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Showing posts from October, 2013

{Crew Review} Rosie’s Doll Clothes Patterns

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When I was in 7th grade I took home-ec (I had to; it was required.) One quarter was sewing and one was cooking. Let’s just say that sewing and I did not get along.  I can close my eyes and still see the very uneven stitching on my backpack.  *Sigh*   Years later when Tailorbear was about to turn 3, I decided I really wanted to learn how to sew. I am fairly proficient now at the “no-pattern-elastic-waistband” skirt and basic pillow cases.  Doll clothes are beyond my abilities.  That is, they were beyond my abilities until Tailorbear and I had the opportunity to review Learn How to Make Doll Clothes Video Course with 8 Free Doll Clothes Patterns   from Rosie's Doll Clothes Patterns . Rosie’s Online Video Course contains over 130 step by step instructional videos. These videos are organized into a six week course but with a purchase of the online course you have access to all videos for 12 months (roughly 8 hours of content). You can choose to have access to the content available w

Fall Means: Spiders!

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One of the cool things about being a home school mom is getting to learn about things like spiders.  Cool spiders.  Not those ginormous black creepy things that get into my house and must be destroyed.  Nope I’m talking about the spiders that appear in the fall, graciously stay outside, but provide beautiful fall decorations. Several years ago, we observed some of these spiders up close.  Closer than we wanted actually but still it was fascinating.  We stayed warm and dry on the inside of the house while we sat on the floor or leaned on the arm of the couch, and observed the intricate web created by a beautiful (but in a creepy way!) orb spider who made a web across our back door.  We even avoided the back door for several days so as to not disturb this creature. This year two spiders have taken residence in our front yard.  They seem to like the bushes.  The sun was shining today and it was easy to see the spiders and their webs. The clouds began to roll in but BooBear managed to sn

Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story{A Crew Book Review}

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Being a book loving family, and always being on the look out for another great read-aloud option for Supergirl and I, I jumped at the chance to review Diary of a Real Payne Book 1: True Story by Annie Tipton. This charming book, published by Barbour Publishing , is ideally suited for children ages 8-12 but also makes a fun family read aloud! Emma Jane Payne, who prefers to be called EJ, is a 10 year old 4th grader with a vivid imagination. Her father is a pastor, her mother a teacher and her 5 year old brother, Isaac a Kindergartener.  The book begins with an introduction through a diary entry. EJ tells the diary a bit about herself. Each chapter begins with a diary entry that foreshadows a voyage into an imagination adventure.  For example at the beginning of one chapter EJ tells her diary that tomorrow is the spelling bee and she explains why it’s called a spelling bee and then closes her entry by telling the diary she is going to go look up bees in the encyclopedia. During the ch

B is for Breakfast Ideas

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Last week I wrote A is for Arranging Meals and I talked about how I was planning meals around the principles of Trim Healthy Mama.  This week for #abcblogging I’m rambling on about breakfast. I’ve known for years that I needed to reduce my carb count.  I knew that eating whole grains was healthy but even those whole grains needed to be reduced. The problem? Breakfast.  Here’s what we would eat in a typical week: Monday: Baked Oatmeal or “Swedish Pancake” (think dutch hats) Tuesday:  Eggs!  But eggs with toast. Fried eggs or scrambled eggs but always with toast. Wednesday: Muffins such as banana chocolate chip (home made) or chocolate chocolate chip (from Costco! Yum!) Thursday: usually cold cereal.  Sometimes we’d have healthy cereal but I did sometimes buy the so-very-good-but-really-bad-for-you sugar sweetened junk. Friday: Our favorite Friday breakfast was bagels.  Toasted and spread with cream cheese (except during Lent) Saturday: These were are “bigger” or more involved br

Random 5 on Friday ~ October 18th Edition

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  1. The handle on the “trunk” part of the van broke.  Now we can’t open the back part which is really really really making things difficult.  We’re not sure if it can be repaired and we’ll have to wait until we have funds to get it checked out. 2.  Quote of the Day Week: “Mama your hair is turning white. It’s trying to get you old.”  I’m glad that it’s my hair that’s trying to get me old and not the fact that I’m actually in my mid-40’s.  Whew!  Good thing that age isn’t what gets you old; it’s your graying hair. Supergirl is just too cute!   3. The Government Shutdown officially ended this week.  Somehow though I think this is really only the beginning of the nightmare and I’m planning on another shutdown/furlough happening when the government runs out of money again in January. 4. My voice hurts this week from all the reading aloud I’ve been doing for Supergirl. We’re having a blast though learning about Mexico and Matter (social studies and Science, yes reviews coming soon!

God’s World News ~ TRAK {Crew Review}

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Several years ago we subscribed to the weekly magazine, WORLD.  WORLD also publishes magazines for students. At that time a high school version of the popular God’s World News magazine did not exist. Our social studies curriculum suggests assigning 3 current event reports each week for high school students.  Trak , the high school level of God’s World News, is perfect for finding news events for these assignments. What is God’s World News (GWN)? GWN is published by WORLD News Group. This organization publishes news articles, both digital and print, from a Christian perspective. You can read GWN Mission Statement and the Doctrinal Statement on the website.  The Mission Statement ends with this statement: “The goal of all our products and services is to assist in developing a biblical worldview for all aspects of life, consistent with our organization's doctrinal statement.” More about Trak: We received two back issues (August and September) as well as the current October I

Why Should I Make my Bed?

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For some people, it won’t make a difference.  A made bed or an unmade bed doesn’t affect them.  But for some of us, well, crawling into a made bed may be the key to a more relaxing and better night of sleep. It sounds weird doesn’t it.  It very well could be all in our head. I admit I’m weird. I admit that sometimes I feel like I walk to the beat to the beat of a different instrument played on a different planet in a galaxy far far away. Are you familiar with Flylady?  She’s become quite the sensation over the last 14 years.  I stopped reading her emails long before she had her own website but if you’re familiar with her than you might know these two things: 1) Shine your sink! and 2) Wear your shoes! I’m sitting here typing and I am only wearing socks. I did wear shoes for a long time.  She was right about the attitude changes it brings.  Sometimes I wear slippers but I stopped wearing shoes.  Turtlegirl has started wearing shoes and more put together outfits for school hours. S

Crockpot Chicken and Stuffing Casserole {Recipe}

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I haven’t done a recipe for a long time.   A few weeks ago, I mentioned on my FB Blog Page that I was making this and I commented that I better post the recipe.  If you are looking for a healthy, “from scratch” recipe, you’ll want to skip this.  If you’re looking for “really easy, very tasty comfort food” then keep reading! I was so diligent to take pictures while putting it together but I completely forgot to take pictures *after* it was done and we gobbled it all up! NO leftovers.  None. Here’s what it looked like assembled but not cooked: This is so super easy to assemble!  You’ll only need 5 ingredients (6 if you want to add optional cheese!): I only included one box of stuffing mix in the photo but I did use two boxes and I only used about 1 cup of soup cream not that whole big container!  The chicken is about 1 1/2 to  2 lbs.  I cut 3 chicken breasts in half (butterfly style) so that I had two thinner but still full sized fillets for each breast. This gives me 6 pieces, one

{Crew Review} Chess House ~ Starter Chess Learning Kit

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When I was a little girl my father had this beautiful Chess game that sat on his chest of drawers in my parents bedroom. I remember a wooden box that held the different pieces. My father taught me to play chess but I was never very good at it and as an adult I realized that my father seemed to have his own rules for playing. I jumped at the chance to review The Starter Chess Learning Kit from Chess House because I wanted to share the game with my daughters the way my father had shared it with me, but with the right rules <grin>. This product is recommended for all ages.  It is ideally suited for children ages 6-12. I thought “hmm ideally suited for 6-12?  Will that be too babyish for Turtlegirl or Tailorbear? Will I or Honeybear find it too condescending?” Nope! Supergirl loved it, though she was almost too young developmentally for the program, and loves showing off how she can set up the chess board all by herself! So what is the Starter Chess Learning Kit ? It includes t

A is for Arranging Meals

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Yes, I’m using a fancy, forced method of describing meal planning so that I can begin writing ABC Blogging (Blogging Through the Alphabet) with Marcy over at Ben and Me again. Though I’m writing about meal planning it is about arranging (and rearranging certain kinds of foods.) Recently, I broke down, jumped on the bandwagon and purchased the much-raved-about-on-Facebook-book Trim Healthy Mama . With the government shutdown interfering with family cash flow, the book being temporarily out of stock, and being generally impatient I purchased the epub version for NOOK.  (Note: I am not displeased with my choice but I *will* be ordering the physical book as soon as I am able.  Having the real book will make searching for information and following recipes so much easier!) If you regularly read my blog, you’ll remember that my husband (only 41 at the time!) had a very mild heart attack in early June.  Since then we’ve been on a mission to to improve our health by taking baby steps to be

Random 5 on Friday {October 11 Edition}

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I can’t believe we are 1/3 of the way through October already!  The weather certainly has changed and I can believe it’s October. I seemed to have blinked though and missed the first  third of the month! Here’s my random thoughts for this week: 1. Have you been missing me? I just haven’t been posting much. I’m finding it incredibly difficult to post since the Government Shut Down on October 1st. I think I’m now in a better place emotionally and will get back to blogging. I’ve had lots of ideas but it’s hard to write when you are worried, stressed, and processing it all. 2. Speaking of furlough: My husband is one of the 800,000 Federal Employees who were sent home on October 1st.  He’s also one of the 400,000 that the pentagon ordered back to work since his specific job provides “welfare, morale, or support for the military members.” 3. I am really glad that he is back to work; never mind the financial implications, as much as we love having Daddy around, he disrupts our schedule. A

My daughter is so silly . . .

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I don’t know where on Earth she gets it? I mean it can’t be from her theatrical mother or her joke telling father, right? It has to be some throw back to some distant relative from generations ago! So Turtlegirl put a box on her head: She then says to me: “Mom, today I will be thinking inside the box!” *sigh*  and to think I spent all that time and effort trying to teach them how to think outside the box.

{Crew Review} VideoText Interactive: Algebra: A Complete Course

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When I was in 9th grade, Algebra was my favorite subject! I had a great teacher and I fell in love with math. I actually looked forward to teaching Algebra to my children. I discovered though that I didn’t have the same ability to teach as I did learning.  I had heard of VideoText Interactive and VideoText Algebra: A Complete Course when Boobear was younger but I was put off by the price tag. I’m going to state this upfront. This is a program with a higher price tag than other math curricula I’ve seen on the market. I rarely comment on value in my reviews because value is subjective. *THIS* program is worth the cost. I regret not paying more attention to my friends talking about VT Algebra. So now that you know my bottom line from the get go, go grab a cup of coffee and let me tell you about this incredible teaching resource!   What is VideoText Interactive? A better title would be “ who is VideoText Interactive?”  Tom Clark , President of VideoText Interactive , developed his pr