RelaxASpell

Love 2009

by Brie

We are still working on the house. This week was beginning insulation in the addition and this bookshelf. This is my little area of the house for crafts etc so I drew this out and asked Chris to build it for me. Instant love! This took a room full of messy and made so I could find it all at a glance:)

Tonight we finish decorating our Christmas tree!

In other news Corrine is back home. She was in public school for two months and was constantly at the doctor. Her allergies/asthma couldn't handle the school and then add on all the germs she was dealing with and trips to the e.r. for a cut cornea and it was best for her to come home. When Hunter got home and found out she was going back to homeschooling the first thing he said was that he was not so he will continue with public school. He enjoys band and his classes and I'm really happy for him. We made pretzels for a report he had to do on the Star of David this week. This recipe will be going on my food blog soon when I make them again for us...they were fantastic and his teacher said noone had ever made pretzels before for a project:)

And we can't forget snow...record setting for Texas since it was the earliest in recorded weather history and the first time since 1880 that we've had snow two years in a row!

Willow now pulls up and was loving watching the snow fall:)

Merry Christmas 2009=o)

Casual Friday

by Brie

We've been up to a million different things...working on the house(sheetrocking mainly right now) mainly but I also took time to make my own upside-down planter. This is lettuce and I don't think I've been watering it enough but this cost me nothing to make...a plastic juice jug, soil and yarn:)

Chris camped in the backyard with the kids...

Corrine had her fourth grade school play and when another little boy didn't show up she had to learn a speaking part in a few minutes and repeat it all. She did fantastic!

We're finishing a week of learning about rain. His craft was a puffy cotton ball cloud:)

We usually end the week with a field trip or something out of the house so I was hoping for rain today...it didn't happen so he'll be showering later and discussing how it is simlar to rain.

Justin's curriculum comes straight from letteroftheweek.com

The week before rain was horses and he is gluing a mane of yarn on a horse head printout here. We went and petted horses on Friday as our big thing too. It's nice to have horses all around the neighborhood:)

Persimmons

by Brie

Mom's tree had a bumper crop this year! She gave us a few hundred and as they get ripe I'm making them into pulp and freezing them for future cakes. I can also use it in the place of applesauce or oil in recipes.

I have 14+ cups put up in the freezer already and am close to halfway through.

House Additions

by Brie

It's framed and "wrapped".

This shows it in comparison with our old house...this area to the side I'm not sure what I'm going to make...a patio, a garden(it gets morning sun)...not sure!

Inside the kids have taken it over as a play room but I'm happy it's getting use already:)

Welcome Fall!

by Brie

We've had some big changes this week! Our addition is framed and we've moved onto shingling the roof. Hunter went back to public school. He tested into all advanced classes and is playing the sax in band. He can already play a few songs!

Today was the end of learning about cookies and dough too so we had to make cookies. Add that to the birthday cake and zucchini banana bread...the freezer is going to have a stock too!

Just for the fun of fall I made Justin and Corrine 'pig apples' with their lunches today.

I also finished my first dish cloth! I've already drug out my supply of yarn and have a second one on the needles for more practice. Thank you so much Mandi for getting me started out with this!!!

Beauty Berry Jelly

by Brie

American or Purple Beauty Berries are alllll over right now including in the "woods" at the back of our lot. They smell very perfumey and don't taste good plain at all in my opinion.

A jelly sounded perfect so I set out to find a good recipe and after the first batch became pancake syrup for not setting I worked on the recipe and got the second batch to jell:) I still have at least one more batch to make into jelly once I pick up more sure-jell too! Yay!!

Still on the hunt for muscadine vines....

And the recipe:

1 1/2 quarts beautyberries, washed

2 quarts water

Boil for 20 minutes and strain well. Use 2 1/2 cups berry juice, 1 envelope sure jell and 4 1/2 cups of sugar(could be cut down easily).

Boil for two minutes, skim foam and jar.

I started with a recipe here but that one didn't set up for me...not sure why.

Sun bread:)

by Brie

This week Justin has been learning about the sun. Last week was stars so we've still read about stars and included the sun. Today was the last day so project time and the book sun bread was perfect. We read it and then made the recipe on the back(I had to tweak the recipe to have it make a workable bread dough). Corrine and Justin both helped but Corrine took a lot of pictures this time:) Willow was also there enjoying the goings on.

Sifting flour