Mr. Nobody

While commenting on Mother Hen's blog, I mentioned that I couldn't decide between "Not Me", and "I don't know" as the two culprits who must be behind the dishes that keep mysteriously showing up in the garage (not to mention a host of other things).  Mother Hen made the comment that it couldn't be "Not Me", because he lived at her house, and another commenter said that "I don't know" lived at her's.  It all put me in mind of a little poem I came across some years ago, and I wanted to share.

I know a funny little man,

As quiet as a mouse,

Who does the mischief that is done

In everybody's house!

There's no one ever sees his face,

And yet we all agree

That every plate we break was cracked

By Mr. Nobody

'Tis he who always tears our books,

Who leaves the door ajar,

He pulls the buttons from our shirts,

And scatters pins afar;

That squeaking door will always squeak,

For, prithee, don't you see,

We leave the oiling to be done

By Mr. Nobody

The finger marks upon the door

By none of us are made;

We never leave the blinds unclosed,

To let the curtains fade.

The ink we never spill; the boots

That lying round you see

Are not our boots - they all belong

To Mr. Nobody

All of us have those types of permanent house guests in our home.  In addition to "Not Me" and "I don't know", "I didn't do it!" weighs in heavily as a potential trouble maker around here.  His name is usually the one shouted at the tops of everyone's lungs right after we hear a big crash. 

As a side note - when she was very young (say 3 or 4), Beenie's standard answer when you ask her anything was, "I know nothing".  I used to accuse hubby of watching Hogan's Heroes re-runs with her in the room.  Of course, he didn't - as he pointed out, the re-runs didn't come on until late in the evening, but I could just hear Schultz in my head every time she did that.

Becky

Cooking with Kids

MotherHen, at Ship Full of Pirates, has started a weekly link on cooking with children.  I'll try to get the cute little button on my sidebar in the near future.  T.Lynn was just itching for Friday to get here so she could participate.  With a little help, she has made us a batch of Vanilla Wafer cookies today, partially in preparation for the banana pudding I want to make later, and partially because we just love these cookies.  We went on ahead a did a double batch, but I'll put the regular size recipe at the bottom of the post.
So, without further ado, here she is:

Mixing together the dry ingredients.

Adding sugar to the butter.

Carefully adding an obscene amount of vanilla

(but that is what makes these sooo good!) to

the creamed mixture.

Every child's favorite task - cracking eggs.

It's never too early to teach them, that if you get

your eggs from a farm, you need to check those

little buggers, BEFORE you add them to a recipe.

Scraping down the sides of the bowl.

Adding the dry ingredients.

Guarding us from the flour trying to escape from

the bowl - probably because we were making

such a big batch.

The all important "Does this one taste good raw?"

test.  And it does, if the quantity of dough she

was caught sneaking is any indication.

Piping the cookies out on the sheet pan.  This

really is an easy way to get small, reasonably

uniform cookies.

Ready to go in the oven.  We did try out some

on this pan using our small cookie scoop, but

the cookies were a bit too large.

All done!  The lighter colored cookies were the

ones we used the scoop on.  They were a little too

thick, so they didn't get as crisp.

These cookies are great in banana pudding; that is REAL banana pudding -  don't you dare use boxed vanilla pudding mix - and using banana flavored pudding mix is just criminal!! 

Vanilla Wafer Cookies:

1/2c. soft butter (no substitutes!)

1c. sugar

1 egg

1Tbls. vanilla

1 & 1/3c. all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

Combine dry ingredients and set aside.  Cream together butter and sugar, then beat in the vanilla and the eggs.  Add the dry ingredients and mix well.  Put in a piping bag and pipe out small cookies.  I didn't even put a tip in mine, I just used the coupler.  You can scoop them out with a teaspoon if you want.  Bake for about 12-14 min., or until they are begining to turn brown around the edges.

No, these aren't the healthiest thing on the planet, but at least you can pronounce all the ingredients in them, and they make your house smell heavenly while they are baking!

Becky

Out With the Old, In With the New

I've wanted to recover my ironing board for a couple of months now.  But, with Thanksgiving and Christmas to take care of, it just wasn't a high priority.  It's really been bugging me though.  You can see why here:

Before

I've no idea what the stains are.  I'm guessing someone spilled something on it and then whatever it was scorched the next time the iron was used.  I just know that I couldn't get it out in the wash.  And, although you can't really see it, there's a fuzzy spot just across from the two biggest stains where someone had their interfacing turned the wrong way when they were trying to put it in.  Nothing was coming off on anyone's clothes, but it looked just awful.

Now, drum-roll please...

Tada!

In the picture it kind of looks like there's a dark spot near the back - I don't know what caused that, but there's nothing on the fabric. 

Some might think that we have a pink and white striped ironing board because we have nothing but girls - and they would be right - but for the wrong reason.  I didn't pick it out because the girls thought it was cute, or pretty, or anything else; I picked the pink and white stripe because the girls wouldn't have anything to do with it.  All I heard while I was making it was "Ewwww", and "WHY, did you pick THAT?", and "It's so...pink!"  The fabric was in a box of stuff that was given to us  free not long ago, and I chose it specifically because I knew I wouldn't be able to get any of them to even consider it for an apron (although I thought it would make an adorable apron-just, not for me).  T.Lynn even turned her nose up at it, and she likes pink.

Oh well, it's done, it's cute, and best of all - it's CLEAN.

Becky

So Far, So Good

Everything has started off well.  We got the de-Christmasing done on Monday, in a remarkably short amount of time.  I don't know if it was because we had a couple of extra hands, what with Superman being here and all, or if it's just because the younger ones are all just a little older and are also a bit more help.  But whatever the reason, it was all done well before noon, so I decided to go ahead and utilize the extra hands we had, and have him help me run all the other recycling to the dump box site.  We finished everything up (including an impromptu trip by the grocery store) and were back home, fixing lunch by 1:00.  Then, hubby made an executive decision to start school off anyway, by putting in some history documentaries after lunch dishes were cleaned up.  So, we sat around watching those and shelling some of the pecans we've been storing in the garage.  Superman and I cracked, while the girls removed all the nut meat from the shells.  We ended up with just a bit over 3lbs of shelled pecans.  Don't ask how many we have left to shell - this is a positive post. 
On Tues. the milk run went pretty well, despite the fact that we had to do some of our trip in reverse of what we normally do - and it was COLD!!! - But - it wasn't raining! Yay!
Today we worked school in around several things, such as tutoring my cousin (which means the girls watch his baby while he and I work), Beenie's guitar lesson (the girls did some of their school in the waiting area), a trip to the bank to cash everyone's Christmas checks, and open a savings account for Bree, and a trip out to visit Grandma.  We were a little early for the guitar lesson, so I got to meet another mother there that I had not seen before.  This was her first year homeschooling, and she seemed a little stressed out, so I got to talk with her for a bit, encouraging her not to compare their work at home with what her son would have been doing in the private school he had been in (this was what was causing the stress).  I sincerely hope I was able to help her out, if even just a little.  Overcoming the intense desire to compare your homeschool to public, private, or even other homeschools can be difficult, but it is incredibly important.
So, all in all, I think the year has gotten off to a terrific start!!  I hope all of you are having a great week as well.

Off to a Great Start

At least, thats what I'm claiming.  Under normal circumstances we would be starting school again tomorrow.  Actually, I have been known to start school on Jan. 2nd before, depending on what day of the week it fell on, but this year the girls won't be starting back until the 5th - unless you count de-Christmasing the house a good home-ec project.  Hey - it's a necessary life skill!  I love getting my tree down and my house back in order as promptly as possible after Christmas, but with the necessity of having one of our family dinners on the 2nd, we left the decorations up this year, and boy, has that tree been bugging me.  Superman will be coming over tomorrow to haul it off to the recycling center in his truck.  I just couldn't bring myself around to vacuuming pine needles out of the van when such a marvelous alternative presented itself.  Then Tuesday, I'll set out the work I want the other girls to do while Ri, T.Lynn and I go down for milk.  Ri will do all the schoolwork that doesn't require the computer in the van, and T's work will wait 'til we get back home.  She won't have that much to do her first day back after break anyway.

All in all, I think it will be a great start to the first week of our New Year (especially the part about getting that tree out of the living room-yay!).

Becky