About Honey

Honey is a homeschooling mama of five amazing children. She and her husband Jonah run Sunflower Schoolhouse together. She provides the content and he provides the technical support. Please see the About for more information.

My Top Ten Tuesday Collection

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Honey

I have written about a variety of topics, for Top Ten Tuesday, over the course of this year and I thought it would be fun to revisit them.

10 Things We Love About Our New Kitty - A fun post about our new kitty with some adorable pictures.
Top Ten Christmas Decorations From My Childhood - This post was a nostalgic walk down memory lane for me.
Top Ten Things I Say To My Kids Everyday - I read the list again and it still holds true, although there are a few more that I could add now.
Top Ten Building Adventures - Fun pictures of the kids building with a variety of different building toys.
Top Ten Ways To Make Pizza That Isn't Pizza - This was a fun post to research. I am looking forward to revisiting all these ideas after Christmas.
10 Ideas For Stretching Your Large Family Food Dollars - These ideas might come in handy as you start the new year and recover from any Christmas over spending (you didn't do that, right?).
Top Ten Ways The iPad Has Changed Our Homeschooling - The uses for the iPad in a homeschool setting are limited only by your imagination and creativity.
Top 10 Books For Parents Of Boys (and the next 40) - Are you the parent one or more boys? Are you looking for some good books to read? Check out this list.
Ten Special Needs Books That I Have Read - These books were all very useful to us in our journey with a child with autism.
Ten Special Needs Books That I Want To Read - Why is it that I never have enough time to catch up on my reading? (Okay, don't answer that please.)

Which post was your favorite?

Do you have any Top Ten posts on your blog? I would love to read them. Leave me a note in the comments and I will come and find you.

I am linking up with Top Ten Tuesday.

The Week Before Christmas

Posted on December 19, 2011 by Honey

Christmas is fast approaching and all I can think about now is baking cookies, creating sweet treats, and making Christmas dinner.

Things to do:

I need to do a baking inventory and make sure we have all of our supplies, so Jonah can make a last minute run to the grocery store (across the street).
I also need to take our turkeys our of the deep freeze and put them in the freezer tomorrow morning so they will be thawed to cook on December 23rd.
Cook the turkeys on December 23rd.

There will be 16 of us here for our big family dinner on Christmas Eve afternoon (9 children and 7 adults), but we like to cook our turkeys a day early. This makes the day so much easier.

Our Christmas Eve Dinner:

turkeys (two of them)
mashed potatoes
gravy
yams and marshmallows
peas, corn, carrots
brussell sprouts with bacon and onions (first year for this)
stuffing on the stove
pumpkin pie
some kind of tarts - I have 2 boxes of tart shells but I have no idea what to put in them - ideas?
sweet treats - from my pinterest board
punch
really strong coffee

Since we rotate Christmas Day and Christmas Eve with my sister and her family every year, we rotate our menu too, so that we can have our turkey with the whole family.

Our Christmas Day Menu:

Big Breakfast (family tradition)

sausages
pancakes
bananas
strawberries

Lunch

turkey sandwiches

Dinner

crackers
cheese
pepperoni
salami
ham
chips

I have no idea what we will be eating for the rest of this week, but at least I have a plan for Christmas.

This post is part of Sunflower Schoolhouse's Large Family Good Eats

and

I am linking up with Menu Plan Monday.

My Dancing Princess

Posted on December 15, 2011 by Honey

Craft supplies are scattered around my room as I prepare handmade gifts for family and friends. I need a craft cabinet, but that is another post.

One day Hosanna got into my box of embroidery hoops and was waving them around and dancing like a princess. Read number four on this list of 15 Things I Was Saving For Someday to learn more about my box of embroidery hoops.

hoops

It gave me an idea. I got out my ribbon and wrapping box and looked for some pretty ribbons.

ribbons2

I took the embroidery hoops apart and I tied the ribbons on to the pieces without the metal screws.

hoopribbon

Now Hosanna has dancing ribbons.

hosanna with hoops

And I have a dancing princess.

hosanna dancing

Hosanna jumped on the bed and twirled and whirled and threw the hoops in the air.

jumping on the bed

throwing the hoop

I love these impromptu moments of bonding with the kids. I just wish that I had my camera close by more often so that I could capture them all.

What impromptu moments have you had with your kids recently?

Technical Difficulties

Posted on December 11, 2011 by Honey

We are aware that that things are a wee bit wonky around the blog right now. We are updating the theme (much needed) to prepare for a new design and ran into a little hiccup. I hope you will stick around as we get things looking more normal around here again.

Source: RomanVolkov

Oh and my 1 year old, Christmas gift last year, laptop is in the shop, hopefully only overnight. I am using a very slow and lazy laptop that does not do what I want it to do and it likes to open things only when it feels like it.

*Update: I have my laptop back now.

What is new with you these days?