The School Room

It's time to show you the school room! :) I had every intention to make this space bright, colorful and fun (because it's something I'd never do in any other room of the house...) but then we put the house on the market and had to leave it neutral. So, I just worked with what I had! Here goes...

This is what you see when you first walk in. The piano was given to us when we moved to Pennsylvania. I found the "Family" wall-hanging in Hobby Lobby during a recent trip to SC. The upholstered chair in the corner was a lucky find from a super cute shop I refer to as "mom's basement". :) The gate-leg table is an antique from my great-grandparents home. The chalk-board in the back (that's supposed to be hung, hint hint sweet hubby...) was made by us. He bought a cheap board from Lowes and some 1x4's for the trim. I painted the trim brown and used chalk-board paint for the board.

The red bean-bag chairs in the corner are from Target and are NEVER used. Very poor investment on my part. :(

The teacher's desk. :) This is where I store all of my curriculum, pens, flashcards, school supplies, etc. Small upholstered chair is another antique from my great-grandparents.

The boys sit on this hope-chest-turned-bench to work on school, and the chalkboard is easily accessible right behind them.

Just another picture of the desk. Craigslist for $15! Still planning on painting it, distressing it, and adding new hardware but don't want to start all of that until we move and decide on a new color scheme.

We are using BJU's Footsteps for Fours curriculum. I will be honest. I'm not a fan. :( But only because it is not written for homeschoolers. I have been busy completely rewriting the entire teacher's edition to suit our family.

I'm using this notebook to rewrite the lesson plans. LOVE this! Found it in a teacher's supply store a long time ago, and now finally have a use for it! :)

Another down-side to the K4 curriculum we have chosen to use is that it doesn't include Bible, art, or music. Soooo, we are improvising according to our objectives for this year. Verse memorization will just be out of the Cubbies book. Seth does family devotions at breakfast, and the kids have Bible story books read to them before bed. This is enough for us, for this year.

For music we are planning on enrolling our 4 year old in Suzuki violin as soon as we find out where we'll be moving to. :) In the mean time, they are memorizing a new hymn every week. Hymns were an enormous part of my childhood growing up, and I want it to be a part of theirs as well.

I am a very task-oriented planner. :) This school-prep time has really made me think about our reasons for #1: homeschooling. #2: why are we encouraging book-learning for preschool? #3: what are my objectives for this year? The lay-out of the school room, the curriculum we are using, and the extra-curricular activities I arranged are strictly due to these three areas. I don't believe preschool is required to be strictly educational. It's important for us to be prepared for kindergarten next year, so it's important for us to be organized and learn to sit still and listen-to-comprehend this year. We are starting August 2nd, Lord willing, and will be following a 4-day school week. I have allowed 1 day a week for scheduled play-dates, violin, and the library. We will also be taking an entire week off for Christmas. I'm excited, but very overwhelmed. I know it won't go exactly the way I have planned, but I feel like I have a much better chance of getting something accomplished if I set my standards high and strive to work hard. We will see. God has called us to teach and train our children at home for this year, so that's what we are planning to do! And by golly, I'm going to give it my darn-level best. :)

A Family Favorite.

I have been making our own granola for years. My mom made it for years before that. I can no longer eat it since going gluten free, but it's still a very cheap and healthy alternative for my family's breakfast. Here's the recipe:

Combine 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup honey, and 2 t. vanilla in a microwave safe container.

Microwave for 1 minute.

In a seperate bowl combine 6 cups of oats, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup bran and 1/2 cup wheat germ. I prefer using my hands to mix this all up so I can crush the brown sugar really finely. There is nothing worse than biting into an enormous, hard, crusty lump of brown sugar the next morning in your cereal. :(

Now pour your warm, liquid concoction into your dry mix. Use your hands for mixing this too. SO much easier. You'll think it's too dry, but just keep on mixing. It will eventually all become gooey. :)

You can also add 3/4 cup of sunflower seeds and/or raisins at this point. I spray a large sheet pan with Pam and bake it at 350 degrees JUST UNTIL the edges become slightly golden. This will ensure your granola is still a little chewy. Watch it carefully! It burns QUICK!

Pull it out of the oven, stir it up a bit and let it cool completely before storing it in an air-tight container. That's it! Easy peasy! :)

Let the competition begin.

I'm not a very competitive person. I'll let you win, time and time again, if it really means that much to you. But it's a very different story if there is a reward involved. Here's the deal... My hair has been cut into varying lengths over the past few years. It was extremely long for our wedding. But then I decided that married girls don't have long hair, so I got a "bob". Haircuts happened to be too expensive when we were newlyweds and my hubby was finishing up college, so the length came back. Then I had my first baby and decided that moms don't have long hair, so I got an "inverted bob". It was super cute (or so I thought), and extremely easy to care for. But then diapers became priority over salon visits, so it grew long again. Baby #2 entered the world and I was so overwhelmed with caring for two under two that the hair was chopped again. Then my daughter was born. Completely.new.view.on.life. She was a girl! She was fragile! She was in pink! A love for all things soft and feminine returned and I vowed to never cut my hair again. But then life slapped me in the face and it was chopped. :( :( :( My poor husband. He assured me he loved all the changes, but I knew he really missed those locks I had while we were dating. I kept going back and forth and back and forth, unable to make up my mind. He knew I was on the brink of cutting it off again, so he struck me a deal. "If you let your hair grow out long enough to reach your bra strap (am I even allowed to say bra in the blog world? It feels very awkward...), I will buy you stainless steel appliances." Well honey, those are the only words I needed to hear. :)

I was 24 and pregnant with my 3rd here...

My 25th birthday and the hair was a little longer...

Age 26 here, and the longest it's been in a long time....

But here's the catch. Having long hair brings back so many memories of sleeping in rollers on Saturday nights and tempts me to re-live the 90's. :)

I saw myself.

I've had a lot of quiet, alone moments this week. Last night I got a total of about 2 hours of sleep. It's enough to make a girl ponder on her life. :) My only goals in life were to be a wife and a mommy. I'm living my dream, but not exactly the way I had hoped. I was looking for a way to occupy the kids for a few hours before bedtime last night, so we headed off to the library. The library for me means I come away with something to read during those sleepless hours of the night when my brain won't slow down enough to let me relax. The library for my kids means they get to stand at the train table and play with wooden engines for a while. It's a win-win. :) As we were hunched over the train table last night, I noticed a woman sitting on the floor reading. All 3 of her children were involved in "story time" with the library lady, so for all intensive purposes she was alone. Her body language spoke volumes. Tense. Annoyed. Frustrated. A few minutes had passed when a man about her age came in wearing business clothes. He sat down at the table right next to her and proceeded to watch story time. One by one all 3 of their children ran over to give daddy a hug. The nervously looked from mom's face to dad's face, trying to find some sort of answers before running back to story time. That was it. The couple was obviously married, but they never even looked at each other. Story time ended, the couple stood, and the family left the library. I immediately thought to myself "how selfish!" Those kids were obviously searching for approval. They needed the reassurance that the foundation of their family wasn't crumbling. But they didn't get it. The dad probably was a jerk. The mom probably had lost all respect and hope for him. Maybe there was infidelity. Maybe there were financial problems. Maybe abuse. I really don't have a clue, but I felt so bad for those kids. It was then that I saw myself. I've been that woman. He has been that man. The wall of trust broken. All respect lost. Hopes dashed. Forgiveness shattered. Night after night of "letting the sun go down upon your wrath...." We had a pretty serious conversation a few weeks back when we had one of the biggest "light bulb moments" of our relationship. We knew things needed to change....for the kids sake. "These kids need parents who pray for them!" "These kids need parents who are constantly in the Word." And then it hit me. What about when the kids are gone? We were so willing to become ultra-spiritual for them, but what would happen when they were gone? We had a child in '06, '07, and '08. There is a VERY good chance they will all be in college, married, and gone at the same time. Then what? If our whole motives for growing in God is for their sake, what motivation will we have when they are not here? The empty-nester years scare us to death. We dated and were married for such a short time before babies started coming that we never really had a foundation for "us". It's been hard, to say the least. Do we regret what we did? Not for a single day. I could hear someone say "have some time for just the two of you first..." until the day that I die and I will still never regret starting our family right off the bat, but something has to change. We need to get to the point where we are in this for us. Not complaining. Just being honest. :) We are madly in love, but probably not for the right reasons. Don't know why I felt compelled to write this today. I'm sorry if I've ruined your perception of us. :) Last weekend we did something "for the kids", yet again. Hehe....I have pictures to prove it.

Coupons!?

Okay ladies, I totally feel completely inadequate. Not only have I recently found the value in stopping at yard sales, but now I'm throwing coupons into the mix. I found two videos on YouTube today that you just have to watch. I haven't got a clue about where to start. Anyone with suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Here's video 1, and video 2. Enjoy, and be challenged! :)

Why I want a rancher...

I think I may have confused a few people in my last post about me wanting a rancher. Who in the world picks a rancher as their dream home??? Well, me....for two reasons. #1: no more children falling down the stairs. I cannot even tell you how many times I've heard the trip, then the slip, then the enormous crashing and flipping, and then finally the scream. I am just SICK.OF.IT. No stairs means no baby gates. My mom lived in a rancher for a couple of months (or years??? can't remember...) and couldn't stop talking about how much she loved it! "You live in your whole house!" She would say. Which is so true, if you stop to think about it. There is never a lonely, dark finished basement that sits in quietness while you entertain upstairs where the sun shines! No more steps means you use your whole house all day long, because it's easier to get to your whole house! Okay, that was reason #1. Reason #2 is because most ranchers are just dang ugly. It's true. If you live in one, it's okay to agree. They tend to be very dated and tempt you to think "wow, those people haven't done anything with that place since the day the roof was put on!" But you see people, I have an OBSESSION with turning nothing into something. The ugly into the beautiful. The mundane into the magical. Seeing life left in someone else's garbage. If young whipper-snappers like us don't start taking control over ranchers, no one will! Pictures to prove my point:

You can take something like this.....

and turn it into this!

All pictures courtesy of this blog.

One man's trash...

is truly another man's treasure. You wouldn't believe what I find laying on the side of the road. I normally try to fit it in the car by myself. Otherwise I call on the hubby to drive down and rescue me! :) I don't know what I was thinking by picking up all of this stuff last weekend. Did I not remember my house is on the market? Two days later I would get 3 different phone calls for 3 different showings! Oh well, I had fun with my little projects while they lasted! "Finished Product" photos are coming. Just have to run back to Lowes for some more silver knobs. I thought I needed 4. Turns out I really needed 8. Dang those math skills! :)

The ugly wood color that the antique dresser was originally. Have I mentioned how much I hate the color of stained wood these days? Agh!

This pretty lil lady was perched on the side walk, just waiting for the trash man to rescue her. Lucky for her, I got to her first. :) I think this was after the first coat of paint.

My sweatshop. :)

I wish I had better "before" pictures. You wouldn't believe how hideous this stuff was when it first walked through the door. Can't wait to show you the finished product!