Our School Room Revealed!

I am FINALLY ready to show you our school room! I've been working feverishly the past two days and finally have it all ready to go ... with less than 2 days to spare before we begin school! haha!

Please, please, please bear with me as there are a TON of photos!

Our school room is part of our finished basement ... so when you come down the stairs this is the view of the room ...
Our table area ...

The poster wall ...

My fave new poster! I plan to have some sort of prize at the end of each month for girls who have consistently good attitudes with school work.

Artwork that the girls painted a couple years ago ...

Our white board area ...

A rough schedule - not that it will be followed to a T every day - but at least the girls have a rough idea of what comes next each day.

Some bins on the wall so they can put all their completed work in them.

Our workbox system ... purple for one girl, green for the other ...

I made labels and had them laminated.

Each night I will attach them with velcro ...

Oh wait, maybe THIS is my fave poster!! {the outside of the craft closet}

Inside of craft closet ...

I like having everything labeled!

On top of the craft closet ... paints, paint brushes and a tin full of my white board markers ...

Bulletin boards - one for each kid so we can display their work.

Mommy's "workbox" ... LOL, mostly just a place to keep my supplies ...

The computer table ... kind of Mom's space I guess ...

This is our old computer, it's not even online. We'll be using it for educational CD-ROMs and writing/typing papers and stuff like that. It's probably a GOOD thing it's not online so I will stay focused with the girls and not be on the net all day!

Our September snack calendar, more on this later!

My metal bins - I want to add vinyl letters that say 'READ' and 'RETURN' and use them for library books.

New globe, new {to us} microscope and cute little sign from my friend {just like our blog, it says 'Another day in paradise'}.

Chalkboard and the other side of it is a white board - really nice for when the girls want to write out a spelling list or something like that ...

Looking back towards the stairs ...

Dr. Suess alphabet letters ...

A white board calendar, 50 states posters {I love the blue one, you can wipe it off! the girls have already been using it!}, weather poster and book list poster.

Weather calendar I got for free!

A poster for recording the books we've read ...

My two IKEA bookshelves ... I LOVE these things! I had one for years but since I'm a scrapbooker, reader and homeschool Mom I needed MORE space for all my stuff so we got another last year. And they're pretty full!

Vinyl lettering that my Father in law did for me years ago ...

The top row holds most of my scrapbook supplies, the 2nd row has mostly albums, the 3rd row is mostly school books and the last row is mostly novels that are mine or my hubby's ...

On the table we have a small bin for pencils, scissors, and stuff like that ... and the girls love bright flowers!

On my table I have 2 bins, one has the girls school workbooks so I can easily find them each night and pull out their work for the following day. The other bin has all the teacher's guides and test keys. {again, so I can access them easily}

I bought 2 of these lamps {cheap} at Walmart this year. The lighting downstairs is overhead but just didn't seem bright enough, so far these 2 lamps are helping ...

And that's all! This is the end of our school room tour! Hope you enjoyed! Now that it's all done and ready I'm more excited to get started! Tomorrow is our last official day of summer and then it's back to the books on Monday!

Yard Sale

Sooo, yesterday I had a yard sale. It was sort of a last minute thing.

See I have this thought process, bear with me as I try to explain my logic! We will be starting our new homeschool year in just over a week. I like to be organized, but I'll be honest, my life gets busy and many times organization just falls to the wayside.

So for some reason I feel like our homeschool days and routines go soooo much better when my home is in order. Make sense? Because I'm the type of person that gets easily distracted by a project. If I get an idea in my head like 'hmmm, I think that couch should be moved over there', or 'I think I'd like to paint that closet'. I will dwell on that thought until it gets done. That makes focusing my time and attention on school stuff that much harder.

Still following me? OK, moving on. So we live in a fairly small house and it just becomes much too cluttered for my liking. And as I was getting things prepared for our school year I was coming up with more and more and more 'junk' that we needed to clear out of here.

I knew most of it didn't have much value, after all, junk is junk, right? But I also figured it was worth a try to sell it before dumping it at the Goodwill.

In comes the YARD SALE idea. I decided we'd do 'EVERYTHING'S A DOLLAR' - just to keep it simple. One thing I hate about hosting a yard sale is debating with people over the cost of things. Making everything the same price was so much easier! We also decided to do a bake sale. After all, when you're out yard saling for the day you could use a little treat and a cold drink, right? So we made cupcakes and brownies and had a cooler full of soda and water.

Now I know you're dying to know how things turned out .... well, we made a whopping $22!!! haha ... I've never made so little at a yard sale, ever! But it was a good day, beautiful weather and we met some really nice people who stopped by. And it was a good experience for the girls who were my helpers throughout the day.

As soon we decided to close up shop we loaded everything that was left into boxes and into the back of my truck. It completely FILLED my whole SUV! We drove it all down to the Goodwill and dropped it off. So, even though I didn't make much money, it feels SOOOOOO good to have all that stuff GONE from my house!

And now, with a clutter free, organized home, I am finally ready to begin a new school year with my daughters!

LOVE THIS!

If I had my child to raise all over again,
I’d build self-esteem first, and the house later.
I’d finger-paint more, and point the finger less.
I would do less correcting and more connecting.
I’d take my eyes off my watch, and watch with my eyes.
I’d take more hikes and fly more kites.
I’d stop playing serious, and seriously play.
I would run through more fields and gaze at more stars.
I’d do more hugging and less tugging.
~Diane Loomans, from “If I Had My Child To Raise Over Again”


Don't you love it too???!!!

Back to School Blog Hop - My Students!

Today I'm sharing in the Back to School Blog Hop - this week it's all about our students! Yay! My favorite 'subject' to talk about!

I have been slowly but surely getting things ready for our coming school year. I will readily admit that we are trying to embrace every last moment of summer that we can at this point. So although I've been getting things ready - we are still not quite ready to start yet. We plan to start school on Monday, Aug. 30th. Until then, we're enjoying these last 2 weeks of summer fun!

That is why I missed the blog hop last week, because our school room is not quite ready for having photos taken of it! And that is why this week I don't have the student photos I had hoped to have. I wanted to take the girls and take some nice 'portrait' type photos - but sadly, no time - too busy having fun! So I decided to choose two of my fave photos of them from this summer. We'll be sure to take first day of school photos when the time comes!


This is Hope. She will be in 4th grade this year. This will be her 4th year of homeschooling {she went to K in public school} and she is a great student! As you can see by her picture she is NOT shy, she loves making new friends and trying new things. She loves to read, play soccer and swim. She loves music and is learning the piano. Actually, there isn't much she doesn't love - she's a kid who would try almost anything and has a lot of interests. She's not so keen on math, but prefers all things related to words and language {just like her Mama!}.

This is Joy. She will be in 2nd grade this year - it will be her 3rd year of homeschooling {we started homeschooling her in K}. Joy is full of life. She loves to smile and giggle and laugh. She loves to swim and ride her bike. Math comes more easily to her, but she is learning to be a better reader and finding books that she enjoys reading. She's definitely my shy girl, she takes a while to warm up in new situations. But once she's comfortable she's really very chatty and charming. She's still my snuggle bug and would snuggle in my lap all day if she could. She loves doing the subjects that we all do together like science and history.

And here is a fave picture of my hubby and I from this summer. One of the main reasons we started this whole homeschooling journey was because my hubby was working in the evenings and we didn't want the girls to be in school all day, then him leave for work and have them never get to see one another. But now hubby works mostly day shifts and we still love homeschooling so much that we have no immediate plans to change what we're doing!

I know it's not something that every family would choose to do, but for us it's a wonderful choice and works so well for our family life. I'm thankful that Bob is so helpful and supportive in this journey. He doesn't do much of the hands on teaching stuff, but he's very helpful in keeping up with the house, yard, errands, etc so that I can have more time to focus on working with the girls. I couldn't have asked for a better partner to go through this life with!

Click here to go to the blog hop and see more submissions!

Muffins that taste like Donuts.

I kid you not.
I saw this recipe a few weeks ago on the Pioneer Woman blog and just KNEW I had to try it.

These things are the real deal friends. They really DO taste like those heavy, cake donuts that are covered in cinnamon sugar. The only downfall - shock of all shocks my kids did NOT like them! They each took a bite and said 'I don't like that kind of donut!' Guess what? More for Mama!

Click here to go to the recipe! Enjoy!!

PS. be sure to save some extra melted butter for drizzling over them just before eating ... mmmmmmmmm!

QUICK - free photo book!

Don't even tell me you don't scrapbook, can't scrapbook or don't have time. I have an offer you simply CAN'T refuse. A FREE photo book from Picaboo. I figured there might be some type of catch but sat down and ordered mine tonight and I assure you - there's NO catch!

I chose about 80 or so photos from a couple of events and it took me a little over an hour to get it all put together in the book. Picaboo is super easy and user-friendly. You can customize your pages, colors, backgrounds, layouts, fonts, everything!

All I had to pay out of pocket was $8.99 for shipping. Soooo worth it if you ask me!

Click Here for all the details from The Mom Creative blog where I first heard about it. Don't delay though - this deal is only good until the 31st of August!!

Dogs

Here are a couple new pictures of our two dogs .... I swear they both climbed up there and fell asleep side by side without our coaxing. They were so cute lying there together!
Here is our sweet, old, 11 year old Casey. She's moving MUCH slower lately, showing her age a little more every day. But she's still very cute and a real sweet heart.

And here is Trouble ... I mean Gracie. Heeheehee ... she has a lot of nicknames, mostly associated with the words 'trouble' and 'scoundrel' ... but she really is very sweet too. She's about 7 months old and growing taller and taller. She's almost as tall as Casey now, but still very thin. For the most part she has gotten better at learning the way things work around here - but she still needs some obedience training to work on some things.

Sometimes they drive us nuts ... but most of the time we sure love these two sweet pups!

Vacation Bible School 2010!

This past week our church hosted Vacation Bible school - we have it every year the first week in August. Our church does an AMAZING job thanks to lots and lots of wonderful volunteers.

This year the theme was EGYPT and it was sooo cool! My girls were both there and had the time of their lives. I was the crafts leader for the 6th/7th graders and we had a great time in our group too.

A few fun/funny things to note ....

See these masks below? My oldest daughter's group made these one night and were told that one mask would be chosen to be the winning mask and be in the skit on the last night. My daughter said 'I really hope they choose my mask!' - well guess what? They did! She was super excited! Hers is the one in the bottom middle with the blue feather on the chin.

Here is a cute pic of my youngest with one of her best friends.

And here is my smiley, happy oldest daughter ...

On Wednesday night we had 'water night' - they bring in big inflatable slides and the kids have a blast. They also serve cotton candy and it's just a really fun night. So I was sitting in the Bible lesson with my group when my Mom came by {my Mom was leading the kitchen crew all week} and said 'come here I have a story to tell you!'

Apparently my Mom was outside near the cotton candy machine when this little girl said to her 'I've already had FOUR cotton candys!!' SO my Mom was like 'uh oh, your Mom sure won't appreciate that when you won't go to sleep tonight.' and the girl said 'that's OK, I'm sleeping over at Miss Kathy's house tonight!!' -- yep, it was one of my daughter's best friends who was going to spend the night at our house .... below you can see her happy, sugared- up expression! hahahaha! {Side note - the girls DID sleep that night, I think they went to bed around midnight!}

Here is a pic of the huge, inflatable slip and slide!

On the ride home each night I loved listening to the girls tell all kinds of fun stories about the things they did. They were really sad to see VBS end last night!

There were about a dozen kids who accepted Christ this week which is amazing and definitely what it's all about!

The kids also brought in money to help support a missionary who is living and working in Africa and the money was going to help some orphaned kids so they could have shoes, school clothes and supplies. All together they raised over $1,200 for the orphans!!! Last night as we were driving home my oldest was gushing about how much money was raised and she said 'I am SO happy for those orphans that so much money was raised!' -- I love that she gets that VBS is more than just fun and games and that she has such a kind and giving heart.

All in all it was an amazing week. I will admit that I'm exhausted. I came home on the train on Monday night just in time to get to church for VBS, I've been battling a yucky cold and sore throat all week and it's very tiring getting home at 9 or 9:30 every night. But despite all that it's SOOO worth it and I can't wait till next year!

Sorry for the lack of pictures .... I was so busy all week that I didn't take ANY and had to rely on the photographers at church for the above images!