Plan to Eat Black Friday Sale

 

Plan to Eat is having their yearly Black Friday sale. The sale continues throughout the weekend. You can purchase a yearly subscription for only $19.50. I've blogged about Plan to Eat here and here. I love the service!

A Bushel, A Peck

and a hug around the neck!

Last month, Grandmaw let us know that Uncle Keith had an apple tree with apples free for the picking. The kids and I made a trip to his property and got what we could reach. Kent came back with us to get the rest.

He had a very busy few weeks and we had to go after work. The bed of the truck served as a make shift ladder and we relieved the tree of it's fruit.

Mary Claire was a bit short to reach the apples but she gave Minnie Mouse a grand tour.

Henry picked up apples that didn't make it into the crate and placed them in it. He also found time to pose for a few pictures.

When the kids and I picked apples the first time we gathered about half a crate. Kent helped us gather twice as many apples in half the time.

Over the next week Madisyn and I washed, peeled, cored and sliced all the apples.

Then we laid them out on the dehydrator and made one of our family's favorite snacks. I wish I could say the 8 gallon bags would last a long time but we'll be luck to have any left come spring.

Little Baker

 

Since the big kids we away for an afternoon, Mary Claire became my baking assistant. She helped me make a batch of cookies and proved to be an excellent stirrer. :-)

She became very possessive of the spoon and took great offensive if I so much as touched it. She was quick to tell me "my job!".  She made a fine assistant and eagerly awaits her next baking adventure.

Organizing the Freezer

 I shared on Facebook that I was ordering labels to organize the freezer. Several people {all moms LOL} wanted to see the final result.

For the wire shelving I purchased hang tag labels on eBay. The labels attached to the shelving easily and they seem to be very durable. I plan to use the leftovers to organize the wire shelving in our store room as well.

I debated using the printer to make labels  or using chalkboard labels . I don't believe by printer is waterproof so I used a Sharpie to write each description. I didn't want to come back and discover that the moisture in the freezer caused my labels to be unreadable. I decided against the chalkboard because I don't plan to re-label. The wire shelving labels are movable and aren't sized to a standard label size.

 I labeled the doors with normal Avery name badges.  Because these labels are basic paper, I can wet them to remove. They have been on the freezer shelves for a few weeks and haven't come loose so I would say the extreme cold of the deep freeze doesn't affect the adhesive.

I am very fortunate to have two freezers. The newer one is used for all our meats and the other houses veggies and dairy. Nine people consume a lot of food and being able to buy it in bulk saves us a ton of money each year.

Most of our meats are purchased at Sam's by the case. If you have room in a freezer, ground beef and chicken can be purchased at a huge savings over regular prices. In the last year a friend told me about a store called Chicken City. There are several located in our state and their prices provide great savings.

We like green beans and stir fry veggies from Sam's but our other vegetables are purchased when the local grocery store runs a special. I'm the lady in the store with 20-30 bags of peas, carrots, mixed vegetables and beans in her cart. ;)

Write Them Upon Thy House

And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.

Deuteronomy 6:9

 

 

A few years ago I heard  a speaker at a homeschool conference give a workshop about being intentional. There was way too much covered in his workshop to go into detail in a single blog post, but one of his points was being intentional in the atmosphere of your home. He spoke of even the decor having a purpose . He and his wife had chosen to display objects on their walls of Biblical or Historical significance. There is nothing wrong with pretty pictures. We have several nice landscapes scenes hanging in our home. :-)

 

His point was that we could display things that were important. The children and myself spend a lot of time looking at our walls. We eat most of our meals here, we attend work/school here. The walls of our home can offer great influence over our thoughts.

 

I wanted to be more proactive in getting scripture into my children's heads. Over the last few years, I have found a few signs here and there that contained scripture which I wanted all of the members of my family to meditate.  If I could find a way to personalize scripture, that would be an even better use of our wall space.

 

Around the first of the year, I saw this verse on a large canvas. It was surrounded by foot prints. I made plans to create one for our home. Shortly after I gathered supplies, I learned we would be welcoming a new little one so I hated to make the canvas when it would be out of date in just a few months. I also realized that because we plan to leave the size of our family completely up to the Lord, I couldn't predict the size of canvas I would need to be able to include each future possible child.

For my birthday, my sister {Robin} created the above canvas with 3rd John 1:4 painted on it. I set to work creating the rest of the display.

I began by painting 8 x 10 canvases in the same blue color. Four of our children's footprints are so large, that an 8 x 10 was necessary. I found a great deal on a package of canvases at WalMart and purchased them there.

Then with Kent's help, I footprinted each child. After the paint was dry I let each kiddo, that could, write their own name.

The finished product was a large wall display with room for more! It's perfect for our growing family.

Because I had already purchased supplies, I wanted to complete another canvas. I also laid a coat of paint as the first step in creating this wall art. Kent and I discussed it and decided that we liked the slightly rustic look and depth that only one coat of paint gave the canvas.

The next step involved using Microsoft Publisher to create a document with the words I wanted to display. I had to play around with the fonts and size to get it to fit just right. After printing, I colored the back of the pages with chalk. Then using a pencil, I traced over each letter. I bought paint pens to do the writing but after a few letters they just weren't working. Instead, I found a fine point brush and painted the letters on. This canvas now hangs in the hall by the front door where our guitars hang.

This post is involved in linky parties on the following sites. Visit them tomorrow to find other great homemaking related posts.

       

School Book Organization

 

Each year we order various books to "flesh out" our curriculum through My Father's World. These books are a required part of the curriculum and I have plans to reuse them.  The problem began when our children started to love reading. They wanted to read anything and everything. Unfortunately, everything that says juvenile is not appropriate. I also wanted to encourage reading of non-fiction books whenever possible.

This is our fifth year through the history cycle and finding books after the children read them was proving difficult. If it was just me, I would use the Dewey Decimal system {it must be the librarian in me}, but I knew that I would only become frustrated when the books were not placed back in proper order. So, I decided to color code them.

Each year of the cycle is assigned a color. I placed a color chart on the bookshelf and on my desk. If a book is used in two {or more} years of the cycle, it receives a dot for each year. I ordered the dots from Amazon here. For paperback books, I cover the entire spine in clear packing tape for reinforcement. For the hardbacks I ordered clear, protective labels here. We used similar labels when I was a children's librarian. I hope these are as durable as what the library had.

The books that are a required part of the curriculum are pulled at the beginning of the year and placed in our school cabinet. The children are not allowed to remove these books from the living room/ dining room. The other books labeled for each year are supplemental reading.

Each child has half a shelf in our school cabinet. Madisyn is doing additional science so her shelf has the most materials.

Ben has one of the bottom shelves and he has the least to keep up with. His flash card box is stored with the math manipulatives that I featured in my chalkboard label post.

Ty also has half a shelf. He has a few more things to store than the smaller boys but not as much as Madisyn.

Griffin shares the right side of Ben's shelf. Each child is supposed to keep their shelf neat and tidy but that rarely happens.

Our school cabinet is our old china cabinet. When we need more shelving for children the currently school year My Father's World books will have to be moved to my desk. The glass door was broken when we moved it and I decided to repurpose it into a school cabinet. I haven't decided what material to replace the glass with so it remains vacant. I'm looking forward to closing the doors and the books being out of sight.  The bottom of the cabinet houses math manipulatives, headphones, maps and any other miscellaneous supplies we may need.

My desk is where I store the teacher's manual {keeps it handy for reserving library books}. I also keep anything I use frequently. This can change from week to week as we move along in our studies.

School Area Organization

 

I love for things to be neat and tidy. Unfortunately, I have 7 little people who don't feel the same way. ;-) I kept seeing chalkboard labels in various places and decided that they might help me solve my lack of neat and tidy problem. Most of the labels I saw were expensive and had high shipping cost as well. I knew that eventually I would need several so I began researching how to make my own.

 

I began with Avery name badges. I liked the scallop edges on other labels I saw but wouldn't find labels that were already scalloped. I purchased the above label and used an e-xacto knife to remove the brown edge.

Then I got out the big gun. I love this chalkboard spray paint! It covers well. I've made several batches of labels and still have a lot of the can left.

Armed with my labels {with the edges removed} and a cardboard box, I headed outside. Painting, neat and I don't go together! :-)

The labels dried in the sun for a couple of hours and were ready to use.

 

I carefully peeled each one off the back and removed any stray flakes of paint that stuck to the edges. Then I used a chalk pen to write my information on each label and placed them on the containers. I wonder how long before they get thrown back in the school cabinet?!? If I ever need to relabel the containers a wet cloth is all it takes to remove the current writing.

Managers of Their Homes - Scheduling for Families

Several years ago on a message board I frequent, the ladies were discussing their MOTH {Managers of Their Homes} schedules. The conversation moved to how they were able to "wing it" when their children were small or when they had only 2 or 3. As the children got older, their responsibilities grew. As the family grew in number, it's obligations grew as well. Terri Maxwell to the rescue.

The basic premise is that with a schedule you can accomplish the things you and your children need to. No more looking back at the end of the day and realizing that guitar was never practiced or someone never got their turn on the computer. Each desired activity is given a block of time. Those blocks are then arranged to achieve the best flow.

Through the years I'm had varying success with my schedule. However, it gives us goal. As framework. Accomplishing our morning activities is more important than our afternoons. Errands are run in the afternoon and, for our family, if school isn't accomplished in the morning it won't get completed.

The most important thing I've learned about my MOTH schedule is to let it be a guide. We won't have a perfect day - ever. Trying to force everyone to start and stop each activity by the clock only leads to frustration and tears. What works well for one family will be a disaster for another. That said, I've gained lots of insight from looking at other families schedules. I thought I would share our current schedule. My middle children do help keep their younger brother and sisters out of trouble during the nitty, gritty part of our day. Our dining room {school area} and living room are open to each other and we all stay in this general area together.

For reference - Madisyn is 12 {7th grade}, Ty is 10 {5th grade}, Griffin is 8 {3rd grade}, Ben is 6 {1st grade}, Henry is 4, Mary Claire is 2 and Liberty is 15 months. {Click and schedule will open in a larger format}.  You can also click this link to see our schedule.

You can purchase your own copy of Managers of Their Homes here.

Learning To Crochet

Aunt Euna recently came to town and offered to teach us girls how to crochet. {She actually said the boys could come as well but, I know them better than that. ;-) } So one afternoon Madisyn, Mary Claire, Liberty and I headed over.

We were learning to make Granny Squares. Aunt Euna thought that would teach us several stitches and enable us to read other patterns as well. Madisyn started off well but hit a few snags. We plan to try again.

It is a bit difficult to learn something new with Mary Claire and Liberty "assisting". LOL

Menu Planning

It seems I am frequently asked how I do various tasks. I'm a member of a wonderful online community and have friend who are always willing to share their successes {and failures}. I plan to share a few of the things that work for me over the next few weeks. Most of my ideas are not original creations, they have morphed from places like Pinterest and Facebook. There is no reason to re-invent the wheel and I'm more than willing to share how I made it work for me. If you would like to know how I do something, leave a comment, send an e-mail, etc. I'll be more than happy to work up a post on the topic.


For the last two years or so I've been using a service called Plan to Eat to complete my menu planning. Throughout the year, I've tried lots of different menu planning methods - rotating a set of 5 or 6 weekly menus, making menus using index cards and of course, the make it up as I go plan {NOT recommended ;-)}. Plan to Eat is the first thing that has worked long term.

When signing up for Plan to Eat, each subscriber receives 30 days to try out the program and decide if it is worth it for their family. There is a subscription fee of $5 per month or $39 per year. However, each Black Friday, the yearly subscription is offered at half price. I used the program for about a year as a monthly subscriber. I know that I saved way more than $5 by menu planning. Your recipes (or all those awesome ones you have pinned on Pinterest) and loaded into a database. If the recipe can be found online, it loads even easier. Since I started using the service most recipes found on blogs can now be loaded into your recipe book just by copying the URL.

Screen shot of my recipe book 

Recipes can be placed in to categories such as main dish, side dish, lunch, etc.  Recipes uploaded from the Internet can include pictures. Pictures of your existing recipes can also be uploaded. Once uploaded. recipes can be shared through social media, e-mailed or printed. Then using a simple click, drag and drop motion of the mouse you can place your desired meals in either breakfast, lunch, supper or snack categories.

I plan the same breakfast and lunch meals weekly. We don't always follow it daily but I don't have to think about what's for lunch. I know each Monday I have the ingredients to make 5 lunches for the week.

Recipes also have a rating system. When there are no leftovers, I go in and rate a recipe 5 stars so I'll know {and remember} it was a hit. When we hate something I rate it 1 star. Originally, I would delete it but then I would come across the recipe somewhere else and forget we didn't like it. So now I try to remember to rate meals.

Screen shot of my calendar

After recipes are dropped into the planner they can be accessed anywhere. An ical link is provided to make it easy to plug into any web-based calendar. I use the link on Google calendar and also programmed Kent's phone to load the save feed. Each day I can look at the calendar and see what is planned for the day. When I click on the meal, a link takes me back to the Plan to Eat website where the recipe is located. 



 Screen shot of the shopping list

The best part of the program is the shopping list. Plan to Eat automatically creates a list based on my menu. I can set the list for any specified amount of time I choose, or use the preprogrammed time of one week, two weeks or daily.  The program arranges the ingredients into categories. I do tend to shop in bulk so I look over the list weekly and pick up the things I need. I then add those to the shopping app on my phone (which I'll blog about later). The list can also be printed or e-mailed.

Another perk of Plan to Eat is the friends feature. You can link up with friends that are also using the program and share recipes. Love a recipe your friend is famous for? You can link accounts and share!

The links through out this post and the badge on the side bar are affiliate links. Click on them and you can become my Plan to Eat friend. I love sharing recipes and knowing what works and what doesn't.