Pumpkin cake

After 3 pumpkin pie dinners in a week, I’m pumpkin pied out. Well tonight was our turn to host a “Thanksgiving” dinner and I had 2 cans of pumpkin in the pantry. I decided to do pumpkin spice cake instead. It was a big hit. Very filling.
Its a bit heavy but very good with [...]

Kindergarten math readiness

This afternoon I dug out the Math-U-See Primer video I use for kindergarten math. I was trying to decide if my daughter may be ready for kindergarten in the fall or if she needs to wait. I think she will be ready for reading but wasn’t sure about math.
She sat in my lap while we [...]

Fitness update 2

I’m afraid to say I haven’t made much progress this week. First, I was sick and so didn’t feel like exercising. Then we ate out because we had many appointments in town one day with no time to go home and fix dinner. The end result of all this is that I didn’t loose any [...]

Holiday toy shopping

It’s almost the crazy consumer holiday season. Are you ready?
Most kids (including mine) are making wish lists and parents are checking them and their wallets twice. Stores are sending out colorful catalogs and newspaper ads to show you what you need to buy. Shop til you drop has replaced family and religion as the focus [...]

School’s almost halfway over

Yikes! How did we get so much done in so few months? It’s amazing the amount of material we’ve covered so far this year. We started in mid-August and haven’t taken any of those one- or two-day holidays like the public and many private schools do. As a result, we’re almost halfway through the school [...]

Fitness update 1

OK, I know I just started Slim in 6 and posted about it yesterday. Still, today is Thursday so I’d thought I’d kick off the fitness updates.
First, the scale said 170 this morning. Yeah, 2 pounds lost this week!
I was rather sore when I got up this morning. By afternoon I was a bit better [...]

Slim in 6, day 1

As the ticker says: one pound lost 46 to go. The trick is not to let myself get burned out and give up. I’ll post weekly updates. Well today I decided to start Slim in 6 for my exercise program.
It has 3 levels. The first is Start it Up. I’d forgotten how intense some [...]

Chimney stack robber

No, someone didn’t steal our chimney. In September we ordered a stack robber. It finally came in. My husband installed it this morning.
A stack robber is a metal box about 16 inches tall that sits on the chimney. Actually, it becomes part of the chimney. It sits between two lengths of stove pipe. [...]

Brrr, winter’s here

After a glorious long fall and snowy early winter, winter has finally set in with our first below zero cold spell starting this week. I don’t know why it is a surprise to me. It usually is below zero around Thanksgiving. Here’s the forecast for this week.
Tonight
Mostly cloudy. Scattered snow showers. Lows zero to 10 [...]

No S Diet? Hmm, interesting

I read Anna at Veiled Glory started something called the No -s diet. She doesn’t talk much about what it is but has a link. I was curious (and still overweight) so I checked. Sounds interesting.
Here’s the quick of what it is. As the website of the creator says there are just 3 simple rules [...]