It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

When you’re a homeschooler the most wonderful time of the year isn’t in December when snow is falling, carols are being sung and children are so excited for the birth of Baby Jesus presents. The most wonderful time of the year is near the end of the summer when you get to plan for the upcoming school year and do all the organizing and scheduling and buying of new curricula.

Or is that just me?

There’s something that gets my OCD self all excited when I get to sit down with Numbers* and create the next school year’s spreadsheet. It takes hours of planning and sorting and researching and I love every minute of it. The children don’t eat for several days and the house ends up looking like a pig sty, but the money I’m saving on food and cleaning supplies those couple of days is going to go towards new textbooks and workbooks and manuals and other school paraphernalia. 

It’s the most wonderful time of the year for me right now. I’ve got at least five tabs open on Safari dedicated to finding the best deals on the books I want. Numbers is waiting, at the ready, for me to fill in more cells with pages to read and lessons to complete and tests to take. Sigh. I’m in nerd heaven.

Once I get everything sorted and purchased and organized and scheduled I’ll write another post listing the curricula we’re using and some of the extracurricular things we’re planning for this year. I’ll be teaching two kids, full time, this year. That excites me and scares me all at the same time.

*I used to use OneNote when I was a PC. Now I’m a Mac and the only thing I mourn about the Mac world is that it does not include OneNote. I could download that program that lets you run Windows software on a Mac but I’m worried about the safety of it all. So, if you’re a PC get yourself OneNote and go to town, whether it’s homeschool planning or researching your next big trip. Sigh…

Bounty out o’ the oven…aka I baked bread!

While attempting to eat healthier and eliminate gross amounts of preservatives and refined foods from our diet I started looking at the nutritional information on packaging. It is well known that my husband has long cared more for what’s in our food than I have. Me looking at the back of packages at the grocery store is a new thing.

And I find myself asking the same question over and over again: “WTH?”

Why is there corn syrup in 95% of grocery items? Why is there corn syrup in bread? The simple answer is as Americans we’re addicted to sweet. I’m not going to look it up on Snopes to check its veracity, but I’ve gotten emails that claim that McDonald’s puts sugar in all their food to get us addicted. And you know, you can believe everything you get in your inbox. (And you better forward it to ten friends or else your cat will throw up in your shoes and your lucky fairy will get struck with fairy farting disease).

I’ve also watched several documentaries that have scared me senseless against gènetic@lly modified (GM) seeds and food, and now I also believe that M0nsant0 is the devil in corporation form. My family is slowly but surely releasing ourselves from the death trap that is American processed food.

After I realized that there’s corn syrup in bread I decided to take matters into my own hands. That is, after I sat around on the idea for a couple of months because, let’s face it, as a mom, who has the time to complete a whole thought and then act upon it seeing it to completion?

I believe this is my first foray into oven-baked bread. I’ve tried making bread several times in a bread machine and it always comes out dense and hard to cut. If I’m going to make bread for us to eat I want to be able to slice it. My family still consists of Americans and, shove it Europeans, we like our bread soft and sliced. I’m so amateur at this I don’t even have bread pans yet. I had to make do with a small baking pan I’ve got…it’s probably meant for brownies. But this was the result…free-form loaves:


They are honey wheat loaves made with local honey. They ended up being a little bit heavier than grocery store bread but nowhere near as heavy as the bread machine bread I’ve made before. They were easy to slice as well:


Doesn’t that look like regular sandwich bread?! I am so happy!

I also realized how swirl breads are made after I sliced into my bread. I didn’t pinch mine enough when I rolled it up.


I can just imagine cinnamon and raisins in those rolling holes. Mmmmmm!

I also need to learn to pinch my bread once I fold it over:


It still looked nice once it was cut. In fact, the picture above it is this loaf.

Verdict: I am now planning on making our sandwich bread from scratch. I have organic regular flour (unbleached). I need to see if our store carries organic wheat and bread flour. What I still don’t know (I haven’t done the research) is if organic flour is made from wheat that was grown from GM seeds. M0nsant0 is making it virtually impossible for farmers to grow food without GM seed. Boo!

I’d also like to learn how to make French or Italian bread. I’m a lover of paninis and everyone knows American sliced bread just doesn’t cut it when making a panini!

A couple more newbies

I just have to say the three of you who still read this blog did NOT comment on my clever use of literary witticism the other day! 10-word sentences!

There’s another fashion blog I just started following. I appreciate her sense of style and creativity and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it the other day. The Chloe Conspiracy. She’s great for several reasons:

  • She’s funny and clever
  • Her outfits are great
  • She not only tells you what she’s wearing but tells you where to go to get it or get something similar. Selfless fashionista.
  • Check out her latest post for proof of all of the above.

I bought a Groupon for a pair of these

They’re called Fit In Clouds and they’re foldable shoes. They’re great because you can tuck them away in your purse until the killer heels you’re wearing start to literally kill your heels. And toes. I’m planning on getting some use out of mine on our trip. Yay!

I also bought this recently so it won’t look like I’m carrying around a camera bag all the time:

It’s one of Jill-e’s “small” bags but it’s wider than what I’m used to for a purse. BUT it’s super padded and will keep my camera from getting bumped around (and my dad’s lens)…and hold all of my purse stuff. I’m pretty sure I’ll get used to the width.

Simon & Schuster sends us children’s books every once in a while. I really liked the one we got the other day — Dream Away.

The illustrations are cute and they work so well with the story. It was fun to read it with Ashlyn and help her understand why the boy was dreaming what he was dreaming. Cute!

Now, I must go and concentrate on planning our upcoming school year. I’ve got to get some curriculum ordered!

The French Tutor: How do you say “Shame on me?”

Ok, so the tutoring session went really well today. Our tutor showed up on time and had everything prepared. We sang songs, baked cookies, colored, worked on a poster board, learned new words, played a game. And she stayed longer than an hour. She spoke mainly French but she knew the kids were totally not getting it and so she would speak to them in English and the repeat it in French. That helped the kids to relax. She spoke 95% French with me and would only transition to English if she knew I was floundering. It was such a great time.

Then came the end when she said, “we need to discuss the rate”. Uh oh. There were several reason we chose this tutor. Her accent is European French, we all connected with her immediately, and, very importantly, she was the cheapest tutor we were looking at. Well, today she said that the rate posted on the internet wouldn’t do for our setup because she was tutoring 2 kids and in some ways me. She said that wouldn’t charge us for three because that would be too expensive but that she would need to add a little for gas because it’s far (for her) from her house. When she told me the rate she was thinking my heart constricted and I had trouble breathing for about thirty minutes afterward.

This is where the shame on me part comes in. When I was looking at the cost of tutors I never even once considered doubling the rates that I was looking at because the tutor would be working with two and really three people. So the rate that she gave me today almost stopped my heart because it was so much more than what I had plastered in my mind. In reality, the rate she gave me today was only $10 to $20 more than what the original should have been.

So, after I calmed down and talked to several people, I realized that it’s probably still a good deal. She has a curriculum and ideas in mind, she is prepared, she is creative and uses different methods for teaching. She comes to our house where we are comfortable and doesn’t mind staying past an hour. In fact she said she doesn’t want to work by the clock. And if I were to double the rates of the other tutors we were considering they would still be far more expensive.

We’re going to make it work. At least for several months to make sure that everything is going well and we feel like the girls are progressing. Bring on the ramen noodles!

The French Tutor

There comes a time when you have to admit your limits and weaknesses and heed the call for reinforcements. That time of admission, for me, was several years ago, but I only recently got serious about calling in the reinforcements. For two years we’ve lived in one of the most international cities in America and probably the world and I am just now tapping into its resources*…after realizing typing “French tutor DC area” into Google was going to be my best bet.

I minored in French in college and overall studied the language for about seven years. The mistake I made was choosing not to do any kind of studies abroad. Why did my guidance counselor not insist that I do at least a semester, especially if she knew I wanted to minor in it? One can only truly learn a language if they are immersed in it.

I’ve been able to teach Reagan many vocabulary words and I’ve tried numerous curricula but they all seem to be lacking that je ne sais quoi (I couldn’t resist). They were either very choppy and I couldn’t make sense of what they were trying to teach or they wanted to get into teaching grammar. I think, as kids, Reagan and Ashlyn need to learn how to speak French before they start learning the ins and outs of the grammar. If they were starting in high school it would be a different story. They need to be familiar with the language before they become familiar with how the language works.

In comes my reinforcement: a French tutor! Tomorrow is our first session and we are all very excited. We’ve met her once and we all seemed to click immediately. She was great with the kids and they responded well to her. I could somewhat manage to understand what she was saying and she was patient with me. She’s mainly going to work with the kids, but my goal is that by her only speaking French, my conversational skills will greatly improve.

Tomorrow is Bastille Day. How fitting! She’s going to bring over the pâte for cookies and the cookie cutters in the shape of La Tour Eiffel. Maybe I’ll remember to take some pictures. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Bonne chance à nous!


*One of my biggest reservations about trying to find a French club or playgroup was my inability to speak conversationally. I was so worried (and still am) that I would be totally in over my head and be so nervous and the kids would feed off that nervousness and I’d be all hot and sweaty and my ears would start ringing and the Francophiles would wonder why I even bothered to show up if I couldn’t even keep up with such simple conversation like some kind of imposter. I didn’t want to be a poser. Now with our French tutor I may not have to be.

Favorites: recently

Some of my favorite things recently.

Pinterest is candy for my eyes and relaxation for my brain. It’s what I like to look at when I want to wind down at night. It’s my glass of wine.

Garance Doré is French candy for my eyes. Garance is a fashion photographer and graphic artist (sketch artist?) Her sketches are so chic. I love looking at her photographs and reading the little tidbits about her inroads in the fashion world.

District of Chic is a fun blog to follow because she’s a girl in DC who loves fashion. She’s confident, which is the thing I like best about her. Also, if I start posting pictures of what I’m wearing every day will companies start gifting me their clothes and accessories? No, because I don’t dress like I have fashion sense most days. She does.

Pandora‘s Jack Johnson radio station. What Pinterest does for my eyes, Jack and his friends on Pandora do for my ears.

Oregon Chai‘s concentrate. I can make my iced chai lattes at home for a fraction of what Starbucks charges me. And I can have one whenever I want. Take that, Starbucks, with your audacity to actually close for several hours at night.

Authors who try, and try hard, to write really well. Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Illumination, managed to do this. He mirrored one of his characters with a mental disability. Chuck Carter likes things in tens So Brockmeier followed form. That WHOLE chapter, all 41 pages used only 10-word sentences. I caught on by clues he gave in the writing. I spent the whole chapter mentally counting all the sentences. He gave me OCD; actually, he just exacerbated my condition. Maybe I just like word games; that’s my next favorite.

Whirly Word is a game app on my iPhone. A friend introduced it to me three days ago and I’ve solved 38 puzzles.

These red boots. I have focus issues. Need to learn how to fix that.