"What is Heather doing today?" {Wine Making}

After tasting some sweet wine of Janice's a couple years ago to make sure it was done for their church communion service, I asked and was surprised to find the process was relatively easy! So, this year with our huge grape harvest, when Janice told me she was starting her wine making process, I asked for the recipe to try my own......

{A gallon jar packed full of grapes, mixed with 8 cups sugar dissolved in 4 cups water, and cover with cheesecloth for 6 weeks! Mix every day.}

(Straining the wine into old cider and grapefruit juice bottles)

It is a very sweet, sweet wine, that probably needed more fermenting time, but oh well! It's good enough for the Hebraic blessing "sip" we take each Shabbat night :)

Adventures in wine making! Who knew? 

First attempt at cinnamon rolls...

...in probably 12 years...

Yep, I have never made them in my married life! I have stood in the kitchen with other people making them...but I have never made them!

They turned out amazing!

Got them in the dishes rising...

Making the glaze while they bake...

And the final product!

Served up to my 5 little angels...

Homeschooling

Homeschooling has gone very well since re-starting in April. Due to taking a sabbatical during tax season, we have decided to school the boys through summer. They aren't thrilled but thankfully homeschool only takes a couple hours from their day so there will be plenty of time for sunshine, pool time, and playing at the creek :)

I have been pretty excited about our science curriculum this year...we are using Answers in Genesis' "God's Design" series, starting with the collection "Life". Today I printed off the rest of the quarters printables from their included CDRom, and I am even more inspired!

After our "Stems" quiz, we moved onto the flowers and fruits portion, and our art/science craft was lots of fun...

Additionally, we are using Daily grams for both Jason and Tyler, hooked on phonics for Micah, Horizons Math for all 3 boys, and a bunch of apps for extra stuff like Hebrew, Geography, and reinforcing phonics.

Best app purchase ever?? "Stack the States"!!!! Micah especially is so knowledgable now with State facts, shapes, flags, and geography, it blows me away!!!

So that's all folks! Consider yourself updated on Hawkfield Homeschool!

Just cut it....

After pouring over hundreds of mid-late 1800's dresses for little girls, I finally decided on a style I wanted for Emilie. Since we were being snowed in, And Sarah had been babysitting for us so aw spent the night. We got to talking and I decided to just take the plunge!

I got all the pieces cut out that night :)

Next morning we found out our water was frozen so Grace had the plan to have Timothy drive the tractor and we all go on a "hayride" down the driveway to their house! So I packed up the sewing machine and brought it with us...yep, I sure did!!

Once at thee house I began to see my vision together...

Ruffle~

Bias along neckline~

And finally, the completed dress~

But you can't see her in it until Purim party time!!!

Unless I break down out of suspense.

Maybe.

Lame attempts at Challah

Challah.

I had an idea that this delicious bread would be a hurdle for me. So after staring at a recipe for a good 3 weeks, I finally today tried my hand at it.

All was well until it was dough raising time. It just wouldn't rise!!! Sigh.

It tasted good but was pretty dense...

No definition where I braided it either. :( I feel like I need a solid month to mourn before I try again. But I will try again, don't worry!! 

Cuisinart and Leapster...everyday miracles!

1/27/15

Having an appliance and a game console thing break, I sought the requirements to return both. I realized I had receipts, manuals, chargers, CDs, and all those item, to gather! I couldn't find almost anything that went to these products! Trying to get ready at lunchtime, and not stress while looking for them, then not finding them, was impossible. I had this moment while I was buttering toast for the grilled cheese sandwiches and said to myself, "stop worrying about it... God knows exactly where they are and he can help me find them!" I chose to believe that if he wanted me to return these things, that he would show me where all the items were in a timely manner and that nothing would be missing that I needed. Just before I left I had to go into my room to get something out of a second wallet that I have (to keep expired licenses/cards/old receipts).I thought I had checked there a couple days ago when I was going through all our important papers, but I had this nagging feeling to open up the wallet and looked inside....so I did.... to find two receipts! Only two receipts! The very two receipts that I needed for my returns. I can't even comprehend how he pulled that off... But I just started crying, thanking him, and asking him why he chose me to pour out his favor on? I could have looked everywhere else because I had known that I had checked there before... I could have stressed-out...gotten angry with the children...and got myself late for work. Instead, The afternoon was stress-free and I went the rest my day feeling so blessed!

 That evening I knew I still had to find the product CDs and other stuff to complete the returns. After looking for a little while in all the places that I thought I knew they would be, I begin to pray and ask God to do another miracle and let me find all the things that I needed. I went back to my CD basket where all of our music is wondering if somehow perhaps I might've misplaced the product CD in there. Nope. But, on a whim, I slip my fingers around the edges to come across a little white envelope, with a CD in it....and picked it up... To find it was the very CD that I needed! What?!?! It had slipped in the edge of where the music CDs were instead of being with the other product/program CDs I had in a stack above the basket. Again he is faithful to show me exactly what I needed, when I needed it, before I let the world cave in on me and give up in frustration and anger.

 I packaged up all my items last night and today will be shipping and returning the items...to provide my family with a new food processor, and a new learning game console for homeschooling (Leapfrog!).

Friends....God is so good!

Missing photos?!

I have been organizing photos since I now use groovebook to get my prints I haven't done family scrapbooking much, just baby albums...so the last pages I have done are when we just moved to NC back in 2008!! Isn't that crazy?!

So, to the flash drives and photo CDs I go, to organize the pics and upload 100 at a time to my groovebook.

Wait, What!?! How do I not have the entire winter we were in the "Fuqua house"!? Yep. It's gone. Like totally gone. My only idea was that we never backed those photos up from our desktop that blitzed out on us 2 years ago, and we trashed it. I was so upset!!

But my blog to the rescue!!!! This was before Facebook days...I blogged a ton back then, and have a fair amount of photos I have saved off the blog for prints, to keep the memories alive for us and the kids, of that crazy and cold winter in the "Fuqua house" :)

Remind me to ALWAYS keep things backed up!!

Scrapbooking

It's always a challenge creating each child's baby scrapbook.

After all, they will have this for the rest of their lives, as a window into the world we lived in at the time they entered our family.

All the creativity isn't an expression of myself...it has to be about that child...from colors, to format, to the pictures I do or do not put in.

Olivia's has been a challenge simply because life has been going a million miles per hour since she was born...even with the closure of my sewing business. 

Now I am staring at these pages, knowing I must get this done...before the sweet memories of what was, fades. Before I loose the sharpness of clarity in what happened in each of these moments...and interpret wrongly for my sweet baby girl what life was like these precious first moments with her.

I know that sounds super sentimental and I sound like a psychotic artist, but oh well. If I am allowed a good excuse for why this wasn't finished before her 1st birthday like the others, this is it! I have to sit here and put myself back to these moments in each photo...to take that trip down memory lane of 15 months ago, and wait for the inspiration and interpretation to come.

FYI it takes 10x longer than regular scrapbooking! LOL! :)