happy mother's day!

So far my morning has been filled with sunshine, happy smiles, lots of hugs, hand made gifts and donuts (a new iPod shuffle too). Hope that your mother's day is a wonderful one too!

burda + bailey = sew cute!

I have been holding onto this pattern for a year, waiting for the perfect fabric for all those wonderful ruffly layers. There will be two outfits made, today I finished the first, a dress for Tallulah.

The Heather Bailey Pop Garden half yards I ordered earlier this year were just calling out to me...

aren't those colors wonderful?
It isn't pink, which seems to be all Tallulah wears, but I think she likes it anyway, and once Regan has her coordinating capri's and top I am sure I won't be able to get them out of them!

busy as a bee

I have not posted a school update for awhile, so I though I would share what we have been working on this week. Our current Konos unit is Orderliness and we have been studying animal classifications. We started with invertebrates and covered mollusks, coelenterates, porifera, annlida and arthopods... Did you know that of all the animals on the earth only 5% are vertebrates, the rest are invertebrates? Amazing! Anyway, we have taken a small detour from the regularly scheduled program that would have us moving on to mammals and and other creatures and have been doing some more in-depth bug research. This week we have been studying Honeybees (and we read a bit about Bumblebees just to clear up some confusion about how they differ and if they sting, which is of course the most important question, lol).

The kids and I really love doing lap books as it is a great way to record what we have learned and enables us to go back later and review, and I really love homeschoolshare.com because they have so many great, FREE lap book templates so it takes a lot of the organization and prep work away from me.

The two books on top were both excellent resources. I think Regan might have read one of the others, but the top two were so good we did not even bother reading the others together. Charles Micucci has other books too and they are well written with great illustrations (the Life Cycle book has real photos and I really enjoyed having both the photos and the illustrations).

I wanted to do something different from the typical file folder lap book, so I drew the hive on card stock and used book rings to hold it all together.

If you look closely you will notice out Bee Observation sheets are blank. Today is the first day this week it has not been raining, so we will be doing our observing this weekend :)
Next week we start butterflies. I've got my tent, just waiting for the larva to come in the mail!

re-do

We have been talking about moving the TV out of the living room and into the garage (which is a semi finished playroom/laundry room) for over a year now, but there has always been some reason not to do it, that is until 9:00pm Monday night when we were moving all the furniture in order to shampoo the carpets and at that moment, we could not think of any reason not to move it, so move it we did... and I LOVE it! Why did we wait so long?

The TV is no longer the focal point of our living room, but the people sitting opposite you are, what a novel idea!

I actually have room for a real book shelf now (above left) so my hutch is no longer covered with school books and art supplies!

And our office/school/craft/dining room has more space than ever and is (for the time being) nicely organized! (My mom and I actually started the craft/school room redo a month ago when they were visiting... it is SO much better than it was before- Thanks Mom!)
There are still a few finishing touches to be done, like hang pictures, get a new lamp that does not need to lean against the wall in order to stay upright and maybe even an update on the paint job (okay so maybe that's a bit more than a "finishing touch")... but it is coming together nicely. Don't you love the impromptu 9pm redecorating sessions?

a fun twist on a family favorite

We love taco's in our house (Jessica Seinfeld's taco recipe from Deceptively Delicious is my current favorite) and last night I decided to add a little twist to a family favorite. I used Tostitos Scoops and filled them with 1 tsp of taco meat, sprinkled with cheese and put them in the oven at 375 until the cheese melted. We topped them with diced tomatoes and sour cream and the kids absolutely loved these mini taco bowls! They would make great appetizers as well. Oh, I almost forgot! I used an icing bag and a #10 tip for the sour cream, the kids loved getting "icing" on their taco's and it was easier to control portion amount. Next time I will try a flower tip!

field trip

When I was a kid, every May my mom, her best friend and I would go strawberry picking. It would be an all day trip, hours of picking, boxes and boxes of strawberries. I loved (still do) eating the berries right off the bush, warm and juicy, yum! I have such fond memories of those times.

One of the things that I love about living where we do now is that strawberry picking has become a staple of our spring... and not just one day a year, but every week for as long as the season lasts. The kids and I anticipate it all April, even driving by the field to see how the plants look and if the stand is up yet (the field is less than 10 minutes from our house). We drove by on Friday and they were setting up the tent, that meant a weekend opening! We waited until this morning to go, trying to beat out the rain and the first week of strawberries did not disappoint! I'm off to the kitchen to make the first strawberry pies of the season!

Those are some Berry Cute Kids!

"Is this a good one, Mommy?
Bucket Boy

The kids have really gotten good at picking ripe, juicy berries... we actually picked more than would fit in our bucket and had to leave some with the lady in the stand!

I think she was upset because after at least 10 I told her not to eat any more strawberries :)

happy may day!

The kids and I had fun picking out flowers and tying up little bouquets to leave on our neighbors door steps today...hope you are having a fabulous May Day!