Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

No-Oven Treats for Summer

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We’re finally experiencing a little break in the heat here in Nebraska – as in – it’s only in the upper 80’s instead of 101° with a heat index of 115°. I know many of you from the south are experiencing drought and intense heat that makes my 115° seem like winter.

Regardless of how it’s cooled off to “only the 80’s”, I still don’t like heating up the house to do much baking if I can help it. Here are a few yummy treats we’ve enjoyed this summer that don’t require the use of an oven:

Peanut Butter Honey Fudge

Homemade Pudding Pops

Healthier Rice Crispy Treats

Mock Frozen Yogurt

Homemade Ice Cream

homemadeicecream3sm.JPG

Add to the list! What healthy, no-oven treats have you enjoyed this summer?!

 

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Homemade Sunscreen (and more)

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We typically put up a new Healthy Marriage Tips A to Z post on Thursday nights, but we’ve had a couple of super busy days which has kept us from writing our newest post in this series for tonight. We should be able to work on it tomorrow, and trust me, you don’t want us to stay up any later tonight trying to compose it. Matt can handle thinking late at night, but I’m personally having a hard time remembering how to spell “marriage” – writing about it would certainly not be a good idea for me right now.

Anyway, watch for that post tomorrow sometime – hopefully. In the meantime, I thought I’d very quickly tell you about this awesome resource from MadeOn.

I was very excited to hear that Renee, creator of my very favorite lotion bar (which is non-toxic and SUPER for dry skin), has recently come out with an ebook that will teach you how to make several awesome products that are healthy for your skin and inexpensive too!

You can learn to make Homemade Sunscreen, Full Body Conditioner, Bug Repellent Bar and more! Each recipe includes only 5 (or fewer) ingredients and all are ingredients you can trust (like coconut oil). Her ebook includes full instructions, as well as resources for finding the supplies needed. She even offers YouTube links so you can watch her making each product.

I’m most excited to try making the sunscreen – how cool will that be?

 

Learn more about My Buttered Life ebook by Renee of MadeOn Lotion.

 

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Homemade Vanilla Extract by Jill

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As you know, for about two years now, I’ve been making my own vanilla extract. This is all because at that time, my wonderful friend Jill sent me some of her homemade vanilla and told me how to do make it. Yes, Jill created this monster of a homemade vanilla craze around here! If you have also made your own vanilla as a result of reading here, you really have Jill to thank for this. I know I sure do thank her! Homemade vanilla is the best!

And so, I wanted you to know about the possilibility of purchasing some vanilla from Jill herself. Every few months, we offer homemade vanilla for sale here at Heavenly Homemakers (for those of you who don’t want to make it yourself), but we won’t have any more ready until October or November. If you’re interested in purchasing some of the finest, most pure homemade vanilla, I’d love for you to support my friend Jill and her family by purchasing from her site.

I won’t go into all the details, but Jill’s family is going through much difficulty right now. Your purchase would be a huge blessing and if I could, I would just hug you for helping. ;)

Click here to visit Jill’s site.

 

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Homemade Butterscotch Baking Chips

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Check one more item off the Heavenly Homemakers Recipe Challenge List! We have Butterscotch Chips!

These are more than just a little bit sweet – wowza, these chips are quite sugary. Therefore, I must advise that you don’t eat the entire pan of butterscotch chips all in one sitting. I’m pretty sure you knew that already. I’m also pretty sure you are planning to eat plenty of vegetables before (and after) you make these. Right?

Here are the reasons I attempted Homemade Butterscotch Chips:

  1. Many of you wanted me to do this. I aim to please.
  2. Every single package of butterscotch chips I’ve seen on the market has hydrogenated oil in them. Bleh. It is very important to avoid hydrogenated oils.
  3. I need some Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies.

You will notice that I used organic brown sugar in this recipe instead of sucanat. I did this because I was afraid that the molasses flavor of the sucanat would effect the flavor of these chips, making them not taste like butterscotch. I had some organic brown sugar on hand, so I used it and was pleased with the results.

Homemade Butterscotch ChipsYum

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup coconut oil (I used expeller pressed so as not to have a coconut flavor)
1 cup organic brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In a saucepan, melt together butter, coconut oil and brown sugar. Stir continually until all ingredients are mixed well, bringing the mixture ALMOST to a boil, then turning down the heat. Cook and stir some more on low heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is a liquid.

Remove the mixture from the heat and stir in vanilla extract. Pour the contents onto a parchment paper lined container. I used a 9×13 inch dish.

Place the dish into the fridge for 3-4 hours to allow the mixture to solidify. Cut or break the butterscotch into small “chips”.

Store them in an air tight container in the fridge.

And would you look at that? These homemade butterscotch chips make fantastic Oatmeal Butterscotch Cookies! (I’ll share my recipe next week.)

Are you a fan of butterscotch chips? What’s your favorite way to use them?

Read about making Homemade Chocolate Chips here!

 

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Our 2011-2012 School Year Schedule

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If you’ve been reading here long, you know that I keep a very loose schedule during our school days. I like to have a general routine in place, but just about every day looks different depending on the needs of the moment.

For instance, this week our family is helping with our local Meals-on-Wheels. Matt’s been taking two boys with him each morning. We’re just rearranging the schedule a little bit to make this happen. We want our boys to understand that serving others comes first (and that they still have to get the school work done later!).

As is our tradition, we hit the store last week to purchase a few school supplies, then went out for lunch.
We’ve had this before-school tradition for at least seven years and we look forward to this treat every year!

Here, without any specific hour of the day assigned to each line item (because it truly is different each day), is what I’ve outlined for our routine this year. (Read the specifics about the curriculum we’ll be using here.)

1. I wake up first in our household. After beginning my morning with prayer and Bible reading, I use this quiet time to check email and do website work. (one hour)

2. The boys wake up and spend time reading their Bibles while I fix breakfast. (20 minutes)

3. We eat breakfast together and during this time, I read the Bible and a devotional book to everyone. (We’re reading through the book of Matthew and More Than a Carpenter, by Josh McDowell right now.)  We work together to clean up the kitchen. (one hour)

4. Asa, Justus and Elias begin working through their assigned school lessons – doing what they can do on their own (math, English, etc.). I work with Malachi on reading, phonics and math. (one hour)

5. I read History/Geography to Justus and Elias. Malachi does individual work (if possible) or plays legos. Asa continues to work on his own. (30 minutes)

6. Justus and Elias work together on their History/Geography projects (Eastern Hemisphere Explorer, adapted from Sonlight). I read History with Asa (mostly because I want to learn myself!). Malachi does puzzles or magnetics. (45 minutes)

Malachi had a great time working on these Three-Letter Words Puzzle Cards today.
I highly recommend them if you have a beginning reader. I think I got them at Walmart,
but linked them to Amazon if that’s easier for you, and so that you could see what I was talking about.

7. Matt does Spelling with Justus and Elias, then works with Asa on Science, Spelling and/or Spanish (depending on the day). Malachi is assigned to work in his Explode the Code books. I check email and take care of any pressing website work, then I work on fixing lunch. (one hour)

8. Lunchtime! Matt leads us through Bible memory work. While we eat, I read a read aloud. (I eat a little faster than my kids, by the way. That’s why I’m able to read while we have meals. Plus, this helps mealtime be a little more…calm.)  ;)

9. I read Science to Justus, Elias and Malachi, then they work on their Science Animal Project, with help from me as needed. Asa works on his own. (30 minutes)

10. Justus and Elias have their reading time. Asa works on his own. I read to Malachi. (30 minutes)

11. Everyone finishes their assignments for the day and works together to put away books and tidy up the house. (however long this takes)

12. Downtime, Curious George time, trampoline time, mess the house back up time – for the boys. I try to get some writing done or answer emails. (2-3 hours)

13. Work together to make dinner, then eat together. We visit or read aloud while we eat.

14. Evening times look different every day depending on whether we have company, soccer games, Bible class or a free evening. Bedtime is therefore flexible, but always includes family prayer time and sometimes more reading aloud.

15. After the boys are tucked in, I do more website work while Matt gets any work done that he needs to do.

Here are all of my past home school posts if you’d like to read through them to learn more about how this works for us!

I’ll be sure to let you know if ever a day actually goes exactly according to schedule. Don’t get your hopes up.

Do you like to keep to a strict schedule each day, or do you hold a loose routine like we do?

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Gratituesday: A Matter of Perspective

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Our house is over 100 years old. Sometimes it just feels so dirty. And creaky. And high maintenance.

Sometimes I feel like our house is a never ending project. It is huge and the exterior needs painting. Scraping, priming and painting this thing is taking forever and our house looks a little bit dingy while it undergoes the tedious and laborious process.

Inside, Matt’s been insulating several rooms. Plaster comes off, dust forms everywhere, drywall goes up – walls are still unfinished while Matt instead focuses on painting the exterior.

The bathrooms need help. Paint is peeling, the floors need tile. Something weird is going on with the bathtub. The sink has hard water stains.

Most of our walls aren’t smooth, mostly because they’re made of 105 year old plaster. They have chinks and dings in them.

There’s a big draft in our guest room. We don’t have central air conditioning. It’s hard to keep our house warm in the winter.

Do you want me to keep going?

No, you really don’t. I love my house and I’m thankful for my house, but it is very old and takes a lot of constant work to upkeep. I don’t think we’ll ever be caught up on all the home improvement projects we’d like to do.

Sometimes that really bothers me. We love having company, and sometimes I wonder what people think when they stay here. Are they noticing the cracks? The peeling paint? The weird thing going on with the bathtub? Do they see the dangling mini-blinds that our boys yanked down, the gap in the game room ceiling that needs repair, the piece of trim that is missing?

Maybe they do. Some of them surely do. Our house is a work in progress and my prideful heart sometimes cares too much about what other people think. It really shouldn’t matter and it’s not something that should worry me, but sometimes I let it get to me anyway.

But recently, a friend that I haven’t seen for a while came over. She and her family have been living in a tiny home with hardly any yard or living space for her kids to run around and play. She wasn’t complaining, just telling me the latest.

She kept exclaiming over how big my house is, how pretty the living room is, how nice it is that we have a garden, how beautiful my kitchen is, how great, how great, how great.

Really? My house.

Great? Pretty? Nice?

Did you see the unfinished drywall? The varieties of colors on the outside of my house as we go from yellow to bare wood to white primer to taupe?

It seems that it’s all a matter of perspective. And a new perspective is what I need.

What other people see or notice or think doesn’t matter. What matters is that I appreciate the gift God has given me. Even if the gift does have peeling paint.

My house is beautiful and we are blessed.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

What are you thankful for this Gratituesday? Write about it on your blog, then come link up with us here. If you don’t have a blog, be sure to leave a comment letting us know what you’re grateful for!
If you are linking up a blog post for Gratituesday,
please copy and paste the following sentence into your post! Thanks!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!

 

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What We’re Studying This Year (Unless You’re More Interested in Chocolate)

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I realize that some of you won’t be interested in reading about our curriculum choices for this year, but since I continually receive emails from gals asking about what books we like to use in our home school, I’m going to go ahead and share our list. If looking at our book list isn’t exciting to you, perhaps you would like to take a look at our Death By Chocolate recipe? Or maybe many of you will be interested in both? Because chocolate and books – aren’t those just two of the finest creations on the planet?

Once I finally got all of our books organized, I decided to take a picture of our shelf. Enjoy it now – that shelf won’t look so organized after we start digging in. But we can pretend that it stays pretty like this. ;)

The top shelf is Asa’s (grade 9), the middle shelf belongs to Justus and Elias (grades 6 and 4) and the bottom shelf is Malachi’s (grade 1).

We’ve been schooling with Sonlight curriculum for all nine of our home schooling years – yes this begins our tenth! We love that Sonlight is literature based and that we are able to explore and learn without using textbooks. Instead, we read both fiction and non-fiction books as we work our way through History, Science, Geography and Bible. In addition, we choose what Sonlight recommends for Readers (kids reading on their own) as well as Read-Alouds (parents reading to the kids).

Here is a breakdown of our curriculum for this year:

Asa (grade 9)

Justus (grade 6) and Elias (grade 4)

Malachi (grade 1)

Next, I’ll share about our home school schedule for this year – stay tuned!

I’d love to know what your kids will be studying this year (whether you home school or not!). Also, I need to know which you like better:  Books or Chocolate?

I know, that is hardly a fair question. (And yes, your answer can be “chocolate with a side of books”).

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Menu Plan for the Week

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This weekend, I created a big bread mystery at our house. I made a double batch of Honey Whole Wheat Bread, making two regular loaves and two Cinnamon Swirl Bread loaves. I failed to pay attention to the pans I put them each into, therefore, when I pulled them out of the oven, I had no idea which loaves were regular and which loaves were cinnamon swirl. (duh)

One of them, I could quickly label by (pardon me) sniffing it’s underside. The other still remains a mystery. Here’s hoping we figure it out before it’s time to make tuna sandwiches. ;)

This week is our official first week of school for this year. Books are ready, plans are made, boys are excited. I’ll share more about our schedule and curriculum in upcoming posts!

Here’s our menu for the week:

Sunday, July 31
Cinnamon swirl bread, peaches
Cheeseburger macaroni, green beans, grape tomatoes
Youth dinner at our friends’ house

Monday, August 1
Whole wheat cinnamon rolls, apple slices
Taco corn fritters, fruit smoothies
Cheesy beef and rice, stir fried zucchini and yellow squash

Tuesday, August 2
Chocolate chocolate chip muffins, applesauce
Meat and cheese burritos, carrots with ranch dip, pears
Lamb chops, baked potatoes, peas

Wednesday, August 3
Scrambled eggs with cheese, creamy orange cooler
BLTs, chips and salsa, cantaloupe
Grilled steak, creamy cole slaw, corn on the cob

Thursday, August 4
Pancake sausage muffins, blueberries
Black bean salsa with organic corn chips, watermelon
Alfredo sauce with pasta, steamed broccoli and carrots

Friday, August 5
Peanut butter honey toast, strawberry-peach slushies
Hamburgers on homemade whole wheat hamburger buns, corn on the cob, sweet peppers
Creamy mac and cheese, peas, fried okra

Saturday, August 6
Applesauce muffins, bananas
Homemade pizza, plums
Leftovers

Be sure to visit our brand new sponsor:  The Modest Mom!

 

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Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook Books

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We are excited to announce that our new books, Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook, are now ready for purchase! We are offering these books as a download (pdf file), so you can purchase and receive a download link directly in your email inbox. In addition, we are offering you a chance to purchase both Teaching Your Kids to Cook and Learn to Cook in a package, offering you a hefty discount!

Teaching Your Kids to Cook – For Parents of Kids Ages 2-12

Teaching Your Kids to Cook is written for parents who desire to spend time helping their children learn their way around the kitchen. Filled with instructions, tips, activities, printables and over 45 simple, kid friendly recipes – you and your kids will have many opportunities to make messes together and get chocolate in your hair. Here’s hoping your kids learn how to put basic meals and treats together and learn to serve others too!

The recipes in this book include only wholesome, easy to attain ingredients. Teaching Your Kids to Cook is perfect for families with young children – oh the memories you will make!

Help yourself to free sample pages of Teaching Your Kids to Cook.

Learn to Cook – Because You Gotta Eat

Learn to Cook is written to anyone old enough to use a stove (I’d say ages 8 and up). Not only for kids, this book may also be helpful for adults who are new to cooking. This book can be handed directly to “the student” and while you should certainly be available to guide them along as they learn new kitchen skills, your sons and daughters, newlyweds and cooking novices can read Learn to Cook on their own and take off with all of the new skills they are learning! From measuring to menu planning to grocery budgeting – this book covers all the kitchen basics. Not to mention, it includes over 55 simple to prepare recipes!

The recipes in this book include only wholesome, easy to attain ingredients. Learn to Cook will equip the reader with basic kitchen knowledge – an incredibly important life skill!

Help yourself to free sample pages of Learn to Cook.

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The Package Deal

Depending on the ages of your kids or the needs of your family, you may be interested in owning both of these books! We’ve combined them into packages and chunked off a nice piece of the price, as several of the recipes and printables in the books are duplicated.

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New Family Picture

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Hey, guess what? We finally have a new family picture on our About page. The boys are glad that our picture has finally been updated. I’m just glad that everyone is actually smiling and looking at the camera at the same time.

Go check it out if you care to peek. :)

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