Category: Holidays

Recipe: Buns for Thanksgiving

10/10/2016

My mom asked if I could make a dessert for out potluck Thanksgiving meal on Monday. I begged off as I dislike making desserts (though today Hubby said.. PIE! We could bring PIE! ... so we bought a pumpkin pie to bring). BUT I was left with my commitment to mom, that I would bring some buns.....since that is what we compromised on.

Since some people like white bread and others like brown, I made two batches of dinner buns. Hopefully they will both be enjoyed. Hubby cooked them as i made them just before it was bedtime for my lad. What did I learn? Dividing dough up in to equal sized buns is harder than it looks.

Original recipe Tasty Buns found here: Tasty Buns.

Ingredients

5 cups all-purpose flour
2 (.25 ounce) packages dry yeast
1 cup milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt

Modifications
1 cup whole wheat
2 cup white
1.5 cup multigrain

Directions

Stir together 2 cups flour and the yeast. In a separate bowl, heat milk, water, oil, sugar and salt to lukewarm in microwave. Add all at once to the flour mixture, and beat until smooth, about 3 minutes.
Mix in enough flour to make a soft dough, 2 to 3 cups. Mix well. Dust a flat surface with flour, turn dough out onto floured surface, and let rest under bowl for about 10 minutes.
Shape dough into 12 slightly flat balls, and place on greased baking sheet to rise until doubled in size.
Bake in a preheated 400 degrees F (200 degrees C) oven for 12 to 15 minutes.

Original Recipe to be found here: Unbelievable Rolls

Ingredients:

3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup water
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs
5 teaspoons active dry yeast
5 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup margarine, melted

Directions

In a medium saucepan over medium heat, warm milk, water, sugar and salt. Remove from heat, and mix in the eggs and yeast.
Measure flour into a large bowl. Make a well in the flour, and pour milk mixture into it. Do not stir. Cover with a lid, and let stand for 20 to 30 minutes.
Pour melted margarine into flour, and mix well. Add more flour if too sticky. Knead lightly. Cover, and let rise for 20 to 30 minutes.
Shape the dough into rolls, and place on a baking sheet. Let rise again for 20 to 30 minutes.
Bake rolls in a preheated 400 degrees F (205 degrees C) oven for 15 minutes, or until done.

Canada Day Celebrations 2016

7/2/2016

My boys and I had a lovely day together.
A slow start to our day.
A car show. We all liked different cars.

The tractor show put on by John Deere. Had me reminiscing about days past on the farm. Had the lad asking questions. Me and dad answering them. Convinced the boys to pose for me. :)

The lad helped Sensei Peter out at a Karate Demonstration.

Went home in the afternoon so I could get some things ready for the rabbit show tomorrow. Needed to print of pedigrees and think a few things through. I have organized the youth show this year.

We went back in the evening for the fireworks of course. :) The lad was very sweet and choose to buy us all glow bracelets using his own dollars, donated to the fireworks display for next year as well.

Oh, I almost forgot.. the lad and I enjoyed some sparklers too. Took me a while to find a way to start them as the matches didn't work. But... We got them going with the help of another sparkler.

Holiday Visions

12/28/2014

My Christmas Village started off being visited by spiders from Lego... Harry Potter and various others.

But over time, those visitors left. A boy child played, the cats came to visit and my village settled into it's daily life.

Next our tree went up. It was actually fun this year. Normally I put it up by myself but this year I had a willing helper in my nine year old. we had to wear gloves with this tree as it liked to bite back. (boy, those needles were sharp!)

We had our annual Christmas open house at the beginning of November. It was fun. I tad difficult to pull out in some regards, but overall it was a good time.

Gingerbread house! Can it be Christmas without one?

A sporty red cast ended up slowing me down a fair bite so I only made a couple types of cookies this year. Focusing on our favourite Italian Sprinkle and Cinnamon Lemon Cookies.

my son thought mixing all the colours this year was the way to go. He sure had fun doing them up. :)

I'll close off this post with two of my delights from our Christmas celebration. My son snuggling in a new to him snuggly blanket (his request) and the family watching one of the Christmas movies that we always put on. :) Fun times.

Homeschool through the Holidays.

12/10/2014

So, I broke my thumb. Leah has been so gracious to write a post for me as typing is rather difficult. To that end, let us enjoy Leah's post. :)

As the holidays approach, I begin to hear the question over and over again. "When are we going to take off school for Christmas?" In my mind I'm weighing the options. Do I plug along trying to finish our required number of days sooner and have more summer time off? Or do we take time off now when the kids- and I- am tired and need a break. Over the years of homeschooling, I've learned to do a little of both. We usually continue to doing learning things (that can count as "official" school days), but we break from our regular structure and bring in some fun things. Of course we do take some time fully off- mainly when Daddy is home to have fun with us. But we also do some fun learning things that help to bring a little structure and learning to our days but still allow us to celebrate the season.

Christmas unit studies

Christmas is a wonderful time to do unit studies. You can study countries and culture with a Christmas Around the World themed unit. You can study literature by doing a unit study or lapbook with a Christmas book. You can study weather by looking at the weather in different locations at Christmas time. All of these can be fun and holiday themed, but you're still learning. There are many free unit studies available all around the web. A good place to start is Homeschool Share.

Crafts

Crafting seems like a fun activity but isn't often thought of as educational. However, there are quite a few learning tasks that happen while creating crafts. Learning measurements as you prepare materials, reading directions, critical thinking when something doesn't seem to be working, learning how different materials react with each other- all of these are educational components of making crafts. If you google "Christmas crafts for kids" you'll find many ideas. Here are a few to get you started.

Writing

Christmas is a great time to give your child time for writing. Have your child write a creative story about a family Christmas celebration or what the "perfect" holiday would be. Have him write a persuasive essay about why he should get that one thing he really, really wants. How about doing some research on several charities that could be helped throughout the season and writing a paragraph about what each one does.

Cooking

Like crafting, cooking has many "hidden" educational benefits. Learn how to read a recipe, measure ingredients, and why different ingredients are important. Do some critical thinking when something doesn't work just right and figure out what happened or what you can change. (Some cooking- like cookie baking- is more fun with friends. So you can have a little social time too.)

Service

Many charities or mission organizations need help throughout the holidays. From making meals to wrapping gifts, there are usually many things to be done throughout the holiday season. Consider your child's age and pick a charity that you can help. A service project can have educational benefits, but there are also spiritual benefits as kids learn the importance of serving others and reflect on the real meaning of the season.

It's possible to keep doing a little "school" throughout the holiday season while still having a break and a lot of fun.

Leah Courtney is a homeschooling mom of four. She was a school teacher in her former life and now loves homeschooling her children. Recently she began the adventure of homeschooling a high schooler. She loves reading and reviewing and blogging about life and homeschooling. You can visit her at As We Walk Along the Road.

Christmas traditions

12/1/2014

Every family that I know has them, do you have a Christmas tradition? Perhaps even one or two?

I grew up in a family where gift giving was kept separate from the understanding of the Christ child being born. Mind, it was always somehow connected in the minds of us children, but my parents tried to keep it somewhat separated. My hubby grew up with gifts on Christmas morning and then heading off to church. As a family we sometimes don't quite no how to make it work, but we generally always have a good time a Christmas regardless. :)

One of the things I did when I was single was to make plates of goodies for my neighbours. Doing that now is a tad difficult so we've changed it to an almost annual Open House.. we miss sometimes due to health factors and what not, but generally we Open our doors to friends, family and church folk to visit us. I put out a spread of food, clean the house really well, and will get out stuff for the children do if any come. :)

We put up a real Christmas tree every year. This year my boy helped me with quite a bit of it. That was so fun and quite nice. This year our tree came from a very local farmer. It's a big rather heavy tree, but it's smells up the house quite wonderfully and the decorations don't fall off as they have on some of our previous trees. Oh shucks, I thought I had picture it it but I don't. :) When I get one I toss it in here. In the meantime let me introduce to you one of the favourite things to do at Christmas. Put up my village. :)

I've been collecting pieces over the last 15 years. It makes me smile and my boy loves to add his own little touch. This year it was numerous lego spiders and various Harry Potter figurines. Our student made me smile. You see, he's been heavily into basketball and has been coimng home exhausted. After a nap, while I set things up, he came down stairs, saw my village and gave me the biggest grin and then had to check out my train. ) He gave everything a good going over and then said "is nice". :) I agree.. it is nice. :)

I have to admit, it's been a bit odd this year. Normally the cats take out a claim in my village but this this year they are totally ignoring it. Not sure why, but I don't mind the lack of knocked over or broken village pieces.

We also do a advent. Sometimes I buy the cheap calendars with chocolate in them, this year we went with the Lego Advent Calendar. It's not a true Advent as it's just the 24 days before Christmas. But we do readings along with it. We are alternating this year between Professor Carol's advent reading and reading Bible passages. Keeps things a bit different you know. :) We tried doing a Jesse' tree one year but found it didn't work for our family well.

So tell me please.... what are some of YOUR Christmas traditions?