Home Schooling Summary for Last Week

I am feeling bad calling this "home schooling" at this point, since it is mostly just a project here or there.  Mentally, I am on summer vacation I think.
This was a very busy week of watching the cousins plus my own kiddos all day from Monday to Thursday. We did some fun crafty projects and I worked on my knitting a little bit here and there.

Awhile back our lovely friends sent us this treasure of a book:

We used it for an Easter play date earlier this year. And this week we did 2 other activities from it with the cousins. It is great because it does not just include the paper press out pieces, but also has stickers and directions for making the other parts of the dramatization, like hats, wands, spell books and awards.

1. Wizarding

Wizard books and wands made from recycled cereal/food boxes 

2. Equestrian Fun

Loving this funny new pose of A 

And then we just had some fun playing in the cousin's new bug tent. Imagination is a beautiful thing.

Last week I mentioned that we were preparing to help with a baby shower at a friend's house. Here are a few quick shots of the results.

Hydrangea's from my garden

I made the tiered plates and the fruit skewers. Also I added the tulle around the table.

And here is the bunting that I made. I wish I had a better picture of  it

Recommended Reading: Blue Book Guide to Preserving

As I mentioned earlier this week, I love this Ball canning book. I have turned to it for wisdom every summer for the last 5 years and never been disappointed. I have trouble following recipes exactly, but I do try to be accurate when canning. I am too afraid of botulism and jars exploding! I try to note the years that I use each recipe and how I liked the results. Don't be fooled by the slimness of this volume either. Each page is packed with recipes.

This year I made blueberry syrup for the first time. Yum.  I immersion blendered the skins and seeds instead of removing them though, which I thought worked well since the syrup turned out thicker. But that almost doubled the volume so I doubled the lemon juice to make sure that it was acidic enough for canning. See, I guess I am getting braver about how closely I follow the recipes.

A. very proudly mashed all the blueberries for the syrup making

And M. very proudly learned to pit cherries this year

My kiddos pitted a whole quart of cherries

Baby S is looking forward to helping next year

Reuse Recipe: Eggshells

I started my first batch of fall seedlings this week. I am hoping that starting them indoors (cooler for germination) will allow them to be ready to transplant outside by September when it starts (theoretically) to cool off.  Roster so far: Bright Lights Swiss Chard, Buttercrunch Lettuce, Redsails Lettuce, Basil, and Cilantro. Since most of these are usually direct seeded, I am trying the eggshell method.

• Break top of shell & pull off a few small pieces
• Use the egg white and yoke for whatever you are cooking
• Rinse the shell thoroughly and return to carton
• When all the shells are empty, use a teaspoon to fill the eggshells with seed starter or potting soil - based on my experience, expect some spillage (illustrated below). I think I might try filling each egg over the bag of potting soil for the next batch...
• Water and close the lid (make a little germination greenhouse).  Label and date the outside so that you know when germination is likely to occur and when to open the lid 

Garden Progress: Harvesting Greens and Cabbage

This week I processed and froze about 4 pounds of kale and collards. I cleared out all the broccoli and cauliflower remains. I harvested about 12 small-ish heads of red cabbage. They are currently shredded, salted, and waiting to be canned using the "Spiced Red Cabbage" recipe from the Ball Canning book. I am always trying to find more/better canning books, but I keep coming back to the Ball Canning book. It is a classic. The only thing that I don't love about it is that it does not include enough suggestions for meals using the canned items. I also finally had room to transplant the last of my leek and tomatillo seedlings into the garden. I do not know if they will have time to finish growing. I planted some white runner beans in the sunflower bed and some zinnias.

Sew Special: White Slipcover Part A

Slip Covering Summary Part A
1. Pre wash fabric
2. Trace outline using chalk pencil
3. Cut out all pieces with a 1/2 inch seam allowance
4. Pin it together INSIDE OUT on the chair
5. Sew it all together. I did it like this:

• Sew top front to lower front panels 
• Sew inner side arms to arm rest strip.
• Sew arms to fronts. 
• Sew side panels to arms.
• Inset back panel.

5. Trim with pinking shears.
6. Topstitch armrests and back panel
7. Hem

and Ta-Da!  

Okay, if you are very observant you can tell this picture was taken before I inset the back panel and hemmed. Also, this chair and its twin have been a dream to slipcover since they are all clean straight lines and right angles. The fabric is white bull denim from here. It washed up nicely and has been just the right weight and softness to work with.  You could use the chevron denim side or the soft grainy side of it and it would look nice either way.

Homeschooling Summary for Last Week

This may be our last week "home schooling" with the cousins since my SIL has a new job now and I probably won't be watching the cousins 2 days a week anymore. But never fear grandparents, we will have lots of photo worthy play dates.

Our weather has continued to be wetter than ever. Last week I decided that we needed to get outside in spite of the weather conditions - the kiddos were all for it.

This could be called "child labor" rather than "home schooling", but to be clear - they WANTED to help make the diaper cake for my friend's baby shower. It was new and exciting to them. They made quick work of wrapping about 80 baby diapers too. 

Here is the finished diaper cake. One of you dear readers will recognize several elements of this cake as your very own contribution to its beauty. Thank you, thank you. You are an inspired friend.

 And yes, that is a new rug in the living room - the Ikea one that I have been wishing for for about 8 months now. I was holding off on getting it until I finished making white slipcovers for all the LR furnishings. More on that next week...

 Here we are using these awesome Clifford the Big Red Dog educational brochures that a friend passed along to me. We did one about the seashore, one on caterpillars, one on the alphabet, and one on fruits.

Pretending to be inch worms as part of the caterpillar brochure.

Recommended Reading: City of Bones

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare is part of the Mortal Instruments series. It is not quite a "twinkie book" - follow this link for my definition of the Twinkie Genre. The plot had some interesting twists and it was a page turner, but overall another Twilight-esque  dark teen romance book. Recommended to anyone looking for a twinkie book.

Good Reads Summary:
When fifteen-year-old Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder -- much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with strange tattoos and brandishing bizarre weapons. Then the body disappears into thin air. It's hard to call the police when the murderers are invisible to everyone else and when there is nothing -- not even a smear of blood -- to show that a boy has died. Or was he a boy?

This is Clary's first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons. It's also her first encounter with Jace, a Shadowhunter who looks a little like an angel and acts a lot like a jerk. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace's world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in ordinary mundanes like Clary and her mother? And how did Clary suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know. . . . 

Exotic and gritty, exhilarating and utterly gripping, Cassandra Clare's ferociously entertaining fantasy takes readers on a wild ride that they will never want to end.

Reuse Recipe: Cereal Remnants

This week I made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies with my favorite recipe (see below). The only change was that I used the 2 CUPS of leftover shredded mini-wheat cereal bits from our Costco size package in place of 2 of the cups of oats. Easy and so delicious - they were gone before I could photograph them.

The Best Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 C. shortening (butter flavor crisco is best)

1 C. packed brown sugar

1/2 C. granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 t. vanilla

1 t. baking soda

1/2 t. salt

1 1/2 c. flour (can use part wheat)

3 c. oats

1 t. cinnamon - small amount, but critical to perfect flavor

1 pkg (2 cups) chocolate chips

Directions: beat shortening and sugar until creamy, add eggs and vanilla, beat well. Add flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt. Mix well. Stir in oats and then chocolate chips. Bake 10-12 minutes at 350 F. Do not over cook.  They will look like they are just barely done (brown on the bottom), but be nice and chewy when they cool. 

Garden Progress:Harvesting

The garden is fruiting at full tilt these days. I am trying to incorporate the harvest into our meals each day. Our lovely neighbor has also been sharing his harvest with us so we are eating lots of cucumber salad lately.

The Sunflowers third year. These seeded themselves. 

Yellow grape tomatoes

Abi's harvest

Bringing in the harvest. 5 cucumbers, onions, and 2 small heads of cauliflower

Sew Special: 4 Bridesmaid Dresses

My friend's daughter is getting married. I love wedding planning and inculcated myself into the process. One way that I have been helping is with the bridesmaid dresses. We started talking about them at least 2 months ago and now they are finally all done!
The theme of her wedding is "Garden Party" and it has a shabby chic victorian vibe to it. The bridesmaids will wear these dresses with thin leather belts and bubble necklaces. I hope to take some pics of them on the big day in August.

Dress without the belt (from the back)

Dress front with belt for test pics

Dress back with belt for test pics

Home Schooling Summary for Last Week

As I mentioned previously, we are all obsessed with Magic School Bus lately. We've been watching the first season on Netflix and reading the books from the library. The book called The Magic School Bus Gets Ants in Its Pants suggested this experiment to see what kind of foods ants are attracted to. We put various foods in lids and then set them equal distance from an ant hill in the garden.  We waited about 15 minutes and then checked to see which foods attracted the most ants. They actually all had a few ants. The honey was a death trap, but I think the sugar and bread crumbs were the preferred choices. 

Magic School Bus Ant Experiment

Checking to see whether our "Ant Preferences" hypotheses were correct

We also have been regularly picnicking in the back yard. Sometimes with food, like frozen juice pops, sometimes just with books.

As