So, again, this is something I first saw on Pinterest. Here is the blog link.

Yogurt is big in our house. I eat it for breakfast a lot and both kids like it, although Emma more than Eion. So, when I saw this, I thought “I gotta try that”.

We always have extra milk and this seems to me to be a great way to use up milk before it goes bad. We do freeze gallons all the time as well, but still… I only have so much room in my freezer

So, here’s how it goes. You will need (this recipe can be doubled, halved, etc. as needed / wanted):

8 cups milk (about half a gallon)

1/2 cup plain yogurt from the store (one of those single serving sizes of plain yogurt is perfect, after your first batch, just save some for this)

Sweetener (optional)

• 1/2 cup honey
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup Truvia / Splenda
• whatever the equivalent is for stevia
• etc.

Flavouring (optional)

• 1 Tbsp Vanilla
• 1 Tbsp almond extract
• etc.

And here’s how it’s done.

This is a process that’s a minimum of 13 hours start to finish. 5 hours cooking & cooling, another 8 hours ‘growing’. I start it at about 5:00pm or later the night before and have yogurt in the morning. Just figure when you want it to be ready (unstrained) and subtract 13 hours, lol. I use 1 cup unstrained in a smoothie in the morning and then strain the rest (more on that below).

Pour the 8 cups of milk into your slow cooker. I have one that is the perfect size to just fit it all.

Cover and cook on LOW for about 2 1/2 hours (Some things I’ve read say that the milk should be heated to 180 degrees to kill any bad bacteria. Other things I’ve read say that’s not necessary. I was curious so I did a temp reading and it was at 145 degrees at the end of the 2 1/2 hours.)

Turn off the cooker, leave the lid on, and let it cool for 2 1/2 – 3 hours (Again, sites say to cool it to about 115 degrees, I did a temp check and it was 114 at 2 1/2 hours.)

Take out 1 – 2 cups of the heated and cooled milk and put in a bowl. To that, add the 1/2 cup of pre-made yogurt, any sweetener and any flavouring (only use FLAVOURINGS in this step like extracts, not jam, preserves, fruit, etc. If you want those add them later. You can also, of course, skip it at this point and mix extracts in later, but they may incorporate more evenly while it’s still liquid and hasn’t started to thicken). Whisk well. Then pour mixture back into the rest of the milk in the cooker and whisk. (it’s all bubbly from the whisking)

Now comes the growing part. You want to keep it as close to 110-115 degrees as possible for 8+ hours. I wrapped mine in a towel and put it in the oven WITH THE OVEN OFF. This just kept it out of the way, out of drafts and in an insulated space.

10 hours later, it looked like this: (yes, longer than 8 hours is fine, it just may be more sour)

At this point, it’s 100% ready to eat. However, it is thinish. If you want a thicker yogurt, strain it.

This involves a piece of cheesecloth, muslin, or even a coffee filter, placed in a colander, and put over a bowl. I used a piece of cheesecloth the first time, but could see that cleaning it would be a pain over time. I had a piece of medium weight muslin in my fabric stash that I decided to use instead. Worked wonderfully.

Put it in the fridge to strain for a few hours, checking it until it’s the consistency you want. This was mine after about 3 hours. Just happened to be the time we were gone for Eion’s class, etc. this morning

This is how much strained yogurt I wound up with, this is a 3 1/8 cup container. There was about a cup more that didn’t fit.

The whey that is strained out at the bottom is USEFUL, don’t just throw it away. Put it in a jar or container and keep it.

This is a quart size Mason jar, so you get about half yogurt and half whey if you strain it as much as I do.

Whey is nutritious, full of protein (Know those protein powders? Most are whey based). Add it to smoothies, I’ve read it can be used in bread to replace milk / water, in pancakes in place of buttermilk, etc. I used some from the last batch in place of the water in my pancake mix and it worked GREAT. Freeze it and use it in place of ice cubes in blended smoothies (I haven’t tried that yet but will soon), Google more uses

If it’s still not sweet enough when it’s all done, feel free to add more. You can also add jam, pureed fruit, cut up fruit, whatever. Emma loved it just like this. A little imitation honey (because I can’t handle full sugar) and vanilla and she was a happy camper.

This is another project that’s been on the back burner for a while.

My New Year’s resolution this year is to be more organized. One of the things was getting the Menu board up and used. This is another.

There are many many posts out there about Home Management Binders, etc. This one was inspired by a few I saw on Pinterest. Initially, I was just going to compile randomly found forms out there into my binder, possibly buying some of the customizable ones out there. Then I thought, wait a minute, I have a degree in Graphic Design. I should be able to do this. So… I did

Freezer inventory (laminate and use a dry erase / wet erase marker), Babysitter Notes, Daily Schedule, Finance Checklist (for bills, etc), Library Book List (I’m always losing track of what books we have, when they’re due, and where we got them from), Auto Maintenance log, Important Information, Year calendar (2 pages), Important Dates (2 pages, birthdays, anniversaries, etc), and Monthly Calendar (12 pages).

See how pretty! I love that it all coordinates. Same colors, same fonts, etc. Makes me happy.

If anyone is interested, I’d be happy to send you the files. Some of them are fill-in-able before you print them, like the Important Information one. Of course, you can always just print and then write in the information on that one too.

I only have 2 kids, so the Babysitter Information page and Daily Schedule pages are only set up for 2 kids, but I could probably be talked into making them for more than that if you ask nicely

Vote here please . Spread this around, if you wish. The more the merrier definitely applies here!

Thank you!

I have been meaning to do something like this for a long time, but just kept putting it off. After seeing this pin on Pinterest, I finally got inspired to get it done. Surprisingly, it didn’t take very long either.

The boards I found at WalMart for $6 each. The magnets are made by printing on magnet sheets. The ones I used I found at Staples for $10 for a 4 pack, so they’re $2.50 each. All of the magnets you see were printed on ONE sheet.

So, $22 payout with room to use the magnet sheets for other projects or to greatly expand my meal choices. Not bad.

The magnets themselves I designed in Photoshop, but the above Pinterest pin will take you to some put out by Better Homes and Gardens. They weren’t quite versatile enough for me, but may work just fine for you.

As you can see, there are some things I don’t have magnets for. Yet. The pesto chicken was an oversight, the Moussaka is a new recipe, so not sure if it will be added to the rotation yet, and I simply forgot to make ‘potatoes’ magnets in my excitement, lol. But, no worries as it’s also a dry-erase calendar, so I can just write those kind of things in.

Third Thursday is an event at church where dinner is provided / potluck. Once I know which it is in January, I can write in or use magnets to add to that day. This way I just have a place marker that I may not have to cook anything that night .

The “G” means that it’s been added to the grocery list. When it’s circled, it means that those groceries have been purchased.

To me, the lower part is what makes this so awesome. All our ‘regulars’ are right there at my fingertips. With this board full of meals, there’s no excuse for not having SOMETHING planned. If you look, there are also those “other” things like Pizza, Take Out, and Eating Out. They look like they’re the same color as the No Meat category, but they’re not. No Meat is purple, the others are grey. I figured 4 ‘take out” (pizza and other) and 4 for eating out should be plenty. That’s one per each category per week. There are no magnets for leftovers. That’s just a given on the blank days.

You will also notice that there are some magnets there are multiples of. It’s absolutely possible to have salad 8 times in a month, same with mixed veggies of some kind, pasta, rice, etc. So, yeah…

Anyway. This is my board. Make your own and make it YOURS!

Just a worksheet with places to put dots to make the letters. Like the foam cubes activity, this is something that can incorporate patterning at a later date.

Eion’s and Emma’s on the top, mine on the bottom. Whenever we do a new activity like this I color one as well. I also do their weekly letter coloring page and bible coloring page with them.

Geoboards

I made these for about $5 each. You can buy geoboards for about that, but I wanted the bigger pegs for now as they’re developing the fine motor skills needed for the smaller pegs on the purchased boards. It’s a beveled piece of wood from Joann’s / Michael’s / Hobby Lobby / whatever for about $3. The paint I had. The push pins I needed more than I had so I bought a package at the dollar store. The bands are hairbands from the dollar store. I like these as opposed to regular rubber bands as regular rubber bands can snap. Even metal clamp hairbands or the ones with no metal can snap apart sometimes. These are a knit circle, so virtually impossible to snap accidently.

Here’s the tutorial I used: http://mama-jenn.blogspot.com/2009/08/make-your-own-geoboard.html

Emma just played with hers. It’s one of those “she wants to do what Eion’s doing so I made her one too” things.

For Eion, he’s played with it a bit before today, but today I had these laminated cards I made up with shapes to try to make. I was, of course, also right there with him. In the future this can become more of an independent thing. If there is any interest, I could probably make the cards available for download.

Foam cubes on the letters – I tried to encourage Eion to do the blocks in a color pattern, but he wasn’t having it today, lol. Emma didn’t finish hers, but that’s 100% okay. It’s more that she wants to do whatever Eion is doing so I gave her one to do. Besides, we used the letters again later, which you’ll see

I don’t know what to call these, but generally in the Confessions of a Homeschooler Letter of the Week curriculum there’s these pages for using with magnets. This is the first time we’ve done them. The magnets are just pompoms hot glued to magnets. While they were doing these I realized I didn’t have enough and was able to make more in a snap.

Unifix cubes! These cards are just printouts of the samples available from Didax. I plan to get the actual flip books at some point, but wanted to test out the concept with Eion with a free resource first

This one was particularly complex for him, but we got it

Roll a Rainbow is in the CoaH Letter of the Week curriculum.

He got so excited when he got it all finished, especially as I think he rolled that dice about 10 times to get the last number he needed, lol.

He wanted to play again so I videoed that one:

These are just the letters from the earlier foam cubes thing. Collages with Rainbow Rice. Just add a couple drops of food coloring to rice, shake it up, let it dry. THEN combine the different colors in one container for this. Eion did the glue and rice including pouring off the extra (with a little coaching on not using too much glue). For Emma’s I controlled the glue, but she put the rice on, then I poured off the extra.

Still more new stuff to come!

Roll the blocks, see what word we can come up with. I watched as he rolled them and if there were not any words available with the combination he already had, he re-rolled the block. I , of course, helped him find words. In the future this will be able to be much more independent.

More fun with the Pattern Blocks today. I posted the location of the worksheets in a previous post.

Eion created the ‘sun’ the other night just playing around with them.

Working on the patterns:

Some of the finished products. They each did about 3 of them.

We’ll also be working on continuing a pattern (hexagon, triangle, hexagon, triangle) in the future, and showing an image and copying it without having to put the pieces directly on the papers. BTW, I found the cookie sheets at WalMart last month for $0.97 each. They’re probably still there if you go look soon. Big time baking season, after all

My First Sentence, also from CoaH

Sentence parts are color coded, all words will fit in the sentence as long as the colors match. I wrote the first one, but then he did the rest.

That’s it for today. We have a lot more new things we’ll be introducing this week – Unifix cubes, a homemade geoboard, and finally implementing some of the other activities in the Letter of the Week and K4 curriculums from Confessions of a Homeschooler – so expect more posts soon

The kids and I were at the library today when something happened. It’s one of those things that can be interpreted in two different ways. Let me set the scene for you.

Public library, quite a few kids in the front check-out area. I’m in line to pay some fees (oops) and have Eion and Emma with me. Eion’s jumping from one colored square of carpet to another as he does sometimes. Then, he’s standing there along with two other older boys. I’m going to guess they’re about 6 or 7 years old. I’m not really hearing what the kids are saying until one of them says “his shoes aren’t cool though”. I see he’s talking about Eion’s Disney Cars shoes. I say “I think they’re pretty cool.” Then I notice that the boys also have Cars shoes, but the one who spoke’s shoes are a different kind – they’re those thick white soled Vans-type lace-ups while Eion’s have Velcro and the soles light-up. The boy says something about them not being as cool as his. I say “but they light up” and he starts talking about how some other kid’s shoes glow or something. Then I notice that whatever adult should be with these kids doesn’t seem to be around. Whatever, Eion doesn’t know that he’s being insulted so I let it go, but it got me thinking.

I’m thinking that this is another reason to homeschool. Kids can be so stupidly rude, why should I expose my kids to that. Some will say that kids need to be exposed to that so they can learn how to deal with it. However, I shouldn’t have to expose my child to bullying, however mild, because some one else’s child hasn’t been taught that it’s wrong. It’s one of those kind of things that annoy me. If there were no bullies kids wouldn’t have to learn how to deal with them – the only reason kids have any need to learn whatever they need to learn to deal with bullies properly is simply because they exist. Better that parents teach their kids to not be bullies, IMO, then there would be no need to teach kids how to deal with bullies.

One of the ingredients in the Perfect Protein Salad I like are alfalfa sprouts, which I could not find at the grocery store. The other day I was in the natural foods store for … something, can’t remember what … and I saw their sprouting section. They had a sprouting jar for $3 and a packet of sprout seeds for another $3. So, here we go:

First day: This is just the soaking phase, kind of like soaking dried beans. Place seeds and room temp water in the jar, swirl, and let sit. For these seeds (alfalfa, broccoli and … something else) the soaking time was at least 8 hours.

After the soaking and draining (the lid has mesh on the top for draining and ventilation).

Day two: little sproutlings are forming! (rinse and drain twice a day, morning and evening)

Day three: Almost there (rinse and drain twice a day, morning and evening)

Day four: Small, but ready to eat (rinse and drain twice a day, morning and evening)

This morning I put them in a bowl and covered with lots of water. Then you kind of swirl them around so the loose chaff floats to the top. Then just spoon it off. There are still some that haven’t broken out, so I’ll probably do it again tomorrow. At that point they’ll probably be ready to go into the fridge.

I put some of these on my chicken wrap tonight. YUMMY!

I think next time I’ll just do half the batch. Although the documentation says to use the full 6 TBSP of seeds, as you can see it completely fills the jar. I think for my purposes, most of the time I’ll only want about half a jar full.

So, I need a new name to reflect that, but my creative genius (*snicker*) doesn’t run that way as much. So, HELP!

Post suggestions, please!