Handmade- American made Suggestions

Remember this post about the Holidays?

Well I thought I would update with a few suggestions in case you are still stuck.
A couple of weeks ago I received a very special package in the mail. It was from Jessica over at I'naru' Bath and Body. She's a homeschooling momma down in Florida who makes the most wonderful soaps and bath products.

She asked me to try some samples and tell her what I thought. And my oh my I am in heaven!! Between the soaps and the body butter and the scrubs, and let's not forget the shave cream. Oh I haven't felt so pampered in a long time!! What I have liked about these soaps so far is their surprising suds (I haven't used bars in a while) and the wonderful spa-like scents that fill the shower and just melt away all your worries. I have been around essential oils and fragrances for years as my mom has studied bit of their healing powers and on some of my sad days I can always find comfort in an uplifting oil. So it is nice to pair that with my bath routine for total relaxation.... no matter how many toes and fingers peek under the door.






Jessica has a website for her soapmaking business of I'naru' Bath and Body here. I regularly am jealous of the scents she speaks of whipping together in her shop. After experiencing them for myself I'm not so sure that I won't be giving in to them! I definitely know that a certain niece of mine will be receiving a sweet smelling something in addition to her Auntie-made gift. So if you would like to purchase a little closer to home and support this awesome momma go see Jessica at I'naru' Bath and Body. And tell her Allison says hi! :-)

This moment-

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. - Inspired by Soule Mama

Confessions... Not so fat Tuesday

Opps! Has it really been that long since I updated? My buddy Nicole was going to take some time away as her family came up and I guess I took that time as well. Haha

Anyways last time I updated I had lost 5lbs. Yippee. The next week I lost an additional 2. Then I gained them back. Just the 2 though so no major gains. My mom was in town and Mike was home so routine went totally out the window. Not to mention my fast food abstinence.

Now we are back on track and everyone is where they are suppose to be and Halloween is coming!! AAAAAHHH!
I saw this really cute post about the Pumpkin Fairy over at The Magic Onions. While I'm not sure I can fully convince my kids to give up all their candy, I do believe there are plenty of single Coasties at Mike's work that are in desperate need of a sugar high. Plus Jakob likes to hand out candy to the trick-or-treaters that come by after we go out and we use some of our stash to supply theirs. Makes a momma proud to see her son dump his candy (minus the chocolate and Dots of course) into the community bowl and set it out with a note for anyone stopping by.
That's the plan for Halloween.

On to the fitness stuff. I have been really good about making sure I run at least 10 miles a week. I slacked last week in the middle and had to punish myself with TWO DAYS of 3 mile runs. Although I was dying it really showed me I can push harder and accomplish more (maybe even see those 2 lbs come back off?). This week I hope to increase to at least 11 miles a week.

Here's a little challenge though for anyone that wants to join. My 30th birthday is Nov 4. My buddy Angela and I are running a virtual 5k that day. Meaning on this day at whatever time we will go out and run 3.1 miles. I am challenging myself to do this outside since I always run indoors on my treadmill. So if you would like to celebrate with me saying so long to my 20's and run, let me know or just go out and do it. (it would be cool if you let me know though.. in the comment box *grins*)

That's how life has been on the health-o-meter here. Go on over to Nicole's site to see what she's doing.

And here's you fun video for the week featuring my little bro.

Mission of the Month- November 2010

Over at Mama Jenn's (yet ANOTHER blog I hopelessly stalk... seriously ask anyone, I have an addiction)she has started her own little check list each month so I decided I would join in the fun. Since the Holidays are so near and we have pledged to hand make a large portion of our gifts, I need to keep myself on track.

We are having a late Thanksgiving/early Christmas with my family the first week of Dec so I need at least those presents made by then.

I don't *think* anyone from my family reads my blog I'm gona just go ahead and post my list here...if they do then oh well they are old enough to deal. (lol)

My November To-Do's

Grandma- Hand Pillows by Jakob and Hazel
Mom- Needle Felted Foot display
Dad- Hat and? scarf
McKayne- Scarf (blue and gold)
CaLeb- Hat
Danielle- scarf (red and orange)
LM- Tutu
Tripp- felt food
I think everyone will also receive family photos so I suppose I should add the photo shoot in there.

Wow. This list seemed a lot smaller when written on a Post-it note. But no worries. The task is set and I am up to the challenge. If you feel like joining in to help keep yourself accountable, hop on over to Mama Jenn's blog.

Weekly Wrapup- Oct 26-29

Monday- Fought the entire day to get back into the swing of things and succeeded on many fronts and failed on others. Case in point Hazel's room when left unattended to while Jakob and I read a book... ONE LITTLE BOOK!!!


Sunday night he was promoted to Bear Scout level at his troop's Pack meet/Halloween Party. So when I said "We need to finish up this unit on Birds and make your poster for Scouts", he was all ears. We looked at and talked about different birds and their nests, learned various ways to attract them using foods and feeders and the differences in their eggs. While I was reading the book he had the field guide from the library out and was looking up the birds in the glossary to have an actual photograph as a comparison. I love his little inspirations when it comes to learning. Reading, Math, Calendar Time, Spelling, and Writing followed.

Tuesday- Set out the official plan for this bird poster (will it ever end?) Read lots of books, began talking about trees, ACTUALLY finished Guardians of Ga'Hoole: The Capture and played a lot. Somehow even though we have trees in our yard, the leaves do not stay in our yard. So Jakob and Hazel spent the day making these teeny tiny piles and jumping in them.

Wednesday- Bird Poster/File Folder is complete! YAYAYAY!! Oh and remember those meal worms? Over the weekend I checked on them and had determined they must be dead. Glad I didn't toss them though cause when I told Jakob our meal worms weren't gona make it he insisted I show him. Lo' and behold there was a beetle! So now with a renewed faith in this experiment we are waiting for the other two to change. So exciting right? BEETLES!! lol

That night the Library was playing How to Train your Dragon so we went popcorn in hand and had a blast. Afterwards Jakob has been obsessed with dragons and has been drawing up plans for each family member so that they can "customize" their own dragon. Pretty cute.

Thursday- Library day. Here Hazel has Story Time and Jakob hits the stacks for his Investigation of the 50 States. He chooses his state and finds information about said state based on a list. He also has to find one "fun fact" which is basically anything interesting he reads. This helps him not only with reading but using his library skills, not to mention satisfying the all important Scout requirement.

Friday- Regular routine with a lot of baking thrown in for good measure. It's cold outside so I decided today should be bread day and have been keeping the kitchen warm and toasty (not to mention yummy smelling) with zucchini bread and loaf bread for next week. We began utilizing Marylin Burns' book Math and Literature and Jakob really impressed me with how he tackled the task. I love that this way encourages him to make math make sense to him and not necessarily how I would do it or the book would. Of course the day would not be complete without Halloween crafts and we made spider webs with glitter and spiders with our hand prints (various crafts I have seen through the years).

Throughout the Week Jakob has been taken with our resident spider and notating what she has been capturing in her web. It is also interesting to see her immediately fix her web directly after her meal.


Our family collaboration this week was the Jack-o-lantern. Jakob had drawn up a few ideas and Hazel got to choose. I then passed down the job of scooping the gunk out of the pumpkin to my kids. This was the first year I could really sit back and enjoy not having goo up my fingernails. And yes I did enjoy it. Here's the pumpkin after Jakob and I carved it.

I love how scary he looks!
Alright folks, its time to call it a week. I have newly purchased yarn and a few projects calling my name. Be sure to check out what others are up to at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Weekly Wrapup- Oct 18-22

The week is over? What happened? Apparently we were having loads of fun with Granny here and now Daddy until Monday. Yay! We are going to call this our Fall Break and get started again next week. But look at how much fun we had!!!

We went to Frerich's Farm and had a blast with our Meetup Group. We took a tractor rid in a "dragon" and was able to take in all the beautiful colors that are springing up here. Then we listened to the guy talk about all the huge pumpkins that were being judged (some were 1500lbs+!!) and how the seeds for those pumpkins can be sold for as much as $500 a seed. $500 A SEED!!!! We are definitely in the wrong business. :-)

Posing with the props at the farm

The sign says "Can you find the needle in the haystack?"

Nope! But we did find and "torture" a sleeping kitty. lol

Hazel reenacting Malificent from Sleeping Beauty as a Dragon

We also celebrated my mom's birthday while she was here. The kids loved helping decorate the cake!

They did the flowers and the rainbow and I wrote the words
And yes I homeschool my kids. LOL
We just have "Birtdays" here. *grins*

Mike also took us to see where he works. I have been to his office before but never the Station. What a beautiful view!!

We had to hit yet another farm and corn maze and pumpkin patch. This time we went to Schartner Farms and had loads of fun. This corn maze had questions for you to answer to point you in the right direction. We got lost. Solar System is definitely going on November's "to learn about" list. Now I just have to figure out what a black hole really is, because Jakob is all about them!!..

Posing again

Daddy running the Obstacle course. I love this man! <3> We have continued to read Guardians of Ga'Hoole and I think we may finish today. We are reading "The Capture" right now and I was pleasantly surprised to learn that there are in fact 16 books in this series. Jakob likes them so much I think we will continue with them for a while.
That is more or less our week. How was yours?I'm linking up over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. Hop on over to see what others are up to.

This Moment- Happy girl

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. Inspired by Soule Mama

Weekly Wrapup- Oct 11-15

Wow this week went by crazy fast!! My mom came into town on Thursday evening so getting things all together for her arrival and staying on track with school was a challenge. We were all too excited. But according to the massive amounts of pictures I just edited it seems we had a fair amount of fun learning moments in there as well.

Monday: Columbus Day- Daddy was off from work! And did we let him rest? Of course not!! Since the kids weren't able to have their week off with him last week they wanted to do everything they had planned to do in this one day. While that wasn't too realistic we did manage to show Daddy a few fun places. We went back to Four Town Farm and journeyed through the corn maze again and picked a perfect pumpkin to carve, and some others to cook.


When we got back home Mike realized there was a screw in the tire and went to get that fixed and the oil changed and Hazel took a nap. I was determined to learn something about Columbus today and so Jakob and I sat down with the book "Animals Christopher Columbus Saw..." and began to read. It took us a while to get through it all because Jakob wanted to stop and draw his renditions of the book whenever he saw an interesting fact. We both we intrigued and disgusted by a fact about Frigate Birds and the Booby bird. The Booby swoops down to eat, swallows and the Frigate comes by and scares the Booby and he spits out his food that the Frigate then eats. Totally gross and the only thing Jakob could talk about for the rest of the day. Go figure. After the book we made paper boats and floated them in the bathroom sink. That night we watched a documentary from the library on Columbus which was really interesting for all of us.



Tuesday and Wednesday: Regular routine. Talked about differences in bird beaks and feet and what their uses were. Finished up reading our selection of Tall Tales, and started writing our own. More work in Math-terpieces and a few new fingerplays and songs from "A Child's Seasonal Treasury". Jakob also has requested I teach him to knit and started this week. Made me cry it was so unexpected.


Thursday: We spent most of the day trying to figure out WHEN Granny was comming. There was a bit of confusion with her flight times so that left me with two very excited young'uns and no definite answers. So we went to the Library for Story-time and Jakob started his work on the 50 States (more on that later). We read about 5 chapters in Guardians of Ga'Hoole (this book is soo good!) and finally Daddy showed up with Granny in tow!! YAY!!!

Friday: We went to Salem, Mass. Holy cow!! We went to take in the sites and a few museums, mainly the pirate museum and 2 of the witch museums. I had planned on prepping Jakob with a little knowledge about the place before we left but time got away from me and I ended up letting the locals tell their story. And boy am I glad I did. Many of my preconceived notions of what the Salem Witch trials were about really were proved false. We had a lovely day learning about all the facts and fiction and enjoying one another's company.

This guy (can't remember his name) was one of the founders of Yale and dug up the bodies of those hanged to compare their bones and prove their involvement with the devil.

The family that is punished together, stays together :-)

This is so funny for my mom. She is a Reflexologist, and this "guide" was found in the local Witch History Museum. Can we say praise the Lord for living in a different century?


We are still having a blast with Granny here and may or may not get a ton accomplished next week, but that's ok. How was your week?

This moment- an unexpected request

Inspired by Soule Mama- "{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. If you're inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend!

Weekly Wrapup- Oct 4th-8th aka The week that wasn't meant to be

So this week Daddy was suppose to be off work, but the boats didn't get fixed so he had to not only work but work extra late hours. He "took" the week off so that I could observe in some Middle School classes this week for one of my own classes (still pluggin' away at this degree).
Since that didn't pan out one of the mom's from the meetup group graciously volunteered to be my savior and watch the kids.
So after much preparation and waking up really early to get everything together, I took them to Miss Stacey's house to play. Only to have to turn around and come back because the *new rule* in school is that the only security clearance that is considered valid is a Rhode Island one, not my clearance from Arizona that I paid $65 for and is good until 2015. No, I need a $35 one from Rhode Island that our local police station "politely" told me they didn't have time for and now I have to go to the Attorney General's office (gosh that sounds intimidating) and pay for parking AND another Clearance. Really? Ugh!!

Anyways!! The week wasn't a total loss although I never did accomplish my goals of observation hours or a new clearance card, but that will have to wait for another day.
Monday: the kids made pine cone bird feeders at Miss Stacey's, we hit the library, and Jakob had Scouts
Tuesday: We did our normal routine, talked about birds and the visual differences between male and female and why they are different. We checked on our meal worms and measured them, read about Davey Crockett, and enjoyed another chapter in Guardians of Ga'Hoole. It was kind of chilly so to heat up the house and ourselves we made "Nest Cookies" aka thumbprint cookies rolled in crushed pecans. Of course that calls for a frying pan and a few "Haaayy Yahhs!"
So much fun.
Bird's Nest cookies filled with a little homemade blueberry jam. Hits the spot every time :-)

Wednesday: Business as usual, we read about Johnny Appleseed and worked a few problems out of a Math picture book called - "Math-terpieces" by Greg Tang. Jakob LOVES it and I have to set limits on the amount of pages we will do. It helps him with fact families, something he never fully grasped in public school. He loves it so its a winner! Since we read about Johnny Appleseed (and it was still wet and chilly and I needed an excuse to turn on the oven) we made a simple apple pie based off the recipe found in a wonderful book I found at the Library, "A Child's Sensory Treasury" by Betty Jones. I have a feeling this book I will have to own.
We started by finding the star in the apple....
and then proceeded to cut little pieces off the apple for our pie....
Very serious work indeed.
Next to complement the stars in the apples we cut stars our of dough to go on top of the pie...

That topped with freshly whipped cream just made dinner perfect!
Thursday: We went to the Library for story time and saw some friends we haven't seen in a while and caught up. Then it was business as usual at home with Tall Tales, plotting owls, and Math from masterpieces.
Friday: Today I couldn't get it together. I decided we needed to clean today once we finally got our day started which turned into, "But Mom, you haven't fixed breakfast yet!" It's 10:30...Opps!
While I made pancakes, they did their chores. Then they ate whilst I cleaned up. I had every intention of setting them on a task after breakfast but the next thing I knew Jakob was teaching Hazel the intricacies of dodgeball and fort-making and I just couldn't interrupt that. So I cleaned, they played and then about lunchtime we actually squeezed in Calendar Time and a Bible lesson before we totally lost our focus and gave up and went back to the Library for Lego Time.

The week was much more productive than I planned but at the same time not. In the end I am totally exhausted and by the sound of things upstairs Jakob has made a new friend in the neighborhood. Who says homeschoolers don't know how to socialize?!?! Bah!
That's our week how was yours? To check out other Homeschooler's weeks head on over to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.