Rejoice with me, people!

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God's Creatures

While out hunting for insects, I turn on the back porch light to attrack moths.  Within a few minutes I heard this rustling.

Yay, says me, sounds like a huge moth!  I take a look in the light area and notice it wasn’t a moth.  It was a bat!  A bat, people!

I have always wanted a bat house and now I have one on my own porch!  It was not happy that the light was on, so I turned it off and promptly took pictures.  Look at this cutie.

  I do not know what kind it is.  It’s small.   After a while it left, but I am hoping it will return.  I am not sure what to do if it does return.  I don’t think it is wise for it to live in our lamp.

Anyone know what kind this is?

Random Monday

 

This post is random in itself, since my last post was two months ago!

For the month of March, the husband and I tried the Engine 2 Diet.  No oil, no butter, no meat or animal by-products, except honey.  No booze.  The first two weeks were hard, because I was fixing two dinners.  One for the kids and one for the parents.  We started slightly cheating after two weeks.  I lost one pound by the third week.  ONE.  ONE POUND!  I did not feel any better by the end of the 18 days.  We are no longer on it, but we still eat lots of veggies.

Pea #1 and I signed up for a 5k run.  A Zombie must have gotten ahold of my brain, because I don’t run.  Ever.  I can’t even run, without gasping for breath, to our mailbox.  We started the Couch 2 5k training plan, so I wouldn’t embarrass myself in front of the world.  I can now run 2 minutes and walk 2 minutes for 25 minutes total.   I really think there should be a plan like Floor 2 Couch, before starting C25k.

To help us run “better”, I bought each of us running shirts and socks.  Shorts for The Pea, and a Bionic Bra for me.  Yes, I did say Bionic Bra.  I needed something that really works um… you know what I mean.  I thought I’d go out running in style, so I bought a purple one.  It’s shiny.  I am miffed because my family won’t let me run in just jogging pants and the sports bra.  Everyone else does.

I am thrilled the new styles of ladies’ shirts.  The back actually covers the butt.  Why did it take so long to become stylish?

 

Pinterest Challenge

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Nailed it/Failed it, Pinterest Challange

So far my Pinterest Challenges haven’t been to much of a challenge.  Well, except for the pancake art.  That was a challenge.

This time I wanted to do something completely different and was a big challenge.

Some of you may have read a previous post on the state of my favorite cookbook.  As stated in the post I am not a very neat cook.  My cookbooks get the blunt of my messes.  Can’t help it.  It’s just the way I am.

Since the first time the internet arrived in my home, I have been printing off recipes from different website I visit.

As you can see, they have the same fate as my cookbook.

I don’t know how the marker got on there.  I am not even sure it is a marker.

What to do?  What to do?  Why go to Pinterest and find out!   This.  This, people, is the awesome challenge I came up with!  I know you’re jealous.

It was a hard challenge, but I was up for the task.  You need a plastic hanger with clips, made to hang pants or skirts.  Here is the really hard part; hang it over your cabinet door.  That’s right! Just reach up high and hang it on the door knob.

 What really made this a harder challenge than any of my other Pinterest Challange people, was that I had to actually take out a plastic sleeved recipe sheet from my gorgeous recipe binder.  I mean really!  I had to open it up AND open the rings to take out the paper.

But all this hard work will be forever worth it.  Not only do I have clean recipe pages, my cookbook is not taking up lots of space.  Just take out the recipe, hang the recipe on the knob, rest a minute to get your breath, then close the cookbook.

I claim myself as totally NAILED IT Queen!!

I know this project has just blown your mind.  If you have any mind left, go check out my friends and their Pinterest Challenge.  Of course, they fall way short of my awesome project.

 

Come back and gawk at my awesomeness any time!

The Mondo Bag

Tags

crafts, crochet, knitting

For A Christmas gift a good friend from co-op, made me a Mondo Bag.  For the record, I like bags.  I like lots of bags.  Bags hold Every.Thing!!  So you can imagine the excitement when I opened this.

It’s huge. It’s marvelous.  It’s perfect.  Not only for it’s size, but for how my friend made it JUST.FOR.ME.  :)

Not only did she add awesome bright colors, but also photos.  These are perfect for a Biology teacher.  You can see a worm, mushrooms, and an animal cell. Totally cool.

Below you can see, I Love Biology and a photo of my husband. My friend went out of her way to capture some favorite pictures off my blog.

Below you can see me as Professor Goodenstein and The Webmonkey.  Notice the matching glasses. LOL  I am the webmonkey for our co-op website.

I love this bag!  The bottom is a flat huge square.  I have added a skein of yarn so you can sort of see the size of this thing.

I have used it a few time, but right now it is a perfect place to hold all of the yarn I need to make my daughter’s blanket.  A work in progress.

And all the yarn that goes with it.

Thanks, Georgeann, for all your hard work in making this great bag just for me.

 

 

 

It’s Called a Honey Cowl

Tags

crafts, knitting

Sometime before Christmas Deb and I were trying to decide what I would do for the December Pinterest Nailed It/Failed It challenge.   We decided I would make the Honey Cowl.  You can find Deb’s first Honey Cowl here.

However; I didn’t have any suitable yarn.  No worries, Deb said to use sock yarn and knit with two strands.  Cool.  I can do that.  I wanted to use Chugiak Hand Dyed Sock Yarn by Pagewood.  First thing Deb asked, “Do you have two skeins?”  Sure!, says I.  What Deb didn’t know, was where I got the two skeins from.

I got it from this.

That’s right!  I frogged that sucker right out.  It has been folded in my drawer for three years and I have hated it that long.  Click on the photo to take you to the shawl post

I have another shaw, I’d like to frog too.

I bought a pair of acrylic interchangeable knitting needles to knit the Honey Cowl.  I do not like the acrylic needles.  I will not buy them again, because they seem to be sticky. I like my knitting needles and crochet hooks to be super slick.

So here is the finished cowl.

Some things to know.

• The yarn is not squishy soft, but it is pretty.
• The photo does not do the color any justice.  The color is gorgeous, in real life.
• It is only just over 6 inches wide.  I didn’t want a wide cowl.
• The above photo is the way I will wear the cowl.

A close-up look at the stitches.

Things you should know.

• Every single row has mistakes.
• The pattern was super easy.  I just can’t remember from one stitch to the next if I purled our slipped.

Here it is wrapped twice around my neck.

Some things you should know.

• I will not wear it like this.
• I do not like to have anything wrapped around my neck.  Why I continue to make scarves and cowls for myself, I’ll never know.  They are fun to make, but not to wear.
• It’s doesn’t look as nice as Deb’s.  I think this yarn is on the heavy side and tends to weight down the folds.
• I will most likely make another one of these for my sisters.  I’ll pick a fluffy yarn with lots of squishiness.

Since I did not have the needles to start this for the December Nail It/Fail It challenge, this ended up being a fun KAL with Deb.  Thanks Deb for all your help with this!

Random Monday

So glad we are back on normal schedule.  Letting the kids sleep in until 10:00am does not make for a good long day.

Pea #1 and I are dairy free.  At the end of the day, I congratulated myself for not having any dairy and it wasn’t a bad first week.  Then I cried when my brain woke up and told me it had only been one day since going dairy free.  The Pea has had only one fit when she couldn’t grab a cup of milk.  She is drinking Almond milk, but doesn’t care for it.

My Twit friends have talked me into playing Words With Friends. I didn’t want to since they are all smarter than me.  Not Inadequate was the first to start.  My first word was great YOGA for a whopping 8 points!  Yes, I’m rockin’ this WWF game.  Then Deb puts her word up.  DEFRAYAL for 56 points!  She used ALL of her letters! So the games goes on, my last word ZIN for 23 points.  Her last word SLITS for 45 points. Right now the score is Me 125; Deb 205.  Yeah, I’m going back to not playing with smart people.  It isn’t a challenge playing with me.  This is a very sad game.

I’m lovin’ Evernote!  I can make check lists, keep them in one place for future reference, and email them to the husband.

Now go read what everyone else is randomly saying.

I am thankful for…

• A husband who will do anything for his children and wife
• The experience The Violinist is getting being on a LifeSmarts team
• Rainy days
• My friends on Twitter

 

 

The Month of January

My goals for the month of January:

To save money:

• I will make tortillas, bagels, bread crumbs.
• Will not buy ice cream, microwave popcorn, colas, or chocolate bars.
• Go to the grocery store only once during the week.
• Make a menu plan.
• Return all library books on time.

Health:

• Loose 5 pounds.  A lofty goal, since I ate my husband’s brownie for breakfast today.
• Drink lots of water.
• Stop drinking  coffee.  It really isn’t coffee, because it is more sugar and half/half.
• Get back to hot tea.
• Dairy Free – doing this with Pea #2.  More on that at another time.
• Take daily vitamins

Organization:

• Wake up at 5:00am.  This starts 1/7/2012 when we are all back to work and school.
• Bed time 10:00p.  Lofty goal is 9:30p.
• Make a menu plan
• Clean out two kitchen drawers
• Work on getting the husband signed up for Google calendar

Spiritual

• Daily devotional,  already two days late on this one.

 

Biology Catch-up

Tags

Apologia Biology, biology, Homeschool, science

This is just a quick update to what has been going on in the Biology class, since our Edible Cell project.

We did our Edible DNA.  As always I follow the instructions from Teach Genetics.  The students were to pick what color marshmallow represented each of the nucleotides.

To help them remember what this experiment was about, I made the Eat Your DNA worksheet.  This worksheet was to be handed in for a partial lab credit.

The students had fun with this and one student was really in it for the twizzlers.  lol

We continued to study DNA, with the extraction of DNA from Strawberries.

I have previously extracted DNA from peas, but wanted to do something different and let each student have their own supplies.  I followed this video.  Looked simple enough.

While one student squished the strawberries to break up the cells, the other student made the solution that will break open the cells.  In the video they use dish detergent.  We use hand soap.

The solution was slowly added to the strawberry bag and gently mixed.

After the soap/salt solution was added to the strawberry bag, it was filtered through a coffee filter.  We wanted all the tid-bits of strawberries out.  We had some trouble here when a few of the filters broke.

To get the DNA out of the pink liquid, we added alcohol.

Two layers will form after the alcohol has been added.  The top layer will hopefully have the DNA.

We had little success with this.  Yes, there was DNA, as seen below, but it was not the awesome amount I had gotten when we used peas.

The students still thought it was a pretty cool experiment.

Right after the DNA extraction, we practiced Mitosis with play dough.  I had done this before and it really helped the students.  This time; however, most of the students were not interested in participating with this project.   It turned out to be a bad situation and I did not bother to bring back the play dough the next week to practice Meiosis.  This just goes to show you that each class is different.

I have no idea why my photos are small.  :(

Coming up soon will be our Spudoodles!  So come back and see what we did.

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

19,000 people fit into the new Barclays Center to see Jay-Z perform. This blog was viewed about 140,000 times in 2012. If it were a concert at the Barclays Center, it would take about 7 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.