• Classical Conversations Week 10
    Classical Conversations

    Classical Conversations Week 10

    This week our “Science Project” was Facility Clean-up! I loved the opportunity to do a little something for our hosting church. They are wonderful and we SO appreciate their willingness to host our Classical Conversations (CC) group each week. Just to keep it real here, when I asked my son after the day was over what his favorite and least favorite parts of his CC day had been, “cleaning up his classroom” fell into the “least favorite” category. We need to do some work on the idea of serving others joyfully, obviously. All the children in my class were wonderfully helpful, though, and more than willing to pitch in and…

  • Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins
    Breakfast,  Recipes

    Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins

    Mmmmm . . . Fall and pumpkin . . . they just go hand in hand. Truthfully, I like pumpkin just about anytime, which is why I keep a lot in my freezer year-round. I like to decorate with pumpkins that roast well and look good – Fairy Tale and Cinderella Pumpkins have been my favorites over the years. Using my decor for food later makes me feel SO much better about spending money in the fall on some pumpkins to sit around the house. And, as long as you don’t make them into Jack-o-lanterns, they usually last the full season and leave you plenty of time to roast them…

  • Menu Plan Header Fall
    Menu Plan

    Meal Plan 11/4/2013

    Trying to post this meal plan every Monday has made me MUCH more committed to getting it done! We certainly don’t stick to it 100% every week, but it has been wonderful to have a plan that we ATTEMPT to adhere to! My absolute favorite new recipe from last week was the Slow-cooker Quinoa Chicken Chilli from Queen Bee Coupons. I was a bigger fan of it than the rest of my family, but they’re CRAZY and you should NOT base any decisions on their judgement, whatsoever. It was wonderful! I reduced the spices, because the rest of my family is not a fan of spicy food (did I mention that…

  • Ants Header
    Home Management

    Saturday Special: Kill the Colored Ants!

    We have ants. Again. We live in a fairly old house, and it’s just not sealed as well as it should/could be. About every 2 or 3 months, we get a good rain (like night before last) and a colony of ants decides they need to seek shelter by moving into our house. I don’t know about you, but I HATE ants. My husband says we need to name them and call them our “kitchen friends.” He is not in charge of dealing with the ants, obviously. He IS in charge of the videoing around here (see below). You’ll see that we are pretty easily amused. I’ve tried all sorts of…

  • CC Week 9
    Classical Conversations,  Homeschool

    Classical Conversations Cycle 2 Week 9

    We got to go to our local children’s science center this week. To be honest, I wasn’t actually thinking in advance about how well their “Space” section fit in with what we were covering in CC, but it sure worked out perfectly! It was very cool to see the relative size of the planets on a larger scale and see lots of facts about them, the sun and the stars. It was just an excellent tie-in to the science grammar we’re covering in CC . . . reinforcing and adding to those memory pegs! Science Grammar Our cup overrunneth with ways to expand on this week’s Science Grammar! I’ll keep…

  • Organizing Paperwork
    Home Management

    Organizing Paperwork

    Some time last year, I got SO tired of my counters always looking like this: The amount of paperwork that comes into this house is just insane! I try to follow all the paperwork management rules: touch it once if possible, immediately toss whatever we don’t need, etc. but there is just a certain amount of paperwork that we need to hang onto, either for a short while or for the long-haul. After thinking it over for a little while, I decided to create a system of file folders and to use one of the doors closest to the counter that is usually the “Hot Spot” for all this paperwork…

  • Menu Plan Header
    Menu Plan

    Menu Plan 10/28/2013

    Just your average crazy week around here coming up! A reminder – if it’s marked as “NEW” we haven’t tried it before. Assuming things go according to plan (snort!) this week, you can check back over the weekend for a review of the ones that we enjoyed and plan to make again. Monday Gluten Free Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Muffins Salmon Patties Pot Roast, Parmesan Cabbage (NEW), Roasted Carrots Tuesday Leftovers from GF Cinnamon Chocolate Chip Muffins Flat Bread Sandwiches or Wraps Slow Cooker Quinoa Chicken and Chili (NEW!) Wednesday Baked Oatmeal, Mini Quiches Hummus, GF Pita, Carrots, Apples and Bananas Fall Festival at Church Thursdsay Leftover Baked Oatmeal Gluten Free Tortillas (NEW), Refried…

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  • Week in review
    Week in Review

    Week in Review

    Wow! We had a great week this past week, but it sure blew by in a hurry! On Friday, my husband, a friend, and a passel of kids headed to the Maker Faire in Atlanta. A Maker Faire, if you don’t know (and I’d never even heard of a Maker Faire at this time last year), is Fair . . .  for “Makers.”  So glad I could clear that up for you. No, seriously, “Makers” are people who make things. It’s about that simple. It might be techy stuff or it might be crafty or artsy stuff (robot sculptures, anyone?), but it’s about all those folks coming together to share…

  • classical conversations music itunes
    Classical Conversations

    Creating Classical Conversations Playlists in iTunes

    As more and more of us switch to some sort of smart phone or tablet, there are more of us who would like to have our CC music on these gadgets.  I’ve talked to several moms this year who would like some guidance on how to organize their CC music on iTunes, or who would like to create weekly playlists of the songs that apply to that week so they can concentrate their review. The following is how I keep my music organized. There may be better ways to do it, and I am ALWAYS open to suggestions. So, if you’ve got any thoughts or suggestions, please leave them in…

  • 3-Ingredient-dinner
    Entree,  Recipes

    3 Ingredient Dinner in a Flash

    Okay, so you know how there are those days were absolutely nothing goes as planned and suddenly you look up and realize that in order to actually feed your family before it’s time to put the kiddos to bed that you really should have started dinner an hour ago? What? That never happens to you? Well, it happens to me. All.the.time. Waaaay more than I care to admit, actually. So, I won’t. I’ll just tell you that this is one of those recipes that you can throw together in a pinch with ingredients you tend to have around and no one will really know that you cannot manage your time…

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