Category Archives: home education

home education home life I made something

I got a Serger!

August 10, 2011 – 8:22 pm

Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!  I went to an estate sale put  on by my favorite estate sale ladies last weekend (all by myself!) with some super strong, yet tempered hopes, because in the email announcing the sale, they mentioned there was a White brand serger for sale…  I did my research beforehand as far as what models of White sergers are better, older, newer, etc.  I wrote it all down and went off to Garden Grove to check it out.  There it was, a Superlock 634D!  I plugged it up and it ran smoothly, so exciting!  I had read of a woman who loved her Superlock, she had for 25 years, more than the newer ones she also tried using.  So I bought it!  $175.  Not too shabby.

The manual was available online for $10, so I was able to print it out and put it in a binder with page protectors.  The manual has proved indispensable in my efforts to use the machine properly and to it’s potential.  I’m a happy, happy sewer/serger!

And so, last night, at our biweekly Needles & Knockers -or- Stitches Be Crazy sewing club meeting, I got to bust out some hankies!  My heart is heavy-ish that the hankies are meant to go inside the backpacks of my two older children, who will be attending 3 consecutive classes together on Mondays this school year.  I’ll be okay, but I am a little trepidatious about the whole affair.  Knowing they will have a special, soft place to wipe their boogies while in class helps me a little.  I know it appears that I favor the feminine hankies, but really Ave didn’t like the fabrics I selected for her, so I had to make a few more, and there’s a Spiderman one that eluded my camera and picture taking time.

After sewing club, Aveline was playing dress-up games on the computer and became inspired.  She commissioned me to make her a mini neck-scarf.  It turned out so cute that I made a couple more, and by the 4th or 5th one, tweaking my serger all along the way, I found the sweet spot so that the rolled edge turned out perfect!  That perfect one is being mailed to Ave’s BF today!  I love to do things like that.  I imagine such sweetness in BF’s heart as she receives a gift from a sweet friend.  Aveline let her know in the card that she has a matching neck-scarf and that they should wear them together the next time they see each other.  Their friendship blesses my heart.

A quick little story on that – After the BFs had spent time together one afternoon I asked Ave what she and Chloe had  talked about.  She said, “Well, I asked her, ‘So, what’s it like to be Chloe?’”  I told Aveline that I thought that was a very thoughtful question to ask!  I would love to be asked that by a friend, and actually aren’t we all just trying to make others know what it’s like to be us in most of our relationship dealings?

 

That’s all for now.

 

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Stankovits Vacation 2011, day 1 – Randsburg

June 12, 2011 – 12:24 pm

Even though I’m still in the midst of my weblogger identity/existential crisis (It’s called bless my birth, but it’s time for me to leave my own birthing season behind.  So, why am I here?  Who am I writing to/for?  And for what reason?), and an even worse, sucky keyboard crisis (at least it can’t get ruined from crumbs or liquids, the snack cabinet is directly above the computer desk), I am nonetheless going to share our recent vacation, with pictures and entries from my vacation journal. Onward ho.

May 12, 2011
We are in Ridgecrest, in the parking lot of the Walmart, haha. I like when country folk call their Walmart *the* Walmart, and I feel a little like country folk whenever we’re out of Orange County. It’s early morning, 8-ish and we’re all up, dressed, coffee-ed and fed! I slept amazingly well and awoke with Indy around 5:30. Sid is trying to figure out what’s wrong with our rig. It lost so much oomph going uphill yesterday, maxing out at 38 mph with the pedal to the metal (petal to the meddle? ha). [We have since had the motorhome fixed, it was the resignator, and to my understanding the resignator is what manages the turbo booster.]

Yesterday we explored the Yellow Aster Mine in Randsburg. It was an active mine from the 1890s to around 1933. It was so excessively cool! Sid was best at identifying what the different parts of the machinery and structures were and did. He was most impressed by a super, crazy-deep mine shaft. There were wooden frames every two feet or so, they looked as if they were holding the shaft open, all the way down and there was a very tall building built around the opening. And I’m almost certain this was the Yellow Aster Mine, like 99.99999%, but I’m so used to everything at a site like this being gated, fenced, managed, regulated and with signs everywhere that I do feel that 0.00001% doubt. In our ghost town books the mine in Randsburg was the Yellow Aster Mine (look what I just found!!), so you decide. We really liked that it isn’t managed by any parks or historical societies, it was amazing seeing things as they were, touching them, walking dangerously close to, and even into, them.

The whole mine area was incredibly spooky, various strange noises constantly made our heads turn, eyes search and minds puzzle as to their origins. The wind literally moaned as it rushed over the hills, through the ruins and around us, casting our hair wildly about. There were these certain desert plants up there with skinny components arranged like geometric sculptures. Some of them were still green, others were dry and woody, well the woody ones rubbed and clicked loudly in the rushing wind, like gypsies clinking their coins, demanding acknowledgement of their presence. It was hard not to feel unwanted up there, like someone didn’t want us there. That feeling made us want to leave and stay. So interesting. I’ve never been to a place like that before.

A lovely wildflower meadow, where? you ask . . . Why, in between the Outdoor World parking lot and the freeway, of course.

Outdoor World

"It's comin' right for us!"


That's a tent-cot full of cute

Avie Oakley





The mine outhouse, so cute

Oh, chute!


I wanted a better picture down in, but I was scared to get any closer. Next time I'll take the time to summon my courage

The view up from the crazy-deep shaft

This is inside the stamp mill building, apparently, since I didn't know what was what, I didn't actually photograph the stamps, they were just around the corner, behind that cabinet on the left, darn. This mine had a 100 stamp mill, according to our books, but I don't see how 100 stamps could fit over there. Later in our trip you'll see a pic of a cool 3 stamp mill. Anyhow, the stamps crush the ore and the debris goes down, while the gold ends up on those ramp thingies

check this out……………………………. and this

There's June and me

I love this pic!! Think that sign coulda had anything to do with those feelings I was having, about someone not wanting us there?

The miners used that car to transport the gold . . . just kidding. This site brought the Dr. Destructo out in Jonny =)

It has curb appeal, love the wrap-around porch


 

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catch up

May 22, 2011 – 3:13 pm

Oh wow, it’s been so long. Not that anyone’s asking, but my reasons for not blogging for so long are quite simple. The demands on me in this season of my life make it more difficult to notch in the time to blog. But another factor is that I used to mostly do the blog on Saturdays and now Saturdays are my breadmaking day. I’ve been making those two loaves of whole wheat Tassajara bread every week, and if my family didn’t love it so, so much, I might give it up! It’s time-consuming and the kneading is physically demanding to someone so out of shape as I. I’m getting soft in my mid-thirties :) Sid works on breadmaking day, so I usually have Indy in a hiking backpack carrier on my back, which adds to the exertion, you know? Anyway, I have even experienced some tension over creating this post right here that I’m doing right now. I kinda want to give the whole thing up just to eliminate yet one more source of tension in my life, but I really like doing/having this blog. Having more than doing, though. So, nowhere to go but onward, yes?

Let’s catch up a bit so that I can hopefully share more recent stuff sometime soon.

*We celebrated Aveline’s 7th birthday!! And boy is she 7! She and I went on a date up to the American Girl Store at The Grove.

We made a stop at Sid’s mom’s house so Ave could open her present.

Aveline and her beautiful Grandmother.

American Girl shopping, oh yeah!

Mom-daughter time was so cool. I can’t remember the last time we spent time alone, aside from the here-and-theres we grab amongst the others.

We went to D-Land to celebrate with her cousins, as well. So fun! She loves Tower of Terror!!

*We also planned and prepped for a motorhome trip. We’ve already gone and come home from the first leg of it, athough we didn’t plan for there to be multiple legs of it at all. But the motorhome’s resignator is hopefully good as new and we’ll be heading out again this week. (More on that first leg later.) Luckily preparing for this trip turned out to be very fun in itself, even if we didn’t make it as far as we thought we might, so here are some pics of the prep.

Enjoyed a great deal of these on our trip! I like to pretend I’m roughing it by manually grinding the coffee beans, and using the french press, but I heat the water over the LP stove in our rig! I want to be more adept at campfires, I’m truly working on it.

The lower two titles proved indispensable in our hunt for and exploration of what’s left of some of the old mining towns. I can’t wait to share those experiences here!!

Good stuff, these.

Sadly, we didn’t make it far enough North to go on a proper Bigfoot hunt. Fooey.

*There’s that bread I’ve been missing out on blogging for. I have to report that that is so far, to date, the only thing I have cooked/baked that every member of my family has eaten a ton of every time I make it. (That makes it sound like I’m a horrid cook, huh? Well, I don’t think I am.) At least there’s one thing =). And I do hope to add more foods to that list.

*Now I’ll leave you with some fun photos that the Jonster and I took of ourselves and each other . . .





Phew. That was extensive. Next time, Stankovits CA Desert Ghost Town Tour and Lake/River Downtime.

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Prayer for Japan

March 20, 2011 – 11:06 am


Every week we have some friends come over and play. Us moms organize some type of craft or activity to do while we’re together and this last week we decided to make a strand of Tibetan prayer flags in prayer for the people suffering in Japan. I had a Tibetan Prayer Flag Pack, which I bought from Montessori Resource a couple of years ago and hadn’t used. It came with two strands of prayer flags, one printed with a traditional Tibetan design featuring a horse, which is said to carry the prayers on the wind (pictured above), and one strand of blank flags for us to add our own prayers to. It came with pens, too. I read the little book it came with so that I could briefly (accommodating hyper-friends-are-here! attention spans) explain what the flags were all about.
This was our setup:

It’s so cool that what we choose to pray for, using this medium, can be expressed in different ways. It has expanded my view of prayer, because I don’t ever draw my prayers. (Maybe you can see why, haha! This one’s mine.)

Even if it doesn’t have an appealing aesthetic quality, it’s nice to be relieved of the task of finding the words to match my heart’s cry. The other way that this activity expanded my prayer life, is that the colors of the flags catch my eye often throughout the day – since I can see them through windows from inside the house, as well as when I’m outside – and when they do I can’t help but pay attention to God and my heart connects to Him, and to those suffering in Japan.

Here are the kids working on expressing their prayers.


And here are those precious prayers, expressed. We encouraged them to include any prayers on their hearts.


Us moms sat down to the table after the kids had gone off to their playing, and we filled in the blanks with scripture and prayers of our own.

I’d like to suggest, if you feel led to do this in your own home, that you could easily make this project from fabric scraps, staples and ribbon or string. And any permanent markers will work well on the fabric squares. Google image has plenty of beautiful photos of the flags to inspire you. There was one picture that I printed out to show the kids, in which there was just a multitude of flags, and I was happy to share with the kids that the people of Tibet often pray for peace for every inhabitant of the earth, so one of the flags in the picture might have represented a prayer for us!


By the time we got around to hanging our flags, our friends were gone.

I hope that this will become a tradition in our home (it’s up to me and I won’t make any promises) that when tragedy strikes in the world, in our community, in our family, or in our home, that we will assemble a strand of flags in honor of those affected by such a tragedy. That we will make it a habit of connecting to the suffering of others.

And so now our prayers hang outside, carried by the wind and reminding us to keep praying. Tibetans let their prayer flags go to tatters outside, reminding us of the impermanence of things. When they are all worn out they are said to have done their job.

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Ben at Bower’s

March 13, 2011 – 12:37 pm

We had so much fun the Benjamin Franklin exhibit at Bower’s Museum in Santa Ana!

That's our crew


Some of the kids with Ben. Ave checked his pockets, hee hee, empty.


June and I fanning ourselves with an invention of Frankin's


This was Indy's first time in a stroller! He liked it for a little. His face says it all :)


A printing press


This wasthe coolest thing! Ave is "setting the type"


Now it's going down in print


And there's her title page!


We did one for June, too


There's a better look at the fanning chairs. You push a pedal with your foot and you get fanned from above.


On our way out . . . Not sure we were supposed to allow them to do this ;)

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The little cutie from Irvine Park

February 24, 2011 – 10:05 am


Remember her?

We brought her home, and Aveline quickly set her up in, well, a mansion, basically. That’s the attic of her dollhouse.

We named her Jesco, after the dancing outlaw Jesco White, initially. That’s because we thought she was a boy.

We identified her as a Baja California Tree Frog.

Jonny was super stoked on getting a shot of her mid-air! I’m sorta ripping him off putting his photos on my blog, now that he has one of his own. Surely he’ll tell this story differently than I am.

So tiny and cute =)

I definitely had underestimated how much fun it would be to have a sweetie little froggy hopping around the house! We were all a little worried when we read that frogs should be handled as infrequently as possible. She did start showing signs of red leg : ( But she did recover : ) After the kids stopped playing with her so much : (

We had her for three weeks. In the first week, I got a bunch a frog books from the library. Jonny read one of them to me and from it we learned that typically, you can tell if a frog is a male or a female from the size of the eardrums, which are located just behind the eyes. If they are larger than the eyes, the frog is most likely male, if the eardrums are smaller than the eyes, as in Jesco’s case, the frog is most likely . . . you guessed it.

At that point the kids didn’t feel right calling her Jesco anymore and she became Mary.

Sadly, Mary didn’t thrive under our care. She treated the insects we brought more like intruders than lunch. Her color changed, she stopped hopping around so much. She seemed so depressed that I found myself feeling surprised each morning that she had survived another cold, dark and lonely night.

There was only one thing we could do.

Take her home.

It was surprisingly sweet and emotional, watching her return to her original habitat.

See what I mean?

Sid had been justifying our keeping her captive, by reminding us that she is food for large birds that are so prevalent at Irvine Park. So we were sorta saying blessings to her as she hopped away to this new chapter in her life. Since she looks more like a rock than a frog in this photo : ), we have hope that she’ll have a nice long life.

Obviously, that is where she belongs.

I am the type of person that gives off the scent of fear to animals, they make me nervous and so I make them nervous. Not kidding, farm animals especially, but dogs, cats, rodents, you name it, they act normal with my whole family and then comes the point where I hear, “Mom, don’t you want to pet it?” I do want the experience, so I reluctantly go for it. That’s when the animal starts acting weird and I get schooled on how to properly interact with animals. So, I am especially grateful for this gift that family life has brought me. I never touched Jesco/Mary, but she certainly touched my heart. AAAaaaahhhh! So cheesy, I couldn’t resist!! But seriously, my family is my Rushmore. They offer me so much that I could never, ever dream of doing on my own. Life lived with them is expansive and fulfilling and so much more.

I should also mention that this pet frog business was sort of an attempt to see about unschooling. In that respect, this experience blew doors on traditional homeschooling science. It was so much more than science. The word science sounds cheap in respect to the reach of this experience.

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the wandering stowaway

February 12, 2011 – 8:10 pm

Our friend came over and brought with him a stowaway. Jonny first spotted the uninvited passenger and we decided to ask him to stay with us for a time. We were very interested in him, this mysterious stranger. We wanted to learn about him, get to know his preferred cuisine and his idiosyncracies. We set up a nice room for him and proceeded to observe this most fascinating guy. Unfortunately, we were unable to keep our guest happy. He grew increasingly depressed as the days wore on, despite our efforts to please his palate and make him comfortable. We were left with no choice but to set our little friend free.



Jonny and I both took the pics.
To our wandering buddy, in the words of Christina G. Rossetti, “. . . May no toad spy you, may the little bird pass by you . . . ”

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