Wednesday, 25 January 2012

Pinning it Down {1} Peg frogs & Finger Firefighters


Welcome to the third Pinning it Down Tuesday! Do you find yourself pinning projects to Pinterest, but rarely getting around to doing them? Do you need a bit of encouragement to make some of those projects come to life? Join Pam and Sarah every Tuesday for the Pinning it Down link-up, where we're making a Pinterest project happen in our homes every week. 


Sir N and I chose two pins to Pin down this week:

This is our first Pin:


Source: flickr.com via Chareen on Pinterest


Our first Pin is this one from a flicker album by Molas & Co .

We had a look through the different ideas and then settled on The Frog and The Sea Inside pegs to try.


We had loads of fun trying this one.
This one was a little more tricky because there was no tutorial and if you look carefully at the photo's they are made of wood.  So I improvised.


  • Sir N painted our pegs.
  • I took a screen shot of the peg we wanted to do.
  • Put it into a word document and printed them off.
  • Next we cut the pieces out and lamenated them.
  • Cut them out and then glued them onto the pegs.
  • Loads of fun and we can't wait to show Paul tonight.

The Second Pin we did is :




This Pin is from Tippytoe Crafts: Five Little Firefighters.

This one was super easy and quick to do.
The tutorial on Tippytoe Crafts was excellent.






  • We painted Sir N's hand, made a hand print,
  • Next I drew around some 10 cent coins to get the round heads.
  • To make the hats I drew around the 10c coin and cut the base straight.
  • Next Sir N glued the bits on and used texta to draw the rest !

Follow Me on Pinterest



What will you be trying from Pinterest this week ?

Blessings






Photo Collages done with the FREE software Photoscape . Tutorial over at Great Fun 4 Kids.

Are you ready to play along? Here's how our link-up works:
1. Choose a project from one of your Pinterest pinboards and make it happen. Blog a little about it. Remember, it doesn't have to be elaborate- we just want to see what you've been up to!

2. Make sure you link back here somewhere in your post so others can find us and play along. Feel free to grab our Pinning it Down graphic if you'd like to add it to your post. Also, don't forget proper pinning etiquette and try to include a link back the original idea whenever possible. We want to be sure that cool idea credit is given to the proper person.

3. Link up over at Sarah's . Make sure you're sending us to your actual post, and not to your general blog address. You can add your link all the way through Friday, so if you haven't gotten a chance to work on any of your pins yet this week, you're not too late.

Tuesday, 24 January 2012

Tuesdays Treasures {24} - A Port Through Time

 Welcome to Tuesdays Treasures.  I started these posts as a way of sharing great books in honour of my friend in New Zealand who would arrive with the treasures she had unearthed at her weekly trip to the library!
There are so many wonderful books out there hiding on shelves so I invite you to blog about a book on your shelf, one you're reading or one you found at the library and add your post to Learning All the Time Favourite Resource Link Up



This week ...
A 10,000 year journey from trading post to modern seaport
 
  • Format: Hardback
  • Number of Pages: 32
  • Vendor: DK Publishers
  • Publication Date: 2006
  • ISBN: 00-7566-2221-2
  • Author Dr Anne Millard
  • Illustrator: Steve Noon
I love the Through Time book series.  They are beautifully illustrated and lots of fun to look through. You could spend days on each page and still not see everything there is to see.  Each book picks one location and shows you how it develops from nothing to present day.  Some pages contain "cut away" images. The book finishes off with a brief historical look at shipping through the ages and world trade.

Other books available in the series are: A Farm through Time, A City through Time and A Street through Time.

What's your favourite history resource?

Blessings


Friday, 20 January 2012

Homeschool Mothers Journal {10}



The Home school Mother’s Journal began as a single post on a Friday morning over at The Homeschool Chick, and turned into a link-up for homeschool mothers across the blog-O-sphere to share a piece of their journey with one another each week. The link party is open from Friday to Monday so join me in The Homeschool Journal and lets encourage one another on our homeschool journey.

In my life this week…
 
In our homeschool this week…
  • Rock Candy !! I am so excited. I have been looking for a tutorial on how to do this. I was over at Julie's blog The Homeschool Balancing Act reading her HSMJ and she shared the link Education.com Activities. I decided to take a look and low and behold on the first page was the add. I just hope it is warm enough for our candy to form as we have had some wintry weather sneak in in the middle of summer!
  • We watched The Prince and the Pauper.  I know this story well but only realized this week that it was written by Mark Twain. I highly recommend this version to watch it is excellent.
  • We joined the Summer Reading Challenge at our local library. I discovered some Fitzroy Readers at our library that Sir N could read. First books we have brought home from the library that he could read to me.
  • We read The Light at Tern Rockand One Hundred Dresses. Both excellent reads with deep life lessons.
Helpful homeschooling tips or advice to share…
  • Be your students dictionary. When your children are writing and ask you how to spell something spell it for them. It is better for them to write it correctly than to improvise and learn the wrong spelling of the word which you then have to spend the next six months helping them "un learn". 
  • If you are looking for easy crafts to do with your children head on over to All Kids Network and have a look around.  There are summer, autumn, winter and spring sections as well as holiday crafts, Animal crafts and general crafts. Worksheets and colouring in pages. Great site to have in your favourites bar. 
  • Tips for dealing with Homework hassels by Connie over at Women Living Well while this post discusses homework it has some really great tips to equip homeschool moms in teaching their children.
I am inspired by…
  • Courtney's week 2 of The Gentleness Challenge over at Women Living Well. I find it incredibly difficult to be gentle with my tongue / tone when I am frustrated or tired.  This post is so encouraging.  I feel equipped to grow in the fruit of a gentle tongue after reading this.
  • Prayer is a Necessity over at Six Yates Wanderings. These words are so true:  " I so desire to do EVERYTHING that I want to do and in the end MY schedule ruins everyone else’s attitude
  • The Way Home based on the inspirational True Story. My heart was in my throat quite a bit as I watch this DVD and I am happy to say it has a very happy ending. I have been so encouraged watching this DVD and think you will be too.








Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…
  • Cousin Day was fantastic.  We all got too much sun but the fun we had was memorable.  Little boys rolling down grass hills, testing how brave they were by walking into deeper water out in the tidal pool and seeing just how fast they could run down a steep hill! Lovely Memories Thank you Miss M for such a lovely idea lets do it again !
  • Our Art Co op started again today and we made snow globes.  I really struggled to find glycerin to purchase and just found out you can use corn syrup as a substitute over at Snow Globe Craft.
  • Today our split system air conditioner was finally replaced just in time for the next heat wave this coming week.  I am so grateful.
  • Counting down the months, weeks and days


My favorite thing this week was…
  • Sitting on the chair with Sir N and reading out loud.  
  • Listening to Sir N read the first three  Fitzroy Readers out loud to me.
  • Purchasing my second Kindle book! I was over at Little Homeschool on the Prairie and saw this post: Blessings at the Door and couldn't help myself.  This is Jennifer's first published book. I am so excited for her. It is available for purchase on Amazon in Paperback, Hardcover and Kindle. I just couldn't wait for the paperback to come in the mail so now it's on my kindle. I love what I have read so far.

What’s working/not working for us…
  • Too many late nights.  It's summer and the sun does not set till after 9 pm.  We end up being up far too late and I am exhausted.
Questions/thoughts I have…
  • I would love to be a part of a once a fortnight blog hop based on The Charlotte Mason Companion.  How would I start this ??  I would love to read other peoples insights on the different topics in Karen Andreola's book.
Things I’m working on…
  • I am learning to use Artisteer.  I love building websites but get frustrated with dealing in code because I do not use it regularly enough to know it well.  This software seems to be a WYSIWYG which is great.  I think I might try and redisgn my blog since I can't find a rose background that works for me. I found a tutorial on Youtube to make custom backgrounds for blogger.  I am keen to watch and learn when things quieten down around here.
  • Thanks to Jo over at Princess Warrior Lessons I found out that Blogger now supports threaded commenting, which means that it is now much easier to differentiate between whether someone is making a general comment on the thread, or responding to another comment on the thread. There are two little boxes to set on your blog settings and you are set to go!  So Easy.
I’m reading…
I’m cooking…
  •  Watermelon Jam (Tutorial to come it's a two day process and today is day two!)
I’m grateful for…
  •  New mercies each morning.
  • The new split system inverter air conditioner that was installed today.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…
  •  Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people. -Eleanor Roosevelt


I was blessed by this short movie this week.  I was amazed by the hand of the Lord and how He blessed so many people.  My heart was touched for all the families in this Vimeo movie.


Blessings












This post is linking to:
Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Homeschool Chick pop on over to read what other homeschool Moms are doing. (Will update these links as soon as the linky is up later today)