I have been wanting to have a craft group to do one of Craft Hope's projects for a while now. Craft Hope is a blog with a major impact. Blogger, Jade, has projects regularly and tens of thousands of crafters make things and send them in to be dispersed all over the world.
So, finally, when Project 23 came out, I decided to get together with some of my MOPS mommas and have a mini sewing party. This project was for pillowcases dresses to be sent all over... to a school in Jordan, an orphanage in Costa Rica, Tanzania, and more. We came together for gumbo and snacks and got to work.
We had 6 women and 4 sewing machines going at a time!
In the end, we made 11 dresses ready to be shipped! We tried to make a wide variety of sizes, following this amazing guide of sizing info and more.
We hope this spreads some love to 11 little girls!
In the past, I have done a lot of freezer meal preparations on my own. I have even done a few meal swaps with other moms. Thanks to Pinterest and wonderful food bloggers, there is a crazy amount of information about this online. I have a close friend who is 7 months pregnant with 3 kids. She really wanted to do a freezer meal cooking marathon to alleviate some household duties and, conveniently, my freezer was running low. I ran out of chicken stock for the first time in.... I don't even know how long. I ALWAYS have it on hand.
We talked about what common meals we typically prepare for our families and I shared my experiences with projects like these. We went to the newly opened New Orleans Costco to see what products they offer for this endeavor since we needed some bulk shopping prices. After browsing for FOUR HOURS, with our FIVE KIDS... we started to formulate a plan.
We decided on 2 meats... chicken and ground beef. Mostly because Costco has organic options for these 2. The chickens are sold in 2 packs of whole chickens and the ground beef is sold in 3 packs of 1.3 lb sections (basically 4 lbs). With these 2, we would make Chicken and Dumplings, Chicken Pot Pie, Baked Cheesy Chicken Penne, Beef Enchiladas, Shepherd's Pie, and Baked Ravioli. Also, we would cook some extra chickens just to shred and be able to pull out to make chicken salad sandwiches, or to put on a salad, or to throw in anything else, something I love having on hand and recommended. We also decided to prepare Bacon Shallot Quiches and Chocolate Chip Cookies.
After feeling like my brain was going to explode making the shopping lists, I decided to start putting everything into a spreadsheet. It made everything so much easier. I just entered the ingredients, quantities, and units of measurement. This made it easy to enter how many recipes we were preparing and multiply, then reorganize the list to combine everything. The master lists:
The grocery shopping lists:
All food items were purchased at Costco and Whole Foods. From Costco, I purchased the chicken, ground beef, bacon, cheddar cheese, onions, chocolate chips, frozen organic veggies, butter, eggs, and organic spaghetti sauce.
Seriously. 10 whole chickens.
Two at a time, into my huge stock pot they went! For every 2 chickens, I added 4 whole carrots, 4 celery stalks, 4 onions, 20 whole peppercorns, 2 tablespoons of salt, and 4 whole dried bay leaves.
Then covered with water - about 20 cups is what my pot would allow. I bring it to a boil over medium-high, cover and lower to about medium-low for 2 hours. This should typically yield 32 cups of chicken stock, so after the chicken cooks thoroughly and is removed, I add the remaining 12 cups of water to the vegetables.
Every time we had chickens cooking, I prepared another dish while waiting. So the first night, after grocery shopping for hours for everything we needed, I went with the easiest dish. Unfortunately, this is the only picture like this that I took. I really intended on taking more photos, but just got too busy. We had our hands full cooking so much with 5 kids running around. Whole Foods has these organic cheese raviolis in their freezer section and we layer meat sauce, ravioli, meat sauce, cheese, ravioli, meat sauce, cheese. Buying as much cheese as we needed, we went with blocks of cheese and shredded or grated it all with my food processor. It didn't save us much money, but anything that we could cut, we did. My friend has a larger family so we did two 13x9 pans for her and four 8x8 pans for me. We did foil pans just to make this whole project easier. After filling pans, we covered in freezer paper, wrapped in foil, labeled with instructions, and put in gallon sized ziploc bags or wrapped the larger pans in plastic wrap.
After assembling the ravioli dishes, the chicken was done. We shredded the chicken and froze to keep on hand. To the stock, we added the water, strained and divided the stock into 8 quart-sized bags. The onions and carrots also got puréed and saved in bags to add as hidden vegetables to dishes (works best with ground beef dishes).
Our full day of cooking, we put 2 chickens in and in the meantime, started working on quiches. We made 6 quiches - 2 for each of us and one for us to eat each day of cooking. Seriously. They're that good. I have added garlic to this recipe in the past and it has been delicious. It slipped my mind this time. Costco had this bacon that was SO GOOD. Being that quiches are liquid, we flash froze these until hardened, covered in freezer paper, wrapped in foil, labeled and put into ziploc bags.
When the chicken was done, we shredded it and used the stock to make chicken and dumplings. We cooked 2 of these recipes. The only difference is we used 16 cups of stock instead of 12. We didn't do the dumplings. Instead, we measured and froze the dry ingredients, ready for the half and half to be added and dropped into the dish once heated. The 2 whole recipes were divided up into 4 gallon sized ziploc bags. One recipe usually feeds our families and has leftovers, so we divided it and the dumpling mix for 4 meals.
We put the next 2 chickens in and while they were cooking, we worked on shepherds pie. I get a lot of freezer meal ideas from Once a Month Meals. Even if I don't fully stick to the recipe, I use her blog to reference how to freeze and reheat meals. Instead of any cream soups, we made an onion mushroom gravy with a butter roux, chicken stock, and a little heavy cream. We mixed the ground beef with the gravy. The layers went ground beef/gravy mixture, frozen mixed veggies, whipped mashed potatoes, and topped with shredded cheddar cheese. We did two 13x9 pans of shepherds pie. I intended on two 8x8 pans but they were too shallow for this dish.
When the next 2 chickens were done, we shredded them for chicken pot pies. Whole Foods has whole wheat organic pie crusts in their freezer section. Before our next freezer meal endeavor, I plan on testing making our own pie crust from scratch, but was not up to testing for this round. Instead of using 2 cups of frozen veggies like in this recipe, we used one pound for each recipe. We assembled 4 chicken pot pies. And we used this seasoning mix. It is SO yummy! We flash froze until hardened, covered in freezer paper, wrapped in foil, and put in gallon sized freezer bags.
After cooking 4 chickens for the day, we had some stock leftover from what was used for the day's recipes. Enough to fill 9 quart sized bags. That was a wrap for our one real full day of cooking that our schedules allowed.
The next morning, I was able to fix 2 more chickens and the enchilada dish after bad weather caused my plans to cancel. While the chickens were going, I browned another 3 pack of ground beef and doubled the enchilada sauce from this recipe. This was the one time that my quantities were off. We calculated that this would make two 13x9 pans (10 enchiladas each) and four 8x8 pans (5 enchiladas each). We only got three 8x8 pans though. No biggie. I layered enchilada sauce, rolled enchiladas (seam down), covered in enchilada sauce, then topped with shredded cheddar cheese. When done, the chickens were shredded for the next dish and the stock set aside.
The last day, I put the last 2 chickens in and in the meantime made this chicken Alfredo dish with the shredded chicken from the previous day. I have done it before, but I don't do the sun dried tomatoes for this dish. I do add spinach though. This time I used frozen whole leaf spinach, but I have sautéed fresh spinach to add to this dish in the past. This filled 3 8x8 pans and 1 13x9 pan. The last 2 chickens were shredded and frozen for later use.
In the end, this is what I stocked in my freezer. Not pictured is the shredded chicken, 5 other frozen quarts of chicken stock, the cookies, pureed onions and carrots from the stock, and 3 gallons of chicken stock that will be used this week for different dishes. This is what is in my freezer only. There is also a huge stash in my friend's freezer. Marathon was a success!
I wanted to briefly update on our home classroom space. We quickly outgrew our little hallway classroom when we started Classical Conversations. This new space was already set up like this with the mantle, table, and chairs. It was not used for schoolwork - just crafts and snacks mostly. It is basically in our "great" room though, so I am trying to make it match the surrounding decor. "Great" room sounds silly - we have a small house, but through some renovations, we have opened the floor plan significantly so our living room, dining room, and kitchen are mostly one undivided space, other than structural necessities.
I bought a few Deka hanging systems from Ikea and use them to display the subject matter for the week. On it, I hang worksheets, visual aids, mini timeline cards, maps, and our science and history acts and facts cards. I love that I can clearly see what all we have going on and can just pull things off the clips when ready to use.
I finally came up with a system for cumulative reviewing. I have this little photo box that has 4 sections that you can pull out. I pulled up images of fabrics used in my living room and printed for the outside of the box. The 4 sections each have 6 weeks of material for me to reference when quizzing Blaine. They have all material we have learned and mini maps for the geography for each week. Then I hand cut envelope pockets from some coordinating scrapbook paper I had in my hoarder closet that I have mentioned before in a previous post. I printed squares for all 24 weeks of curriculum with subjects for each (I will add as the weeks go by). All they have are week numbers and subject so I can reuse them for all 3 cycles. We divided the squares up between the 5 envelopes and will pull them out throughout the day to go over material. I am trying to think of a way to make it fun - probably reward stickers to go with it. I'll figure it out, but I feel like our homeschool is lacking rewards and discipline. I am also considering something along the lines of a red/yellow/green light to go along with a reward system.
On the mantle, I keep our globe, review box (for my reference), supplies, and random things pertaining to our schoolwork. I've been trying to get the kids to say the Pledge of Allegiance lately, so I framed the flag to go above it. Last 6 weeks, our science studies focused on ecology, but we are about to start some astronomy, so we have the telescope out and ready!
Opposite this area is a roll top desk with my desktop computer on it. It is very convenient to sit Blaine at the table and direct his attention to the computer for expansion YouTube videos.
I am still trying to get a loose routine going for us. I just can't seem to figure that part out. I'm still not sure that I want to. I feel like a major bonus of homeschooling is that you don't have to set alarms, but I am trying to figure out what to designate for certain days/times. I also have to work around the things on our weekly/bi-weekly schedule of CC, MOPS, PE, Little Friends Club, and basic errands. All of this while retaining flexibility. These first 6 weeks of CC, I feel like I've at least partially figured out what works for Blaine and what doesn't, so I'm hoping by the end of these next 6 weeks, I will get more of a feel for our rhythm.
I've always asked Jason to take me camping, but I think he has been worried about me complaining or not being able to handle it or just being too high-maintenance... "indoorsy". Jason grew up camping a lot, so I couldn't blame his skepticism. Well, he finally agreed to a family camping trip! We packed up the truck and headed to Chattanooga!
We camped on Raccoon Mountain in Chattanooga. Our trip started off with Blaine starting a fire with hot embers left behind by previous campers in our fire ring while Jason and I set up the tent. He kept dumping leaves and twigs in it until we turned around and saw flames. He's a (dangerous) camper at heart.
Here's our 2 cutest campers posing in front of our tent, with the first of many rocks to be added to their "collections." Yes, our 2 and 4 year olds collect indigenous rocks from various places of wonder in New Orleans.... like parking lots and people's yards.
Once setting up camp, we took off to do some exploring, setting our sights first on the Raccoon Mountain Cave. Here are my 3 favorite people outside the cave's entrance and a few poorly lit iPhone photos of us inside.
After, we decided to check out Rock City on Lookout Mountain. This place was amazing. It is 14 acres of a self-guided trail over stone bridges, swinging bridges, around waterfalls, and through slim openings between huge rocks.
To the people who follow me on Facebook and Instagram: this was the closest resemblance to a #vivifit for the whole trip! YES!
The view from the top was beautiful!
Apparently the view was not enough for this idiot to get off his phone. Seriously, I just had to capture this. What an amazing view completely ignored.
Day 1 was a success! We went back to camp and the kids helped Jason start a fire (on purpose).
We put Blaine and Vivienne toe-to-toe on an adult-sized cot in their sleeping bags.
And I know this might negate some of our cool camper family "street credit"....errr.... "forest credit".... but I put a movie on the iPad and put it in the mesh sling on the ceiling of the tent. This kept our little campers satisfied with some night time entertainment once the rain came and kept us from enjoying sitting by the campfire.
Other than the first night's light rain, the nights were cool, the sky clear, and there were fireflies! Perfection!
On the second day, we went to the Chattanooga Choo Choo. I didn't know there was such rail road history in Chattanooga, but with my newfound obsession of the show Hell on Wheels, this was a very exciting discovery.
Next we went to Ruby Falls, a 145 foot waterfall that is 1120 feet underground inside Lookout Mountain. We stopped nearby and had some lunch at the cutest little spot.
We took an elevator down and walked through the cave to the waterfall.
A very cooperative photo of Jason and the kids....
When you first enter the "room" where the waterfall is, there are no lights. The guide gave us a short description of the room and switched the lights on and Vivienne's eyes widened and she said, "beautiful!" How cute?!
We got back to our camp and Jason got out his remote-controlled truck. The kids love it!
Again, we lit a campfire, cooked dinner and had s'mores... quickly becoming the kids favorite dessert.
The third day, we took a ride on the Incline Railway, a street car trolley that goes up a 72.6 degree INCLINE up Lookout Mountain!
At the top of the railway, there is an observation deck with yet another beautiful view!
photo credit: Blaine
And just a short walk away, there was Point Park, a Military National Park honoring both Confederate and Union troops for the Civil War's Battles of Chattanooga and Chickamauga. Of course, being a national park, our discovery of the government shutdown occurred here.
But, I did get a picture of these guys outside with a cannon before leaving.
On our last full day, we started with a trip to the Tennessee Valley Railroad. We took a 6 mile round-trip on a train. We learned about the role of the railroad in American history and development. Especially, the importance during the Civil War and Battles for Chattanooga. And although we rode by way of diesel, Jason and I did get to see steam engines and channel our inner Cullen Bohannon and Lily Bell. The kids really enjoyed the train ride.
Tickets please!
Watching the engine turning around at the end of the line.
From here, we took a long ride after lunch, just soaking up the beautiful scenery.
And we eventually stumbled upon the beautiful Chattanooga Arboretum and Nature Center. This place is amazing - over 300 acres of trails for walking, hiking, and even driving. We walked the shortest trail that brought us to a beautiful tree house!
There was canoeing available from this launch site, but we were too late in the day.
Blaine playing a wooden xylophone with an animal bone.
We opted for driving the Reflection Riding section since this was the last stop for us and the kids were not up for such a walk. There were several spots to pull off and enjoy, which we did. There was horse pasture and Vivienne was so excited!
We also came across some wild turkeys but didn't get a picture.
We really enjoyed this vacation! I can't wait to go back and do some more intense hiking with Blaine and Vivienne when they get older. The kids said their favorite parts were sleeping in a tent, starting fires, and eating s'mores! Overall, we all left as happy campers.
