Saturday

Final Analysis Friday: Week of January 27, 2013

Around the House

Monkey has dropped his afternoon nap so I’ve been working with a new normal that basically means letting him roam in the backyard all day. Thank goodness the weather has been sunny and warm! 

We’ve been focusing on our twenty minute blitz cleanups this past week. I’m trying to be more regular about them because they do make a HUGE difference in the way our home functions, but some nights I want everyone in bed as quickly as possible so I can get in bed ASAP too. I’m thinking of working out a different time of day for blitz cleaning so it gets done, and I can still go to bed early if I want.

From the Kitchen

I baked a Pineapple Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting this week for our small group at church. If you look at the recipe you will notice A LOT of sugar. Well, that’s too much even for me so I cut a cup out of the cake and 1 ½ cups out of the frosting. It was still really rich, so I can’t even imagine what it would have been like with all of that sugar in the original. As for the best thing I made this week, it had to be the chicken meatballs I made last night. They were perfection and on the table in less than 30 minutes!

Homeschooling

We have been rocking out our school work this week! I think it’s the super duper limits I put on screen time (post about that coming up in a few weeks) and the fact that having Miss Jane and Miss Elizabeth come over twice a week for world geography keeps me on my toes. Speaking of world geography, we spent a great week in Russia.

This week Magpie wrapped up our Corduroy literature study, so we will be starting Curious George next week. Chipette loves all of her subjects this year and I love the fact that I assigned independent reading time for her in our school day. She has to read for thirty minutes from a book list I selected for her this year. I’ll be explaining more about that in a later post as well.

On the Blog

I’ve got a new giveaway coming up soon that I’m really excited about. That should be in the works within a couple of weeks. I will be posting my lesson plans from Russia this weekend, and the next part of my Happier at Home Challenge is coming up on Monday. I’ve discovered that I’m much more productive with my blog when I use a blog planner so that all of these posting ideas I have are in one centralized location other than my brain which has been known to forget things.

Fitness

I’m keeping up with my diet pretty well, but bread is going to be the death of me! It is so hard to stop after one piece. In case you didn’t know willpower is HARD!

Reading

So I quit reading Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder. It’s just not resonating with me, so I’m picking up Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard again. Maybe it will help me with my issues with lack of  bread willpower. J

Pinhead

Feel free to follow me on Pinterest using the button in the sidebar. I wanted to share some of my favorite finds this past week:

  • Homeschool: A couple of weeks ago I pinned a prayer journal that uses pictures to remind your children who and what to pray for. I am trying desperately to make two of these this week for my girls. Preacher Man has been praying with them every night and now they beg to pray before we start school, eat, etc. I think they will have fun with this!
  • Home: You know how I love to organize so I was thrilled to see this pin about organizing your house using things from the dollar store! I have a list going already for the next time I visit.
  • Cooking: I found a sandwich bread recipe that I’m dying to try, but I’m afraid that my crazy bread eating self my family would eat it all up in a day. But it’s got to be better for you than store bought bread, right?

Plans and Schemes

Monkey is attending his first birthday party tomorrow for his friend Abe. While Monkey isn’t sure what’s happening the sisters are excited! 

I’m also going to let the girls decorate some boxes for Valentine’s Day like I did when I was in school. We have some online homeschool friends that are mailing out valentines to each other so that our kids can exchange valentines just like kids in public school do. Of course, we’ve got to make our valentines to mail out as well!

A Memory

I was looking through my pictures trying to find one that I had taken for a blog post, but it wasn’t where I thought I’d saved it. I started going through my pictures one by one and came across this one of Chipette when she was around 20 months old. It’s probably my favorite picture of her with her pretty curls and her lips puckered up because she was smelling the flowers. Didn’t you know you’re supposed to pucker up when you sniff?


Looking forward to a new week of productivity, loving, learning, laughing and cooking in the tree house,

Chelli

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