Monthly Archives: December 2006

Birth day!

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Baby Tess was born this morning at 1130am.  Her full name is Therese Claire and she weighed 8lbs 8oz and was 20 and 1/2 in long.  It was a truly peaceful, quiet event and we are certain it was due to all your prayers.  Thank you! Here are a few early pics.  We hope to inundate you with more in the days to come. : ) Meeting_tess_2

These first three or four are right after birth.  Her face was a little discolored but she is rosy now. : )

Tess10

All the little boys are thrilled.  Brendan especially thought this was a great idea… <g> He got to hold her after his bath.

  Tess5

Tess7Tess3Tess6  See? Rosy  : )   

Tess_11

Paper Flowers

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It is the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe. So many friends are posting lovely ideas. We are pretty low key this year, likely just doing the Mexican God’s Eyes this time around.  I did bookmark this site for next year however – The Paper Flower Pomander.  This is a project I would be happy to display in the house for the whole season.

You know I can’t resist the phrase "while you are there"….  BUT, did you catch the name of the blog – One Hour Craft. Right up my alley. : )  There is a nifty machine embroidery tutuorial (just a straight stitch folks!) as well as kids crafts, gift ideas, and more.

Real Food

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Mkt_foods_1 Bookmobile Day is the highlight of my week. : )  My new favorite food book came by way of the bookmobile this week – Real Food.  It is Nourishing Traditions for Dummies in my opinion which is perfect for me! Many homeschool moms have found that Karen Andreola’s take on Charlotte Mason is a much more enjoyable read than Charlotte herself.  That is how I would sum up this book.

The author’s parents fascinate me as much as the science does. Her father was a tenured university professor at a young age. They left it all to become vegetable farmers in VA in the late seventies. They wanted their children to grow up on a farm and they wanted fresh, wholesome food at the ready. Sounded like a theme song to which I knew the tune. <g>    The author grew up eating their home grown produce prepared in simple ways. As a teen she became a vegetarian and later a vegan and eventually very sick.  Another tune I was familiar with.  She moved to Europe and became a major player in the British farmers market movement. There she was introduced to fresh cream, fish, and farm raised meat along with the produce. She regained her health and began to question how she had become sick in the first place and why these foods, which we were all told are supposed to kill us, made her well again.

Enter Weston Price.

The remainder of the book outlines the history of traditional diets and their staples, explains what is wrong with modern foods, and helps you locate ingredients. The book is heavy on studies but translates them into easy to understand language. I have thoroughly enjoyed it.  Unlike Nourishing Traditions it doesn’t have recipes. That’s ok though. You don’t have to wade through chapters about fermented veggies <g>  She assures us we can still enjoy familiar menus by just tweaking our selections and preparation. 

I found a couple links that have been helpful too. The first is a high protein menu collection with breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus each day. For families I would add more whole grain side dishes (steel cut oats, steamed barley, brown rice etc) to these plans but they are excellent and devoid of problematic ingredients like cream of anything soup that seem to be prevalent in the menu plans available for families.  Also this postpartum diet article was very good. Golly I hope to need that soon……..

Christmas crafts

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Between the girls’ sewing class and the new blogs I have loaded we have found some exceptionally cute patterns to save lately.  First, let me share the girls’ work:

100_3878_1 These two images are tiny creations made from girls anklet socks. The head and bodies are stuffed and tied with floss and embroidered. Then you can wrap fabric for the angel dress. I have a pattern: Download makedolls3.jpg  similar to this from a craft blog and honestly I can’t recall which one it was.  If you recognize it please give me a holler and I will give credit where due! 

100_3880 This is the snowman made the same way. The hat and scarf are made from a rib knit fabric.

A new favorite blog of mine is AllSorts.   There are some very nice printables and patterns to be had here! There are lots of nice craft blogs but not everyone links up their patterns or inspiration sites. I so appreciate those that take the time to do this! I especially like the soft Scotty   and the felt trees floating around the net at the moment.  (we bought some sage green felt and trims this week just in case…) How about her last year’s Christmas craft? Or these printable letters to make your own holiday banner?  She posted them at Halloween but I think they could work for Happy Thanksgiving or New Years or Birthday or…..   Enjoy!

Symbols of Christmas unit

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We made a full St Nicholas lapbook two years ago so this year we decided not to repeat it but to add our St Nick icons etc to a new book about the symbols and feasts of the Advent/Christmas season.  I found this unit at Easy Fun School. (Gotta love anything with a name like that ; ))  It is a BIG document – about 49 pages – though much of that is dedicated to cookie recipes that go with the symbols. My biggest gripe is that it is a pdf file and I can never just click on the plethora of links they include.

Hands of a Child has a Symbols of Christmas lapbook kit as well. You can download a sample and get quite a few ideas from there.

My thought is that it is not at all necessary to do it up big on a given year.  We will learn about whichever symbols we can this time around and hit the others another year. The current plan is to move fwd until the baby comes. Today we are doing an advent wreath paper craft. Actually we will do that craft and then assemble this little wreath craft for the lapbook. Will try to upload pics later.

Sight seeing in CO

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I have been on Shutterfly today ordering prints of the last month’s sightseeing trips.  Thought you might like a glimpse of the Colorado countryside too.

Boys_cliff   First stop Thanksgiving week was the Manitou Cliff Dwellings. Here are the little boys climbing on same.

Girls_cliffs Alannah and her cousin.  Am guessing the handrailings were added some time after the Indians.

Royal_gorge Next stop was Royal Gorge Bridge.  Its a BIIIIIIIG ole gap in the ground. I am so sorry I missed seeing my children suspended over it. Not ; ) 

Bridge here is another view. You can walk across or ride the trolley.  My clan being who they are, did both. <g>

Homeschooling for Free

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School1 The first things I reloaded to my favorites were my e-book sites. How much are you paying for books and curriculum these days? Have you checked these out??  Ambleside Online has links to several good e-texts:

Ambleside you will want to click on the links for subject areas and grade levels to get all the links to specific books.  The art and music links are awesome to include printable works of art to study and midi files of classical music

Baldwin Project  this one is a favorite of mine because one of the first purchases I made as a young mom was a set of 100 yr old Baldwin Readers from an open air book sale in Yellow Springs, OH. They have always been some of my favorite children’s books. This collection is not limited to Mr Baldwin’s works however.

Worldwide School

Digital Book index

Collection of etext links

Hoagies free gifted online hs courses

Arthur Mee Children’s Encyclopedia havent assembled all my links for him yet but do check it out

My Bookhouse by Olive Beauprey Miller.  Again, don’t hate me <g>, I bought the whole set at a dollar a bag at a library sale in the early 90s before I had a clue who she was.   link 1

the next two are online programs not etexts but we have enjoyed them enough to share here:

Montessori LEarn to Read for free – programmed reading work

Study Dog  reading program

Genevieve shared the Hillbilly Housewife homeschool links which have been growing to now include a full K-12 curric.  These now include links to COMPLETE bks of grammar and math.

these links are to Catholic and Christian sites:

Miniature stories of the saints  Cath.

Written Treasures moralistic stories from yesteryear – Christian

Padfield bible studybks  and Calvary Chapel worksheets  – Christian

Catholic church history, papal encyclicals, and philosophy

Catholic Planet ebooks

Carmelite titles

Honestly – we need not spend a dime. If you have more to share please do!