Veronica Boulden

We decorated for Christmas the day after Thanksgiving. We like to take the extra time we have around the Thanksgiving holiday to get the Christmas decorating done. Our Advent traditions include adding an ornament to the Christmas tree every night of December leading up to Christmas Day, so we like to have the set tree up for that before December even starts.    I've got Christmas-themed pillows and blankets that come out only for this season. They make the cold days more comfortable.  We keep our collection of Christmas books tucked away with the Christmas decorations in the attic. When these books come out of storage each year, the girls find them irresistible. Throughout December, the books stay under the tree, so we can all read them through the month of December (or as long as the tree stays up, which is sometimes through February!)  My mom gave us a beautiful Christmas hat box a few years ago. We keep it near the tree, and it's the perfect place to store all those Christma

  Dwayne converted our family's old spinet piano into the most lovely writing desk.  (Fear not. This piano was pretty much worthless when we tore it apart.)  We were thankful to have it. It was an answer to prayer. And the girls used it hours everyday for years.  But when we were given an excellent grand piano and were trying to decide what to do with this old spinet, our piano teacher and tuner worked up the courage to admit that it was probably best to just throw it out; It had such poor sound quality and went out of tune constantly, so it would not be a blessing to anyone.  (And knowing how often we had to pay to tune it, we knew this to be quite true.)  So as we were discussing taking it to the landfill, our oldest daughter suggested we turn it into a desk instead.  She had seen pictures of old pianos converted into desks online.  She still had a fondness for this old piano since she'd learned to play on it.  And she wants to be writer.  So we thought if we could make it in

 Chop equal parts onion, celery, carrots, and mushrooms. (Example: 1 cup each) Saute in butter until they begin to soften. The mushrooms will release most of their moisture and it needs to cook away. Stir consistently so nothing burns.  Add ample chicken broth.  Bring to a boil and let this simmer for five-ten minutes.  Add cooked brown rice and sliced or shredded chicken breast.  You could add uncooked rice and chopped, raw chicken, but keep the amounts small. For instance, with two quarts of stock, I'd add a cup of uncooked rice and only one chicken breast, chopped. You'll also need to add a little more liquid (water or broth or a combination), since the rice will soak it up. If you are cooking rice and chicken as you go, bring your soup back to a boil and cook for several minutes until the rice and chicken are totally done.  Salt generously and add parsley and black pepper to taste.  Enjoy with crackers.  Freeze leftovers for a rainy day. This is a great soup to thaw and re

For brunch, we had omelets made-to-order. Dwayne has the gift of omelet making. My omelets usually become scrambled eggs.  Since most of the casseroles and sides were prepped the day before, we spent the day reading, mostly. We took some time to call our parents, too.   We came in and out of the kitchen periodically, putting this or that into the oven at the right time.  I put the girls in charge of decorating the table. You can see what they came up with in the pictures.  After dinner, we read aloud from Narnia, cleaned the kitchen, and watched two more episodes of The Chosen before heading to bed. 

  I have several recipes: soups, quiche, casseroles, that require chopped ham.   So instead of paying a premium for separate ham steaks every time I need ham, I buy a larger ham way ahead of time when it is one sale, slice it into 8-12 portions that are 7-12 ounces each, and freeze these so that I can thaw them as needed.  We often do this with ground beef, too.  We get a better deal on the larger container of ground. Then we bring it home and portion it into 1 pound bags that we freeze and thaw as needed.  Buying meat in bulk is a way to save some money... and time and trouble, too.  We also try to keep an excess of the non-perishable items in the pantry, stuff that we always use like flour, canned tomatoes, and beans.  With portions of meats in my freezer and most non-perishables we use stocked on my shelves, some weeks I only need to buy a few things because I already have a lot of the main and basics ingredients on hand. As I plan my meals each week, I inventory my stores, shoppin

It's the day before Thanksgiving and we've got a feast planned tomorrow.  So I spent the day gathering ingredients, reading recipes, planning cook times and temps, and prepping the dishes.  It was a full day in the kitchen with an audio book on my headphones (Augustine's City of God for the third time).  It was a few sinks full of dirty dishes, and three whole cycles of the dish washer.  I prepped the stuffing and four casseroles, not all shown here.  I chopped the potatoes for mashed potatoes and shredded the cheese for mac and cheese.  I planned and prepped our Thanksgiving brunch- omelets to order.  And to boot, I even made banana nut bread with some overripe bananas.  I've got the cooking schedule planned so that everything should be done on or about the same time.  We're ready for a relaxing day tomorrow, since all the thinking and planning has been done.  We need only follow the plan.  It was a full, fulfilling day in the kitchen.  After twenty years of keepi

"The hardest part of homeschooling is that it is so boring." So said my brilliant, virtuous, talented, devoted, homeschooling mom-friend one afternoon over a cup of piping hot anise tea.  But she didn't speak the words as a confession; She spoke them as a fact, the most obvious observation between peers. So I haven't forgotten her words or how they stunned me at the time.  She and I were both learners, so we had the best conversations.  But she had receive an unparalleled education when she was young.  I was much farther behind her intellectually.  So at the time, I would have agreed if she had said, "Laundry is so boring."  I had enough mastery over my laundry that it felt mundane. But as far as Classical Christian homeschooling went for me then, I was still far too unsure of myself, too uncertain of what I was doing, and even why I was doing it that way to assent to my friend's statement.  I did not have enough intellectual margin to consider anything

Classical Conversations Foundations students learn basic music theory with the tin whistle.  I'm tutoring a Foundations class this year, and we're in the middle of our six weeks of tin whistle for this year.  As a Christmas gift to each student, I've made a book of thirteen tin whistle Christmas songs for each student in my class.  I made the copies of sheet music, drew a cover and then made colored copies of it for each book.   My Foundations director let me borrow her binder, use some of her supplies, and showed me how to put the books together. (Thanks, Rachel!) I already had the sheet music for several Christmas songs accumulated over our previous ten years in Foundations, but I got several more off  the new CC Connected.  I plan to give these books as Christmas gifts to my students when we break for Christmas; That's right at the end of our six weeks of tin whistle.  I wanted to give an educational, useful, thoughtful, enriching, handmade gift that also didn'

Adele is in  Paint Your Way Through Medieval History and Literature . Once a week at a certain time, she meets with her art teacher and her art class live and online to discuss a story from The Middle Ages and complete an art project that goes along with that story.  The students are given a suggested reading list ahead of time, but the reading is not required.   Specific titles and authors in the suggested reading list have included:  King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green One Thousand and One Arabian Nights by Geraldine McCaughrean Queen Eleanor: Independent Spirit of the Medieval World by Polly Brooks The Adventures of Robin Hood by Roger Lancelyn Green The Magna Carta by James Daugherty  We managed the reading in ways that worked for our schedule and budget:  I had already read  King Arthur and The Nights of the Round Table to the girls a few year ago, so we just skipped that title, since Adele was already familiar with the stories.  I already h

Adele's in a pottery class at Change co-op. She's made some adorable projects.  A coffee mug I promptly put to use An owl with a top hat (Adele named him Mr. Darcy) "Bob the fish" An adorable paper-clip holder A pumpkin just in time for fall A decorative bowl  

I'm illustrating favorite quotes from The Intellectual Life  by Sertillanges, which may be my favorite book now. I'll give them as gifts to some students I know and love. 

The girls asked us to watch their play. They got the idea from a recent play at church plus Adele's research on Da Vinci for a Foundations presentation. They know how to make their own fun. God forbid they are ever too cool for this kind of thing.