Super Saturday

Yay for the weekend, right?! I get so excited for weekends, then I realize that they are 100 times busier than the week. One thing I like to save are those plastic bags that linens come in, we use them for everything around here! Mainly, I like to use them to toss craft supplies in that I keep in the car. This makes them portable for car trips and when we run into places

Our living room furniture has been shuffled around to make room for a First Lego League board for competition. We put the frame for now, until our son's team decides on the layout and then we will make a replica. The perimeter helps him program his bot as he works out different ideas, so that he can bring his ideas to the meetings.

Pesto is one of my favorite things to eat and make, it's so simple and adds so much flavor! Here is my recipe:

2 cloves of garlic
2 cups of fresh basil leaves
1/2 cup of romano cheese (grated)
1/2 cup of olive oil
1/2 cup of spinach leaves
Dash of salt and pepper

Pop them all into the food processor and mix it up until it reaches your desired consistency. I used it to place over chicken breasts. If you score the breasts on both sides and then place the dollop on top it will soak into the chicken while cooking and keep the moisture in. Halfway through cooking time, flip them over and add a fresh dollop of pesto and finish cooking. Best.Chicken.EVER! Serve it with a Tomato, Cucumber and Vidalia Onion Salad with a sign of broccolini and this is a family fave. Bake your chicken based on the thickness of the breast, I do mine at 450* for 20 minutes (10 on each side).

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On Pinterest, I post my own personal recipes along with any that I want to try. If you ever see me post a meal on my menu planner, it is always posted above or the recipe will be posted soon!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Fossil Friday!

It's Fossil Friday in the school room and I wanted to share with you what we all did for our fossil lesson with our homeschool group. The kids got to dig for dinosaur bones from a plaster of paris brick with pick tools and a hammer.

These are real fossil specimens given to us by the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Educators have an awesome opportunity to borrow learning boxes from the museum for a small fee and they are an awesome way to get our group together learn.

Due to booking issues with our local library, I decided to host this event in our home. Knwing we had a fairly large group coming, I decided to create stations, so that the kids were not restricted to their tables and the activities could be spread about. I also raided our classroom library for as many books on Fossils, minerals and rocks we could find and used those to decorate the space.

I had 3 tables set up with a booklet we would all be making and I spread the fossils throughout the tables, to encourage them to move from table to table. Each table had a variety of craft supplies, so they would only have to share with their table and not the entire room.

Using the awesome TOOBs from Safari Ltd., I made up these awesome checklists that you can get HERE (Print and laminate them to use over and over again)and then I dumped the TOOBS in bins and covered them in rice. This alone makes a fantastic sensory bin, but when paired with a magnifying glass, brush and checklist, it becomes a hunt to learn. They were told to dig for one, match it to the list and read the name and then check it off. 

Using a Google search, I came across this Types of Rock sheet, but it was afrom a pay site for the entire activity and as I was doing this on my own dime with a small fee to pay for the box from the group, I decided to keep hunting. I used the cover sheet and shrunk it down to fit 4 per page, so that I would not waste that much ink and paper and then did the same for the definitions. Add them to paper for a longer backgroun and they were fun and easy to make! It was a great event after everything!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Where Are YOU?!

I'm here, I'm here, I promise! Sorry for the disappearance and delay, but we have been on the road with our lessons lately. Valentine's Day weekend had us in Chicago taking in sites, good food and also scoping out suburban eateries and shops. I truly love living within a spitting distance of busses, trains and planes to big cities and exotic destinations. 

Heart shaped foods abound all day and it was so fun to celebrate with the children. My parents took the kids Friday night, so we could celebrate with friends in the evening and then spend the morning together, the rest of the weekend was with them!

Sushi doesn't quite have that romantic sound to it, but it was an awesome lunch and the kids love ordering things that just sound wierd.

Monday brought us home to a fossil lesson set up in our home. Our homeschool group borrows trunks from the natural history museum, all with different themes, and I put together a coordinating lesson and activities. These work out so fun and have gotten a pretty good turn out so far!

We took off minutes after the last person left our home and headed up north for some fun in the waterpark capital of the world! We are having an absolute blast getting together as a family and just BEING! 

We had to mapquest a local church for our vacation spot but we found it and it was gorgeous and so welcoming. It's Ash wednesday, so we got some funny looks and comments at MagiQuest after breakfast when we went to go play! 

Waterparks abound and the kids do them from open til close and could probably continue to do them if they were 24-7! My goodness, where do they get their energy from? 

My level 7 Magis absolutely love Magiquest and it is worth every dollar spent. Okay, I admit, we love it too...we all have wands and love to play with them. Now THIS is a workout. They have locations all over the US, get to one ASAP! We are hitting up the one in Ohio next month! So this is where I have disappeared to, heading home tomorrow evening or sooo....maybe....record cold temps reaching -30* when we get back...so maybe the balmy 87* of the waterpark could sway me to stay! I will have some tips and reviews coming up this week along with adding links to everything, but this was just a break and it's time to do the Howlin' Tornado!

Enjoy every single minute my friends!

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Crafty Thursday Book In A Bag

Get out those glue sticks, it's time for a fun craft! I wanted to a fun way to teach a lesson in our religion class but these are awesome for anything at all!
What you need:
1. Paper lunch bags (Ours needed 16 pages, so we used 4 paper bags)

2. Glue Stick
3. Scissors
4. Stapler
5. Assorted paper cut into squares to fit on pages
6. Tabs (optional, for pulling pages out of the sleeves)

Once your paper squares are cut out, move on to the folding your bags in half to make the book. Take your scissors and carefully trip off the bottom tip of the lunch bags, so that you have more openings to use as tabs.

Take your stapler and staple the center of the book, so that all pages stay in place. I carefully folded the pages in, so my stapler would fit better. 

Glue down the squares on each page and place sheets in the pockets, put a tab on if you wish to make them easier to pull out. We just used square task stickers folded up.

You are now ready to design your book! This is so much better than those pre-made books as your kids get to have a hand in creating them as well.

Ours were used for the 15 Stations of the Cross and we created them while listening to the Passion on CD. There are millions of things you could do with your book, please share! We plan on making these books for many other things we are learning!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Words on Wednesday

New books are my weakness, I love them too much to say no. The written word has power over me and I am glad to say that it does the same for my children. Tomorrow's post will have a list of all the books we bought last weekend and this week and what came in our Amazon order.

The kids started their new book for bookclub. HOLES by Louis Sachar and my daughter finished the same day she got it, but Gabriel is another story. We are reading a few chapters a day together and I notice my youngest always come in to snuggle and listen. A part of me thinks that he could read it all on his own, but he wants the snuggles and likes listening to me read. Autumn comes in too, because she loves hearing how I read the book, she says she never pictured the people's voices sounding like that! LOL! Do you still read to your kids? Never stop, they love it!

Crochet class #3 was granny squares, she already has 5 done and is in the process of making a scarf for a sick neighbor. She is not happy with how misshapen they are, but I told her that I love them and nothing is perfect, that's what makes them special.

As I cleaned out the closet of the classroom, I found some old waldorf type learning materials and the memories came flooding back as to how small they really were, where does that time go?

Why is it that kids absolutely love being outdoors? I am freezing just looking out the window, but they could be out there all day and every day. This photo was taken at the beginning of winter, now the snow has covered the slide that goes off the back porch and they love sliding down it and then filling it with snow again...I will admit that I did it too!

Enjoy every minute my friends...

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Homeschooling in Town Review

On Monday, we had a Dunkin Donuts open in our town...actually it's less than a minute from my house (DANGEROUS!), the good thing it that I love Starbucks so much more, but the bad thing? It's shiny and new. We decided to head on over and hang out for a day of homeschooling and see how it was.  Yes, I know that opening day is when they will obviously be at their best, but I wanted to see how they could handle opening day crowds. The staff was friendly but their prices were higher than other DD we have frequented. Their line moved quickly, but their selection was minimal. Their restaurant was kept clean after a busy morning and we were not disturbed or given dirty looks for staying and working for a couple hours. The parking lot cannot handle the crowds it had, but I expect it to taper off once the novelty has worn off. We will definitely revisit this place for another day of work and see what has changed since opening day!

A fun tip for flashcards is to keep them in a library checkout card holder while they are being used. We normall put all of our cards onto a binder ring for easy study, but during a lesson, my children use them to take notes on and jot down reminders. They also like to keep them flat in the book when we take our school on the road. This envelope stays neatly tucked into the book and is perfect for their active lesson. 

Chat pack for kids is an AWESOME way to get the chatter going on around your dinner table.

 These are awesome conversation starters. We pass them around and each person asks a a question and each person gets a chance to give their answer. 
More info HERE!

Too cold to play outdoors? Bring the snow inside and let your kids have some fun! 

A simple cilantro-lime crema for tacos, veggie bowls and pretty much anything you can think of, it's absolutely delish! All you need is the juice of 2 limes, half a bunch of cilantro (just the leaves) and 1 cup of greek yogurt. Pop it all into a food processor and it's all set!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

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Meal Plan Monday

My meal plan is running a bit late this week and has been missing for 2 weeks because I have just been going crazy with life. I'm lucky enough that I have content ready for blog posts that I can churn them out and schedule them to post, but my meal plans are done on shopping day and I just never have time to type them up but i'm working on it!

Prepping a stirfry overnight so it's ready to just toss in a wok

As I have shared before, I always know what I am cooking when I go grocery shopping, this keeps my shopping inexpensive and no impulse buys allowed (all that savings is vacation money!!) at any time. I create my menu based on ads from local places as well as what I have in the freezer, fridge, pantry and basement freezer and then online ads from Trader Joes and Whole Foods, as we don't have these in town. 

Making wonton soup was so easy and fun, next time we will make our own wonton wrappers

The MINUTE the bags come into the kitchen, we begin our routine. The kids begin washing produce, putting away pantry supplies and I begin to chop and dice everything that needs to be put away. This keeps our produce from spoiling or going unnoticed. Leave a watermelon whole and it may go moldy, cut it up and suddenly it's everyone's favorite fruit! It's a chore, but it's well worth it to my bottom line. It also makes dinner so easy when I am just throwing it in the wok or in a crockpot. No chopping or dicing required! It also keeps your produce fresher for longer periods of time. 

Ceviche is always a fun lunch staple, so quick and easy

Now it's time for the menu!
As always, most of my recipes can be found HERE!
Monday- Beef Roast over cauliflower rice with fresh green beans
Salad- Romaine & Escarole with Tomato Slices and Lime juice

Tuesday- Loaded Baked Potato Soup
Salad- Spinach Southwest with Corn

Wednesday- Shrimp & Avocado Ceviche with Guacamole
Salad- Tomato & Cucumber slices with chile, salt & lime

Thursday- Chicken Gyros served in Lettuce Leaves instead of pita
Salad-Greek

Friday- Out to dinner with friends moving out of state :(
Saturday - Out to dinner for Valentine's Day

Sunday - Italian Wedding soup with homemade french bread
Salad- Traditional Garden Salad bar with choose your own dressing

Eat well and enjoy every minute my friends!

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