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November26th

Thanksgiving Week in Preschool

Posted in: Homeschool, HouseWifery, My Kitchen, Our Traditions, Slice of Life
We are having a blast figuring out this thing we call preschool at home. I’ll post more later on the things that have worked for us so far, but for now I wanted to share with you our Thanksgiving week.

This is the first year that Kade’s really been able to comprehend/remember big holidays and so I wanted to try to really introduce Thanksgiving to him. I had three goals for the week:
1. Know that Thanksgiving is a time to GIVE THANKS
2. Learn about Pilgrims & Indians and why they’re important to Thanksgiving
3. Experience some of our Thanksgiving family traditions
I used my new Silhouette Cameo to cut out 60 or so fall leaves last Sunday night and then each morning and evening this week, I wrote down on the leaves the things we were thankful for. Kade helped me decorate our vinyl trees with the leaves so we could be reminded throughout the week how blessed we are.

I found a great book at the library, Thanksgiving Day by Elaine Landau which gave an easy to understand history lesson and helped highlight some favorite traditions. This made it easy to talk about the first Thanksgiving and what life was like for the Pilgrims and Indians. I figured dressing up might help lodge the info into his memory, so we dug through the dress up box and found a headdress and then he made some Indian jewelry (a necklace out of wooden beads and macaroni) and then, of course, decorated a ~~paper bag~~ leather Indian vest. And who could make a more adorable Pilgrim than Berlin? Her costume was much easier (black dress and tights and two squares of white felt).

One of my family’s Thanksgiving traditions is homemade pumpkin pie. It’s a family recipe and my mom has made it every year for as long as I can remember. To give credit to my mom, the recipe says “Early in the day, prepare pie crusts”. For me that meant “early in November buy refrigerated pie crusts from the grocery store and remember to thaw them that morning”.

Kade donned his apron/art smock and helped me whip up a couple pies. His little fingers were just the right size for making the fluted pie crusts.

As expected, they turned out beautiful and delicious. So delicious in fact, that Kyle and I had to sneak a piece late Wednesday night, which is why the pies are already cut into before our feast even began!

Notice the paper plate turkey in the corner – Kade was “in charge” of the table decorations which included more traditions, like hand crafted turkeys, homemade napkin rings and of course the hand print turkey. He really like that one and went around tracing everyone’s hand and turning them into turkeys. All except Berlin’s, although not for lack of trying to get her to keep her hand in one spot!

It was a wonderful week and I’m so THANKFUL for my little Thanksgiving helper. He was a great sport about trying new things and it’s so fun to see what things spark his interest. Like finger puppets…the part with mom is cutting, coloring, etc…then dad comes home and Squanto and the Chief start wrestling Mr. & Mrs. Pilgrim. But he at least learned about Squanto!

We were also more than blessed to eat like kings. Everything but the pumpkin pies and Stovetop stuffing was a new recipe. I experimented with brining a turkey this year. I used Alton Brown’s recipe and it was FANTASTIC! Apparently there’s a reason it has over 3600 5 star reviews.

Here are my boys, wondering what will we ever do with all this delicious food! Please ignore my husband’s trucker mustache but please do feel free to donate to Movember. Hope you all had a fabulous holiday!
July11th

A Trip to the Country

Posted in: Slice of Life

Sooo…we’ve experienced another blogging hiatus. Sorry about that. I could give a lot of excuses as to why we’ve been missing but I’m pretty sure that would be incredibly boring, so instead I’ll try to catch you up on all the fun stuff. In June, the kids and I flew to Colorado to visit family for a week or so. It was a GREAT time and provided the perfect opportunity to play with my new wide angle lens in the wide open spaces. Above is my parent’s ranch. They live approximately 20 miles from the closest stoplight (except for the one hanging in their basement, because doesn’t everyone have a stoplight hanging in their basement?) It was the absolute perfect time of year for the scenery. Everything was sooo green and the evening thundershowers turned the sky sooo blue. Dad calls it “Selling Weather” because if you tried to sell the place with everything looking this good, you’d get a better offer. Luckily, they aren’t selling!

My mom and I are both “list makers” so, of course, we had a list of things we needed to accomplish while I was out there. I’ve mentioned before that my parent’s have an antique shop on the ranch and every so often they go through the buildings and rearrange stuff to give things a fresh look. They were in the midst of this process while we were there so my mom and I and my sister-in-law Katie decided to decorate an entire room in neutrals. Strangely enough, the concept took shape around a new use for old bedsprings, so we made that a focal point. It was so much fun! Every time I go through their shop I swear that I will move closer, just to have access to all the great stuff. I really love how the frame wall turned out, so much so that it’s inspired me to do my own in our living room. I’m in the process of frame collecting now and can’t wait to get started. Oh, and see the round table there with different chairs surrounding it – loved that idea…so I coerced Kyle into dragging home a round table today that had been discarded on the side of the road. It needs a lot of TLC, but I have high hopes.

I had a great time treasure hunting in the storage trailers…we found old jewelry that we made into new jewelry…lace collars to put on burlap…old doilies for table runners…and so much more. When we weren’t out with antiques, we sorted through some of my mom’s homeschool supplies and idea files. Amazing finds! and so much of it! We even managed to save a day to go thrift shopping. I think the stores in Colorado have better stuff than the ones in Cali, I’m not sure how that’s possible but we sure found some great deals. We also took some time to just hang out.

This is my dear sweet daughter doing her best gansta pose.

This one has a little sweeter smile!

Kade got to go farming with Opa in the big white truck.

Berlin charmed the pants off everyone, including herself.

Uncle Jacob even let Kade take a turn in the driver’s seat of his dear Beatrice.

We were happy that we even got a chance to see Grandma Carol in Colorado, since she’s normally in Texas.

It was a such a fun trip, but by far the reason we go is FAMILY. Thanks everybody for making it such an amazing time! We loved it!
September23rd

Shared Room for our Boy and Baby Girl

Posted in: Handcrafted, HouseWifery, My Home, Refurbishing, Sewing, Slice of Life

When we found out #2 was on the way, Kyle and I had the logistics talk. We ended up deciding that whether the new baby was a boy or a girl, the kids would share a room. Both of us had shared rooms at one time or another growing up and lived to tell about it, and to be honest, we didn’t want to give up our guest room / office. After we found out Fritz was going to be a girl, I started brainstorming decorating ideas.

Kade’s first nursery had a farm theme, which we loved since Kyle and I both grew up on farms and it was very “boyish”. I don’t have a lot of great pictures of the nursery after we moved to NorCal, but here are a few from when it was set up in our LA condo.

This time, since it was going to be for a boy and a girl, I thought a nursery rhyme theme would be cute, sort of a “Jack & Jill Nursery”. Plus I already had a few family pieces that I wanted to incorporated. My grandmother had made a baby quilt for me and it was nursery rhyme themed.

And Kyle’s grandmother had given us a couple of wall cut-outs from the 1950′s that used to hang in her children’s room.

Here is the result. The nursery rhyme illustrations are from my parent’s antique shop and I painted 3 frames that I picked up at the flea market. The bunting is made from the scraps my mom sent out. I had made basket liners and a lamp shade for Kade’s farm nursery, but I modified them to both to fit into this new theme. And the nursery rhyme nesting blocks I picked up on Etsy.

I was glad that the grandparent picture frames still worked in my color scheme, and the farm overalls were a great compliment to the vintage pink dress I’d picked up at the flea market.

My parents gave Fritz her very first doll and below her are the fitted sheets that I made, along with a few pics of the new white eyelet crib bedding.
July9th

Chalkboard Growth Chart

Posted in: Handcrafted, Woodworking

Since Kade seems to grow overnight, I really wanted to get a growth chart for his birthday but I was actually pretty particular about what I wanted. We always had one on a door frame when I was growing up, but I knew that we moved so often that wouldn’t be realistic. I wanted one that could fold or collapse. I also didn’t want a super-kiddie looking one. What 12 year old boy is going to want a giraffe on his wall? And I wanted it personalized somehow. I thought maybe I could sew one, but never quite found the right inspiration. I really liked the wooden ones but never found one for sale that was collapsible. I finally decided I would just have to make one up.

I found some 12 x 12 boards at Michaels and gathered up some random supplies.

Then I decided to paint the boards with chalkboard paint which would allow the chart to change with his room’s decor. At age 3, cute notes from mom and colorful chalk animals are fun. At 15, maybe it will have a girlfriend’s phone number and still some cute notes from mom.

Then to make it collapsible, I glued sections of wide ribbon on the back of each square and let one end of the ribbon hang a bit long. I added heavy-duty velcro to the long ends of ribbon and attached the other half of the velcro to the square above it. This way, the squares would velcro together with no gaps when hanging up, but could easily be disassembled and packed in a box when we move.

Then I used white paint to mark each half-inch tic and the numbers and letters. I’ll also use white paint to permanently chart his growth every six months or year when we measure. Beyond that, he can write to his heart’s content in chalk.

Finally, I added grommets in the very top of the ribbon on the back for hanging it up. (Although, as you can see, for the sake of hanging it for a quick photo, I just used more ribbon.)

Voila! A wooden, personalized, collapsible, not-too-kiddie growth chart!