November Homeschooling

I know, I know, two post in a day is kind of crazy but I feel into bed yesterday without publishing the post for yesterday. I took some photo's of yesterdays homeschooling seeing as it was a really peaceful time. Which is definitely not the norm around here. For some reason the stars alligned yesterday day and both girls sat quitely (even during L's reading lesson) and payed attention to the word coming out of my mouth, so strange! After L's main lessons and P's coloring pages I decided to add on a little art time since it actually sounded like fun.

I laid an old flannel sheet that was mine as a girl down on the table to minimalize mess and let them get to work of trees and turkey cards. Two crafts in one day even!

So they crafted and I snuck a few moment of knitting time with my new project the Cosima cardigan. This one is going to be slow going, but I am really hoping to have it done in time for my birthday in January. We will have to see though since this is a work on at home only project and I have lots of holiday crafting on my plate.


I hope everyone has a truly great Thanksgiving with lots of pie and other mouthwatering goodies!

Soapmaking

On Sunday I got the pleasure of going out to a friends farm to learn how to make soap. What a fun adventure that was! We made lavender soap, apple cinnamon soap with apricot seeds, and even some lotions. These are her already made soaps, that we got to see when we first got there.

Here some of are in the kitchen blending a batch.

(soap in the cylinder mold)

I was surprised with just how much I enjoyed soapmaking. I've always been kind of freaked out by the whole lye thing, but once I did it, it wasn't so scary. It took about an hour to do batch of soap and you get at least a dozen 4 oz bars out of it. The lotion was absolutely dreamy though, do harsh chemicals, just melt and blend. Very luscious and a lot of fun. I think I see much more of the is in my future, especially if I ever get to have the goats I've been dreaming of, goat milk soap sounds so heavenly!

A Recipe For You

In my attempt to make something kind of like the Lara Bar peanut butter cookie bars, but with a less "datey" taste I came up with these peanut butter balls. They take only 10 minutes to make from start to finish and that's WITH little helping hands.

Peanut Ball Cookies

3 cups unsweetened dates

1 cup unsalted peanuts

1/2 c. unsweetened coconut

2 Tbsp ground flax seed

1/2 tsp vanilla

A dash of salt

Combine all ingredients into food processor and turn on for a couple minutes until mixture resembles the picture below. Have you and your helper roll into little balls (remembering that little hands need to use smaller amounts of dough). Makes about 18 cookies, refrigerate to keep dates fresh. Enjoy!

Honeymooning on a budget

When Micah and I got married we were broke, pregnant and in love. We had a small but awesome wedding in my parents backyard under a trio of birch trees. There were twinkle lights in the trees and barbecue on the grill, sun dresses and flip flops and we all had bouquets fresh from that mornings farmers market. We couldn't afford a honeymoon, but in didn't seem to matter much. Two kids and five years later we finally managed to get away for a honeymoon. Unfortunately we were still broke and had little time off to work with, we made it work though and we had a wonderful time.

Micah has always wanted to go to Ashland Oregon because it is one of my favorite places and since it is only three and a half hours away we decided to go there to see the Shakespeare Festival. The hotel prices are high there, so after extensive Internet research we decide to camp lake side in a place right outside the city. We packed an ice chest full of food and headed out on our first childless adventures since our marriage. We saw plays, took lakeside walks, drank fancy coffee drinks, shopped in the funky down town shops, and had a simple yet wonderful time.

Isn 't he handsome?

OOh and look I even got some knitting time in, this is the Star Crossed Slouchy Beret by Natalie Larson, the link is to the Ravelry page. This is a free pattern and a very fun knit!

New Adventures

Wow, that was a much longer break then intended. Things have been a whirlwind around her with moving, homeschooling, traveling, and celebrating Lydia's 5th birthday. Moving to a bigger place has been something we have been talking and praying about for quite awhile now. We wanted someplace a bit bigger that would allow us to have chickens and a small veggie garden and God certainly provided, actually the place CAME with chicken. These are our girls:

They are mostly free range chickens even though we have a chicken tractor to keep them in. The fresh eggs are amazing and but we have found that we also really like just having them around, they are so much fun!

About a week after we moved in we put in our very first winter garden. We have always kind of been wanna-be farmers planting container gardens or share gardens with others with land. This time our efforts are being much better rewarded, check out those seedlings!

These are our snap peas, next these we have regular peas,

Then we have some lettuces, we planted romaine and simpson, but I forgot to mark which was which, but I'm leaning towards these ones being simpson....

Here is the best of our cauliflower plants, they really seem to be thriving!

Here is some broccoli,

And then there is the onions, one row of red and one of white.

More to come soon, I'm off now to watch a movie with my wonderfully patient husband:)

100th Post

It's funny that today I would log on after almost a month of not blogging to find out that this is my 100th post! Crazy I say, it doesn't feel like that, I still feel as though I'm barely getting the hang of this whole blogging thing. It's even more amusing to think that I was wondering if I even would come back. Lately I've been feeling like blogs are to braggy you know? Look at what I bought, made, did etc. I'm not effectively conveying what I originally wanted in this space. Well, whatever, maybe the next 100 post's will be better, and hopefully more enjoyable to read.

Lately my crafting has taken a bit of a back seat to life. Homeschooling is getting off to a great start this year, we are going through a very laid back charter school and it's turning out to be a great choice for our family. We are doing all sorts of fun things that would have otherwise been impossible on our shoestring budget and I'm using the exact same curriculum I would have picked independently. With the help of my husband and the teacher we are working with I really foresee this being a more enjoyable year for me.

We have also been enjoying the last bits of summer left, that is the summer fruit that's left. A friend of ours gifted us with about 20-30lbs of organic peaches which became smoothie peaches, pie peaches,

and peach fruit leather. We were SO excited to give fruit leather a try using our new dehydrator given to us from the depths of our friends garage. So happy to find out that it did in fact work, yay! A really great way to use up the slightly bruised peaches.

Weekly trips to farmer's market have been a must around here, trying to scoop up the last of the years strawberries to freeze for winter's pie's and smoothies. Northern California Farmer's Markets have the most awesome strawberries, truly they have no comparison to the little hard ones in the grocery store

The prices are unbeatable too, I think what I have photographed there was just a little over $20.

Gifts of Graditude

It has taken me awhile to get back into the rhythm of things after our wonderful trip to the beach. Honestly I think I was dealing with a little post-beach depression! I grumbled and lazed about thinking of all the fun we had and wishing we were still there for a good week, I think we all did really. Now things have gotten back to normal, the laundry is all caught up and regular routines are (mostly) back on track. I knew the first thing I wanted to do once we reached homeostasis was to get some baking done for the wonderful family members who dog-sat and kept our plants from wilting. You all know how I feel about pies, they just make everything better! Triple Berry Pie, the recipe is from my first post ever :D

I hope everyone else has a great weekend, I think I may be doing a little bit of preserving and we might even get in a little family day trip. Summer is almost over and even though I am longing for fall I want to make the best out of this lazy time.