Our Trip To The Beach

Driving, driving, driving across the state on I-40.  Past trees and houses and the usual stuff. 

But then we began to see marshy areas off the interstate.  One expects that in the coastal plains area.  We get excited!  Not too far now!  Closer and closer we drive.  Is that Spanish moss in the trees?  Finally, someone gets a glimpse of the ocean between two beach houses as we turn on to Beach Drive.  We’re there!!!

You know what that means…

Empty Flip-Flops

Lynn’s got her toes in the sand.

It felt so good to be back at the beach.  All three days we were there were beautiful.  The children had SO much fun.  I had so much fun. 

I read.  I ate good.  I was thankful.  I had time to meditate. 

You know, they even have flowers at the beach, and yes, I did notice the flowers, but I also fully enjoyed watching the boats.

And the seagulls.  They are so funny the way they run across the sand, looking for things to eat.  And the pelicans!  I wanted to get a really good shot of a pelican, but I never did!  I should have tried harder, but I was just too relaxed. 

Seagull

As always, we enjoyed playing in all the ”pools” of deliciously warm water that get left behind when the tide goes out.  You can find many treasure there.  I found a conch shell this year!  We found a bunch of hermit crabs…

which we certainly let go of after everyone had had a look.  Yes, there are little crabs in many of these shells.

We used a shell to scoop up this, uh…  Can anyone tell me what it is?  Someone said it was a sea sponge, but I honestly don’t know.  It was put right back into the water.

I found a really cool website with lots of Ocean Life that can be found at the Brunswick County Beaches.  It’s the O’Keefe Family Website.

Hey!  Remember the little cutie on the blanket so many years ago?

He’s still a cutie, and he’ll produce a handsome smile, just for his mama.  Awww, he makes me so happy!

I got a chance to do one of my favorite, favorite, most-favorite things at the beach: play in the sand and build a sand castle.  Only this time we built a fort, because the builders were myself and one of my first-cousins-once-removed, a fine little fella who has a big imagination, and I just figured it should be a fort, for obvious reasons.

Now, it’s hard to tell — the front of it looks flat in the picture, but there’s a wall in the front, which is what the face is sitting on.  The wall keeps out “bad guys.”

Fort Builder

That’s my helper.  Together, we were the fort builders.  He was wondering, what if someone tears it down. 

I had to tell him, the waves will wash it away later, but we can build again tomorrow.

Sure enough, the water came in later, close enough to wash away at our wall.  Princess of the Universe was there to watch our fort begin to melt back into regular, flat beach.  Wonder how many castles have been built and washed away here?

Maybe We Can Build Again Next Year

One of my cousins was kind enough to take a picture of me and all my children together before we left.  I love it.  I want to print one to put in a frame for my office.

Aren’t we a windblown mess?  But a happy, warm, ever-so-slightly sun-tanned mess!

The house we stayed in was lovely…

Who would want to ever leave?  Not I. 

We did, though, have to come home.  Back to work and school lessons and chores.  But we brought some sweet memories home with us.

It feels good to be home after all.

Lynn

PS - Can’t wait to catch up with everyone’s blogs!

To put our toes in the ocean.  To twist our bare feet down into warm sand and let it get, all grainy, between our toes.  To go to sleep at night listening to the very soul of the natural world, the rhythm of the waves beneath the moon.

This is a picture of a vaction long past.  That’s one of my sweet boys on the right and his sweet little cousin on the left.  They are but 10 days apart in age. 

I’ll be away for about three days.  My sweet husband is staying behind to work.  He’s so kind to wish us a good time.  He loves the beach.  (I promise he’s got a nice vacation to look forward to soon.)

From the garden today…

The new growth on the sweet potato vine caught my eye as Peter Pan.

Bright, or what?!

“To create a little flower is the labour of ages.” 
William Blake, English Writer and Artist, 1757-1827

“Flowers are lovely;
love is flower-like.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, English Poet, 1772-1834

“Chide me not, laborious band!
For the idle flowers I brought;
Every aster in my hand
Goes home loaded with a thought.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Writer, 1803-1882

I love the bright petals on this geranium. 

I believe this is some kind of hen-and-chicks (Echeveria).  I was a bit surprised to see that it is going to bloom.

I shall see you when I return. I hope for safe travels. I’ll take plenty of pictures.

Lynn  

There are new things over at Lynn’s Victorian Treasures.

Ride over and take a look!

Lynn

  As I said, it was time to plant the mint.  So plant it I did.  It gave me the chance to recycle some newspapers.

I wrapped the newspaper, not too tightly but snugly, around a can.

I folded the ends up at the bottom, tied some string around and then pulled out the can.

I ended up with perfect little planters for my mint.  They’ll stay here until the whole thing can be planted into the ground.

I save all manner of cardboard and wrapping things, so I had the perfect separator thingy to sit down into an old shoe box to hold my growing mint plants.

A little neighbor girl stopped by and wanted to look through the stones I have in jars for my mosaic work.  You know I couldn’t tell no when she asked for “one” for her “collection.”  We settled on six. 

Lynn

NOTE:  I wish I could remember where I saw the recycling idea.  In one of my magazines?  On a blog?  I just don’t remember, but I would love to give credit for it.  I was thinking it was Mary Janes Farm, but when I looked back through this month’s issue I couldn’t find it.  I’m stumped.

Mint roots very easily and I think this is ready to be planted in containers now.  More to come about this.

This is from some mint given to us by a cousin of my husband’s.  She lives up in Vilas, North Carolina.  It’s a beautiful moutain area.

Lynn

You gotta have energy to lesson-plan!  That’s why I start my days with some sort of healthy drink. (Well, not really. I just like healthy drinks.)

I often run my juicer so that I can drink carrots, apples, oranges, and greens.  But lately Peggy at She Hath Done What She Could has introduced me to the Green Smoothie Girl website, so this morning I had a green smoothie.

I have to admit that I really like the idea.  Two of my children tried this out this morning.  I think they can help me get this to be something we will all enjoy.  I could drink straight greens.  They, however, will need more fruit and stevia. 

Oh.  Back to lesson planning.

I have really been working on getting all of my records in order, since I have one who will graduate next year.  Although, a good administrater will keep them in order anyway.  I have the large notebook above with sections for ease in finding things.  It has the following sections:

• State Information - my registration card, our original letter of intent, etc.  I also keep legal state guidelines here.
• Transcript & College Planning - What the colleges require from high school, letters we’ve received from universities, SAT info, our high school planning charts.
• Field Trips Taken - self explanatory
• Special Education/Dyslexia - contains all the information documenting my son’s dyslexia and various testing he has had and our plans to remedy his dyslexia.  In some areas he’s way ahead.  In some areas he’s way behind.  This helps to say why that’s so.
• Five In A Row - Contains book lists and ideas for go-alongs for our Five In A Row studies through the years.
• Lesson Plans - Contains all the lesson plans I’ve written out through the years.  Great documentation!
• Planning Sheets - Master copies of planning sheets.
• Important Reproducibles - Again, self explanatory.
• Teaching Standards - Various scope-and-sequence guidelines.
• Testing - Our copies of all the required testing we’ve done.
• Attendance - Our copies of our attendance records.
• Immunizations - Yes we are required to keep those on file.

This notebook weighs nearly 10 pounds, by the way. 

The summer is getting away from me so fast and I wanted to do so much!  I have printed enough planning sheets to take us through September.  The trick now is to make the plans do-able and full of interesting and fun learning, but also leave room for coincidental and spontaneous happenings!

Like today!

This evening we watched another of our Artists Specials tapes, but we had not planned to do so.

Rembrandt : Fathers and Sons

The tape was SO good.  I think this may be my favorite so far, but it’s probably because of what happened before we watched it — what prompted us to go ahead and watch it.  I just have to share the coolest thing that happened today. 

I was (guess where) at the thrift store for about 5 minutes today during an errand, and everything was 1/2 off.  I found this beautiful, very nice book:

Yes, it’s Rembrandt by Christopher Baker, a very large picture book, 242 pages.  Some of the paintings are disturbing, but it’s because they depict so vividly real life.  They make us realize that pain and suffering and sickness do exist.  There’s also joy and gladness.  Do I let my children see it? 

Well, I think about the disturbing images on some video games and movies.  I’m afraid that rather than helping children understand the gravity of pain and suffering, the horribly graphic games and movies deaden a child’s sensitivity to pain and suffering.  It’s worrisome to me.  Real art does something different.

I think the difference is that in the video games and movies, the impossible happens.  People get shot and get back up.  People fall off buildings, but while flying through the air, miraculously grasp a ledge or something, with barely their fingernails and are saved.  I’m not saying it can’t happen, but…  And in the video games, the soldiers get blown to pieces and then they stand up and you start the game over again.  On the other hand, a fine painting of a stoned staint or a dead person prepared for burial or a soldier entering into his final battle – well, there’s a finality to it, and the more you look at it the more you enter into that finality. 

Princess of the Universe spent a great deal of time looking through this book.  Then, seeing Rembrandt brought to life in the VHS tape we watched made us appreciate the master behind the paintings.  He was a real man with his own joys and sorrows.

Well, that’s enough for now.  It’s been a full day. 

Lynn

I found some excellent children’s books today and they will go along wonderfully with some of the unit studies I am planning for Princess of the Universe.  (Well, the book Herbs: Gardens, Decorations and Recipes is for me.)   

I had to make a trip out of town today and while out I stopped by a Goodwill and also had the occasion to visit a Book Warehouse.  Book Warehouse is great, by the way.  If you’ve never been to one, you can check the store locator on their website and see if there’s one close to you.  They give a 15% homeschool discount, that on top of offering a huge discount on books to start with. 

All the books above were found at the thrift store except for The Pumpkin Runner (a Five in a Row book) and The Dream House, both found at The Book Warehouse.  I paid 4.99 for one and 5.99 for the other, before the discount!

Other books I found were:

•  Children of the Midnight Sun: Young Native Voices of Alaska
• Mother to Tigers (Junior Library Guild Selection)
• The Speckled Band: A Night Lights Glow in the Dark Book
• Charles Dickens: The Man Who Had Great Expectations

 I was very happy with our book finds today, in total costing me only 14.00.

A Cooking Note

Thanks to one of my pregnant homeschooling friends (Linda, you know who you are), I have been craving potato salad, and, no, I’m not expecting.  So, Linda, thank you for inspiring me to make this today. 

For those of you who are really craving potato salad now and need to get a little closer — close enough to smell this delicious potato salad, here you go.

Our Evening Walk

On my walk with Princess of the Universe tonight, we saw four wild bunnies.  We only got a picture of one, and we could not get very close for that.

They were such sweet bunnies, and Miss Priss said they reminded her of Peter Rabbit and his blue coat. 

We spied some Queen Anne’s lace, or wild carrot, which our modern cultivated carrot comes from, as a side note for you.  (You probably already knew that.)

It’s one of my favorite wild flowers.  I love it when it favors a little bird’s nest, as below.

So pretty and delicate.  Just remember not to confuse it with poison hemlock.

The wild blackberries all along the roadsides are getting ripe.

In MY Garden

The liatris is in bloom.

More daylilies, but I don’t remember what their name is.

Both of my nicotiana plants are getting ready to explode with blooms.  They should bring butterflies, hummingbirds, bees, and moths to the garden.

Lynn

We have this old printer’s drawer mounted on the wall as you go up the stairs.  It is full of all sorts of little miniatures and transient pieces of nature.  Sometimes items will disappear for use in play elsewhere and then make their way back to the shadow box. 

I know decor-wise it’s dated perhaps to have a shadow box, but I like mine.  I like it very much and every so often I dust it out and visit all the little characters and creatures in it.  Imagine the double-take I did as I passed by it this morning on the way upstairs with an oversized basket of clean laundry.

I mean, this is what I’m up against around here!  I try as hard as I can to keep things neat and clean and presentable should someone drop by.  It’s bad enough that the shadow box desperately needs dusting, but a partially eaten pretzel stick sitting in it.  My word.

On a sweeter note, the kitties have taken to climbing up into the cinder blocks that hold up one of our water barrels.  There are two “cinder block hotels,” each one two blocks high, so there are eight rooms to three kitties.  They move around as they see fit.  This kitty was so sleepy he could barely open his little eyes.

So he promptly closed them again and curled up into an even tighter little fluff-ball and want back to sleep.

I did a cute little project today for a corner of my home office where I needed to post little reminders and notes regarding my job.  I definitely wanted something small, and I found it when I found a perfectly good cork board for 50 cents.

I painted the frame, hot glued a piece of fabric over the cork, and wrote a couple of verses from Proverbs 31 around the frame.  (It won’t hurt me to glance at that throughout the day either.)  Princess of the Universe helped me glue some treasures on at the four corners and some buttons onto some pushpins.

I really like it!!  And it’s small enough to sit on the back corner of the desk in very clear view for me.

I’ll leave you with a reminder to work on those things that can be worked on:

“Patience with ills you can cure is the greatest evil.”  Margery Ashby

Lynn

Thoughts on Food…

Just a reminder that there’s a difference between good fat and bad fat, and that our bodies need some fat to help us with hormone production, among other things.

This was yummy and I have no guilt. 

A slice of sourdough olive bread, a spring-green salad with Bragg’s Ginger and Sesame Salad Dressing and a fried Egg — with just a bit of olive oil on the side for dipping my bread in.  For dessert?  A slice of watermelon.  Now, I am stuffed, but I may have to break down and eat the one truffle that is hiding in my purse, safely away from kids and hubby.  The truffle probably does not count as good fat, but sometimes you just need a truffle.

Last night I made a sort of pesto, with plenty of fresh basil, olive oil, a bit of fresh tomato and pumpkin seeds.  It was pretty good last night on crackers.

This olive loaf, all natural and bought locally, is heavenly.  Well, almost. 

And while at that all-natural grocery store, I picked up a copy of one of my favorite magazines:  Mary Jane’s Farm.  You should take a peek at one some time.  Hopefully, I will get a chance to curl up with mine this evening.

Unfortunately, my dear husband has been very sick today and last night.  He has a cold on top of some of his chronic issues and was just miserable.  I took him to Urgent Care and then home, but it was back out for me, to get his prescription.   While waiting, I had the time to run in Goodwill.  I found the beautiful all-linen peasant blouse above.  It’ll be so pretty with a long skirt.

I also found a pretty pink shawl for this fall/winter and a feminine  T-shirt.

As usual, I had to go through the books.  I found a Jim-Dandy!  It’s called The World’s Finest Food. 

The World’s Finest Foods

“Designed as a true culinary journey, ” It has gorgeous photos, and recipes and cultural information from 12 different countries, complete with helpful little maps.

Today In The Garden

Not too much new in the garden today, but I’ll try and post vegetable pictures later on.  The trumpet vine is blooming today.

Also, the old-fashioned flower that I am unsure as to the exact identity of — it’s blooming so happily and will bloom for a long while now.

A Bloggity Revelation

Rue over at Rue’s Peanut Butter and Jelly Life posted a picture of some lovely dishes she spotted on an antique hunt.  Rue!  I have those plates.  Well, only a few of them.  Mine look nearly identical to the ones you saw.  They are left over from a set of dishes my mother-in-law had in years long past.  I love them!

Sorry if I have given you TMI.  It’s been a long, long day, but a good day (except for my husband being sick), and I just had a lot to say. 

Lynn

An odd title, I know, but it’s what this weekend has been about. 

A Saturday Morning Yardsale

The weekend was good.  Even though I had to work on Saturday, I started out my early morning with a yard sale which was on the way to the local all-natural grocery store and farmer’s market.

There was a ton of Barbie stuff that all looked brand new and the clothes to the Barbies were all good stuff, as in long “princess” dresses.  You know, the more modest stuff, if you can consider Barbie modest.  Anyway, we do play with Barbies here.

Princess of the Universe awoke soon and checked everything out right away.  I knew she’d look at the horse and rider first.  It’s Fisher Price.  The horse neighs.  Princess of the Universe was showing me the difference between a walk, trot, canter and gallop.  I was impressed!  And glad she still likes to play.

Buying and Cooking Whole Foods

After the yard sale, I bought some fresh vegetables and all-natural bagels and muffins for the children to have when they got up.  (Yes, I made an early morning trip without children.  It’s one of the advantages of having older children.  They watch the younger ones.)

I washed and layered in a large pot in this order: 

• red potates, one large sweet potato, one large rutabaga
• several peeled whole carrots
• broccoli

I filled the pot with water up over the carrots and then put on the stove on medium-high and covered.  The water boiled, which cooked the potatoes, rutabaga, and carrots, but just steamed the broccoli.  I kept a close eye, taking the broccoli out when it was tender.  (Pretty quickly.)  The carrots came out not long after.  When the potatoes and rutabaga were tender, I drained the water and put all the veggies back in the pot.  Along with a side dish of wild rice that had been cooking in another pot, this was what we ate on all day.  What beautiful, delicious, brightly-colored vegetables!  (Vitamins!)

I also bought some sausage patties from locally raised pork.  Talk about lean.  And good.  Yummy with a fried egg and Wisconsin cheddar cheese on a whole grain English muffin.  :)

I also decided last week to make my own English toffee cake, and I’m just getting around to showing you how marvelous it turned out.  Make two chocolate cake layers.  Ice with homemade chocolate buttercream icing.  Melt caramels to drizzle between the layers and on top.  Use a food processor to grind up a Heath bar and sprinkle between the layers and on top.  It was OUT OF THIS WORLD.

Doll House Adventures

On a doll house note, we have been playing and redecorating.  We have even done some decluttering of the doll house. 

Hey!  Even dolls can only move around and function so well when there’s too much clutter.  Of course, it won’t do to throw out something you use from time to time, even if you’re in a decluttering frenzy.  Now, that’s a lesson to teach!

You’ll see the fancy dog bed that Princess of the Universe made from a little tin from the thrift store and some fabric scraps.  That dog has a nice bed!

She put a couple of pieces of wood on the “fire.”  Of course the fireplace was drawn on paper and then decopauged to the wall. 

The bathroom was also moved to a room with a fireplace (made from a cardboard papertowel roll), and yes that’s the man of the house in the bathroom currently.  Ahem.  I desired to edit this out, but Princess of the Universe insisted it should stay in.  It is real life, after all.

How would you like a huge, round bathtub which allowed you to step out and dry in front of a roaring fire?  Could be dangerous.  But it could be warm. 

Shopping Tip

One thing we’ve been doing is to clip any coupons we see for Michael’s or A.C. Moore, especially the ones for 50% off any regularly-priced item.  That cuts the price of a set of dollhouse furniture in half!

In The Garden This Morning

There was what I think is a cabbage butterfly sitting on the nandina.

The bee balm, or Monarda didyma (below), is starting to bloom.  It is also known as Oswego Tea.  As a lesson to tie in with your Colonial studies, you can share that the Oswego Indians told the immigrants how to use bee balm for tea.  Tea was scarce, remember, after the Boston Tea Party.

After a heavy rain (and storms) last night, the basil looks so bright and green this morning.  I love to stroll through the garden after a good rain.

A new rosebud on the Knockout Rose.

A parsleyworm sits on the parsley.  I did note a black swallowtail fluttering around it last week or so.  I guess she was laying eggs.

The wind sent petals flying from the white-blooming crepe myrtle so that it looked like snow.  It was pretty then and pretty afterwards.

The red clover, one of my favorite herbs for infusions, is blooming prettily this morning and spilling over the rock border.

I think I should pick a bowl of raspberries today.

I hope your week has started out wonderfully.  Princess of the Universe was pretty sick this weekend (think stomach virus), but I think she’s on the mend.  We survived the storms, even though the phones are out this morning.  I can’t believe the DSL is working, but I’m glad it is.

I’ll leave you with a quote that came to me after decluttering the doll house:

“Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”  William Morris

Happy Monday,

Lynn