Homemade Fabulous Furniture Duster!

Is your furniture dull? 

Do you walk by and a cloud of dust follows you? Are you feeling like you're living in a dusty tomb instead of a sparkling haven?

Then you need to make a bottle of Fabulous Furniture Duster!

3 easy ingredients is all you need!

1 cup white vinegar
3/4 cup olive oil
water

Put it all in a bottle, shake, spray and wipe away!

If you want some added scent, you can add any kind of essential oil. Lavender will make the room feel calm and relaxed, while lemon will give the room a feeling of pep and energy!

With Love,

Emily

DIY Hard Water Stain and that Pink Stuff Remover

Behold! I bring you a miracle in a bottle!

Do you have hard water stains? 

Do you have that pink or orange guck on the bottom of your shower? 

Have you tried every brand on the market only to scrub in vain??

Then put down that sponge and MAKE yourself a bottle of miracles!

Ok, seriously, this isn't exactly a miracle, but pretty close to one!

So here's what you need to make your own bottle. 

1) A clean bottle

2) White vinegar

3) 1/4 cup Lemon juice

4) Blue Dawn Dish Soap

Fill the bottle more that half way full of vinegar, add the lemon juice, and fill the rest of the bottle with Dawn. Shake, spray, let sit for 30 minutes, scrub.

AND THAT'S IT! 

I wish I had a before and after, but imagine glass shower doors opaque with hard water stains and a shower floor disgustingly orange with Serratia marcescens (surprisingly not a mold, but a bacteria that can cause urinary tract infection and, rarely, pneumonia). 

First, I wetted a couple of new dryer sheets and scrubbed the doors clean of any soap scum. (YES, I said DRYER SHEETS! They work great!!) Then I sprayed the whole thing down, waited my 30 minutes, and scrubbed. First the shower doors (with a sponge) and then the floor (with an old toothbrush,... totally getting myself a bigger brush). 

The doors came out as crystal clear as the day they were installed (yes, the very doors in the picture) and the floor came out nearly white again. I got tired of scrubbing with a little toothbrush, so next time I expect it to be perfectly clean. 

I hope you will try this! It will work on any surface you have hard water stains on!

With Love,

Emily

The Calling

1 Kings 19:11-13

New International Version (NIV)

11 The Lord said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

You would think that after growing up in church, being born again for almost 20 years, and used to hearing that still small voice of God, that I would know to never ignore Him.

It would be much easier to stand there and obey God if He made a loud and dramatic approach every time he wanted your attention, but that would take away our free will to choose to obey God.

Well, when God was calling me to homeschool I was covering my ears. You would think that after being homeschooled myself, that this would be an easy thing for me to obey God with, but I was promised that when both of the kids were in school how much time I'll have more myself and how clean my house would be, yadda yadda yadda. Even having Thing 1 in pre-k for half day was really kind of nice, because I was able to bond with Thing 2 with no distractions. Then the next year Thing 1 went off to Kindergarten and I had dreams of how it was going to be like the year before, but with more bonding time with Thing 2 and actual big time cleaning getting done.

It couldn't have been farther from the truth. 

Our mornings were rampant with stress, and always ended up with me yelling at Thing 1 that if he didn't hurry he was going to miss the bus, and him sleepily trying to hurry and get his shoes on the right feet. I hated having to wake him so early in the morning, just so he would have to be rushed to get out the door every morning. 

Then I was stressed during the day, keeping an eye on the clock to make sure I didn't lose track of time and miss him at the bus stop on his return. Several times I had been out and about with Thing 2 and praying as I drove madly home that I would make it to the bus in time.

Then we would only have a few hours together before I had to make him go to bed, just so we could start another stressful day the next day.

Thing 1 wasn't doing well in school either. He was bored, emotionally drained from the stress that morning, and becoming more and more physically tired from lack of sleep. He missed spending quality time with us, and was being turned off from learning all together.

And what was happening to me spiritually this whole time? That still small voice of God. I knew it was Him. I recognize the voice. I've heard it many many times before. So why did I not listen?

Fear of being judged.

As a homeschooled kid back in the 80's and 90's, I was judged. At some point I was told to just lie and say I wasn't homeschooled, because the myths that so many people believe are so damaging to not only the homeschooling family, but to the child. 

So many times people asked me, as a child, how do I socialize? Do I get along with other children? Do I ever get out of the house? Am I in my pjs all day? And they always inevitably start quizzing me on basic knowledge, like I must have the IQ of a cantaloupe and they have to "prove" that a homeschooled child is an idiot. It hurt. 

Fast forward a decade or so and now I'm the homeschooling parent, and guess what,..

People still believe the myths and ask the same questions.

But now, I can tell you that many things have changed just in my own opinion about homeschooling my children and what people say. I've grown a thicker skin, for one, and found support with other homeschooling families. I've done research and found that homeschooling is truly becoming the norm!

Back in the day, I was one of maybe 10-20 thousand homeschooled children.  Then I see this statistic from 2012-2013.

Today, my children are apart of the low end estimation 1.5 MILLION homeschoolers! The number estimation may actually be far more as many states don't require registration. Even still, the numbers are astronomical!

But what about the socialization, going to college, getting a job,... and prom!?!?

Ok, first of all, even as a homeschooled child, I went prom. Yes, normal public school prom. 3 of them in fact. But even if a homeschooled child isn't as lucky as I was, there are homeschool proms. There are homeschool bands, football teams, and even science clubs. Just get enough kids together an BAM you've got a high school experience without having to step foot in a school building.

As far as getting a job or even getting into college,... well, these demographics speak for themselves.

Source 

Without being inhibited, without having to "fit in" with the right clique, we homeschool kids just learn to love, well, learning! College are even seeking out the homeschooled kids, as stated in this 2006 news report, because we want to not just pass the class, we are ready to learn!

So let me wrap this package up with a pretty bow. If you are hearing God call you to homeschool, if you feel that tug at your heartstrings to be with your children more and help them be as prepared for the world as they could possibly be, then take that dive into homeschooling. It's hard at first, not going to lie, there will be many sacrifices, but the goal set before you IS achievable, and there is so much more support to guide you and lift you up in your homeschooling endeavor than there ever has been before. 

And you know what? As more of us homeschool our children, and our children homeschool their children, eventually the myths that hurt so much will eventually be dispelled. 

The future is very bright.

With Love,

Emily

When Life Starts Again

Hi again everyone!

I have taken nearly a year long rest, and it was very much needed. My husband, who was working two jobs, quit one last July (about when I stopped blogging) and we've been adjusting since then to make it on one paycheck.

With that being done, he has gone back to school to get his Masters in Accounting (yea!!), we've plodded along in our homeschooling, and we are in our spring both weather and marriage wise.

It's nice to have my husband back into the picture. God is good!

With that being said, I have been searching for a way to organize all those workbook papers without having to pull out what I need for the week every. single. week. So I searched pinterest and this is what I found!

Folder system

As found on 'Life your way'.

Have you ever had those moments when something so ingenious is so blatantly obvious that you just want to smack yourself for not thinking of it? That would be this girl.

Well, what it is is you take your 40 folders and mark one for each week, then you take ALL of your workbooks and divvy them up for what you want them to do for each week, then you place them into the appropriate folder. BOOM. Done. Never have to do it again.

Now, what I do for each week is take it out all the papers in said week and put them in their subject folders. They know they have the whole week to do them. If they don't, it gets pushed on to the next week. (Don't worry, about the 20th week you'll mostly run out of workbooks). If they get it done or even get it done early, then they don't have to do any more for that week!

Awesome deal if I so say so myself.

Even though I live in a state where I don't have to do so, I wanted to have some kind of record for what the kids are doing, but I wanted something that's quick, easy, and for everyday. So with a bit more pinteresting, I found LARRY ZAFRAN! This guy is a genius. 

Now, you can buy the record book here for less that $6, but if your like me and are too impatient then you can print out his sample 180 times. Oh, I got a new fancy printer with toner instead of ink a couple of months ago. That and the laminator have been my two best friends. :-)

The page is very simple. You have one for each day, there's 20 subjects on it from reading, math, down to hobbies, and you just simply fill in a blip of what you child did that day. Easy Peasy. Boom. Done.

Well friends, I'm excited about blogging again. I can't wait to start putting up pictures of all the fun things we are doing on our journey. Thank you for walking down this road with us!

With Love,

Emily

Happy 4th of July!

I'm so excited to blog today about our 4th of July crafts we did. I found all of these (except for the free form fireworks) off of Pinterest and just couldn't wait to to have Thing 1 and Thing 2 try them out. They we're just as excited as I was!


American flags

Supplies
Constuction paper in red, white, and blue
White pompoms

Directions
Cut white paper into strips and glue onto red paper.
Cute a square from blue paper and glue in upper left hand corner
Glue pompoms onto blue square for the stars

Pipe cleaner Sparklers

Supplies
Red, white and blue pipe cleaners for handle
Iridescent, gold, red, and blue pipe cleaner for sparks

Directions
Twist together red, white and blue pipe cleaners, set aside
Fold in half, pinch loop, and then open into a V the sparkler pipe cleaners
Take all the V pipe cleaners together and fold over the handle into the ditch of the V
Twist handle to secure

Hand print Eagles

Supplies
Paint in brown, off white, yellow, and orange

Directions
Paint each hand brown and place together on paper = body and wings
Make fist and paint side of hand and pinky finger off white = head and neck
Dip finger in orange paint and draw legs
Use brush to paint eye and beak

Free Form Fireworks

Supplies
Paint of all colors and some fingers

Directions
Dip fingers in paint and make a firework show. Don't forget to make the sounds!

 Thing 1 used one finger and explored what color the colors would turn as he mixed them all.

 Thing 2 used one finger for each color to keep the colors pure.

Mama had fun doing her own decorating too!

I hope you enjoyed your holiday as much as we did!

With Love,

Emily

Jesus Wept

Photo Credit

 John 11:35: “Jesus wept.”

The shortest verse in the Bible; Jesus wept. 

Throughout my tweens and teens I was a avid poet. I love poems and the different ways we can write the exact same words, but just a slightly different format, and the meaning is completely different.

So as we taught the story of Lazarus the the 3 year olds today in Sunday School, I couldn't help but wonder why would Jesus weep when he's about to raise Lazarus from the dead? And why was it emphasized in it's own verse that Jesus was crying? 

There's lots of different opinions out there, so if you want to do some research on it, I promise that it's very fascinating, but I have three different points I'd like to share with you.

1) Jesus was not just the Son of God, He was also fully human.

The fact that Jesus was God in human form means that when he fell down as a child, he hurt.  When he celebrated their holidays with family and friends, he felt happy. When he got sick, he ached. So why wouldn't he cry when he saw his friends grieving?

He felt our pain and sorrow, and felt our joyful and happy moments. He experienced them as we have! Even more so should we rely on God to understand the good, the bad, and the ugly feelings and situations we find ourselves in. He's been there. He knows.

2) Jesus knew that even though he was going to perform this miracle, people were still not going to believe that he is God. 

It pains me to think that when Jesus walked among us, performing miracles completely unfathomable today, people still didn't believe that he was God. In fact, the very fact that we today have to rely on more faith because we haven't seen with our own eyes, seems like it's even more blatantly obvious that if the people of Jesus time saw and did not believe, how blind and hard hearted they truly must have been.

3) Just as poems emphasize on certain phrases, God wrote it this way in the Bible to make a point.

And what exactly is that point? I believe the point was to make you stop and think about how powerful those two words are...

Jesus wept

The Universe is Gods throne and the Earth is His footstool. In the vastness of space and time  each one of us are nothing more that the tiniest blip in the grand scheme of the known universe, and even smaller than that in what is beyond the edge of space. 

And yet, God sent his only son to become one of us. To experience the pain and devastation we go through, to die for us in the most painful and tortured way, just to repair the bridge between us and God and restore what Satan had destroyed when evil entered the world. 

All because He loved us. The human race. The little, simple minded, undeserving of a second glance, and completely lost in darkness, sheeple. 

God repaired what once was broken and all we have to do today is just ask for salvation and it is done. But even though it's in His book, in black and white, simply put,

People will still not believe.

So

Jesus. Wept.

With Love,

Emily

No Cook Play Dough

Today the kids decided that since it was too hot and humid, not to mention the low lying threat of thunderstorms, to go outside today, that today was a good day to battle to the death with each other. Oh my goodness gracious, God help me.

I tried every thing that I could think of, school work, movies, ringing the bell to make them go back to separate corners. Absolutely nothing was working.

So I called Dad and asked for some ideas. He suggested to make something with them, even if it was just cutting up paper and gluing it on another paper.

Not feeling up to making a giant mess, I decided that making some play dough was the way to go.

Here's the recipe that I used.

No Cook Play Dough

4 cups plain flour

2 cups salt

4 tbl veggie oil

4 tbl cream of tartar

3 cups boiling water

food coloring or kool-aid for coloring

Stir all together and play!

I wanted to make mine with an added element of interest, so I made them..

MYSTERY COLORS!

Grab a handful of dough and a packet of kool-aid.

Use the whole packet!

Or use 5+ drops of food coloring

Carefully fold over the dough around the color.

Let Thing 1 and Thing 2 choose a mystery color.

Start mixing kiddos! Thing 2 is checking out how big brother does it first.

I'M GONNA WRECK IT!

Explore different ways of making the color mix... poke poke. Love how he sticks his tongue out in concentration; just like his daddy.

Show mommy how much fun this is!

Thing 2 just poked her finger in to peek at the color instead of mixing. Cheater. :o)

Despite the Cinderella Blue color, she was not happy she got blue. She wanted pink.  

 The kids got tired of mixing, so I did for them as they looked on. The bottom three are the kool-aid packets. They smell wonderful!

 Play dough was a big hit! They stopped their fighting, ok well mostly, and enjoyed playing with the play dough on and off throughout the day. Woo hoo!

Color recognition. Check.

Fine and gross motor skills. Check.

Social skills. Check.

Oh...

 Thing 2 made me the Earth. 

I think that's supposed to be Ireland. Lots of shamrocks.

Geography and Earth Science... Check.

We're done.

With Love,

Emily