Category Archives: Home Life

Planning for next year’s home education

May 21, 2013

Although we haven’t officially finished school this year, I’ve already been thinking about next year. So far we have been semi-structured unschoolers for preschool, kindergarten and first grade. It wasn’t what I planned, but that is what has developed. I’m not sure I want to continue in that same vein although I think my hesitation to continue as we are is more out of false sense of guilt than the fact that Caroline isn’t thriving. Caroline is doing fine. She’s reading well and interested in learning. That’s really all that matters with a six year old, in my opinion. She’s creative and happy and inquisitive. I call that success.

But I feel this compulsion to have a list of things to do. A checklist so I can prove we did something. I think it is part of my personality. I’m one of those people who makes a list of things to do and then when I do things that aren’t on the list I write thmn down too so I can have the pleasure of seeing them crossed off.

At the same time, I’ve been pondering some good posts written by other people. These are helping me think through my priorities and Caroline’s needs. I especially liked these two posts about six weeks on and one week off (a Sabbath).

Sabbath Schooling – How it saved my homeschool from burnout

And on the seventh day, God rested

I’ve also been thinking about this one Christian sent me last year.

Could it be a storybook year?

Ultimately, I’m thinking about what will work for both of us. What will Caroline enjoy and what will I be able to handle the planning for? I continue to revisit Charlotte Mason and Ambleside but it always feels like such a huge learning curve. Every Charlotte Mason person I come across online spends so much time reading Charlotte Mason, discussing Charlotte Mason, and analyzing Charlotte Mason. I’m just not that committed to any learning philosophy. I’d love to do the storybook year idea above, but the thought of constantly creating activities and so on to go with it… I know my limitations in terms of time and energy. I’m not sure that’s how I want to spend the precious hours I have each day. I also know the limitations of our budget and that purchasing lots of picture books isn’t in my budget (as much as I would love it to be!). And trying to coordinate ordering books from the library and getting them at the right time? Not so sure.

So I’m pondering (to quote Brenda). And I’m asking God to show me what Caroline needs and what will work in our little home.

Life around our home

May 19, 2013

Now that spring has finally made her appearance, we’ve been busy enjoying all that it entails. Yesterday we took our annual trip to the next small town over to buy our garden plants. We’ve found a little place owned by an octogenarian lady where we can get great plants at a wonderful price. Her “nursery” is full of old, dilapidated buildings, but there is something really charming and small-townish about it. We’re glad to give our business to her.

We moved our two square foot gardens out of the yard and up onto the huge lower deck. (We have two decks and are not deck people at all.) We made them several years ago with stands so we can stand next to them and use them. I can now look out my kitchen window and see little lettuce and spinach plants growing along with cucumbers, green beans, red peppers, yellow peppers, zucchini, rosemary, thyme, sage, chives, and other things that escape me at the moment.

And speaking of life around our home… We just celebrated our second anniversary of living in Cute Little Town! Amazing to think we have been here two years already. We still love our home and Cute Little Town.

We also celebrated our sixth annual It’s A Girl Day. Can you believe Caroline will be seven in a few months?

And David had his own milestone birthday. We had an open house for close family a few weeks ago to celebrate the Big 50.

Do you remember my goals for 2013? I’m still working on them although in ways I hadn’t anticipated. (Isn’t that like God?) One of my goals was to lose a size and a half this year. I’m happy to report that I’ve lost about fifteen pounds in the past six weeks or so. I really can’t take credit for it though. I’ve done no exercise at all. It is all the result of drastically changing my eating habits due to the suspicion I have silent reflux (see comments).

So that has meant the elimination of carbonated beverages, coffee, peppermint, chocolate, and tomato-based products since those were the things I suspected were the biggest triggers for me. I haven’t completely eliminated coffee, but I’ve gone from 3-4 cups a day to a third of a cup in the morning (mainly to keep the caffeine withdrawal at bay). I’ve also drastically reduced my dairy and gluten but still eat them every day. The only elimination that has been truly hard has been the tomato-based products. It is kind of ironic because I don’t even like fresh tomatoes. Cannot stand them, in fact. But I eat so many products with tomatoes in them – pizza, sloppy joes, chili, Italian, etc. This has been by far the most disruptive part. The rest of the items I’ve had to give up aren’t that good for me anyway so I know it is a good thing. Thankfully I did find a recipe for low-acid tomato sauce which I made up last weekend. I was then able to make homemade pizza which tasted so good after not having pizza for a few weeks. (I love pizza!) I froze a bunch of the tomato sauce and will start cooking with it soon.

So we have been eating drastically different the past month and a half. Almost no eating out, carrying in, or driving through. With the exception of pizza and Starbucks, we didn’t do it much anyway, but there is something about knowing you really can’t easily do those things that makes it harder. I’ve been spending more time cooking and looking for recipes these recent weeks. I did discover Vanilla Bean Frappacinos at Starbucks and I’ve had a few of those. But since they don’t have coffee they just aren’t the same. It did satisfy the craving for something frozen and slushy, but they aren’t wonderful enough to be a great temptation. I took a sip of David’s Cinnamon Dolce Frappachino this weekend and it tasted awful to me. I think I’ve finally broken my Starbucks habit and I’m glad of it, truth be told.

So if anyone reading this really wants to lose weight… There you go. I would just about guarantee if you give up those items and cut way back on the others you will lose weight. In reading about silent reflux online I’ve learned that most people with it lose 20-30 pounds simply through the necessary diet changes. I have a diagnostic procedure with a specialist coming up soon and then I should have a definitive answer. Even if he says I don’t have it, I plan to continue with the diet changes.

I’ve been spending a lot of my free time working on product development for my TPT store and learning blog. It’s a lot of fun and I only wish I had more time to work on it every day.

We’ll be finishing up our school year soon. I can’t even wrap my brain around planning for next year yet, but that is just around the corner. I’m not sure if we’ll continue being semi-structured unschoolers or if we will adopt a specific curriculum. I have a post about that in the works.

I added a widget in my sidebar with quick links to all the places I’m doing “stuff” online. Feel free to stop by any of them anytime. I do share a lot of links in the other places so if you like my links, you should check them out. I accept almost all Facebook friend requests so feel free to send me an invite. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know more about some of you the past several weeks since I went on Facebook. It’s fun to get to know the people behind the comments!

Enjoy your Sunday!

The best way to live life by Laura Ingalls Wilder

April 25, 2013

It is still best to be honest and truthful; to make the most of what we have; to be happy with the simple pleasures and to be cheerful and have courage when things go wrong.

Laura Ingalls Wilder

Experimenting with living dairy-free, egg-free, gluten-free, wheat-free, soy-free…

April 13, 2013

Remember when I shared my three goals for 2013 and I said in passing I didn’t care about healthy eating? Ha! Every time I re-read that I felt a bit of a check in my spirit like maybe that wasn’t the right thing to say. Obviously God has other plans (like emphasize goal #1 and perhaps laugh at the third one based on some less-than-fantastic news we got today related to goal number 3).

Late last year I started to decrease the amount of dairy and whole grains I was consuming. I didn’t cut it out completely, but noticed I did feel better even with the reduction I made. Well, forward a few months and I was becoming increasingly convinced that diary, eggs and probably wheat and/or gluten was really making me feel less than spectacular. The clincher came when I was reading a menopause board and the women were discussing dairy being a major contributor to asthma and muscle aches. Muscle aches? Yes. Sound familiar? Other women said that going off dairy eliminated almost all their hot flashes (a problem I haven’t had so far) and night-waking. So I made the decision to start experimenting.

So the past week and a half I’ve been doing some serious experimenting with my diet. Went off the dairy and within twenty-four hours I could tell a difference. For the past ten days I’ve gone dairy-free and then tried a few different times to eat some dairy. Every single time I felt yuck afterwards. Splitting headache after cheddar on my burger. Needed my asthma inhaler each time. Otherwise my asthma and allergies have been significantly improved.

So I’ve done a ton of reading and experimenting with cooking. I’ve found a new chili recipe that I’ve already made twice. I found a blueberry muffin recipe that I made twice and it was EPIC FAIL the first time and FAIL the second time. I’ve tried a soy-based butter substitute and felt yuck afterwards so I’ve tacked on soy-free to my experiment. I also couldn’t stand the way it smelled when I cooked with it. Blech. I had to open all the windows just to get rid of the smell in the house. (Contrast this with David who didn’t even realize I had switched it out for the butter. How I WISH I didn’t notice every. single. little. difference. in foods.) I’ve navigated a trip out to eat for a late birthday celebration by pouring over allergen info online. (Applebees and Chili’s both do a great job of providing detailed info.)

One good thing is that there is so much info available. There are many people who have to eat this way (or choose to do so) that the information is abundant. I can’t imagine doing this without the internet. And, thankfully, our Meijer has a lot of good foods available to make this easier. I’ve been able to find most of what I went looking for there (except for a good egg replacer). I’ve been able to find new snacks and replacements for things we liked. Thankfully more and more companies are providing food without all the crud so there are many options that would not have been available even five to ten years ago.

Well, that’s it for now. I have more stories, websites, and cookbooks to share, but that will have to be for another day. In the meantime I’m going to pretty much go free on all this stuff until I can get into the allergist and confirm things one way or the other. Hopefully it is not allergies but only time will tell!

Anyone else out there eat this way?

Gathered around the hearth

April 9, 2013

We’ve been blessed with a cool spring that is only very slowly moving toward anything resembling warmer weather. I don’t mind because it affords us more time to enjoy the blessings of cooler weather – warm meals, the fireplace, and general coziness.

I’ve found that I’m really happiest when I have my little family gathered around me. We’ve enjoyed many cozy days and evenings lately in our small family room. This evening Caroline was creating a teddy bear out of felt, sewing it together and stuffing it with cotton balls. I was reading a favorite book and David was just rocking and resting in the glider. Telemann was quietly playing in the CD player. The rain was coming down outside, but the inside was welcoming with lamps and a fire.

David went out to bring in more firewood and Caroline stomped delightedly in the puddles around the house. Then we settled down to popcorn and the Little House on the Prairie TV pilot movie.

I really cannot imagine being much more content and thankful.

I know I’ve written in the past that the easiest way to simplify is simply to stay home. We’ve had a lot of home time in recent weeks and we are all much happier. Time is multiplied by staying home. But not multiplied in order to try to accomplish more. Instead, multiplied to allow us to complete our tasks at a more leisurely pace.

Caroline is a homebody and many mornings when I ask her what she has on her agenda for the day she answers, “Stay home!” Staying home means she gets more time to play, more time to create, and more one-on-one time with Mama and Daddy. For an imaginative six and a half year old, that’s pretty much heaven on earth.

Staying home means better meals and less rush. It means having the time to read an extra chapter. It means more conversations and knowing one another more completely. It means absorbing less advertising and spending less. It means making the most of what we have rather than racing out for more.

Gathered around the hearth I find much happiness and contentment.

Behind the scenes with perimenopause, allergies and life

April 4, 2013

Even though I haven’t written much lately, much has been going on behind the scenes. So this is kind of a catch-all post about those things.

I know I already wrote this here, but if you are under forty and/or haven’t started dealing with perimenopause… Enjoy every day you can. It totally stinks.

I suspect I’ve been in peri for at least four years, but didn’t recognize it. Last November it hit me like a ton of bricks. Frankly, some of my lack of posting here has been due to the fact that I’ve been spending so much time dealing with it.

The best overall site I found for reading up on the most common symptoms is 34 Menopause Symptoms. Good, basic information without being over the top. (Bookmark it. You’ll probably need it some day.)

Without a doubt the worst things I’ve dealt with so far (and I’ve dealt with a good portion of that list already) have been the crashing fatigue (scary as all get out the first few times it happens), muscle tension, and allergies.

I already struggled with environmental allergies, but this has just taken it over the top. I just switched allergists to one closer to Cute Little Town and he redid most of my environmental allergy testing. I want to give shots one more try more for David and Caroline’s sake than anything. They are the ones that constantly have to deal with my allergies and how much they limit me. My new allergist introduced me to the Oral Allergy Syndrome which cleared up a LOT of things for me. I have terrible grass and tree allergies and there are numerous fruits and veggies that will cause similar reactions. Now I know why I can’t stand to eat so many of the things on that list that are so “good” for me. Because they aren’t.

I cut way back on dairy and grains a few months back since I was starting to wonder, but then slacked off on that. Recently I have really started to wonder if I have a dairy allergy and not just intolerance. I also suspect I have an egg allergy. I think I’ll be going back to the doctor to have those checked because I don’t want to mess around with any dangerous allergies.

So anyway that’s some of what I’ve been up to. It has just been a huge time and energy suck. When I do feel well, I really focus on my product development. Add in home educating, keeping a house up, and keeping a home business running… My plate has been really full. Full of good things most of the time, but still fuller than I’m used to having things. I’m not even allowing myself to really think about how disruptive it will be to our lives if I do have these food allergies. It has already been a challenge just trying to minimize them a bit. To completely cut them out is just not something I want to think about right now!

Have a great weekend!

Easy and Inexpensive Pizza Dough in the Food Processor

April 1, 2013

My parents bought me a Cuisinart Food Processor for Christmas (more than a year ago) and I finally got around to trying it out. (Add two things to the 100 Days of Failure page!) The main reason I asked for the food processor was to try the pizza dough recipe in Amy Dacyczyn’s The Complete Tightwad Gazette. We like pizza and I wanted to find a good and quick dough recipe.

I love it!

The recipe is basic and easy. I top it with our family favorites – Muir Glen Organic Pizza Sauce, pepperoni, green olives and mozzarella. YUM. It even received the “Caroline Seal of Approval” which is no small feat!

So here is the recipe, slightly adapted by me.

1/2 to 3/4 cup warm water (105 to 115 degrees F)
1 Tbsp (or package) of dry yeast
1 tsp sugar
2 cups flour
1 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp salt

Combine 1/4 cup warm water, yeast and sugar. Wisk briefly to dissolve the yeast. Let stand about five minutes until bubbly.

Place flour, salt and olive oil in food processor. Process for 5 seconds with steel blade.

Add yeast mixture to the food processor and blend for 10 seconds.

With processor on, slowly add the remaining warm water through the feed tube. Add until the dough forms a ball and the sides of the bowl become clean. Continue processing until the ball goes around approximately 25 times.

Turn dough ball onto a greased pizza pan. Cover with a bowl and allow to stand for 10 minutes.

Spread dough on pizza pan. Add sauce and toppings.

Bake at 425 degrees for 13-20 minutes. Pizza is done when crust is lightly golden and cheese is melted.

My Experience with Selling on Teachers Pay Teachers

April 1, 2013

If you’ve been following my SallieBorrink.com site, you are already aware that I’ve been busy over there and in my Teachers Pay Teachers store. I’ve now been with TPT for over nine months and want to share my observations. I know there are a number of teachers, former teachers, and home educators who read here. I’m hoping this information will be helpful for them.

I’ve been very pleased with my experience with TPT. We just completed the first quarter of 2013 and my earnings were substantially higher than the previous quarter. There is a learning curve, but I feel very good about where I am and where I am going with my products. I increased my earnings by a multiple of 6.6. My goal is to do something similar this quarter. This might be a lofty goal given that school and home education will be winding down, but I’m aiming high! I could have earned much more than that, but rather than develop new products in January and February I spent a lot of time rebranding everything, redoing my site, etc. I had a definite dip in sales in February due to not having many relevant products available during that time. I’d make the same choice again, but it certainly had an impact on my sales graph! LOL!

Selling on TPT is a half and half proposition. You spend a good deal of time creating your products, but you also spend a good amount of time promoting them. There are so many sellers on there that you have to work hard to get your items noticed. But there is a definite correlation in how much I market and my sales.

If you are a high school teacher or middle school teacher, I would strongly encourage you to consider it. The lower elementary market is very competitive. Upper elementary is competitive, but not to the same degree. But there are many fewer middle school and high school educators on TPT. The same would hold true if you are a special education teacher. There is very good potential.

If you can create a product that isn’t already there… the sky is really the limit. I’ve watched the top sellers list and there are several people on there who joined around the time I joined or even after. I’ve determined that young women with no children seem to do especially well. LOL! They have nearly unlimited time and energy. Some of the sellers put in an incredible amount of time all week and all weekend on creating products. I simply don’t have the time or energy level to do so.

But for someone who has the education, experience and desire… There’s a lot of potential there. It is the perfect opportunity for a retired teacher, stay at home mom, etc. who has an education or home education background and wants to grow a little business on the side.

If you are interested, feel free to leave a comment or send me an email about any specifics. I’d be happy to help anyone out who would like to get started. This is also my referral link if you decide to give it a go.

A new documentary on homeschooling by Jeremy Stuart – Class Dismissed

March 24, 2013

While reading over at Penelope Trunk’s blog about Mainstream Media is Delusional about Homeschooling, I took a comment link by Jeremy Stuart. In his comment on Penelope’s blog he describes himself as a “secular, middle class homeschooling parent.” He is in the process of completing a documentary about homeschooling entitled Class Dismissed: A film about learning outside the classroom.

I took a look at some of the trailers and it looks fantastic. So many good thing I’d like to comment on, but for now I’m just going to embed a few of the videos to share. They are all good and I want to put them all first in order here!

The past few weeks I have been thinking so much about education, learning and home education. The combination of reading much about the Common Core Curriculum, participating in the forums on Teachers Pay Teachers where I interact with a lot of great teachers, and then doing some assessing of our own home education experience this year…. Wow. So much going on in my head even though I haven’t been blogging about it. I have a list of links a mile long related to these topics and hopefully everyone will be well this week so I can get to them and share!

Anyway, here’s the trailers. I’d love to hear what you think!

Lots more good stuff at their You Tube Channel!

Our quiet simple life lately

February 25, 2013

Lately I’ve just been living the life. A family to love, food to cook, a house to clean, laundry to do, fires to enjoy, snow to watch, creative projects to bring to fruition… Life. Nothing spectacular, but blessedly ordinary and fulfilling.

So what have I been up to? Mostly working toward my three goals for 2013. I feel good about the progress I’m making on each one. The first one is kind of hard to measure, but I know intuitively whether or not I’m making progress in that direction. (I am.) I’ve struggled with the second one a bit the past ten days. And I’ve made lots of good foundational progress on the third.

I’ve been busy creating products for my Sallie Borrink learning website and TPT. I’ve also been adding some of my products that will work for homechoolers to CurrClick. Pinning on Pinterest is a big key in generating traffic (especially to TPT) so I had to figure out a way to keep track of what I was pinning where. (I currently have over 100 boards on my Pinterest account. Some are personal, but many are collaborative education/learning/teaching boards.) I developed a sheet to keep track of every product I make, where it is posted, where it is pinned, etc. Then I had to go back and retrace all my steps over the past few months which was very time-consuming. Thankfully I am all caught up now on the tracking. But it was very helpful to go through it. One seasonal product hadn’t sold well and it was probably because I only pinned it once. I didn’t even realize it until I tracked everything. So the past few weeks have been a huge time investment in the business side of life.

I have been spending some time pinning on Pinterest. I especially like collecting ideas related to children, home and garden. You can see my pins or my boards. The non-education boards are mostly along the left side of my board listing.

I’ve started participating on Facebook at Sallie Borrink. My account is completely public so feel free to stop by and/or friend me at any time. I’ve really enjoyed starting to get to know some of the people who read my blog through the things they post on their Facebook account.

I’ve done almost nothing on Twitter. Too many other things going on!

And this weekend I moved all my women in the church articles to their own website. They are now at A Woman’s Freedom in Christ. I’m glad I moved them off the domain with my name. I didn’t feel comfortable using my name for that topic. It isn’t what defines me and there was just something about it that bothered me. But after I moved them off to AQSL I really missed being able to add more links. And I don’t want this blog to be overrun with theology that can be somewhat controversial. So in the end I’ve ended up with three sites that are basically all developing into more niche-y places. I think I prefer that. People who come to each one don’t necessarily want to read about the other topics so putting them all in one place just didn’t make sense.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to in those areas.

We’ve been enjoying lots of winter weather. We’ve had so many beautiful snowfalls. I can hardly believe it is almost March! The past two months have been a blur of happy activity. I am so profoundly thankful that we’ve stayed healthy this winter. I think it is a combination of lots of prayer, not skimping on sleep, regular exercise, getting regular messages and chiropractic adjustments, and staying home a bit more during the height of the flu wave. We continue to pray daily (and sometimes more than once a day!) that God will protect our health this winter.

Hopefully this marks a return to more regular blogging. I’ve got a number of posts in my head and hope to get them on here soon!

Happy Monday!