Preparedness: Stocking Stuffers

Solstice is coming and with it the dilemma of what to stuff stockings with. I hate buying flimsy, crappy toys that will fall apart or useless junk that will just become trash in a few weeks. My kids LOVE survival stuff so I've put together a list of possible stocking stuffers. Many of these items have been requested by my kids at one time or another.

Para Cord Survival Bracelet
These come in a variety and colors and sizes. Each inch of bracelet roughly equals 1 foot of para cord.

Even funner are the Para Cord Bracelet/Compass Combo.
You lose a bit of the cord but the compass could be handy, especially on a daily basis with my kids going out into the woods which meander all around.

Full tang hunting knife with fire starter
The reviews on this particular knife and some of the others recommend wrapping your own para cord on the handle.

Survival Snare Kit
Has instructions on using snares and 2 different sized snares. I most likely would buy one then create my own kits based off this one as they are about $17 with shipping.

Fishing Survival Kit
Possibly another kit I would buy 1 of then create copies of. It gets expensive buying for 5 kids!

Leatherman Multitool (there are many styles and price ranges available)

or

11 function credit card tool

Pro-Knot Card Sets by John Sherry. They have 3 to choose from: 

Ka-Bar Hobo Utensil Set - my 15 year old is in love with this thing!

Will you be stuffing prepping/survival items into your kids' stockings this year? What sort of survival/prepping goodies will you give them?

free owl printable calendar

how adorable! i found this link through another blogger, piper and had to share:

http://www.myowlbarn.com/p/owl-lover-2011-calendar.html

i know my 13 yo will be printing it off!

tuesday link love

love this article about not doing santa with kids. this is exactly why i do not do santa with my kids.

i so needed to read this right now. i am struggling with sage and his (to me) inappropriate behavior.

i did it! i made it through 30 days of blogging. :)

my little guy's all grown up

sage had his first sleepover last night. i can't believe it! he was waiting for our friends to come over and was worried they weren't going to come and get him so he wanted me to drive him over there. he packed his bag all by himself, including pjs, a change of clothes, his toothbrush and toothpaste and plenty of toys all without my prompting (well, except the toothbrush which he forgot about...). how can this be, my little 4 year old ready to spread his wings and fly?!

and then...

sage is becoming a person now which is helpful with his, ummm, crazy? personality. he loves to help greg split wood (thus the safety gear). he still is quite a volatile ball of craziness but with moments of self learning. he has recently taken up cutting paper with scissors and yesterday was cutting out 'bones' to make his skeleton costume for next halloween which he is convinced will be today, everyday. he's ready to go trick or treating and score all that wonderful candy so he can eat it up in about 4 hours again. thank goodness that only happens once a year! he also built himself a shotgun out of a stick, paper and tape. it even has the part on it that you move on the gun to load the shot, greg would laugh his butt off at that description but i cannot remember the proper name for it. the funny thing is, he wrapped the paper around the stick and it actually sounds like a real gun would sound.

i have a head cold that jaden caught from a friend's house last week. the worst part is i can't even sleep it off because the sinus congestion is keeping me up...having to blow my nose every 30 seconds makes it impossible. ugh.

this too shall pass.

i've been altering skirts i've purchased at the thrift store recently to fit me. a lot of them are too big in the waist, story of my life. i tend to pick skirts based on materials (cotton, silk, wool, linen) and colors (browns, olive greens, rust oranges, mustard yellows) so usually they are too big for me. i'm getting quite good at shortening elastic waist bands or adding elastic to the waist to decrease the size.

i've also got a good pile of wool sweaters to start on my gypsy coat. now to lay them all out and decide which to make as the main body and which to start chopping. this part is extremely hard for me to do. i'm so afraid of screwing them up that a lot of times, i don't take chances on chopping up clothes to make something more spectacular. i'm using etsy sellers' creations for inspiration.

i'm also in search of kids' fiction that talks about using herbs medicinally. have you run across any? it can be as obvious as the legend of the lady slipper or more subtle like the witch's brat. i want stories that use herbs accurately.

sage the jeweler

sage got ahold of a bag of beads and silver wires and went to town making a pile of earrings. this pair he made for me:

gnomes, vampires and alice, oh my!

i'm glad sage let me dress him up as a gnome this year...he was adorable!

my little man is 4

as my 2nd, 4th and 6th child (2nd for greg and me together, 4th for me personally and 6th between the 2 of us), you are my most challenging, most determine and most cuddly child. you give and take like there's no tomorrow and you never stop to catch your breath.

at 3 1/2 you hopped on your bicycle one day and began riding it without the help of training wheels and then 2 weeks later upgraded to a bigger bike because it was faster. you push the boundaries and force me to practice more patience than i ever thought possible.

you are tough as nails, sweet as sugar and crazy as a loon. just 2 months ago you told me of your ambition to open your brother's window on the 2nd floor, hop on his skate board and skate board off the roof. i think i successfully talked you down from that one but i'm still worried that someday you may rethink doing it again.

you've climbed trees to the top of the shed roof (about 15' high) and managed to get on top of the old milking parlor on the old barn and gleefully yelled down to your dad to show off your accomplishment.

if there are any gray hairs in my head, they all have your name on them buddy!

you are wild, feral, free and i love that about you. you can spend hours watching the fish and frogs in our water pond, lay on the floor blissfully playing with your cars or upset your older siblings by going through their belongings in their rooms finding toys and items to amuse yourself.

you like cars, frogs, planes, trains, wearing dresses and playing barbies with your sister. you play until you give out and exhausted every ounce of energy in your body.

i resisted your arrival into my life. you sucked me in with your sweetness and when i was hooked, you switched gears and came alive. may you always have that spirit and learn to use it to your advantage!

outdoor hour challenge #22: butterflies

we have all sorts of butterflies flittering about, monarchs, tiger swallowtails, blue swallowtails and more. yesterday i noticed tons of smaller butterflies on our peppermint patch, it was literally covered with flittering wings. i had no idea what type these are but found them at this great website. sage was lucky enough to even have one hang out on his finger for awhile.

fritillary, not sure what kind though

more fritillaries

common buckeye

we also discovered caterpillars all over some milkweed. they are milkweed tussock moth caterpillars. we collected a few and put them in a jar to watch. they love to munch on the milk weed! from what i've read, they do not compete with monarch caterpillars as monarchs prefer younger shoots while the tussock moths eat the older tougher leaves. regardless, we are enjoying watching them munch away at the leaves!

this upcoming week in our studies we will identify butterfly parts, try to find out if our caterpillars are indeed monarch 'pillars and read about butterflies in the handbook of nature study.

this was our outdoor hour challenge #22. what butterflies have you seen around your yard?

Friday the 13th Baby

happy birthday to my sweet friday the 13th baby. she is 6 today. she never stops amazing me with her intelligence that is so beyond 6 years of life. just this week she sewed for the first time and did a great job. i showed her how to sew 2 stitches and she took off, sewing 3 sides to a square to make a sachet.

she can cook, wash dishes, help with the laundry, milk a goat and so much more. she begs me to 'do school' every day. she loves the one-on-one time of just sitting and doing. when we don't have time to sit down and do formal schooling, she creates books and games and anything else she can think of. 

she sings and dances like there's no tomorrow. she's a princess and a queen (drama) but so sincere and lovable. she has taken me on a ride from the day she was born and for that i am thankful for. she is my light and joy and inspiration. 

she loves pink and red and green and all the colors in between. she loves to help me with everything i do, is afraid to go upstairs alone, has lost 2 teeth this past year and is currently wearing 1 earring because the other ear hurt and she didn't want the earring back in. 

she can't go to sleep w/o me snuggling up with her at night (or sometimes her dad) and usually ends up in bed with us at night. she insists on being carried down the steps in the morning when she wakes and loves french toast, pancakes with fruit in them, playing with barbies (why, oh why did feral cheryl go out of production?!) and ballet lessons. 

she started talking at 10 months of age, potty trained herself at 22 months of age and insists on speaking to every person i talk to on the phone. she loves music: miley cyrus, michael franti, feist, alanis morrisette  and john denver, singing along whenever it's playing on my ipod (ok, i cringe when i hear miley cyrus but some things you gotta do for your girl, right?!) and begging me to 'turn it up' when any of these artists are playing. 

this little girl owns my heart and she knows it!

homeschooling update

we are still going full speed ahead with school. jaden would do it 7 days a week if i had the time to sit down with her.

she still won't read but i've been working on phonograms with her daily much to her dismay. she has a mental block on the last 8 or so sounds but i think she will get them soon enough.

math is another block. we have been working on skip counting....2's and now 10's. she's not grasping the concept very well so i've created extra worksheets then backed off and moved forward. i figure it will click sooner or later.

for science, i purchased a microscope for us. we've been looking at things under it and also following the pandia press r.e.a.l. science curriculum. i love it! we're studying the body right now.

history has been a lot of fun. we are using pandia press's history odyssey and doing ancient egypt. today she and her sister mummified a barbie doll and put her tomb in the flower garden, lol. we've been doing lots of fun egyptian stuff and i hope to wrap up egypt by having her help me cook an egyptian meal of foods they would have eaten during ancient egypt. she LOVES history pockets and wants to do them everyday. i purchased a papyrus plant for my water pond so she could see a real papyrus plant. when it gets bigger, i'll harvest some and we'll make paper from it. i also bought a paper making kit. i hope to break that out in the next few days so we can play with that. it should be a lot of fun!

art has seen a lot of water color crayons and some pastels and clay. some of the clay projects were tied to the history lessons, some just for fun. we are following the artistic pursuits but also plenty of free choice art going on!

life skills - jaden and sage have both been milking and adelena is getting in on it too now. i have turned over this chore to adelena and the wwoofer.

jaden helps with cooking, cleaning, setting the table and more.

schooling jaden

the past few months, i've fallen into the unschooling category. at first i was neurotic about it but when i started seeing all she was learning, i didn't worry too much about it. but, last week, all that changed.

one of the things jaden has learned to do is call her dad's cell phone. she has his phone number memorized. so, she started saying to him 'ask mom why we didn't do school today...' greg doesn't agree with unschooling so i couldn't explain that so i just said i'm taking a break.

after 2 days of this, and jaden telling greg about all the movies she watched that day (which really weren't many but still, we have gotten into a bad habit of watching movies daily which needs to STOP) and greg questioning about how many movies she watches in a day, i put my foot down with her and said 'no more!'

new rule: no movies unless school work is done unless they are educational related (muzzy for french and spanish, linnea for art history and an abc video we have).

boy, she threw a fit but i pointed out to her that she was calling her dad and complaining i wasn't doing school so i was just trying to go with her wishes to 'formally' school. she was grumpy the first day but then, i decided to try out the history odyssey 'try before you buy' option for ancient civilization and got to work tracking down all the resources they require. (thanks maria for mentioning this on your homeschool list!)

one of these resources is History Pockets: Ancient Civilizations, Grades 1-3. she LOVED it! it took us 2 days to do it because i had to go out and get construction paper but the first day, she colored all the pictures and did the copy work/vocabulary/etc and the 2nd she cut them out, glued them on the construction paper and assembled the pocket. she is ready to do the next section!

as much as i hate going through a lot of paper, if she is learning and enjoying it, i'm willing to work with it a bit.

math
for math we are still sticking with math-u-see for now. she is bored with it, she really does enjoy the art/creating side of schooling.


art/foreign language
she has been doing ballet once a week since january and loves it!
i may get the artistic pursuits books for art inspiration. although we draw, paint, etc., i like the formal learning part too (another maria suggestion)
muzzy french and spanish

language arts
and yet another maria endorsement: all about spelling

science
for science, i am going to start the r.e.a.l life science curriculum (put out by the same people who do history odyssey) as they have the same 'try before you buy' option. also, jaden has been really interested in herbalism lately and working with me to make herbal products. since i am trying to do formal study myself, i thought life science would be a good start to let her see what i am learning about the human body and this curriculum covers that quite well.
also, we go to willoughby weekly for my master naturalist volunteer work and she helps with that

general living skills
i feel these are very important. i encourage and welcome her help whenever i am doing any household stuff: dishes, cooking, laundry, cleaning, ironing, etc. and homesteading: gardening, milking, collecting eggs, tethering goats, etc.

it's futile

why my kitchen floor is never clean

the culprit

projects and plans

the warmer weather brings dreams and schemes to my mind! this year, i'd like to:

-make a small water pond (i've been wanting one for about 15 years)

-make a living willow tipi for the kids (check out this cool site for ideas) at the edge of the garden

-create a flower garden next to our house on a plot of land that is compacted earth. i've already started this...it's going to take a lot of compost to build it up. i want the water pond in this area too

-create a sand pit for the kids to play in

-extend the herb and flower garden down a section of the vegetable garden with a path leading to where the living willow tipi will be

now, i just need to find those extra hours to do all that!

clay play

sage is really starting to become a kid now...the other day, he asked me to get out the clay so he could play with it.

'you make us have fun mom!'

she says it like it's a bad thing...






you can make some too...it's super easy!

glad we got that straightened out!

just out of my 4 year old's mouth:
"his LAST name is johnny depp mom!...his FIRST name is jack sparrow!"

***

today i'm posting at not dabbling about how i make mozzarella.

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the barn swallows returned yesterday...2 pairs! they were almost 2 weeks later than usual arriving. i sat in the garden with tears rolling down my face, i was so happy to see them. sage loves watching birds and when he saw them swooping down he started screaming.

spring is now officially here.

tortillas

i ran out of yeast last week and i refuse to pay $8 at the store for a tiny jar when i have 2# worth arriving today in my coop order. so, i've been making lots of tortillas lately. the kids helped get in on the fun, rolling them out and flipping them in the pan. the downside to making your own? they taste so good you'll never want to buy them again.


basic recipe:
3 c. flour
1/2 t. cream of tartar
1/4 t. baking soda
1/4 t. salt
1 c. warm water.

mix together and knead a few times. divide into 8 -12 balls, depending on your size preference. roll out until very thin. cook on a hot cast iron skillet that is ungreased. place on a plate and cover with a cloth napkin to keep warm. devour!

something wicked this way comes

greg has the flu, jaden and sage are getting over something (cold?) and now i've got it and sage has an ear ache from all the drainage. laying low but i did find this interesting article about dehydrating eggs.

catch up!

i am so bad! i completely forgot to post pictures from valentine's day. adelena made the cake again this year and she made me a cute little needle felted penguin owl (i meant to say owl but she had made a penguin for someone else and i guess that was on my mind).