conference bingo cookies of the vegan variety

This weekend was LDS General Conference... and that means 8 hours of yelling at my kids to be quiet so we can be taught and uplifted!

It such a juxtaposition, and an imposition ::Clears throat:: Sings: Come follow me the  SHUT YOUR MOUTH STOP HITTING YOUR BROTHER his foot steps tread, for thus alone I SAID GIVE IT TO HIM NOOOOOW!!!

Well we have these bingo sheets i printed out and laminated, a few years back so we went that course rather than the aforementioned plan of action. We have before used skittles or m&ms as the bingo chips but today i wanted to do something special! )also i was freash out of skittles or m&ms I had some miniature vegan chocolate chips so we took that and ran with it Vegan Chocolate "Bingo Chip" Cookies!!!

The secret here is in the scoop!! At first i tried to just roll little tiny cookie dough balls, but the cookies turned out like little tiny balls of baked cookie dough. So I rummaged through the old kitchen drawers for another option, after a few contenders(chopstick, no... strawberry gouger, no... potato peeler, nope) i came to a melon baller!!

So the secret here is to first, scoop the dough and press it into the baller on the side of the bowl, then while pressing against the bowl, sorta rock the scoop in a circular motion so as to trim off the remaining dough. Now you tap the scoop on the rim of the bowl and catch the "bingo chip" cookie in your other hand. Voila! perfect size and shape

Delicious mini Vegan chocolate chip cookies

Playing conference bingo... so hard not to eat the pieces BEFORE getting a bingo!!

The perfect size pieces!

RECIPE:

1 3/4 cups white whole wheat unbromated flour (click link if you dont know what this means)
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/3 cup granulated sugar1 tbsp arrowroot pwder3 tbsp water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup mini vegan chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream the butter and sugars together in a stand mixer

Combine the arrowroot powder and water in a small bowl and add to the butter mixture

In a medium bowl sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt, and slowly add to the stand mixer.

Scrape the sides and add the mini chips. If making bingo chip pieces, refer to scooping instructions mentioned previously... if simply wanting some yummy vegan cookies, scoop heaping tablespoons onto your cookie sheet and press slightly 

Cook for 7-9 minutes, or until slightly golden on edges, careful not to over cook. allow to cool on wire rack, before playing some bingo!!

First week of almost-school

The first week of school was filled with surprises, disappointment and three very happy children.

My plan last year was to do school in the dining room, and then over the summer prepare a room of learning fun and magic (or just learning) over the summer to accommodate what turns out to be a lot of homeschooling materials.

Well the summer came, and with that an overwhelming amount of work, and responsibilities, and pregnancy sickness. That coupled with exhaustion, put ever bit of my school room plans on the back burner.

Two weeks before the start of school, i am off my day care duties and immediately into travel plans. We go visit family and friends for about 10 days,and come back earlier than originally planned, in the hopes of getting SOMETHING ANYTHING done... well a couple of bald tires and 2,446 miles of gas later, we are broke beyond broke.

So now i have a room to clear out and clean up from step sons mess, then fill up with learning goodies and storage furniture, and paint nice colors... and i have four days and no moneys to work with.

Well, i cleared out the room, found some spare stuff from around the house to use as desks and storage, made a very short trip to ikea, with what little change we could scrape up for a cubby unit, and the room is now "usable"

Not to mention my plans for a first grade curriculum is out of the question...

First day of school, i made some "all about me books" they weren't amazing, but i couldn't find any free printable books with what i wanted, so i drew up about 16 half pages... it doesn't look like to much, but it kept my little ones engaged and busy for almost 2 hours! (of course they are both really anal about using every single color in the color box on every picture possible)

here it is for your FREE downloading pleasure... unless you want to just make your own ;)

All About Me Book

I also put together some review stuff from last years curriculum. For an added project we made salt dough hand prints.  Then i took some school pictures of my little learners

The kids were over joyed, they loved it all... they loved having a work book about them, and having review sheets, they loved the craft project that last about 4 days due to baking and painting and drying. I think they were soaking up the one on one mommy time, that has so been neglected of them all summer long.

Wednesday i gave an art lesson, at the library to the older kids in our home school group, and then while we were there picked up some food chain books to start our science block! They were really into learning about what animals eat and how environments work, we have read two of the books already and have classified animal pictures by food preference (carnivore, herbivore, and omnivore) and next week i think we will make our own food web.

So i am struggling to be happy with what i have, and my children are ecstatic to have what they have. We cant all be rich i suppose, i will just work around the pile of stuff i call a home school room until i can piece together a more suitable learning atmosphere.

I am trying to stay positive. This summer was fun and exciting for my kids as well as the day care kids, and the trip home was necessary we haven't made it back in two years, and celebrating my best friends marriage was so awesome... but all MY plans and hobbies and expectations were pushed aside... for the good of the family, i guess that is another part of being a mommy i just have to accept.

A Triumphant Return

Okay well more like a defeated and beaten down return...

It takes trips like this, to help me sustain our healthy life style.

By healthy i mean so soooo soooooooo much more than how we eat.

My wonderfully "cultured" home town in Louisiana is a hard truth to swallow. I love my folks, relatives and friends. We have a distinct way of living in the deep south, and i am going to be brutally honest here, there is a lot of eating, drinking, gambling, and sex. The eating is the worst of it all, but is more hidden than the other things. What you do as a family as a pass time at get togethers when you are bored when it is hot, when you are tired, when you are stressed when you are celebrating... all the time just about, is eat! I love to eat, i stinking love it! But people dont eat food in my home town, they eat product, lots and lots and lots of it. and it is all disguised as tradition. Fast food, is only trumped by, plate lunches, greasy meaty rice, boudin, bread stuffed with cheese and shrimp, dinner foods, and gravy covered deli po boys and chips, so many chips. It is delicious, oh soo sooo delicious, you cant say no but why would you want too. Well in the week and a half that we were down there, my husband and i both gained 10 pounds... no not together, each of us. And on the 24 hour drive home we were detoxing, and quite miserable, queasy, unsettled, achy, tired, and slow.

Now from the moment you enter the "sportsman's paradise"(aka Louisiana) you are bombarded with two main forms of entertainment... Sex, and Casinos. These are the industries running the state. Gambling and Adult Entertainment. It was pretty bad before i left 10 yrs ago, but now i feel like it has grown exponentially worse. The casinos are EVERY WHERE, it use to be only on the rivers and Indian reserves... but video gaming has become the south's favorite pass time, and the only rule for that is, you must be 18. Every where you look is another video gaming "restaurant"(because eating is always involved) its covered in trashy lights and gaudy led billboards, and are usually located next to a truck stop or gentleman's club.

Which brings me to my next point. Adult superstores, gentleman's clubs, porn shops, OH MY. I was tempted to take pictures of all the billboards announcing these palaces of pleasure to every one that can read. My phone would have no memory left after so many pictures! there were almost more of them than casino billboards (but obviously casinos have larger advertising budgets) I am so thankful my children are not quite reading yet, but i was a little nervous at first. We cross the state line, and immediately start seeing the billboards for "the lions den" I10's most memorable sex stop, mainly because of their clever advertising ploy... LOTS AN LOTS of billboards. I thought my daughter will surely see this and start sounding it out, because that is the only thing other than trees to look at, and wont that be an awkward conversation to have with a six year old. But its not just the one, they are every where, and some of the billboards are quite explicit... and my husband had to point every single one of them out, funny and slightly irritating!

And the drinking is involved with every thing i have mentioned so far, you cant have any one of those things without the other...and the kicker is that we are located in the bible belt!!!! The drinking is the thing that bothers me the least, i really don't care about what other people want to do to there bodies, that is there prerogative, but it is usually accompanied by smoking, and at times driving, so that tends to worry me.

 Its fun being around the people i grew up with, but not around the lifestyle we are no longer accustomed to living.

So now i am back home and recommitted to the way we live. We are just about detoxed from all the junk we have been eating... still not feeling great, but feeling better. You really don't realize how good you feel eating right, until you get the opportunity to feel really terrible from eating junk. You cant truly have good, without also having evil.

I have already started homemaking my kids healthy snacks... made some quinoa muffins last night... and have plans to continue on the right track for eating responsibly... a salad a day, and a smoothie for snack, and a slightly over the top vegan dinner, should keep up eating right and me not bored to death about cooking. Also i found this muffin cook book, that i am waiting till pay day to get and that will keep us snacked up for many days to come!!

My house was deep cleaned before we left, and i am working to keep that up again (especially now that all my summer woes are done) i am about to go declutter my children's room, and put together a clutter free home school room.

I have seen what happens to a society when children become a side note, i am sure that i will live for my husband and children's happiness, and if Virginia ever starts replacing skating rinks with adult super stores, it will be time for us to move (to new Zealand)

i sound like a prude, but really the truth is i am just sad that it has gone this way, i remember having some fun things to do as a kids, but now there is no fun places for kids to go, it is all replace with "the money making industries" as mentioned above and it makes me sad.

Husband and i had a few eye opening moments and now we know where we stand as far as ever moving "back home"

If i could just convince my family that there is life outside Louisiana, then we can start fresh together!

The Mystery of the missing lunch box!

It is sometimes dificult in our Homeschool group to have an activity that spans the ages (2yrs-17yrs) and every one can enjoy! I was to host "the mystery of the missing lunch box" an activity concept but not planned just yet... So when i looked at the rsvps to see who was all coming i was quite shocked at the number of children(not to mention the age differences) that were going to be joining us...38!!! not including my 5 kids.

So I set to work putting  together a mystery scavenger hunt, that more closely resembled the hobbie i love most... LETTERBOXING

It was 10 boxes with a stamp and a clue in each(except the last box to which no clue was needed), showing where the next box was hidden. Each stamp was a clue to the mystery of who stole my lunch box. The last stamp was a magnifying glass.

Some of the journals, and a few stamps.

I also made 40 detective journals, and i think that really helped get the kids focused and ready to go!!!

After a dramatic intro about how my lunch box was missing, we split the whole group into little detective squads, and i gave each group more info about how to find the boxes...showed them their first clue... told them what my lunch consisted of (a juice box, an apple, and a salamy-anchovy-penutbutter sandwich<- the disgusted faces were the best), and sent them on there way at intervals enough to give the group in front time to re-hide the box (or so i thought, some groups were faster than others)

shhhh dont show the other groups... here is the clue

When finaly you found all the boxes, you were to "slove" the mystery and then pick the culpret to stamp in your magnifying glass.... a dog, a crow, or a squirrel... there was no wrong answer. And it was quite interesting to hear the theories of each individual group. How the older groups were more meticulous in solving their crime, and the younger groups had very elaborate stories (one girl did actually put together my original story almost exactly as i had written it, and she was 12) some had just one culpret, some chose to stamp all three(but who can blame them they were such cute stamps!!!

we found one!!!

taking notes in their journals

Following the picture clues...i know where that is!!! 

Inking up a stamp

its got to be here somewhere!!

The triumphant return!

The last day of WORK

Today marks the end of my full time baby sitting career! it has only been one summer, and let me tell you i have a new respect for home day cares.... Well respect for the ones that care... i could have put on a movie every day, then sent them all to nap time until their parents arrived, and i could have pumped them full of junk food, and kept them busy with boat loads of sugary snacks.

But i cared, so we did stuff like:

pancake brunch, and library days

dollar movie tuesdays

3 grueling sessions of swim lessons

cold in the morning lessons, miserable hot afternoon lessons

skate rink field trips

skate world pizza

kids attic

tee-ball in the yard

attempted kite flying

lots and lots of forts

frisbee golf

mushroom hunts

juggling balls... learning to juggle

creative play

gardening

bugs

and more bugs

trip to the Marine Museum

Boat racing

MORE ON BOAT RACES HERE

bon fires

bounce house mayhem

tin can telephones

A few trips to the field house

tee-pee building, and role playing

Now we have come to the conclusion, and i am ready to move on! This next week will be filled with appointments put off, shopping that couldn't get done, housework that has been set on the back burner, and spending time with my little beloveds, just me and them (and daddy of course) then we will set sail(actually drive) back to my hometown for a well earned vacation!! hopefully there are many letterboxes in my future ;)

If you build it, it will float!

lets go boating I said!

I pillaged my stash of craft goodies for all things boatable and floatable.

Most important i decided that craft foam will be our base!

After a bit of trying, i jumped in to build the base of the boats... some better and more elaborate than others, but all of which will float

the two orange boats are mine and the baby's... the other ones, alls i did was staple or glue the craft foam and show them how to use brad fasteners and they did the decorating and flag building and mast making and canopies, etc.... they all turned out really great in my opinion... the pink one had A CANNON... i tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted on cutting out a huge hole for the toilet paper tube cannon, i wouldn't want to be the craft foam boat that crosses her boats path :)

mine done up in pink and blue flags

the baby's... he didn't help at all really other than telling me what colors he preferred, but he really liked it and didn't let any one else hold it for him!

that piece hanging off is the flag, haha

his favorite color is green, and that was really the only thing that mattered

she said it looked like the arc... i had to agree!

he is delighted that we get to see them float now

and they are off.... floating in the wrong direction!?!

a few dont get stuck on the other side of the stream and make it under the bridge to the "rapids"

the baby's floats the best and looks really neat... he followed it all the way down the stream

mine got stuck amongst the roots

what is daddy up to?

Skipping rocks perhaps... or target practice with the stray boats :)

And we played in the water until we were too hungry to go on and then we had ourselves a picnic and headed home for nap time... boat racing is a lot of work!!