Keeping my Treasures Warm

So every summer I go garage saling.  Every summer I find warm beautiful winter jackets.  Every summer I try to prepare for the coming winter and every summer, I get too many jackets!  I was over at a friend’s house who was going through clothing, she has a mega-sized family so it was a lot of clothes and I found a really nice jacket in her stuff for Bubble Gum and came home and realized she needed it but that Laffy Taffy had 3 jackets.  He doesn’t need that many.

And so the sorting began.  I started by going through  the house:  garage, front coat closet, back hallway, laundry room closet and totes and found all the coats or jackets that had been left out since early spring when it was still cold or stored away for the future.

Then I started hanging up jackets in birth order starting with me and working my way down to Marshmallow.  That hot pink coat near the wall is my winter jacket.  Next comes Chocolate, he has a winter coat, a fall/spring coat, a jean jacket, a leather coat and a pair of snow pants.  He’s set.  Everything in his size that I don’t need is going out of my house.  Next is Strawberry.  She has a winter coat, jean jacket, spring/fall jacket and snow pants.  She’s on the look out for a trench coat from a thrift store. Everything else in her size is leaving my house too.  And down it goes. 

To deal with the left over stuff, it went in one of four places.  Either here (my laundry room closet), these are coats that are VERY nice and someone will be able to wear in the next couple years, like Adrielle or Jonathan.  Or they went in the basket you can see with doll chairs sticking out, I’m taking those to Once Upon a Child because I don’t have friends with baby girls. 

Or into a bag for donating.

Or in this pile to take to the beach for my friends to dig through.  There are many coats in here, including nice coats that were mine but are too big now.  It’s so fun to be able to share our blessings with people!  I love seeing all the coats and jackets and snow pants lined up, knowing that my family will be warm this winter.  And now I don’t have to look for coats at garage sales anymore this summer!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

2013/2014 Taffy Academy

During my blogging sabbatical, I spent a lot to time rearranging and reorganizing our school room.  Being as I lost two of my students, three actually when I take into account that Strawberry does most of her studies in her room… where it’s quiet, eh hem. I figured it was time for a good old rearrange!

The view looking right.

The view looking left.

I love it.  All the books make me happy.  I would still like to replace my plastic table with a conference table.  Our plastic table wiggles when somebody uses their eraser.  That’s kind of annoying.  Mr. Taffy is also on the look out for a cheap wall TV with a built in DVD player so I can show the kids education movies from time to time without them huddling around the lap top.

My Sonlight Books  and educational DVD’s.

Here’s the fall line up for the children starting with the oldest.

Strawberry Taffy-11th Grade

• Chemistry-Apologia
• Geometry-Teaching Textbooks
• English 3 (American Literature)-Excellence in Literature
• History-Constitution 101 & 102 (Hillsdale College)
• Graphic and Web Design- Team Tree House on-line program (She’s already started this because she’s VERY interested in it.)

I put links in the text if you are interested in learning more about each of her subjects.  I’ve also got an elective planned for her called:  Training in Biblical Womanhood.  I bought her several books that she is going to slowly read and journal her way through.

I found this awesome book holder at a garage sale.  This was on my list to find for our school room!

Blue-Raspberry Taffy- 5th Grade

• 5th Grade Math-Teaching Textbooks
• History-Sonlight Core D & E (combined American History)
• Latin- Song School Latin 2
• Science- Considering God’s Creation
• Language Arts: Sonlight Core D & E (Reading), Easy Grammar, All About Reading Level 4

Strawberry Taffy-3rd Grade

• 3rd Grade Math-Teaching Textbooks
• History-Sonlight Core D & E (American History)
• Latin-Song School Latin 2
• Science-Considering God’s Creation
• Language Arts: Sonlight Core D & E (reading), Easy Grammar & All about Spelling Level 4

You can see Blue-Raspberry and Bubble Gum are pretty much doing the same curriculum, I just have different expectations for each of them.  Bubble Gum read’s terrifically and won’t have any trouble with the reading, Blue-Raspberry reads terrifically too, he just doesn’t enjoy it as much.  (smile)

Laffy Taffy- 1st Grade

I did things differently with Laffy than I did with my other children.  I couldn’t stomach another round of Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons.  It’s a great book, but it’s SO boring and I’ve been through it 5 times already…ugh.  So I used All About Reading PreReading with him.  Usually my children are reading by the end of Kindergarten, granted he just turned 5 toward the end of kindergarten but still, he’ll be starting 1st grade and he doesn’t know how to read yet.  Though he knows all the letter sounds and how to write them on demand.  This year we’ll put all the pieces together and he’ll be reading like a champ before I know it!

• Reading-All About Reading Level 1
• Spelling- All About Spelling Level 1
• Math-Miquon Math Starting in the Orange book and working our way through them all, I’m not sure how long it will take, might take a couple years, might only take 1.
• History/Literature/Science-Sonlight Core A or K depending on what you’re used too.  I primarily wanted a list of age appropriate reading material, to read to him and to have him start reading to me. 
• Handwriting-Just a work book I got from a friend.

I’m using workboxes for him this year so he can visually see how much he needs to do and consequently know when he’s almost done. 

I read on the Duggar’s Blog that during school hours the children aren’t allowed to talk about anything non-school related.  I am totally considering copying this amazing idea.  So much chatter and so many uninteresting questions and too much redundancy, it really makes me crazy sometimes!

The Tot School Area.

We are starting up August 5th, with a four day a week schedule so we can still enjoy the summer weather and meet our friends at the beach once a week.  Until we start up, I have a BIG issue I have to pray through.  I’ll share that next time.  Here’s a hint:

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Where do I start?

 

Well hello out there!  Is it okay if I start blogging again?  So much has happened, so much I want to share.  I have some significant things to share and some not-so-significant things to share.  Where in the world do I start? 

I’ve been purging and cleaning like a crazy person. My husband (and the rest of my family) is starting to get a little annoyed with the things they find in the garbage and in the trunk to be taken to Goodwill.  I can’t help it. I’m compelled to PURGE!  I’ve even been purging and cleaning my laptop.  Yesterday I deleted 200 files!  Most of them were  blog images that I have made over the years and different reviews of things that I don’t need to keep a rough draft of.  Some were funny things the kids have typed up or created on the computer, I found a funny ad for dog food that one of the kids had made either just for fun or a business idea.  It was cute.

            

I’ve also been filing, filing at home and on my laptop.  I made new folders to keep track of my writings and my homeschool things.  We’ve had so many computers over the years and I’ve downloaded so many fun things for our homeschool that I just can’t find what I’m looking for anymore.  I think I fixed all that.  My desktop only has 10 icons now and only about 6 of those are mine, I wouldn’t dare delete anything that looks like my husband’s.  I have no idea if it’s important or not!  I use to have about 30 files stored on my desktop.  It’s much less cluttered now.

This morning I’ve been going through my picture files and deleting non-important images.  You know, like all the images of the food I eat!  lol  Books I’m selling, stuff like that.

It feels great to get rid of the clutter.

My goals for this year are: Simplify. Trust. Pray.

That’s it.  Those are the words burning in my soul. Maybe I will share how I’m tangibly trying to obtain those goals.

Thanks for hanging with me.

The battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Homeschool stuff (LONG!!)

It’s been a while since I’ve done a homeschool post.  I did post the used-curriculum stuff, but I thought it might be encouraging to know that we are still plugging along here.

We started school in August and have about 10 weeks left.  Unbelievable!  It’s going by so fast!  We’ll be done the first week of May.  I just got my 4th and 2nd grader planned out through March.  Blue-Raspberry will be finishing Teaching Textbooks 4. That’s pretty exciting!  Strawberry is finishing Algebra 2 this week!  I love it when stuff starts dropping off the agenda.

I’ve mentioned a couple times how a friend of mine blessed me with an incredible amount of Sonlight material.  I’m still absorbing the magnitude of her gift to me.  I think it may be more than a gift from God, I think it may also be the “thing” that keeps me moving forward.  I’ve been homeschooling for 14 years!  That’s a long time.  I have at least 18 more years to go too.  Wow, I’m almost at the halfway point.  Interesting.  Anyway, sometimes it can get kind of dull using the same thing over and over again.  But this Sonlight stuff seems to be so interesting, if I can keep from expecting too much from myself and my children, I think this may get me through the rest of my homeschool journey!

I had to find a place to put all those books.  So, we went to Menard’s (which I personally detest) and found these black book shelves for under $15.00 each.  Oh what fun I had putting these together and organizing them!  Most of these books are for Sonlight, but I did move our science stuff out there as well.  I was able to put our graphic novels and other special books in a place that the kids could get to them without asking for help.

It’s fun to be able to display some stuff on top too.  Now these book shelves have overflown into the playroom.  Which isn’t ideal, but the kids are all in love with them so it worked out well.  Besides I’m still on this “get rid of stuff” kick so it keeps us from lining the wall with plastic toys.  I’ve gotten rid of some really special thing lately.

I put a few things on the shelves for Marshmallow.  She’s pretty good about not making a mess of my shelves.  Mostly she likes to push the books toward the back of the shelf.

I’ve got each shelf labeled by core level.  My friend was VERY organized and has each book labeled on the inside  for what level and what subject.  She made it so easy to organize them!  I think I am getting one more core, she loaned it out to another friend, if that’s the case I’ll have to  do a little rearranging but that will be a fun challenge. 

Since I was able to move my All About Reading posters, I had room to put a few things up to interest Marshmallow, these color cards and another of shape cards. 

This is our “All About” center.  I got rid of the easel and bunch of other little stuff that was hiding behind it.  This is much better place for that huge metal board.  I just flip it over when we aren’t using it so Marshmallow doesn’t try to start spelling words, which she enjoys VERY much.

The white board is often covered with Spelling too.  They are cruising through level 3.

My window to the world…our current Read-Alouds and the kid’s assigned Readers.  I’ve also got all our supplies hanging there  See all that white outside?  At least it reflects the sun and makes the basement even brighter!

These are my book baskets that hold the teacher books.  I’m thinking of getting another one of those black shelves to put there instead, some of those soft cover books are getting kind of mangled in the basket.

With all the other things going on, the hard emotional things of a healing marriage and a rebellious teen, I’ve been trying to simplify and streamline our day better. I’m so happy with how our school time is going right now.  We start about 8 and are usually done by 10:30.  I’m just working with Blue-Raspberry, Bubble Gum and Laffy Taffy, Strawberry is completely independent though she does spend most of her mornings down in the school room with us.

Here’s what we do.

I start Latin with Bubble Gum and Laffy Taffy while Blue-Raspberry does his math on the Lap Top.  Then I teach reading and math to Laffy Taffy while Bubble Gum does her independent work of: handwriting, math and reading.  While she is doing that Blue-Raspberry is working on his Latin, sometimes on the laptop, sometimes not, reading, and Word Roots.  When Bubble Gum and Blue-Raspberry are done, I read to everybody from our current Read-alouds.  After that we do grammar and spelling together and call it a morning.  Come March I’ll be including History in that schedule so it might take a little longer.  But I’m trying to cut myself a little slack and we only do AAS 3 days a week and Grammar 4.  Some of the younger kid’s things only last 4 days anyway, so if we get behind we can always make up stuff on Friday’s.  We’ve been doing our school time this way for weeks and it’s working very nicely.  Not too much for anybody.  They watch an episode of the Magic Schoolbus and the Kratt Brothers everyday for science.  It’s not ideal, but I figure it’s better than nothing and they ARE learning, so I’m satisfied.

On a side note, having a toddler in the schoolroom is VERY stressful.  If she’s not making  mess she’s unhappy about something, she wants somebody’s pencil, she wants a snack, whatever.  When I read out loud I have to be REALLY LOUD because she interprets my talking as, “it’s time to talk with Momma!”  Phew!  It’s exhausting.  Her presence is building character in each of us and for the most part she is delight, but I don’t want you to think it’s all perfect and wonderful.  The reality is, it’s difficult when she’s with us during school.  Thankfully I know this difficult time will pass, I’m just looking forward to that day with GREAT anticipation!

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

When winter gets long…

This is the weather graphic is for my suburb.  Today the high is 9.  Yeah.  We are about halfway through this winter and sometimes at this point we start to get a little stir crazy.  See that sunshine there, well it looks warm and inviting outside, but it’s not really and the sunshine just makes us want to go out there all the more!  So what do we do?  How do we cope with the endless winter weather? 

We plan!

We get out all our seeds and take inventory!

              We get out our garden notebook and draw!

We get on the computer and visit the land of the living, living things that is.  Seeds. Plants.  What can we grow?  What can we plant?  Show me some GREEEN!

We figure out where everything goes.  What can we plant here, how about here?  We use post-it-notes so we can change our mind.

We ordered organic seeds and 10 (yeah 10, my husband doesn’t do anything small) elderberry bushes.  Still not sure where all those are going to go, but who cares!  They are coming!  My husband also bought worms of all things, and they are happily munching away in a container on the counter in the kitchen.  That right there is love in action.

Here’s my garden pin board if you want to see some more inspiration:  http://pinterest.com/mrstaffy/garden-backyard/

We want to try the potato towers and the sunflower fort, do you think the neighbors would mind if we put the sunflower fort in the front yard?  Our backyard is pretty full!  ha!  An outside chalkboard for the kids and gutter gardens on my little deck to keep the spinach safe from the bunnies.  So much inspiration! 

I wonder how many other people have spent a long winter’s Saturday planning for the time when the earth warms up and the worms wake up and life springs forth!  Probably more than we can imagine!

The Battle is the Lord’s,

Mrs. Taffy

Budgeting

Do you have a budget?  A few times through our almost 20 years of marriage we’ve had a budget.  We could never do anything like Larry Burket or Dave Ramsey because we just didn’t even make enough money to do it.  We had various financial trials throughout our marriage too, but I look back on the times of budgeting as a blessing.  Sometimes my husband was paid on commission, or monthly or weekly, it seems our finances are always changing, unpredictable.  Those times were hard to make a budget for as well.

My husband has turned in his resignation at his permanent position at a Bank here in the Twin Cities.  He had a VP title, health insurance, 5 weeks of paid vacation.  But at the end of the day he was miserable.  The commute is awful.  The environment…I’ve never worked in an office environment but the times I’ve gone to his work, I can’t believe how quiet and dull it is.  I would be asleep in 5 minutes! The hours were long, the work thankless. He was offered at contracted position at another bank in the Twin Cities, one closer to home, one with set hours and an hourly wage, no more health insurance but more freedom.  He’s worked there before and got the job without a formal interview.  He’ll be getting paid more money and will be able to work less hours.  With this new job we’ll be getting paid every week.  It’s predictable. So we decided to make a budget.

We went out to breakfast one Saturday morning, took the laptop and a note book, the bills folder and our thinking caps.  It was a wonderfully productive meeting.  The best earthly feeling, in my opinion, is being on the same page as your spouse!  I love to have a unified goal.  Love it!

Our categories look like this:

• Mortgage
• Food
• Bills (Includes: water, trash, cell phones, our Compassion Child, etc.)
• Consumable Household (Includes: toilet paper, napkins, toothbrushes, Goodnights, etc.)
• Non-Consumable Household (Includes: Printer ink, laundry baskets, brooms, photo prints, car keys, rugs, paint, stamps, etc.)
• Auto (Includes: gas, insurance, maintenance)
• Medical (Includes vitamins and Minute Clinic Visits, Dentist appt.)
• Clothes (Broke down per person, per week)
• Education (For homeschool stuff and fees for classes and tests for the teens)
• Savings (This is just a general savings for agreed upon family things.  i.e. Vacations, large car repairs, large medical bills, minor emergencies and Offerings, snow blower, etc.)
• Fun (This includes eating out)

We will also have another savings account that will hold all the money that goes beyond what we’ve allocated into these categories.  It’s complicated how we figured out the base amount, but he should be getting quite a bit more than what we budgeted for, that extra will go into a separate savings account, to be saved for emergencies or when we need a new car or sending Chocolate off to college or whatever, we want this account to keep growing.

Some of the numbers in the different categories are pretty small.  For instance, our clothing category.  It looks like this:

• Mr. Taffy- $25 a month
• Mrs. Taffy –$25 a month
• Banana Taffy- $15 a month
• Chocolate Taffy-$15 a month
• Strawberry Taffy-$10 a month

And down it goes, $10 a month per child.  That’s not much.  Mr. Taffy’s has more because he really needs some new work pants, mine is more so I can get a pretty dress for the boy’s graduation, the boys is more because we want to buy them each a suit for their graduation gift.  Could you spend $10 a month on clothes?  It’s going to be a stretch.  But like I was just telling Strawberry, “If you save all that money until May, you’ll have $50 to spend at garage sales.  You can get a LOT of clothes at garage sales for $50!!”  Some of numbers might be too aggressive.  We may have to re-evaluate in a month or two, but for now we are going to give it our best.  The kids can always use their own money if they want something new too.  They have no lack, trust me. 

Mr. Taffy has a LOT of experience in building data bases so he is working to build us our own to keep track of our purchases.  I’m going to teach Strawberry how to enter our purchases into each category.  I want her to learn how to itemize and organize.  She loves to find coupons and good deals, so this will turn into a nice .5 credit economics/accounting elective for her. 

One thing I’m doing to help me not be tempted to buy extra things is unsubscribing to all the email lists that send me wonderful amazing deals practically everyday!  Hello Gymboree?  Bye bye!  Good riddance!  I’ve given you enough money!  lol  Very Jane.  Sniff sniff…that one will be a little harder. 

It is a challenge living on one-income.  It’s even a bigger challenge when you consider how the price of food is increasing every day and how it looks like our taxes are going to be raised again.  It can be overwhelming.  I’ve been tempted to open a day-care in our home.  But God is in control and we are purposed to be good stewards of what He’s given us.  Mr. Taffy does NOT want me have a day care in our home (me either really), so we will do what we need to do and if that means we don’t get to eat out whenever we want too or if I have to spend more time in the kitchen because I’m cooking all the time, well so be it.  It’s a fair exchange to be home for my family!

What’s the hardest thing about budgeting to you?

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Playing with Pumpkins

Food gets me so excited!  Especially fresh produce.  The more the merrier!  Recently I purchased, ready for this…400 pounds of produce!  All at once!  Wanna see? 

I got 4-50 # bags of acorn squash and 2-50# bags of butternut squash.  I also got 100# of potatoes and 20# of onions.  I  guess that’s a little more than 400 pounds huh?

I’ve been reading about the Pilgrims and the incredible trails they encountered when coming to America, about how they had to grow and store all their food over the winter in order to survive.  It may sound funny, but they really inspired me.  Surely if they could do that, survive that, thrive in that, I can take care of and manage 400 pounds of produce. Surely.

I was honored to be able to purchase this food from a farmer, what I bought was part of his left overs from the year.  I spent a total of $148.00 on all this food, which still just sets me at awe!  All the produce came in burlap bags like the squash photo from the top.  It’s a handy way to transport them, but not so handy to retrieve, especially if I’m sending children out to get them.

  So in my garage I set up a table and portioned out some of the food into boxes.  All the potatoes are in a box so they stay nice and dark.  I also put the onions in a box.  One bag of acorn squash was divided between my big pantry in the house and chicken box from Sam’s Club.  All the produce is off the floor and covered with a sleeping bag in order to keep out the frigid winter air.

It’s not very attractive but I don’t care. (grin)

Since I’m showing you around my ugly garage I might as well show you my other food storage.

Buckets with bags of dry goods.  Mr. Taffy and I  feel pretty passionate about having a little bit of food on hand for eating and for emergencies.  We don’t live in fear, but I feel like part of my job as resident Homemaker is to make sure that there is food here, continually and Mr. Taffy always encourages me to stock up a little bit here and there. Plus it’s such a blessing to be able to go shopping in my garage and not be at the mercy of grocery store prices and the fluctuating market.

Along with the produce I ordered, the farmer gave me some canning pumpkins, or sugar pumpkins or pie pumpkins, not sure exactly what they are called, but they are the kind of pumpkins that make delicious pies.  I don’t really make pumpkin pies but I love to put pumpkin in EVERYTHING else.  So even though it was a stretch for me, I spent an evening “processing” those pumpkins.  With a little help from my best girls of course!

I figured out it was easier to sort of “milk” the seeds out of the center of the pumpkin, rather than scoop out everything  all at once and separate the seeds afterward.  (I washed, soaked and roasted the seeds. My husband LOVES the salty pumpkin seeds to snack on!)

So slimy!  I think we processed 8 pumpkins, I still have 2 more, but I’m going to use them for my Thanksgiving Table.

I got to wondering if I could just bake the pumpkin pieces in my roasting pan.  Guess what?  It worked, beautifully!  I roasted them in two layers, with a sheet of tin foil in between.  I baked them at 325 for about an hour and the pumpkin came out of those shells as easily as could be!  After it cooled I ran the pumpkin through my Squeeze-O and then froze the pumpkin in one and two cup portions!  No added sugar or preservatives, just look at that lovely color!

It was a pretty messy job but I’m glad we took the time to do it.

Off to make some Pumpkin Bread! 

 

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy