A little bit of this, a little bit of that...
I've been working on organizing schoolbooks these last few days. Our umbrella group recommends that we keep a year's worth of work on hand, so I've been clearing out last year's stored work to make room for this year's.
The recycling guys are probably going to want to say bad words when they pick up our recycling bin this week.
It's a li'l heavy.
Zoe's starting to be done with some of our non-consumable textbooks, which means that I can sell them instead of store them.
Which is awesome.
And now that the job of dealing with old school stuff is done, I'm going to need to start to think about books for next year.
My lilies are blooming.
I love these things because they're so low-maintenance. They're perfect for a not-so-much-into-gardening type like me.
I've been faithfully decluttering a little each day. I even tackled my desk, which held some papers that haven't seen the light of day for a couple of years.
It's nice to know exactly what's in there now.
You know what else is nice? How late it stays light at this time of year.
I am a fan.
We've talked about clothes a lot of late, I know (that's because clothes are something I've been working on a lot lately!), and I have one more clothing thing to share with you next week.
I did a little something to refashion this dress, which has been sitting in my think-of-some-way-to-freshen-it-up pile for a really long time.
And while I'm mentioning summer bucket list stuff, I should tell you that I've had lots of opportunities to meet my "say yes to sleepovers" goal.
(I have been saying yes, just so you know.)
Have a lovely weekend, you guys!
Very nice! Sounds like summer should be!
Would love to see the before picture on the dress? Makes it interesting to see what you did to freshen it; I'm sure it's a good fix. Thanks, Susan e
Well, that actually IS the before picture! You can see it very well in the photo, but that dress is stained and faded. And the proportions of the top part and the bottom part aren't very consistent (you'd have to be a really, um, well-developed preteen to wear it!).
I'll show you what I did with it next week.
You and my friend are the only two people I know who use those split keyboards. (I use a 1986 US made IBM Model M, myself.)
I find a good way to encourage decluttering and cleaning is to invite people over. It gives a good excuse to put stuff away.
I love my split keyboard so much. It's way more comfortable for typing once you get used to it. I feel incredibly squished when I have to use a regular keyboard now.
Can't wait to see what you did with the dress!
Regarding home schooling: do you find your younger kids picking up things that you're teaching the older kids?
As soon as I learned to read, I started teaching my baby sister. She had a pretty good handle on it when she began first grade (many years ago).
Just curious.
I love how late the days are staying too!! In the winter I always feel like it's time to go to bed right after supper because it's dark already!
This morning I worked on our homeschool book list for next year. This will be our second year. Last year I spent way too much and many of the materials we never used.
My daughters just graduated high school, so they've been clearing out papers from their study room. The piles are huge! They saved every last paper from the last 4 years. We're shredding them and adding to compost a bit at a time.
When we homeschooled, we had a fair number of workbook-texts to dispose of at the end of each year. Several years in a row, we used them to lasagna garden an area in the yard that we were building up. The covers were plastic-coated and so needed tearing off. But the pages did well, torn off 10 sheets at a time, in the layers. I did this with catalogs, as well.
*sigh* I need to get to work on my sewing pile. It has gotten quite large. But I've knocked out a lot of other little projects so that is good. Hopefully I can keep going...
Good luck on getting all of your organizing done! I'm going to work on my pantry/freezer soon. Joy. NOT.
My freezer is on my list too. Oy.
I am impressed on the "yes to sleepovers"... I haven't been ready to say yes, just yet.
The late days are probably my favorite part of summer. I love that it's still light out when I get out of work! It's so sad the day that we fall back.
Your lilies look like Hemerocallis, or Day Lilies. If they are, you can eat the flowers 🙂 (You definitely can't eat regular Lilium Lilies, like white Madonna Lilies)
Hemerocallis- red, yellow and orange flowers- taste a little bit like peas and can be added to salads, whole or shredded or picked when wilting at the end of their day blooming, dried and ground and used as a thickener (used a lot in Chinese cooking). There are loads of other uses for them, just google them 🙂
Didn't know you could eat day lilies. I have them all over the place.
They're really tasty- this is a good article on them http://honest-food.net/2010/06/29/dining-on-daylilies/
As I said, just make sure they really are Hemerocallis! (I'm sure you know the difference, just worried I'm going incite somebody to eat the wrong thing!)
My son in particular eats the flowers whole but my eldest daughter finds the texture slightly odd, though she likes the taste, so she eats them chopped or sliced 🙂
I need to tackle my desk as well - now that I'm back from holidays I'm aiming to be super-productive 🙂
Now that we're past the shortest day of the year, the days are getting slightly longer here - not long till summer 🙂
Just wanted to comment on the saving schoolwork thing...I always thought that a year or two was fine until I hit my Senior level class in College for Quantitative Analysis (business major). We had a test (the first or second day of class mind you) on Business Statistics that I had taken 5 years before that, and of course no longer had either the book or my notes. I barely passed with a D on that test. Had I kept those notes, I could have used them on the test (it was open notes) I would have been able to remember most of that stuff! - Not that this applies to school aged kids, I just wanted to share!