oatmeal, chickpea cookies, and homemade playdough {today}

this is what we eat almost every weekday morning:
oatmeal, a tiny tish of organic cane sugar, frozen organic berries, ground flax seed, nuts, and assorted other fruits- yummy!

We found some phonics games I made when I was a para in a LD room a million years ago before I had kids.  They were all Snoopy themed of course!

Jeffrey worked on his mammoth dig today.  He got it from my parents for his birthday but has been saving it because he wanted it to last longer. :)

We needed to give our neighbors a baked good thank you gift for watching Boo while we were in Minneapolis this past weekend so MB and I made some chickpea/oatmeal cookies.  They're really good- from Jerry Seinfeld's wife's cookbook(came out several years ago).  The kids are intrigued that there are chickpeas in it.  All it does is make the cookies puffy and moist... oh and adds protein too!

 

MB thought is was pretty fun using an "ice cream scoop" for the dough-
I told her it was a cookie scoop.  Do you have one of those?
It's from Pampered Chef and it's a dream for forming perfect cookie dough balls- plus the you don't have to use your finger to get it off the spoon.

Then we decided to make a big batch of homemade playdough- all the kids helped... until it got too hard to stir and then I had to take over- boy did my arm get a workout!
I don't remember which recipe we used but there are a million out there...

 

Mickey kneaded it for us and then they each got two blobs and could choose what color they wanted to make it.  I had a whole bunch of sugar-free kool-aid packets sitting around(I was going to try to dye wool with it but never did) so they used those to make them smell good and look good.

 

They played playdough the whole rest of the afternoon.
Good cheap fun! :) 

 

 

I love listening to Jeffrey practice his piano(keyboard)- he's getting so good.
It was a productive, fun day today- my favorite!

magic science... on President's Day!

After the teepee excitement wore off it was on to pet shop and then science experiments.
Norah and Jeffrey LOVE science experiments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pretty cool stuff.  This is a really good kit- a great gift idea for any science lover!

buildin' a teepee {in the house!}

I decided we needed a teepee in our new homeschool room(aka: the dining room).  The kids were all for it!  So last night we picked up 6 pieces of wood from Lowe's at $0.75 each (1x2x8s) and a ball of twine since I was out.  We bumped into our friends at Granite City afterwards and the kids invited the girls to come over in the morning for a pajama party/teepee building party.

Thank goodness we had 6 pairs of hands!  It went a lot smoother that way.  (Not necessary though incase you want to try this at home.)
Before we did this part though John drilled a hole about a foot down through each piece of wood and we looped the twine through them all and tied it tight once we situated them the way we wanted them.
We got this advice from here.  Love that blog!

Then we just kept winding the twine around tightly and tied it up.

 

I found a couple of sheets I had been saving from some lucky thrift store finds and a vintage chenille bedspread I found in an old cabinet on the side of the road during clean up week a few years ago.(don't worry I steam cleaned all of them in my washer) :)
I used some "fort clips" (Ikea clothespins) to secure them around the frame and ta-da!  A teepee!
It's pretty big and takes up a ton of the room but I wanted it to be able to fit all of the kids at once... mission accomplished!  Total for this project:  about $10.   Can't beat that!

Valentine's Day Brunch {Feb. 15th}

This morning was our second Valentine's Day celebration.
Our friends from "coffee" came over for a special brunch- it was so fun!

 

This picture is dark but I was trying to show the heart garland I made out of 100 year old book pages.
You just cut them out and sew them together with a sewing machine!  Easy peasy!

All the kids exchanged Valentines and ate yummy food.

 

 

 

 

After everyone left the kids played with these (best toy ever for all ages by the way- you just have to watch the price and wait til it comes way down) and their fractiles for about 3 hours!

 

Oh and here is the DELICIOUS homemade raspberry lemonade I made for the party.
It was a big hit.  Here's the recipe incase you want to give it a try!  I cut the sugar down though.

Valentine's Day Night {2013}

 

 

Here we are eating our traditional Valentine's Day pancakes and strawberries and whip cream supper.
Made special for all my favorite valentines. :)

 

Easy idea:  cut a heart out of felt and just place it on a pillow-
it sticks pretty good and no one even realizes it's not attached.
Then after Valentine's Day you just pack it up and your pillow is back to normal!

After supper it was time for their favorite part... the scavenger hunt!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They got one big present this year and it was educational. :)
Fractiles.  They LOVE this and have been wanting it forever.
I think Mickey may have been expecting something else though by the look his face. Ha!!