Pomander Balls

Inspired by the book, Little House in the Big Woods, the kids worked together to make a pomander ball, just like the one Aunt Eliza gave to Ma. This little activity took the kids over an hour to make! But at least it was an activity that had them working together and away from their screens. These pomander balls smell so good, and make a great little scented decor. The cloves act as a preservative for the apple, and the apple is actually suppose to keep for months and months. All we needed for this activity was an apple free of cuts and bruises and a small container of whole cloves.

Shaking Butter

The kids and I are reading through the Little House on the Prairie books, starting with The Little House in the Big Woods. We're loving the book! Inspired by the Ingalls we are having fun with a few crafts as we read through the books. Our first activity was homemade butter. We don't own a cow or a goat (yet!) and we don't have a butter churn, instead we used a clean jar with a secure lid, and heavy cream bought from our local grocery store. We filled our jar half way with cream and started shaking. We had two jars, and I let the big kids go first while the little ones were able to have a turn when their older siblings arms became tired. The kids had to shake the jar for maybe 10 to 15 minutes before the cream turned to whip cream, and then finally butter sitting in a jar of buttermilk! The kids loved this project. They had so much fun, that they couldn't stop talking about it all day. We squeezed the buttermilk out of the butter and separated the liquid and the butter into two different containers. To enjoy the fruits of their labor the kids then baked some fresh homemade bread to go with their butter. We saved the buttermilk, which I plan to use to make some buttermilk pancakes.

Summer Movies

Over the summer the Regal Cinemas in our area have offered free movies every Tuesday and Wednesday morning for G and PG rated movies. This year however they started charging a dollar, but $4 for a movie theater experience for a family of 4 is pretty awesome!In the picture above the kids are holding up their movie passports that get stamped every week that they come in, and once they get 9 stamps the 10th movie is free. I just love this summer tradition! So far we have viewed Journey 2, and Yogi Bear.

Summer Bucket List

I love making lists, so I am grateful to have stumble upon this free online app, Cozi that allows me to organize all my lists from to dos, to my grocery list, and now to my summer bucket list! Below is a screen shot I took on my iPad of my summer bucket list. We have a lot planned for this summer and I love it. Today is only day 5 of our summer break and we're already having fun!

Other items that didn't show up in the screenshot:

*Mission trip to Haiti
*Have a "Yes Day"
*Create at Hearts of Clay

Children Summer Reading

Summer is flying by and in just 6 short weeks school will be starting back up, for us it is August 17th. I hope that you and your family have been having just as much fun as we are! We have been play play play all June, but this July I started getting worried about the kiddos taking a complete break from learning, and maybe you have been too. Some ways that can we help them prevent summer learning loss is of course brushing up on their reading and spelling. Our school assigned our kids a summer reading list, and maybe yours did too, but in case you lost your list, or if you just didn't get one, I will share with you our list. You can of course add your kids' favorite to it as well. The list below includes grades first through high school, just click on the appropriate grade level. You can find any of these books at a local library or local book store.

Summer Reading Lists

Some other things that we are working on is memorizing our phone number, address, city and state. Skylar is working on her spelling, and Maddox our soon to be kindergartner is practicing writing his letters, numbers and is reading along with Momma. 

Below is a spelling list for first graders, but click around for spelling lists from preschooler to 8th grade

Time4Learning 1st grade spelling list

Enjoy the rest of your summer, but try to squeeze in some educational fun too :) I know that we're trying! 

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Father's Day Gift

My kids and I created this soda bottle snack pack for Mitch for Father's Day! :) I wish I could have posted this earlier, but then I would have gave away what he was getting ;)

I got this idea from the Idea Room: fathers day gift ideas , where she actually has a lot of great ideas! ;)

This snack pack was so easy to make.

First we bought a 6 pack of coke, with those cute glass bottles, and 4 of his favorite snacks that would fit inside.

We drank 4 of the cokes, washed and dried them and filled them up.

Then we placed the tops back onto the bottles.

Next I drew little neck ties for the the kids to color in and then I cut them out, attached an elastic string to the ties and tied them onto the bottles.

Then for the front cover I cut out a piece of white paper to fit and wrote "Happy Father's Day Mitch" and one for the back "We Love You".

I hole punched and tied the notes onto the pack.

Then voila! A snack pack! 

The kids also made handmade cards for their daddy to go along with the gift.

This project was super easy, super cute, and super fun for the kids to do. This project could also make a cute gift for daddy from the kids as a birthday gift as well :)

Please comment below letting me know what you did for Father's Day.

Skylar's Homemade Honey Butter

This is my beautiful baby girl Skylar. She is in the first grade and when she grows up she wants to be a chef! She loves to help mommy in the kitchen, and since she was 3 years old she's been creating her own little recipes. All of which I must admit were nasty, such as mixed eggs, flour, sugar, and whatever else she would mix in there, microwave and then expect me to eat, with a smile on my face. So I started teaching her how to make some yummy edible creations. For Christmas her grandmother, who she calls GiGi, got her an apron to wear in the kitchen, and whenever its time to bake, cook, or create, she puts it on eager and ready to go. 

One of her most recent creations was Homemade Honey Butter. Skylar made this all by herself and below she will show you how. This butter was delicious! 

The ingredients and materials you will need are:

A clean jar

A marble (optional)

Heavy Cream

Salt

and

Honey

Now lets get started!

Have your materials and ingredients ready

Fill your jar halfway full of heavy cream, then drop in the marble (the marble just helps with the mixing).

Then start shaking!

You're going to be shaking for a long time, so you might need a friend (or a mommy) to take turns with you when your arms get tired.

Half way through, your mixture will look like whip cream.

Keep shaking and have patience!

And soon, after all of your hard work, that white cream that has coated your jar will soon clear your jar and you'll have a large yellow lump in there, and thats your butter!

Spoon out the butter from the liquid thats left in there. That liquid is now butter milk! You can save that for other recipes.

 You will need to also take that butter and squeeze out any butter milk that is mixed in over the sink. Try to squeeze out as much as you can. Mom needs to help with that.

Sprinkle on some salt

Then drizzle in some honey. We eyeballed it to taste.

Mix it all together

Then spoon your mixture into a container that you can keep in the refrigerator 

And then you're done! Now you have some of the most amazing honey butter. This stuff is great on toast, dinner rolls, muffins, you name it! We ate it on toast for dinner that night and finished it off on toast for breakfast the next morning. Skylar was so proud of herself as we ate the butter and praising her for a job well done. I hope that you or your little ones have fun making this yummy treat! 

Enjoy your babies, have patience, and have fun in the kitchen! :)