The Procrastinator's Picnic: 3 Things You Really Need

Oh, there are some lovely picnics out there!  If you get on pintrest you know what a magical thing a perfectly planned picnic can be!  Would you just look at this woodland set up on Kha Do's page or basically Janice Johnston’s whole board!  Granted, most of these were well planned and positioned for proposals or photo shoots, but how romantic! 

...and this is us! =)

I don’t know about you, but our kids love the idea of a picnic as well.  Truthfully, they were not deterred at all by basically having picnics every night for a couple months until our table arrived.  And now that it’s here I’ve been asked countless times if we can go to the neighboring arboretum for a picnic.  I kept putting it off because I needed to plan and prepare, get a perfect basket and containers, and figure out a way to haul a tiny vase of flowers into the middle of nowhere with two younglings and a moose of a dog in tow.  It didn’t take me too long to realize that might not be realistic for us at this stage in our lives!  But my brain is always trying to find a way to make things work, to get creative with the situation, and I started to whittle down these perfect picnics into something more practical for us right now.  I started to ask myself what we’d really need.

1.       Something edible: chances are, you’re going to be eating anyway, and, at least for us, lunches are often cold.  Sandwiches are great, but we were slightly pressed for time, so I just started throwing in what we had.  This is what I ended up with: a cucumber, sliced cheese, salami, crackers, guacamole, and an apple.  The only prep I did once we got there and that was just to cut the fruit and veggie with my pocket knife

2.       Somewhere to sit: we have an awesome place to visit down the road, and I’m super grateful for that.  But it’s really not necessary.  When we first moved down here, we would go out in our yard or even in our living room.  We once even had a snow picnic in Alaska!  A blanket to sit on is great but, again, not absolutely necessary.

3.       Someone to break bread (or whatever you have) with: Okay, technically you could have a picnic by yourself, but I feel the fun thing about picnics is being able to share them (and ideally the outdoors) with others. 

Finding Tiny Wonders Together

After a stressful morning of running all around town, this was such a perfect way to refocus and connect!  We looked for nature treasures on the way and tucked them in our bag.  We found a cozy place down by the river and settled in for our meal.  My little son said, “Mama, look!  It’s so nice to just sit here and look at how pretty the river is going down hill!”  Yes!  I love it when he gets it like that!

Views from our hike out

Their highlight was finding these two great dirt hills and sliding (or scooting, rather) all the way down!

 

All this to say that it was wonderful, refreshing, and imperfectly perfect. But we grew together which is much more important than my tiny vase of flowers! =)  I hope this might encourage you to take a picnic with the ones you love and just enjoy it without letting it be a huge inconvenience.  Hope you have a great week!  Oh, on that note, we may not have internet this week, but I shall return!

Autumn Trio: Printable Nature Art

Quick post today because my kids want to go on a picnic and, well, priorities.  I wanted to give you some free autumn printables should you so desire.  If all goes as planned, high quality prints will soon be available at my Etsy shop's grand re-opening!  Click on the photo to open the larger version. I hope you enjoy and cherish this day!

Rendered Useful: Adventures in Making Lard

As promised!  LARD!  Ugh, that isn’t even a fun word to say.  Not unlike BLOG, actually.  I really don’t like that word and my kids and I laugh every time we say it.  In fact, we’ve been trying to think of another name for it.  Blog is a mix of, what, basic log?  Back log?  So if I were Jean Luc I would call it a clog (captain’s log)?  I think I’d replace log with journal or even record.  Maybe combine with web?  Wernal?  Wecord? Hm…I’ll have to work on that a bit.

When Josh came out of our neighbor’s cooler with a packet of pig fat, my first thought was, “Gross, why?”  But he was all excited, “Look!  You can make lard!”  Okay, I was sure there were instructions out there in the interwebs somewhere, but I had never used lard before.  Even if I did figure out how to make it, I had no idea what to use it in!

So there it sat in our freezer for about a month and I didn’t want to see it go to waste, so I rummaged up some instructions from Faulk Farmstead to render lard in my crock pot.  Pretty simple, really.  You just cut the fat into smallish cubes (mine were a little bigger than dice size), discarding the large portions of muscle, ligaments, and blood vessels.  But don’t get too particular, the remnants just get used  for cracklins.  In the pot add a cup of water so it doesn’t burn before it melts, set it to medium and let it melt!

I feel like now would be a much better time to try this, at least if you are rendering indoors, because it was pushing 100 degrees the day I did this and the added heat (though not a lot) was noticeable unpleasant.  And though I didn’t notice a strong smell, it was detectable at close proximity.  I wish I would have done it outside!  It took the better part of a day, maybe 6 hours?  But I had my pot packed full, too!  As the lard melted set a strainer atop a mason jar and poured out the liquid until all the fat had liquefied. 

I saved the remnants for cracklins, later frying them up until they “crackle”.  This was the first time I had ever had cracklins, but they reminded me of bacon bits.  We had them with our scrambled eggs in the morning, but the Food and Wine page cooks it into a tasty-sounding pasta, though I have yet to try it, and I’ve seen many recipes out there for crackling chicken.  I’m really curious what else you have used them for? 

Anyway, after the mason jar was full, I just sealed, labeled and allowed it to cool.  I try not to do a ton of baking, so I kept it in the fridge, though I know many will just keep it in the cupboard.  The very next day, the little ones wanted us to make cookies together, quite specifically, snickerdoodles!  I realized the recipe I had called for shortening and that this would be a perfect time to substitute the lard.  They turned out amazing!  Slightly crisp on the very outside, but soft and almost chewy. 

The more I read about lard the more I find it’s ideal for baking, especially pie crusts.  I can’t wait to try my own!  And someone mentioned making soap with it, also.  So many possibilities!

I don’t know about you, but for so long we were told that lard is so unhealthy, but now we’re learning that isn’t so true.  Happy meets Healthy has a great article about the benefits of eating lard.  The most notable in my mind was that it has super high vitamin D content (which doesn’t occur naturally in a lot of foods).  This is great news for my Alaskan friends!  Our pediatrician in Fairbanks told us that even in the summer we didn’t get vitamin D because of the extreme angle of the sunbeams.  So all year we had to supplement to avoid the deficiency we all had. 

Well, I’ll sign off with that little tid bit and hope you have some new ideas that you’ll experiment with as well! 

Beyond the Books: September

Can you believe it’s October!  The time seems to be slipping by, yet I adore this time of year!  Especially this year!  After being away from a place where “harvest time” has such meaning, I can’t get enough of all the autumn-ness going on right now!  From the colors, to the leaves crunching, harvest produce, cheery pumpkins, crisp air, and holiday anticipation!  Ah, I love it! 

Last month I shared some ways we took our home preschool outside or even just found different ways to learn.  I thought I might keep up the pattern every month to possibly give others some ideas.  And maybe you’d share more of yours with us?  I always appreciate new inspiration!  I am not one to plan things out well, but sometimes just seeing someone else's ideas can spark an idea that would work for the particular circumstance. 

Eclipse: Fynn has been asking about fractions (halves and quarters) a lot lately and I realized it’s a little difficult to explain because it changes depending on what it’s a fraction of.  I knew math was going to be hard for me, but I thought I’d have a couple years of smooth sailing!  Nope.  I think I'm starting to impart the idea of what a half is at least, and being able to go outside and watch the super blood moon eclipse was a fun way to teach about what half of a moon would look like!    While we waited for the moon to rise, we saw the beautiful sunset over the lake and looked up to watch the stars come out.  We even saw one shooting star and a couple planes and satellites.  Wow, why don’t we do this more often!?  Josh pointed out the Big Dipper and it made me think about how I’d like to learn the constillations some day.

Now that is something that’s wild: the sky.  Sometimes I feel like it’s hard to find a truly wild place anymore down here in the lower 48.  Even in Alaska, for that matter, it’s not easy to get to the wild country.  But the sky, it’s always right there, and every clear night your eyes can wander galaxies away.  How does that song go?...”I don’t care, I’m still free, you can’t take the sky from me…”

Geek moment over.  Before we went out that night, I showed the kids a couple YouTube videos (SciShowKids was by far my favorite)  explaining what was going on so they could kind of have an idea when we got out there.  And I guess some little ones can be frightened by the odd moon, so we wanted to avoid that scenario if at all possible through education.

Trees: we ended up exploring trees a lot this month as we watched their leaves go from many shades of green to the vibrant oranges, yellows, reds and purples.  Also fascinating has been discussing the variety of ways that trees will naturally try to plant new trees:  seeds!  We discected several evergreen cones and found the “treasures” (seeds) inside. 

 

And I’m not certain what these (pictured below) are called that fall from the maple trees, but we’ve been calling them helicopters or whirly-gigs.  I’m pretty sure God made them that way as a toy for forest-wandering children as well as a seed transport mechanism because my kids could toss these into the air and watch them whirl forever!  They are rather hypnotizing.

 

 

  A big horse chestnut tree behind our house also started dropping it’d mace-like bulbs, then spilling the shiny brown nut.  It was like treasure hunting here every time we went out, too!  Now I have a whole bucket full I’m not sure what to do with!  Any ideas?  We took a closer look at the areas where the branches had been cut last month and we discovered sap: the smell, texture, color, and even the taste!  Then the little ones started using it as an adhesive!  They glued twigs and leaves to just about anything, even a letter they sent to Grandma. 

 

We still have a lot to learn, but I feel like we made some great progress!  And of course there is just the joy of jumping in a big pile.  PE?  Oh and leaf rubbings for art class?  We did also discuss why the leaves that had fallen were a different color and becoming dry and brittle (disconnection from the sap stream). 

 

Animal Wisdom:  Something that I feel is very important for anyone to learn is how to interact appropriately with animals and we are getting so many more opportunities here!  Having pets in the house is an awesome start and really helps them to be unafraid of animals (and decreases the likelihood of allergies!)  But I'm always so excited when they can meet new critters!  Our sweet friend from whom we buy eggs always lets us go visit the chickens, feed them a snack and check for eggs!  It's such a treat when they're not your own!  She also has some rabbits they love to pet, too!  So soft!  We talk about walking slowly and quietly and gentleness with all the animals and especially the eggs! 

We also got to visit ducks and were later confronted by a gaggle of geese at a new park we visited this week!  With the ducks we got to talk about not chasing them and what were good snacks to offer them.  Did you know that bread crumbs are not good for them?  I didn't until this past year.  You can learn more about that from Stella123 here.  Then the geese came at us as we were walking in another part.  Our little animal lover was so excited and started to run at them with open arms to hug them all!  We learned how to be cautious with geese and remember that they are wild animals and can hiss, bite, and scratch.

 

 

Fractions: We discovered this a little with the moon, then we got some pears from the farm stand across the street and got half and even quarter concepts a little more engrained.  MMmmmm!  What a yummy way to learn math!

Writing: I’m struggling a little with ideas for this one.  We have done a little book work, then tracing with the chalk.  It also seems to help him if there is a purpose to his writing.  Copying letters over and over in a book is tedious, but when he wants to  write a letter to his friends or relatives he  seems to be much more motivated. 

Library story time:  Sometimes, you hear too much of Mom’s voice and just hearing  another seems so much more enjoyable.  A couple age-appropriate stories, songs, and activities they were able to engage in along with others their own age.

Museums: At the beginning of the month we went to a science museum.  It was a bit overwhelming and we didn’t get to see everything.  But I so remember going to science museums growing up, and even though I hated reading through the signs, the concepts I saw demonstrated there quickly came back to me when I had to read about them later on. 
 

 
 

 

Then there was the Smithsonian museum day and we got into the local historical museum free last weekend!  The little ones are just beginning to understand that there has been quite a bit of  time before right now.  Lots of questions about how life went on without engines or electricity.  Great questions and ones I want them to think through!  I want them to figure out alternative ways to do things, how to do without, and know what is important. 

Dorris Ranch also had a fun pioneer day at their recreated village.  The kids were taught about the Wagon Trains, frontier life, trapper life and native life.  They got to practice hoeing up the hard dirt by hand, washing clothes with a wash board, hauling water, grinding flour, writing with a quill and some native children's toys. 

 

 

Music: A very thoughtful and generous couple from our church decided to lend us their keyboard for as long as we wanted it! Wow!  And there are all kinds of drum beats and instrument sounds built in.  The kids are loving playing around with it!  No formal lessons yet, but what a fun introduction!  And we found the ukulele, too, so now the rest of my crew can all play their “ ‘tar’s” together! 

 Then Monday night we all went to see one of the artists we know at a concert held behind an ice cream shop in town.  It was really a lovely venue with a giant mimosa tree growing in the middle.  The kids loved the harp, piano and guitar and danced along to the upbeat songs.  A late night, but well worth it!

Our little guy nailed it this week when he told me he goes to lots of schools.  I asked him what he meant by that and he said, "Well I have homeschool and Sunday school and Daddy school and Grandpa electric school and outside school and..."  The list went on, but that's all I remember and I just thought, Yes!  He gets it!  Learning is everywhere! 

Grandpa Electric  (and construction) school:  I've heard several other homeschool moms talk about this and I love the idea.  If there's someone else in your life who's knowledgeable about something (especially if it's something you do not excel in!) consider asking them to teach your little one a skill.  Most people (especially Grandpa!) are more than happy to share their knowledge!

 

 
 

 

Sunday School crew discovering bugs and making their own salad from things they picked from the garden:

 

Projects around the house: paper making, baking together (apple oat muffins!), drawing a picture together, building a barn for their toy animals with Daddy, corn husk doll making, and map reading with Daddy and Grandma. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I enjoy writing these out because it helps me remember that they are learning and getting new experiences all the time.  I think like any mom I often worry that I don't do enough.  And maybe I don't, but they're learning anyway!  If you'd like anymore information on any of these projects, please let me know!  I'd love to hear what you are interested in!