Life Lately - Winter Evenings

I noticed the Game Commission took a bear trap up to my neighbor's house the other day.  I don't think they've trapped Ugly Ted yet, but I'm hopeful.  I'm also relieved that a solution is in the works.  It's a bit unnerving to have bear sightings during the afternoon, when your children are out playing.

The Sleeping Beauty ballet was lovely.  Blossom3 and I immensely enjoyed the graceful dancing, superb choreography, rich music and amazing skill of the ballerinas.  It was also very pleasant to run into some friends there.  Blossom3 was tickled pink to be able to drink an entire cherry and blue razzberry slushy on the way home, without having to share with anyone.  Sure, she didn't fall asleep quite as quickly when she crawled into bed, but her shining eyes and special smile were worth it.

The evenings have been so cozy here lately.  The Blossoms are on a watercolor streak, so the dining room table is now littered with amateur landscape paintings.  One of the girlies was inspired by a book about miniatures and is dabbling in clay too.  Yep, those are also drying on the dining room table.  Blossom3 received a fleece tie kit for her birthday, so she's been plugging away at that.  It's like the Rugged Mountain Man says, "Crafting is a winter sport!"

I can't reiterate enough how much that 7:30 nightly all hands on deck cleanup is making a difference in our lives.  I feel like our days have been more productive because we're spending our time on the tasks of this day, rather than always catching up from yesterday.  Even the Rugged Mountain Man noticed.  I also rewarded the Blossoms with a token or two for their prolonged efforts in keeping our home tidy.

I'm looking forward to a pleasant weekend.  Tomorrow I may get to learn how to butcher a pig.  Ironically, I'm (strangely) excited about possibly adding this new skill to my arsenal.  We'll have some more family and Daddy time today too.  What a blessing family is!

Keep the faith, friends!

Dominique

Winter Fun

During Christmas break, this mama surprised her Blossoms with a fun little project.  

First, we cut the graham crackers according to google. 

Then, we whipped up a batch of royal icing.

We assembled the little graham cracker cottages and let them harden for an hour.

Then, the real fun began.  

Raid the candy basket, pull out the goodies I'd bought for this project 

and get decorating!

Every Blossom decorated her house a bit differently.  

That should come as no surprise.  They are delightfully diverse in personality, gifts and preferences.

That diversity brings such a fullness in our fellowship every day.  

They all agreed on this project though;

super fun!!! But, really not all that tasty.  

We love winter fun!

Dominique

Somethings

If we had tea today, I might share a whole bunch of "somethings" to go along with the "somethings" from your every day life that you'd share with me.  Why not brew a "cuppa" and enjoy these somethings with me?

Something that's working:
Abbie over at M is for Mama shared a fantastic tip that is helping peace to reign in our home.  She instituted 7:30 nightly clean-ups that involve everyone.  I've always done a nightly clean-up, but like Abbie, I'd fallen into the trap of believing that it was all on me, with only a smattering of Blossom help.  I'd be grouchy every night, discouraged at how hard we'd worked all day and how I couldn't get it all done to start again in the morning.  Yep, we make big messes here, but we've got lots of minions to help clean up.  Every night.  At 7:30.  And they lived happily ever after.  Plus, I've taken it a step further.  If we happen to be busy at 7:30 pm, I schedule the alarm for an appropriate time to clean up before we all hit the hay for the night.  #itworks and #itsabeautifulthing



Something that's hard:
Homeschooling is hard.  By that, I mean that it takes a lot of steady, gritty, sweaty, hard plodding to make good progress.  Right now, one of my Blossoms just really would rather daydream instead of work.  What should take her til 1:30 pm in the afternoon, has become an all day process.  We're doing mama reminders.  We've done 10 minute fresh air breaks.  We rearranged the school room to help keep a busy little sister not quite always in the line of sight, but basically, we're just plowing through.  At some point, you gotta learn that the quickest way to get schoolwork done, is to do it.  It isn't always fun, but not everything in life is fun.  I came through this stage successfully, as did some of my other Blossoms, so I'm optimistic that we'll weather it well.

Something exciting:
Blossom3 and I have a mommy date at the ballet coming up.  I'm super excited to see Sleeping Beauty with her.  Based on how well Swan Lake and Cinderella went over, this should pan out to be a delightful and inspiring evening. 

Something lovely:
I'm totally digging the scarlet carnations given to us after a friend's wedding.  It's so pleasant to see the splash of vivid color they bring to the dining room table and kitchen island. 

Something funny:
At previously mentioned wedding, the Blossoms were given peacock feathers.  This morning I arrived in the school room to discover quite the calligraphy in progress.  They'd soaked markers in water to detract the "ink" and then used said "ink" to dip their quills into.  I couldn't really argue with the fact that peacock quills have gotta be the "glammest" writing instrument ever.

Well, friends, thanks for sitting down to have a "cuppa" with me.  Have a terrific weekend.

Dominique

Ugly Ted

I heard Jake barking a different sort of bark the other day, so I hurried to investigate.  

(Reason #947 to have a dog)

When I stuck my head out the door, I could hear Blossom3 sprinting up the driveway and out of the woods, screaming, "A BEAR, A BEAR, A BEAR!!!!!!"

I was sprinting then, at least until I could get all the details and ascertain if anyone was in danger.  

The Blossoms stayed pretty cool.  They hustled themselves and their sisters out of the area. 

This young bear had been treed, most likely by Jake.  

We'd recently been studying hibernation and estivation, so it was fascinating to observe a bear up close.  

Black bears don't technically hibernate.  They go into a torpid state.  

This bear likely ventured out because he was too itchy, from the mange that he's battling.

After snapping pictures and enjoying this spectacle with our neighbors, we reported him to the Game Commission.  Mange is highly contagious and can easily spread to other animals.

There have been a few other sightings since that evening, so we'll see if "Ugly Ted" gets trapped and treated by the Game Commission.

That's life here in the Hollow.

The Gift That Does Not Keep on Giving

I'm a big fan of getting our hands dirty while learning stuff, which is ironic, 

considering I'm not a big fan of messes.

Maybe I should clarify; I don't like the kind of messes that "keep on giving."

Like play dough!  No matter how hard I try to corral it, 

it invades my house and shows up in the cuffs of my skinny jeans. (????)  

However, when my brother announced at the end of Christmas gift-opening, that he and his lovely Eryn had purchased all the supplies for magnetic slime, I was just as excited as the Blossoms were.  

Though I was trying to be kinda "adult" about it.  

Sorta.

Apparently, this particularly concoction is made up of liquid starch, Elmer's glue and iron oxide.  

It can also stain clothing, so we put everybody in t-shirts and got right down to our magnetic slime business.  

It was not difficult to clean up.  The table wiped clean when we were done and I haven't had any trouble with staining their clothing.  Go figure.

The best way to make this slime work is mix the ingredients with a plastic knife and then, dig your hands in and squish it.  

And then, squish it some more.

And throw in a healthy dose of stretching too.

Perhaps you can plop it a bit.

Then, definitely go back to squishing it.  We found that to be the most effective method.

Uncle Zach decided that the only thing cooler than magnetic slime was GLITTERY magnetic slime.

He doused that slime with enough glitter to adequately protect his position forever as World's Coolest Uncle.  

We were a bit disappointed that this slime wasn't as strongly magnetic as we were hoping, though it definitely demonstrated magnetic properties.  

I was pretty sure the glitter made up for the weak magnetism.

The Blossoms didn't seem disappointed at all.  Blossom4 played with her slime again that night when we got home... at about 10:00 at night.  

She's the girlie who loves hand held concoctions.  

She was just coming off a streak of homemade peppermint play dough (what was I thinking???) 

but I must say, slime is welcome here any day.  

It doesn't sprout legs and follow you around the house.

Dominique