Happy New Year

Sippy Cup Central wishes you peaceful days and joyful nights in 2013!

My First Knitting Project

Meet Clarece...this is Olive's first knitting project. We actually learned to knit at the same time. I am just so proud of her and thankful for a great 4-H group.

Candy Cane Playdough

I am thankful that I get to hug my girls all day! My heart aches, I can't imagine such grief, and I pray that love will see us through these times.

Today, I made peppermint infused playdough for gifts, and for my little ladies that love it. I used a basic recipe and added sparkles to the white batch and peppermint to the pink batch. It was something to keep my mind off the news and to help me be present in the moment.

Santa Hand Print Ornaments

I have missed posting and creating with you all....Happy Holidays!

I am not a painter, but I made the most adorable salt dough Santa hand prints this week.  You just mix up a recipe of salt dough, smoosh your child's hand in it, and cut around the print.  Simply place it in a low degree oven and wait for it to dry.

Wait for the kids to go to bed and search through all your old paint for just three colors: red, white, and in our case, peach.  This is a super cute keepsake that you will cherish for years.

Linked to:

Friday (This Moment)

Easy Kid Bake Cookies

The girls loved making these cookies together and with only 3 ingredients, it was a no-help from Mom project.

We found it in Laura Numeroff's cook book, Mouse Cookies.

Rainbow Play Dough

Who doesn't love rainbow play dough? This is one of the homemade gifts that I am making for my girls and nieces.

This isn't my favorite Kool-Aid play dough recipe that I have posted about before, but the normal salt, flour, oil, and cream of tartar recipe with neon food coloring. Play Dough must really keep the Cream Of Tartar people in business!

(I have been posting from my mobile app so please forgive the double posts.)

Reason Number 1

So this is reason number 1 why we love homeschooling....

Little sisters can give hugs during presentations during Classical Conversations.

Hyroglific Fun

We have been having a great time learning about Ancient Egypt. The girls enjoyed writing in Hyroglifics and continued writing in "secret code" for most of the day.

These passports were also a big hit. We will be stamping them as we learn about new places.

We are moving along with Story Of The World and week 3 of Classical Conversations.

Making Mummies

We are finishing up our week studying Ancient Egypt by making mummies to go in our Lego pyramids.

We used paper towels dipped in a glue/water mixture to wrap our bodies (Polly pockets). After they dried the mummies were placed inside their tombs so their Ka and Ba could enjoy ever lasting life.

A New Family Member

Our family is super excited to host Giulia from Italy. We took her to her first baseball game over the weekend and yesterday was her first day in American school...can you imagine!? She has tremendous courage and besides a few growing pains, it all went well.

Now describing the things she heard and saw on the back of the bus is another story.....

The girls love hanging out in her room and listening to her music. I know this will be a wonderful experience for all of us.

Classical Conversations

You will be reading many post about Classical Conversations in the near future.  This will be our third year of Foundations.  We are now connected to the blog carnival at Half a Hundred Acre Woods.  This is a wonderful site for all things CC, enjoy.

Homemade laundry soap recipe

It really works!!!! My quest is over for a perfect laundry soap recipe...for less than 2 cents a load...I'm sold.

I have been using this recipe since March and just today I am making a new batch. It cleans well and it has a fresh scent. My friend adds Pyrex crystals to her recipe for more scent.

Here's the laundry soap recipe:
1 box of borax
1 box of super washing soda
1 4lb box of baking soda or 1/2 big bag
1 small container of oxy clean
3 bars Feld-naphtha soap grated
1 big container to mix in- I mix it up in thirds so it combines well. I use the oxy scoop to add it to my laundry. 2 scoops per load does the job.

Let me know what you think.

Daughters are special

One photo says it all:

Space Unit

We are easing into school by doing a fun unit on space.

The girls painted this really cool glow-in-the-dark solar system. They learned about temperatures of stars and seeing the different colors come off the flame was a good visual.

The planet cards came from Montessori for everyone.

We have started moon observation journals and use an App on my phone to pick out popular constellations.

We are back!

Here is what we've been doing this summer...in photos.

We celebrated 2 birthdays, had a ton of company, and dusted off the canner for summer harvest.

We are getting ready to start school and another year of Classical Conversations.

How is your summer so far?

Strawberries & CSA

 What do you do with 25 pounds of organic strawberries... eat, dehydrate, and can!  It took me about 5 hours to work my way to the bottom.

I tried a new jam recipe that did not use Sure-Jell, just lemon juice, strawberries, and sugar.  It taste nice, but it's not as thick as some recipes that I've tried.  I dehydrated 10 pounds of berries and filled all 6 trays of the dehydrator.  It's amazing how much they shrink!  The strawberry chips are now stored in 2 freezer bags.  This is the dehydrator that we have, it's wonderful.

My girls call this lovely strawberry- 3 Sisters.
The strawberries were purchased in bulk from our CSA, Vollmer Farm, and they arrived in this box....it made me laugh out loud!

I chose this particular CSA because it was organic and is Non-GMO!  Did you know that 90 percent of all corn purchased in grocery store is made from Genetically Modified Seeds?
I also love the challenge of cooking with vegetables that I normally never purchase, like rutabaga.  Tonight for dinner I mashed them with butter and garlic...everyone loved them, even the baby.  Here are a few pictures from week 1 and week 2 of our CSA.