Eating worms

We had another great co-op day today. It is always so much fun to see our friends and spend the day together. Our family lives about an hour and a half from the rest of them-but they are worth the drive.

I remembered to get a picture of Julianne's crocheted worm today.



Somehow, a pink yarn worm doesn't seem as disgusting to me as Allison's edible worm looked.

She told everyone what her worm was made of before she ate it, so no homeschooled kids were grossed out in the conducting of this exercise.

One of the families brought this wormery. It was pretty interesting to watch the worms tunneling in it.

Here is our snack. Green, orange, blue, red, and yellow neon worms. Makes you hungry, doesn't it? Or not.

I really want to know whose idea it was to make candy worms in the first place. That is just odd, don't you think?

Last minute details

Our homeschool co-op meets once a month. We're a small group of five families and we have such a great time together.

We are a literature-based group so each month the moms choose a book and plan activities based on what we're reading that month.

This month's book is "How to Eat Fried Worms" by Thomas Rockwell. I must admit that this book isn't typical of what we usually choose but it gives us an opportunity to learn something about worms.



One of the assignments the kids have is to make a worm out of the medium of their choice. Allison's choice is a mixture of peanut butter and marshmallow creme. Julianne crocheted hers and I haven't taken any pictures of it. Maybe tomorrow.

The girls also had to interview people about their favorite and least favorite foods and create graphs of the information they compiled. They had to learn some unique and/or interesting facts about worms to share with everyone else. Allison hopes to gross everyone out by eating her "worm" after presenting her facts.

The last assignment was to create worm recipes to share with the group. I found it interesting that they both used fish recipes from the crock pot lady (that I've prepared recently) and simply substituted worms for the fish. Do you think there's some sort of significance I'm missing here? I know Allison isn't terribly fond of fish, but Julianne actually likes fish. Hmmm.

I need to go make some pudding. I'm bringing the snack tomorrow and another mom suggested dirt cake. I have no better ideas-c'mon, we're talking worms here-so I need to get it finished.

I'm not doing the flower pot thing though. I'm going to put the pudding in a cake pan, spread the oreos over top, then lay the gummi worms on the cookie crumbs. Showcase those worms in all their glory. (And make them easy to pick out) ;-)

A Beautiful Fall Day

I'm no fan of fall. Yes, it's pretty when the leaves change color and you get the occasional warm day interspersed with the cooler ones. But it's a harbinger of the cold weather to come, which I really don't look forward to.

Today, however, is a perfect fall day. The temp is in the mid-70s, the leaves are starting to look pretty and haven't all been knocked off by incessant rains. The bug population is somewhat less than it was a month ago. Yep, it's a great day to go outside.




Mom gave us this gorgeous mum for our anniversary a couple weeks ago. I haven't decided where to plant it yet so I've just been enjoying it still potted. Better find it a home soon, I think.



We don't have a lot of red leaves around our yard but this yellow caught my eye as I was walking around. It'll be interesting to see how this view of the driveway changes over the next couple of weeks. We still have a significant amount of green in our trees.

Another aspect of fall is garden clean up. Yesterday Clarence was working on that and wondered what I wanted to do with my parsley. Later, he sent Allison to ask what I would like to do with a "volunteer" cilantro plant. Have you ever determined a menu based on one ingredient you have that you want to use? Yeah, me, too.

Last night's dinner included parsley potatoes (which I've never made before) and today's lunch was chicken tortilla soup. I know, I know. A gorgeous, warm autumn day and I left soup cooking in the crockpot for lunch. I couldn't help it-I just love snipping cilantro into the bowl and scooping the soup over it. Knowing I had fresh cilantro to use made it impossible to think of having anything else.

It might be an addiction.

Please pass the...

Today's Housewife's recipe swap this weekend is for breakfast/brunch food.

I'm sharing a breakfast cookie recipe, adapted from one I found online some time ago. I've spent considerable time this morning trying to find the link to the original recipe I adapted but am coming up empty.

I've made these a few times to take with us as a snack on Bible quiz days. We usually have to leave home by 5:30 or 6 AM and the girls need to eat something between then and lunch at noon. I shared them with a friend whose kids LOVE getting cookies for breakfast.

Breakfast Cookies

1/2 cup Canola Oil
1/2 cup Unsweetened Applesauce
1/2 cup Brown Sugar
2 egg whites
1 tablespoon Vanilla Extract
2 tablespoons Lemon Juice (or 1 T. lemon juice, 1 T. orange juice)
1/2 cup Oat Bran
1/2 cup Seven-grain cereal (I use a rolled 7 grain flake that resembles oatmeal)
1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
1 teaspoon Baking Soda
1 teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
1 teaspoon Ground Allspice
1/2 teaspoon Ground Cloves
3 cups Old Fashioned Oats
1 cup dried cherries (or other dried fruit like raisins or craisins)
1/4 cup Unsweetened Coconut -- optional
1/4 cup Chopped Walnuts -- optional

Preheat oven to 350. In a large mixing bowl, beat together with electric mixer, oil, applesauce, and brown sugar. Add egg whites, vanilla, and juice, then beat again.

Sift together oat bran, 7 grain cereal, flours, baking soda, salt, and spices. Mix these ingredients with the wet mixture. Stir in oats. Fold in dried cherries (and any other optional ingredients).

Place dough on ungreased cookie sheets by the tablespoonful. Bake 15 minutes or until golden. Remove cookies from the sheet immediately and let cool.

My notes say this recipe is courtesy of The Manor at Taylor's Store B&B Country Inn. Sorry I can't link to the original recipe.

Baby blanket

There's a baby shower at church next weekend and I decided to make a blanket and some burp cloths to give them.

I don't know the parents at all. The grandparents have gone to our church for a few years but their daughter (the new mom) only recently started attending.



They seem to have a Pooh theme so I chose this fleece. I love the soft pastel colors and the patchwork look it has.

My plan was for Julianne to crochet a pretty edge around the fleece but we discovered that it is too hard for her to get the crochet hook through the fleece. I always seem to need a Plan B, don't I? So, today I backed it with a solid color and hemmed it. Not as pretty, but it is for a boy so I suppose that's better anyway.

I bought some Pooh flannel for burp cloths and then later found cotton fabric that matches the fleece. I haven't decided if I'm going to give them burp cloths with both fabrics or just use the matching cotton. Decisions, decisions.

For a seemingly simple project, this blanket gave me a lot of grief to assemble. I have enough to make a second blanket, and planned to give them two, but am not sure I'm up for the frustration of doing another right now. Maybe I'll try it again once I'm done with the burp cloths.

Beaded pen

In my blog wanderings, I recently came across this project, something even I could do.

We happened to be near a Michael's store on our way home from the quiz last weekend and Clarence stopped so I could look for microbeads. I found the sticky paper I needed while I was there as well.



I had forgotten that I had allowed the resident scrapper (Julianne) to use up all my double-sided tape so I couldn't try this until I made another supply run yesterday.

The directions were easy to follow (in fact, I didn't have them when I made it, I just went from memory-which meant no measurements. It would've been easier if I'd had those.)

I was pleased with how it turned out, and how quick and easy it was to make.

Wednesday Ramblings

Wednesdays are busy days for us.

The girls have swim lessons after lunch, we rush home for a quick dinner, then back to town for quiz practice followed by church. Whew!



This is Julianne swimming some of her endless laps for class. They "warm up" by swimming 5oo yards.

They have to tread water for at least 9 minutes.

They practice all their different strokes.

Allison has it a little easier in her level. She *only* has a 200 yard warm up.

Allison has tinted goggles, Julianne's are clear. I'm not sure I'd know which was which in these pictures otherwise.

I took these pictures last week. It is so nice to see them swim so well. When they were little and started lessons, they were afraid to jump off the edge of the pool into the shallow water.

They've come a long way.