Halloween

I have a love/hate relationship with Halloween.  Usually, at the beginning of the month, I get excited about the thought of decorating, and dressing up the kids.  I even juggle with the idea of dressing up myself.  I think of the costumes that some of my friends and family come up with.  They are truly talented at dressing up!  I'm serious!  Its a talent, that I wish I had!  The creativity is inspiring!

So, while I did not personally dress up... or put up decorations other than what Bunny and Bug hung up from craft day, I headed down the steep trail of making the girl's costumes.

*SIGH*

I HATE spending money on cheap costumes that probably cost no more than $5 to make.  I just couldn't justify spending that money, when we needed to focus on more important things...like food storage.  So, instead, I found some really pretty and inexpensive fabric.  Thus the project began.

Bunny (Big T) was an angel, and she knew she wanted to be an angel for months.  So, I thought up what her skirt would look like, I drew it out, measured her, and sewed.  It was fun to make...and it only took me a few hours!  She loves it and wants to wear it every day.  The nice thing is, it looks good enough to wear to church!  Yaay!  The cost you might ask?  Probably about $5 or so.  Her halo alone took me an hour to make!  Its a good thing that I decided to pass on making her wings...although, I had an amazing vision that dealt with white feather boas, and wire with tulle.  But I woke up from that dream real fast!  I think the pink wings give her great color for her costume anyway!  I don't think the end result was so bad.  She sure loved it!

It was hard to get Bug to hold still long enough to take this picture.  So this is the
best I could get!  She wanted to run off to trunk-or-treat!

Bug (Little H).  She cracks me up.  Every year, she starts out saying that she wants to be something cute and pretty like her big sister.  I mean... who doesn't want to be just like their big sister?  Here's the kicker.  Bug usually changes her mind no less that 20 times about what she wants to be, and she usually lands on being something scary or sinister.  This year, she skipped the cutsie costume idea all together, landing directly on the runway that was her mummy costume.  Originally, she was going to be a mummy from a little story she started to write.. the pink mummy, Emma.  But in the end, she didn't want to wear the pink skirt that I had made for her costume...but it doubles as a great church skirt!

Anyway, have you ever tried to make a mummy costume for your child?  A mother who wraps up her child's every limb, leaving just her eyes and mouth exposed is a truly phenomenal mother!  I started down that road, and again, I woke up from that dream real fast!  So, instead of wrapping up her legs, I just made her a rag skirt to wear over her pink leggings.  She really liked her end result though...so that is a plus!

Puppy (Baby K) couldn't care less about any of it (the nickname Puppy, is one I've been using for Baby K since he was a new born.  It just stuck...so it isn't completely circumstantial!).  I mean, he is only 1 1/2 or so... right?  The choice for him was between a puppy, or Superman.  I chose for him.  He was the puppy!  And he made a cute puppy at that.  He HATED the makeup that I tried to put on his face.  I had to finally just give up on it resembling a spotted dog.  Oh well!  He wore his squeaky shoes, so he turned heads everywhere he walked.  He caught on very quickly to the whole "I walk up to these people and they give me candy, which I put in my bucket."  He would just stand there, looking at them passively while they cooed over him, and finally gave him candy.  Then he was off!  He didn't care which direction.  He's a runner... not a walker.  Its run or sit.  Anyway, it was really cute to watch...and now I'm wishing I got it on video to experience as well.  He is so funny!  Come to think of it, all three of my kids crack me up, all in their own way.  Funny funny kids!

Here's the "gang" before we headed over to the church.

Hoss got off of work and over to the church just in time to eat the chile from our ward's chile cook off.  Then we trunk-or-treated in our church parking lot, and finally, Hoss drove us to the really nice trick-or-treating neighborhoods (He knows the city and the neighborhoods better than I do, since he drives them everyday)!  What kid doesn't want to get a full-sized candy bar!  I just hope they can hide them from daddy!  That will be the trick!

Puppy got to have one of his suckers.  Every time we go to a store, he sets his sights on those big 24 hour lollypops.  He always cries out for one.  I never let him have one...because let's face it, they are huge, and its a mess waiting to happen.  So he was very pleased when I handed him this one.  He finished it completely, then snuck a candy bar and some smarties while I was cleaning up.

All in all, Halloween was a success on our end.  I'm sure glad its over!  Now onward and upward to the best time of the year!

I didn't take pictures of our carved pumpkins...but that's no matter.  A pumpkin is a pumpkin.  I'll post later about our traditional pumpkin seed roasting, and pumpkin roasting to puree and freeze!  Yaay for pumpkin all year long!


















Today I had to initiate mandatory naps for everyone.  I'm thinking its due to the sugar hang over that the kids were on.  They were so tired this morning, that I knew they weren't going to make it through the day.  Its funny, I've heard of sugar doing funny things to your dreams if you eat too much before bed.  I think I was a victim of such things.  Last night, I dreamt of a freakishly scary clown chasing me around the church.  Then my dream morphed.  I was then running from some psycho on a train.  I had to hide in the hills.  It was frightening. :)



Sincerely,

Evelyn Curtis


How did your Halloween Celebrations go?  Any fun experiences?  Bad dreams?  Tummy aches?

Day Four of the Creation

Before we started studying the Creation, we read the scriptures for the exact account.

First we read it in Genesis, then we read it in the book of Moses, and finally, the book of Abraham.  All three are essentially the same, but I wanted the girls to be able to know that with the scriptures, there are multiple witnesses of the events, prophesies, and teachings written.

Since we are studying each day more in depth, including science, I decided that we needed to read at least one of the accounts, for that day before we begin.  Both girls love reading the scriptures, and they are very good at pronouncing the difficult words.  I can't think of a better way to become a strong reader.

Baby K was learning sorting.

Day four, God divided the day from the night, and created the sun to rule the day, and the moon to rule the night.  He also created the stars.  The scriptures say, "and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years;" (Moses 2: 14).  A great opportunity to study the seasons, and time, right?  Well, next week, we are going to create our own sun dial.  I'll post that in a separate post.

 So I found a website that had a diagram of the Earth's rotation and revolution around the sun (that is the diagram that I drew on my marker board -pictured below-, but I had to erase part of it before I thought of taking a picture..so visit the link to see the full diagram).  Along with the diagram, I drew the four seasons that we usually experience.

My Diagram

I taught them about how the earth is on the axis, and it spins.  One rotation taking a full day.  Then we talked about how the earth revolves or orbits the sun, and it takes 365 days aka 1 year to make it all the way around the sun.  We then discussed that the earth is positioned at different angles toward the sun as it revolves... which causes the seasons to change.  You can see it in the diagram.

I needed a way to show them what it means to spin on the axis, and luckily, the Lord is on my side, because He fed me the idea that I needed to get the point across... in a fun way!

What you need:

1 apple
1 chopstick

Insert the chopstick through the center of the apple.  I suggest pushing it through from the top side, across the core and out the opposite bottom side.  That way, you can see the differences around your "earth" as you pretend to make the apple revolve around the "sun."  In this case, we used a trick-or-treat pumpkin to represent the sun.  Spin the apple on the chopstick, while you make it revolve around your sun.  

Baby K saw the apple on a stick, and he insisted that he have it.  So, we made up a fun Creation Day Four snack!  Apple on a stick.  Big T, and Little H both got one too!   

We finished up our lesson with vocabulary words, that both girls wrote 3 times.

Fun lesson!

Now it is on to sewing Little H's Halloween costume!  The kid's costumes are a surprise!  Don't worry, I'll post pictures!

Sincerley,

Evelyn   

Day Three of the Creation

We are plugging away nicely here with the Creation.  I suppose we are taking our time with it.  Fun activities here and there, pointing to the glorious world we live in, the animals, the plants, everything.  The following are the things I happened to remember to get pictures of!

Day three of the Creation, God divided the dry land and the water, naming the dry land earth, and the water, seas.  He also caused all of the plants, trees, and seed yielding herbs to come forth out of the earth.

Lady Bug coloring her earth with its land and seas,
and writing the information she's learned.

Bunny (Big T) and Lady Bug (Little H) helped come up with our vocabulary list that went with the topic.

We learned some fun ways to draw trees, and we made a list of some plants and trees that grow.

Source: iheartprintsandpatterns.blogspot.com via Evelyn on Pinterest

I like going with the flow of the lesson, and I have that we should go out of the house in hunt for tree leaves.  We have an awesome book on trees that my wonderful Aunt Janet gave me when I graduated from high school.

*Side story:  Aunt Janet visited us in Idaho a lot.  I always loved spending time with her, as she was so much fun, and I think we are kindred spirits.  I had a news paper route that I worked from about the age of 7 or 8 to 14 or so.  When she would visit, she would come with me.  I always took my time, playing along the way.  An hour (walking) job, usually took me 2 or more hours.  I remember her looking at this really huge tree.  The trunk had to be 6 feet in diameter!  She remarked on how big it was, and mentioned that it had to be at least 100 years old.  I was fascinated.  I think that sparked something in me, because from then on, I paid attention to trees.  I love trees.  I guess, that is in thanks to her!  So when I graduated, she must have noticed that my love of trees lived strong, because she sent me this book, that I've referred to many times!  It is packed full of information about all of the different trees, with ways to tell what they are by the bark, leaves, and shape.*

So I thought we'd use that book to identify the leaves we find, based on the descriptions and pictures.  As we looked them up, we will string them up to hang somewhere as a fall decoration!  Fun fun!  Now we just need a free morning to do it!

Our kitchen is our best workspace.  It just goes to show, homeschooling in a tiny house is doable!

Homemade Pizza Sauce

One day, a few months ago, I had planned meals for the week, and shopped for those ingredients.  On one of those days, I had planned to make pizza.  As I got the dough rolled out then slipped it in the oven for the "pre-bake," I realized that I had failed to purchase any pizza sauce.

I've made my own dough before, but I had never made my own sauce.  So I went to the computer, and I googled, "How to make pizza sauce from scratch."  I looked at a few different recipes, and of course they all had tomato.  I was short on time and was limited on the extra ingredients needed.  So I scoured the ingredients I did have, and I came up with the following.

Homemade Pizza Sauce  

1  Roasted red pepper      

1  small can tomato sauce

Blend the two ingredients together in a blender, or in a food processor.  The particular bottle of roasted red peppers that I have has seasonings and such in it.  It seems like it has about 3 full red peppers in it.  I did my best at pulling out the equivalent of 1 pepper.  Then I stored the rest for later.

Spread the mixture on top of the pizza dough.  I usually buy the Pillsbury roll out dough when I don't want to spend so much time and effort making the dough (I like my pizzas to be one of those quick meals).  Add your toppings, and cheese, and bake as directed.

 I forgot to take a picture of the pizza after I baked it...it was quickly devoured by the hungry children for lunch today!

The sauce has a little zing to it, and it tastes so great!  We all love it!  Even Baby K!  And he is the most picky of them all!

It was a good lunch for us today!

Sincerely,

Evelyn