The Lakeside Schoolhouse

From Scratch Adventures: Jambalaya

So I'm on a quest to make things from scratch... Since we live in Louisiana now we, as a family, have fallen IN LOVE with Jambalaya! Shortly after we moved here, we were invited to a football gathering at my new friend April's house and that's where we were introduced to this wonderful Cajun food. None of us were interested in trying it... until we did. Then a few weeks later we hung out with April's awesome family again and her dad made Pastalaya... and it was over... we were hooked!!

(btw... my friend April blogs over at Wildflowers and Whimsy! You should check her out! She's so creative!)

photo credit zatarains.com

Anyway so to get our Jambalaya fix at home... we have been buying a box of mix for a couple bucks, throwing some chicken in and chowing down. Like all the time. Like several times a week...

First we were buying this box of Zatarain's... till I realized that it has *caramel coloring* in it which is very bad for you. The most common place to find it is in sodas...

Then we started buying this box of Tony Chachere's which doesn't contain *caramel color* but it still has a bunch of ingredients that I do not understand... lol

So it occurs to me at this point, that we eat this dish so much it needs to just be one of those things I make from scratch. To save us some money and also to save a little bit of our health. LOL

So I started googling recipes online and was pleasantly surprised to find a wide variety of different ways to make this amazing dish!

The first recipe I found, a cabbage jambalaya, had me laughing really hard though because of the description... Because I have extremely picky eaters in this house! I let you click on over to it and read it.

poto credit allrecipes.com

Are you back...? HAHAHA! Did you read the part about how "your kids will be eating cabbage like it's going out of style!"?

Yea that cracked me up...

Anyway...

This is the recipe (from allrecipes.com) I'm going to go ahead and tackle this week! After I do... I'll just edit this post to reflect the outcome!

I am super stoked!! Stay tuned! :)

Lazy Dayz

Does anyone else just take a super long break around the holidays?

Seems my blog was on the list of projects to put down as well! LOL! This was not intentional... I think I had applied to be a curriculum reviewer too and at this point I have the next school year planned so if I don't get included... I'm cool.

We live in the south so we have been taking our long breaks in the winter when we can ACTUALLY be outside... in the summer it's just way way way too hot down here in TX and LA, where we have been living.

Anyhoo... sorry for the delayed postings.. hopefully my enthusiasm will resume after Christmas. :)

For now.. I leave you with an adorable picture of my son hugging a tree! :)

From Scratch Adventures!!

It's time... And the time has been comin for a while. I've been hiding from the inevitable... But it's finally time to embrace this calling in my heart.

From Scratch Cooking!

New segment on the blog... Each month I will tackle 5 new from scratch items and share them with you. I'm taking this slowly so that I can stick with the things I learn to make.

I'm also getting the whole family involved! So this will be super fun!

This month's list: (processed things I desperately want out of my home...)

Jambalaya

Crescent Rolls/Pizza Dough

Ramen Noodles

Peanut butter

Spaghetti Sauce

As I make em... I will share the recipes and reviews with you!! Im so excited!!

Wish me luck!! <3

Life of Fred

Ok who doesn't like Life of Fred?? lol! We love Fred around here. In fact, Life of Fred (LOF) did something neat for my oldest son... when he started reading Fred... it was like a lightbulb turned on in his brain and all avenues for learning and exploring were opened. <3 It's hard to explain but when you are a homeschool parent and a light bulb goes off... it's a magical thing, isn't it?

Why I like Life of Fred: Because it's funny! Come on, have you read a Fred book to your kids lately? It's so entertaining!! It's soooo much better to be *forced* to read LOF to my kids than some of the other things they bring me sometimes... And the amount of knowledge my kids get from these books is astounding! It's unreal how much my sons retain after a read. They will even take a long while to digest some concepts and start exploring them on their own! Like the time my seven year old got his tape measurer out and started measuring everything in the house! Even my small 3 year old will remember and learn things!! LOF is a series I will be saving for my grand kids someday. Also... LOF is inexpensive for the value it holds in my family.

Why my sons like Life of Fred: Seriously they love it! Fred doesn't even look like a "curriculum" to them. To them it's just a book! We read Fred at their leisure and enjoy it very much. My older son, in particular, has been completely influenced by the style of writing inside the Life of Fred books. He has started writing his own stories because of Fred and he has started READING on his OWN because of Fred. :) I waited and waited for that spark... and when he connected with Fred, it happened! :) Like I said above, magical! I know that some families out there get real serious with LOF and will do the chapters on schedule and things like that but we do not. For my kids, Fred is like a friend they can visit with whenever they want and play with for however long or short they want to.

I highly highly highly recommend LOF and although you may see reviews on my site sometimes that I may do for incentives, this is not one of those cases. We simply love Life of Fred and I wanted to share it with you. :)

Life of Fred

Christmas on Apple Ridge: A Review

I am a big fan of Amish fiction and so this review will most likely reflect that fact. Christmas in Apple Ridge is a compilation of three books in which the characters lives intertwine. In the first book we meet Beth. This book is my favorite of the three stories, hands down.

Book one is entitled The Sound of Sleigh Bells and it's story has the most intriguing conflict for the main character. My heart connected with this one better than the others. I truly understood Beth's struggle with love and why she lives the way she does. I cheered for her when she finally let herself love the man who's art broke through the wall she had created after the tragedy she had been through.

My guess is, your heart will connect with one of these stories too.

In the second book we meet Mattie, who is so sweet. She, like Beth, has also been burned by love. We get to read as her heart heals and she finds a happy ending as well. And finally, in the third book, we meet Sadie who is the spunkiest of all the women in these stories.

I loved that as I read each book I was able to continue to peek into the lives of the women I had previously met throughout the books. It kept me interested until the very end. I also really liked how independent these women are among the Amish faith. They stand on their own feet and involve themselves in their own destinies, listening to God all the way.

If you are looking for a light read through the Christmas season that is both heartwarming and wholesome then this is your book.

Click Here to download chapter one of this sweet story!

Click Here to buy this wonderful book through the publisher!

Click Here to find it on Amazon!

http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/catalog.php?isbn=9780307730992

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review.

Math Mammoth-Blue Series

We love Math Mammoth around here! So much that my son wants a stuffed mammoth for Christmas this year.. So much that he likes to color Mathy the Mammoth pictures all the time. (You can download a picture of Mathy on the Math Mammoth website. :)

Why I like Math Mammoth - Blue Series:

I like it because before I found it... I was lost. Math-wise lol. I looked up so, so many lists of standards and math subjects kid should learn and how and when to teach them.. my head was spinning. We tried to "school math" so much with too many curriculums. It was a math nightmare... Math almost did me in for homeschooling... I was ready to quit. Then I found this. Let me add really quickly, that Math Mammoth has grade level curriculums... but we do not use that. We use the blue series because it is by topic and skill level. Which is more important to us than grade level. Anyway, I love this curriculum because it gives me confidence and a backbone behind my math guidance. ALSO this curriculum is so inexpensive!! It's truly a wonderful tool. At any time I can pull it out for a fresh perspective and I never feel bad when it's time to put it away for a while and do some math unschooling because it's cost does not keep me strapped.

Why my sons like Math Mammoth - Blue Series:

With this series of curriculum... my kids are in control of what they learn and when they learn it. If my son wants to learn about clocks today, we grab his clocks folder and go to town. We do some hands on activities with our big play clock and check the real clocks around the house for the time. Stuff like that. Then we do a few problems on whatever worksheet we are on until my son has had enough for the day. He is in control of it and this is how he wants to learn. It gives my older son the ability to compartmentalize his math. He likes that. It's comfortable for him. To him Math Mammoth is not a curriculum and it's not even mandatory. It's a tool for him. And he loves the way the author explains concepts to him while he's working. He has connected so well with this curriculum. I would say that before this curriculum appeared in our homeschool... he had zero math confidence. He spent a lot of Kindergarten in public school and then most of first grade de-schooling from that. So now in second grade, he is finding his learning feet and Math Mammoth has really helped him a lot.

Math Mammoth - Blue Series

Have you used Math Mammoth in your homeschool? If so, I would love to hear about it! Math Mammoth is not the only math curriculum we use. We also love Life of Fred around these parts. :)

**Although I do sometimes receive incentives for my reviews... this was not one of those circumstances. :) We simply love Math Mammoth and I wanted to share. <3

Easy Spooky Spiders

So I've been blogging some of the things I'm crafting to decorate my sons Halloween/Birthday party. <His idea entirely!! He has been planning this for like a year...>

Here is another super duper easy Halloween decoration you can do to give some special extra spooky details to your spider webs!

Everyone has probably used those neon green or white spider webs as decor but I decided to add a kick and make some little pipe cleaner spiders to stick in the webs!

What you need:
-Pipe Cleaners
-Scissors

That's IT! :)

1) Start by deciding what color(s) you would like your spiders to be and then set those pipe cleaners aside.

2) Cut ALL THREE pipe cleaners in half. Take two of the halves and cut them in half again... so you should have 4 short little pipe cleaners and on big half left.

3) Arrange the four short little pipe cleaners in a star-like pattern so that you have eight points sticking out.

4) Take the pipe cleaner half you have left and wrap it around the middle to make the spider's body and ALSO to secure the legs to each other.

5) Bend the little legs slightly to create creepy legs! :)