One World One Heart Giveaway

One World One Heart is the brainchild of A Whimsical Bohemian. The idea is to bring blogger's together, and maybe find a kindred spirit or two, or three. I was part of OWOH last year too, at the time I was brand new to blogging, by new I mean I had only been doing it for like 2 or 3 days...seriously. I found quite a few blogs during that event that I still follow.

I could have sworn though that this one didn't start until the 28th, so I am running fast to catch up to the magic carpet...wait for me!!!!!

This year my giveaway is going to be one of my shaded path prints. For every 100 people that enter I will add another print.

If you are so inclined you can pick a different print from my Etsy shop, but this is not about sending people to my shop, it's about blogging, so if ya don't wanna ya don't hafta!

To Enter:

Just leave a comment on this post =) easy as pie.

Be sure that I have some way to contact you if you win.

Winners will be announced on the 15th of February.

Anyone who has a blog is welcome to enter.

Last time I checked there were 500+ taking part in this event and I'm sure many more to join.

If you would like to check out some of the other blogs taking part, click HERE.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ho Ho Home Schooling

Last Thursday was akin to Christmas (too cheesy? sorry). We got 2 large boxes delivered to our doorstep. In each of those boxes were smaller boxes, all filled with a bevy of school supplies. Text books, fiction, practice paper, shapes, white boards, a blow up globe etc etc. Everything you could need to teach a kindergarten student Math, Phonics, Language Arts and Science.
Yes, I do realize that it's January and the school season started several months ago. You see we sent our little one off to kindergarten with all the other kids at the start. He was very excited to go, and we were excited for him. At first he was very happy to be there but it didn't take very long for it to deteriorate. He's a bright, spirited little boy with lots of energy...not a teachers easiest kind of student. He wasn't good at sitting still, had trouble with disturbing the other students while they were doing their work, and would throw a fit at least once a week. In our local school system it's a 6 1/2 hour day for kindergarten. The teacher did the best she could with him (as far as I know anyway), but she and the principal both said he was immature and hinted that he should do kindergarten again. So, instead of waiting out the school year to see how things progress, watching the little light in my child grow dimmer day by day, we decided to take a different approach.

Technically what we are doing is not called home school. It is actually an online charter school through the state of Washington where kids can do everything at home, and meet periodically with one of their credited teachers to check progress and such. He can move at his own pace. The state of Washington requires a person to be certified to home school, which I am not (yet) and this offers me a way around that. Also the curriculum is all set up for you, the web site has each day's work laid out for you. You can do more if you want, move ahead, or take more time. They have a set amount of time that is required but it's flexible and you can schedule days off for vacation and such.

One common question we get when we tell people that we are teaching our child at home is "but what about his socialization?" As far as the social aspect of this goes there are at least 3 home school groups in our area, plus the charter school has a long list of people using the program that you can schedule field trips with, or co-op teaching, or whatever. Plus sports, art, music classes. There are plenty of ways to give a home school child socialization.

We haven't been at it long, but so far everyone is happy and we like the program. If any of you are interested in trying it for yourself, you can find information here ---> www.k12.com. It's available in states other than Washington.

Wow, I'm not usually so wordy.

The Front Page of Etsy....almost

I had a big spike on views and hearts for my Etsy shop on Friday and couldn't figure out why...It's taken me 2 days to figure out that I may have been on the front page, yay! I found a treasury in the Vault that had one of my embroidery pieces as an alternative. I'm guessing that it must have been on the front page for at least a few minutes, to explain the hearts and views.
Yippie, even being an alternative on the front page is a hoot!

I couldn't seem to get a screen shot with the whole Treasury in the picture. To see the whole page follow this link ----->The Vault

Adornment for Tarts Raffle!

Choklit Chanteuse is having a raffle to celebrate her one-hundredth blog post! First prize is is a bracelet made by Totus Mel,

and with enough entries she will offer up gift certificates to use at her beautiful Etsy shop

------->Click Here<------ to find out more. There are only a couple of days left, so don't wait.

The Loo

An embroidery for the bathroom, doesn't everyone need an embroidery for the bathroom?

For sale in my shop

Great Way To Start The Day

I woke up this morning to find I was in a beautiful new treasury, that and some coffee makes a great start to the day!

Beautiful!

Wordless Wednesday

Black and Blue Butterfly

New embroidery work for my Etsy shop.

Bran Muffins!

Every once in a while I feel as if I'm in a cooking rut, so I look around for some new recipes to liven things up. Usually I find them on allrecipies.com.
Bran muffins are not at the top of my woo hoo list, I'm more of a chocolate cream cheese muffin kinda girl, but this recipe had a really high rating on the web site so I figured I'd give em a try. And I could use a little more healthy (or healthier) in my life.

They turned out to be pretty dang yummy. I did do a couple of substitutions: instead of oil I used some all natural applesauce, and instead of raisins I used trail mix chopped up a bit (the trail mix had chocolate chips in it and i took 90% of them out)
I don't like fake sugar, and I don't think it's healthy, at least not any healthier than the real stuff so if a recipe calls for sugar, that's what it gets.
They were a hit with the family even the 5 year old came back for seconds!

I also made some Italian sausage soup and biscuits. Yum! I know,sausage and biscuits are not exactly healthy, but I've got bran muffins to make up for that.