Faith, Home, & Family
Hope I remember where all the wires go!!
For more pictures, visit Wordless Wednesday,
Wordless Wednesday at 5 Minutes for Mom ,
Say “Cheese” at It’s a Blog Party
A Beautiful Mess,
Live and Love Outloud,
Mama to 4 Blessings
Wordy or Not So Wordy Wednesday
Frugality is Free
Dear Crissy
Baba’s Farm Life
1) TOOTHPICK – To remind you to pick out the good qualities in others. (Matthew 7:1)
2) RUBBER BAND – To remind you to be flexible. Things might not always go the way you want, but it will work out. (Romans 8:28)
3) BAND AID – To remind you to heal hurt feelings, yours or someone else’s. (Colossians 3:12-14)
4) PENCIL – To remind you to list your blessings everyday. (Ephesians 1:3)
5) ERASER – To remind you that everyone makes mistakes and it’s OKAY. (Genesis 50:15-21)
6) CHEWING GUM – To remind you to stick with it, and you canaccomplish anything. (Philippians 4:13)
7) MINT – To remind you that you are worth a mint. (John 3:16-17)
8) CANDY KISS – To remind you that everyone needs a kiss or a hug everyday. (John 4:7)
9) TEA BAG – To remind you to relax daily and go over your list of blessings. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)
There’s nothing like a frozen treat to cool you off in the summer. My kids love popsicles. I don’t love the high sugar content and all the food dye. The 100% juice popsicles are very expensive. Some of my kids like store bought slushies, too. I have the same problem with those that I have with the popsicles.
So I started to make my own.
My favorite is lemonade. I make the lemonade myself:
6-8 lemons, juiced approximately 1 cup of juice
1 cup sugar, xylitol or your favorite sweetener
Add to a 2 quart pitcher and fill with water stirring to dissolve.
Pour into freezer containers or popsicle molds.
You want to make the lemonade a little stronger than if you were just drinking it.
Freeze until solid, or desired constancy, if your kids are standing at the freezer waiting like mind do. lol
If frozen solid, let sit at room temperature for 20-30 minutes, then stir (or chop) with your spoon.
I like to take my frozen lemonade and start scraping right away. Kind of like the lemon ice I used to get off the ice cream truck when I was a kid.
We also use 100% juice to fill the containers. My son likes grape. Another likes orange juice. With orange juice, you’ll want to make sure the juice isn’t bitter before freezing. My kids don’t like bitter slushies, and I’m guessing yours won’t either. lol Just use your kids (or yours!) favorite juice.
You can freeze any kind of smoothies that you kids like and treat them like a slushie, or let them completely defrost.
I like to use canning jars to freeze our slushies in. I bought the plastic freezer jam containers that one of the canning jar companies puts out, but ours keep cracking on the bottom. So I started using the glass jars, which are freezer safe also. My kids actually prefer these to popsicles. The benefit of these is no dripping.
Saturday – Sabbath- Make ahead meals- Dinner at church
Sunday – soup & sandwich day – Homemade Chicken Tenders, zucchini from our garden
Monday – beef – Hamburgers with lettuce & tomato
Tuesday – pizza – Homemade pizza . carrots sticks
Wednesday – super simple – leftovers, salad
Thursday – chicken – Chicken and noodles, broccoli
Friday – Friday Night Fire/Beef – Roast in crockpot with potatoes & carrots, challah bread- if my daughter makes it 🙂
For more ideas, visit Menu Plan Monday.
I just love the Echinacea flowers.
The next picture is taken from my front porch, looking left. You can see the small purple Butterfly Bush (small being relative, it’s taller than me, but smaller than our big white bush), 2 Hibiscus – one pink and one white, branches from the Mimosa tree, and some Hostas on the lower left. The picture is blurry because the humidity is so high, as soon as I walked outside, the lens clouded up.
This is our 3rd Hibiscus bush in the back yard. The Mimosa tree on the right is the same tree that has branches in the picture above. The grape vines, (that has lots of grapes!) is to the right of the Redbud tree, behind the Hibiscus.
This is a flower from the above bush. Now I know what leaves holes in the flowers. Beetles.
We harvested a cucumber from the garden! My 16 yo son is holding it in this picture. We all shared it, and it was so good!
Look at the Zucchini!
And more cucumbers!
We have lots of green bean blossoms.
And look at the tomatoes!!
The apples are so heavy, they are weighing the branches all the way down to the ground.
Now that you’ve seen my gardens, what’s in your gardens?
Here are a few websites I found interesting and helpful this week:
20 Common Herbs for Medicinal Purposes
Growing Tomato Plants Without Tomato Wire
How to Grow Big Leaf Maple Trees From Cuttings
Grab The Saturday on the Farm Button!
Saturday on the Farm is a blog carnival that lets us share links to our blog post. It’s fun to visit each others farms.
To participate in Saturday on the Farm:
For more Farm & Garden posts, please visit:
Homestead Barn Hop
Bloomin’ Tuesday
Frugal Gardening 101
Fertilizer Friday/ Flaunt Your Flowers
I’m still working away in the schoolroom. I’m making great progress. The kids have even commented. I guess I really am making progress if the kids noticed. lol
Tonight, I’ve been sorting through a pile of fallen apart books. Seeing which ones can be glued or are too precious to part with and which ones can be thrown away. The Piggy in the Puddle (Reading Rainbow Books)
will be staying on the shelf coverless until I can replace it. What’s a book shelf without a little oofy poogy. 🙂
Abby asked to make hummingbird food the other day. We haven’t made any yet this year. So I told her how to make it, and she did it all by herself.
She used 1/2 cup sugar and 2 cups of water. Boiled for 2 minutes, then cooled. Very easy, and much better for the pretty little hummingbirds than dye laced food. You can make this in any quantity, just use 1 part sugar to 4 parts water. You can also store it in the fridge for up to a week before filling the feeders.
She hung two feeders, one on the back porch and this one on the front porch.
Have you got your curriculum lined out for the new school year? Since I have all the books all the way through high school already, it’s just a matter of pulling books off the shelf and handing them out to the kids. The basics are the same for everyone, then they add in any electives that they want. It’s nice, after stressing about Jr. high and high school with the older two, to be able to just peacefully hand out books now.
That doesn’t mean that I don’t change curriculum if needed for individual students. That’s why I changed from Saxon Algebra to Teaching Texts Algebra. I like it better, and so do the 2 students in it now.
Since we school longer than the public school, we always have books carry over from “last year” to “this year”. But all four kids will be starting at least 2 new books when we go back to school. I will pull those off the regular shelf, and put them on each kids school shelf or in their school bin after I finish my thorough clean out of the school room.
Due to family visiting from out of state, we won’t be starting back to school the first week of August as planned. The family is coming the 2nd week. It really doesn’t make much sense to have school for one week, then take off a week. At least that’s what my kids keep telling me. lol Their right. I just haven’t told them that yet. lol
Here are a few links I found interesting and helpful:
Signing Savvy
How to Make a Butterfly Feeder
Please visit:
Weekly Wrap Up at Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers.
Wrapping Up The Week
Weekly Homeschool Highlights
I found lots of new favorites this week.
Non-Toxic Fly Repellant
How to Make a Kitchen Fire Extinguisher
Make your own air conditioner! How cool is that?! lol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zR9CA8lJGvs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Apple Nachos
Musical Note Birthday Cake
Pancake and Sausage Muffins– The kids are excited to try these. lol
Homemade Teriyaki Sauce – No MSG or HFCS I’m excited to try this one. 🙂
No Nut Pesto – I’ve never made Pesto before, but I like that this recipe doesn’t require expensive nuts. I’ve got lots of Basil growing in the garden, and I’m looking forward to trying this.
Fun Flip Flops
T-shirt decorated with a T-shirt – so pretty! My daughter wants to try this.
Doily Lamp– What a great idea! Perfect for a girls room!
Hope you find some new favorites, too!
