december windup

...in photos because some things need no explanation

Hoping your Christmas was merry and your New Year is bright! xo

cranberry bread

The girls and I have been busy in the kitchen making cranberry bread, The recipe is from the book Cranberry Thanksgiving by Wende & Harry Devlin, which we studied & made lapbooks of during the thanksgiving season.

My girls are ever willing and capable in the kitchen these days, they always want to help & make and I'm all for that. On this particular day I set out the ingredients, they round up the tools. We work slowly and try to stay the course of the recipe all the while they chat up my ear. I'm happy to have them so interested in making even if baking with kids twins can be daunting. Patience I tell myself, one day they won't need my help anymore. 

They carefully cut up the cranberries, measure & mix the ingredients. Help me pour it into the dish and let me put it in the oven, there have to be some rules in the kitchen. The recipe itself was a nice loaf loaded with fruit, we reduced the sugar & substituted raw honey into the mix, we also substituted the oil with coconut oil. The first time around we made the bread as one large loaf and recently made it again as mini loaves for teacher gifts (aside: fruit should be reduced for the mini loaves, in my opinion).

my rating: recipe was good

time with the girls: priceless

a pinteresting lunch

Yup, I'm addicted to pinterest you know, but I'm getting better now. I don't "need" to pin everyday but on those days when I do visit, there are so many yummy things to see and pin, it's inspiration at your fingertips. But I'm not just a pin and look sorta girl. I've gotta try things out you know. And so I gave this recipe and go and my review is: I liked it, my kids however did not - too tarty and limey for them (keep that in mind if you do not like lime, I however adore all things lime). Between you and me I'm not very sad that they don't like it because there is never quite enough of this stuff to share when I do make it. 

Now go and do likewise: don't just pin, make :) Happy Friday, xo

 

sure fooled me!

This fall we started our school year on the right foot with an organized and dedicated space for our resources. Let me tell you how happy I am to finally have this space in place for all these items. Most of which have been sitting in banker boxes until needed and then we go on a mad hunt for such and such, you know the book about "... blah, blah, blah"   

The planning for this little area started way back with these renovations. I knew it would be a long while until I saw this area complete as this is an open concept shelving unit in a central part of the home and I didn't want dusty construction from ongoing projects wrecking havoc on our education resources.

With the hallway & stairs newly completed (more on that later), the hubby started his work on a custom build-in shelving unit. Let me first say that carpentry is not his fortay, but he does a fantastic job at it none-the-less. In the early days it did take a fair amount of convincing that diy is the way to go and a typical conversation would go something like this: 

me: "honey, it would be great if we could build something in this area (of the hallway) since it will be dead space" 

him: "umm, I'm not a carpenter..." 

me: "I realize that but we can't afford to hire a carpenter for every little thing that needs to be done and by the way, who was the first carpenter anyway?? someone had to start somewhere." When I sense he isn't biting, I throw in a desperate attempt aimed at his spirituality :  "Jesus was a carpenter" ...at this point his eyes are rolling and he just wants me to stop already.

him: "alright already, but this will take some planning"  I think that is code talk for stalling but I am immune.  

me: "great! I already have the plans drawn up"... as I hand him a drawing of what I would like. 

him: sensing the lost cause of it all he succumbs to my insatiable desire for project 'organize this home'  "k, I'll need to make some measurements and then we need to go to home depot..." 

Once the unit is built, we jam it into place, fill holes and cracks - I'm dangerous with the caulking gun, add a few coats of low VOC paint and a water based varathane to seal the deal. I let the unit cure to a solid hard finish for about 14 days, overkill I'm sure but at this point I don't want any mistakes.

AND didn't mr. duckyhouse do a fantastic job? he may not be a carpenter, but he sure fooled me! 

The shelves were sorted and organized, baskets (from Costco) were filled with hands on learning items as well as crafty kid stuff.  Our texts, current books, binders, dictionaries, etc all live in this zone. It's our go to place for everything education. I love having it central and readily available. I'm sure the kids find the visual aspect much easier as well and I couldn't be happier!