The twins have been helping out at Cub Scout Day Camp all this week and having a wonderful (but exhausting) time with the Cubbies and Webelos. They’ve even managed to make it into some of the photos (Connor a lot more than Cade) they’ve posted on the website. It does look like everyone is really enjoying themselves and that Mrs. Dawn did an outstanding job with this year’s Day Camp.

Quinn and I have been spending quiet days without them…visiting with Momma and swimming in the pool or just staying cool at home. It’s really hot and humid outside with daily thunderstorms.

(Not so) lazy, crazy, hazy days of summer around here. *smile*

~~ . ~~

Susan Branch has a bunch of delicious sounding recipes up at her website. Old-Fashioned Potato Salad and Lemonade and Homemade Fresh Strawberry Ice Cream.

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I’ve posted three new images at Dani3D.com, “a soft summer night,” “I Love Faeries” and “I Spy.”

Sing a Song of Summer

When crickets sing
their evening song
and
fireflies turn
their lanterns on
and
spiders spin
at early dawn
and weave their cobwebs
on my lawn -
It’s summer.

~ Kay Winters ~

Old ones are Here.

State Bird Font and some other pretty ones at Fancy and Unique Fonts.

Olive Cheese Bread at The Pioneer Woman Cooks!  I made Marlboro Man’s Second Favorite Sandwich (with chicken and peppered bacon) for the boys yesterday and they loved it.

My Country Living, Martha Stewart Living and Country Home magazines are piling up a bit but I’m getting caught up with my reading while the boys swim.  Country Living recommends some great crafty blogs…

Pozie Gets Cozy

decor8

SIS BOOM Day Dreams

MarthaStewart.com has lots of summer crafts, cakes and decorating ideas!

Some websites for the 4th…

4th of July Project Ideas, Template, Clip Art and Fonts

Kaboose Holidays - July 4th is Independence Day

Wilstar.com’s Independence Day

Happy 4th of July 

I just wanted to let you all know that I’m still here. Yesterday I waded through quite a bit of old emails, trying to catch up, clean up and delete. I hate it when my inboxes are full of emails and mine were about ready to burst. I also updated our homeschool co-op and boy scout websites.

I’m still working on my parents’ memory book. So many old photos and papers to go through, old memories to relive. It’s fun to talk about the good old days with family members but with it carries a tinge of sadness too. I’m glad that my sisters and I are doing this but, boy, it’s a lot of work. *smile*

I made some time to have some friends over on Thursday for a simple cookout.  It took a bit of ingenuity to figure out where to put all the boxes and albums so I could have some free space on my kitchen table but Lisa and her kids didn’t mind the mess. We spent hours chatting about our kids and homeschooling…two of our favorite subjects. *smile* While going through all of the photos for the memory book I noticed that though we have tons of photos of family, we really don’t have much in the way of my parents’ friends. So the next time you have friends over, make sure you get your camera so your kids will have some photos of your friends to put in your Golden Wedding Anniversary album.

Last night my sister, Colleen, came over and we worked on trying to select the best photos for each page. It’s so hard trying to choose just a few when there are so many. We’re either going to use Shutterfly for the printing or I’m going to purchase a comb binding machine from Staples and do all the printing myself…I think. We only have about three more weeks to get this thing finished. Everything is still pretty much in the air but at least we are farther along with it than we were yesterday.

When we’re finished with momma and daddy’s book we’re going to work on a family book for all of us. It will cover more of our family genealogy, traditions and memories.

I wanted to say, “Thanks,” to my dearest friend, Jeanne, who sent me wonderful links on love and anniversaries.  Thank you, sweetie!!!!

I made a little girl/fae. I wasn’t happy with any of my attempts to use her in an image so I decided to offer her for download. The files are in png format and are 681×1385, 300dpi for the girl and 779×1385, 300dpi for the faery. This is half the size of the originals so if you need a larger format for a print job, please just drop me an email. Click on each image for the png and then just right click and save. Personal use only.

I’m working on creating a book (with help from my sisters and husband) for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary coming up in July…posting will be light until I get it finished. If you have any great websites, quotes or poems bookmarked on love, anniversaries and particularly 50th wedding anniversaries…please send them my way! Enjoy your summer!

Summertime here in the Herring household is mostly filled with days spent swimming, eating ice cream cones, syrup-y snowballs with marshmallow, and fishing…just enjoying living on the water. Since we spend so much time outside I’ve decided to focus on some Montessori concepts for Quinn this summer. Inspired by the Dear Ladies on the 4RealLearning Forums, I’m starting to put together a list of simple things we will cover this summer. I’m not ruling out creating a Summer Lapbook and probably will get one finished before the first tree starts to turn to autumn gold but I want to focus more on trying to expand Quinn’s fine motor skills, speech and learning in ways that will catch his interest.

At least we’re going to try to…Quinn may very well (and probably will) have different ideas. To help him develop the fine motor skills that he needs to put on his shoes and socks, I’ve been giving him my socks to put on. First off, he thinks it’s funny to wear Momma’s socks and second, he can actually pull them on, which he can’t do with his own socks. To further develop those finger and hand muscles, I also love the little lock box but am afraid it’s out of our price range so I did a quick search on Amazon and found a peek-a-zoo lock box and a Ravensburger lock and key puzzle that we can afford. The Farm Yard Hammering set is another item that I have on my wish list. Of course, Michael has questioned if we really want him to learn how to unlock and hammer things. *smile*

To work on his memory and cognitive skills I created a simple Summer Matching Cards created using the template (and some of the photos) from Montessori for Everyone. I saved the PDF document and then opened it up in Photoshop and customized it with half of our own summer photos. I’ve printed them (shown below) and all I need to do now is laminate and cut them out.

I also want to work on the Bug theme unit that I put together last year…the one that Quinn absolutely refused to even look at. *smile* Since we got the feeder crickets their own little house, Quinn really loves watching them so I’m hoping to be able to interest him with learning about insects, talk about their colors, body parts, and where they live. At Amazon I found an adorable little Klutz (Chicken Socks) book, “Tree House Bugs.” We have Usborne and DK books on insects and of course, a visit to our library will quickly add many more to our collection.

I’m going to hit the dollar stores and pick up items for the pool…plastic pouring utensils, brightly colored animals and sea creatures, small containers so he can sort his collections on the pool cap and a large container to store everything when it’s time to come out and dry off.

Catching lightning bugs, having ice cream runs (gathering the kids up at dusk and heading out to our favorite ice cream place), sleeping out in the tent in the yard, being in our local 4th of July parade, fireworks and cookouts…looks like it’s going to be a great summer. *smile*

Click on each preview image and then right click to save the PNG file. Print on 8.5″ x 11″ white cardstock.

Hallelujah Nuns

h/t: The Anchoress

Kim suggested that I create a printable paper fairy doll…so I did and it’s now uploaded at All Things Fae (look for All Things Fae Printables). If you find this lens (or my lens on Nature Journaling) useful, please consider joining so you can vote for my lenses. It’s free and only takes a moment or two. Yes, I know, shameless self promotion but truthfully the way Squidoo works is the more votes, the closer you become to being in the top 100, which gets you more exposure…since I don’t sell anything it just means that more folks can find my really cute stuff. As of today Nature Journaling is at #708 and All Things Fae is #1,608 so I’ve got quite a ways to go yet. *smile*

Click on each preview image and then right click to save the PNG file. Print on 8.5″ x 11″ white cardstock.