Author Archives: Maria

June Harvest

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As a part of my plan to try to simplify things in my life, I am no longer weighing out all of my harvest…. Though the anal side of me really wants to know exactly how many pounds of summer squash I picked, and how many ounces of herbs, it’s just not a priority.  So, I’ve let it go.  I did, however, write down what I’ve harvested this month.

June Harvest

  • Lettuce (now bolting)
  • Basil
  • Parsley
  • Edible Flowers
  • Garlic
  • Onions
  • Berries (Blue, Black Raspberry, and Red Raspberry)
  • Peas
  • Summer Squashes
  • Nectarines
  • 336 eggs

I also put up 11 quarts of Kale Soup  (and we still have stuff in the pantry from last year!  YAY!)

What have you harvested?

The big 7!

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This evening, my baby girl turned seven!!!  I can’t believe she’s so big!  Seven seems like a major number for some reason.  She’s had a wonderful week of parties, cakes, outings, and fun, and it doesn’t look like that will stop until next week!  It feels so wonderful to be a mother to this amazing young lady!!

Re-evaluating

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We’ve had a great spring here on our land.  Things have felt really productive.  But, I have to tell you, we are beat!  I wake up in the morning, jump out of bed and get going.  Laundry, taking care of the animals, garden care, kitchen clean up, etc. all comes before breakfast.  Most nights I spend preparing for Kaia’s schooling, sewing, cleaning, or researching one thing or another on the internet.  Weekends we do chores around the land (and we usually don’t get done with our list of ‘to do’s).  I’m not complaining.  I’m simply stating how things are right now.  But I’m starting to feel resentful that we have very little down time, fun time, or time to play with the kids.  We have been working towards this life and lifestyle for years.  We now have our own land (25 acres!), our own house (built with our own hands and very earth friendly), we have chickens and gardens and orchards and bees and cottages.  And each of those things requires upkeep.  Well… we are tired!  We are re-evaluating this life style.  We want to live more gently, but this is definitely not more simple.  We don’t have time or energy for those bonfires and potlucks with friends that we wanted.  We have little time for travel and very little time to relax and read.  Having Heidi here helps tremendously, but she has been gone for much of 2010, and we won’t always have her here.  So, we are taking a look at our life and trying to decide what things we truly desire in it, and trying to figure out how to have those things and keep a simple and earth friendly life.  There may be some changes in store…. we’ll see.

Toby's new shirt

garlic and onion harvest

veggie gardens

more veggie gardens

Kaia got some goggles for swimming… Leif stole them!

Yes, the goggles work more effectively if you stick your tongue out.

Sumerian Princess

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Kaia is really enjoying the projects we are doing from Ancient Egyptians and Their Neighbors!

I have to admit…. I’d kinda like one of these head dresses for myself!

Tomorrow is her last official day of first grade!  Wow!  Calling her a second grader just makes her sound so old!!

I can’t wait to start on our summer study units.  We start mythology next week and I’m still trying to find a little bow and arrow so she can dress up like Athena and practice archery 🙂

Weekend projects

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The 2 year old roof.

Spots are filling in pretty well.  I think I’ll give it one more year and then plant a few more things if needed.

I absolutely love all the color on the roof right now.  It’s like a patchwork quilt!

And the yard is coming along, too.  After 2 years of having huge piles of dirt and rubble in the yard, we finally had it leveled.  Now I have the perfect spot for my berry garden!!!  Yum Yummy!!

We also put up a bear fence for the beehives that are coming this week.  I finally painted the chicken coop… I just need to trim it in yellow and put some color on the windows… green or blue maybe?

I also made myself a Medicino sundress.  I love this pattern!  It’s so simple and such a cute dress!  Kaia wanted to pose in her dress with me.

Kaia has one more week of ‘official’ school left.  We will continue with math and reading through the summer, and add in whatever else she is interested in.  We are definitely going to do a few lessons on Greek Mythology!

Shoe Fetish

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I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time picking up shoes around the house and it’s all because of this guy:

My Little Dude!

He seems to have a bit of a shoe fetish.  From the moment he wakes up til he hits the bed at night, he usually has a shoe near or on him.  No, he’s not walking yet and it’s not his shoes that he’s playing with.  It’s everyone elses.

No, he doesn’t discriminate.  Big shoes, little shoes, he’ll even wear heels.

It’s no wonder why we are getting very little homeschooling done these days.  He’s just too entertaining!


Our weekend in Georgia

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We had a wonderful 4 day weekend visiting my sister in Atlanta!  We spent lots of time seeing the sites and just catching up.

Our first full day there we went to the zoo.

This poor giraffe really wanted to eat the trees that were just out of reach.  Can you see its tongue reaching out?

This elephant was having fun cooling himself off by splashing mud up on its back.

When we got to the panda area, this one got up from its nap, came over and sat right in front of us to have a little snack.

Of course there were rides:

And silliness:

And exhaustion:

The next day, we hit the Aquarium… the largest one in the world!  Really cool place!!

Kaia pet the sting rays and the sharks!

They have a tunnel that goes right through the largest tank of fish!  REALLY COOL to walk underneath basking sharks and other huge fish!!

See the people in this picture below?  That gives an idea of the scale of this tank.  The tunnel was about 4 times what you see in this picture.

Check out this manta ray!!!  Fabulous!

There was also a beautiful coral reef display!  I LOVED the colors of the fish.  I think this pink one with the purple square on it is a Square Spot Anthias. Sooo Coool!

Then there was more exhaustion!

We really had a blast!

Of course, we are decompressing this week, and homeschooling has been very light!  But we are mostly wrapping things up for the end of the year, so that’s just fine by me!

Thoughts on homeschooling

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One of the things I was worried about when deciding to homeschool Kaia is that she would feel that she missed out on some of the fun things that big schools offer like going to school games, prom, and year books.  Now, I laugh about those things, but back then, they were a huge deal.  I’m lucky to live in an area with a big homeschooling community.  There is a homeschool yearbook, homeschool prom, and homeschool athletic leagues, and if Kaia and Leif chose to participate in those… great.  But in an effort to cover all of my bases, Kaia and I decided to create school t-shirts.  First we had to decide on the school name:  Green Meadow School.  Then we had to create a mascot: a flying unicorn with a shape-shifting mermaid on it’s back.  Once that was done, we knew that the motto had to be “Where flying unicorns and shape-shifting mermaids RULE!”.  The school colors are “blue and rainbow, with a hint of gold” (yes, that is exactly what Kaia said).  We may create a new shirt each year… maybe we’ll change the mascot and colors, too.  We’ll see.  But, now, she can show her school spirit and be proud of her school when people ask her about her shirt!

Here is our family school picture:

No, wait, that’s not it….

Here it is:

OY!  It’s so hard to take a picture of all of us being still at the same time in the same place.  Let’s try this one:

Much better 🙂

Biltmore Homeschool Festival

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Last week, were were able to enjoy a day at the Biltmore House during their Homeschool Festival.  They put this on twice a year and it’s lots of fun.  Their focus this year was Farms, Flowers, and Food.  We made terrariums, listened to a stories about farming, learned to make peanut butter, made leaf prints, and lots more.  But my absolute favorite part was stomping grapes!  We all got in the grape bucket and tried our turn at making wine, even Leif!  Then we made prints of our feet (the prints are actually made with purple ink).

It also happened to be during the time of their Festival of Flowers, so we were able to enjoy that too!

Symmetry

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Kaia and I have been working on the concept of symmetry in math for the last few days.  We’ve looked at the symmetry of shapes, objects, foods, etc.  We talked about how our bodies are symmetrical (one arm on each side, one leg…), but thought it would be fun to see what it would look like if our faces were really completely symmetrical.

I took a picture of Kaia (she hammed it up) and then altered it so that we could see what she would actually look like if the right half of her face was exactly like the left (and vice-versa).

Here is the original picture:

Here is her right side.

Here is her left:

Her favorite part was seeing the design that her hair makes.  It would be neat to make something like this with an object from nature… maybe a tree, and look at the symmetry of the branches.

A new dress

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I love, love, love this fabric and how Kaia’s new dress turned out!  It’s a really simple pattern by Heather Ross, and it was also my first time working with elastic thread (fun!).  The pattern is actually for adults so I altered it for Kaia.  Isn’t it sweet!  I’m definitely going to be making more, for her and me!

The first pose was my idea.  Kaia then decided she wanted to do something a little more sweet and innocent:

Family Postcard Swap

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You HAVE to check this out!  It looks like so much fun!  Kaia is always talking about how she wants to get more mail and I tell her she has to send some to get some back.  Well, now’s her chance!

I use to have lots of pen pals when I was a kid.  Then computers happened and most of the snail mailing stopped.  But there’s something so satisfying about getting mail that you can touch, feel, and even smell.  Hey, maybe we’ll even get each others names!!

Go sign up!

Field trip!

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One thing I really like about homeschooling is going on field trips!  (OK, I know that I could go on field trips even if Kaia was in public school, but it just seems like more fun when we get to design and plan them ourselves!)  She just finished up her solar system and prehistory studies.  So, we headed to the Raleigh/Durham area to visit friends and play!

The first day, we met up with some other homeschooling friends and headed to the NC Museum of Life and Science.  The little ladies enjoyed looking at the butterflies in the butterfly exhibit.

Driving the boats in their wind exploration exhibit.

Climbing on the dinosaurs.

Digging through the rubble for fossils.  (Leif especially enjoyed tasting the fossils!)

On day two, we went to the Morehead Planetarium to see a show!  We all enjoyed relaxing in the reclining chairs and watching the stars above in their huge dome auditorium.  After, we spent hours playing and exploring at the NC Botanical Gardens.  Leif made some great moves on their life size chess set.

Day three took us on a tour of the NC Museum of Natural Sciences.  We went specifically for the Megalodon exhibit, but enjoyed walking through the whole thing.  Leif said ‘hi’ to the little turtle swimming back and forth.

Kaia heard the secrets of the dinosaurs.

And, of course, there were lots of smiles along the way!

Kaia, who has always been a very cautious little lady, decided she wanted to take a ride on ‘uncle’ Mark’s bike!  I was really proud of her!  She’s usually one who would prefer to sit back and watch rather than participate.  So for her to take this step was a pretty big thing!

Off she goes!

Leif enjoyed some riding of his own!

And a little exploration of daddy’s face.

And a little more exploration!

Kaia took this picture when she noticed the sun shining through the glass door.  I love it!

By the end of the 4 days, we were all pretty tuckered out!

We’ve got lots more field trips planned this year!  Next stop is in May when we head to my sister’s in Atlanta for some time at the Aquarium and the zoo!

While we were gone, our fantastic neighbors and friends took care of our animals.  Kathie even put up a few videos of the chickens, too.

Sensory Doll

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I’ve been wanting to make Leif this doll for a while now.  He’s so into taking things apart, pushing buttons, pulling levers…. I thought he’d enjoy it.  It was a lot of fun to make!

If you want to make one for your favorite little explorer you’ll need:

  • fabric for the body (I used an old sweater that was given to me… it has a great texture and reminds me of a teddy bear)
  • Contrasting fabric scraps for the shirt, shorts and pocket
  • buttons, string, or whatever you would like to create the face
  • 5″ zipper (with a large zip for little fingers)
  • 10″ ribbon for the belt
  • easy-open snap for belt
  • large, bright button for the pocket
  • 6″ ribbon for foot strap
  • velcro for foot strap
  • ~2 feet of string/shoelace for the other foot
  • bells
  • crinkly paper
  • small beans (~1 cup)
  • stuffing

(Here’s something major!!  If your little one is still into putting things in his mouth, you may want to hold off on this doll since there are so many buttons and choking hazards!)

First cut out your pattern (download it here.… don’t let your printer ‘scale it to fit page’.  You want it at 100%.  And some of it is drawn really close to the edge of the page, so just be sure to compare what’s on your computer to what printed out… sorry about that!  It’s very hand made!)  You should have these pieces:

You will need to tape the four piece for the body together before cutting it out.  Lay down #1 first, then #2 on top, and so on…

Iron your fabric.  Then, using the pattern, cut out your fabric.  You will need two body pieces.  I only put clothes on the front, but you could cut a second set of clothes and dress the back if you want.

Put the right sides of the shirt pieces together and sew 1/2″ seam.  I used a baste stitch for all but the last 1″ closest to the waist.  That was a regular stitch.  Then unfold the fabric and press the seam open.

Sew the zipper to the wrong side

Then rip all but the last 1″ of seam.

Trim the excess zipper.  Fold the zipper and neck seam and sew 1/4″ seam.  Sew 1/4″ seams at the arm holes and waist.  Then sew a 1/4″ seam at the pants waist and leg holes also.  Sew 1/4″ seam all the way around the pocket, and measure and make your button hole.  Measure out where you want the button to go so that it will match up to the button hole on the pocket, and sew the button to the pants.  Then, sew the pocket to the pants so that the button matches up.  (was that too much???  Does that all make sense?)

Pin the pants and belt straps to the body front (matching the waist and leg corners to the triangle tabs on the body).  Sew 1/4″ seam on the sides of the legs, leaving the wast and leg holes open.

Measure out where you would like the snap to go on the belt.  Trim the excess belt (leaving 1/2″ or so extra so you can sew a seam on each end)

Sew belt end seams and sew on snap.

Place ribbon on foot (either one) and sew them onto the edge of the leg.  Then attach and sew the velcro (making sure that the upper and lower pieces meet up then the strap closes).

On the other foot, sew a piece of shoe lace to the edge of each foot.  Make sure the pieces are long enough to tie into a bow.

Sew on a face.

Place the right sides of the body together.  Pin and sew the body front and back, (with a 1/2″ seam) leaving a large enough hole to turn the doll inside out.  Trim off excess fabric.

Yes… Toby is feeding the doll some salad!

Turn it right side out.  I put little beans (about 1/2 cup each) into the feet for texture, followed by stuffing.  Then I placed ~4 bells into one arm, and crinkly paper into the other, followed again by stuffing, so that nothing moved around.  Then stuff the rest of the body.  The sweater material I used was nice and stretchy.  I love the way the finished doll looks like he’s wearing clothes 3 sizes too small!

Hand stitch the hole closed and give him a proper name!  You can certainly give him hair, or a hat… I like our man bald!

Then pass him on to your favorite little one!

Kaia said he looked like a hippie.  I couldn’t really see what she meant.  She said “you know… the tight clothes he’s wearing”.  I said, “I don’t get it”.  She said “you know… a Hippie... those people who walk like this… ” and she proceeds to saunter in a sultry way through the living room.  This went on for most of the afternoon with me trying to figure out how this doll looks like a hippie.  Then, as we were sitting outside playing, she said, “OH WAIT!!  I MEAN A HOTTIE!“  I bust out laughing!!  I have made Leif a pimped out Hottie doll for him to dress and undress! Great!!

Dino Dig

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We are wrapping up Kaia’s Prehistory studies this next week and she has been begging to do a dinosaur dig. I got this kit because it looked like it was pretty good quality and the tools (which are metal) could be used again.

The kit says it can be ‘hours of fun’, especially if you go slowly and carefully, like a real paleontologist would.  While this did fill up a chunk of the mid day, when you go at it like a jack-hammer it won’t take long to get to the bones.  Kaia’s never been one to be gentle about much 🙂

Leif woke up while she was working and was a wonderful assistant!

Little hands, hard at work!  I love it!

Kaia has changed it’s name from a tyrannosaurus to a Droptolipadon because anything she tried to feed it fell right out of it’s mouth.

Passing on the tradition

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Last week, my father-in-law passed on boxes of sewing goodies from his mother’s stash (so, that would be Kaia and Leif’s great-grandmother)! She was an avid seamstress and had some fabulous stuff! Look at this:
There were 4 boxes of lace like this!
This is just begging to be the hem of a frilly dress or skirt!!

Look at this lovely lace!

And there are all kinds of patterns!  Some obviously from the 70’s.

Kaia and I are going to use some of this to make some Greek goddess outfits when we study Mythology this summer.

And there was a nice chunk of this fantastic fabric!!  I’ve already made Leif a pair of pants (I call them his Party Pants) and might make a skirt for myself.

Here’s what happens when you wear your party pants to sleep!  Not a good idea to party when you are sleeping.

Eggs for sale!

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Our ladies have had a great egg laying month!!  Last month we averaged about a dozen a day (from 22 chickens), and the numbers just keep increasing.  I’ve put a fence around the garden so that I can let the chickens out of their gated area to free range in the afternoons without them getting to the seedlings.  They are loving it!!

So, with all these eggs, we’ve officially started selling them.  I spent a good part of today designing the cartons 🙂

Aren’t they cute?!

Our day in pictures

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Let’s start our morning with some daredevil antics!

Don’t see anything wrong with this?

Let’s look again:

Then off to a sweet farm tour where we enjoyed some fabulous home made jellies and ice cream, and I scored an angora fleece from this guy:

Then we spent the rest of our day enjoying the beautiful spring weather:

(You didn’t know chickens can read, did you?  Well, our chickens can!)

What I didn’t get was pictures of the fabulous sand creation that we created!  We got a bucket full of sand from the pile in our back yard and Kaia put all kinds of stuff in there.  Then we all went dinosaur fossil hunting.   Even Leif was getting into it.  At one point, Kaia pulled her hands out of the sand and said, “Hey mom!  Coprolites!”  I was thrilled that she remembered the word for fossilized dinosaur poop.  Then, I looked at what she was holding in her hand and realized that it really was poop!!  Turns out the neighbor cat has been using our sand pile as a littler box!!  Needless to say, we all stopped playing archaeologists and went inside to scrub off!!! 🙂

Still, it was a fabulous day!

Going Places!

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Deb over at Just Short of Crazy has given me a sweet award!  (Don’t you love the name of her blog!  I feel that way so often, although, I think my husband might say I’m more like ‘just short of sane’!)  Thank you, Deb!  Though I write this blog mostly for myself, like a journal of the happy things I want to remember, it is nice to know that there are people out there who read it and get some good stuff out of it!

I’d like to pass this on to 5 blogs that have inspired me lately!

1- Smrt Lernins – a wonderful blog with great homeschooling goodies and goodness! (I can’t read the name of her blog without thinking of Homer Simpson “I am so smart! S-M-R-T, smart!”)

2- Sew Liberated – a mama’s sewing blog that always inspires me to try new projects.  (and the pictures of her cute little boy are reason alone to check out her blog!)

3- Not So Humble Pie – the recipes she posts are to die for!!  I gain weight by just reading her blog!!

4- Art Project for Kids – Full of fantastic art to do with your kids, young and old!

5- The Crafty Crow – A blog crammed packed with fun crafts, often pertaining to the season or upcoming holidays, that inspires me to play like a child with my kids!

Welcome Spring

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I am SOOOOOOOO happy that spring is officially here, and right on cue, the weather has been glorious!  We took advantage of the warm air and bright sunshine these last few days and put up our tetherball court!  That’s right, you heard me!  I could SO kick Napoleon Dynamite’s butt!

The ball is just an amazing blur of speedy fastness!  (So I circled it for you.)  And check out the cheering section in the background!

Kaia was scared of the ball at first, but she got into it…

And Leif the Curious enjoyed a little clothes-soaking time.

“Hey, water!  Come HERE!  I’m thirsty!”

I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

Happy St. Patty’s Day!

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In preparation for St. Patrick’s Day, Kaia spent some time creating a Leprechaun Trap.  The sign says “Gold Mine Here.  No Leprechauns!”  She hoped he would climb up, peek in, and fall into the box. We had to make it really enticing, so inside the box we put lots of our homemade gold.

For homemade gold, you make peanut butter and cracker sandwiches:

Dip them in melted Mint Chocolate:

Let them cool on wax paper:

Wrap them in gold foil and place them at the bottom of the chute, inside the box:

Well, Leprechauns are crafty little creatures and don’t take well to being trapped.  As you can see by his little green foot prints, the trap worked just as Kaia hoped it would:

Unfortunately:

He was, however, nice enough to leave a book that Kaia has been wanting to read.

Summer and Second Grade plans

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Kaia and I have been busy planning her summer and second grade curriculum.  No, we won’t really be doing much ‘real’ school work during the summer, but she has asked to learn about certain things, so we are planning ‘camps’.  Mythology, Weather, and Mapping camps.  She will also be attending a couple of camps outside of the house.

I’ve also put together her second grade curriculum.  When I started homeschooling, I didn’t think I’d use a lot of pre-written curriculum, but I’m finding it to be nice, especially with a little one crawling around under my feet.  It’s much easier to draw from something that’s already prepared than to have to write my own right now.  Then I can put my energy and focus on the fun stuff!  So, here’s what next year looks like:

Math – Right Start C, Mind Benders, Analogies and other math games

Language Arts – All About Spelling (we’ll probably be at level 3 by then), Language Smarts (grammer), for handwriting I’ll probably create my own copy work and also continue having her write letters and postcards to friends, along with lots of reading time.

Science – R.E.A.L. Chemistry, and continued animal habitat studies, and Nature Walks

History – We are doing an in depth study of Prehistory this semester, so we’ll begin with Ancient History using Story of the World and History Odyssey.  (I’ll pull from both)

Art– Artistic Pursuits book 1, and continue with art group

I’d love to add in some Music and Foreign Language, but don’t have anything planned yet…

Here’s Kaia perfecting her recipe for Home Made Asteroids They were yummy!! (Oh, and we used cheese and didn’t have a problem with them going flat)

Garden Season has begun!

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YAY!!  I’m so excited!!  I can’t wait to have fresh food from the garden.  This past weekend, we set up a straw bale cold frame to start our seeds in and seeded kale, lettuce, cabbage, and parsley!   We are using a pane from a glass door as the top.   The greenhouse in our window that we did last year got things sprouted fantastic, but after that, they got tall and scraggly.  So, we’ll see how the cold frame does this year.

Swimmable Mermaid Tail

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Kaia has been waiting, and waiting, for this project to happen.  She picked out her fabric last month, but we had trouble getting the fins.  They finally arrived today, so I had to get right on it!

Behold – Mermaid Kaia!


This was a fairly simple project to do.  We got the swim fins from Metro Swim Shop (yes, you read correctly, I said ‘fins’.  I got this fin for myself and will make my own tail as soon as I get the fabric.  The description says it’s for kids, but it fits up to a women’s size 8 shoe)

First, I had Kaia put on her fin and traced her lower half (from waist down) on a large piece of paper.  This gave me the basic shape of her body.  When I was tracing the fin part, I had her sit up for that the fin was flat on the floor.  The tracing is not the proper measurement of the pattern, it simply give me a shape to go by as I mark in the proper measurements.

Then, I measured Kaia around her waist, hips, thighs, knees, shins, and ankles.  I took each of these measurements and divided in two, since you will have 2 sides to your fin.  Ex: her waist was 21  so half that is 10.5

On the paper, along the tracing of her body, I marked the measurements in the proper places.  Ex:  at the waist of the tracing, I measured out 10.5 inches, marking on either side of the tracing, so that the center of the tracing is also the center of the measurements.  Do this with all your measurements and then connect the markings.  The markings will probably be an inch or two out from the original tracing.  Use the tracing as a guide of how to shape the pattern.  Does this make sense??

Then, cut your pattern out.

Take your chosen fabric and fold it in half.  This way you will cut out both sides at one time.

Lay the pattern on the fabric and pin it down well through both layers of fabric.  Make sure there are no wrinkles.

Cut out your fabric.

Take the pattern off and, if they aren’t already, put the right sides together (meaning the sides that will be showing once you are done should now face each other).  Pin the fabric together really well so that it doesn’t slip or bunch when you sew it up.

Then sew along the sides leaving the waist open, and one side of the fin open (see finished picture below)  I left 1/4 inch seam allowance on the first run and had her try it on.  Then Iwent back over the edge with a zig zag stitch to finish it off.

To get the mono fin into the tail, you will need a hole big enough to slip it through.  The adult monofins are a little more flexible and might fit through the waist hole and be worked down to the tail.  Kaia’s fin is pretty stiff, so we left a hole in the bottom of the tail for the monofin to slide into and then put 4 pearl snaps to close it off.  I zigzagged the open edges to prevent any fraying.

At this point I checked to be sure the monofin fit into the opening and had Kaia try it on to be sure it fit well, and figured out where she wanted the waist level to be.  It was a little loose in the waist, so I took it in a bit.  You could make an elastic waist band, but the fabric Kaia chose hugged her body well once I took it in, and didn’t need any elastic.

With the right sides still facing, fold the waist band down (wrong sides together) to where you want it to be on your body (below the navel, at the navel… etc.) and finish the seam.  I did two lines of a wavy stitch to make it look like scales.

Kaia’s really happy with how it turned out and wore it to bed the first night (fins and all).  You can see in this picture on the bottom left of her tail, where there are snaps that open up the tail to let the monofin in.  You can even see a little of the pink fin sticking out.  I want to fix that but Kaia said “no”.

I’ll post pictures once mine is done!

The big dig

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We found this craft when we were cruising around on the web looking for info in sea monsters of prehistory. (scroll down to Sediment Fossil Surprise).  As soon as Kaia read the details, she was dying to do it.  So, saturday, we got all our ingredients together and created our layers of history in a cup.  We took out our giant time line and followed along.  Our first layer was from the Cambrian period (red jello) and had trilobite fossils (gummy bears) in it.  The next layer was the Silurian period (chocolate pudding) and contained Pneumodesmus worms (gummy worms).  The third layer was the Carboniferous Period (shredded coconut) with Belantsea fish (pink star cookies) in it (those things are crazy looking)!  Next was the Triassic (more chocolate pudding) and Lepidotes (Cashews).  Then the Cretaceous (whipped cream) and coprolites/dino poop! (chocolate covered peanuts).  Finally, topped with granola to represent the Quaternary period, or where we are today.    Whew!!

We piled these yummies high into our glasses and served them up for dad, with a card that had clues to what he might find in each layer.

As we ate our way through history we looked back at the time line to find our fossils, and when Toby was done he took out our Ancient Creature Cards and read to us about some of the things he found.

It was a sweet way to spend the afternoon.  Literally!  Nauseatingly, horribly sweet!!  I needed a big glass of water and a nap after that project!! 🙂

Send your name to Mars!

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Kaia and I are in the middle of her studies on the solar system, so we couldn’t have found this at a better time!  In 2011 NASA is sending a Science Lab Rover to Mars and you can put your name on a microchip that will go to Mars with the rover!  Kaia loved this idea, so we sent in her name and then printed out a certificate of participation!  Too coo!!

Come live with us!

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We’ve finally got it all figured out and are happy to announce that we have some of our land for sale!  We would love to have some other families out here with us!!
Here’s the schpiel:

10+ wooded acres for sale!  We are a homeschooling family of four (6 year old daughter, 1 year old son) attempting to live as sustainably as possible.  We have a small homestead with chickens, bees, and a nice big garden.  We own 25 acres and would like to sell 10+ (due to county regulations, it can not be any less than 10 acres).  The land for sale is rolling to steep, completely wooded and mostly north facing.  Don’t let that discourage you, though!  There are some beautiful homesites, as well as solar and garden possibilities.  We are in Leicester, only 10 miles from downtown Asheville, but it feels very private.  It is $7,500 per acre (firm).  Let me know if you have any questions.
Blessings!