Monthly Archives: October 2006

Font 411

Posted on by

Had a request for more specific directions for downloading those fonts shared the other day.  It can be maddening to attempt the first time! I remember several phone calls to Jen and a few expletives aimed at the screen when I realized how many free fonts were available and how few I could figure out how to load.

Here is the tutorial with graphics of the windows used.  Basically you right click on the font you are downloading and click ‘save target’. You want to have a file set up to save it to of course so you can find it again. I created a ‘font’ file under Windows. You will need to unzip your font file, so you must have an unzipping utility like Winzip installed. It will open a window with a TT(True type) icon once you unzip it. This is where most people get stuck. If you click on this icon you get a lovely sample of your new font and can do absolutely nothing with it. So…. don’t click on it yet <g> Proceed to:

Open your control panel (on the bottom left of the screen hit start, then control panel). Go to Appearance and Themes and then find the Font prompt and open that. Mine is on the top left at this point.  This should pull up a window with all the TT font files already installed on your computer. Drag your new font icon over into this window and release it. It will automatically install. If you go to your word processing program and select a font it should be there ready to go. Do double check the linked tutorial.

Once the world of free fonts is opened to you the newfound options for school work, notebooks and scrapbooks will amaze you. A couple of my favorite font sites are:

Dafont.com  I like the handwriting, script, and school themes.  The serif and sans serif are great for scrapping.

One Scrappy Site

Scrap village

When you see layouts you like in scrapbook mags be sure to check the materials info included. Do a search for the fonts listed and you too can get the same look.  If you are a homeschooler check the school fonts from the first link. (linked in the Adventures in Grocery Shopping post as well) You will save a fortune over the ones available in school supply catalogs. These are perfect for making handwriting practice pages. You can adjust the font size to whatever stage at which your young writer is currently performing.  It is particularly nice to make notebook and copywork pages by starting your text half way down a blank page and printing on cardstock. The child can illustrate the top half and practice the copywork on the bottom. Or he/she can dictate a nature notebook entry which you can print in light gray and he can copy and illustrate that. The list goes on. Enjoy!

A hunting we will go..

Posted on by

Asher Asher and Allen went on the first hunt of the year this weekend.  It was the first hunt of a lifetime for Asher. Asher seems to have a lot of things come easily to him the first time he tries. True to form he got the largest doe virtually effortlessly! He managed to get his dad to do most of the cleaning pretty effortlessly as well. ; ) The elk hunt is next month. It looks like the trip falls the same week as our piano recitals so Asher is bowing out of the hunt. The call of the show is a bit stronger than the call of the wild!

Canyon We spent yesterday hauling home a new (to us) chest freezer and getting everything loaded in. We need to yet unload the old freezer and defrost it this week. Not looking fwd to that job! Having a store of organic food for winter is very gratifying however. If you have any good tips for venison send them on!

Cattle_driveThe pics show some of the most beautiful land on the Western Slope fwiw. You can see life hasn’t changed much in a century.  They had to stop for a rancher moving his cattle. : )

Adventures in Grocery Shopping

Posted on by

Cream_puffs Walking is getting to be more challenging for me at this stage of pregnancy. We have always had Wednesdays as our errand or ‘town’ day. Three of the children have piano lessons in the afternoon. We usually try to hit a thrift shop and the grocery store and anyplace else I need to go.  Short runs I can do while they are at lessons. Groceries come afterwards. Problem is, I can no longer run errands during piano and still make it all the way through Walmart and do the half hr drive home. We came up with a very workable solution. Asher and Alannah head into the grocery store ahead of me and the little ones.  We catch our breath in the van and meet them inside when they are about finished so I can check the carts and pay. This is such a blessing! Because they have shopped with me for so long now they know which brands we buy, what size bags/cans things should come in for our family, and where things are.

Fanny Alannah kicked it up a notch this past month.  We had read and loved Fanny at Chez Panisse this summer.(link below) It was a wonderful book that held the attention of even my antsy little boys who asked for just one more chapter. It is the real story of the daughter of a restaurant owner (author) and her adventures with the cooks, the florist, the farmer’s market vendors and so on. It is full of simple watercolor paintings that begged to be copied by small people. It is also full of easy recipes.  Half the book in fact! That started the ball rolling. Alannah wanted to try several.

I told her to get me a list. She did better – she made a menu (for the week) based on this book and others we had reserved, wrote out a list, and then shopped for the ingredients (with Asher pushing her cart ; )) Then she prepared the meals for that whole week. The cream puffs at left are a sample of her newly honed baking skills. God bless her!

Honest_pret Her younger siblings have followed her lead and are eagerly taking weeks to be chef or chef’s helper. Aidan has had this past week. Granted no cream puffs for him. It’s been hot dogs, quesadillas, and tacos, all of which are more his speed. He still needs a lot of help but can do much more food prep than one would expect from an almost seven year old.

On a seemingly unrelated note I was thinking about the copywork we are doing. I have been cutting and pasting quotes from people we are studying and the gospel stories from Sundays into Word documents. I change the fonts to whatever type hand each child is working on and then change the color to the lightest gray possible and print. They trace over the correctly formed letters.  They are wild over this for some reason. At first it felt like ‘cheating’ because they were tracing vs forming the letters. But it does fall into line with Charlotte Mason’s idea of implanting the habit of perfect work and is also similar to Montessori’s tracing of the sandpaper letters.

It occurred to me that the shopping and the cooking were very similar. In home ec curriculum for middle grades and higher you see detailed instructions in cooking and meal prep. They tend to presume no previous instruction. They bring to mind my own efforts to learn to cook – LOTS of effort, lots of guessing, and mixed success. My children, by contrast, seem to be preparing dishes with very little help or effort and much success. It would seem that having the children shadow me for many, many years has prepared them much better than a rigorous cooking curriculum ever could have. They have learned not only to prepare food but to plan meals and purchase ingredients. They have seen it modelled over and over. I am hopeful that the copywork will serve the same purpose.

Guess it all falls under the proverb:

“Tell me and I’ll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I’ll understand.”

Below are a few links to resources we have used for both:

Clear Print font

print with lines font

dashed Cursive font

Honest Pretzels cookbook for kids – step by step!

Fanny at Chez Panisse

Adj cards

Posted on by

Adj_game_m We have been making sentence analysis materials this month.  Thought I would share the logical adjective exercise Moira and Aidan were playing.  The cards are color-coded by part of speech. They go nouns (black) first and then the adjectives. In this pic Moira is matching adjectives to nouns.

What do you suppose it is about our kids and the tongue thing while concentrating lol?

Peanuts and Crackerjack

Posted on by

Coors_field Baseball may be as American as apple pie but I must confess it has never been ‘our’ game. Basketball has been the sport of choice to play for our guys and football the game to obsess over all winter. It was military appreciation day at Coors Field however, and the little boys were itching to see a game live. Allen took all but Brendan last week.

A good time had by all, though I think the necklace and dog tags given as phone company A_and_a_shuttle Boys_game promos were an even bigger hit. 

Go figure <g>

Clean Sweep – the craft room and office

Posted on by

Mag_holders We actually tackled the craft room job last summer though you wouldnt know it by the stacks of books in the craft room at the moment. : /  I mentioned I have a room for scrapbooking and sewing in this house. It is painted a taupe/tan color with cream trim. We purchased a large black banquet table which is the perfect size for crafting – not too deep and long enough for more than one crafter or to use one side for sewing and one for scrapping.  I had an old armoire style entertainment center that was on its last legs. The doors had long since broken off. We painted that black and it holds large items now. Next I bought several sets of the black wire snap-together cubes from Target and made shelving around two sides of the room. They are deeper than most shelves and can store deep photo boxes and fabric cuts etc. Also on the shelves are patterns, magazines (in holders) paper, scrap supplies and unfortunately preschool materials. They are safer up there!

Pb_office Creating Keepsakes has a great article online this week  about organizing your scrap space. Many of the tips could be translated into a home office imo. They have a second link to organizing on a budget featuring my favorite – magazine holders with labels. <g>  Here is  yet another room we haven’t linked to previously. Very bright and cheerful. 

I am also in love with the home office and storage pics at Pottery Barn online (sample pic left). Lots of great ideas for stashing your stuff. <g>  My fantasy is to move directly into a Pottery Barn catalog – preferably a page with LOTS of fabric lined baskets and deep shelves lol!

Speaking of shelves – we decided to tackle the bookcases downstairs completely this week. Realizing how stressed the stacks are making me it seemed wiser to move the best of the old cases into the living and box whatever doesn’t fit comfortably. At least we can get back to order and clean. I don’t think the built in’s will happen until after the baby with all we have scheduled in the next two months and the thought of approaching Christmas and birthing with a torn up main level puts me over the top. SO, better get moving on that note! 

Oh, yes, the home office. In progress! We have yet to decide where that will be. It is in the kitchen right now and may move to the craft room or livingroom. We are organizing the components and then a move won’t be a big ordeal. Remember that organized does not need to look institutional nor modern. This site explains. or you could go Mexican country, English Country,primitive, cottage, or American classic country.

Here are some further links to organizing your home office:

essortment

http://www.hgtv.com/hgtv/dc_design_office_workspace/0,1792,HGTV_3378,00.html  home offices

http://interiordec.about.com/od/planninganoffice/

Clean Sweep – the Paper Monster

Posted on by

We are plugging away at our home organization project. I got a copy of Simplify Your Life which Cheryl recommended.   So far I have been diving into one such book every other month.  This one was quite nice. Some parts, particularly the beginning about organizing time, were worded a bit awkwardly to me. But lots of food for thought in practical areas.  The prayers at the ends of each chapter are definitely as nice as Cheryl described.  Those will be saved since I expect I will be praying for the fortitude to persevere with this project for some time to come. ; )

The author suggested listing your hot spots and estimating how much time they would actually take to tackle. This is my big bugaboo.  How much time?  Um well if I had tackled them before I might know!  Or if I didn’t have half a dozen children needing to be fed, clothed, bathed, educated, and taxi’d precisely while I attempted the hot spot tackle. Being that I do it sorta changes things!

Apparently I am not a good estimator anyway. I figured the current project – paper files and piles – would take about an hr per file drawer.  To which I now can only say BWA-HAAAAA!!!!  Perhaps make that a day each to sort, purge, and refile into a new container. In all it took the better part of a week to do five drawers which hadn’t been touched in yrs some of them.   All the needed papers are now re-filed.  There are still a few stacks awaiting permanent storage.

Filebox This has been very gratifying though! I had seen a review of Easy File Solutions on a large family blog. (course, which one escapes me now!) I was intrigued by the tabs – pic at left. They use a straight line filing method so all the stand up tabs are lined up behind each other vs zigzagging across the tops of the files. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around the logic or the system so I googled straight line filing and found a flash tutorial on Smead’s site.  Nothing earth shattering but it made sense. The eye follows a straight line better than others which is why the phone book is set up in columns. You can memorize colors easier than letters also so they color code categories like yellow for education, green for finance, red for medical etc.  The Easy File people also have a second tab on the right for the first file in a category. I can’t tell you how nice it is to look at the files now!

Fwiw I used the hanging files with the clip on tabs instead of the ones Easy File uses.  The others tend to fall over or slip down if they arent tight in the cabinet. The hanging files are much easy to adjust tabs on also. I did not purchase the Easy File set. You can buy colored tabs to place on the hanging files in the office supply section of Walmart etc. Honestly once you choose your category colors I can’t see that a premade set would be necessary.

There is still more work to do. I have a lot of softcover stuff on the bookshelves. Those will be boxed til the new shelves are finished but at that point I plan to put all softcover and booklet type bks into upright magazine holders which can be labelled more easily. If it doesn’t have a title on a binding then it may as well be in a black hole once it hits a shelf. I am also getting mag holders for the kids school books. We have used crates in past yrs but they tend to wreck the books and cause lots of rifling through during selection. Open shelves are nice but the soft covers tip or bend.

Finally there is the binder project. I am collecting all my articles, printable school projects, and craft patterns etc into topical binders. The thrift shop tends to have an abundance of empty binders cheap. So I am grabbing those each trip and starting to gather all these ideas into binders.