Shauna's Birthday Tea Party

Shauna's request for her birthday was to have a tea party. It was so fun to plan! We live in a small space and wanted it special, so we cleared off the front porch the best we could and put up curtains along one side to "hide" all the things we could not clear off. We had to set the stage by making sure we had plenty of candlelight...

These tealights were all along the railings of the porch

And of course, you HAVE to have a teapot. I didn't have one before this event. Wouldn't you know I waited until the last minute to try and find one? Well, surprisingly, I found one!!

Isn't it beautiful? it is smaller than I would have liked, but it did the trick. I will be on the look out for a bigger one. I am SURE the other girls will want one soon as well. ;D

Here is the table in all it's splendor! Shauna and all her guests are patiently awaiting to be served their tea.


The Birthday Girl getting ready to blow out candles...

...and in action. :D


This is the one treat she specifically asked for. I think they are called pirouettes.

Lastly, it was time to open her presents. She recieved lots of wonderful gifts, and was completely delighted, but here are just a few samples...
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playfood from Lisa of Winsome Whatnots


......and a doll Ashley "handed her down". We didn't get a new dress done in time, but she will be getting a lovely purple floral dress to match the hairbows.

Thanksgiving gifts

We are being particularly blessed this Thanksgiving! Yet another blessing to be thankful for!!

Our mushroom journey

Evan found this the other day...



I forget what the scientific term of it is, but it's common name is the Parasol Mushroom. I was talking via email with a mushroom expert, and come to find out it is edible (we weren't brave enough to eat it then, but if we come across another, we may)

Here is the bottom showing the gills


...and the top


There is a poisonous mushroom that tries to mirror image this one. Here are the things we learned to compare...
1. the poisonous one will turn dark yellow when the stem is rubbed or when the meat of the mushroom is exposed to air. The edible kind will not turn.
2. In the edible kind, the ring (see in the pic of the gills) slides freely and is not a part of the stem.
3. The gills are open and fully formed
4. The location is important as well. With the edible, you typically would find it along the edge of woods, and slight composted material. They do not grow on logs, but from the ground directly.
5. This is the most crucial part...


They call this the spore print. You turn the mushroom onto a glass or saran wrap and let it set for a couple of hours...the longer the better. I put a black piece of paper under it on one of the pics to get a good contrast. If it were of the poisonous type, then the spores would be a green color. With ours, it is quite clear that the spores are white.

The specialist I talked with and showed pictures of my progress confirmed that we had the go ahead to consume. :D He said it was a valuable find and that it would be awesome if they came back year after year.

Here are links...
poisonous
http://cms.jcu.edu.au/discovernature/fungicommon/JCUDEV_017203
non-poisonous
http://www.mushroomexpert.com/macrolepiota_procera.html

Our own wheel

*I* think it is the most beautiful wheel out there...but I may be partial ;D

Florida Snow

Isn't this beautiful? I think this is the prettiest cotton field I have seen.

I dub it "Florida Snow" :D. I just wish you could have seen it in person. When we drove by the next week, they had the cotton piled into 21 truckload bundles! That's ALOT of cotton!

When the cotton reaches maturity, I believe they spray it with a defoliant to remove all the leaves. It sits for a couple of weeks until the get these big combine looking creatures/machines and sucks up(I think) all the cotton. It gets bailed into HUGE retangle shaped cubes...3/4 the length of a semi trailer, but just as wide.

Here's a close up of it. If you don't know what you're doing when you pick it, you will have bleeding fingers in no time. The part of the plant (would you call it the hips?) that holds the cotton on the plant has sharp burs on it.

To learn more about cotton, go here...
http://www.cottonsjourney.com/Storyofcotton/default.asp
and this one...
http://www.historyforkids.org/learn/clothing/cotton.htm

See any similarities?

When we are in town, quite frequently I will get the comment~ "They all look alike. Any of them twins?" Well, tell me what you think :D
First off, these are around the age of 2.
*ME* :D

Ashley

Shauna

Kyla

AnnaRuth

I don't have one of Ruby seeings how she is not quite 2 yet.


Now, here are the girls all about a year old. Any resemblences?
Ruby

AnnaRuth

Kyla

Shauna

Ashley

My new hobby :o)

I have found something to do with all of my fabric scraps that I can't seem to throw away. Anyone else like that? :0)

What do you think?

Our latest finished job

We finally finished an upholstery job for a particular client. It took longer than it should have, but it seemed like everything was going wrong. Well, here are the before and after pictures...



Before~

And After~

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3 Trees

This was sent to me in my email today. I thought you all would enjoy it!

~~~~~

Once there were three trees on a hill in the woods. They were discussing their hopes and dreams when the first tree said, 'Someday I hope to be a treasure chest. I could be filled with gold, silver and precious gems. I could be decorated with intricate carving and everyone would see the beauty.'
Then the second tree said, 'Someday I will be a mighty ship. I will take Kings and Queens across the waters and sail to the corners of the world. Everyone will feel safe in me because of the strength of my hull.
Finally the third tree said, 'I want to grow to be the tallest and straightest tree in the forest. People will see me on top of the hill and look up to my branches, and think of the heavens and God and how close to them I am reaching. I will be the greatest tree of all time and people will always remember me.' After a few years of praying that their dreams would come true, a group of woodsmen came upon the trees. When one came to the first tree he said, 'This looks like a strong tree, I think I should be able to sell the wood to a Carpenter, 'and he began cutting it down. The tree was happy, because he knew that the carpenter would make him into a treasure chest.
At the second tree the woodsman said, 'This looks like a strong tree. I should be able to sell it to the shipyard.' The second tree was happy because he knew he was on his way to becoming a mighty ship.
When the woodsmen came upon the third tree, the tree was frightened because he knew that if they cut him down his dreams would not come true. One of the woodsmen said, 'I don't need anything special from my tree, I'll take this one,' and he cut it down.
When the first tree arrived at the carpenters, he was made into a feed box for animals. He was then placed in a barn and filled with hay. This was not at all what he had prayed for.
The second tree was cut and made into a small fishing boat. His dreams of being a mighty ship and carrying kings had come to an end.
The third tree was cut into large pieces, and left alone in the dark.
The years went by, and the trees forgot about their dreams.
Then one day, a man and woman came to the barn. She gave birth and they placed the baby in the hay in the feed box that was made from the first tree. The man wished that he could have made a crib for the baby, but this manger would have to do. The tree could feel the importance of this event and knew that it had held the greatest treasure of all time.
Years later, a group of men got in the fishing boat made from the second tree. One of them was tired and went to sleep. While they were out on the water, a great storm arose and the tree didn't think it was strong enough to keep the men safe. The men woke the sleeping man, and He stood and Said 'Peace' and the storm stopped. At this time, the tree knew that it had carried the King of Kings in its boat.
Finally, someone came and got the third tree. It was carried through the streets as the people mocked the man who was carrying it. When they came to a stop, the man was nailed to the tree and raised in the air to die at the top of a hill. When Sunday came, the tree came to realize that it was strong enough to stand at the top of the hill and be as close to God as was possible, because Jesus had been crucified on it.
The moral of this story is that when things don't seem to be going your way, always know that God has a plan for you. If you place your trust in Him, God will give you great gifts.
Each of the trees got what they wanted, just not in the way they had imagined.
We don't always know what God's plans are for us. We just know that His Ways are not our ways, but His ways are always best.
Please keep this moving... Pass it on, so God may inspire more people on The Way.
May your day be blessed. And until we meet again, may God cradle you in the palm ofHis hand.

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What's been going on?

We have been quite busy over at our end. Schooling, upholstering, keeping up the house, sewing. I guess the list can go on and on.

When Danny gets home today, we are having our good friends, the DiMarcos, over to help us put in a handpump well. This is something we have wanted to do for some time, and decided it was high time we did. Danny has done lots of research about how to do it the old fashioned way without any heavy equipment. We are quite excited for this homeschooling project and experience.

Evan is making leaps and bounds with his reading! I think he is finally catching on! Danny and I have decided to go ahead and get him some other subjects besides math and reading so he can be putting his reading to practice. I think this will spur him to greater reading.

Ashley and Zeb are flying through their lightunits. I can't seem to be able to keep them supplied with work. I need to start ordering more at a time. Ashley is excited that she can work as fast as she can and go to the next grade quickly.

Shauna and Kyla are learning to read together. I decided to use "Scaredy Cat" with them. AnnaRuth is doing "work" as well.

All this makes for a busy school year!

I have been planning our yard out for next year. I would REALLY LOVE to have a flower garden besides just our normal vegetable garden. I have bought some bulbs so far in my pursuit to getting that garden. I do need to plan out everything though. We will have to "doctor up" the soil with the sand we have around here. This will be a project that will take bits and pieces to get to. I will keep ya'll updated on our progress!

Two unwelcomed guests

The other day, Ashley and I were gathering tomatoes from our garden. I noticed a dense web surrounding some of the leaves, so I thought, "ya know, the boys would love to see what emerges out of this". I could tell it was a spider, but just didn't know what kind...Well, today, after sitting in this jar for about 3 days, she decided she would become visable AND lay her massive egg sack.

Here she is...in all her (not so) spendid glory...

Can you see her? Can you see that red spot on her abdomen? Do you see her egg sac up at the top left picture? Yes, it's a brown widow! I dare not take the top off to get a better pic, so instead you will have to settle for this picture I found of another brown widow.

Black and Brown Widows are quite prevalent around our yard. Does anyone know how to get rid of them? I thought maybe guinneas. Do you think that will work?

Now on to our next guest. I have search high and low on the internet to find out what kind this is. I am at a loss. It just about freaks me out as much as the widow, but just because of the looks of it. See, a while back, the boys put a caterpiller in a jar with leaves. We were gone for about a week. When we came back, the caterpillar had died with the leaves and it decomposing...I know...it's gross, but every day is a homeschool day around here. :D Besides just the decomposing, there were also about a handful of regular house flies in the jars. Well, boys being boys, they wanted to see the life cycle through. We also noticed 5 or 6 black egg type things inside of the jar. That also spurred their curiousity. So, the good mother I am, I decided to allow their endulgence. We paid little attention over the course of the last couple of weeks. I noticed the house flies had died off, but no spawn. I contemplated just throwing the jar out, after all, who wants a science project of this sort on their kitchen counter? For whatever reason, I left it, call it laziness, call it not wanting to touch it, call it the instinct of a teacher-mom.

Today, this is what greeted us...

There are two of them. They are SOME sort of fly. I just don't know of what kind. It is about 4 or 5 times larger than a normal house fly. The hair on it looks like spikes. It is solid black except for it's face (I guess you could call it that)~that is like a greyish color.

I did find this picture on the internet, but the owner to this picture seemed just as curious as to what kind of fly as I.

So, anyone? Any idea at all? I have half a thought to release the flies into the widow jar to have the children watch "nature".

Until next time!

okra and tomatoes

We planted a pretty good garden this year, but all that seems to be producing are okra and grape tomatoes. Oh, and some Roma tomatoes are green on the vine right now. If I can keep the tomato worms away from them, then we will have some of those too!

Ashley went and picked this afternoon. She felt compelled to weigh them. There were 2lbs, 10oz of grape tomatoes



and 3lbs, 9oz of okra.

thinking on food

Ok...I LOVE good food, but that isn't exactly what I was thinking on.

Here is what I had in mind.



Most anyone who knows me well knows I am good at finding the cheapest cost for beans or trash bags, but I am HORRIBLE at creating a menu and making it work for me (Dana also knows me well enough to realize that the picture above is just my rough draft..it will be redone when everything is on there that I need). If I make a menu, it is usually twice the cost as if I just get a list of basic things I always use. So...this has me pondering a few things. We have been buying for the month, and my system seems to get us through, even if it isn't a "true" system. So, I have come to terms with not being one of those women who can write out a menu and shop from it. Instead, I see myself as a women who buys the basics and then can possibly plan a menu from what she has? Is there anyone out there like me? Am I hopelessly alone on this?

Because of my earlier blog about not having supper planned out, I REALLY MUST get this together. My day is quite full, but there SHOULD be a meal on the table at a certain time.

These are just some thoughts from my day :D Carry on!

Our adventures yesterday

Would you believe that I was so busy yesterday working on an upholstery project for a customer? I was so busy that I neglected to set something out for supper. [rolling eyes] Ok, Dana, I know...I know...I tend to do this frequently.

SO...this is what Danny decided for us to do:


I also decided I was going to try to be good at this blogging thing and brought my camera along in Walmart.
and the race was on...


first we had to go to the school supplies. This is Ashley's weak spot. Who can resist 5cent notebooks? OH! Nevermind the 4 arms...that is our Zeb being true to self. :D


Well, this is the first of 2 reasons we needed to treck to Walmart. Our mower is out of juice. Danny says, it needs a battery.


Here is the other important reason for our trip. The kids fix breakfast in the morning, so I allow them to go simple probably more than what I should.


the little girls had to help too.


"Mama, can we have just one?" I was a mean mama...after all, we were already getting wafles, right?


How else to end a day?
You can't beat this one...