Circling Through This Life

So many days it seems that I can either get schoolwork done, or lots of laundry washed, dried, folded and put away,  or we can eat hot home cooked meals, but managing all three?  Sometimes, I can get two of three done.  But not all three.  That is until recently. So I’ve started thinking about those rare days when I have managed to get more than 1 subject completed in our home school and managed to get at least one load of laundry completed and actually managed to get a hot meal served.  How did I do that?  This week’s Blog Cruise theme is “How to”  “How to {fill in the blank}”   I’m going to explore “How to do school, have clean laundry, and eat home cooked food: all in the same day.” It is possible to serve a hot home cooked meal on the same day that you wear clean clothes and accomplish school work. The Key? There are three: A Crock Pot, Daily Laundry, and an Assignment sheet.  In this post I’m going to focus on using my crock pot...

I know that is a boring title but my creative juices just are not flowing at the moment.  I know we’re solidly into January now and I’ve been reading and I’ve been thinking about reading and I’ve been making some reading goals.  I just haven’t gotten around to sharing those things here on my blog. I took the plunge and joined Goodreads so that I could track the books I read in 2013.  With my word for 2013 being DO I want to DO more reading.  I don’t want to just wish I had more time for reading. I want to make time for more reading.  And I don’t want to just say I want to read more I want a measurable goal so that at the end of 2013 I can have some measurable objective thing to point to that says “yes, you’ve accomplished your goal.  Well done.” My daughter also joined Goodreads and she and I had nice chat while driving to piano lessons about reasonable goals and expectations. She has more time to read than I do especially since she is still reading many...

I like green beans.  My most favorite kind of store canned green beans are Green Giant Kitchen Sliced.  Alas, I have not seen them in a long time.  I will buy Green Giant cut green beans when I can find them at a decent price (like during the Holiday Season from Thanksgiving to New Year’s many stores have them on sale.  I bought lots at $0.48 a can!) Home canned green beans like my mother in law used to do are fabulous but I’ve never learned how to can veggies.  (yes, it’s on my never ending list of things learn and do).  But the best green beans are fresh or frozen and steamed or better yet roasted.  I’ve been on a “roasted vegetable” kick lately and have found that most vegetables, if they must be cooked, are better when roasted, especially with butter and lots of chopped garlic. At one church potluck I had these wonderful green beans.  They were so different from anything I had ever had before.  Thankfully it was a good friend who broug...

A brand new year usually means lots of “New Year’s Resolutions” which we all mean to keep and those fizzle out – for me anyway - long before the month of January is over. This year I am building my resolve but not making resolutions.  Instead I’m choosing a word.  A simple two letter word:  DO.   I’m tired of being a procrastinating perfectionist paralyzed and overwhelmed who gets nothing done. A few weeks ago a blogging friend from the Crew shared her heart about being a Do-er.  I tend to procrastinate until I have time to “do it right”.  I’m a perfectionist.  I have, in many ways and in many areas, relaxed and no longer require things to be a certain perfect way. I’ve chosen do as my focus word for the year because at the end of 2013 I want to be able to list all the things I accomplished instead of bemoaning all the projects I never started because I was stuck in planning mode. Don’t get me wrong, planning is good.  Sometimes I need...

In a few days it will be the 100th anniversary of my grandmother’s birth.  She was a writer: a poet.  I remember when I was 10 and she gave me one of those Mead Spiral notebooks.  She told me I should write it in it everyday.  She encouraged me to write poems and short stories.  Many of her poems were stories: memories shared and treasured.  Today I was working on more cleaning and de-cluttering from the Great Bedroom Swap of 2012 and I came across this poem.   It doesn’t have a date but I know it would have been written after September 2003.  I suspect that it was written for my daughter’s 8th birthday, which would have been in 2005. My Granddaughter [Turtlegirl], age 8, is my [great] granddaughter. She lives so far away She came to visit me one summer. In the creek and on 4 wheeler she climbed the mountain She liked this way to play 2 Me and my 3 sisters and 2 cousins In the creek we did play Mama said when she was little at grandpa and...

Or OUT with the OLD and in with the NEW Happy New Year! The calendar on the wall says January 1st, 2013.  A brand new calendar year starts today.  Even though this is not the liturgical new year, it’s still a busy liturgical day. This 8th day of Christmas is the feast of circumcision of our Lord**.  It’s also the Feast of St. Basil the Great.  If I was a more organized Orthodox Christian I’d have some hymn lyrics to post or an icon image to include but I don’t. I also have to confess that the liturgical stuff takes a back seat to the BRAND NEW YEAR stuff.  We really enjoy our junk food feast on New Year’s Eve and we love spending New Year’s Day with friends. On this beautiful, sunny Tuesday morning, I am contemplating my goals, wishes and plans for 2013 while relaxing with a cup of coffee and eyeing another sugar cookie. During the Great Bedroom Switch of 2012, which occurred this past weekend, I experienced a sudden urge to purge (oh dear that didn’t com...

The 2013 Schoolhouse Review Crew Blog Cruise is starting back with a 2012 in Review theme.  2012 is coming to a close and I am not sorry to see it go.  Here at my house we dubbed it the year of things that broke. I no longer recall the exact order of items only that through out the year things kept falling apart, breaking down or just simply not working anymore, including me! We had a broken dishwasher and a broken kitchen sink. At some point, but thankfully not at the same time, we also had problems with both the washer and the dryer.  Those were earlier in the year.  I do remember the dishwasher and the kitchen sink being worked on around Easter.  We were all in the family room enjoying a movie or something when the futon suddenly decided that it had had enough.  After 15 years it just collapsed.  With all of us sitting on it!  That was not fun.  It was funny later but it was no fun finding myself sitting on the floor! In July  we ...