red leaf, yellow leaf.

Yesterday we were supposed to go apple picking, but things came up with both families we were going with, so it got postponed for another day (hopefully soon!).  Instead we decided to do some crafts with my friend Shawna and her family.
We decided to do some fall keepsake paintings, using the kids' arm/hand-prints as a tree trunk, and little dots of paint on their finger as the leaves.  They didn't quite understand how close together the leaves should be, but they still had a lot of fun and the trees still turned out super cute!

 

After making our fall trees, we read a story about the life of a sugar maple tree. titled Red Leaf, Yellow Leaf.

The kids were sort of itching to go play instead, but they still seemed to enjoy the book. 

We sent them out to try to find leaves in the yard after, but they weren't really interested, so we just let them play instead.

I tried to make pizza dough in the bread machine while they played, but I hit the button one too many times and ended up baking it (as a quick bread!)

note to self: check what number you pressed before you hit the start button!!

.....so we went out to dinner instead.  I was sort of upset with myself after, we're pretty short on money and with the place being super crowded and the food not being all that great it wasn't a very enjoyable use of our money.

Overall, though, it was a good day! It really inspired me to do more crafts with the girls, AND to hang up their artwork around the house.  I put our little handprint trees in our kitchen and it already feels more bright and cheery, and the girls are so proud to see them there.

 

bread machine love.

Move over Shane McCutcheon, I have a new love.  And it's name.....is bread machine.  
Ok, not really.  I don't love it more than Shane (because I'm in <3 with Shane!)....but I HAVE been baking up a storm with my bread machine, and seem to fall in love with it more each day!
I love that I can throw everything in, press a button, and forget about it until it's done.  I love that I don't have to run my whole oven, worry about getting the temp right to get it to rise, or dirty a bunch of bowls and my counter-top to make dough.  I love that I can have any type of fresh baked bread that I want without the risk of bakery contamination with nut containing products, or weird chemicals I can't pronounce (or can pronounce and KNOW are bad for me...corn syrup anyone?).  I still need to venture out away from the white flour a little, but for now I'm thrilled that my bread consists of REAL ingredients: flour, butter, eggs, yeast....not by products or preservatives.  AND it's cheap!  My frugal side is THRILLED that my breadsticks, rolls, pizza dough, and, of course, bread, are made with mere pennies worth of ingredients, and taste BETTER than their store bought counterpart!
This whole bread machine love is probably not so good for my waistline, but my ultimate comfort food is hot, fresh bread, so....it's the little things in life, right? ;)


This morning I actually used my bread machine for both breakfast AND lunch!  First, I made a pumpkin raisin quick bread (with the remainder of the pumpkin from the muffins), using a recipe from Betty Crocker.

I subbed raisins for the nuts (obviously....), and also took a suggestion from the comments to use brown sugar rather than white...it was almost a little TOO moist though, next time I'll just use white.

After that was done I turned around, washed the pan, and started dough for dinner rolls (lunch rolls?).

fluffy goodness <3

For a long time after getting my bread machine I was so intimidated by the dough cycle...."What do you mean I have to take it out and bake it?!"  But it really is so much easier than doing it all by hand!  It takes an hour and a half, but it does all of the kneading, mixing, and warm rising for you.  Depending on the recipe, all you do is take out the dough, put it on a baking sheet, cover it for a half hour or so, and then bake it.  SO simple!  And everything has turned out really yummy that I've made. 

hot roll with roasted root veggies and quinoa....yum!

a love of literature.....

 I always said I wanted my kids to love reading, so I just couldn't be too upset when I asked the girls to clean up the spare room and 20 minutes later came in to find them reading books to each other....

They did, eventually (with a bit of nagging), clean it up, for the record.  And, hey, I'd rather read than clean too!  :)

warm cooking for a cold day.

Ok, Ok.....it's not really a cold day.  But at least it's finally in the 70s!  And the weatherman (er, um, Weather.com) says it's going to rain tomorrow morning!  This is cause for celebration!  Or at least some yummy fall food...right?
This morning I made pumpkin-raisin muffins, by far one of my FAVORITE fall treats.  I used a recipe from Joy of Cooking, it seems almost anything I bake from that book turns out amazingly good.  I included the recipe at the end!
 

After that, we went to the Farmer's Market in Concord.  This is sort of a weekly ritual for us, we usually meet friends for a playdate there.  Today though, it was just my friend Shawna and I (plus the kiddos).  We got some veggies and fruits and then let the kids play for a bit.  I got some awesome organic multi-colored beets and some sweet potatoes, I think I'm going to have roasted root veggies and quinoa tomorrow for lunch (when my picky husband is at work so he can't turn his nose up at the beets!)  I also got leeks for potato leek soup and a few pounds of "damaged" (read: slightly bruised or deformed but still edible and VERY cheap!) pears.  The apples were screaming my name but I refrained because we're planning on going apple picking this weekend....look forward to lots of apple baking recipes next week  ;)

beets and a honey stick!

I finished the day off with some veggie stew, buttermilk bread from my bread machine, and watching GLEE in my warm jammies.  <3

I got a nickel, I got a nickel, I got a nickel, hey hey, hey hey!

In some kind of cosmic unity of searching for a way to get August to clean her room and picking out random library books, we stumbled into teaching her about money.  Today's the first day, it's been interesting but seems to be working (both in the math teaching aspects and the cleaning the room aspects...).
We got this book at the library the other day, and it sort of sparked the whole thing:

 

One side is your standard letters and a picture of an object that starts with the letter, but the other side (it's a book you can start from either direction) is numbers, from 1 to 99, and an actual size picture of how many cents can make up that number.  So, for example, the number 10 has a picture of ten pennies, two nickels, and one dime.  I love that you can take actual coins and place them on top of the pictures in the book, so they can see the size and make the connection.

This morning August picked up the living room (including my things like all the shoes, or throwing away a diaper, I'm not just paying her to pick up her own toys!), and cleaned up her room.  She earned one nickel and one dime (cheap labor around here, huh? LOL).  Then we got out the book and found the picture of the nickel and of the dime and counted how many pennies were in each and added them together.  She was VERY proud to have earned 15 cents!  

I told her that when she earns a full dollar she can go to Target and buy one thing from the dollar section....we'll see if that's incentive enough to keep that room clean, but at the very least she's learning math! ;)

Reason # 7524234131457 why I homeschool.

Peanut menace? Bullies use food to torment allergic kids

"About 1 in 4 kids, teens and young adults with allergies reported being teased, harassed or bullied because they were allergic, according to a new survey published in the Annals of Allergy, Asthma & Immunology. Of 353 families of kids ages birth to 25 surveyed at allergy conferences across the nation, 85 reported that their kids had been plagued because of the problem.
When children under 5 were excluded from the results, that rose to 35 percent, and among kids in grades six through 10, it was as high as 50 percent, noted Dr. Scott H. Sicherer,  a professor of pediatrics at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute of the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York."


What is wrong with our culture that young kids think it's ok to taunt someone for an illness they have or even chase someone with something that could kill them....for what, a good laugh?  I get it, I can't protect my kids forever and ever, they will eventually experience hurt and heartache and probably even cruelty at some point in their lives, homeschooled or not, but I wholeheartedly admit that when I read things like this it solidifies it for me that this is the right choice for our family.

a day in the life.

Busy Sunday today, and I think homeschooling might be a misnomer, we're never home!
First I baked some yummy apple muffins with a bunch of bruised apples my grandpa gave me from his tree. I used this recipe:

http://thegirlwhoateeverything.blogspot.com/2010/02/apple-muffins.html

They were super yum, but I think I used to much brown sugar on top because all of my tops fell in. Oh well, they still tasted great AND I loved that not only were there no nuts but there was also no dairy so this is getting filed in my recipe folder for a future playdate with other friends who have allergies!
Then it was off to church, I go to a Unitarian Universalist church and love it there. I love how welcoming and open they are, how we strive for social justice and equality for all, how it's a church for those of us who just don't fit in anywhere else and a place where we can make our own spiritual path. I wish I could tell you how great the service was today, but above stated muffins made me 20 minutes late and then Libby (my 2 year old) was having some anxiety over staying in the nursery PLUS they were short staffed one person, so I ended up just helping out in the preschool room. Callie liked that idea better anyways since she also got to play (read: chew on) some toys on the floor rather than sit quietly on my lap.
On the way out we saw a family of deer right there along the roadside! The girls were SO thrilled and did really well at not yelling to them and scaring them away. I, being a crazed picture taker, made my husband pull over so I could snap a picture out the window.




After this, we went to Clayton's Oktoberfest. This, unfortunately, was a flop. Everything was INSANELY overpriced, there were about a million and one people there, and nothing really great to see. Since we had already parked and the kids were bouncing with excitement we still went in and did one loop around and let the kids go on one ride each.
August chose the classic dragon coaster, it seems she's a little daredevil in the making ;)



We also got a silly picture taken, that I somehow got talked into since I wanted Callie in it....



Now we're back home, I'm in my favorite pair of penguin jammies, putting some finishing touches on my blog, and getting ready to have a "make your own pizza night" with the kids. This is the first time we've made our own crust (using this recipe for making dough in the bread machine!), usually we buy it at WinCo. It's rising as I type, so wish me luck!