Homemade Play Doh

We had a lot of outdoor plans for this lovely Monday, but of course I didn't think to check out the weather when planning the week and we woke up to rain, rain, and some more rain.  So it came down to some last minute planning to keep these little hands busy and I came across an awesome homemade playdoh recipe.  The original recipe I found called for cream of tarter and I didn't have that so I doubled the salt and it worked out great!  As soon as my littles sunk their hands into it the first thing out of their mouths was "Mom! This is way better than the store kind!"  So its totally mom + kid approved!  It calls for everyday pantry ingredients and only takes about 10 minutes.

Ingredients:
2 cups of  all purpose flour
1 1/3 cups of salt
2 cups of water
2 TBL of cooking oil
food coloring

Mix flour & salt in large pan.  Then add in water and cooking oil.  Stir on medium heat and it will get THICK.  If you want it all one color then add your food coloring now.  If you want it different colors then once its all mixed, grab some gloves and separate the dough into each bowl and go to town mixing and kneeding in your colors.  The kids would actually love to do this part and it would be fun for them to mix their own colors. 

We store ours in mason jars. 

And I will never ever buy store playdoh again. 

Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

Sometimes I think we buy banana's just to watch them turn brown and black on my counter.  We are the world worst at buying them with good intentions and then letting them get too ripe before we can eat them.  Im a bit picky and only like them green so once they turn yellow I kind of forget about them.  I hate throwing food away so I decided to whip up some banana bread Saturday morning.  Its super easy and moist and I personally think that it tastes better the 2nd day when its cold, but that's just me.

Anyway, heres how we did it:



Ingredients:

3 ripe bananas
1/2 cup of apple sauce
1 tsp vanilla
2 eggs, beaten
2 cups of all purpose flour (reserve 1 TBL)
1/2 cup of sugar
1/2 cup of brown sugar
1tsp of baking soda
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
1/2 cup of dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup of white chocolate chips (or you can do 1 cup of whatever kind of chips you have on hand)


Directions:

Preheat oven to 350
combine bananas, apple sauce, vanilla & eggs in large bowl.
mix flour, sugar, baking soda, cinnamon  in a different bowl.
slowly mix in flour mixture to the banana mixture.  (I put the banana mixture in our standing mixer bowl, turned it on low, and let my daughter slowly add in 1/2 cup of the flour mixture at a time...she loved getting to help!)



Add the 1 tbl spoon of flour with the chocolate chips.  This will help them from sinking to the bottom of the bread.  Then fold the chips into the dough. 



Pour into greased loaf pan and bake for 50-60 minutes.
Let cool and store in the fridge.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Knock Knock Cake

You know those smells and tastes that can take you right back to your childhood?  Well, this is mine.  My aunts famous Knock Knock Cake.  When I was a kid we got it twice a year.  Once on Thanksgiving and once on Christmas.  I would eat my dinner as fast as I could so I could try to get the first slice of this heavenly, chocolately, amazing, goodness.  Now, if you don't like chocolate or if you are a health guru that may pass out at the sight of sugar then run away now...run far, far away and don't look back at this post.  Because well, this cake is not the healthiest thing on the market, but damn, it is good stuff and is perfect for a special occasion.  I wish I had better photos of it, but we simply gobbled it up too fast and I wasn't able to snap one.  Now I cant tell my aunt this but I cheat on her recipe with box cake mix.  I have tried and tried to get a cake from scratch to work and I just cant do it so I buy 2 boxes of a golden butter cake mix and make it as it calls for.  I bake 4 thin layers in 2 9 inch round pans.  My aunt is a knock knock cake master and does 7 layers, but I just dont have my game together yet.  You can of course do the cake however you want, but Im telling you now do the layers.  How the icing melts in-between them is part of the amazing part of this cake. 

Now for the icing...this icing is tricky and the first time I made it I failed terribly, but now I have finally nailed it. 

You will need:

4 Cups of sugar
1 1/3  cups of evaporated milk in the can
5 Tablespoons of butter
8 HEAPING tablespoons of cocoa
1 teaspoon of vanilla

Now mix all of that in a big pot and bring it to a boil for about 3-4 minutes.  Keep stirring constantly.  Then turn it down to medium heat and stir for about 20 minutes.  DO NOT LEAVE the icing.  It will burn really easily.  I promise the cake is worth the labor. 

Since it has so much sugar it will start to get hard if it isn't on the heat so this is the tricky part.  Go ahead and have your cake layers ready and cool. This is like a fast assembly line process.  Put one layer down, pour icing, another layer, pour icing, and so on and so forth.  Don't take time to make it perfect down the sides...just pour it and go with it while the icing is hot.  If you do wait too long and it gets hard in the pot just put it back on low heat and maybe add a tiny bit of water.  Let the cake cool in the fridge and when it cools do the knock knock test.  My kids love this part.  You should be able to knock on it, but when you take a bite it will melt in your mouth and is SO good.  Oh my heavens.

 I hope this brings you & your family many wonderful memories as it has us!

What our days look like so far

I cant believe we are starting our 5th week of kindergarten!  It seriously feels like I was just planning our 1st week a few days ago.  I'm not sure where time goes.  Any who, a lot has changed since my last homeschool blog which can be found HERE. After the first week, I realized the curriculum we picked at first was not for us.  Marleigh was slightly bored because we did a lot of what it wanted in preschool last year so she felt like we were just repeating the year all over again.  We ended up switching to Oak Meadow curriculum which can be found HERE. I will forever sing the praises of this curriculum!  It is the perfect fit for our family.  Its challenging enough for Marleigh to keep her excited each day for what we will be learning and is easy for me to keep up with & plan.  However, the days are not planned out to a T in the curriculum so I did struggle with this for the first couple of weeks.  I feel like Im finally finding my groove with it and I love the flexibility it offers us.  We follow it pretty closely, but also add in our own ideas too.  We are finally finding our daily rhythm, but Im sure as time goes on we will change and adjust more and more to our new adventure.

Right now our days look like this:
We start school around 9am once everyone is dressed and ready (some times we skip the getting dressed part).  We gather around for circle time which I love because Maddox can get involved with this too.  We start with lighting our circle time candle, say our morning verse, do finger plays and sing songs, discuss what we are doing that day, say our closing verse and the kids love to blow out the candle.  We then start with our morning main lesson.  On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays we do language arts.  Tuesdays & Thursdays are Math.  This lasts anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes depending on what we are doing for the day.  After this they have an hour for creative play which is where they can mimic me doing house hold chores or they can play creatively on their own or we go on a field trip. We set up shelves up stairs that are organized with things for them to do on their own such as crafts, puzzles, games, etc...There's absolutely no TV allowed to fill in this space.


We then gather again for lunch.  After lunch we have an afternoon hour of school.  On Mondays and Thursdays are science.  Tuesdays are arts, crafts & baking day.  Wed is music & play date day.  Friday is health & hiking day. 



After this they are free to go do more creative play and then Marleigh helps prep for dinner.  Her job is to set the table, help cook, and she helps clean up.  After dinner and baths Maddox plays quietly in his room and I give Marleigh some kind of handwork to do to wind down for bed like finger knitting, embroidery, bees wax molding, etc...We then start our bed time routine and end with a story and start all over again the next day!

Its a lot of work, but I have enjoyed it so much!  Its been so great for me as Im now getting further away from the social media scene and Im really putting all of my focus in to my children.  They are happier because they have more of my attention and Im happy because they are so great!  When they have all of my attention on our school days their behavior is so wonderful.  Im not just saying that.  When you are there, body, mind, and heart, your kids will sense it and they will not act out for attention.  I especially love during the creative play hours and Marleigh chooses to help me around the house instead of playing.  We bond during that time and I then see her treating her brother in the way I treat her.  Maddox is picking up on our rhythm and loves to help clean.  Even tonight before bed he wouldn't go to sleep until we picked up all of his toys.  Its amazing how when we, as moms, turn these chores into a positive thing how it can change the outlook on it for our children.  And I like to think they will grow up into have great work aspects and will be able to maintain a clean and healthy home when they are on their own.
 

When we run errands I try to keep some sort of school structure.  For example, this past week we were working on the letter C & the number 2.  So while at the store Marleigh had to see how many she could find on the products.  If we need to grocery shop I make her a list too with pictures + words that I draw and she matches it to what she finds on the shelf.  This takes patience, but can be very beneficial.  I want her to learn real life lessons in the real world so this is a great first step that she can handle.  When we are out doing things like this she  is also out interacting with people of all ages and walks of life.  I hate that stereotypical comment about homeschool children being socially awkward.  When in life, besides in a classroom, are you stuck in a room with people all of the exact same age?  My bet is never.  At least not for me.



So there's a bit of a rundown on our schedule right now. Ill be blogging more of what our days look like soon!
xo

Comfort in a Cup

I seem to remember the most random parts + pieces of conversations & life.

For example,  the first time I saw my daughter I just remember blurting out, "Is her head always going to be shaped like that?"

 Or even the first time I saw my son I recall the first thing out of my mouth being, "He looks pissed."  Granted I was high on drugs from the emergency c section, but lets face it,  Im not the most romantic gal on the block.   My brain is totally random, Im not very clever with words, and I struggle often with the right thing to say.  And I cant remember shit. 

Maybe that's just motherhood?  Or maybe its just me...or ADD?  Im not sure, but its how my brain works.

Another example would be about 7 years ago in high school when I first met my best friend.  I don't remember much of our first conversations, but I do remember her telling me about her mom giving her hot jello to soothe her sore throat when she was a kid.

So you guessed it, as soon as one of my kids complain of a sore throat all I can think about is hot jello.

And that was no exception this morning with my little Marleigh woke of full of complaints instead of her usual chipper self.

The key I have found to this trick though is adding a heaping scoop of natural, local, the GOOD stuff, kind of honey.  Honey has so many healing powers and its just the ticket for a sore throat (as long as the sore throat is caused by a cold and not a virus).  Our lovely neighbors just happen to be bee farmers so its like a never, ending supply of the freshest stuff we can get just a hop, skip, and away.

When I get a sore throat I down apple cider vinegar, honey, lemon and hot water.  Theres no way my kids will drink that so the ticket for them would be....yep, you guessed it,  hot jello.

So as you can imagine she downed the drink and is now running around happy as a clam.  Her throat magically feels better and she is good to go.  I will make her gargle salt water for safe measures in just a bit, but for now this works.  And it works wonders if you have picky kids that wouldn't dare swallow a spoonful of honey. 

A Place to Breathe

After much debate I finally decided to start up this little blog.  A space to breathe away from my photography blog and facebook.  A place where I can share more of a personal peek into our lives for our family far away and as a virtual scrapbook to document our story.   This is a space for my main role in life: mom & wife and its where I will share how we do things for school, our progress on becoming self sufficient, recipes, and well, just a place to put my thoughts. 

I hope you will check in often and follow our story :)