Large Family Chores: Mopping

I’ve been reading a wonderful resource lately… Kim Brennenam’s Large Family Logistics (visit her blog here). The book is good for me. Most is common sense and stuff I’ve heard or already knew but the key to this book is how she takes all that knowledge and brings it together into a workable solution for [...]

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The Green Thing

A good friend from church sent me this email. I thought this pretty much sums things up. I couldn’t have said it better myself! Thank you!  The Green Thing In the line at the supermarket, the cashier told an older woman that she should bring her own grocery bags because plastic bags weren’t good for [...]

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Real Food Part One: Dinner and a Movie

Maybe some of you remember the $5 Food Challenge invitation? Yesterday was the big day. I admit, I was a little worried. Because of time and money restraints I wasn’t able to go shopping until the day before.  But due to the generosity of friends and being able to go shopping at a new wonderful [...]

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Take the $5 Challenge

This showed up in my email today: I want to eat healthy, local food but I have no time, not much money and no clue how to pull it off. What can I do?” – pretty much everyone Yes..yes…have heard this SO many times, often from my own mouth. I’ve done A LOT in the [...]

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Canning No-Chunks, Kid-Friendly Strawberry Jam

Mmmmm….. I’m sitting here smelling strawberries simmering down on the stove top. There is no other smell like it in the world. I can only describe it as scrumptiously heavenly. The childhood memories it evokes…grandma’s house, strawberry shortcake dolls, summer playtime, childhood foraging…is probably as strong as the deliciousness of the smell. And today it [...]

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Gardening Woes

May I just say that I suck at growing cilantro. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but there are no other words to describe it. This is the third year we’ve tried growing this supposedly easy-to-grow herb. The first year it died within the first month. I thought, ‘too much shade…more sun next year.’ The [...]

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You Are What You Eat

They say you are what you eat. We joke about it with witty quips about not wanting to live till 100 if it means cutting out all the fun stuff. Until you see it literally staring you in the face. I first noticed it when I made a quiche out of the lovely free fresh [...]

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The Simple Pleasures

Well, hello there again family and friends! I started writing a post on how our experiment into the simple life went. After a few days of sitting on it and realizing how negative it sounded (still may post it), I decided to first come back with a pictorial spread of the simple pleasures we enjoyed without technology [...]

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Living Simply ~ The Challenge

If any of you read our Learning Room post on Henry David Thoreau, then you know that this study spurred something in our family. Living simply and sustainably has been a goal of ours for quite some time. We would love nothing more then to buy some land, grow and preserve our own food, and [...]

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The Learning Room – Part II: Henry David Thoreau

April 5th – 11th We did a study  on Henry David Thoreau this week. I know, not something young elementary students usually study. Not even something I studied in high school! But I just found a fantastic kids book on it and it just fit in naturally after talking about John James Audubon. Both were [...]

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The smell of clean

What does clean smell like? To me it smells like fresh cut lemons and the scent of newly fresh spring air breezing through open windows. That is what I want my kitchen to smell like everytime I clean it. And, ppsstt,  I have the secret: Palmolive dish soap (the cheap, old-fashioned $1 green bottle), lemon [...]

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The cost of food today…

Received this link to my email through Food Declaration.org. Reading the comments reminds me a lot of our own household debates on eating healthy. Go check it out for yourself: Why a Salad Costs More Than a Big Mac Some comments I found particularly telling: From mythago ~ …poverty and obesity are strongly correlated in [...]

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A Dryer Sheet Anyone!!!

I simply must tell you all about the latest discovery in our house. As anyone with toddlers know, sharing doesn’t come easy. At school time, for the toddlers, that means sharing a dry-erase eraser to wipe down the Kumon letter and number flashcards (which can be found here). I’d heard a tip a while back [...]

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Saturday’s Movie Night

With Saturday being our usual library day, the kids are excited to watch whatever new videos they picked right away. This practice has naturally turned our Saturday nights into movie nights. It is the one night where I try to stop what I’m doing (i.e. housekeeping) to just sit and spend time with them doing [...]

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I didn’t know…

Last night for Advent we read a story I have been meaning to get to for a long while…An Early American Christmas by Tomie dePaola.  We are in the middle of studying early American History so when I spotted this little gem at the library I snapped it up.  I meant to do it as [...]

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