans to make my favorite 'Breakfast Cake' shortly. Want the recipe? Its super easy, and you can put whatever you want in it...versatility...gotta love it :)

Breakfast Cake

1c brown sugar
1/2c melted butter or oil of choice
2 eggs
2/3c yogurt
1/2t vanilla extract
1c unbleached white flour
1c whole wheat flour
1t baking soda
1t baking powder
1/2t salt
1/2t cinnamon
1/2t allspice
1/4t nutmeg
1/4t ground ginger
1 1/2c rolled oats
1/2c OJ or milk

Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Beat brown sugar and melted butter together in a large bowl.
Beat in eggs one at a time.
Add yogurt and vanilla until well blended.
In separate bowl, whisk together flours, soda, powder, salt and spices until well blended.
Add oats to flour mix and blend well.
Slowly mix dry ingredients into wet.
Mix in OJ/Milk and any optional ingredients you have chosen.
Put batter into a well oiled 9x13 pan and add topping option if you like.
Bake for 25 mins or until a knife comes out clean when inserted in the middle of the cake.
Enjoy! Freezes well, and can also be baked in muffin pans, try 15 mins then start checking for done-ness.

*optional...1/2c raisins OR 1/2c cranberries OR 1/2c chocochips OR 1c chopped fresh fruit or berries, really you can add anything you want to this cake.
**optional topping...once cake is ready for the oven, top with sliced apples on top of which you drizzle 1/2c melted butter mixed with 1/2c brown sugar...mmmm...