Browsing the blog archives for January, 2014.

Week Three Resolution Check In

California, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but you know…

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule stay on top of our new homeschool schedule and attend social events
We have been struggling with wanting to send our kids to school so they have a ‘normal childhood experience’ and with wanting to keep them home because we have seen the benefits (both academically and socially believe it or not) that have come from homeschooling. We have finally found a hybrid alternative with an online virtual school. We finished up our last day with the LAUSD’s ISP program on Friday and we start the new program today! We have chosen this both because while the kids are still at home and have our full support, they are lead by teachers online which is especially helpful for our oldest who is in his last year of middle school and will soon be tackling subjects I’m a little rusty with. Trigonometry, anyone? And also because this program has field trips and social events with the whole group which is really the only thing lacking in the program we are were using. There is a high school graduation ceremony and even proms, sporting events and dances. Who knows if they will want to do any of that, but having the option is what matters. I’m changing this resolution because as far as I can tell, you can’t get ahead of schedule with this program. If one of the kids understands a concept already or catches on right away, they are able to move on to the next concept. Once we start I will be better able to know how to word this goal!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
I think I will make a little page to keep track of the birthdays and the cards we send out to see it coming together. Last week we sent out cards to my dad and Melissa. This week we sent out cards to my husband’s long time friend Jon and the first friend I made online (waaay back in 2001) Nichole. I should note that these four always get birthday cards. I am usually really good about this until sometime in March or April. Then I tend to totally forget about it. I know, terrible! So far, so good!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
It is so embarrassingly behind! I haven’t touched it at all this year. :/

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I’ve been keeping up with just writing a line about what we did each day! This will be especially cute next year so we can look back and see what we were doing a year ago. Cute! I got index cards and a date stamp, and have been pretty good about making notes every day.

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
I currently only use social media as ‘soverydomestic’ and so most of what I post and do is blog related (though really, since this blog is mostly about what I make and do, it’s kind of the same thing).

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I blogged 4 times last week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
Next week? I didn’t even think of this much this week.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week Three – Neapolitan Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
This month’s techniques are lace and intarsia – and since I’m still working on my Ravenclaw Pride socks, I went with lace. The pattern, Anna, is a 10 row repeat with something a little different on the first row! You knit two stitches together, leave them on the left hand needle and then knit just the first stitch and slip both new stitches off. What? Really simple and looks good. It has a 33 row cuff which is something that would probably dissuade me from wanting to knit these socks, but once I saw the cuff coming together I loved it!

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket

I also planned to replace alcohol with coffee, I thought it was a great idea and then my husband who drinks alcohol only once every few years, suggested we start having a drink with dinner. We had both recently read about a slew of health benefits to having one drink a day. So maybe we’ll alter that to having one a day and try to make it fun? I should note that 27 days into the new year and neither of us has had any alcohol so who knows which way we’ll go with that.

1 Comment

Week Three Photos

California, Kids

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like


Caught having fun with his sisters in the backyard! Hazah!


We could all learn about life balancing from this one! Busy dance and school schedules and she makes time for fun.


She ‘invented’ a game where she throws a ball through a hula hoop held up by a sibling. So cute!

Only a day late on this project this week! Progress!!

2 Comments

A New Homeschooling Journey

Homeschooling, Kids

When we first started homeschooling through the LAUSD, it took a little while to get into the swing of things. The way that I ended up finding it best to organize our work was binder style. Once a week, we meet with our check in teachers and hand in the work from the week before.

Since the work is organized by week, I organized the binder the same way. The start of each section had a sheet protector with that week’s assignment sheet in it. Then, all the work for each subject is hole punched and put in the binder – and each subject is paper clipped together to make handing it in easier. When I’m setting up each week, if I am missing something I remind myself to print it later or order missing items by putting a sticky note on the sheet protector so it’s the first thing I see for that week. For assignments that don’t fit in a binder, I write down the assignment on a sheet of paper and put it with the other assignments. I do that honestly so we don’t forget to do it, or come back to it if we have started it and set it aside to work on something else. Generally, we were easily able to finish what was assigned for each day long before it’s time to call an end to the school day.

That was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because we supplemented with other curriculum to both fill in some holes and to reinforce concepts we were working on, and it allowed a lot of free time to work on things that are important to us but not part of standard curriculum, like programming and their physical pursuits like competitive dance and jiu jitsu. It was a bad thing also because while the free time was good in a way, I feel like there was too much free time because the kids were not being challenged enough, also because there is not a lot of opportunity for social interaction.

Socialization with homeschool kids is for sure the biggest issue, both to us personally, and it seems to other homeschoolers as well (and to all the randos who want to weigh in on this kind of thing). I have met a lot of homeschooled kids at meetups when we first started doing it and were searching for ways for the kids to make friends. Some of them were great kids – and some of them were the version of weird that is the stereotype of homeschooled kids. I mean obviously there are weird kids in public school, Catholic school, and private school too – but we’re not talking about them. 😉

It’s been almost two years now that we have been doing this and I absolutely feel that I am way more focused on my kid’s social lives than I was when they were in school. Between dance, jiu jitsu and playgroups, all three of them have found great friendships here and unlike friendships cultivated at school with kids I don’t know from families I don’t know, I have a much better understanding of what they are up to. I understand that when they are older they need to be able to judge for themselves who they should be spending time with, but I really believe that they need more time than just elementary school and honestly even middle school to be able to make those judgments. I’m a big fan of The Mommy Mess, and back in September she posted this about her kids not having formed their social circles yet – and I totally agree that it is a good thing!

Next week, we are starting a different homeschooling program, based mostly online. There are two big reasons we decided to switch programs, the first was the community days in this program where we will have the opportunity to meet other kids doing the same program, in a social instead of academic environment (knowing that there is a traditional graduation ceremony for high school was a pretty big bonus too). The second reason was the curriculum, this program has great curriculum that I am looking forward to starting. The more I looked into the program and the more research I did, the more excited I got about it. As soon as I was officially able to log in and check out the interface this week, I was impressed. Every morning the kids will check in online and they have a list of tasks to do and a list of materials they need for those tasks. I have already sat in on a few workshops that were full of great ideas.

This program being mostly online with some offline schoolwork to be done each day fits well with us as a family. We’ll update as we get into it!

No Comments

January Socks

Crafty

One of my resolutions this year (#10) is to participate in Sockdown 2014. It technically goes from August to August, but I’m aiming to participate from January to December. Hopefully, I will keep it rolling after that. As soon as I started knitting, I wanted to learn to how knit socks because it seemed so cool – I still think it is so cool! Five sticks and a really long piece of string = socks. So neat!

Each month sockdown has one or two techniques, two designers, and a mystery sock. You can pick any one you want, and there are a lot of options there. This month the two techniques are lace and intarsia and I went with lace. I picked Anna by Barbara Richardson. It’s knitting up nicely! I mainly work on it while I sit and watch our oldest at jiu jitsu at night and then late night when everyone else is in bed. Gotta fit it in whenever I can!

I am aware I’m a day late for Work in Progress Wednesday – let’s just gloss over that and I will explain why I’ve had big plans but have been stumbling a bit tomorrow. 😉

No Comments

Week Two Photos

California, Kids

Ack. Our tiny dancer had her first dance competition this past weekend so that’s what I was up to instead of blogging. Worth every second of all the planning, for sure!

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I haven’t done my resolution check in for last week either. If I don’t do it later today, I think I may just skip it. I’ll aim for the accountability of getting it done today. 🙂

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week Two
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like


When he’s not feeling it, and I can’t get a decent picture, he’s stuck with one of him and his sister. 😉


All her hard work and training really paid off. She won first place for her jazz solo at Miss Dance Drill Team California.


This little lady is learning to read. Watching her start to understand and see it clicking is incomparable.

I reeeeally hope I develop the habit of posting these every Saturday instead of Monday!

2 Comments

Orange Creamsicle Cake

Domestic

The second cake of the year! It was actually a happy birthday cake for my friend Brigid! Happy Birthday, Brigid!

It’s wonderfully simple and could not possibly be easier to pull together. No really. It has three ingredients – 4 if you include the orange zest – you really should, it makes it more legit I think. 😉

You know how I feel about using a cake mix as a base, or anything that comes from a box like that when you can just as easily make it yourself from scratch. I keep being told that some recipes (like this one) need the cake mix and it wont work out as well if it’s done from scratch. This usually infuriates me, but I’m trying to pretend it doesn’t bother me relax about this stuff a bit.

If you’re counting calories, this cake is a pretty good treat. If you slice it into 9 pieces, each slice is about 200 calories.

Orange Creamsicle Cake

via Better Recipes

1 box white cake mix (see, this bugs me, is ‘white’ a flavor??)
6oz plain Greek yogurt
1 cup orange juice
zest of 1 orange

This is one of those ‘dump it all in one bowl and you’re done’ type cakes, which, hatred for cake mixes aside, is actually really helpful. Preheat to 350 before you get started.

Orange Creamsicle Cake

I mixed the yogurt and the cake mix together first, then added the orange juice and once that was well mixed I folded in the orange zest. Bake for about 30-35 minutes.

Orange Creamsicle Cake Orange Creamsicle Cake

I keep taking pictures of my finished kitchen accomplishments with my phone for Instagram and then I totally forget to get a picture with my camera. Lame.

Orange Creamsicle Cake

This cake is really, really moist. Even the next day! It’s orangey, for sure, but not as orangey as I would have liked. If I make this again I will add more zest and maybe even some orange extract.

No Comments

Week One Photos

California, Kids

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014. I took the pictures in the first week and then totally forgot about posting them on Saturday. Ahem.

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week One
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like


Our oldest is on the move so much it’s hard to get an actual ‘portrait’, but this is what his week was like


Our tiny dancer is seriously devoted to her training


Our littlest is madly in love with this baby doll she got for Christmas, she brings it all over South Bay with us

I hope I get into the swing of this self imposted challenge and remember to post these every Saturday!

3 Comments

Week One Resolution Check In

California, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

I thought checking in once a week would be a helpful way to stay on top of my resolutions. Or maybe make me feel like an epic failure. Only time will tell – stay tuned!

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
School in our district technically doesn’t start until Monday, but I started the littles this past Monday, so goal #1 of being one week ahead of our homeschooling plan is in full effect! Maybe I can get even further ahead at some point so we can take longer breaks? I’m sure they’d love that!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
There are six birthdays in our lives in January. On Monday, I got out cards for the first two – my dad and my good friend Melissa. Yay!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
Ok so when I made this resolution last week, I didn’t realize just how far behind I was with it. The photo section is updated to Jan of last year, the video section is updated to May of last year, the house tours page is updated to 3 houses ago. The mobile galleries and blog pages are totally bare. This week I fixed some code that was making it take longer to make new additions so hopefully I can make some progress next week.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I just got 365 index cards and a date stamper. I’m hunting for the perfect box to put them in still. I was using The Happiness Project but I need a little room to ramble. 😉

5. quit social media that’s not blog related (this is part of a bigger move to be more present in all of my relationships)
I am officially only using social media for the blog. Though to be honest, I am still chatty on Instagram and Twitter with some friends and family, the main objective was to get away from Facebook as the world’s biggest time suck and I accomplished that! It was pretty tricky actually. Facebook doesn’t allow a page (like the one for this blog) to exist without a Facebook user as an admin. I read a lot of blogs explaining different ways to go about doing this, so naturally I thought I knew what I was doing. I converted my personal profile into a ‘page’, and the instructions I was following said that after I did this, I’d be able to merge this page with my existing blog page. Buuuut, I had no such option and was the proud owner of my So Very Domestic’s FB page, and also a page that looked similar but had my name instead. Ugh. I poked around the settings on my personal ‘page’ and changed it’s status to unpublished. This way, I am not on Facebook as a person, but my blog can still be there.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Today makes 2! This was our first week back doing school and dance and jiu jitsu. Hopefully, I’ll find a groove!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been reading about lightboxes and I love the idea of getting tiles to use for backgrounds and all kinds of fun stuff I want to put into play. I’m still researching and learning.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Every Saturday morning, I’m going to post the best picture of each kid from that week.

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week 1 – Nutella Icebox Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
Sockdown is, essentially, a knitting challenge within the Sock Knitters Anonymous on Ravelry (which is sort of like Facebook for knitters). Each month there are different sock knitting techniques, sock pattern designers and every other month there is a mystery sock (it’s a mystery because you’re given the pattern  but no pictures). For example, this month the techniques are lace and intarsia and the designers are Stephanie van der Linden and Heatherly Walker. I am casting on this afternoon a lacey sock. I think probably this one or maybe this one. Hopefully this will get Work in Progress Wednesday happening again. 😉

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
My beekeeper quilt is sitting in a bag, in about 360 pieces. I am not going to like writing that every Friday until I put it together. This weekend, I am going to lay out all the hexipuffs I have knitted and see what it looks like. I don’t think I need more puffs but I will make sure, and if I do I will estimate how many I have to knit and start knitting them. If I don’t need to make more, I will work on piecing it together. So exciting! I started knitting this before we left Canada!

The two other things I’m working on are replacing alcohol with coffee and working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol and 10 days in, I’ve been successful with the coffee over alcohol! Though really, I haven’t had any alcohol since a Christmas party in mid-December. As far as my vitamins and cholesterol levels, I had my bloodwork done on the 2nd and yesterday I saw my doctor about it! Only my D is low, everything else is good so maybe this is a short lived goal haha. I guess it’s about keeping my levels good, my cholesterol is actually higher than it was! I think I got kind of cocky when I first had it checked in July and when it came back good I thought, hey look eating just ok is perfectly healthy for me, and then I started eating even less than just ok. Ahem. I am having my bloodwork done again in April, so I will compare numbers then.

So far, so good I think. I’m off to a decent start. Now, to edit that pesky photo site!

No Comments

Nutella Icebox Cake

Domestic

So the first weekend of the year has already passed! Ours was busy as usual, but we managed to do a little Greek Christmas celebrating by making some traditional cookies and we had a little barbecue with lemon chicken and roasted oregano potatoes. Serious hit. Since today is technically Greek Christmas it would probably be more fitting to post about that, but I also made the first cake of the year and I think that trumps pretty much everything else.

In 2009, I vowed to make a different pie every weekend and I ended up making 57 pies that year – with no duplicates! Here’s a messy gallery of them. The following year, we moved out to the woods and I wanted to bake a different cake every weekend, but with a serious lack of people around us, I ended up making only 45 cakes. Defeated, I didn’t even try any self inflicted challenges like this for the next three years. Now though, I think this year I can easily meet that goal.

Presenting cake #1 of 2014, the Nutella Icebox Cake.

I’ve seen a few versions of this cake online, some of them are a little lazy in that the filling is made from Nutella and whipped cream. Really? That’s pretty much just Nutella Pops, right? We can do better than that, people!

Enter this recipe! Thank you Dessert by Candy! This recipe involves making a beautiful Nutella custard/pudding from scratch and then layering it with graham crackers to make a pretty icebox cake that my Granny would have been proud of. She really would have, she was a serious force in the kitchen. If you’re not feeling the effort of assembling the cake (although seriously, making the pudding requires way more effort), I encourage you to make it just to taste the Nutella pudding. It’s even better than you think it is. No, really.

Nutella Icebox Cake

via Dessert by Candy
2/3 cup whole milk
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 cup granulated sugar
4 large egg yolks
2 tablespoons cornstarch
6 1/2 ounces Nutella
2 tablespoons Frangelico I didn’t want to kick off my year of not drinking by spiking the cake
graham crackers (the number depends on what size pan you are using)

First, choose your pan. The original recipe says to use a 7″ square pan, which is not something all of us have on hand. 8″? Yes. 9″? of course. 7″ though? No, I don’t have one either. I almost ordered this one, but I told the Tiny Dancer that she could choose the cake this week and I didn’t realize I needed an odd pan until it was too late. So I went with my 9 x 13 and made do. Once you’ve chosen your pan, line it with plastic wrap.

Nutella Icebox Cake Nutella Icebox Cake
Whisk together the milk, cream and 1/4 cup of granulated sugar, and then scald that in a saucepan. In a medium bowl, whisk the eggs yolks, the other 1/4 cup of granulated sugar and the cornstarch.

Nutella Icebox Cake Nutella Icebox Cake
Now weigh out the Nutella and (not pictured), temper the egg mixture with the scaling milk and cream mixture. Do this by veeeeery slooooooowly pouring the scaling milk and cream mixture into the egg mixture while whisking the egg mixture as if your life depended on it. There is no overexaggerating here. Pour slowly, whisk seriously. Easy peasy. Now, stir the Nutella into the now warm milk, cream and egg mixture.

Nutella Icebox Cake Nutella Icebox Cake
I switched from wooden spoon to whisk after the Nutella melted into the custard because I wanted to to make sure there were no lumps because I saw a little lump and my obsessive personality just could. not. let it slide. Now it’s time to make the cake – but first, try this Nutella custard/pudding. Divine right? (Little Miss D says ‘divined’ instead of ‘divine’ and I say it that way in my head every time now. Ahem.) So you start with a layer of graham crackers. This is when I realized that if you have a pan that perfectly fits any specific number of graham crackers, that’s the pan you should be using.

Nutella Icebox Cake Nutella Icebox Cake

Cover that first layer of graham crackers with about 1 cup of the Nutella custard/pudding and then another layer of graham crackers. Keep going until you run out of your Nutella layer, just make sure you end on a Nutella layer! Now it gets covered in more plastic wrap and hangs out in the freezer for a few hours.

Nutella Icebox Cake
Then tah dah! Everyone declares your cake a hit at Sunday dinner and cake year is off to a success. Or you know, whatever happens at your house. 😉

1 Comment

Resolutions 2014 Edition

California, Crafty, Domestic, Healthy, Homeschooling, Kids

I’m a big fan of setting goals and working hard to achieve them. Some of the biggest goals I’ve had and achieved were not resolutions at all, but I do love the ‘fresh start’ feeling of January, even though it’s already 1/4 of the way through the school year and doesn’t really actually change anything. Ahem. I love January! Resolutions are fun and I usually set a few for the blog and for my knitting and so far I’ve come pretty close to doing what I set out to do. The only times I really fall short of the goals set in January is when I unexpectedly set harder goals halfway through the year and kick my own butt to reach them. You know, like moving to a different country or homeschooling.

Two years ago, I listed all of my goals for the year (2012) in my blog sidebar and achieved almost all of them. Last year, I blogged a list of goals for 2013 but I didn’t add them to the sidebar and I mostly didn’t do them. I think I need the visual reminder. This year I will add them to the sidebar and use that to keep track of them. 🙂

I think I will even set aside a day once a week where I post about them and how it is going. I have noticed that while most of my new visitors are not so into commenting, you’re there and knowing you’re reading is helpful motivation.

Personal Goals
1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
5. quit social media that’s not blog related (this is part of a bigger move to be more present in all of my relationships)

Professional Goals
6. blog 3-5 times a week
7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography

Fun Stuff
8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 (inspired by Miss James)
9. bake a cake every weekend (hoping to match my record in 2009 when I baked more than one pie every weekend)
10. participate in sockdown 2014 aka knit as many socks as possible (technically it goes August to August, but you can jump in whenever)
11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt, I have all my puffs knitted I just have to piece it together

Miscy changes that are not really resolutions…
I’m replacing alcohol with coffee this year. Which really isn’t much of a stretch for me since I used to never drink at all and now my California bestie is more interested in coffee than cocktails!
My doctor gives me a print out of my blood work, which is new for me as none of my other doctors have ever done that, and I’m a little obsessed with stats, so I’m working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol (it’s not bad but it would be nice to make it even better).

No Comments
« Older Posts