Things That Distract...

I saw this on Facebook and had to share it because I had just had a friend stop by yesterday and really wished there was an excuse for the what looked like a cyclone had blown through my house! As I led her into the kitchen to send her home with some birthday cake I wondered, "Why does my kitchen look this way?" through my dentist-imposed haze. I remembered getting half-way through dinner clean-up last night and then deciding there was something else to do.

Ah, yes. NOW I remember. It has begun again, my quest for THE home school curriculum. Okay, I've got to figure this out right now, what is the plural for curriculum? Pause for discovery...Curricula. Well, I was wrong; I was thinking possibly curriculi, now I know. Anyway, I am a self-admitted curriculum junkie. The problem is, for a homeschooler there are way too many choices out there! Yes, it's true that one of the benefits of homeschooling is that you have the freedom to choose what works for your family as well as your child's learning styles and abilities. That being said, when do you know you've found that one? Maybe this one works pretty well, but there might be another that has the few elements that seem to be missing from your current one that would make everything complete! Do you see where I am going? I have known many homeschool families that have chosen and stuck with the same boxed curricula for as long as they have homeschooled, but not me! In our 13 years of homeschooling I have probably changed core curricula 4-5 times and other minor changes every year. And it doesn't help that the kids like the change as well, or that there is always something new coming out.

So about my messy house, I had stopped cleaning my kitchen to look at a curriculum catalogue! I really thought I was off that roller coaster with one almost graduated and the other in a nice steady curriculum rut, oh excuse me, on a stable curriculum path. And then along came little guy. With him turning two this week I realized that Kindergarten is just 3 years around the corner! It's never to soon to start thinking about curriculum. In fact, I had already made some decisions while he was in the womb! Then a couple weeks ago this catalogue came in the mail and it was a curriculum that I had seen at conferences before and never gave it a second look for whatever reason. Then this week I picked it up and glanced through it. One little sentence had me pouring over it. "Combining the best of Charlotte Mason's ideas, classical education, and unit studies with a Biblical worldview." Well," I thought to myself, "that's exactly what I want." I've done all of them but Charlotte Mason, and that's what I was planning to do this time, so all of them together would be perfect.

If you don't know anything about homeschool curriculum there are so many ways to choose. You can choose by learning style and philosophy. You can choose by religious affiliation or denomination. You can choose by cost. Some learning philosophies are Classical, Hebraic model, Charlotte Mason, Unit Studies, Unschooling, World View...and I'm no expert. You might also want a curriculum particular to your catholic, baptist, reformed protestant, Mennonite, Latterday Saints, or secular background. There are also the questions of how many children you are schooling at once and do you want them all to be learning together. It's a miracle anyone is able to decide anything! Obviously you can use these categories to narrow it all down and then still have an abundance to choose from. You can choose whole curricula or piece subjects together, color or black and white textbooks, workbooks or printouts, hands-on or computer education. The options are seemingly endless--what a blessing we have! And I mean that.

I am joking about my curriculum addiction, but knowing that I have the freedom not to use curricula that don't work well for my children is a wonderful thing. Sometimes you keep trying new things and finally realize that a particular child is just not great at spelling. Don't we all have something we aren't great at (like keeping my kitchen spotless)? What we have to do is nurture the things we are great at. So if your child loves to cut and paste (mine did not) you can do a million lapbooks. If your child has wiggly pants all the time,  you can do a lot of nature studies. There comes a point--high school--when you have to hunker down and make planning for the future decisions. I know because I'm at the tail end of one with another not far off, and it isn't quite as fun as the younger years of homeschooling. There are blessings there, like seeing the maturity increase daily before your eyes and watching adult principles be applied independently.

But truly, I am so glad that God has given me the blessing of starting another homeschooling journey from the beginning. For some reason it is more fun to teach colors and words of things in nature than grown-up math and science. Yes, I will become a whirlwind curricula tester, but it's all part of the fun. I need to print some sort of funny sign to put over my kitchen sink to remind me to just keep washing and look at curricula later!

Easter Sunday

Until we moved here, really far from all of our extended family, we usually spent Easter weekend with grandparents and indulged in and brought home way too much chocolate. Most families we know would still have some really old chocolate left over by the time the next chocolate holiday rolls around, but not us! If it's chocolate, it gets eaten in this house. Anyway, being so far from family and not having established Easter traditions of our own (other than attending worship), it's been a strange couple of years. Hubby decided Easter morning would not go by without baskets of sorts and went out shopping around 7:30pm last night. He found some great stuff for not that much money and everyone had a smile this morning. Because Little Guy is so into Toy Story these days, he got a Buzz Lightyear Pez dispenser. He LOVES the dispenser, but I guess he doesn't like the PEZ candies because he pulls them out and tries to give them to someone else. Then he gets mad when you don't want them!

I actually got up in time to paint my toenails AND make a nice breakfast. I wanted to try another make ahead pancake batter this morning, but I stayed up too late working on other stuff to mix up batter. I was feeling a little nostalgic so I decided on French Toast this morning. One thing I always remember from my childhood is my dad making us French Toast for breakfast. And we didn't have a piece of French Toast, we each had a stack of French Toast--plus eggs and bacon or whatever else we had. In our house my teenager is the only one who could actually eat a stack of French Toast. French Toast was also one of the few things I actually knew how to cook when I got married!

Anyway, I had some sour dough bread in the house (only because it was BOGO at Publix) and plenty of eggs, so French Toast it was. I'm sure everyone knows how to make French Toast, but maybe it wasn't a staple in your house--so here's how I do it, no recipe. First I beat some eggs in a dish large enough to lay my bread slices in. I also add in a little milk or half&half, a splash of vanilla, and some cinnamon.

 I heat my cast iron griddle pan over medium (and later turn it down to medium low) and melt some butter on the pan. I lay my bread pieces in the egg mixture and then turn them over to coat both sides. If you are using a sturdy bread like french or sour dough, you can let it soak up more of the egg mixture for an eggier bread, but if you are using regular sandwich bread, don't let it soak too long or it will tear apart. Then I lay it on the hot pan and sprinkle the tops with more cinnamon or a cinnamon sugar mix.

When they are nice and brown on the first side, turn them over. The second side will brown more quickly. My little one likes French Toast plain dusted with confectioners' sugar, but the big boys like syrup. We all prefer real Maple, but it doesn't usually make the grocery budget cut. This week we happened to have a bottle of blueberry syrup which I bought on closeout at the grocery store, which is also very nostalgic for me because as a child it was something special that we would get on occasion and I loved it so much. As a grown up it's not my favorite, but the boys really like it.

For both of my big boys, having food prepared for them is a "love language." To make this special, I drizzled their plates with blueberry syrup and served their French Toast up restaurant style. They did love it. In hind sight, sugary sweet French Toast probably wasn't the best choice for Easter morning right after they opened their Easter chocolate!

Further Notes on Sewing up Daddy Flats...

Earlier this week I was in Joann's Fabric (yet again) and I was perusing the flannel aisle (yet again) when out of the corner of my eye I saw this gorgeous green color beckoning me. If you are wondering if I get paid to mention Joann's--I do not! I really have a love/hate relationship with the place. Everything there is so overpriced that you have to either buy on sale or use a coupon. I buy most of my diaper materials online from small mama-run businesses, but there is something to be said for touching and feeling a fabric before you buy it and getting to take it right home and use it. I digress...


To say I'm not a fan of green, other than the natural kind you find outside, is an understatement. After yellow, green is my least favorite color for almost anything. However, I try to participate in Etsy Cloth Diaper Team's monthly themes for shop items and I had already bought some green doggy flannel to make up some Daddy Flats. I was going to line them with plain diaper flannel, but then I saw this apple green cotton terry. At $9.99/yard, it was no steal, but I had a 50% off coupon (of course). I decided to try it out because I had read several blog posts about using cotton terry for fitted diapers, so why not Daddy Flats?

BUYING FABRIC I bought 1 1/2 yards of the green terry. I was able to get six Medium Daddy Flat cuts out of that piece (which is 3 diapers if using two layers, or 6 diapers if layering with another fabric as I was doing). It is good to know the dimensions of your pattern before you go to the fabric store, just in case you make a spur of the moment fabric purchase, so that you buy no more or no less than you can use. Once you have your Daddy Flat pattern printed in the size you want, take a measurement of the general rectangular shape. Then at the fabric store you can figure out how many DFs can fit across the width of your fabric and how much length you need for the number you want.

MY MOTHER TAUGHT ME-- And this was after I was all grown up...ALWAYS prewash your fabrics. I just said how fun it was to be able to rush home and use your fabric. Well, really I rush home and throw it in the washer. For cloth diaper fabrics I run a really short hot wash cycle to preshrink and a short hot dry cycle. Ready in 1 hour! OH, and then you should give it a little press so the pattern can lay flat when you pin it to cut out your diapers.

COTTON TERRY has a few benefits for these diapers. One--it is "snappiable." Someone had commented on a blog post about snappiable fabrics for these diapers. If you use terry on the outside, you can use a Snappi with it. Another advantage is that it is a slightly thicker fabric to use for absorbency that isn't super stretchy like velour or other knits (and as I mentioned in my previous post these diapers do better with stable fabrics). One last advantage I saw was that the flannel and terry sewed up very nicely together. Oh, and I almost forgot, terry (like true diaper flannel) is double sided, so it won't matter which direction you cut out your Daytime Daddy Flat--big bonus for forgetful gals like me!

ABOUT PINNING, If your pins don't want to poke through the fabric, or they are all bent, or they catch and pull, it's time for new ones! I'm preaching to myself here. As soon as the "notions" wall goes on sale again, I'm getting some new pins. It's often the little things that can make sewing projects more enjoyable.

PINNING LAYERS--If you didn't lay your two fabrics together to cut, they probably won't be exactly the same size. I mentioned before how important it is to get the edges of this pattern lined up because you only get 1/4" seam allowance. If you make it bigger you are taking away from your diaper. So line your fabric up as best you can, smooth the layers as much as possible (without stretching the fabric if you are using a stretchy fabric) and pin, pin, pin. Then flip it over and see how the back looks. Sometimes you can smooth the back fabric more, which means unpinning and repinning. You MUST get the edges lined up because if they are off and you sew 1/4" seam you may not catch the underside fabric at all! This may sound tedious for a pattern that I boast is easy to sew, but really I am just being tedious! My advice to new sewers--use two layers of non-stretchy fabric to start, it will be easy!

CORNER TIP-- I like to backstitch at the corners where I will be clipping to make it less likely they will come undone, especially since you don't top-stitch these diapers.



I decided to pair the last two green terry cuts with this red mushroom knit print for the shop--kinda bright, huh?

Wiggly bodies DO NOT take good pictures!

I forgot to mention something about choosing prints for cloth diapers. Try to choose prints that run both ways. Uni-directional prints only run in one direction, which means that when you fold the diaper up, either the front or the back will be upside down. If you choose a pattern that runs either way it won't matter. If you accidentally choose a unidirectional print (and it bothers you) you can always piece the diaper with a solid so that the print is not upside down. I may blog about that later.

Awesome Cloth Diaper Giveaway for New Mothers

Etsy Cloth Diaper Team has put together another great giveaway for April! This one is full of cloth diapering gifts in Newborn and Small sizes.Check it out! You have to click the read more button at the bottom to get to the part where you enter the giveaway. Even if you aren't about to have a baby, you probably know someone who is-- so pass it along!

http://etsyclothdiapers.blogspot.com/2012/04/april-promotional-giveaway-from-etsy.html#more

When life gives you flat pancakes...

Last night I mixed up a batch of pancake batter from a recipe I saw on a blog. It appealed to me because you make it the night before and it's all ready in the morning, you just add an egg and some baking powder. I told my teenager he could go ahead and make them if he wanted to eat before I got up. Of course little guy slept late, so I did too. I awoke to the clang of dishes and the smell of something cooking. When I came into the kitchen there was no batter to be seen and he told me he had already made all the pancakes and they were warming in the toaster oven. As I moved to open it up he said, "They came out a little flat..."

You know it's all in the recipe. I don't know how long I have been searching for a perfect pancake recipe, but they are either too thick, too eggy, too cakey...what I want is a recipe for Cracker Barrel pancakes! They have that perfect blend of tenderness with a crisp and buttery outside. So, of course it's not just the recipe, but the method of cooking makes a difference too. I make mine on a cast iron griddle pan, but even that does not yield the results I want. You might be asking why I don't just use a mix. To me a pancake mix is like cake mix. It only has one purpose and it sits on the shelf (like a single purpose appliance) and is only used when needed. You can always make pancakes with pantry ingredients and you never have to buy anything special.

About those flat pancakes...they certainly were flat. I don't know what went wrong. It could've been that we used white flour because we didn't have any wheat. It could've been the baking soda or the fact that we used powdered milk instead of real because we ran out last night and no one wanted to go to the store that late! I was about to turn my nose up at them (in my head so as not to hurt feelings), when my brilliant teenager said, "They aren't too bad with Nutella on them!"

There is this amazing little French bakery called Baguette & Co. in a tiny little pass through town not far from here where, aside from the most delicious breads and pastries, you can get crepes with Nutella in them. A friend of ours just gave us a giant jar of Nutella, which was a real treat because I had looked at it in the grocery store the day before and decided it was too expensive--and she didn't even know about it!

These pancakes were that thin, so I slathered them each with a healthy tablespoon of Nutella, rolled them up, dusted them with confectioners sugar and WHA-LA! Talk about yum--maybe not Baguette & Company yum, but certainly delicious and very easy to eat with your hands!

What's the moral of this story? When life give you flat pancakes, fill them up with something...Or is it that Nutella makes everything better?

Eradicating that Mystery Odor!

My husband will tell you that I do not have the best sense of smell. I am always the last one to notice a stinky diaper (hmmm) and have often failed to notice the tell-tale scent of something burning. SO, if I can smell something odd, it must really be something. Something terrible, like when you find oozing rotten potatoes at the bottom of your pantry (one of the absolute worst smells in the whole world), or when veggies (or worse--leftovers) have been shoved repeatedly to the back of the fridge for so long that they are unrecognizable as food, or (eew) a dead mouse in a little used closet, or...well I'm sure you can think of your own.

Last night my olfactory receptors were offended by something in Little Guy's bedroom. I picked up the litter of toys and clothes and vacuumed the carpet. I thought maybe I would find an unobserved accident from an earlier "airing out" session. I found nothing, so I spritzed the room with the odor neutralizer we keep for the diaper bin, removed the diaper bin from the room, and hoped for the best.

This morning the offending odor remained! Because I found myself with unexpected extra time on my hands today, I decided I would rearrange Little Guy's bedroom like I was planning and eradicate the odor. I started by moving all the furniture and vacuuming along the baseboards and smelling the carpet as I went. Nothing there. I smelled the crib bedding and stuffed animals. Nothing there. I stuck my head in the giant tub of stuffed animals. Nothing there. I cleaned and polished all of the wood furniture in the room to freshen those up. As I began sifting through the collection of tubes of various rash ointments, baby meds, and other nursery paraphernalia on the changing table, I smelled it again. I stuck my nose in the stacks of cloth wipes and cloth diaper liners. All I could smell there was the scent of the heavy duty Desitin that never goes away. WHAT was it? Maybe the changing table itself was smelling from too many sloshes of wipe water...the wipe water.

I opened the lid of that container and gagged a little. Normally it just smells faintly of baby shampoo because all I use is water mixed with a little baby shampoo. I quickly ran the container to the bathroom and poured out the offending liquid and scoured the container with hot water. What in the world caused that? I am thinking several factors could be involved. One--because we do not have regularly scheduled poopies, sometimes the water isn't used very often and maybe it sat longer than it should have. Two--something got into the wipe water during the process of changing a diaper, this one I think unlikely because I always wet my wipes in prep and then begin changing. Three-- and the one I am leaning towards, the baby shampoo which I bought stinkified my wipe water. I recently bought some J&J's Baby Oil Baby Wash at the grocery store because we had been out of baby wash for several days and had been using regular soap to bathe his very dry skin. I normally try to by a natural baby wash, but the budget was particularly tight that week. This baby wash was on sale, and a baby wash with baby oil seemed like it might be good for his skin. I don't like this product for a couple reasons, mainly the design of the bottle. It comes in one of those bottles that looks upside down, where the lid and opening are at the bottom. From the first time I used it, there had been a puddle of goo underneath the bottle, it leaks terribly. Because of the shape of the bottle it cannot be turned upside down. It even leaks when lying on its side. Then, when you open it to use it it just blobs out. I guess the good thing is that it will be used up quickly and I will have to buy something else--a silver lining.

I don't usually rant about a poor purchase, but I really think that shampoo stinkified my wipe water! I had just refilled it using that shampoo a day or so before, well who knows? A lesson learned--beware the wipe water!

On a side note, as I am sitting here enjoying this blissfully quite couple of hours while the big boys are away and Little Guy is asleep, I am suddenly serenaded by the stereo in the other room. Yous see we have a haunted stereo, well really it has some personal electrical issues! It is a very old, mostly broken, bulky, hand-me-down CD player/stereo that we connected to the television a few months ago to try and get better sound (why?). The first time we came home and found the stereo playing we thought it must have been the cat bumping into it with her shenanigans. Later we witnessed it spontaneously turning on in the middle of the day! It only happens occasionally, and hasn't yet happened at night, but I think we have plans to remove it. Today I was serenaded with what sounded like the Christian music station and then maybe and 80's station? I turned it off, I like the quiet.

Where is my head?

This afternoon hubby tells me he is taking the boys to a movie tonight, and I say "Okay!" At 5:45 I wander into the kitchen and start baking a lasagna thinking it would be a great night for a later dinner because my teenager had made homemade brownies for an afternoon snack and we would all be able to wait. At 6:10 hubby says, "Will that be done before we leave?" "Leave," I say in an astonished voice, "Where are we going?"

So as they head out the door hubby is making disappointed sounds that the lasagna is still in the oven and it is smelling very good. To be honest, I can't say how good it will be. I really hate boiling lasagna noodles the old fashioned way and I absolutely LOVE everything about no-boil lasagna noodles. Sadly, ALDI does not carry no-boil noodles and I do the bulk of my shopping there and sometimes do not make it to the other grocery stores. So tonight I cheated. I was thinking that I had made a lasagna before where I just soaked the noodles in really hot water before layering, but there is a good chance I completely imagined that. So anyway, that's what I did tonight. I cooked the lasagna a lot longer than it said, but I still won't know if the noodles are completely done until we eat it. Little Guy and I will eat in about 30 minutes when it's cooler, and all my big boys will be starving when they get home from the movie. I hope their expectations aren't too high! It looks and smells good anyway.

Kitty loves to sit in the window with the attic fan running.

Now I will go watch Toy Story for the bagillionth time this month and enjoy the sounds and smells of the attic fan running after a rain storm.

I don't want to be a spoiler, but Etsy Cloth Diaper Team is giving away another amazing prize package in April--this one is for new mamas. Look for it on Wednesday!