Oct. 23, 2009 - Home-made Christmas Gifts!

Yes, it's that time of year already! If you like to make home-made Christmas gifts, it's time to get very busy!! We've been busy knitting, the kids weave a variety of things on their loom, a quilt is in the making, etc, etc. But one idea that we're quite excited about is our home made books! This is, in my opinion, homeschooling at its best! I'm taking pictures of the process and hope to revisit this again once we've completed some, but here's the general gist!

1. I gave the kids a writing assignment! The assignment is to write a short story on one sheet of notebook paper with the intent of giving it as a gift to our young cousins. We sat down and brainstormed to come up with a good story line, and I turned them loose! It doesn't take them too long to fill a sheet of notebook paper when they're set with a story that excites them! I should add that I've informed them of my role as publisher, educating them on what a publisher does, etc. That will include requesting revisions where needed, etc. I will ultimately type this out for them as my kids are still young to have to type it all out. The idea is to have their words and keep it fun! Not to get too caught up in expecting perfectionism here (This is a note to self!)!
   
2. Next, I'll have them break up the story into pages appropriate for a picture book. So just a few sentences per page. 
3. Next, once they understand what's going to be said on each page, have them illustrate the pages. For us that means using watercolor paper, sketching it lightly in pencil, and then letting them use the media of choice to color it, although I'll probably just encourage this to be done with watercolor. They need to understand that one piece of paper will be folded in half and will eventually be two pages, so they'll need to decide whether to do a picture per half page, or one big picture to include what's being said on both sides, if that makes sense. They will also need to be sure to leave some white or lightly colored space to put the words. Younger kids will probably need some direction to think all of that through.
   
4. Now, we have a scanner, so at this point, I'll scan in the images and use photoshop to put the words on the pages. Doing this will allow us to keep the original art work, and make multiple copies for all of our cousins. If you don't have the ability to do this, you could take it to a local store to make copies, but you would need to figure out how to get the words on the picture. Also, be sure to get the next page printed on the back of the right sheet of paper so they'll be in the correct order when completed! You will have to think this well through, dividing some of the pictures in half to get them on the backs of half a sheet where necessary. Again, I hope to revisit this with pictures once our process is complete! We will buy some higher quality paper to print them on so the pages will be thicker and more durable and also the pictures won't show through the back as much.
5. Now you're ready to bind your book! This is the fun part! If your kids are old enough to do this, have them help! You will need to fold each page in half, assuming you've printed it correctly and the back half pages will match with the next front half, etc. There are some great youtube videos on how to bind a book, so I would highly suggest you view a good one! We fold each page in half, then carefully clip the ends by the folded edges side to be bound. Then smear glue along the folds, making sure it seeps into all the folds a bit and completely covers the entire edge. Then put it on a sheet of scrap paper and under a heavy box. They may slightly glue to the paper and box, but ours pulled off quite easily. Let it dry for a couple of hours. Then I went back and actually sewed each page like an actual book to make sure it lasts. We haven't completed our books, but I bound some plain white paper to get the idea before I do it on their actual books.. If you look at some of your hardback books, you will see the stitching, or even your Bible.
6. Let them design a cover on the paper of their choosing, and cover it however you like! For us, that means using heavy cardboard, letting them design and draw a cover of their choosing and then copy and print it on sticker paper to just stick right onto the cardboard to cover.

What better way for them to do several things: Have a great writing project that they will get excited about, Learn about the entire process of writing, illustrating, and publishing a book, put their hearts into doing something for someone else, which they will truly take great joy in! And this is one of those projects that will give them a great sense of accomplishment and satisfaction, along with confidence in their ability to write! The fact that you would see their writing as something worthy of putting the time and effort into making special and giving as a gift will do wonders for their writing! And what gift could they give that said "Love" more? I also have hopes that we can make a special one for grandparents as well, perhaps listing and illustrating fondest memories. I hope you enjoy making a "real" (as my kids like to call it) book as much as we are!

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Oct. 7, 2009 - Typhoon!

There's a pretty big typhoon hitting Japan right now. It poured rain all night, but so far, there hasn't been too much activity around here. We had some pretty major gusts of wind that made our pooch run for cover, but otherwise, all is fine here. The fun part today has been watching the sky! When we got up this morning, the sky was very heavy, and it was still raining. But in the distance we could see the eye was just approaching. The sky looked like this!

Then a few hours later, we were smack dab in the middle of the eye! The sky is swirling very fast and these pictures hardly do it justice, but this is the best I could do! These are taken from our balcony. It reminds me of the verse that says, "The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handy work."

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Oct. 2, 2009 - Sketches

The ladies of a nearby church were putting together a cookbook a while back, and asked me to do the sketches for the categories. They wanted it to reflect the fact that they were in Japan.  I eventually hope to revisit them and put color to them, as they're just pretty rough at the moment. But here they are.

Main Dishes



Bread


Breakfast


Ethnic Foods



Appetizers

Desserts



Beverages


Miscellaneous

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Oct. 2, 2009 - Bread and Butter Pickles

I don't know what it is about fall, but there's something about the cooling weather and changing of leaves that brings out the best of homemaking and house-wifery! I actually think it's heightened dramatically in me since coming to Japan and enduring a few winters here with no central heat! Things like airing out the down comforters, canning a few things that are in abundance (and cheap...er) now but will be unavailable through the winter, and making some warm outfits for Bri (that now mostly include some warm pantiloons to go under her skirts) have become a yearly tradition. So, we've now officially begun the winter wind-down. The evenings are already cool enough to pull out a quilt, and the windows that have been permanently open for eight months or so are beginning to be closed more and more frequently. I don't look forward to seeing my breath in my bedroom and taking a shower in a below freezing bathroom, but we can do a few things to prepare! I am just about to finish her first outfit made of heavy denim and flannel (I'll post pics once it's done!), have material to start a quilt, and we made our first few jars of pickles a week ago today. Here are some shots of our process. We had never actually made pickles before, but I was just longing for this good old taste of home and childhood! I didn't necessarily even like bread and butter pickles growing up. Funny how that works!

Japanese cukes are so good! They're long and skinny, the seeds are generally very small, and they've got a great taste!

My cheerful assistant and companion! Don't know what I'd do without her!

Now, on to the pickling!

And voila! Pickles!

We ate the blue lid jar right away as it wasn't a sealable, gave one jar away, ate another jar over the next few days, and opened the last jar a day or two ago! Ha! So, looks like I need to go down to the market and get some more if I intend for them to last us the winter! Cucumbers are very cheap and plentiful right now, so it's a good time for pickling. I haven't figured out how to get some of the typical seasonings or "pickling salt" here yet, so I think they're a bit "cloudy", but the taste is great anyway! Steve said, "You know how you're supposed to let the pickles stand for a week before you eat them? Well, I don't think ours are even going to last a week!" So, I guess I should make pickles more often! I expect the newness will wear off and the next batch will last a whole lot longer!

Now, I'm off to finish a dress!...

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Sep. 28, 2009 -

So, I thought I would take a moment and reteach myself how to put pics on my blog since it's been so long! I have so many I want to share, but I think I'll start with a couple of our house! It was almost a year ago that God first led us to look at this house after looking and praying about a house for a year and a half! We still feel so very blessed with what God has given us, and we are so very very thankful to have a home! We didn't know if it would ever be possible to buy a house of our own in this country, but God allowed it and led us to just the perfect one! It's so much bigger and better than we ever imagined we would own! It has become a testimony to everyone we know of what God can do!

This is a picture of the front from the road the first day we saw it. That is our realtor standing in the drive with my husband. I just snapped this on my cell phone when we came over to look at it, and I've been so glad I got this shot!


This is what the yard looked like when we bought it.


And this is what it looks like now. Actually, these pictures were taken this past spring while the azaleas and petunias were blooming, and it wouldn't quit raining long enough to take a dry picture! I (while Steve was down with a broken arm) dug out about a hundred azalea bushes that were covering this poor little yard! This was right after we put down sod. There is still SOOO much we'd like to do out here, but there's also lots inside a well!

Actually the angle in this one is closer to the before.

So that's it for now! Maybe soon I'll show some of the inside! You wouldn't believe the kitchen transformation on VERY little money!

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Sep. 18, 2009 - Quick Update!

I'm happy to say my husband is doing great! His arm has healed wonderfully and he's now back to normal activities. Praise the Lord! He does have to go back in the hospital sometime probably in December to have the wires removed, and he's actually looking forward to that, as the wires are in his elbow joint and prevent his arm from straightening all the way. This interferes with his basketball game, much to his dismay! It was an unusual accident with two motorcycles colliding. The police at the scene said that was very unusual.

School is going great and we're thoroughly enjoying our best year ever! We just finished our fourth week! We are using a modified version of workboxes and loving them! I hope to post some pics soon!...after I re-learn how to do that. It's been so long!

A couple friends and I are starting a homeschool co-op! It will be the first in our area as far as I know. I'm very excited about it and hope and pray it will be a blessing to many homeschool families in our area. We're having our first classes on October 13th. We'll be focusing on the extra curricular activites that are hard to get around to at home or things like team sports for P.E. where you need more people. Hopefully I can get back later today to post pics! Have a great weekend!

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Jun. 9, 2009 - I'm back...hopefully! :)

Wow has time flown! I had no idea it had been so long since I'd been on here! I'm going to give it another try, but sometimes life happens and this ends up falling fairly low on the list of priorities!

Anyway, our curriculum for the year has been ordered and we're eagerly awaiting it's arrival! It will probably be another week and a half or so. We were introduced to Winter Promise half way through the year last year, and we're excited to go with it this year! I think it will be our forever curriculum, but we'll see. The last few years have been a huge learning curve for me, as we broke away from the traditional textbook approach, and our world opened up before our eyes! Ha! That's really how I feel! Now, I'm getting eager to settle into a program that best meets our needs and lifestyle and stick with it. I'm especially excited about this year, as God has opened the door for us to make some other homeschooling friends who will also be studying the same topics as we will! We're planning on co-oping some and doing a lot of our special projects together! What a blessing after being completely on my own all these years! God is so great!!!

So much has happened since I last posted! God totally opened the door for us to buy a very special house.  Words cannot express our appreciation! This is especially miraculous with our being foreigners here. It is extremely difficult for foreigners to buy property in Japan, but God is greater and allowed it to happen! Not only that, but we got a nice, large house for a fraction of it's worth. God is so great!!!

Another thing that happened, is that my husband was involved in a motorcycle accident. He was practically sitting still and got hit by another motorcycle speeding well beyond the limit. The police said it is very rare for two motorcycles to collide, but it happened. My husband was thrown from his bike and remarkably came away with only a badly broken arm. He was in the hospital for about ten days and had surgery to wire the bones together. He's still going to therapy to get back the use of his arm and will have another surgery in December to remove the wires, but he's otherwise doing great! God is so great!!!!

Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting back into the blogging world. I've decided to do all my blogging here, rather than have several different accounts, which means I may be blogging on several different topics rather than just homeschooling. I also love doing Bri's hair in lots of fun styles and will be talking about that here from time to time, posting pics, etc. I also love art, so may incorporate some of that, as well as several other things!

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Sep. 4, 2007 - Workin' Men

Work on making a couple of parking spaces at the church has begun! We're so thankful for the neat little church building the Lord enabled us to get, but it was obvious we would need to make some parking spaces. We've been able to rent a few spaces nearby, but today Steve and his dad rented a backhoe and truck to dig out the raised yard at the church to make some parking. We're hoping to be able to park two cars here when they're done. The kids and I took lunch over and they even got to try their hand at the backhoe! Ty thought this was better than Disney Land! Then they were delighted when Grandpa took them with him to the dump. Isn't that just the cutest little backhoe!!

Ty digging the dirt

Moving the dirt to the truck

Dumping dirt into the truck

Happy workers!

Someone else getting a chance to try the men's job.

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Aug. 30, 2007 - My great idea!

Okay, so maybe this isn't as great an idea to you as it is to me!! But for me it's a life saver!...Well, at least a money saver, thirst quencher! Here in the Land of the Rising Sun, drinks are even expensive! Just trying to keep milk and juice in the house can be quite a challenge! So, my family loves tea. They'll tolerate the Japanese barley teas and iced green tea too, but they really like "real" tea, and a box of tea bags is about as cheap as it gets! The problem is, I always have great intentions, but just don't get around to making "real" iced tea every day. And it just goes SO fast! One pitcher only lasts one meal.

So what I did...

One day it suddenly "dawned" on me that iced tea will freeze! And how much more trouble is it really to make a LOT of tea at one time than a little? Not much! So I gathered up all my empty two liters, washed them out, and got to making tea. Lots of tea! I filled enough two liter bottles to give us enough for our evening meal everyday for about a week. And put them in the freezer. It's wonderful! My family can't drink it all up at once, because frozen tea won't drink! And I can take some out each morning and have it ready for dinner!   Water works fine for the rest of the day, or barley tea, and yes some juice or milk too. I think next time, I might experiment with freezing just the concentrate in little tupperwares or something. I imagine it would be almost instant if prepared that way, rather than taking all day to thaw.

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Aug. 29, 2007 - I finished it!

This is the dress I was trying to get finished in time for Bri's old fashioned tea party. I just had so much going on that I couldn't get it done in time, but I did get it done today! Well, almost done! I need to go buy some buttons tomorrow and put them on and the button holes. She was so surprised when she saw it! She had seen this material at the fabric store and loved it, but she didn't know I got it. She hugged me and told me I was the "queen of sewing"!!

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Aug. 23, 2007 - Tea Party

We had a small celebration today celebrating Steve's, Bri's, and my father in law's birthdays, as they're all within a week of each other. We've been so busy with camp and school and all, that I didn't get to put the time into making it as special as I really wanted to. Bri really wanted to have an old fashioned tea party in the midst of it all, so we tried to make that happen as well as we can. I really wanted to surprise her with a new dress for the occasion, but I couldn't get it finished in time. She was thrilled with what we did do, so that was great! I'm so impressed with some of the pictures Steve was able to take! He's getting quite an artsy side!!

 

 

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Aug. 22, 2007 - Lego Lovers!

Do anyone else's kids love legos? I sometimes think my kids could play with them all day everyday if I let them! They're just such a great toy! That was actually the only thing Bri asked for for her birthday! Her brother has accumulated quite a collection, but we always kind of considered them a "boy toy". Recently, however, they've come out with some cuter (but not wierd) ones here. She got a set to make a cute little  house and some odds and ends flowers, tables, etc.

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Aug. 21, 2007 - I love this!

I literally took this picture from my front door! I never ceased to be amazed at the goodness of God to put us in a place like this, in the middle of the concrete jungle of Japan!

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Aug. 20, 2007 - New Library!

We haven't even been to a library in the four and a half years we've been here, but our little city just got a brand new beautiful library! We've been so excited watching it be built and it just opened this month. We'd heard from a friend who went last week that they did in fact have English books! We were so excited and finally were able to go yesterday! It's a beautiful two story building with a nice children's section on the first floor and everything else on the second. We were a little disappointed to discover that they only had about thirty English children's picture books, about two feet of a shelf worth, and no older books. Our son was so disappointed that he almost cried! He was so excited and hopeful to be able to find many classics and good books, as he loves to read, that it was a big let down to get in and find that there were none! We're slowly discovering the real value of the books we do have here! But, on the up-side, they WILL order from other libraries if it's a book that another library has, so there is still hope. We have found a few classics and such at the bookstores, as Japanese people like to try to read English books to improve their English. Yesterday I found Anne of Green Gables and Huckleberry Finn! That cheered everyone up considerably!

We're on day six of school today and the kids are still loving the Bob Jones Curriculum! I like the structure and ease of knowing they're learning everything they need to know. They have so many really neat extras, that it makes learning really fun. Right now, my daughter is watching a puppet talk about the types of sentences, and my son is on the phone to Nanna in America telling her about the history of the moon! He even got to watch the space shuttle take off and everything! So, needless to say, so far, we're very happy with the new curriculum!

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Aug. 17, 2007 - Family Camp Pics!

Here are some of the pictures from Family Camp! My sweet husband and kids all pitched in and helped get the house recovered from the trip, so I've had time to figure out how to put up pictures and get them posted.

Service Time

Bonfire is always a special time.

Free time

Bri and Kie finishing dinner

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Aug. 17, 2007 - New Building

I think I'm getting the hang of this! Here are some pics of our new little church building!

 

 

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Aug. 17, 2007 - We're Home!

We had a great camp. I still haven't figured out how to post pics, but maybe later today I can get to that. It's never felt so great to be home! For two nights we slept on the traditional Japanese, and might I add very thin, mats on the ground. My poor back is not used to this and complains loudly!

We're taking today off school as well, as I have so much laundry and house work to catch up on. The kids had a wonderful time playing with the children of the Japanese pastor we went with. I so wish we lived closer so they could play together more, as there just aren't very many Christian children in our area.

Tuesday is my daughter's birthday. She'll be seven and wants to host an "old fashioned tea party". I'm trying to surprise her with a new dress for the occasion, so hopefully I'll have time to finish it over the next couple of nights once she gets to sleep. If you have any great ideas for a Tea Party Birthday, please let me know!

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Aug. 13, 2007 - Family Camp

Well, we're off in just a few minutes for our annual Family Camp. Our church gets together with another church and goes up into the mountains of Japan for a couple of days of fun and spiritual refreshment! The kids are beside themselves with excitement! See you all when we get back!

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Aug. 13, 2007 - Blessings!

It truly is unbelievable how God keeps blessing! After the string of miracles that went along with the purchasing of our new little church building here in Japan (that's a whole different story), we've continued to watch God move in amazing ways! Just this last week, however, He did it again! We were really needing a screen for our church. There are many wonderful uses for a screen here, different from the purposes for which they're often used in the States. My husband has some terrific power point Sunday School games that we needed a screen for, and my father-in-law has found that the Japanese people can understand the message much more easily, if he shows it to them in writing.

So we began looking. We found a used one at a recycle shop, but it was very old, not very big, and they were asking over $300 for it! We decided to wait! Last week, my husband was talking with one of the men in our church, and he suddenly got a strange look on his face, picked up his cell phone, and started calling. So here's the story! He works for a moving company. They had recently been moving someone who had a screen, a really nice screen! Somehow in the process of the move, the outer case got a little scratch on it, so they demanded the company replace it! This particular moving company has insurance that does replace anything that gets damaged, so they did! And the company was "stuck" with this screen. They threw it in their warehouse to eventually be thrown away!! They were happy to send it to us free of charge! The kicker? It's perfect! It looks brand new, it couldn't be a more perfect size (we needed to put it in front of a window and it's the exact size of the window!) We searched for a scratch, and finally think we might have found what they were talking about, a tiny, faint little mark on the top of the case that no one will ever see! My husband hung it in its new home this week, and we got to use it for the first time in services yesterday (Sunday)! Our people were so excited and talked about how easy it was to understand with points from the message up there like that! You can't imagine how excited we are to see God continue to bless in unbelievable ways!

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Aug. 11, 2007 - We did it!

We survived week one of our new school year! In fact, we came through with flying colors! We switched curriculums this year, which has been (and still is) a challenge for me, after using the same one for the last few years. But here's the thing! My kids LOVE it! And that was the goal, so I know it's a good thing. Maybe one of these years I'll get brave enough to venture from the dvd programs. I definitely see the benefits in doing it all yourself vs the DVD's, but I really like some of their benefits too. Son has come to me several...no, many times this week and thanked me for getting this new curriculum, and told me he loves it! If you only knew how far we've come since pulling him out of a bad situation midyear a year and a half ago and going back to homeschool! But now for him to be exclaiming in such excited tones about how much he LOVES his school, is such an incredible blessing to this mommy's ears!

 

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