Family Tablecloth

from www.istockphoto.com

From a wrong mindset to a well-meant intention to a project completed, our family tablecloth has been altered.  It had become such a commonplace sight that when I recently placed it on our table, I did not consider its effects.  The free-handed drawing of the betrayer's hand print, who had not bothered to attend that Easter celebration in 2002, did catch the notice of the betrayed, however.  Pain has a way of propelling me to action; thus the unsightly artwork is now in the trash.

One of My Favorite Things

Because peaches were on sale this week, I was motivated to bake a peach pie today.  Fruit pie in the summer is one of my favorite things!

Ankle Deep

100 degrees F yesterday!

Despite the out-of-routineness of yesterday (an early morning walk with a dear friend whom I haven't connected with for years and a trip to Bell Parts for the magic fridge part to get our main fridge up and running again), I made significant progress in the school planning project, which allowed me to finish off the changes to the coming year's subject assignment sheets -- Yah-hoo!

Knee Deep Still

http://www.logitech.com/en-us/keyboards/keyboards/wireless-touch-keyboard-k400#

What's up with me today and since last I blogged is school planning.  As a result my shoulders, neck and upper back are growing more and more stiff and sore.  I'm considering a wireless keyboard as a helpful, ergonomic solution.

Post-Its Planning

Some unexpected events occurred at the end of the 2011-12 school year, which prompted me to re-evaluate and to "re-mix" the way I have functioned as a home school teacher over the past 15-ish years.  I tend to like to improve things when they need to be improved, so the remix has not been too overwhelming to date. 

B, E, I

http://www.123rf.com

B is for batter, as in blackberry muffin Batter whipped up after my early a.m. run, and as in Breakfast...

C O O K I E S ! ! !

I am craving a cookie baking session, and these treasures caught my eye:  Princess Tea Cakes.   I've baked a couple of the cookie recipes from Eatingwell.com, and they have been delicious.  As Russian Tea Cakes are one of my top 10 favorite cookies, this seems like an obvious choice.

...of course, I need to finish my work first -- good motivation!


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Books, Books, Books

As usually happens, I received notifications for books awaiting me at my two favorite libraries during the past week.  Early this morning I headed out to retrieve my treasures.  I can hardly wait to dive in!  I do think one of my dream vacations would be to simply read books the entire time and that one of my dream jobs would be to work in a library.

Fiction

Flying Under the Radar

I'm not braggin', just informing...Ok, so here it is:  for at least 10 years, thanks to the influence of many of my friends from our former church, I have milled my own whole wheat flour and then made 100% whole-wheat bread from the freshly ground flour. 

What's baking?

The finished products of a bliss.

Homemade granola and Zoe's banana bread have been on my "to bake" list for some weeks now.
Here's how I made the granola today:

Granola

3/4 c. brown sugar
1/3 c. honey
1/3 c. oil

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon almond extract

Preheat oven to 300 degrees.  Combine above ingredients in saucepan.  Heat mixture to boiling.  Simmer for about 5 minutes, stirring constantly, until oil and sugars blend.  In the meantime, combine 6 cups oats, 3/4 cup coconut and dash of salt.  Add 1 t. vanilla extract and 1 t. almond extract to the liquid mixture and stir carefully.  Pour sugar/oil mixture over oat mixture and mix thoroughly.  Bake on greased baking sheets for 1 hour, stirring every 10 minutes, or until crunchy.

Original Recipe from Eat Well for $50 a Week

Eat Well for $50 a Week

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Project: Enjoy the Process

Post-It Notes to the rescue again!  My quilt sketch, not to scale, in progress.  The orange squares represent the quilt squares and mark the width and length of the combined squares.  The white space in between is for sashing as is the abutting white space around the outside of the squares.  The outermost white space represents the binding.

One of the projects I hope to finish this summer is a Helen Keller’s Rose quilt that I started in (yikes!) 1997. 

Excellent Free Online Learning Web Site

I want my two youngest children to learn to use PowerPoint in the coming school year.  I have an obsolete computer curriculum which I was considering using as a resource in order to write my own curriculum.  While pondering that option, I decided to poke around on the web to see what is already out there.  Early on in the process I stumbled upon a fabulous free tutorial on an even more stupendous web site.

Low g.i. brownies

When all else fails, bake!                                                                     

I have intended to try a low g.i. brownie recipe that I found here for a few weeks now.  Finally last evening I was motivated to bake.  

My DIY Perpetual Calendar

While poking around on Pinterest, I was inspired by the perpetual calendar idea someone pinned recently.  I likewise pinned it to one of my boards and began pondering.  I confess that I do not like to dust, so the more things I have sitting around collecting dust the less I like it.  I love pens, paper, journals, books and office supplies, but the thought of yet another one of these sitting around seemed like too much to me.  Because I spend a decent amount of my day doing something on my computer,  I searched for something that I could use on my laptop.  Perusing images as well as blogs and other articles for ideas helped me to form the basics of what I wanted.  

I love using OneNote and have much information stored in notebooks via this program.  Here’s what I came up with for my very own DIY perpetual calendar (along with an entry):

 

Run & Enjoy

One of my newest Brooks running shoes

My stomach churned and burned.  I could feel my breathing become shallower and faster.  The whistle blew and off I lurched.  I sprinted to each line on the gym floor and back to the beginning point all the while complaining internally.  I flopped to the floor at the end of the circuit, gasping for air and despising that part of practice…

“Yes, you can run the hurdles,” our track coach replied to my dream request.  She continued, “as long as you also run the mile relay.”  My heart sunk, but I agreed.  I would run a race I hated for the sake of one I loved…