teacher sale

A friend called and told me she had driven by a tutoring business that was having a going out of business sale.  Score for us!  We jumped right in the car and went to see. 

We bought all we could with all the cash on hand.  I could have come home with more.  Scraping together only $16 was probably a good thing.   I had to be picky.

 There were full curriculum sets for math and language arts in almost every grade, blank workbooks, flashcards, learning games, trade books, etc.  She said she'll do it again in June and I left her my email address. I'll make sure to have more cash!

hoarding and friends

I have the best friends!  Because they love me for my hoarding and even encourage it, my crafty friend Melissa found two boxes of baby food jars and thought of me.  What a find!   Of course I took them.  I'm saving them for some school projects next year.  Like applesauce and butter making (which I don't think I've posted about yet!)

this weekend- preview

This is pretty much a preview of our weekend. 

My youngest little sister is graduating from highschool.

I always felt like as long as I could say I still had a sister in highschool it kept me young.  

We'll be packing up our photo props and setting up a photo booth at her graduation open house.  Total DIY.

All of my siblings and significant others will be in the same place at the same time, which as my dad says, means the stars have aligned.

There's ski soda and mustaches, a good time is guaranteed. 

 At the last second I added a frame to our  props and I think it will add to the fun. 

 

Yep, it's going to be a fun weekend. 

child labor

I'm all for child labor, given the right setting. This seems like the right setting.  Ignore that Lou is wearing Bee's pink crocs.  He tends to leave his shoes places and then can't find them when we wants them.

We are almost done with the diy milk jug green houses. 

We were planting green bean seeds in our empty spaces.  Lou was the seed man.

Bee likes my new hoe as much as I do. It's actually a double headed adze type hoe and it belonged to hubby's grandpa.  I hear he was quite the gardener.  I am happy that I the kids and I get to use it now.

side note:  For those of you that know Lou, you may know that he never goes without a shirt.  Never.  This summer, he has decided that in front of the right company, it might be ok.  It's funny to me to see his white belly out in the light of day.

growing stuff

If you need some lettuce of spinach come picking at my place, It's growing faster than we can eat it and/or give it away.  The rabbits aren't even interested this year.  

Since the rabbits are missing, the green beans stand a chance.  We're pluggin in bush beans wherever there is a little spot.  They are growing randomly around the gardens now. 

The snow peas just started flowing this week which means the pods are coming so so soon. 

Just yesterday we ate the first logan berry.  This picture must have been taken just the day before.  They're just like kids, they grow up so fast. We used a netting this year over the strawberries and on some of the logan berries.  It's the netting from our old trampoline!  We're ghetto like that. It's working though.

Hopefully the rabbits and the raccoons are on the same page, one outside my fence.  The corn may stand a chance if I can keep them out.

My tomatoes are smaller still than any of my gardening neighbors, but they're from seed and I found last year that all of my three surviving self started tomatoes caught up with my store bought ones. 

These are our diy milk jug green houses.  We're ghetto like that.  They have been really nice this year and I'll keep saving more for next year.  I also tried using 2 liters, but the clear plastic had a negative effect.  They fried the plant inside.  The milk jugs kept my little seedlings safe, warm, kept bugs off, and kept them plenty moist.  

The zucchini and squash have gotten all mixed up.  Hopefully I end up with a nice number of each, but it will be a mystery until the vegetables come.

This is my first time with pole beans.  I've done bush beans, but not pole.  We'll just see what happens. That's my favorite part about gardening, you can try new things all the time and keep at it until you get it right.   

I peaked at the potatoes and there are sprouts!  I like getting to peak at them under the straw.

I planted some rhubarb.  I'm excited to have this, especially since it's a little to no work food source.  I have two growing but planted three.

They carrots are trucking along.

I still have a few spare seedlings. They are my backups.  I've needed to replace several in the garden over the last few weeks and just grab a nicer one from the porch and switch it out.  They get a little more water and more shade on the porch, so they seem happier.

strawberries and such

 We've been picking strawberries almost everyday from our own little patch.  For several days, we got a quart or two each day, now we're getting a small bowl full each day and usually eat them before we get inside.   

We've gone picking two times at our new favorite berry farm the next town over.  The one closest to us sprays the plants so heavily I just couldn't pick there anymore.  In the box is our farm pick, 18 pounds and Bee and Lou's home pick the same day. 

We went back a few days later and picked another 22 pounds!  It's a lot of berries.  Berry season is so short that we better make the most of it.

They've been eaten fresh, used on ice cream,

I dried two batches,

we've eaten them on salads,

I froze 6 quarts, and make lots of jam.  I canned 32 pints of strawberry jam!

They have such a short season- so we've got to get them while we can.  They say blueberries are in another week!

end of the year gifts for the teacher

My class was so generous to me the last few days of school.  I have gift cards and flowers galore.  Here are a few of those sweet gifts I received.  I thought these were so clever that I'd get them posted. 

This book was from a sweet little guy who has become a good friend.  This reminded me of the 'daddy dates' gift we gave at our house last month.

Each page has something that I might do this summer and a little gift card. 

I love that you could work this up sending as much or as little as you want.  There were several pages, for some reason, my pictures were blurry.

This flower pot has a tag that says "thanks for helping me grow" printed on a flower shared card.   It is stuck on the eraser end of a pencil.  The eraser is the little paper flower's center.  I thought it was a cute plant marker.   There's also a target card stuck in there, so that was fun too.  Cinnamon rolls were a gift from another friend! 

I had never seen this little letter that goes in a pretty frame.  I thought it was sweet and clever.  In case you can't really read the note, the line that ties the frame to the note is 

"Since you have helped to 'frame' her future learning, we hope you will use this to frame someone who means as much to you as ____ means to us."

Another little friend gave me a book that they made on one of those photo sites, snapfish or something. 

It's full of photos of the her and our class and the two of us from the past two years.  This kind of project works for our setting since the parents come in the room at drop off and pick up most days and then are there for leader day once a month or so as well as at Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter party.  They take a lot of pictures.

We gave strawberry jam as our teacher gift.  Not as exciting or cute, but tasty.

end of the year- preschool style

Lou's teachers had the best idea.  I tried to get it together for my own class on the last day but gave up.  I have it in my plan book to get it together much more in advance next year.  

Anyway, I thought these autograph books were just awesome. Organizationally speaking, you could get these together a number of ways.  His class had them all ready put together with blank pages.  The kids sat in a circle and wrote their name on a card, flipped the page, and passed, wrote their name, flipped pages, pass, all around the circle.  You could also have the kids write their name on every page in a book and then the teacher take them home and take the books apart and reassemble with correctly.  Next year, I'm thinking that it would be easy to just use blank cards as your sign in activity when they enter, it will just take a few weeks to get them all collected.