Anne of Green Gables

Gracie's end of the year book report was done on Anne of Green Gables. Anyone that knows me, knows this is my ultimate favorite book and movie! So obviously, I was tickled pink, err green, she chose that book! she did her report, a poster board and dressed up like Anne (as best we could with a modified goodwill dress, old apron and braids! lol). I was very pleased with her.




The kids were given options on what they could do with this final project. Some chose a power point presentation, some gave oral reports. One child chose a model from a scene from his book. Now I must say I am one that loves lots of bright colors and the effort put in was great! However, for many reasons, especially since it was a young boy's project, I think I would have coved the bottom of the box with some construction paper or something! HAHAHAHAHA!


And yes i know the date on the camera needs to be fixed big time.

Firestarters

I have been trying to find ways to reuse things and come up with homemade alternatives for as much as i can. Luckily my friend Jenifer, the Martha Stewart of all my friends, taught me a wonderful "craft" if you will, that does both. We have 2 firepits in our backyard. Chris usually starts the fires in them, however I attempted to the last 2 fires we had. Needless to say, I am thankful I will now have these firestarters to help me along! They make "reuse" of dryer lint, cardboard egg cartons, and if you want, crayons. However if you are unlike most Americans with kids, and don't have a ton of old crayons that can be melted, you can always buy some wax. You can also use either coffee cans (espcially if you do this over an open fire, like a firepit) or like we did, you can use glass jars, which also were recycled from spaghetti sauce, mayonaise, etc....
Fill the jars with the wax and set them in a pot of boilling water. Stir until melted.







Careful not to let water get into the jars. But if you do, just wait for it to harden and then you can pour the water out and melt the wax again.




Once the wax is melted, pour it over the egg cartons/lint. Let dry then just tear off as many as you need to place under the sticks to start the fire with. The cardboard and lint catch fire easily and the wax keeps it going for a long time so as the wood has plenty of time to catch fire.

Just a note, old spatulas, get brittle and break easily! hahaha!

Spare the rod....Soften the blow?

So i think there is only one thing worse than having to spank your child, having to sit and listen when someone else (ie your spouse) does it!
at the kids school, if you get a mark, it's a warning, two marks, one last chance, three marks and you fill out a think it through and have to have your parents sign it and return it the next day. when they were younger, they had colored fish, one time and one time only did frankie get a bad colored fish, and he got a spanking and grounded from some privelages. this standard is how we have kept him from doing anything bad (enough to get a think it through) in the years since.
until yesterday. 3 marks, and a think it through! he did not want to tell his dad. he knows mom can be a softee on these things, and so does she, which is why dad has to be involved. he asked me not to tell his dad, i said i wasn't going to, he was! so we get home and i call chris upstairs and he tells frankie to hurry up, he had to be on a business call in 4 mins. now as bad as it seems, i am doing a little dance in my head, he can't surely do too much punishing in that short of time. so frankie blurts out what happened. chris informs him he will be back up to deal with him AFTER the call! dunn dunn dunnnnn! so frankie heads to his room, and the tears fall. i go to him, to discuss how just the night before, we discussed, being responsible and accepting the consequences to our actions and not trying to get out of them. he asked shouldn't he get some credit for telling the truth! i said, yes and he will not loose privelages due to that, but he still has consequences. he said, ya it wont' save my butt. i said no, the only to soften that blow would be a couple extra pair of underwear and a soft pair of pants. and i left. well chris gets off his call, and asks for the wooden spoon. he asks how many whacks i recommend. i said no more than three. so he calls frankie downstairs, as he goes by (i'm picturing dead man walking) i see he still has his school pants on, and feel bad that he didn't atleast change pants. i kept waiting to hear the spanks....nothing, i kept waiting to hear the wails....nothing, finally they start to come up, first frankie, and close behind, chris. as frankie is winding the corner, chris says "wait, what do you have on under your pants" frankie mumbles extra underwear, chris is about to add to the spanking, and i interceded and said i told him to and sent frankie on his way. chris is having a hard time not laughing, yet he was mad at me at the same time. i said, i did not interfere with the spanking, i just offered advice! and i told him he needed to now go in and make sure frankie remembers how much he loves him still.... we go in to frankie's room, and chris asks how many extra pairs he has on, and frankie says, three, so he tells him to take off the extra pairs and put them away so not to accumulate extra laundry (we always have tons of laundry! ) so as frankie takes off his school pants we discover, underneath he had also added a pair of fleece pajama bottoms! now we both were having a hard time not laughing! but chris informed both frankie and i, next time it will be a bare butt spanking! :-( i still refuse to feel bad, all i did was offer advice and i'm sticking to that!) however chris did think it odd, he didn't hear the crack sound when he spanked him, and that frankie received the spanking without fighting nor did he cry as much as usual....what's a mom to do, baby steps to letting her kids get what they deserve......

Spring Yard Work

WARNING! my garden/yard work blogs will probably be boring to most, but i want to keep them so when my kids are older they can look back at our experience while hopefully working in their own yards/gardens! Ahhh! i love spring, however, all the yard work that goes into it.....well i don't mind alot of it while the weather is cool. but it can be expensive and seem to take forever to get all the things done you want to. however for the first time, we have made a list, and prioritized it. for instance, the garage can wait no longer.....as you can see it is in DESPERATE need of new paint....

and the trellises around the pool may come all the way down to be used in the garden and then plant bushes around the bottom, however that decision has not been official yet, due to....the money portion to buy the bushes. however i am happy to say that stupid fence thing around the burner barrel is gone as of today. we will till all that area up (where every year it turns to weeds!) and plant weed and seed grass seed there, and just let it be grass for a few years. however the old clothes line pole, is taking alot of work to remove, seems they dug to china, then poured cement then put the pole in. it is gonna take more time and effort to get that baby out of there!

Frankie and Chris have been working on cutting down the branches in some of the trees to open up more areas that the sun can reach on the ground. i missed getting the shot of frankie in the tree on the ladder and sawing away, but he did and i let him....that's a hard one, i just knew he was gonna fall or cut a finger off! but i am happy to say he did neither and he did a very good job! here he is opening up so the sun can reach the grapes we planted next to the arbor last year. the front ones really took off cuz they were able to get alot of sun, but the ones behind were blocked alot from the tree's branches.

however there was some new growth on all the grape plants, no mater how small!

there also is the work of the garden this year.....last year we left grass in between the rows, something i had read in a book. i really don't care for that book any more, because it caused me tons more work keeping the grass from growing around all the plants! this year, we tilled it all up and expanded. therefor, not knowing how many rows i could fit in and how many plants in the rows, gracie and i measured it all out (where the sticks are) and then we also made a path down the middle (that's what grace is doing) that we will cover with straw and planks to walk on later. we already got the peas in last week, so i still need to plant a few other cold hardy plants then we wait until may, where all the plants i have started in doors will get transplanted and the rest direct sowed.

we wer very pleased with how the cherry tree we planted two years ago shot STRAIGHT up this spring! we thought it was a goner when one of the dogs dug it up that first year! the dog is gone but the tree is luckily still here! lol

the peach tree we planted just last year, got blooms on it this spring, we were extremly suprised to see that, chris said we'll probably get tiny peaches that are all pits but it's still exciting! we still have a LONG way to go in this wonderful yard of ours, but i am glad to have my large (to me) yard to do soooo many things, and plant so many things that we can rely on to feed ourselves instead of settling for high priced, low quality produce that seems to be the norm here lately. it's gonna take us awhile to get everything, but one day, i will garden like it was second nature, can food in my sleep and kill chickens with my eyes closed (but i have to wait until next year for that experience!)

oh the many thoughts in my head!

where to begin, seems i have had lots going on but not enough of any one thing to post about. first of all, i ordered the homeschool supplies! oh but the butterflies were going in my stomach! first when i notified the school they could give gracie's spot away next year, and then ordering the supplies, were definete "no going back now" moments! ahhhhhh! but i feel very strongly that God has brought us to this point, and so like the saying goes, He will also bring us through it! lol

i think i have secured gracie flute lessons starting in june, so one of the things she was upset she was gonna miss out on from public school has been knocked off the list. so excited to see if she does as well with that, as frankie has with his piano. hopefully she will practice her flute more than he practices his piano though! i was able to pick up a nice flute in great condition last year at a garage sale for $20 and now only have to pay $10 for her lessons!

Most recently (no none of this will probably be in order because my mind does not flow in order) i have thought we needed to add some more recipes into our biweekly menus. my friend jenifer had given me this recipe for italian chicken which i thought was wonderful. posted about it on fb and found out EVERYONE except ME had been using this recipe forever! lol then i discovered it was in a tast of home cookbook! ha! well that got me to looking through recipe books for new ideas, but i always am fearful to try them for fear of wasting all the ingredients if we don't like it. so i decided to hold a "recipe tasting party". i'm gonna have everyone bring their favorite recipe, be it appetizer, main course or desert or a recipe they have never made but thought it sounded good, to this party, along with several copies of the recipe. that way we can all try new recipes without making so many ourselves. i am reallllllllly hoping for a good turn out and good recipes! i mean, what more can you ask for, free food and good company!

on yet another front, i started reading my granny's diaries again. she kept a diary ever day of her life since she was 18. i currently just finished 1942 and am starting in 1943. she also has yearbooks from 1919, 1920 (the year she was born) and 1938, why she had the earlier ones i am not sure, but they sure are fun to look through! anyway, it has renewed my motivation to get back to keeping my own daily journal. especially for things i want to remember but may not be sooo appropriate for on here! lol so far i have kept at it for 13 days! a new record! lol

mailed my mother in law's quilt to her. i am very pleased with how it turned out. she called 2 days in a row to tell me how much she enjoyed it and that it made her feel like chris' dad was back with her. she had gotten rid of the majority of his things last july when he passed. she had forgotten she gave me his shirts to make the quilt with, so she was very pleased to see the quilt. she said she slept better than she had in a long time with that quilt! that alone was worth all the time put in, but then she called back a few days later to tell me she had taken it downstairs (she lives at an assisted living place) to show her friends. she said they all were looking it over and loved it. i laughed and said, well tell them not to look too closesly cuz it's far from perfect. she said, no they did look closely and couldn't get over all the work put in. i said, how many of them had cataracts!? lol she laughed and said all of them! lol then she said they were all asking her if i could make one for them! she told them she didnt' think i had enough squares left over, they said, they would go around collecting them! lol just to hear her laugh and joke and carry on again, now THAT made it really worth it!

well that's all for now folks, i have lots more going on, but the yard and garden are enough for a whole new post! good night for now!

Let's get organized

a very short but funny blog. so i asked frankie to put the clean towels away in the linen closet. well gracie said she would do it for him (shocker i know!) well she decided she wanted to organize the bathroom. so when i got up this morning, this is what i found..

valentine's day 2010

ok, let me specify up front, i don't usually decorate for valentine's, st.patrick's day or easter, simply because, i was tired of getting stuff up at the last minute and then having to take it back down. however, i also must fess up, when i watched an episode of jon and kate plust 8, it did seem like so much fun for the kids and she really didn't do that much in the way of decorating. so when out shopping with my friend, i saw a packet of v-day decorations, all in one thing, for $10 smackaroos! ok, i thought, i can do THAT! and i got each family member a little "love" to wake up to. again, maintaining it all in the dinning room. most people's kitchens are their center of activity, well my kitchen is too small, so the dinning room is ours.

Gracie got a picture framed thing i made for her of hunter beans, plus a valentine's day waterglobe (as we have started a new tradition of collecting water globes, some chocolates and a card from nana and a card from gran and grandad.

Frankie got his globe, his cards, and a mini pot of flowers to grow, some aqua globes that he has wanted for a long time and some andes mints (since most boxed chocolates have nuts!) and

chris got a card from me with a gamestop gift card and some of his favorite chocolates taped on top. the kids got me a little box of chocolates and we all enjoyed some krispy kreme doughnuts. all in all, it was fun, easy and i loved that i could take down the decorations the next day and put them back in thier little package for next year! now that's what i call decorating! i may even decorate for easter at this rate!