Knitted Key Chain Scarf

This was on the Lion Brand web site and we thought it was just the cutest thing.  If you think so too, leave us a message and we will draw for one of you to have your very own.  Leave us a message telling us you were here and tomorrow night, Sunday, we will pick the winner.  I'll let you know right away if you are the lucky recipient and hopefully have it out in the mail to you on Monday morning.

If you knit you can make your own with these instruction lifted right off the Lion Brand web page:


KEY CHAIN

Cast on 3 stitches in Paprika yarn.

Knit each row until entire piece measures 7 inches.

Bind off.


FINISHING

With green yarn, make two pom poms leaving a 6 inch tail. Thread tail through the large eye blunt needle and securely attach one pom pom to each end of the item. Weave in loose ends.

It worked out perfectly and we got through it

I am not good at last minute and rushing.  That was what the last week has been.  I know some people thrive on hustle and bustle, but it just makes me tense.

We started on Monday by having bowling in the afternoon after a busier than usual weekend.  The kids and I drove into town separate from Dad because he had a meeting at work and we didn't know if we could get from the bowling alley to the hospital in enough time for his meeting.  The kids and I also needed to get to the library to pick up books on hold and to the grocery store before we had to leave for 4-H.  By the time we got home we had just enough time to grab a bowl of cereal for supper and get in the car again.  4-H was at a nursing home where we sang carols for the residents (I really love this part of Christmas so I am not complaining) and then we had our meeting afterward.  Not a big deal but we didn't get home until almost 10:00 p.m. and then we have to go out and do chores.  Yuck to chores in cold weather and the dark.

Tuesday Dad and I went shopping and out to dinner with Grandma.  We went to a resturant that the kids don't like so that part was a huge treat.  What we thought was going to be an afternoon in town turned into the afternoon and evening.   We just couldn't find what we were looking for but by changing a few of the things we wanted to get we did finish shopping for the kids.  We got home late,  watched the end of Biggest Looser, did chores and wrapped a few presents for the kids who were still up and excited to see the gifts being brought out of the bedroom.  I looked at the clock and it was 1:30 a.m!  Time sure goes fast.  We quickly scurried the kids off to bed, who of course never mentioned the time.

Wednesday I started on making 15 dozen cookies I needed for a cookie exchange.  I didn't have enough eggs so a trip to our little town was needed and pushed things back.  Then, in between the baking, I needed to run the kids to AWANA which is a 40 minutes round trip.  Usually I just stay there but by coming home I was able to bake two more dozen cookies and do some much needed Christmas wrapping.  After I got home from getting the kids, I finished up the cookies while Dancer looked at her email.  She had a note from the 4-H office that at the Awards Banquet on Friday girls should wear a dress or skirt.  Great, we had already bought her a new sweater for the banquet and thought we had it all taken care of.  At present time Dancer does not have a dress or a skirt. 

To remedy the skirt/dress problem, we went into town early for YMCA gym to look for an outfit.  I was a little nervous because I haven't seen skirts or dresses in the stores this season.  I did think, lets try the Fashion Bug because I often have luck finding something there when I don't else where.  We went in and they had one rack of skirts and one rack of dresses, see they are not in style this season.  The second outfit she tried on she liked, a blue skirt with a cream top.  Score!  We grabbed a blue necklace to go with it and were out the door.  Two hours at the YMCA and we were off to buy nylons, which are also hard to find, but they did have a teeny tiny display at the first place we stopped.  This may date me, but when I was a working woman nylons were everywhere, you could probably have found then at the gas station.  Remember how they use to come in eggs?  On the way out of the store I remarked to the kids that this was just too easy to find all the parts of this outfit, nothing usually ever works out this well.  Next we were off to find Dad a pair of pants to wear to the banquet as his were all getting pretty ratty looking, not fit for a banquet.  We went to the store where he buy them and they have a whole wall devoted to the brand of jeans he likes, except the cubby hole for his size was empty.  Every other stinking cubby was chalked full of pants.  I went to find someone to see if they might have more that just weren't out on the shelf.  The lady comes over with her little scanning gun and scans the cubby.  Yep, they have four pair that just came in, she will go and look through all the boxes from that order and we should come by the clothes counter in about 15 minutes.  We do a little looking around and 15 minutes later promptly show up at the clothing counter.  No luck, they have not been able to find them but she can call me when the do if I want to come back and get them.  No thanks, Dad will have to go tomorrow and look for a pair somewhere else.  On the way out of the store we were looking around at a few other things and over the loud speaker the say that the lady who wanted the jeans should come back to the clothes counter.  They found them.  Score!   I thanked the woman over and over for finding them and left happy because Dad was working over night and would need to sleep tomorrow, not go looking for pants.  We did miss seeing Dad before he left for work but at least we got everything we needed.

Today Spark had is last day of a Phy. Ed. class he has been going to and they were having a Christmas party.  They are changing the day and the time of the class after the new year to a day that doesn't work for us so it was important to him that he go one last time, especially since it was the Christmas party.  That was from 10 till noon and then we needed to leave right away and zoom home because Grandpa Bob and Grandma Shirley were coming for a little Christmas get together.  They were here for a few hours and then I needed to get Dancer ready for the banquet tonight.   We got hair curled, nails painted, a little makeup on and outfit ironed in time for her, Dad and Spark to get out the door in time to not be to terribly late.  I gathered up my cookies and headed out to the homeschool mom cookie exchange party. 

Finally, we are all home, the cookie party was really fun and Dancer did a great job presenting her part of the awards at the banquet.  Even Dad and Spark got a job when they got there so Spark was pretty stoaked that he got do something.  Whew, I am going to sleep good tonight. 

Second Hand Parrots

Turns out ours can perfectly screech MEEP-MEEP-MEEP like an electric alarm clock.   Nice.

The Round Barn Still Stands

This is a round barn that is being closed in on by "progress."  Developers want to tear it down and expand their shopping center that you can see on the left in the back ground.  Others are trying to save the unique barn and make it a historical site.  If the housing market hadn't bottomed out I am sure the barn would be gone, but now there is extra time to try and save the round barn.  Are we going to leave any history to future generations besides strip malls?

The Cold Wind Blows

Through this little corner of the garage door, where there is about an 1/8th of and inch crack between the floor and  bottom of the door,

blew this this snow drift. 

On the other side of the garage there was a drift that was long and low and extended from the door to the back of the garage.   Brrrr.

Happy St. Lucia Day

Pretty Bert

Dancer has been wanting a parrot.   Well, that is nice honey but we are not getting a parrot.  Then, lo and behold, we were asked if we wanted a parrot.   The people we got him from had him for six years and think he is not too much older than that, probably under ten years old.  Dancer knows that he will most likely live another 30 years and says she is willing to haul him around until she is about my age.  We will see, I think he will probably be here until she is married and living in her own permanent home.  

So here he is, he is living in Spark's room since that is where we have space for him right now.  Maybe after Christmas we will move him out to the living room.  He will be more used to us by then too.  

Bert is quite the bird already.  He whistles, says pretty Bert, good night, makes kiss noises, screeches, squawks, coughs if someone in the room coughs, dances, bangs his little ankle tag on his perch when he wants attention and likes to have his head scratched. 

Bert is a Senegal parrot the size of 20 oz. pop bottle.

It is thought that he is boy, but that is purely speculation.  He could be a Roberta instead of Bert.

His cage is about four feet tall and at least two feet square, his accommodations are the Hilton of the bird world. 



It seems he has every bird toy ever made that we are suppose to switch out every couple of months so he doesn't get bored.

Quit reading that blog

I struggle with motivating the kids.  They seem to think that I am some unreasonable task master and I think we could be getting a lot more accomplished during the day.  Our days really are quite relaxed, the problem is that they have only lived this kind of life so they don't know what the rest of the world is doing.  Well, they do know what some of their friends have to do but I think they truly believe those friends are the exception to the rest of the world. 

Tonight I was reading a blog where the mother, who was trying to motivate her kids because some days they aren't finishing school until 3:00 p.m., made a rule that if school wasn't done by 1:00 p.m. the kids lost their privileges like TV or computer for the rest of the day.  I read this out loud to Dancer and asked what she thought of that.  Like lightening she responded, "I think you should stop reading that woman's blog!"

To explain just how horrible this could be, I should mention that there are days that we have just gotten started on school at 1:00 p.m.  It also isn't unusual for us to being doing school at 9:00 p.m. either depending on how the mood strikes us for the day.

Almond Bark w/Candy Canes, Ritz Crackers and Pretzels

Dancer had a friend over night and Dad had lots of things planned for to keep them busy.  Having a few things planned for them to do also makes the night go smoother when there is a little brother involved.  One of the activities was making lots of treats with almond bark.

The two girls had quite the time breaking the block of almond bark into squares.  I think when you are 13 years old it is mandatory to add a little drama into everything you do so that may have been part of their problem.  Once they got it into chunks they melted it in a double boiler.  We don't have an official double boiler so we just put a big pot of water on the stove and then a smaller pot on top of it and it works just a good as the real thing.  The other plus to using two pots is that I don't have to store another kitchen gadget in the cupboards.

The first thing they made was Almond Bark with Candy Canes.  The only ingredients are almond bark and candy canes.  Unwrap all the candy canes, this is the longest part of the whole process, and put then in a plastic zipper bag.  Smash them with a rolling pin, but don't pulverize them, you want some larger pieces not just peppermint dust.  Pour the pieces in melted almond bark and stir. 

Next, pour it out on wax paper, spread thin and allow to harden.

Then comes the fun part.  Pick the hardened piece of almond bark a few inches off the counter and  

drop it where it doesn't shatter into pieces.

Drop it again and it........doesn't break.

Drop it again and it........doesn't break.

Get out the rolling pin where for sure that will make it break......into two pieces.

Give up and break it apart with your hands like when putting away a jigsaw puzzle.  This method is not near as gratifying as having it shatter on the counter.

Their second recipe was Almond Bark with Ritz Crackers and Peanut Butter.  I think some people might call these Ho Hos.  Take two Ritz crackers, spread one with peanut butter and put the other one on top to make a sandwich.  Dip these in almond bark, we used chocolate here, and sprinkle with Christmas sprinkles before the almond bark get hard.  These are one of our favorite treats and they are usually gone the first day as they are just so addicting.

The final almond bark creation was dipping pretzels in the bark.  Again melt in the double boiler.  Dip the pretzels into the bark with a fork.

Shake off the excess bark or you just get big blobs ad lay on wax paper.

Sprinkle with colored sugar before the bark hardens.  These too are hard to leave alone so I put them in container where they are out of sight and, hopefully, out of mind.

Date Pinwheel Cookies

Grandma brought us pre-made cookie dough for these.  All we had to do was roll them out, spread on the filling (which she also brought all done - gotta love that woman), roll them up, slice and bake them.  Oh, these are good.  Too good in fact, they only lasted a couple of days.  We did figure that since they had date filling they were probably healthy and so we even had them for breakfast one morning.  I think during the season of Christmas cookies that is okay to have cookies for breakfast.  She brought us half a batch of these as they make 16 dozen.  We got about five dozen out of our half as Dancer cut them a little wider to make a softer cookie.  Grandma used a recipe from Taste of Home, it follows below. 

Date Pinwheel Cookies

Ingredients


1 cup butter, softened

2 cups packed brown sugar

3 eggs

1 teaspoon Spice Island® Pure Vanilla Extract

4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon baking soda



FILLING:

2-1/2 cups chopped dates

1 cup sugar

1 cup water

1 cup finely chopped pecans

Directions

In a large bowl, cream butter and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Combine the flour, salt and baking soda; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well. Divide into four portions. Refrigerate until chilled.

In a large saucepan, bring the dates, sugar and water to a boil. Reduce heat to medium; cook until mixture is thickened, about 15 minutes. Cool completely. Stir in pecans.

On a baking sheet, roll out each portion of dough between two sheets of waxed paper into a 12-in. x 9-in. rectangle. Refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Remove waxed paper; spread with date mixture. Tightly roll up each portion jelly-roll style, starting with a long side; wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for 2 hours or until firm.

Unwrap and cut into 1/4-in. slices. Place 1 in. apart on greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 10-12 minutes or until set. Remove to wire racks to cool. Store in an airtight container at room temperature, or freeze for up to 3 months. Yield: 16 dozen.

Deck the Halls

We have the tree up so it looking like Christmas around our house.  It was fun to put the ornaments on the tree and talk about when we got them all.  I really like to put the ones on that the kids made when they were little.  Some of those I can still see the kids making them,  where we were and sometimes almost down to what they were wearing that day. 

We don't put up too many things after the tree.  I would love to have one of those fancy schmancy homes that you see in magazines but that just isn't us.  Our house is not a show case, we live here and it shows.  Of course, we could have a house like that but what would the cost be?  It would be a huge job to keep it looking picture perfect.  Clutter makes me a little testy and crabby and we have enough clutter with just all our school stuff.  Who wants a fancy decorated house and crabby mom?  Our tree, and some of our other decorations, are a mishmash of things we have made or love, it isn't color coordinated or the theme of the season.  We want to spend the season having fun with the kids not keeping a house looking like some HGTV set.

So if you come our house you will see a Christmas tree full of  memories that show who we are, will be offered a tasty homemade looking cookie and you may leave with a little glitter sticking to your pants but you can sit back relax while you are here. 

I Don't Get That

So I'm driving into town the other day checking out all the decorated houses.  As usual, our family was grading christmas light displays on the 1-10 scale.  By the way, to score a "perfect 10" a house needs to have some Christian religious element to it.

One of the places we went by had a lighted Santa head on the wall next to their front door.  As we went along I noticed other Santa heads displayed in various ways.  What the hay???  Do you really think that displaying Santa's severed head will increase the booty they get?

In Olde England, traitors heads were impaled on pike lining the London bridge to warn others.  I can't fathom how having parts of Santa's dismembered body strewn about the front yard would encourage him to stop on Christmas Eve.

"Let's hang Santa in effigy"

"Let's hang him right here in Boston"

People, come to your senses.  Stop displaying Santa's severed head.  It's wrong, damn it!!

The Island of Misfit Toys

I saw one of the iconic Rudolph shows on TV the other night.  On the show there is the "Island of Misfit Toys."  These are toys that are a little off, don't work and maybe were the victims of a bad design team.  The scene reminded me, in some ways, of our little farm. 

In the morning we head out to see Eeyore, the little goat wether that has seizures (no, he's not a fainting goat).  We give him a few pieces of candy as that seems to ward off his spells.

On the way to Eeyore's pen we pass a couple of rabbit hutches.  In the first is Ear and a Half, admittedly a pretty long name.  This rabbit lost half of one ear when a few days old.  He is pretty friendly and is one of our bucks.

In the next pen is an assortment of rabbit does.  One of these is Radar.  Radar was named by Dad because of it's abnormally long ears (huge really).  This bunny also is puny, less than half the size of our other does.  Not an ideal trait for meat rabbits, but she gets played with because she is cute.

Other misfit rabbits, who are old, or just can't get along, wander about the yard.  One even took the initiative this fall to dig a tunnel from the garden into the barn for easy access even when the barn is locked up. 

A couple years ago one of the ducks hurt her leg and couldn't hobble fast enough to keep up with the flock.  We all took care to make sure she had water and gave her a seperate pile of food so she didn't have to fight the rest to eat.  Last spring she proudly limped out of an old chicken coup with EIGHTEEN ducklings in tow.

This brings us to the latest arrival.  On Friday morning the cats were gathered about the front door waiting for food.  Oddly, there were four cats instead of the traditional, and expected, three cats.  I bent down to look at the new cat and it jumped into my arms!!  I didn't hold it long as I saw it's one eye was a cloudy green/brown with yellow discharge.   The cat is a small, young female.  We are guessing it was a pet that got dropped off as it tries to get into the house continuously.

It's eye is now sort of scabbed over and mostly shut.  The new visitor is very friendly, and even got a couple names--Pirate and Bella.  I thought the plan was to relocate Pirate/Bella this week, then this morning, I saw that Spark gave her a bowl of food and a steaming bowl of water (you don't need hot water to steam when it's 2 degrees out).  The provisions were sneakily placed behind the house but in view of Sparks room.  When asked, "Why the hospitality?", Spark replied "She might have baby Raggles in her tummy".

Well Pirate Bella, welcome the Island of Misfit Toys.  

Memory Test

In Dancer's science we are studying body systems, right now we are on the nervous system.  Today we are talking about sleep and what purpose it serves.  Some studies show that sleep is a time when the brain processes and stores information (others disagree).  Researchers also speculate that the brain does this learning work during REM sleep.

This is an experiment we did to see if sleep aids learning.  Look at these 10 words early in the day. 

horseshoe, category, sphinx, civilian, opinion, animate, utility, segment, independent, magnify

Study them for 10 minutes, keeping in mind you will be asked to recall them later.  After about eight hours ask your subject to recall the words.

Before bed have your subject study this second list of words for 10 minutes. 

quantity, medicine, funnel, target, latitude, scavenger, ornament, graceful, stadium, journalist

In the morning, after an appropriate de-groggifying period, have your guinea pig recall as many words on the list as they can.  Dancer could recall five words from the 1st list and nine from the 2nd list.  In this case the sleep seems to have aided in recall.

Cleopatra's Kisses - Egyptian Unit Study

It was thought that Cleopatra had an intense sweet tooth so these kisses would have been a hit with her.  This recipe came from the Cookbook of Foods from Bible Days, by Jean McKibbin, although we made a few changes to it. 

Cleopatra's Kisses

6 slices white bread crumbled 
1 cup honey
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup butter

We only have wheat bread so used that in place of the white bread.  We made bread crumbs instead of just crumbling the bread which I am not sure how you would do with fresh bread anyway.  First we toasted the bread, broke it into small pieces and put it in the food grinder.

Turn it on and let it go for a few seconds until it turns to bread crumbs.

Put the honey, sugar and butter in a skillet and heat on the stove until it is melted.

Add the bread crumbs and continue cooking over low heat for 10 minutes stirring the whole time.  This firms up quite quickly so it needs to be stirred so as not to burn.



Drop by spoonfuls on wax paper and let cool.  We kept these in the fridge but with all that sugar and honey they should be fine sitting out on the counter. 

Christmas Picture

Our 2010 Christmas  picture. 

I want to put it up on the header but only half of it goes on.  When I uploaded it I clicked on shrink to fit and it still didn't work.  Now when I go back to edit the shrink to fit option is gone.   I have had this problem ever since this spring, which is why Spark in the swamp was our header picture for so long.  There was more people in that picture too but at least it looked like we meant it to be just Spark.  Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong and help me get our complete picture on the top?

Dancer's Butterflies - paper cutting for big kids

Dancer made these beautiful butterflies based on some she saw in the book Simple Paper Crafts by Gunvor and Harriet Ask.  They are done a lot like paper snowflakes.  First fold a paper in half, draw half a butterfly on it and then cut out.  These are putsy and take some good scissor skills to get smooth antennas and the holes in the wings. 

Choir Girl Christmas Gift Tags

When it get dark out at 5:00 p.m. we have plenty of time to sit and putz with little art projects.  This one is Christmas tags that we found in the Christmas Around the World book 9.  We broke Popsicle sticks in half and glued on for legs to get them a little more heft and dimension. 

Dancer added bows and glitter on some of hers.  We copied these out of the book but it would be easy to just draw one and also wings can be added to make them into angels.  We will write who the gift is to on their skirts.

Sparkly Walnut Christmas Ornaments

My title of the post pretty much wrapped up the project. 

If you crack nuts during the holidays, this is a nice thing to do with the shells.  I remember as a kid we had a coffee can decorated with felt to look like Santa's boot on the coffee table and every night we would crack some nuts.  Over the years we could have made enough of these to cover several trees. 

With our kids, when they were younger, I would give them a bag of nuts and a nut cracker and they would sit and crack them for an activity to keep them busy.  There seems to be something satisfying about cracking nuts and digging out the meats, especially if you get one out whole.  We seem to be easily entertained here. 

Well, on to the ornament.  First, we cracked the walnuts open and took out the meat.  This was the hardest part as we had trouble getting the shells to crack perfectly in half, they kept wanting to break on the sides.  We had the best luck when we took a butter knife, slid it down the middle of a nut and then twisted it.

The kids spread glitter glue on the outside of the nut and then dipped them in glitter.  I thought they could paint them but they brought out the glitter instead so we went with that. 

After the glue dried we ran a line of Tacky glue along the rim of the nut, put the hanger (curling ribbon in our case) between the two halves and stuck them together.

As I was writing this, I thought that it would be cool to leave the materials out all season and have everyone assigned a color and tally them up after Christmas to see who had the most walnuts perfectly cracked.   I think we would paint them if we had this out all season or there would probably we glitter around until July. 

Where, oh where, did it go?

Spark can not find his Awana book.  It was here on Thanksgiving and I remembered him with it in his hand on Friday.  We searched for that book, looked through all the books under the coffee table, the couch, then end table, the homeschool cabinet, the down stair book shelves, anywhere we could think the book could be hiding.  I told Spark to think about the last time he had it in his hands and what he did next.  His face lights up, he runs in his room and comes out with the book.  Where was it?   He had put it away in his Awana bag and that must be such a rare act that he never thought to look there.  Ugh, we need more organization at our house.