There is no way I can do it all. With a big family comes big messes, and lots of laundry and dishes. The secret is . . . everyone helps! And because everyone helps, they all learn how to do the things they will need to do to keep their own homes running when they…
My schedule has not changed much since I posted it 2 1/2 years ago, but I have made some small changes. I also have a nursing baby now. I can count on him waking every morning at close to the same time (Can I just say “hooray!” that it’s usually around 5:30 a.m.? My poor…
I cut cucumbers, pears, basil, grapes leaves, oregano, and butternut squash from the garden. I mended an item of clothing. We took a little trip to the cemetery to see the flags; there were almost 3000. Each one represented a person who had died on September 11, 2011, and you could read about each…
Since I’ve lived here, September has always felt like the last month of summer, though we’ll continue to run the air conditioner well into next month. With 5 months of over 90º weather, running the air conditioner is normal here from April through October. It’s going to be 97º today. The garden is not yet…
I spent some time looking at dresses online. It seems that the going rate for a dress today is around $100 (or more). I am often asked if it is worth it to sew. I should be able to make several dresses for myself for under $10 each with fabric that I bought on sale. I…
We had some friends visit from out of town. I thought they weren’t going to be able to come, but at the last minute they said they were on their way, and I was so excited they could make it! I made meals from what we had on hand. Cyrus washed the windows before…
What a beautiful week we’ve had! We had rain twice this week; once on Monday evening and then early on Saturday morning. It is very unusual to get any rain in August, and we missed our 1-2 days of rain in July that usually come (they never did this year). Monday’s rain was a half inch…
I am still ill but was determined to accomplish as much as possible last week. Unfortunately, that went like this: I was laying in bed on Sunday with a pen and paper on the bed next to me, and I thought, “Why don’t I write a list of the things I can get done this…
I spent almost all of last week sick in bed. I managed to get up to wash a few loads of laundry and do a couple of things. I’ve written all of the posts I had hoped to share with you last week–but a couple of them aren’t published yet until I can get up…
Note: This post contains affiliate links. You can read my disclosure policy here. I love penmanship. It’s important to me that my children learn to write beautifully. When I was first learning penmanship, I remember being frustrated that we could not choose alternative ways to write letters, even though I knew at the time that…
Note: This post contains affiliate links. You can read my disclosure policy here. I have finally completed the long overdue update to my homeschool pages, and you can now find grades K-10 in the drop down menu under the Homeschool tab. I’ve made a few changes to some of the other grades as well. The…
I sewed a new cover for Winter’s bicycle seat using leather scraps we had. We’re going to make some covers for her handles as well as repaint her bike in the next couple of weeks. From the garden, we harvested grapes, a few tomatoes, figs, a pear, 2 Armenian cucumbers, a zucchini, basil, and green…