Queen of....Tarts?

One of the things that often comes with this time of year is baking. I absolutely love to bake, and look forward to all of the extra baking I get to do in the holiday season. I often feel that I don't have enough people to bake for, and have thought of opening a bakery or catering business of some sort. Maybe in the future, a girl can dream!

My husband's birthday is November 24th, and that means pumpkin cheesecake. This year I tried a new recipe and I really liked it. It has some lemon extract in it and a few other ingredients that I wouldn't normally have used and it just added such an interesting combination of flavors. We all enjoyed it so very much.

Here is where to find the recipe for the cheesecake: Pumpkin Cheesecake

The other thing we made were English butter tarts. Isabella has been doing a literature study on Alice in Wonderland and this is one of the activities. We got the recipes for these from <a href="www.allrecipes.com"></a> , also. I used  a separate recipe for the crust and the filling. I don't have the direct links to the recipes with me right now because I printed the recipe off weeks ago and put it in my lesson plan book. What I liked about the tarts were that they are such a non-traditional food in the U.S. that I didn't have to worry about being in competition or offending anyone by bringing something that they typically bring to the holiday meals. If you forget to ask in advance what to bring this is a good dish to bring because you know there won't be two of it! Also, it is delicious and tastes very holiday-y if I do say so myself. We opted to put walnuts in ours (not black ones) but no raisins. Everyone who tried them thought they were very good. Also, my daughter was quite proud of her culinary prowess when bringing her own dish to Thanksgiving dinner!

Blogs Are Addictive, Which is Why I Can't Maintain One.

I have not been posting lately, which is crazy because we have done plenty of interesting stuff since my last post! We are doing crafts and activities almost every single day because of the holidays, plus I have become super addicted to quite a few blogs. I just love all of the creative, fun, free ideas that are out there! In fact, I feel all of those addictive blogs are partially to blame for my not posting. I can't quit perusing other people's long enough to post in my own!

In the past couple of weeks I have had quite a few adventures. I am in a walking boot now, and start physical therapy on Tuesday. This has slowed me down a little, but mostly just from shopping and laundry. It doesn't affect making crafts much so boo-yah bad foot!

My mixer broke while making cupcakes for co-op on Thursday, and I forgot lots of the supplies, but I am the queen of improvisation. Using only coffee beans, my class and i still managed to create these cute Panda cupcakes:

After that, the kids and I covered Thanksgiving. We made lots of lovely crafts that I got from the Craft Lady's blog, which you can find here: Craft Lady

The kids loved these crafts a lot, but the Turkey bags were their favorite. That was probably my favorite, too. I didn't think to use my scrapbook paper-cutter to make the squares for the corn until halfway through when my hand started cramping up from cutting so many things out with scissors. It was a lot of cutting!

We also read a new book called Thank You, Sarah.

This book is about the woman who wrote the song "Mary Had a Little Lamb." Apparently the same woman is responsible for why our country all celebrates Thanksgiving together. She wrote thousands of letters to 5 different presidents before 1 finally agreed to make Thanksgiving a national holiday. It was very interesting, fun for kids, and something that even I had never learned before!

Other things that happened this week is that Alex learned to read and write his name:

Bella made a picture entitled "Rainbow Valley" using crayons and tempra paint that she is very proud of  and that I immediately matted and hung on our kitchen wall:

The last thing that happened this week is I purchased the Expedition Earth curriculum. I am very excited to start it! I got a lot of the books to go with it from the library, but I had to purchase a couple of them. We are starting with the Christmas Around the World unit since it is so close to Christmas, and our first country is Germany. Last night we made felt gingerbread men cookies. The tutorial came from the same blog as the Expedition Earth curriculum, which can be found here:

<a href="http://confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com"><img alt="coahbutton" src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4030/4539688748_8098ff340c_o.png" width="150" height="150" /></a>

Honestly, this is probably my most favorite blog. It is where I get a lot of my ideas right now and I just can't get enough of it. I am on their every day, sometimes several times a day. I would like to do 12 hour school days just to fit in all the fun ideas this lady has! She is great!

So, as you can see, it has been busy around here! All the crafts were actually done this week, and we are already gearing up to do more. I was up until 1 am last night trying to plan out when to do all of the fun things I have found. Of course, I was also watching a special about Prince William's wedding, but that is besides the point. Silly television distracting me with gorgeous royal weddings and sparkly tiaras. Tonight we are going to a craft swap where I will get to see some friends I haven't seen in a while, make some new ones, and hopefully come back with even more inspiration! I love the holidays!