Menu Plan Monday - December 1st

For more menu ideas check out orgjunkie.com

~ Monday ~

breakfast - oatmeal

lunch - Soup, grilled cheese sandwiches

supper - sloppy joes, potatoes, veggies

~ Tuesday ~

breakfast - dry cereal

lunch - leftover

supper - chicken, rice, veggies

~ Wednesday ~

breakfast - bran muffins

lunch - leftovers

supper - Chilli, toast (In-laws bringing over dinner)

~Thursday ~

breakfast - bran muffins

lunch - leftovers

supper - Mexican Casserole, HM rolls

~ Friday ~

breakfast - smoothies

lunch - leftovers

supper - Steak, Potates, veggies

~ Saturday ~

breakfast - waffles

lunch -

supper - Taco Soup

~ Sunday ~

breakfast - muffins/bagels

lunch -

supper - Ribs, roasted potatoes, veggies

Solar Lights

Solar Christmas lights might not actually save you enough money to be equal the cost of paying for the lights in the first place. However, if you cotton to the idea of decorating your house without having to run messy and ugly extension cords all over the place and more importantly are keen to protect the environment, then these Solar powered Christmas lights may just be the answer for you.

These days there are a number of styles to choose from. You can find almost as much variety with solar-powered Christmas lights as with the traditional Christmas lights or the more recent LED Christmas lights. You can choose from the coloured or white strands of bulbs, or maybe go with the fun icicle-style lights.

A 144" long strand of solar Christmas lights features 24 white long-lasting LED bulbs with rechargeable battery lights. Small and non-obvious photo sensors will turn the lights on at dusk and off at dawn. Although you must be certain that the sensors are not covered in snow during the day light hours.

Whatever Christmas lighting options you might choose this season, whether it's solar lights, led lights or just old fashioned Christmas lights, please have a happy and safe holiday.

Looking at this week....

I have to tell you all how much I enjoy homeschooling my youngest daughter. This week we are going to start working on our Christmas lapbook and we have a field trip on Tuesday that we are so excited about. Of course as the week progresses pictures will follow. Right now it is snowing out so our plans for tomorrow could change... to lots of outdoor play depending how much snow we get.

Monday
start on Christmas lapbook
daily lessons

Tuesday
Field trip: Christmas with the Animals
daily lessons

Wednesday
baking with mom
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Thursday
more baking
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Friday
Children's Museum (maybe)
Christmas Lapbook
daily lessons

Wolli Creek flats

Apartments at Wolli Creek. View from Wentworth Park at Undercliffe.

Thanksgiving Leftovers

A flash from the past:



Whatever happened to Jan Smithers?



Even more old school:






Older Still -- The sort of thing that I'd watch on Thanksgiving:

Sunlight at last!

Look at the incredulity! Madrasis are rejoicing at the sunlight after 5 days of torrential rain. I am sure we will start hating the heat from tomorrow. That is life!

Water had entered our house. There was no power, no milk, no newspaper since last Monday. I did manage to blog something by going to my friend's house.

The newly laid roads are again in bad shape. Still, the water has not receded completely off the roads. The Government as usual couldn't mitigate our sufferings.

Added to the owes was the tragedy in Bombay. I feel sorry for them. Again, the Government has failed miserably though they helped end the trauma. The security of such a famous hotel in Bombay was found wanting.

Christmas Lights Trends

So many Christmas Lights options, where do you start? The worst part of all is that trends seem to change every few years, so of course we all want to go out and buy the cutest Christmas tree lights possible, even if our old ones have plenty of life.

And what about color scheme changes? Decoration trends? Are snowmen in or out this year? So much to think about when you want to co-ordinate your holiday decorating theme with the twinkle twinkles on your tree.

I decided that it would be a nice experiment to start keeping track of Christmas lighting trends. Here is where you will be able to check in on what's hot in lighting this year, as well as what used to be in, and what is so old that it's become fashionably retro.

Browse our articles, or check out the reviews of the newest products, enjoy a little Christmas light nostalgia as we round up the years trends for this Christmas season.

Wolli Creek, Tempe House

Tempe House sits on the southern shore of the Cooks River in the southern suburb of Wolli Creek. It was designed by John Verge and built by Alexander Brodie Spark in 1836. It has a Georgian feel and regarded as one of the great houses of Sydney. It was named after the 'Vale of Tempe', a beautiful valley in ancient Greek legend set at the foot of Mount Olympus in Greece.

Christmas Lapbook Ideas

I am just putting together our links for our Christmas Lapbook. I can't wait to get started on this next week. Enjoy! As we put our lapbook together I will direct links and pictures to what we actually used to make ours.

Example of Christmas Lapbook
Printable ABC mini book
Christmas Symbols
More Christmas Lapbooks
Audrey's Christmas Page
Pop Up Christmas Tree
Free Christmas Coloring Pages
The Night Before Christmas
J is for Jesus book
Homeschool Helper Stuff
Printable Christmas Advent story book
12 Days of Christmas Lapbook

Jesse Tree Links
Jesse Tree
Jesse Tree Calendar
Jesse Tree Colouring Book
Jesse Tree Family Devotional

Advent
ABC's of Advent
ABC Advent Calendar to Colour

Thanksgiving

Before engorging myself with a couple guys from the house on Thanksgiving, I wandered around lower Manhattan a bit, just to see what is to been of Thanksgiving on the streets of New York. I saw men and women working their jobs, couples in their Sunday best walking or driving to their party, kids playing in the streets and a pregnant woman trying to contain two toddlers while her husband waited for a cab.

Here are some pictures I took along the way. (And as usual, clicking on the photos will generally give you a much better image.)

(The view outside my window)

To all my American Friends....

To my American friends and readers...

Happy Thanksgiving!

Annoying

This morning at 7:15 I had a flat tire (from the air valve, not a hole, so I had to get towed) on the side of I-30. Scary! And then Triple A took an hour to come get me and then I sat at Wal-Mart for 2 hours. I was three hours late to work and had to use vacation time... tear, tear.

Kent came and picked me up because he didn't want me to get hit sitting in my car on I-30. Here we are sitting for an hour..... sigh.
Finally the tow man came and we followed him to Wal-Mart. Kent went to work and I stayed at Wal-Mart for the next 2 hours. Ghaaa! The only good thing that came out of this senario is this: A couple weeks ago I had a flat tire at a garage sale and the guy throwing the sale noticed the flat, laughed and said "Man, that really sucks!" And then wouldn't help change it. What a jerk. Anyhow, it was a broken air valve and Wal-Mart said the problem was fixed. Apparently not! The tire was ruined since I had driven on the flat for so long on the interstate (it was really hard to pull over three lanes of traffic). However, I had saved my receipt from a couple weeks ago and since Wal-Mart did not really fix the air valve before they had to replace my tire for free! Free $100.00 tire. Moral of the story: save all receipts. The end.

Christmas Links

These are some links I have found while searching for curriculum for my daughter on Christmas so I thought I would share them with you. As I find more and some that are not as useful I will purge the lists but for now they are here for you to look through. ( I have fixed some of the links... I will tr to get the rest fixed later this evening)

Advent

Annie's Advent Calendar Page
Make an advent calendar

Lapbooks

Christmas Symbols Lapbook
Christmas Customs Lapbook


Unit Studies

How the Grinch Stole Christmas
Cookies

Curriculums

A Holiday Preschool Curriculum
Christmas Bible Reading Chart

History

Christmas Traditions
Christian Origins of Familiar Christmas Customs
Christmas History


Colouring Pages

From Sheryl's Originals (Santa, Angel, Snowman)
Santa 1, 2, 3
Coloring Book Fun 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
Trace and Colour Star

Other Activities

Christmas Tree Light Sewing Card
Christmas Templates


Printables

Kaboose Crafts
Christian Printable Worksheets click here (pdf)
Mazes 1, 2
Christmas Themed Worksheets


Books

Christmas Alphabet Book "print here"
Twas the night before Christmas (printable minibook)

Crafts

Christmas Crafts for kids 1



Stories

The Christmas Story for "kids"

Recipes

Miniature Gingerbread House 1
Stained Glass Cookies 1

Online

Christmas Fun with Veggie Tales 1

Look Down!

I finally posted 2 pieces on election night, including one with lots of photos. Through a glitch, they ended up posting below the wine post (have you bought your bottles yet?). But scroll down and you'll see them there -- they're titled "Obamanalysis" and "Times Square, Election Night".

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving. Have a very nice holiday.

(By the way, the photo is of Turkey.)

Christmas Planner

I have seen on many blogs Christmas Planners made from altered file folders so I thought I would do a couple of them up. Here is the first one.

Front of Planner:

A Look inside:

Back of Planner:

Don’t replace; just upgrade!

Unfortunately my laptop belonged to an ancient era. Also, there is no way one can go for a memory upgrade in laptop computers. That why, desktop PCs are still preferred over any other type of computers.

And we never have to replace some of the existing accessories like RAM in desktop PCs. We can simply upgrade to larger memory card or stick. This way, we can save money and thus contribute to a green environment because we don’t add to the garbage.

But many people buy memory cards which really can’t serve their purpose. It is essential to know your PC before you decide in favor of memory upgrade. You need to know what type of memory your computer can adopt.

If you are not sure, ask around in the Internet.

Crockpot BBQ Ribs

3 1/2 lbs Pork Ribs
1/2 tsp Salt
1/4 tsp Pepper
1/2 cup water or cola
3/4 cup BBQ sauce

Spray slowcooker with cooking spray.
Sprinkle ribs with salt and pepper.
Add water or cola. Cook on LOW 8-9 hours.
Remove ribs. Drain liquid (keep it for later to use if you wish)
Dip rib in BBQ sauce. Return to slowcooker.
Add remaining sauce. Cook on low for an additional hour.

Cream of "whatever" Soup

This equals 9 cans of cream soup when mixed and used as directed.

2 cups non fat powdered milk
3/4 cup cornstarch
1/4 cup instant chicken bouillon
2 tbsps dried onion flakes
1 tsp Basil
1 tsp thyme
1/2 tsp pepper

Mix all ingredients together adn store in an air tight container.
When you need soup combine 1/3 cup of this mix with 1 1/4 cup cold water to equal one can of soup.
Heat over medium heat stirring constantly until it thickens.
You need to add this to make waht flavour you need to make

Mushroom - 1/2 cup finely chopped mushrooms
Celery - 1/2 cup minced celery
Potato - 1 cup cooked diced potatoes
Chicken - 1/2 cup cooked diced chicken
Veggie - 3/4 cup cooked veggies
Broccoli - 1 cup cooked chopped Broccoli

Note: you can leave out the bouillon and add 1 1/4cup broth instead of 1 1/4 cup water.

Light Cream

18% table cream

or

1 cup = 7/8 cup milk + 3 tablespoons butter

Heavy Cream

35% whipping cream

or

1 cup heavy cream = 3/4 cup milk + 1/3 cup butter

Sweetened Condensed Milk

Sweetened Condensed Milk

1 cup instant non-fat dry milk
1/3 cup boiling water
2/3 cup sugar
3 tbsps melted butter

1. combine all in a blender (I use my hand blender)
2. Process until thick and smooth.
2. You can store in refrigerator until ready to use.

Makes 1 1/4 cups or equal to a 14oz can of sweetened condensed milk.
Serving: 1 can

Weekend in Pictures

Here are some pictures from last weekend. I went to Memphis for Megan's bachlorette party.

Megan and Ali at dinner.
More dinner.

Elevator with a bunch of old men.

Trying to find a parking spot for 30 minutes.

Amber getting her hair rolled. Looking hot Am!

Here I am! And Stephanie. At dinner.

After dinner. That's all folks!

Menu Plan Monday - November 24th

For more menu ideas, go to orgjunkie.com.

~ Monday ~

breakfast - dry cereal

lunch - ham salad sandwiches

supper - garden vegetable soup

~ Tuesday ~

breakfast - oatmeal, oj

lunch - leftover soup

supper - chicken, roasted potatoes, carrots

~ Wednesday ~

breakfast - bran muffins, oj

lunch - leftovers

supper - beef stir fry

~Thursday ~

breakfast - bran muffins, oj

lunch - leftovers

supper - tacos, salad

~ Friday ~

breakfast - smoothie, coffee cake

lunch - leftovers

supper - homemade pizza, salad

~ Saturday ~

breakfast - waffles

lunch - homemade mac n'cheese

supper - chicken noodle soup

~ Sunday ~

breakfast - muffins/bagels

lunch - church potluck

supper - rice casserole

Bear cub grieves to death.

I read a moving story of a bear cub that could not endure its mother's death and died. The news story appeared in Times of India, yesterday.

This incident took place in Coonoor, a hill station in India. The four-month-old bear cub died of shock soon after her sick mother breathed her last on Friday night.

The mother bear is reported to have died of internal bleeding due to infections in her lungs and intestines. The veterinary doctor who performed the autopsy on the mother bear said that he has come across a few such cases in the past.

I was unable to digest the tragic news for several hours after I read the news. The bears are supposed to live a life of closely affectionate family.