Blueberry Cornbread - Dairy Free

I thought blueberry cornbread would be yummy, and it was!  My husband even liked it, and he doesn't like plain cornbread!  This recipe is for dairy free, but if you don't need to be dairy free, go ahead and use butter and regular milk.

Blueberry Cornbread
1 cup soy or almond milk
1/4 cup melted shortening
1 large egg
1 1/4 cup cornmeal
1 cup all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup blueberries (and a few more if you love blueberries)

Preheat oven to 350.  Place shortening in cast iron skillet and place in oven so shortening will melt.  Meanwhile, mix milk and egg with wire whisk.  In another bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt.  Add dry ingredients to milk and egg and mix.  Pour in melted shortening and mix.  Stir in blueberries and pour batter into skillet.  Bake for 30 minutes or until knife comes out clean.  Cut in wedges and enjoy.

Homemade French Fry Medley

Who doesn't love french fries?  I have been making a french fry medley of potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots.  It is a delicious way to get more veggies in!  My favorite is the sweet potato!  I put them on a cookie sheet and drizzle olive oil on top, mixing with my hands, then spread them out.  Sprinkle with salt and any other seasoning you like (paprika and sugar are good).  Bake at 350, turning occasionally, until they are browned and soft.  Then enjoy!

100 Party!

One of the first things we do every day in our school is add a popsicle stick to our cup, count them, and write the number on our chart.  Today we added stick number 100, and had a party to celebrate!  In the picture below, Caleb is counting them.  Every ten sticks is bundled with a rubber band.

100 sticks makes quite a pile!  We played with them and spelled their names:

What's a party without snacks???  We counted out 10 piles of 10 pretzels, which makes 100, and then shared them!

 

Of course, we also had to have a treat.  Here are 100 jelly beans.

We sorted the jelly beans by color, and then counted each one.

They filled in a chart using the right color crayon (there were 12 red jelly beans, so they colored 12 boxes red).  I found the chart online, but have since lost the link...

I threw 100 pennies in the sand box and had them dig for buried treasure!

We finished our party with a 100 lunch!  Half a banana and two apple rounds make a 100, and I used cookie cutters to press a 100 in their sandwiches.  It was a very fun school day!

Check out other MFW users this week at Discover Their Gifts.

Build a Chicken!

Last night, my husband took Caleb fishing, which left me with Rebekah and Joshua.  She loves to do "girly" things with me, and expects to do something special whenever Caleb and Daddy leave.  First, we went to the craft store where I bought her a couple packages of stickers for her scrapbook.  When we got home, she started begging me to do something "girly", so I asked her if she wanted to make a scrapbook page with her new stickers.  Nope, she wanted to do something different that we'd never done before.  Okay, well, what do you want to do?  Her reply:  "Build a Chicken!"  We built a whole family of chickens!

Joshua is about 2 months already!  Look how much he's grown.

Kk Kangaroo - Homeschool Highlights in MFW

Last week we did Kk Kangaroo!  Our bible words were "I am safe in God".  We didn't do too many extra activities this week, it was all I could do to get the regular work done, Joshua was not in a cooperating mood!  We did go down to the basement and practice our jumping, and then we measured the 30 feet that a kangaroo can jump.  Wow!  It was the entire length of our basement, amazing!  Above are the books we read, everyone enjoyed Marsupial Sue and the song that came with it, very funny!

Our lapbooks were made with items from DLTK and Homeschool Share.  Caleb is really getting good at writing now, and Rebekah can write her name without crying!

My next homeschool post will be about our 100 party, so check back soon!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake in a Cast Iron Skillet

Wow!  Many people rave about pineapple upside down cake made in a cast iron skillet, but I didn't expect it to be this good.  While I haven't had as much time to sew, I have found time to make dessert!  A woman has to have her priorities, right? I didn't have pineapple rings, only a can of tidbits, which worked great.  And thanks to my mom, we even had maraschino cherries!  I pulled the recipe off of the internet, but now I can't find the exact one I used, but it was similar to this one.  I used soy milk in the batter for Rebekah, but made her a separate little one so I could use butter in the bottom of the skillet, because butter is just better.  Everyone loved their cake, even Caleb who says he hates pineapple!

This is the cake in the skillet before turning it upside down onto the plate.

Little Girl Pants to Skirts

Rebekah has been growing!  I recently noticed that all her skirts were a little too short, so it was time to make her a few more.  The top one was a pair of pink corduroy pants.  The bottom was just a pair of jeans, but it had that embroidery of Piglet on the bottom of the leg, which I had to save!  You can see my tutorial of how to do this here.

Homemade Liquid Laundry Detergent

In an effort to be more frugal, I decided to try making my own laundry detergent.  I prefer using liquid, so when I saw this recipe on Frugally Sustainable, I had to try it.  I had a hard time finding the Castile soap, but finally found it at a local grocery store that carries a lot of natural and organic items.  I bought the baby version to avoid the scents that my husband is allergic to.  According to my calculations, the All Free and Clear costs $0.114 per load, while this homemade version is $0.075 per load, which is a savings of only about $4.00 per 100 loads of laundry.  Not as much as I was hoping for!  However, if you use the Fels Naptha soap instead of the Castile soap (at Walmart for $0.97), then it come to only $0.035 per load, which is a savings of $8.00 per 100 loads.  That doesn't seem like a lot until you realize that the bottle of All Free and Clear says it's for 96 loads and costs $10.97!

So, I bet you're wondering how it worked.  When I added the water to the warm soap mixture, it started to gel right away, which ended up looking like cottage cheese on top, with liquid beneath.  I was concerned about this, so I read all the comments on Frugally Sustainable's site, and learned that this happens sometimes but the soap can still be used if you just shake it up first.  After washing a few loads of laundry, it seems to work just as good as the All Free and Clear.  Next time I make it, I will use hot tap water instead of cold, I think that might solve the gelling issue.  I also want to find a cheaper source of Castile soap!

Pp Penguin Homeschool Highlights in MFW

Our first week back to school after having a baby was not as easy as I was hoping!  We did Pp penguins, and ended up having to stretch it out over two weeks.  A few days we ended up skipping school because Joshua just would not cooperate.  Most days we ended up doing school in two or three chunks, sometimes over two days!  And because we took three weeks off, the kids were out of the routine, and we'll just say they felt the need to test me during school time...  But we all survived and did enjoy learning about penguins in the process.  Above, they are playing with ice burgs (in the baby's bath tub!) after learning about Antarctica. 

Instead of painting I broke out the shaving cream again and they made penguin pictures, and then did construction in Antarctica, which meant covering the entire table, and most of the chairs, with shaving cream.  Good thing it wipes off easily!

Below is our zoo mural that we started during Ee elephant (found at The Learning Page, registration is free).  It's finally colored and up on the wall!  The next couple weeks as we do Kk Kangaroo and Zz Zebra, we will add more animals to it.  The kids thought it was great fun putting all the animals where they wanted them to go.

Our bible words for this unit were "I show love to everyone, especially my family."  We read a lot of books about Emperor penguins and also watched the movie, March of the Penguins.  They have such a unique and loving family structure. 

And lastly, our lap books.  The printables came from DLTK and Homeschool Share.   I just love Caleb's drawing of a polar bear, the lower paper, box #1.  Can you see that it only has 3 legs?  Love it!