There are times when I forget what weekends really are. So much of our time is centered around our home and I find my responsibilities with homeschooling, homemaking, and church blurring together and putting me in a constant state of ADD.
When the Dowager Countess wondered about weekends, her reasons were pretty much the opposite of mine, but any excuse for a Downton quote is good enough for me. We’ve had a ton of craziness lately. Jam-packed calendars and germs running rampant easily justified an afternoon at the beach. There are few things that proclaim God’s glory like blue skies, sandy shores, and beautiful waters. These kinds of afternoons feed my soul.
Lots of interesting things were happening for The Boy this week, but he especially enjoyed the time we’ve spend studying animal classification. Despite the fact that I didn’t care too much for the talon-filled pictures, you’ll be happy to know that birds were given the same amount of attention as all of the other groups. (I’m not exactly a fan of birds. That’s probably an understatement.)
Our ancient China chapter in Story of the World was also fun. Learning about Lady Dai’s amazingly preserved body in our additional reading was fascinating to us, especially considering the mummification techniques in other ancient civilizations.
Letter E was Prissy’s Letter of the Week. Two queens made our week feel quite royal. We read about Esther’s braveness in our story Bible, made a crown, and used several Esther and Elsa/Frozen-inspired printables. Esther and Elsa were everywhere we looked! We also borrowed a bunch of Letter E books from the library: Ee: See It, Say It, Hear It; Emma’s Turtle; Horton Hatches the Egg; The Elephant Prince; Emma’s Pet; and Edward in Deep Water.
A packed schedule and a puny boy made it a little tough to cook like we normally do throughout the week. Here are the recipes worth mentioning:
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This Good Morning Smoothie isn’t exactly a recipe, but it sure does make me happy. I don’t think measuring ingredients is necessary here. I use spinach, apples, bananas, milk (I use coconut or almond milk), yogurt and a drizzle of honey for mine. The great thing about a smoothie is that you can add or omit anything and make it your own.
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These Pink Velvet Cupcakes are actually Paula Deen’s Red Velvet Cupcakes. Since I ran out of red food coloring, I decided that pink was more accurate. Either way, it’s a good cupcake recipe to have in your collection. Also worth noting, I happen to know that they’re rather forgiving if you need to substitute some of the all-purpose flour with self-rising.
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Our Crock Pot was a show-stealer this week – thank goodness for that! We have several stuffed pepper recipes that we really like; I wasn’t really searching for another. On a whim, I decided to check out this slow cooker version. They were delicious and this was so much easier than making stuffed peppers the traditional way.
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Slow Cooker Mac and Cheese – In all fairness, this mac and cheese was good. I was perfectly happy with the flavor and texture, despite the bad picture. The problem is that I bought ingredients for this specific recipe, but the website was down when I needed to start the slow cooker that day. I had to completely guess the instructions. I’ll try it again soon and actually follow the recipe to see if I get better results.
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I’m the only person in my family who likes mushrooms. Because of that, I find myself bringing these Garlic Parmesan Ranch Mushrooms along to potlucks. I was happy to have another potluck this week just so I’d have an excuse to make them. Y’all, these are soooo yummy. I’d like to pretend that I did something complicated to make them, but they’re just another ridiculously easy crockpot recipe.