• Little Women
  • Homeschool
  • What To Eat
    • Banana Muffins
    • Lady’s Chicken Nuggets with Wheat Germ
    • Lady’s Tortellini and Zucchini
    • Meatballs, The Recipe
    • Skinny Jenny Recipe
    • Tuscan Sausage and Bean Soup
    • What I Cook for Dinner, A Comprehensive List
  • Ask Lady

The Lady at Home

~ Simple Living and Child Rearing with a Smile

The Lady at Home

Monthly Archives: November 2009

Happy Thanksgiving!

26 Thursday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in 'Round Here

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

ordinary life, Thankful for little things

Earlier this month, I wrote about the profound feeling of gratitude for an ordinary life.   So today, I thought I’d list the things I am thankful for that do not add meaning or depth or importance to my life but I am thankful for nonetheless.

I am thankful for:

Dr.Pepper.

Dr. Seuss.

Claude Monet.

Jeopardy.

Toenail polish, nay, pedicures.

My Nikon, digital photography, and low aperture lenses.

Chocolate.

Pre-Packaged, purchase-able, Panko breadcrumbs.

Alliteration. *see above

The Postal Service.

Trivial Pursuit.

Make-up.

Online Banking.

Dishwashers.

Super Wal-Mart.

Cute Shoes.

Risotto.

Food Network.

Inside Jokes.

Christmas lights.  Anytime of the year.

Amazon.com.

Big Earrings. 

Irving Berlin’s White Christmas.

Parades.

Wedding gowns.

Second Chances.  (oops, verging on the profound.)

Baby’s head smell.

New hair styles.

Country music.

IKEA.

Photo slideshows set to music.

The circus.

And Puppies. 

Most definitely puppies.

 

I could add about a hundred more food items to the list.  And apparently I’m more superficial than I was aware of.  (shoes, earrings, makeup, hair. . .wow!)

This was fun.

Maybe start a new tradition.  We all know what we’re truly thankful for.  It’s important to remember those things.  Hopefully we remember to be grateful for them more than once a year. 

I try to practice an attitude of gratitude regarding my family, friends, health, wealth, home, and other blessings.  And my oh my, am I ever thankful for God’s grace and faithfulness.

But I hardly ever think about the little things.  I’m glad I did.

Math Drills

25 Wednesday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in Home sweet School

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

math drills, math facts, math worksheets

As always, I must begin my homeschool post by saying this:

Not all homeschooling methods and curriculums are the same.  The awesome thing about homeschool is choosing what works for you and your family.  I do not presume to tell other people what works for their kids.

I say all that because, as a homeschooling mom, I know there’s a lot of stress and self-doubt.  “Am I doing enough?  They’re doing that??  Maybe we should be doing that!!”  I wax and wane between that stressful place and the happier place of “Hey, we’re getting the hang of this homeschoolin’ thing.  What works for us is good enough.” 

IF (notice the big if), IF your family needs math drill sheets, I have an excellent resource for you.

www.mathfactcafe.com

I love the Math Fact Cafe.  There are pre-designed math drill pages or you can make your own.  It is a bit trixy in the beginning, but once you figure out how the form works, (you must type “1 to 20” not “1-20” for example) it’s a cinch.

You can even create a form and have them email you a worksheet each day.  My curriculum suggested that my daughter memorize her addition and subtraction facts through ten before moving on to the next phase dealing with tens and ones.  (If yours is different, that’s okay!!!) 

I didn’t want to spend lots of time drilling, using flash cards or the same ol’ worksheets.  Basically, I didn’t want her to “memorize” them but to use them so often it was automatic, almost instinctive.  You do something so many times that you don’t even have to think about it.  That’s more than memorizing in my opinion.

I have memorized poetry, but I can’t recite “Ozymandias” or Marc Antony’s speech anymore, but there are commercial slogans I could probably recite (“seeing green is saving green!”, “At Standard Insurance, we take better care of you.”)  without having ever set out to commit that to memory.

I dare you to look at this and not think of the answer.

2 + 3

You’re thinking it.  I know you are!  Don’t think it. . .

That’s what I wanted my first grader to absorb, so I made a little form, a daily worksheet, for her to do each morning.  Nothing too long that it becomes tedious.  Hopefully easy enough that she won’t have to go counting fingers. 

Of course, one of the easiest ways to drill math facts, or any facts for that matter, is a pop quiz at the stop light. 

We’ve played this sort of car games as long as I can remember.

“What do you get when you mix blue and yellow?”

“What does a cow say?”

“What shape is that sign?”

“What’s one more than seventeen?”

“What rhymes with ‘cat’?”

This can go on throughout your homeschooling experience.

Someday, “What’s Avogadro’s number?”

“What’s the square root of 289?”

“What is needed in the process of mitochondrial respiration.”

“If a ball is thrown off a 25 foot cliff at 35 miles per hour, how far away will it touch the ground?” 

Okay, maybe not.

Although. . .

knowing me. . .

it could happen.

Gotta buff up for Trivial Pursuit. 

My poor children.

Make Your Own Holiday Cards

24 Tuesday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in Scrapbooking

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

how to use brushes, making a card, photoshop elements, tutorials

After doing a bit of research, I found I could print my Christmas cards from Mpix and Color Inc. Pro for cheaper than Shutterfly.

I have never used Mpix, but they get great reviews.  Color Inc. Pro is awesome.  Great prices, great turn-around, Christian foundation, and a real personal touch.

But if I want my prints from them, I have to use their designs–not awesome–or design my own.

It’s easy to make an awesome knockoff of the Shutterfly designs.  (Or just use these techniques to create your own.)

Take a look at this one.  It catches my eye.

We can make this in Photoshop Elements.  For starters, you’ll need to download some free snowflake brushes.

Brushes confused me at first.  They’re more like stamps.

I downloaded my snowflake brushes from easyelements.com.  Follow their instructions for downloading and installing in your version of photoshop.

Open up your editor and select File>New>Blank file.  Or press Ctrl + N. 

You’ll need to set the dimensions of the card you are going to create. I’m making a 5×7.  Be sure to set the resolution to 300 or higher.

Oops, I made it a vertical card. 

If you make that mistake, go to Image>Rotate>90

Ahh, much better.

Next, select the little black and white circle over the layers palette.  Choose Solid Color. . .

Then choose the color you want for the background.  The Shutterfly card is black, but I think a deep brown would be prettier.

Now your card has a nice dark background.  You’ll see in the layers palette that you have created a color fill layer.  It is locked with a layer mask.  Drag the lock and the layer mask into the trashcan icon. 

Now you just have a big brown rectangle.

Select the rectangle marquee tool.

At the top of the page, you’ll see a drop down menu called Mode.  Select Fixed Aspect Ratio.  In the Width space, type 3.5.  For Height, 5.  (This is half of the card size.)

Position the rectangle so that it is aligned with the corners of your card.  Now, chose the magic eraser.  Click anywhere inside the rectangle marquee.

Your brown will be replaced with a gray and white checkerboard–no pixels.

This image shows the magic eraser (in the red box). 

In the purple box, I want to point out that you must chose the new layer icon–looks like a square page turning–to create a new layer.  Drag this new layer below the brown color layer.

Okay, hang with me here, I don’t have pictures of everything, but I’ll try my best to explain it.  And I’m always available to answer questions.

Next, we’re going to add a snowflake.  Create a new layer.

Grab the rectangle marquee tool, set the fixed aspect ratio to be a square and draw a square about the size of the snowflake field you want to create.

Be sure your new layer is selected.  Click the brush tool.  There is a drop-down list of brush palettes. Choose the snowflake brush/stamp you’d like to use first.  Set your foreground color to the color of the snowflake you’re going to make. 

Use the [ and ] keys to make the snowflake larger or smaller.  It should be about one-third of the height and width of the square.  Place the snowflake where you want it and click.

Ta-Da!  A snowflake.

Repeat this process (including the new layer) eight times, using a different brush and a different color for each snowflake.

If all goes well, you’ll get here.

I suggest placing each snowflake on a separate layer because then you can move or nudge them if their position is not just right.  You can also easily erase a mistake without erasing all of them.

Once you have all the snowflakes how you want them, you can select all nine layers and merge or lock them together.  (Right click.)

Now we need some text.  I can’t really tell you what font to use.  I didn’t actually copy Shutterfly, just the basic design.  So, on a new layer, add in the text box for the word “happy”. 

For the word “holidays”, you’ll need to do a new layer for each letter.  Yes, layers are your friend. 

Select the text box.  To choose the color, use the eye dropper on your snowflakes.  After you make each and every letter–yes, this is a bit tedious–you can select each letter and use the align tool at the top of the page to align all top edges.  The Distribute tool may work to position the letters, but it won’t work if all your boxes are different widths.  You can just manually arrange them.

Then, select all those letters and link or merge their layers.

Finally, you’ll add a text box for the message and one for the names. 

Save this as a pdf file.

You’ve made a card template!!

To put in a picture, open the file you wish to add.  Then select the blank bottom layer on your card, remember it?

Drag the photo from the bin on the blank layer.  (It may be necessary to use the Transform>Free Transform option.)

Once you get the image in, the card template will clip any part you don’t want to show.  You just grab the resize handles to make the image bigger or smaller.

Obviously the names do not really belong to these people. 🙂 

I hope I’ve encouraged you to try your hand at card making.  Though, I certainly could have chosen a simpler card to teach you with. 

If you’re ready to take this on, place to begin is google.  You’ll need to download some free brushes and maybe some patterns. 

Another good trick to know: when you want a line around a photo, use the rectangle marquee and then Edit>stroke>stroke outside. 

The most important part is to remember to keep a blank layer underneath it all and erase–from the card–the part where you want the photo to be.

When I make my own Christmas Card, I’ll share it with you.  Good Luck!

There’s More Than One Way. . .

23 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in What to Eat

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

chef's hat, how to fry an egg, ordinary treasures, try new things

To fry an egg.

I didn’t realize this until the other day.  I was chatting away on the telephone

when I mused to my friend, “now that I’ve fed the children, what will I have for lunch?” 

She replied, “I think I’ll have a fried egg.”

“That sounds good,” I said. 

“I thought you didn’t like fried eggs.”

“I don’t,”  I admitted. “But it sounds good.  I just don’t like runny yolks.”

She told me she doesn’t make the yolks runny and proceeded to tell me how to do it.

Melt some butter in the skillet.

Crack in an egg.

When the white begins to set, break up the yolk.

Let the edges get all brown and crisp.

And flip.

When it’s all set through and through, slide it off to a plate.  Salt and pepper, and enjoy.

The first one was so good, I had another one on some toast.

No, I haven’t been reduced to teaching you how to fry eggs because I ran out of culinary ideas.

The storal of the mory, I mean the moral of the story, is try new things.  Fried eggs have long been one of those things I hated and feared because I was surprised by a sunny runny-side-up one time.  Sure, it looked good, but not for me.

It seems funny that I am not afraid to attempt some of the most complicated recipes I’ve seen, but the simplist thing had me worried. 

To thank my friend for her inspiration, I taught her a bit of trivia–I have issues, I know–the pleats in a chefs hat represent the all the ways he can prepare an egg.

So I thanked her for adding a pleat to my toque.  (That’s a freebie, a chef’s hat is called a toque.)

Then I sat and ate my fried egg sandwich with a new look on the world.  Something new had found its way into my life and I would never be the same.  (heehee, I think we know where my daughter gets her flair for the dramatic.)

Coincidentally, we had chinese food  that evening and my fortune cookie told me, “You find treasure where others see only the ordinary.”

 Maybe that’s the storal of the mory.  Treasure the ordinary.

Trivial Pursuit Follow-Up

23 Monday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in 'Round Here

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

arabian legend about cat, Jeopardy, trivia, Trivial Pursuit

Here’s the answer I promised you:

Yes, that’s right.  According to Arabian legend, the Cat is the offspring of a monkey and a lioness.

It makes sense.

I guess.

Doesn’t it?

I thought I’d mention that if you’re playing a trivia game you should know that the question often gives you a clue to the answer.  In that last question you’d have to think of an animal that would naturally be in Arabia, of course.

Sometimes it’s a statistical question, “How many out of ten. . . ?”  In Trivial Pursuit, it’s almost always one, zero, or ten. 

In one game version, every tennis question had the answer “Maria Navratillova” or “Andre Agassi”.  I didn’t really know anything about those two people, but I knew if it sounds like tennis, is is a boy or a girl?  There’s a good likelihood I can guess the answer.

Sometimes it’s the vocabulary that gives it away.  We had a question that asked about a simian movie.  Simian. . .I know that word. . .simian. . .what does that mean?. . .Oh yeah, ape-like!  Um . . . King Kong. 

No, it was Planet of the Apes.  But at least I had a guess.

If you watch Jeopardy, they bury hints in the clues all the time.  Alex Trebek will say, the best way to prepare for Jeopardy is to watch Jeopardy.  Because there’s a language to these games.

Oookay. . .enough analyzing my trivial strategies.

I told you I was a nerd.

Let’s Talk Layouts (not turkey)

22 Sunday Nov 2009

Posted by Lois Houston in Scrapbooking

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

beginner's scrapbooking, how to scrapbook, Scrapbook sunday, Scrapbooking, starting scrapbooking

We’ve spent most of this month talking about inspiration… I want to change things a bit this week and talk about some design principles. After all, once you have the inspiration, you have to do something with it, right?

There are all sorts of “rules” about design. I’m not a graphic designer, so I don’t know them all. But I have learned a few along the way that seem to work for me when designing scrapbook pages. One of my favorites is called (to me) “Visual Triangles.”

Basically, the rule of Visual Triangles is based on this… if you create a virtual triangle on your page – with photographs, text, or embellishments; you provide a “path” for your eyes to follow as they view the page. Take a look at this example:

If you look at the embellishments, you will see that I have created a triangle of sorts.

This provides some framework to the page and guides your eye through the collage of photos and across the two-page spread.

Here is another example:

Do you see the visual triangle here?

Again, this doesn’t have to be with embellishments only. I just happen to have those as the triangles on these two layouts. It may be a triangle you create with a combination of journaling and titles or with photographs on your page.

The key is to think about what areas of your page you want the eye to focus on. Try to use those as the “points” of the triangle. The viewer’s eye will naturally be drawn to focus on those areas.

What are some design delimmas you have? If there is anything you’d like me to help you with, post a comment. I’ll either address it in a return comment or feature it in a future column!

Happy Scrappin’ and have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Oops!

21 Saturday Nov 2009

Posted by Christina in Ditching Debt

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

christmas shopping

I made a dreadful omission in an earlier post.

I wrote, okay boasted, about being through with my Christmas shopping.  I had intended to mention the great help I had in that, but the post took on a life of it’s own, and I forgot to thank someone.

My sister!

Three of our Christmas presents are joint-effort.  The siblings in my family collaborate to give one gift decidedly better than we could each afford.  And the gift-recipients like it that way.

I must give credit where it’s due.  This year, my sister did the leg work.  And the brain work too.

Sister, if you’re reading, Thank you for organizing that this year.  I’d be way behind if you hadn’t managed that so ahead of the game.

 

← Older posts

Proverbial Wisdom

Whoever walks in integrity walks securely, but whoever takes crooked paths will be found out. -Proverbs 10:9

Who Is This Lady?


Born in the wrong decade, but thriving in the 21st century, I'm a small-town girl loving life, God and my man and growing everyday.

RSS Word of the Day

  • An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.

Most Popular Posts – Fan Favorites

  • Alligator Pancakes
  • Scrapbook 100--Supply List

Like What You Read? Subscribe!

RSS Feed RSS - Posts

RSS Feed RSS - Comments

The Complete Lady Collected Archives

  • December 2012 (1)
  • November 2011 (3)
  • October 2011 (2)
  • January 2010 (11)
  • December 2009 (20)
  • November 2009 (26)
  • October 2009 (22)
  • September 2009 (32)
  • August 2009 (50)
  • July 2009 (1)

Blogroll

  • Beating Debt
  • CoffeeShop Photography
  • Coupon Mom
  • Crown Financial
  • The Provident Woman
  • The Quiet Life
  • Unchained Melody

Blogroll

  • Beating Debt
  • CoffeeShop Photography
  • Coupon Mom
  • Crown Financial
  • The Provident Woman
  • The Quiet Life
  • Unchained Melody

Cancel
Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy