What a kid

Simple Things Sunday

Saturdays, as a family, cheering them on, is the sweetest.

Linking up with Rebecca.

Simple Things Sunday

The Little Engine That Could, then sleep in Daddy’s bed. A pretty good end to his day.

Sleeping boys are often the sweetest.

Linking up with Rebecca.

Crockpot Beef and Broccoli for the Win

My crockpot has been getting a serious workout since activities have started up. I use it every week when we have Classical Conversations, and usually one other night a week when we have an inconvenient sports practice. This is a new-to-us recipe that was delicious and when I posted it on instagram, I got asked to share. I wish I could post back to where I originally saw it, but I think it was something someone had liked on facebook and I snagged it that way. I’ve noted the few tweaks I made below.

CROCKPOT BEEF AND BROCCOLI

1 pound boneless beef chuck roast, sliced into thin strips I used stew meat that I got on sale and found in the freezer
1 cup beef consumme
½ cup soy sauce
⅓ cup brown sugar or honey
1 tablespoon sesame oil
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons cooled sauce from the crock pot after being cooked
Fresh broccoli florets (as many as desired)
Hot cooked rice (brown rice, or riced cauliflower)

1. Place beef in a crock pot.
2. In a small bowl, combine consomme, soy sauce, brown sugar/honey, oil, and garlic. Pour over beef. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.
3. In a cup, stir cornstarch and sauce form the crock pot until smooth. Add to crock pot. Stir well to combine. (If your sauce is not thickening, try bringing your sauce to a boil on the stovetop with the corn starch mixture. Boil until your desired consistency is reached). Mine thickened okay in the crockpot, not as good it probably would have on the stovetop, but I didn’t want to dirty an extra pan. : )
4. Add broccoli to the crock pot. Stir to combine. I cooked the broccoli separately – steamed it in the microwave – instead of adding it to the crockpot. It took all of 5-6 minutes and made those in my family that don’t like broccoli (or don’t like their foods mixed together) happy!
5. Cover and cook an additional 30 minutes on high (the sauce has to boil for it to thicken).
6. Serve over hot cooked rice. I also had a small portion of leftover mashed potatoes from Monday night and served it to a couple of family members over the potatoes since I was low on rice. Also yum!

There you have it! It was like a little trip to Panda Express with ingredients that I have on hand. I tripled this batch (because it worked with the amount of stew meat that I had) and ended up with five extra single servings of the meat and sauce that I’ve packaged up in little containers and popped in the freezer. Can’t wait to pull those out for quick lunches for me over the next few weeks.

Enjoy!

Simple Things Sunday

Friday night was a family trip to the soccer field to take one of the girls to practice. We traded off watching munchkins so that each of us could run for a bit and then headed home for our family Friday movie night. (This week’s pick was the Disney Robin Hood version).

Simple evenings are often the sweetest.

Linking up with Rebecca.

Project Life ::: August 19-24, 2013

Maybe one of my favorite layouts for a week,ever.



Those eyes. : ) He’s my only blue-eyed one so I’m a little bit mesmerized by them when I can get a good shot of them. It just had to be the title card.

 

On the left:

• reading to the boy during school
• the current series that N1 is reading through (in the journaling pocket)
• new desks for the girls
• music lessons! (they come to the house! I don’t have to take the kids anywhere! I don’t have to entertain the boy at an hour and a half of lessons! This is a good. thing.)

All the journaling cards in these layouts are from the August Studio Calico kit. I love how the cards really are so different, but they all tie together and don’t clash. Still thinking that the Project Life kit from SC has been a good investment for me this year. Other than having to purchase my PL pieces (a new binder, pocket pages, etc.) it has kept me out of the scrapbook store. : )



On the right:

• the current read-aloud
• a boy and a dad playing a little guitar together
• the little girls working together to climb a tree that was a bit too high for them. I told them I wasn’t going to help. : )
• some shots of planning that I’ve been doing that I just liked. And this spiral notebook and this yellow folder are tools that I use every day so worth including.
• a shot of N1 enjoying a piece of cake as we celebrated her and N2’s baptism a few weeks ago! I have an insert that covers that but didn’t include photos of it for this post.

All the yellow scattered through these photos make me happy.


And that’s all she wrote for this week. As of right now, I’m staying current with my album, but have a quite a few weeks that I got behind on last spring. Maybe our fall break will give me a little time to play catch-up? : )
Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins and available on Amazon.com, DigitalProjectLife.com, and many major craft retailers. It can be anything you want it to be. You can view all my posts about Project Lifehere. I'm always happy to answer questions about how Project Life works for me, if you have any.

Simple Things Sunday

Soccer and softball are back in full swing for us. Evening practices on the field and Saturday games are on the schedule until early November. While life is busy for the next 8 weeks, it’s really not that long when you think about it. Enjoying the little moments of three sitting together, watching a sister practice, a boy contentedly eating some popcorn before sister take turns playing with him and running him around the field and wearing him out.

Simple things are often the sweetest.

Linking up with Rebecca.

Discipleship & Discipline Webinar with Sally Clarkson and Sarah Mae

How cool is this!

Sally Clarkson (who I consider to be one of my homeschooling / mama mentors is co-hosting and webinar based off her book Desperate with co-author Sarah Mae. This looks SO good!

Topics that will be covered include:

• How to Raise a “Wild One”
• How to Instill Excellence in Your Child
• How to Have a Quiet Time When There’s No Quiet
• How to Deal with Over-Emotinal Children
• How to Find a Mentor
• How to Build a Winning Relationship With Your Child
• How to Motivate Your Children to Listen to Your Instruction and Obey Your Training
• How to Deal With Your Lies So You Can Parent in Freedom Instead of Fear
• How to Get Through the Desperate Days
• How to Find and Nurture Friendships with Other Moms

I’m hoping to register and attending this and if you are interested in doing so, here’s a link to get started.

The links included are affiliate links and if you use them, I will make a small profit which most likely goes towards books in this household. Thank you!

Project Life Update ::: July 15-21

Yes, I’m behind on Project Life. About all I’m managing to get done right now with homeschooling is uploading and printing the week’s pictures. That way they are at least waiting on me when I get a moment to fill in my journaling cards. I found a very neat tutorial here and have started laying out my pages with post-its. Makes is super simple to see where my pictures go and what gaps I have to fill.
I used lots of summer colors this week - I used the July Project Life kit from Splendid Fiins almost exclusively and the colors just fly off the pages. I love them.

On the left:

• Notes on a new job for T.
• a boy that crazy about swimming
• school books in the mail

I cut down a 12x12 page that had spots for six 4x6 photos and we had a little insert about N1’s week at overnight camp. She did the journaling on these two cards (both from the Bridgeport mini kit).

She wrote us notes each day so those (of course!) had to be included. I just stuck them in a 6x6 pocket I had and left the top open. I’m sure we will want to pull them out and reread them someday! An extra picture from camp was stuck in the back.

There was another 8 1/2x11 insert that I didn’t photograph that just had a piece of artwork one of the girls did and something that N2 wrote about her recent trip to Guatemala.
On the right:

• Saying goodbye to one of our buddies that moved away.
• Picking our girl up at camp. You see the liberal use of washi tape around this photo. It’s a homemade flip up pocket that you can see in greater detail below.
• Photos from a friend’s karaoke party
• The first journaling card is a pic of the boy shooting his toy gun along side Han and Luke one night as we watched Star Wars. I died at the cuteness.
• Another little friend’s birthday party
• ANOTHER birthday. This one for my sister. Covering up incriminating evidence so I don’t get in trouble. : )

You can see my handy flip up pockets here. The flip up in the journaling card spot is also from Splendid Fiins – so handy for an extra bit of hidden journaling.

And that’s all she wrote for this week.
Project Life is a product and a system created by Becky Higgins and available on Amazon.com, DigitalProjectLife.com, and many major craft retailers. It can be anything you want it to be. You can view all my posts about Project Lifehere. I'm always happy to answer questions about how Project Life works for me, if you have any.

Around the Web, a New Jelly Telly Post, and a Giveaway!

• I have a new blog up of at Club Jelly Telly today … all about taking a deep breath as we are gearing up for the beginning of a new school year and remember who is the one worthy of our trust when we get anxious. Read more here.

• Doesn’t this look like a fun little online workshop? And, if you blog about it, it’s free! So there you go. I’ve recently found Edie’s blog (Life {in} Grace) and wish I had tons of time to dig around her archives and get to know her better.

• I’ve been perusing a few of my favorite posts from Elizabeth Foss and Kendra Fletcher and trying to fire myself up for school this year. This is a busy season in our house with a VERY active 2 going on 3 year old boy and I am in need of encouragement for me and a few ideas in my pocket to keep this boy out of trouble and busy while we do school. If you aren’t subscribed to these two blogs (or at least making generous use of their archives) you need to be.
• As a fun little back-to-school treat for you, the few and faithful that read here, I’ve got a giveaway. (I don’t know the last time I’ve had one of those!) I’ve got an extra unopened copy of Volume 1 of What’s in the Bible that I’d love to mail to a new home. If you are interested, leave a comment on this post by Friday afternoon and I’ll draw a winner. (Make sure you leave me an email with your comment so I know how to track you down.) For one extra entry, you can facebook or tweet about this giveaway, and then leave me a comment with the link. Good luck!

This contest is closed - congrats Tami!

Back to School

With back to school, comes the need to set new routines and schedules, earlier bedtimes, and reinforcing general school time behavior. Hopefully I’ll have something worthwhile to say in space sooner rather than later, but as if posts weren’t sporadic enough, they will probably be more so for the immediate future.

Thanks for reading, and I hope to be back soon. : )