Cardamom's Pod

Wow – how can it be 12 days since I posted?  Real life has been a-goin’ on over here, folks!
Oh, yeah – now I remember – we set a new family record for the number of days in a row having people over – 9 days straight – mostly different people each day with a [...]

Through the years, in the process of learning how to schedule our family, I have tried many different things.  I have asked friends to share their schedules with me so I can glean ideas.  I’ve bought scheduling books, and looked things up on the internet.  I’ve fussed and fumed, scribbled on hundreds of sheets of [...]

“Don’t forget to set your clocks back/forward this weekend!” We hear this in spring and fall here in the United States. Personally, I think life would be much simpler if we didn’t have to think about moving the clocks twice a year – much less which way.  (Just remember “Spring forward, and Fall [...]

I had already planned to post this as a tongue-in-cheek WFMW tip, and then I saw the theme for this week was tips on cleaning!  Don’t my boys come up with the neatest ideas?
You have to admit this could work…

I do have other (real) WFMW tips – go to We Are THAT Family for [...]

A few months ago I stumbled across a quick way to thaw 2 quarts of chicken stock I had in a tall glass container. I had forgotten to take the stock out of the freezer, and needed it for soup – fast.
I placed the jar in an 8-quart pasta cooker – the kind that [...]

This great shelf was given to us by friends who run a Christian preschool/daycare center.  It solved a lot of problems for organizing our homeschool supplies.  Each of our 9 children has their own personal cubby, decorated with permanent markers, on the upper right.  Mom has one on the left, and the other cubbies hold [...]

We eat a lot of eggs.  A LOT.  We used to eat a dozen when we scrambled eggs, but now we’ve upped that to a minimum of 18 eggs – 14 if we’re skimping.  But one thing I usually didn’t do was a lot of hard-boiled eggs.  Why?  WORK!!!
There’s a lot of tips out there [...]

What?! Is that a typing error?  Well, I let my children make some tests for each other, and that’s my tip for today’s back-to-school themed edition of Works For Me Wednesday.
I stumbled on this a few years ago and it has become a great help to me in our homeschooling.  I used to draw informal [...]

When money gets tight – really tight – we implement a couple of tips to immediately drop our grocery bill.  Actually we try to live this way as much as possible, but we also try to be balanced and realistic.
If it’s pre-packaged – like tortillas, chips, cookies, noodles, cereal, breads, corned beef hash, whatever – [...]

For the last week I’ve been letting my 2 year old play with these blocks and she’s already recognizing letters!  These are from my rarely used Word Launch by LeapFrog.  The sturdy plastic letter tiles that come with this game fit nicely into a recessed cardboard alphabet storage tray.  The blocks only fit one way [...]