The Handmade Dress

  (Picture from our "Why We Love Homeschooling" post HERE ) It's that time of year again, it's time to practice our times tables (again!). I need to revamp my old system. Do any of you have fun ways to teach or learn them? Since it's just the beginning of school I'm wanting it to be extra fun so that we can keep the motivation! I usually teach everyone together no matter what age so group methods would work too. So what's your favorite or most effective way? xo, Sam

 My little bug catchers/scientists have another mystery on their hands. Maybe you can help?   They found this guy eating in the trunk of a tree. Tim thought that it was a grub, but we can't find this particular grub anywhere. All of the grubs that we have found on the internet have three legs on each side, this guy has two legs on each side. My bug catchers are just crazy to find out more about this big ole guy! If you have any idea what he is, or know a good place for us to look, please link us up! It is a scientific emergency in the eyes of my eight year old boy. :) Thanks friends! xo, Sam

As we sat on the porch this morning, easing into our day, we started talking about our next big adventure. We plan to make it all the way to Canada this time, Prince Edward Island to be exact. The conversation led us back to our last big adventure , and all of our favorite parts. Tim said that Abe Lincoln (the Lincoln Memorial) was his favorite part of the last trip, and then Molly said that seeing Napoleon Bonaparte's chess set was her favorite. That got us thinking...What was that chess set made of? Bone or Ivory? A quick Internet search on my phone told us that it was carved from ivory, but we found another little fact too! Napoleon thought that he was being poisoned, so he ordered that after his death there be an autopsy to determine the cause. When he died an autopsy was preformed and his heart was placed on this table. From  HERE :  "According to Biltmore archives, the chess set is 19th-century ivory from China. It rests on a gaming table in which the heart ...

(I now sell everything you need to do henna in my etsy shop HERE !) Many of the pictures that you see here were done by my super awesome baby sister, Rae. Before kids she decorated cakes at a bakery, those skills transfer VERY well for applying henna! (henna day 3, by Rae) There are as many henna recipes as there are fish in the sea. Okay, so maybe not quite that many, but if you are just starting out it can be pretty confusing. It can be so complicated that it takes hours or days to make a batch with expensive ingredients, or it could be as easy as using a few things out of the pantry and spending a few minutes mixing and you are done. I use a VERY easy and no fuss recipe with all natural ingredients because it is safe for children. My kids love henna tats as much as I do so I always make it this way. At the end of this post I will include a list of links to all of the supplies that I use, you may want to check those out.  (henna dry paste, by Rae) ...

Today is our first official day of no school! Woot woot!!! I think mama is just as happy as they are! And on our first official day of no school, God gave us this perfect, rainy, dreary day to stay inside and watch cartoons/movies. That may sound like no fun to you, but for us it means that summer is really here. You see it's a House Rule during the school year that there is no TV Monday through Thursday in the Caffee house, so this just sweetens the deal! They were all out until after dark last night picking blackberries, and we were making cobbler at 9PM. Tim is eating some for breakfast right now. :) Summer memories have already been made! Molly took advantage of this first day by sleeping in until 10:00, and then getting up for some toons on Netflix. I'm pretty pumped about my free day too! I think I will knit, listen to an audio book, crunch ice (of course), and take a nap with the babe today. Ahhhhh! Summer is finally here! xo, Sam PS. Ben and ...

 Knitting, coffee, Dove chocolate (thank you hunny)...  ...a nice view, a warm fire, a pudgy baby playing music with kindling....  ...a big girl curled up under a quilt reading "Life in Ancient Mesopotamia" (they are loving the Tapestry of Grace )... ...and the playful noises filtering in from the porch. Now I could change my perspective and tell you that at this very moment that lovely wood bowl full of fossils and pine cones is all over the floor, that I bumped my coffee just after I took that picture and all three of those pretty doilies are now soaking in the sink, that by the time I got back to the coffee it was only luke warm but I drank it anyway, that I still haven't got a chance to eat that chocolate, that the playful noises quickly turned to screaming because Maddie busted her lip, that not one row has been knit or purled on that cardigan today, that my ears are aching again (I guess the antibiotic shot just didn't get all of the i...

Tonight the kids were gathered around Ben for a little guitar playing and Molly proudly announced "I think I taught myself to play a song today! Dad, you want to hear it to see if I got it right?" She taught herself by EAR! To someone who can't play a radio (ME) that's HUGE! I grabbed my iPhone and caught this on video ( it's the 8mm App ). *LOVE* Afterwards she asked if she could watch it and she said "Aww man! I messed up!" I asked "Do you want me to take it over?" She shrugged and said "Nah! I don't mind." Confident. I love everything about you Molly Caffee.

...but I didn't make it past lunch! All is well in the Caffe house once again, thank goodness! Friday was my 32nd birthday and I wanted to document it. We started out pretty early for us, at 8:30, headed to ball room dancing class.  I stopped and got another load of Caffee kids. :)   This month is swing dancing! The kids loved it and Molly and Adam caught on pretty quick!  This is what seems like every homeschooler in Birmingham doing the last "fun" dance before class is over....I sing "The Cha Cha Slide" every Friday for hours after class! After that I fell off the wagon with the picture taking. Bummer, I really wanted to succeed in one of these posts at least once. I'll just give you a run down of the rest of the day though (every Friday is about the same). From dance class we loaded up as fast as we could and headed to eat Pizza with Paw-Paw for Paw-Paw day. The kids and I hung out for a few hours and then we headed to the health food stor...

Today I was out on the porch enjoying this cool morning and looking at all of the "signs of life" around me, when it occurred to me, that right here in this little scene I can see a creative process at work. That is so fun to me! That natural, organic, inspired, creative process that happens when kids play. Let me show you around... first in the top right hand corner we have a handmade skate board turned scooter...  Last week my kids decided to take apart an old store bought skate board and make a cooler one from some scrap wood. Later they decided that it might make a better scooter than skate board so they added the other board to it. Now they have decided to go another route, I don't have a name for the contraption that they are planning to build next yet- I'll keep ya posted. :) Next we have the beans that are popping up all over my beloved brick path and flower garden. That started a week or so ago when I sent the kids out (Lily, Iris, and Abe were h...

We had a blast with our henna art lesson! The kids loved it! I saved it for the end of the school day that way they would have something to look forward to -a very sneaky way of motivating my children to get their school done in a timely fashion. :) It was so much fun! They weren't very patient with the drying process, so theirs turned out a little lighter than mine.  While it was drying it looked dark like this. We sort of looked at the suggested designs as we went, but it was way more fun to doodle. I think we may do henna art on T-shirts next using paint or a bleach pen....maybe we need to take a trip to the thrift store for shirts today! I'm always down with any excuse to get to the thrift store! Reason number 4568 that homeschool rocks. What kind of projects are you guys working on? Share a link, or your blog post, we could always use fresh ideas! xo, Sam

Oh my do I need just that today! Along with all of the wonderful, magical, joy filled days that a homeschooling mama is blessed with.....there's always one of those days where you can find her locked in a closet, in her pajamas, a bag of her children's Easter chocolate in hand, dreaming of what it would be like if a bus were to pull up in the drive, take her children away, and bring them back hours later full of knowledge that she herself didn't pound into their thick little heads. Oh yes, I have those days too, and today is one of them. Sure, most days are completely uneventful, save a sibling fight here and there, and most days leave me feeling so blessed that I get to be the one that teaches them.....but on days like today I wonder why we can't all just get together for coffee and chocolate to tell our silly stories and laugh about the different ways our children have tried to get out of doing their school. We could tell each oth...