Orange Cranberry Muffins

These are tasty. As always, I did not follow the original recipe. I also always double muffin recipes because my kids are crazy about muffins. This makes about 24.

1 cup orange juice (the kids juiced tangerines)

2 eggs
1 cup coconut oil, mine was solid

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder (It just occurred to me that I didn't double either the baking powder or the baking soda. I loved the consistency of the muffins and didn't find them dense.)
1 teaspoon baking soda

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs. Add flour, baking soda, and baking powder. Add juice. The batter was a little on the thick side so I added a bit of water. I would have added milk, but we were out. Bake at 400 for 20 min.

Tillie

This is why I keep having kids.

Fall 2013 Curriculum, Revised!

I like the Beautiful Feet books, but I don't want to shell out $200 so I'm changing my mind. I might change my mind several more times because I am exciting like that.

Confessions of a Homeschooler has a US geography/history curriculum for $18 that I think the kids will enjoy. They'll study two states every week and there are lots of activities and visuals. There also seem to be several more in depth learning opportunities and the price is right.

I think I'm happy with everything else I've chosen for this fall.

Dining Room Remodel

This is the current state of my soon to be dining room. The section on the left was the main floor bathroom. I'm very excited to finally have a dining room off the kitchen and a more traditional layout. Our house was built in 1856 and the people who lived in this house before us were idiots when it came to construction. The room in this photo is part of the original house. We found the frame for an old door behind the bathroom wall and there is a hidden window in the wall behind the cupboards that you can barely see in on the right side of the picture. I am fortunate to have a super talented husband, father-in-law, and father-in-law's cousin to do all of the construction work. They are a great team and high five at the end of the day which I think it cute. I mean manly. Their high fiving is very manly. And tough.

I am anxious to organize and redecorate my space. I think I'm going to paint my hutch, buffet, and dining chairs black. I'm also going to paint all of the interior doors black because I have decided that I'm tired of seeing dirty doors and marker marks. I have no idea when or how quickly I will get everything painted, but my goal is as soon as possible. If you know me, that statement is funny because it took me years to finish painting my office and even then I never really finished it. Maybe I'll have a house painting party. It'll be like a house warming party except after admiring our new space, everyone will be handed a paint brush or can of spray paint. I can bribe people with good food, right?

Fall 2013 Curriculum

I think this is what I'm ordering:

Maeve (3rd grade...how did that happen?!)
-Beautiful Feet Books history
-Primary Language Lessons
-Sonlight C science
-Singapore 2A 
-Handwriting Without Tears cursive
-Latin (I bought the Latin a couple of years ago, but still haven't taken it out. I think she will be more interested now that she can read. I want her to learn this because she's so interested in frogs/science and this will be helpful to her one day.)

Finn (1st grade)
-history with sister
-math with sister
-McGuffey's readers
-Explode the Code
-Latin with sister (if interested)
-science with sister

School!!

We took off the month of December to focus on being together and making gifts. I've been trying to start school for the past two weeks, but our house is under construction. We'll be super productive for a couple of days and then the kids' work areas will fill up with tools or the house will be so loud or dusty that the kids have trouble focusing. It certainly doesn't help that Daddy has been home on vacation for two weeks. It's been great having him home, but I'm ready to get back into our routine. I'm ready to have walls in my kitchen again too, but that's another post.

We should be ready to go by Monday at the latest. Here's our new daily schedule (As a side note, I love making schedules and have a schedule for everything) :

Breakfast
chores
school/snack
lunch free time/nature study
dinner
bedtime

Nothing is a specific time and this is basically just the flow of our days. Maeve likes to see everything written so she knows what to expect. Our school breakdown is what I have tweaked. Here it is:

Family work
-Bible (we just finished memorizing the Lord's Prayer and will move on to the Ten Commandments)
-history (Mondays): I plan to read The Little House on the Prairie and we will cover information about the 13 colonies, pioneers, and Daniel Boone. We're working our way through the entire Little House series and I'm hoping we can take a trip to Laura's childhood home when we're finished.
-science (Tuesdays): Sonlight C, we're studying birds
*I might decide to do science and history everyday, but I want to focus more on math and writing since that's where Maeve needs the most work. She's improved a ton, but is not confident in either subject.
-art (Wednesdays): I'm going to pick an artist.
-music (Fridays): I'm going to pick a composer.
*Art and music aren't going to take up much of our focus, but I do want to introduce the kids to more since there's some really great classical stuff.

Individual work (daily)
-McDuffy's readers
-copywork
-math
-quiet reading

I've started looking at stuff for next year and am considering My Father's World. I want to continue to use living books for history and might end up loosely following Sonlight. I would like something that is already planned for me, but nothing I've found so far has made me too excited and there's no way I'm paying $600 for something.

Hello New Year!

Is it really 2013? I don't do resolutions, but here's my list of goals:

1. Expand the garden. I'm talking huge. I want to put up a whole lot of food for my family.

2. Paint all of the interior doors black. I have my husband's permission, but it's contingent upon actually finishing the painting. I have a problem with follow through when it comes to paint projects. It took me over a year to paint my sons' room and even then it was my mom who finished it.

3. Organize the house! My husband is building me a humongous pantry that will make most housewives swoon. I am looking forward to have extra storage and can't wait to see how it changes our living space.

4. Learn about beekeeping.

5. Get rabbits again. I think I want to do this, but I want to try to put them in a movable type of chicken tractor. We'll see about this one. I hated having rabbits, but I think I mostly hated our rabbit set up since it wasn't very user friendly.