Rainbow Cake

Yesterday we made a rainbow cake. A lot of our extra discussion/school time was spent talking about weather this week. Especially Cyclone Hamish. Anyway, we tied that in to the story of Noah. A couple weeks ago I ran across a link for a rainbow cake somewhere on the big internet world. Since I don't have the regular computer I can't find the saved link. =) But this is our version of rainbow cake.

I made our normal vanilla cake recipe--vanilla cake mix, vanilla pudding mix, 1 cup yogurt, 1/2 cup liquid, 1/2 cup oil, 4 eggs. (from the cake mix doctor) Then I let each girl pick out a food colour. Then we put in a liberal amount of food colouring. And finally layered it into the angel food cake pan (I seem to have gotten rid of my bundt cake pan? weird!) As the cake rose while baking it got a bit of a curved shape going on with the colours. And as you can see our final result was VERY bright colours. The girls love it. I'm a little afraid to eat it myself. =)

Homeschool storage

Got an old wardrobe from the op shop for $30 plus $10 delivery. (as you can see I had already started doing the drawers in this pic.)

2 coats of Dulux Water Music (glossy for ease of cleaning)

$15 for shelves made by Floyd and Josh

Scrapbooking paper and mod podge I already had. Plus one coast of Dulux Lily Legs 1/2 strength (someday I'll do the other coat)

Flowers cut out of left over scrapbooking paper and stickers that match from my stash.

All this equals one happy mama =)

busy, busy

Saturday Josh put 2 garden beds in for me. This one I'm going to try some Square foot Gardening. Along the front and left edge the squares aren't squares and aren't one foot. So I've planted some marigolds and other flowers that help with bugs, some repel and some attract. Along the fence I will plant sweet corn and sunflowers. Other veggies in this garden will be radishes, carrots, cucumbers, lettuce, cauliflower, rainbow chard, turnips. Can't remember what else. As you can see Josh also installed a sprinkler system for me. (he also fixed the camera. pretty handy, doncha think?) =)
This one has flower seeds all mixed up in it. And I will plant tomatoes along the fence and also plant cantaloupe and pumpkins.

The garage-turned- guestroom turned into a schoolroom/computer repair area on Sunday.

Standing in Josh's work area. He's planning to build a dividing wall. Still looks bare but soon it'll be better. Also, all his stuff is moving off that shelf so I can put up their puzzles, games, books, etc.

The girls helped decorate. They put up all the farm stuff. Beka asked to be in the picture. =)

We've been busy today too. Already this morning I've washed and hung out 3 loads of laundry, washed dishes, started an art project with the girls, changed all 3 girls' wardrobes from winter to spring/summer, gotten irritated because the girls' new "washable" markers aren't so washable, changed stuff around in my kitchen and paid the van registration. I still need to buy shorts for Catie, buy new plastic containers to help contain toys in Beka's room since I moved the bookshelf into the schoolroom, clean off the computer desk and put clothes away in my room. Plus I'll have 3 loads of laundry to fold and put away later. But it's spring and it's beautiful and it's good cleaning weather. =)

Plants

So for homeschooling today we did plants. We went to Bunnings to buy some roses and ended up with daisies, snowpeas and strawberries as well. I found the rose I've been wanting. The "Mr. Lincoln". And then the girls each picked a rose. Catie picked purple, Emma picked pink and Beka wanted white.

So now my front garden has 7 roses, 3 daisies and a gerbera, a carnation (I can't make myself pull it up as it was the only one that made it out of 4 I planted last year sometime), 2 strawberries, 6 snowpeas and 7 pansies. oh yeah, and some aloe.

Then using our new oil pastels and watercolors we did drawing/paintings of a plant including it's root system underground.

We had a very fun day and I am seriously addicted to water colour painting. too bad I'm not any good. =)

Mental Health Day

Back in PBBC days I had a friend whose mother used to let them have Mental Health Days off school. We would take them every once in awhile at college spending the day in our pj's watching tv, painting our fingernails, dyeing our hair, etc. They were good days. Well, today the girls and I had an MHD. It is 4:30pm and the girls have just decided to go outside for the first time today. They are still in their pyjamas. I'm still in mine. Catie and Beka had a long sleep while Emma had some quiet time in her room. You know, it's been a good day. We trimmed and painted some fingernails and toenails, had a picnic on the rug, we watched a video and some tv while snuggling together.

I also took some profile pics of the girls for a project for the "wall of shame." I worked on another project for the wall as well. I'll share them when I'm done (if they turn out.) =) You know, my mom had a wall of pictures when we were growing up. We called it the wall of shame because we were embarrassed of our pictures. And now I have one in my hallway, as do my sisters I believe. I use mine to show the girls' their US relatives. Beka loves it when I pick her up and we go from picture to picture, "who's this?", "who's that?" Do you have family pictures in your hallway? Are they somewhere else in the house? How do you display/preserve your family photos? Have a great day. And give yourself a Mental Health Day sometime. I bet you'll enjoy it. =)

Helping Daddy

So, I think this week we are having "Nature Studies" and "working with Daddy" for homeschool.

Homeschool

At the moment our homeschooling consists of going through the alphabet and numbers 1 - 20. We do a page where the girls copy the upper and lower case letter and a word that starts with that letter. Then we do something at the top related to that word. For instance, the letter M we wrote monkey and they drew monkeys on their pages. That is Catie's up at the top. Then on another paper we write the number and the number word and do something for it. For instance for 12 we copied, cut and glued a calendar on the top of the page. I put all these pages into a folder for each of them and they love to look back through their books. Then sometimes we do worksheets related to that number and/or letter. Good fun. I read all kinds of things about how to keep your toddler occupied while working with the others but so far the only way to keep Beka occupied is to let her do everything with us. Her pages look a little different than the others and I obviously don't get her to copy the letters and stuff but other than that she does all the colouring and gluing that the other two do. She likes to cut but isn't good so we do that together. Emma does really well considering it is a year ahead of where she should be chronologically. Well, here anyways. They don't learn to read in Prep, they learn that in 1st grade. but I think Catie will be reading by the end of the year. Anyways, we're off to the school to visit Daddy and Grandma. Have a good day.