The Most FABULOUS Bread

My friend Wendy, who is FABULOUS!, gave me this FABULOUS Bread recipe. I will share it with all of you, my FABULOUS blog friends.

Fabulous Bread
2 1/2 C. Water
2 Tbls. Yeast
3 Tbls. Sugar
1 Tbls. Salt
1/3 C. Oil
6 C. Flour

Mix water and yeast, allow to sit a few minutes. Add remaining ingredients and let your mixer knead the dough until it is a soft dough. Let it rise in mixer. Punch down every 10 minutes by turning on the mixer. Do this 4-5 times.

Divide into 4 equal parts. Roll each quarter into a large rectangle and roll up starting from a long side. Place on greased baking sheet sprinkled with corn meal seam side down. With a sharp knife, cut slits into the loaves. Let rise until double in size, about 30 minutes.

Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes. Brush the crust with butter as soon as it comes out of the oven.

A few notes from me:
Mine never takes that long. It usually takes 15-20 minutes.
I sometimes have to add more flour. Even up to a cup more.
I make this in my KitchenAid mixer. You can adjust if you don't use one.

I SPY With My Little Eye....

A Tree Frog.
I love how GREEN he is. I was glad the kids didn't beg too long to keep him!

Arabella Watercolor Lesson

Here is a little make up lesson we did this week. My mom came over and painted with us.

Watercolor is a tricky medium. I would love to take a formal art class. I have a great book that I am going to practice with. It is called The Artist's Handbook by Angela Gair.

This first photo is an excerpt from the book Arabella.

I found I do pretty well at copying someone.

Mouse is pretty good at coming up with her own ideas.
I think we are going to try to do a lot of painting this summer.

Washer Update!

Ok, the washer is fixed! There was a crack in the tub. Who knew it was plastic? The repairmen were surprised I was still using it. I told him with a family my size, you use it unless it is shredding your clothes or flooding your house!

Also, I did get that room all spic and span before they showed up. YAY me!

So as not to lose Blogmentum!

I am trying hard to not be a blog loser! So here is a post of random things.

Things that are going on. Sears repairman are supposedly on the way. My new washer that I bought at the scratch and dent store. "Yes Ma'am everything only has cosmetic damage, the machines work great!" Guess what? It has a cracked tub! So, they are coming out to replace it. It has only taken 2 reschedules to get it done. I will let you know how it goes.

Bad Baby decided to make some soup yesterday while I was not looking. His recipe includes:

Flour - lots of it! Make sure you get it everywhere
Pecans - until the package is empty!
1 cup of koolaid. Red!
Stir while sitting on the cabinet.

Right now we are being entertained with a pot and pan ensemble with several cries of OH YEAH!

I guess I should probably make a space in that laundry room. I am sure the repairmen don't want to sit on the "crafts" box as they work. The helper just called and said it would be in the next 2 hours. Hmmmm....I hope I have enough time!

FUN School - Another Celebrated Dancing Bear

We are still in to the Fun School idea. I think we will really enjoy this week.

I finally have a copy of Another Celebrated Dancing Bear by Gladys Scheffrin-Falk. This is a fabulous book about friendship and how we can support and uplift one another.

Monday:
Social Studies: RUSSIA!

I have another Highlights Top Secret Adventure. We will complete this together, and use the book as a reference throughout the week.

Tuesday:
Language Arts: Characterization

We will compose several sentences that are descriptive of people we know. It will be fun to see what they come up with.

Wednesday:
Art - Color/Posters

We will talk about how color choice sets a mood in a story.

Also, the local univerisity is having a showing of Russian movie posters. We will see if we can take a tour and relate it to the poster that is shown in the story. We will see if they want to make a poster of their own.

Thursday:
Applied Math - Hours on a Clock/Seven Days in a Week

This lesson is pretty basic for my kids. We will try to beef it up a bit with time differences. Maybe talk about time zones.

Friday:
Science - Boiling Point/Freezing Point

We will find the boiling point and freezing point of water.

I think this story would be fun to act out. I may have them make bear masks and we will see how we do.

It's a Bug Hunt!

The other day we were enjoying the weather and the kids declared NATURE DAY! They are so in love with the outdoors. We found some pretty cool things.

A funnel web spider.

Some tent caterpillars.

An underwing caterpillar, we think. Monkey climbed a tree to find this one. Look at the awesome camoflouge on it. Amazing!

These bugs are mating. Go ask your mom what that means.

Happy Blogaversay!

Happy Blogaversary to Heather at Blog, She Wrote!

Heather is a fantastic blogger and encourager to other homeschoolers. When I need that special ooompfh I go take a look at Heather's blog and get inspired!!!

I am not sure how long I have been blogging. Maybe a year, but I am not very serious about it, now am I?

Something for Music Lovers

In addition to being stand up comedians, we listen to music like maniacs.

Recently we found a really cool music site with free music and quality sound. It is www.pandora.com

You choose a song or artist you like and set up a "radio station" for that artist. Then the site will play music in that artists style, including music from that artist. It works on an evaluation system, you tell it what you like or dislike, and it will play songs based on your ratings.

Enjoy!

We're BAD!

In our family we are very silly. To say that we joke around a lot would be a huge understatement. I think there is rarely a time when someone is saying something serious in our family without a silly comment being made after it.

When Puppy was around 6 months old, Monkey was a bit tired of having a little baby around. During a crying time for Puppy, Monkey says, "He is the baddest baby we ever had!" LOL!

This has turned into the saying, "He is the sweetest baddest baby we ever had!"

So now the nickname of Bad Baby has stuck. It is a term of endearment and we just love him so much, but he truly is very obstinate at times.

The other day, Monkey was in the bathtub and Puppy was looking for him. When told he was in the bathtub, he gets exasperated.

Puppy - "He is in the bathtub again?"
Mama- "Man, he just lives in there, huh?"
Puppy - "Yeah, he is a bad bad bad Monkey, in a bad bad bad world!"

HUH? LOL!

Play Ball!

Last night was our first night of Pitching Machine baseball. It is kind of scary to see a machine whirling balls toward your little guy, but Monkey never flinched. He did quite well. He did not get a hit, but that was expected. I am sure he will do better. I am considering askking the neighbor boy (who is an all-star player) come over and pitch to Monkey. I have zero skills in this department, and Andrew's shoulder is shot from a zip line injury last year.

Puppy woke up dry last night. That is amazing. We will see if it transforms into potty training. He is showing some interest. Mostly his interest is in being obstinate about it unless it is his idea.

FUN School - Arabella Week Two

Week one of Funschool was very fun. We did not get to everything on our plans, but we did most of it. Some things we will try to catch up on this week. Especially studying the Great Barrier Reef and storytelling.

Monday:
Social Studies - Relationships & Learning - Island Life - Review Australia
Science - Build an Island (Volcano building)
LA - Storytelling

Relationships and Learning: We will discuss why it is important that we learn things in stages. Building one idea on top of another. This will also be taught in a spiritual way. Heavenly Father loves us and teaches us in stages. Using Isaiah 28:9-10

Island life - I used to live on an island, Crystal Beach, TX, it was fabulous. We will talk about the pros and cons.

Australia Review - Where is it? What animals live there? etc.

Language Arts: Storytelling
Mouse wrote the story to a boy, a dog, and a frog. It turned out quite nice. She is trying hard to write so she can be "published"! I have seen a huge improvement in her writing lately.

I will have Monkey narrate his story to me later.

Science: Islands
Mouse wants to make an island as part of our study. Being the new and improved homeschooler that I am we are going to do it! We read a book from the Magic School Bus series on volcanoes and how an island is formed. This will be fun. We are going to make a volcano, and then if she wants to make a dirt island outside we will do that too.

Tuesday:
LA - Descriptive Sentences/Lists, an extra for Mouse: Parallel Construction
Science: The Great Barrier Reef

We will use some books I found at a library sale to supplement our study of the GBR. We will learn about coral, and the fish that live among it.

Wednesday:
Art - Medium - Watercolor
We will paint nautical scenes on real watercolor paper. It should be fun! I was thinking of tying this in with the GBR study and painting coral, or saltwater fish.

Thursday:
Applied Math - Parts of a Whole in Real Life
Science: Clouds

Friday:
Science: Tides

Dinner will be seafood po boys.

Pictures will come as they happen!

Mommy Logic goes Spring!

Ok, I was tired of the cozy feeling. I needed to feel like grass was growing and bees were buzzing all about the blog world.

I am working on the white background. Right now the graphic I made with the help of clipart from www.pccrafter.com is creating a hideous white square around the oval and I can't figure out how to fix it! So we are doing white until I can get something figured out.

Happy Spring everyone!