What's In A Room?

A bedroom is one of the most common and most beloved places of the house. You go there to sleep read, hang out, talk and contemplate. Or maybe that's just me; I don't know. But I've always believed that your bedroom should be a place you enjoy being in. A pretty place, a haven of rest and relaxation. My room is such. Bright and sunny, relaxing and beautiful. When we moved into this house 8 years ago, Pa and Mama gave Brianna and I linens and we decorated the whole room around it.

Why are you writing about your room? You may be asking. Well, I just had a sleepover-my first ever. All of us kids went to a friend of Emma's. She's kind of an adopted sister. Anyway, After spending a night away from home, and staying up way too late, I was grateful to see my own room. I crawled into bed and just thought "Ahhh, that's wonderful.". Simple, yes, but heartily felt.

Instead of just saying how cheerful my room is, here are some pictures for you to judge for yourself.

Here is the border and paint detail:

Here is the quilt side and dust ruffle detail:

Here is the top detail of the quilt:

And the pillows and shams:

And lastly, the valence:

So... What do you think?

Man Cannot Live By Bread Alone... He Needs Jam, Too!!

Today, Mama, Nana, Emma and I made jam. Not just any jam either. It was some of the best jam ever!!! Now, if you've never had hommade jam, but instead have always bought the grocery store's sorry excuse for jam, then you, my friend are missing out!

Well, anyway, we made jam. Peach Fondue, Kiwi, and Blueberry Lime. Sounds good, right?! Well, They looked prettier than they sounded and they tasted  even better!! 


Here is a picture of one jar of each
alongside Mama's
homemade wheat bread:

And here they are with the light shining through them. I always think that seeing the jars all lined up in the pantry is just so satisfying.

  For great jam tips, write my Mom : arts_chili@yahoo.com

Math Anyone?

Hello, Blog World!!
Today, I want to tell you what our family has been up to our eyebrows in for the past week or so. Numbers. Yep, you heard right, Numbers. Not the book of the Bible either. I mean the 1,2,3's. You see, the past 3 days have been World Math Day.

World math day is a really great way to build your basic math skills. When you visit the website (which you can do by clicking on the post title) you will see a little button at the top that says register. You'll be asked for your name,email, age group, school, and country of representation. Don't worry, only your last initial will appear elsewhere. From there you will be emailed  your sign in information.

There are 5 levels. Each level has 100, 1 minute rounds.  If you register in time, you can practice each level as many times as you'd like.

On the day of, you sign in and play.  Now that sounds like fun. But it gets better. At the beginning of each round, the server randomly chooses 1-3 other students in your age group and level for you to compete with! Not only do you have the incentive and goal of coming in first, it's neat to see who you'll get. It has not been uncommon in the past few days to hear "Look! a Guatemalan!" or "Oh, No! She's so good at these!".

I've had so much fun, and I only have 15 games left in the last level. so I ought to get back to work. But one more thought...

My parents, being homeschoolers, are always looking for an oppertunity to have "fun school" museums, library books, movie, games and  field trips count as school. They always encourage us to dig deeper into what we're interested in. For example, last spring, Brianna studied WWII. She was so incredibly interested in the political aspects of the War, that she went to the library and checked out some books about the size of the dictionary!! She read them clear through! And Mom counted it has history!!

The same with math day. Poppop and Nana told us about it and when we said we were interested, Mom said she'd count each half-hour as a day of Math! And all through, Pa was our coach. If we were stuck, he pushed us through. At the end of the round, he would explain and demonstrate an example problem. Being an engineer, he's really, really quick and accurate in calculations-even in his head.  Mom helped us with problems, too, but she also worked as personal assistant. She brought us hot tea or cocoa, lollipops or "brain food" whenever she saw us begin to falter. Parents... what would we do and where would we be without them?!