All Things Hold Together

In fairness to my husband, he did buy me something for Valentine’s Day, but it is back-ordered until 3/30.

The Greatest Is Love Ceramic Mug

I really wish it was coming sooner because my favorite mug broke and I don’t really like any of the ones we have.

Today, everyone was sick. Even Bob stayed home from work, sick. This was the third day this week he was home.

He usually saves his shopping for Valentine’s Day, so he did not have anything for me. He ended up making me a card out of construction paper. He even drew hearts on it!

The real gift was the message, written in very legible handwriting, which I know took effort.

He opened with Proverbs 31:10-11,

A wife of noble character who can find?
She is worth far more than rubies.

Her husband has full confidence in her
and lacks nothing of value.

Then continued to tell me how much I mean to him. It was beautiful! I cried through the whole thing.

Much better than a box of cheap chocolates, or even nice ones.

The D made me a card, too. It said, “I love you. Yes, it’s true.” It had a picture of green, grassy hills with trees, a blue sky with clouds, and a heart with wings on it.

Big E also made me a card. His said,

Roses are red
Violets are blue
Nobody could ask
for a better mom than you.

I am truly blessed.

Little E did not make me a card, a fact he lamented at bed-time, but he helped me make Bob’s gift.

Dark chocolate-dipped peanut butter balls hearts.

And for the boys, along with some store-bought candy, I made heart-shaped, pink Rice Krispies treats.

I hope you all had as wonderful a Valentine’s Day as I did!

I have had that song in my head all day, since we made our little Love Shacks.

We used graham crackers, royal icing, and lots of candies.

(To make royal icing without the hassle of raw eggs, try meringue powder. I used Wilton, which I bought at Michael’s craft store in the cake decorating aisle.)

You can cut triangles to close the front and back of the roofs, but I was not feeling well, so I took the shortcut way. No one seemed to mind that our roofs were open.

With out further fanfare, here are our houses.

That is Big E’s in the front. He is the artist in that family. That roof is just beautiful. He did that with no help at all.

Here is The D’s. It is hard to believe that just a couple of years ago, this boy had no interest in anything creative.

That’s mine on the left and Little E’s on the right. I did the front for him. He got tired and wanted to go watch Cyber Chase on PBS. (Yes, he’s only 4. He is our budding math genius.)

A few pointers to share… make the icing about toothpaste consistency and they should set up pretty quickly. Little kids do not have much patience when it comes to waiting to decorate candy houses. Fortunately for me, mine did not have to wait.

If you want to make white, pink, and red (or dark pink), make one big batch of white icing. Take 1/3 out and put it in your icing bag. Add a small amount of red coloring to make pink. Take out 1/2 of that and put it in another icing bag. Finally, add more red to achieve desired shade and put the remaining icing in a third bag.

I have been away from the computer lately because I have a terrible cold that is kicking my butt. I have not had an illness this bad in at least two years. I am slowly recovering, but I am still sick.

I will have pictures up later of the little Valentine’s Day graham cracker mock-gingerbread houses we made today.

I’m sick, but not too sick for Valentine’s Day crafts.

Besides, I have had the supplies for these since Christmas! (They were supposed to be Christmas houses, but we never got around to making them. Add conversation hearts and red icing colorant and voila - Valentine’s houses!)

Today on a VT homeschooling online group, a legislative homeschooling advocate posted the following:

I have a senator with a request to homeschoolers. He wants to know what it is that makes homeschooling work. Please give me your thoughts as to why you think it works. Most parents who choose to homeschool do not have a teacher’s license and almost no training in educating children.

So why does it work so well? If you can put your comments in a list format so it is easy for me to compile the comments I would be eternally grateful. I need this information as soon as possible.

So, what makes it work?

This was my response:

Pedagogy and teacher training is mostly about dealing with large
groups of children, which is why a teaching degree is not needed to
homeschool.

Homeschooling works because

- Children are not forced to learn things that they are not
cognitively or developmentally able to learn at that time, just
because some bureaucrat decided that it needed to be learned at a
certain time.

- Children can get rest, food, bathroom breaks, time off, a hug, fresh
air, or what ever they need, when they need it.

- There is no peer pressure about being *too smart* or *too dumb* so
kids can comfortably work at their own pace.

- Children do not have to sit at a desk for hours at a time.

- Parents can integrate the subjects into everyday life. Since parent
and teacher are one and the same, discussion is not limited to a 30-45
minute period M-F.

- Parents can tailor the material to the child’s learning style.

I’m sure there are more.

What would you add to that list?

Last year, I was really into Knifty Knitter. Really into it. I made hats, purses, neck rolls, scarves, booties. You name it, I Knifty Knitted it.

But for some reason this year, I am not that into it.

Maybe it was the lack of challenge. Once I learned to make all those things, it got kind of boring.

Or maybe it was the repetitiveness.

Whatever it was, this year I decided that I didn’t like the hat I made myself last year at the end of winter, before I had a chance to wear it.

My hat modeled by Little E

Since the yarn was new and I didn’t want to waste it, I decided to rip it out and crochet a new hat with the same yarn.

Here is my new hat, modeled by Big E, who was gracious enough to model, but not happy enough about it to actually smile. That, and he had a mouth full of Life cereal.

I made it from this Crochet Hat pattern from the Lion Brand Yarn website. (Free registration required to view pattern.) I omitted the pompom, though.

The hat uses Lion Brand Wool-Ease Thick & Quick and a size P-15 hook.

Back in October, I mentioned that I was learning embroidery, so I could make something for my parents-in-law for Christmas.

Well, even though it took me until February to post the picture I took, I did embroider a towel for them.

Here it is.

Updated.

I have not been happy with the theme of this blog since I moved over from Blogger.

I have 11 themes uploaded to this blog. 11!

And I have not been happy with a single one of them.

So, today, I decided that I was going to customize a theme to look how I wanted it to.

I took the theme Shade of Grey and changed the CSS to make it the way I wanted it to look. That took a long time. I was surprised at how many things there are to change when you want to totally redo the color scheme of a blog.

I was also surprised - pleasantly - at how much CSS I know.

Then, I made a custom banner.

And last, I made a new favicon to match. (Though my Firefox still shows the old one, but the new one shows when I view in IE.)

Finally, I can say I like my template.

Now, instead of spending hours working on a new template, I can actually post!

The only thing that I am bummed about is that the picture of the Power Rangers in the spaghetti bowl is gone.

Maybe I will put it in the side bar.

Update: The Power Rangers are back.  And my favicon is now showing up.  All is right with the blog.

I don’t know if I metioned this enough times yet, but I love the cast iron skillet my parents-in-law bought me for Christmas.

I made the Chicken and Biscuit Pie recipe from this week’s Menu Plan in it because it can go from stove top to oven. It was delicious!

I didn’t have any cooked chicken, so I cooked mine in the skillet first. Then, I put it aside to cool while I proceeded with the recipe.

I think that made it even better because there were yummy caramelized bits of chicken stuck in the pan that added flavor when I made the gravy.

Have you ever seen anything so wonderfully scrumptious (excluding anything containing chocolate, frosting, whipped cream, or ice cream)?

My giveaway is closed and I have selected the winning comment using the integer generator at random.org.

It is so much easier to choose the winning comment using WordPress, which numbers the comments, instead of Blogger, which does not.

I have already contacted Marcia and I will be shipping out her prize this weekend.

Thank you to all who participated. And many thanks to Shannon from Rocks in My Dryer and Bloggy Giveaways for hosting.