Quote for the Day- Thus my entries

"What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things." -Unknown

How to Make Homemade Ground Wheat Bread

All you need is some wheat berries, a wheat grinder and saf yeast. Yes, I realize that most people don't have those things lying around. That is why I start there. If you really want to do this, look into it... for the health and welfare of your family. It's a great idea for food storage and a wonderful way to bond with your family. (it was nice to throw some of my photography into my blog again... i've been posting lame pictures)

Here is the recipe I swear by. I prefer simple, quick methods to confusing ones. That is why I love this recipe. It turns out DELICIOUSLY and it only takes me about 15 minutes to put it together. Then, it rises for 45 in the pans and bakes for 35-40 min. If you have made whole wheat bread before, you may find that startling. :) Here is the recipe. Requested from the family blog.

2 3/4 C very warm water
1 tbsp salt (or a little less)
1 1/2 tbsp rapid rise dry yeast (saf instant)
Combine above ingredients.
Add 1/2 C oil, 1/2 C honey (tip: use the same measuring cup and the honey won't stick to it.)
Add 4 C whole wheat flour and 2-3 C whole wheat flour
Mix 7 minutes in Mixer.
Separate into 2 greased large loaf pans.
Rise approx 1 hour depending on weather until top of loaf is just higher than top of pan.
Bake at 350 for 40 minutes.

When you pull it out of the oven, use a knife to pull the bread gently away from the pan, then turn the pan upside down, supporting the bread from the top with a gloved hand. Gently place the loaf on a cooling rack and allow to cool for at least an hour before bagging. Then, leave the bag open for a little bit to not choke the bread.

How to Plant an Orchard

My Black Tartarian Cherry Rocket Root tree from Gurney's...

The Potting Mix I use for planting... it has some compost, sand and other great additives that work well in clay.
And the sticks I bought to support my trees... installing those tomorrow.

My Dwarf Bing Cherry from fast growing trees.com ... the cross-pollinater to my Black Tartarian.

My Golden Delicious & Red Fuju Apple trees (front) and my Elberta & Contender Peach (back)

I LOVE fruit, could not survive without it, worry that there may come a day when the grocery stores do not have all the imported fruit anymore, and I LOVE to work outside. That is why I decided to turn our backyard into an orchard. I started off thinking one or two trees, then learned about cross-pollination etc. Now we have two peach, two apple, two cherry, a persimmon tree, two grape vines, 3 raspberry bushes, 2 blueberry bushes and 25 strawberry plants. Believe me yet that I love fruit?! If you want to do a little like me, and I would assume just a touch of the Storm way, here are my tips:

1. Basically, find out what fruit trees can be grown locally. Purchase them at a local nursery or online, I recommend www.gurneys.com and then watch a you tube video on how to plant a tree. Make sure you research to see if you need to buy two for cross pollination. (my tip on this is if you do need a pollinater, buy a more mature tree and a younger tree to save money and have fruit sooner... I bought an instant orchard peach tree, and an instant orchard apple, then I bought $25, 2-4 foot trees to pollinate. Fruit trees usually take a few years to bear fruit. A lot longer than that if you start from seed. Frankly, I am not that patient.

2. Watch the you tube video on how to plant a tree. Essentially you dig a big hole, mix the soil from the hole with potting MIX from Lowes or what not, and fill in the hole leaving the base of the tree bulb above ground (do watch the video).

3. Plan on cedar rust. I have lots of cedars in my neighborhood, and 7 in my backyard... they are staying. So, my fruit trees leaves will be speckled. But, don't give into vanity. The tree will still bare fruit. It will just look freckled.

4. INCLUDE THE KIDS in the fun. If you need materialistic back-up, Lowes sells kids size trowels and gloves etc. But, all you need is some plastic kitchen cups and a sink to wash their hands in. Kids love the dirt. So much of tree planting is kid friendly. Callie watched the video and I had her teach others how to do it. The best way to learn is to teach.

5. Winter is for planting. NOW IS THE time. Go online today to buy your trees. You want them in the ground in the next week or two, or else wait until fall.

Have fun!!

How to Relive Your Childhood

NOT through your kids... WITH them. We all hear stories of the casually depressive parents who feel like they should re-live thier lives; all the frills, glory days and moments of their own lives; through their children. How sad. It's like there is a subconscious belief that all humans are alike and are endowed with the same gifts, interests, opinions, likes and dislikes. How untrue this is! Each child is unique. So, what if there is something you LOVED about your childhood and you want your kids to have it too? Bad idea? No, I don't think so. So long as it is not forced upon them. The other day I grabbed some of Callie's ponies, and reminiscing of my days lying in the moss and rockery of my backyard with my Sylvanian friends, I began to play. My world was gigantic to my Sylvanian friends, and I loved escaping into their miniature version, which from a bird's eye view was so enchanting. So, I (ME, not them) escaped back into my childhood for a day. ME, not them. Ofcourse, they followed. But, whoever came up with the subtle messages that adults can't play was a nincompoop. Nothing could be more therapeutic. Mom's (myself included) are always so concerned about what they can teach their kids. I assert that rather mom's should NOT be concerned for a minute over that. If a mother is living right, learning herself, exploring herself and loving life... the children will learn by example. Society does not teach this. Society teaches that the only way to learn something is through force, coercion or manipulation. This is a fallacy that unfortunately takes a lot of the joy and peace and freedom from our lives. Message for the day: Play what YOU want to play mom's... craft what YOU want to craft mom's... read what YOU want to read mom's... and the kids... may... too.

How to Play Play-doh

I had a conversation last night with a mom who told me she met some mom's who don't allow their children to play with play-doh. In protection of their homes. Perhaps the negative results come because the children are bored?! Meaning, do you sit them down with the gooey substance, but don't give them any ideas or tools to DO something with it? If the substance is solitary, they will experiment... and they should. SO, I would say... do it this way if you are one of those mom's that fears nastied carpet and clothes. First, cover your table with a cheap left-over party cloth. I have had mine over a year. 2 bucks. Then, I give them wipeable mats so they subconsciously think to keep it on the mat. Then, I cover the middle of the table with rolling pins, smooth edges knives, cookie cutters etc. Callie has figured out her sleeve makes a really cool design too. I, personally, am really happy about that discovery. Textures are great art methods. Anyway, they were there a good hour at the table. Even squirmy Mariah only got up once. I had music playing and they had their cookie cutter animals eating each other and their cookie cutter dogs playing fetch. What fun!! ( Tip: If you get some on the floor, wait till it dries, THEN sweep.)

How to Dress a Webkinz...

My sweet Emily told me over the phone (after knitting me the most beautiful hat in the world for Christmas) that her style of knitting was EASY! Ha! I said. Yeah right. I followed her advice, and got myself a knitting loom. Well, it took me until yesterday to break it out and try it because I figured it would be a full day learning event. Not so. It 2 minutes I had the thing figured out, and in one broken up day made a cute little hat. But... what was better, was that Callie learned as fast as me. She was dying to "do it too"... I was not so confident... but, she picked it up right away and ended up knitting her Dolphin, John, a cute little sweater. Amazing. A five year old knitting a sweater! See what I am talking about. With inspiration, comes rapid learning!

How to Recylcle without Curbside

It's a long going pet-peave of mine, that we have no curb-side recycle. Which is fine really... I just spend an extra 10 minutes a day peeling off labels, saving cans and driving them to the dump/recycle bins. I can't help it really being born and raised in Seattle. So, in one of my label peeling eye rolls, I realized... hey! I have two kids that love to take things apart! Let them remove the labels! As you can see in the pictures, one thing led to another and they made their own lessons in balance and weights. First they built towers, and then they checked to see how much stuff would fit on top. Actually, it started off with Callie trying to build a catapult, which frustrated her too much because the spatula kept falling off the cans... so she decided this was more fun. Me? I was just doing dishes and caught the tail end of what was a 40 minute experiment.

How to Disect a Flashlight

Appearantly Da Vinci was one of the first, if not THE first to take animals and people apart and draw their many pieces to learn about them. We were studying Da Vinci today, looking at his pictures he made, from the Mona Lisa to his drawings of the bone structures of the arm. Callie is FASCINATED with medical stuff. So, she was begging for this. And, rather than disect a living thing, we decided to disect a flashlight. First we played musical chairs around the table each drawing the flashlight in whole from three different angles, then we took it apart and drew the insides. It was awesome. There were no rules or regulations, just free discovery. Usually they are not allowed to touch the flashlight because it wastes batteries, but today they were inthralled to touch it, examine it (how it works), push the buttons and draw what they saw. The Da Vinci method works great with kids. Next time, we may disect an orange or something. GREAT!!

How to Know the Land of Your Boyhood

The Tree Swing. $25 swing at Lowes. A step ladder and 7 feet of 39 cent/foot rope. Installation time: 20 minutes.

Log Cabin. Still in progress. Junk wood from the side of Justin's work building. Some steel rods and some motivation. $5 tarp for roof.

The tree climbers kit. Junk wood. Nailed onto our trees. That way... they can climb at leisure and explore.

In the words of Louis L'Amore, author of The Walking Drum, "What boy does not know the land of his boyhood? Every cave, every doleman, every dip in the land and hole in the hedges, and all that lonely, rockbound coast for miles." In my margins I wrote an answer, "the 'boy' of the modern day, in front of his T.V." Is this not the truth?! Do we not isolate our children to our house most the time, or put little or no effort into giving them an outdoor environment? Are we not too afraid of strangers and spiders and injuries to let our children live?! Would we rather them die in front of the T.V. I am not sure we know what we prefer?! :) In two days our backyard has gone from a boredom with a broken trampoline to a wonderland of incessant inclination. I cannot keep my kids inside. Upset? Hardly. I love it. All it takes is a little time outside with them to see what they need. Callie has been begging me to lift her up to the tree branch for years. Duh mom?! Nail in some boards so she can do it herself whenever she wants!! Then they like to swing off the tree branches like monkeys... so we put in a swing. I think this will be used far more than the $1500 Rainbow playground version down the street. We have come ALIVE!!! What an exciting life!

How to Make a Fort

If you are like me, you have forts found all throughout your home. No matter what room there is a pile of pillows from whatever lay nearby and a covering of blankets raided from my nicely folded linen closet. DRIVES ME CRAZY! I have enough to fold with all the laundry. Well, I decided one day that I needed to figure out an easy-assemble fort. Talk about Industrial Era mentality right?! So I got some old curtains, threaded them through some yarn/string stuff and made easy on/off handles that would attach over the drapery hook. And you can pull it off and roll in placing it in the wicker basket by the side of the couch. I LOVE this thing. However, I am sitting in my room now, in front of yet another lovely abode made from the blankets on my bed... which was for some reason superior to my creation. Why? Because it was MY creation. Point being... there is a place for manufactured forts... but MOM's what is wrong with us!? The point is to CREATE a fort, not use it! They don't always realize that either... but it is. And, once again... they feel pride in their work and USE it. (Ever seen those Dora forts?! Kids only use them when their friends are over)

How to Make an Impression

I was going to call this entry, "how to make a smore", but that would lead you astray. You see, what this entry is really about is how to make a learning experience a positive one. What we came up with (Larin and I) is that each day of the week is a kid school topic. (Our kid schools is called Storm Academy) * I should interject here that Storm Academy takes place right after Storm Salon. We begin with a song, the Pledge of allegiance, a prayer and then a low key, FUN activity. This is NOT a force the kids to sit down time. They look forward to it. So, anyway, Monday's= Musicians/ Tuesday's=Artists/ Wednesday's= Women/ Thursday's= Inventors/ Friday's= Founders. So each day of the week we FIRST learn about a person in history and do an activity that coincides. Then we learn about the human body (ABC of the Human Body- Fort Benton Library book sale 05) , then we journal it. Sounds like a lot of work right?! Nope. It's not. Each Sunday, in the daddy/daughter time, Callie tells Justin what she wants to learn about. He then gives her a list I made off wikipedia of different inventions. She picks the one she wants to learn about. Then, I print out the one page about it off wikipedia on Sat or Sun before the week to coincide with the day (takes all of 15 minutes). It just so happened that Callie wanted to learn about microwaves this week. So, today I printed off a page about Percy Spencer and how the microwave came about. Then I ad-libbed the basic story about how he stood by a machine with a chocolate bar in his pocket... (I gave them each a bar to stick in their pockets) and HIS melted! Then he grabbed a handful of popcorn! And it popped. So we did an experiment of putting different stuff in the microwave to see what happened to it. Marshmallows grow gigantic. Popcorn kernels either pop or burn. And they softened their chocolate bars. They LOVED pushing the buttons and eating the experiment. And, mom learned something new!

How to Make a Sun...

May I begin this entry by saying that MOST successful experiences, as the ones listed on this blog, do not begin with motherly genius or anything of the type. MOST successful experiences begin through the genius or curiosity of the child... once inspired. Provide an inspiring environment... But that genius or inspiration must be responded to correctly. For example, we have little pillows in the girls room with handles on them. Mariah's handle ripped off, exposing the inner batting. Callie has been hounding me to fix it. Well, it's taken me a while... and finally she said, "mom, can we sew this in Storm Academy?" I responded with "sure, YOU can". She was thrilled. SHE wanted to learn. Not ME wanted her to learn. BIG difference. Learning is best by responding to desire and inspiration, like a mentor... not by sitting them down and telling them to "like this now". Yes, this is hard to do. One's life has to be organized and relaxed to respond to inspiration when it comes. So, organize life right?! Right. Constant process... but that is right. Then, interests evolve. You see, we got out the thread and Callie fixed the pillow, meanwhile, Mariah was demanding to sew. So, I got my yarn needles out (which are not lethal) and some yarn, some scraps of drapery fabric and gave her the basics, which SHE asked for. (Imagine how the story would change if I had a major agenda of my own and had no time to respond) Then, Callie, finishing her pillow, wanted to sew with yarn too. I said, "okay, draw a picture of something simple, like a sun, and you can sew it". So, she drew a sun, and I helped her put dots on it and she sewed it. EVER NOTICE that when a CHILD does the work, they feel pride in it. You can say "THIS IS GREAT" a hundred times, but unless THEY were responsible for it, they don't feel pride in their work. We all work that way, it shouldn't be hard to understand. Anyway, then it evolved into Mariah coloring balloons in different sizes to match the people in our family. Her favorite project.

How to Dirty Clothes...

I don't know any mom's who have trouble knowing how to dirty clothes. Usually we are looking for ways to keep clothes clean right? :) Well, after a long spell of freezing days, we finally got a warmer one where the two could play outside. What was intended to be 20 minutes ended up being almost 2 hours as they were ungulfed into a world of curiosty and exploration. Any mom afraid of letting their kids get a little dirty messing up the garden needs only to look into their eyes after a FREE adventure of their own outdoors. Not one YOU structure and force, but one of their own accord. They are the creators. They are the explorers. They are dirty, but they are ALIVE and living as they should be. We got a fence for this very purpose. It is a locked, unpenetrable fence that allows me to let them out in the open and play without me worrying about the street etc.

How to Have a Heart Attack

It is a common misconception among Americans that the quickest way to have a heart attack is to eat lots of saturated fat and stop exercise. Au contraire!! My experience proves this method is much more efficient and inexpensive. We used doilies that were in the art drawer, as well as some paper cut outs we made. Then, the girls wrote on their hearts. I told them that if they wrote I love you to someone on each of their hearts, I would give them a piece of tape for each written on for hanging. So, Mariah drew circles (she can't write yet... she is only two) and said "I love Courtney" circle "I love mommy"circle "I love Becca" circle etc. Callie popped out an "I love God" which I thought was very spiritual of her. :) So, our door had a full blown heart attack in one day... and NO medical bills! But, the best part was that for 30 minutes are hearts will filled with the thoughts of those we loved. Several times they both giggled and yelled, "this is so much fun". Simply joys, profound learning.