January Currently

If you love blog hopping as much as I do, you probably have noticed the new trend people are doing. It's those "Currently" lists I'm talking about. Have you seen them? I love reading up on what's going on with others and decided to post my very first list...

In case you have no idea what I'm talking about, or need one for your blog, this blogger posts a new template each month for you to use. Here is my January currently:

My owl (one little word) for the year is to be RELIABLE. Last year, I burnt out with all the volunteering I was doing with my church, school, and babysitting. I enjoy family time, especially since my husband is a firefighter. I was feeling guilty when I had to put them aside to do things I promised others I could do. Well, once I cut back, I started to become a very unreliable person in general.

I'm hoping 2012 will be different in that aspect. I'm not ready to take on a full plate, but I hope my closest of friends will realize that they can depend on me for favors and such. I would love to see your January Currently. :)

What We're Reading

Since I've been homeschooling my fourth grader, I have been inspired by other Moms on how to create lessons. I know many Moms out there ditch books all together and go with natural, everyday experience-type learning... but the Type A in me really needs structure, lists, schedules, and routine. I like to think my daughter does too because she has a sense of pride when she gets to check off something from a list. :)

Anyway, back to my inspiration. I've been reading a blog called Almost Unschoolers and have really made it a point to include (free) library books into my teachings. At a recent outing, I was thrilled at the books we found that matched perfectly with what we were learning!

Yes, even that Potty book was perfect. It motivated "B" to ditch the diaper for good and I can now, proudly say... SHE IS POTTY TRAINED!!!!!!!!!!! "B" loves the Potty book because the boy in there has "undies" just like her. At the end of the book, it shows many different kinds of underwear and "B" likes to point out which ones are mine, Daddys, sissies, Grandmas, and so on. She loves this book.

"R" finished up her "Noun Word Wall"  and on the final day, before she entered her final 10 nouns, we read this book...

With the new vocabulary, she was able to complete her word wall of winter nouns:

She had so much completing this that we are continuing on with "Texas" nouns this week. She's learning about Texas history for the next 6 weeks, so this will cover subjects in Language, Reading, and History.

These books are assisting her in learning new nouns for her word wall...

Do you all have any books you enjoy reading to your kids?



Nouns can be fun. ROFL fun!

Note: Since I will be talking about my kids more than usual, I will be calling the 10 year old "R" and the 2 year old "B." Blogging about their adventures will flow a lot smoother this way. :) So, to clarify I is in month 2 of being homeschooled, and B is on day 3 of potty-training. (jumping for joy on the inside)

R has used the Abeka curriculum since she was 4. It's quite structured as far as homeschooling choices go, but it's what she's use to. I have changed things up a bit though by trying to incorporate more hands-on learning, as Abeka is pretty much worksheets.

For the last 3 years, R's school has taught her about the different parts of speech, with every year getting a bit more detailed than the previous. Currently, she's learning the rules for common and proper nouns and I wanted to put aside the textbooks this week. I love, love, loooove Language Arts, so creating fun lessons has been exciting for both of us.

As she is reviewing nouns, we have been making a really fun Word Wall. Each day, we add ten new nouns to the theme word. This is a simple exercise that can be used for verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. This weeks theme is "winter."

The first two days, R quickly spit out all the easy nouns associated with winter. Day 3 and 4 were a bit more challenging as she really had to use her head. By the way, I didn't want to spend the money on butcher paper, so I'm using the back of an old desk calender to display charts and such. #twice-owned, #under$20, and still #frugalLiving. See... the old repurposed me is still there. :) This cost me NADA.

Today, we had made a trip to a bookstore to spend a gift card she received from her Grandma for Christmas. Imagine my excitement as I found a huge selection of Mad Libs! I loved playing with them when I was little and thought this would be a perfect way to practice her parts of speech. I showed her how to play them, afraid she would find them boring, but she started cracking up with the very first story. We ended up walking out of there with 5 versions!!!! Mad-Libs are $3.99 at this store, and even though our gift card made this FREE, it still would have been under $20 with our membership discount.

That night, we played Mad Libs for over an hour. On some stories, she was laughing so hard, tears began to fall. Little did she know, I was counting this as schoolwork and her problems with identifying adjectives are nearly over.

You can kind of see her wet eyelashes and red nose. This was after one particularly hilarious, ROFL, story.

Homeschooling can be LOL fun...

Linking up with:
Christina's Adventures, A Creative Princess

Happy New Year!

Hooray!!! I hope you all had a safe and happy new year! Did you notice I took a vacation? ;)

HA! Hardly a vacation and more like a "I'm so stressed out I'm going to SCREAM" hibernation. Oh, how I wish I was joking. Rather than bore you with the details, here is a quick rundown of what has happened to me (er, my blog) since I last posted in... September? October?

1) My two-year old toddler turned terrible. GAH. I don't even want to go there. And she is still NOT potty-trained.

2) My ten-year old was missing at school one afternoon and I made the decision to pull her out and homeschool. There were a lot of other factors other than safety, but that was the one that sent me over the edge.

3) The growth of Creative Memories. I have been so caught up in my scrapbooking, that I have put aside my home projects.

We're still tiling, painting, and changing out light fixtures.... but who wants to read a blog about changing a brass sconce into a satin nickel one??? Didn't think so. Rather than post about boring projects.. I just chose not to post period. :( I hope you can understand. I miss my blog though. This is my outlet and I miss the ladies who visited my site often, and we would root each other on. :( Are you all still there?!

I think this blog will have a new direction for 2012, since my life has taken quite a dramatic turn. If you don't mind about reading about my adventures in homeschooling... stick around. :) I've missed you!

Have a wonderful Tuesday!

Halloween Decor on the Cheap

October is nearly halfway over with and I am barely writing my first post. So sorry. :/ This month saw the one year anniversary of me becoming a "blogger!" YAY!!! Let me tell ya... I never thought I would get to have a friendship with ladies who are literally thousands of miles away from me. It has been a joy sharing my projects with you and getting to know you in the process.

Also... drum roll... later this month will mark the 29th year of my life! Surprisingly, I don't feel sad about entering the final year of my 20s. I am so ready to put that decade behind me. ;)

These little celebrations have me in quite the festive mood this year! Just look at the fun invitation I created for my birthday:

I used StoryBook Creator 4.0 and took a grand total of 5 minutes to complete it. Don't you love it?

I don't normally decorate my house for Halloween but I had an urge to do so this year. Nothing big and crazy... just some dollar store decor here and there. Like this sign:

This greets my guests as they enter our front porch. Sure the thing swings like a monkey at the slightest breeze, but I think it looks creepy cool. ;)

Once you enter the porch, you have a mixture of sweet and scary. No, I didn't plan this out. Besides, the mouse will only be up another 3 weeks and then the whole area will compliment each other. That autumnal pail will be up for at least another 2 months. That brown pail used to be a this color. Remember? I already had the spray paint and used autumn decor from last year. The mouse... ahhh... let me tell you about the mouse...

Those little guys are all over my house. EEEK! I saw Martha Stewart use them last year and I searched in vain all over for them.

Would you believe... I found them at the dollar store! A pack had about 16 of them! Sure, they aren't Ms. Martha, but I luv 'em.

My summer wreath also received a minor update. Again, I just used my fall items from last year. I love the black ribbon paired with a small pumpkin.

In addition, I love all the ideas I'm finding on Pinterest, but I need to step back from too much spending. We are preparing to tile again before the weather gets too cold. I can't wait! I want the guest bath and hallway tiled so we can start our kitchen reno. :D

I'll be posting again very soon with a product review. You'll see...