Life on Planet Caddick

I know, after a month and a half you'd think I'm going to jam pack this post with all kinds of excitement and goodies. You are, aren't you? Um, ya - sorry about that. What have we been up to? Well, school (of course), and baking, and learning how to make homemade things like stock and applesauce. Which is a lot of fun, but really  makes me want to get a canner. Or at least a rack for my big ol' pot so I can do water bath canning on some stuff. Then I could save my pennies for a pressure canner.   I've learned how to make homemade rice a roni too. Yep, because we are rice a roni freaks in this house! And I'm going to be honest, I didn't think it would make that  much a difference in taste. Goodness I was wrong! I am going to make up a whole slew of them and keep them in my cabinet to use whenever. I don't mind making it as needed - but having the convenient, all ready made up ones would suit me so much better (and keep me from getting lazy and buying ...

Today I'm linking up with the Hip Homeschool Hop . This week we tried our hand at making soap. I've been wanting to try making soap for a while, but while reading our latest book about Ben Franklin they have soap and candle making activities. Doing a "requirement" for school is definitely a reason to make it happen! We are going to tackle candle making later this week - but for now it's soap making. I know young Ben didn't make soap with a melt and pour goats milk base, and I know they didn't add color (or probably fragrance), but that's how we did ours. Bonus points - I'm counting it as this week's art project too. Little man did all the coloring and swirling so he gets credit for that. He really did all of it - I just supervised and gave him direction. That's the good thing about melt and pour instead of cold process - no lye. Poor young Ben, what a nasty job that must have been! Putting colors in the molds He made them very colorful All ...

Yes, I've been on a baking binge lately. It's kind of in line with my (trying) to go crunchy theme, but it does hinge more on I'm sick of paying $3 for a loaf of bread. Ugh. You can call it frugal or cheap, but you have to call it delicious! Last week I tried my hand at dinner rolls and hamburger buns. They were the exact same recipe, just divided and shaped differently. They came out so good. I didn't take pictures of those, but trust me they were good! So this week I decided to try my hand at a few things. First - pumpkin spice creamer. No, this isn't baking but it did lead to baking so I'm counting it! My niece gave me the idea and I followed the recipe found on Mrs. Happy Homemaker . For the base I used the sweetened condensed milk and (organic) half and half. It tastes so good. But you must remember to shake it every time you use it. My husband also suggests stirring your coffee a lot because it does settle. I say it's super good and much more fr...

Today we played tourists. We went to Charleston and after a brief stint in downtown (very brief - it was crowded!) we went to the USS Yorktown. We wanted to go to Fort Sumter but we missed the last boat out. Now we know. That is going to be another trip because of our history studies this year. Maybe a during the week trip though, when it's not so packed with people who are really tourists or people just acting like them! Charleston from the deck of the USS Yorktown The Yorktown is moored with a destroyer and a submarine. Miss Claustrophobic almost didn't make it through the submarine, but I held my panic in check (barely) and survived. I'm going to be honest if I had to live on one of those people would be dead. Or I would die trying to blow a hole in the side to get out! It really was a fun time. We did three of the five tours (self guided) through the Yorktown, walked the destroyer (the USS Laffey - named after a Civil War Medal of Honor recipient), and walked ...

My effort in include art and PE this year has been hit or miss. That, sadly, is nothing unusual in this house! PE especially has taken the back burner ~ it usually does. I know I'm not teaching my son good, healthy habits by not doing something everyday. I hope that we can start making changes in that area. On the other hand art has been going much better. We've completed a few projects (which is a few more than last year). I get our ideas from pintrest or this book We've had this book since 2nd grade - it only took us 5 years to use it... It has lots of good ideas and we decided on Squares with Concentric Circles by Vassily Kandinsky. It was one of the easier projects :) That's how we roll around here! What the original looked like Our circles Completed project Zach enjoyed working on it, choosing his own colors and and how dark he wanted to paint each section. I had him make all the choices, did it need another coat of watercolor? How dark did he want the wax circles ...

I have delved into the world of homemade natural solutions a tiny bit over the last couple years. Most of this was because I was tired of spending a lot of money on a little bit of stuff (more than the whole 'natural' aspect). That some things were better for us and the environment was bonus as far as I was concerned. I tried homemade liquid hand soap (you can read about that here ). I also made homemade laundry detergent last July. I used this recipe from One Good Thing by Jillee. Seriously, I still have a ton of this stuff so it's lasted us well over a year. This one is a hit (as in the boys don't complain about the texture or smell) and it gets our clothes clean. So we can count this one as a winner EXCEPT  for the one fact that during the summer, the freshness doesn't hold up so well after you start sweating. This can be a problem in SC for sure. So, I bought some Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day (Geranium). Haven't tried that yet but I'm sure the boys ...

I'm trying to make a concerted effort to include art this year in our homeschool. I'm not very artsy and I find teaching art - well, boring. But doing art, well even making bad art is fun! My son feels the same way, so we're going to do some fly by the seat of our pants painting and other projects this year. I pulled our first project off Pinterest (of course!). I'm not as addicted to that site as a lot of my friends, actually I rarely use it - but sometimes I find cool stuff I'd like to try and this idea was one of them The idea seemed super simple and I thought, why not - some cool artwork on the wall will be nice when we're done. So I drug the boy to Michaels, had him pick out some colors (along with the rest of the supplies), and we dove right in. He picked shades of blue and purple (which matches nothing in my house!) but again - it's more about the doing here... Hubby didn't paint - he was our photographer Hi Honey! All dry and waiting for our sw...