Handprint shirt- Make It Monday

A few years ago, I made a shirt with my children for Father’s Day. At the time there were three children and we put handprints and ages of each child on the shirt. B loved it and has worn it ever since. Over time, we added two more children and the older three had grown several years and it was time for a new shirt. So, for Christmas, we made B a new shirt. Since it has been such a loved shirt, I decided to make this week’s Make It Monday a how to make the shirt.  This will make a great birthday or Christmas or Father’s Day present for any dad or grandpa.

Thank you goes to Butterfly for taking the how-to pictures!

First, get a cotton t-shirt and wash it. Once dry, slide a piece of cardboard inside the shirt to protect the back side from getting paint on it. The craft stores have t-shirt boards that don’t fit terribly well for larger shirts, but they work fine, any smooth cardboard will do though. Then, spread some puffy paint on the hand and brush it to evenly distribute.

   

Make sure the person holds all the fingers spread open so the paint will evenly coat and the handprint will be crisp and clear.

To place the hand on the shirt, place straight down. Firmly press on each finger and the back of the hand to insure even coverage.

Lift the hand straight up to reveal the handprint. Use the puffy paints to write the child’s name and age on the shirt under their handprints. My children also chose to add little decorations. You can see hearts and flowers in the shirt where my girls decorated their names.

In general, it is hard to get a handprint from a baby under about 15 months old. Footprints are FAR easier. Little One got one good handprint, one smudged messy print, and 2 feet on the shirt. The girls all wanted multiple colors of prints, so this was a very colorful shirt.

    Taaaa Daaa!     

Make It Monday- Chili Baked Potatoes

I was having a super busy day and B was working from home. I realized at 10 that I had to feed everyone lunch and we were out of bread. I also realized that I didn’t have time to do much for lunch. So, I pulled out my trusty thermal cooker and I made chili and baked potatoes. YUM! Since I was in a hurry and didn’t have time to chop veggies, I used some Thrive veggies I had on hand. I learned that the thermal cooker is the best place to rehydrate freeze dried beans. I find that the freeze dried beans can be burntish tasting when boiled but thermal cooked, they taste fresh and delicious!

Step 1- scrub potatoes and place whole in the bottom of the thermal cooker. I chose to use Yukon gold potatoes but russets and reds work too.

 

Step 2- cover with water and bring to a boil for 2-4 minutes. (Make sure that the top part of the pot fits on top of the potatoes and water so air space is used up).

Step 3- Mix together some freeze dried onions, carrots, beans, and mushrooms (fresh could be used for sure, but I was in a huge hurry so I used some freeze dried food storage). Add the correct amount of water and some chili powder and bring to a boil.

Step 4- Place both pots into the thermal cooker and close. Come back in 2 or more hours. Season the chili with a little salt and maybe some left over tomato sauce. Adjust the chili seasoning if necessary.

  

Step 5- Enjoy!

Happy Birthday Butterfly

10 years ago Butterfly surprised us by coming into the world asleep. Not only was she born sleeping, but she came into the world so quickly that the midwife was half an hour late for her birth. So petite, she was a little doll.

She has always been full of surprises. These days, she gracefully splits her time between Earth and her own world- lovingly dubbed Butterfly-land. Someday she hopes to create Butterfly-land as an amusement park larger than Disneyland to welcome all of us into her world. In the mean time…

Butterfly is an incredible big sister. She cares for her siblings with love and tenderness.  Somehow she knows how to float between the worlds  of best big sister and best big sister in charge without overstepping into the realm of bossy. She really does have a magical skill there! She is very artistic and loves to dream. She loves Astronomy, especially dreaming of how big the universe really is. She is a self-described book worm and will read anything she finds lying around the house- especially if it gets her out of chores!

Butterfly also dreams of having horses and being a famous artist. She also is desperately hoping and dreaming of a sewing machine for Christmas. Almost daily I hear about what she will do when she gets a sewing machine.

We love you Butterfly! We are so happy to have you in our family. Your imagination brings freshness to these logic minded parents of yours! 

Make it Monday- Onion Honey Cough Syrup

I am going to try to create a “Make it Monday” post each week. Try being the operative word here! So, for the first Monday, here goes!

Cough syrup is nasty stuff. It tastes bad, has artificial colors and flavors, and usually is meant to suppress a cough. Given that coughs are the body’s way of expelling harmful elements in the lungs, I don’t believe suppression is the answer. I believe that soothing and healing as well as supporting the cough to be productive is a better way to handle a cough. So, I make onion honey cough syrup for my family. It is super easy and contains a minimum of two ingredients everyone has in their kitchen: Onion and Honey.

Chop 1 large onion.

Place in the top of a double boiler.      

Cover the onion with honey. The onions just need to be covered by about 1/4 inch or so.

Place on the stove and simmer the water on low for 2-4 hours or until the onions are done. I like to use a lower heat and cook longer so mine takes closer to 4 hours. You will know the onions are done when they are translucent, papery, shrunken, and have little to no flavor.

After 1 hour: 

After 2 hours:

3Hours- Still large chunks but they are getting a little more shrunken.

4 Hours: Notice the onion is now shriveled a bit and if you look at the pot behind, they are not as closely packed. Strain and bottle. Store in the refrigerator or ad d 25% vegetable glycerin to extend the shelf life and store in the cupboard. 

Additional herbs can be added to this syrup when it is placed in the double boiler. Thyme is one I sometimes use. Generally speaking, I recommend only using herbs not roots or bark since honey doesn’t extract roots and bark very well.

Christmas Books- The Night Before Christmas

As much as I love books, I realized I was lacking a critical book- The Night Before Christmas! How could it be? I realized that despite all the stories we read together, I have not shared this classic poem with my children. I went on a hunt to find a beautifully illustrated edition of the poem to share this year for Christmas. On December 1, I let the children open their new book. The book I chose was one illustrated by Charles Santore. 

I like that the pictures have a classic feel. The only thing I don’t like about this book is the beautiful double page spread where the sleigh is about to come to the house because the pages fold out and are four pages wide. As a result, the book becomes hard to hold, but the picture is so beautiful!

We have other books we read every year like The Littlest Angel and A Christmas Carol as well as a binder of stories we read each night. Little One was trying to open the advent story binder a few nights ago.

What is your favorite Christmas book? Find out what other Schoolhouse Review Crew members read at Christmas by clicking the button below (link live on December 18). 

The Tongue-Sticker Ornament

I love four year olds! They always have something funny to say or do. The other day Strawberry came and proclaimed she was the “Tongue-Sticker Ornament.”

The tongue-sticker ornament is a little wooden elf dressed in yellow and orange. He sat upon my Grammi’s tree as long as I can remember. Really he was a little German toy originally. When I was a little girl, Grammi would let me push the little button and make his tongue stick out. Other than this ornament, the tree was strictly off limits, filled with beautiful glass balls, hand made carved wooden ornaments, medallions, wooden snowflakes, and icicle shaped lights. Her tree was the most beautiful thing I could imagine growing up. Thinking about her tree reminds me of the feeling of Christmas. It was magic. No matter how many times I looked at the tree, I would find something I hadn’t seen before. Ornaments that rested nestled deep inside the branches as well as on the tips. The lights that sparkled made the tree glow golden at night against the blackened background of Pate’s desk and the hallway to their bedroom.

 

So, when Strawberry came to me and proclaimed she was the tongue-sticker ornament, I had to laugh.

Tiger's Report

Ok, so this is a report of Tiger's fundraising project. Thank You to everybody who doanted or plans to, and think you to everybody who supported me in this project. Her is the report:

I made a total of $95! 50 came from a friend and my aunt donating in my name, 15 came from my mom donating the cost of her lunch on Friday(I have a Lunch Business at our Homeschool co-op, and i am giving her lunch at no profit to me this week.), and $30 came from my gift wrapping Business.

  a) My project didn’t go very well at first, because the gift wrapping never really caught on, and I only had one customer. But things got better when i asked for donations, and I almost doubled my personal goal, because I wanted to get $50, and raised 95. I think that in the end, it was really rewarding to have the experience to look at the website and see that we multiplied the school goal by 3.5 times than it originally was. I tell you, it was truly amazing to be looking at this monitor at 7 pm yesterday, and see REALLY big numbers on the screen. That was seriously a sight to look at.

         b) This experience changed me, because I never thought about things in this way before. It really made me Feel how horrible it would be to have to go get water, early in the morning, risk being late for school, and having to do it for your whole life, when Mrs. Maucotel told the story of what it would be like. And to think that we changed the lives of almost 50 families, when we are only a small private online school, is really cool to think about. That is why this experience changed me.