Monthly Archives: October 2014

A Busy Day

Finally Friday

Busy Day ~ LifeOfJoy.meOk, I’ll admit it, I like movies and television shows. I especially like sci-fi shows. But please tell me why all of the good shows have to be on the same two nights! Well, I guess it is three nights. Then, because we don’t have cable or satellite, there are some that we have to watch online because we don’t get the channel.  It’s always happy sad when a series ends – happy because hopefully the characters you wanted together finally got together but sad because it is over. I like it when after the series is over the same characters make a movie to either continue or wrap up loose ends. I do not like it when a series is left hanging. :(

Tiffany and I caught up on  a few shows we hadn’t seen in a while. We like Once Upon A Time, The Mentalist, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., The Blacklist, NCIS, NCIS: LA, Arrow, Doctor Who, and Castle, not sure about Person of Interest any more but still watching it, and Elementary; I like White Collar. We are way way behind on Bones, as we stopped watching it when there was some sleeping around going on but I’m told they stopped that, so we will probably try to catch up on it at some point. I miss Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles and Fringe. There are a few that I never saw when aired but liked them when we found them online to watch (I think we started watching them on Netflix or Amazon Prime), Farscape and Eureka.

I’m liking the new shows Forever and scorpion; I hope they make it. I’m told Chuck was good, so we may be looking for that to watch on some online service since it is over too. We used to like Survivor and Amazing Race but just got tired of all that and their backstabbing and we’ve never really been into the singing shows. We did like America’s got talent for a bit but got tired of it too, because singers kept winning and there are shows for singing talents; we wanted to see other talents. ;)

It Begins . . .

Tiffany went out this morning to feed the animals and found the chickens were out of the coop because Phillipe started chasing her. She made it back in before he attacked her; he’s got some huge talons. So the normal procedure is to let them free range throughout the day and then in the evening they will go back in the coop and someone will go out and close the coop up.

Mike and I went out to dinner with Brian and Lauren. It’s fun and inexpensive. We go for their $14.99 four course meal and split it: Mike eats the salad, I eat the soup, we split the Alfredo and dessert. We eat for $20 and Brian and Lauren eat for $20. Cheap date night! Nice fellowship. It’s worth the effort to get our hermitish (Is that even a word?) selves out of the house for a bit.

So we came home and checked to see if the kids had remembered to close the coop, when I spied some black little piles across the back yard. Then I saw Max, our big black dog – he’d gotten off his chain and had attacked the chickens. All were dead and four are MIA. We’ll see if we have any left in the morning. Very sad and troubling!!! I think Max will be moved to a friends’ place where there are 900 acres to roam; he’ll like that better than being chained up because he is a free spirit that adopted us several years ago. One day a neighbor came and asked if he was our dog (not really but we have a house he can sleep in and give him food) and proceeded to inform us that if he saw him on his property again he was going to shoot him because he’d eaten an entire 40 pound bag of dog food he’d just gotten. So, for his own good and because he was such a loveable sort, we chained him up. He has not liked that, so I’m sure he’ll be happy for the move.

Our church has a conference next week. Tiffany and I are helping in the kitchen. We went to help clean the kitchen this morning . . . it is now sparkling clean. We had a great group of volunteers. Since the conference is next week, I made a menu to get us through the conference and then to Tuesday of the next week and I ended up making the menus for four weeks total. Then I’m making salads for three days of the conference, so now I have to make my grocery list before we run our errands. I’m tired just thinking about it. ;)

I also have to do my nails, since the conference is next week. I like to have pretty nails; gel nails last for about two weeks and they make my nails more durable, which is a plus when working in a kitchen. I love to have my nails done but hate taking the time to do them. Since I wait so long to do them, my nails need a lot of attention and it ends up taking me close to two hours to get my fingernails and toenails finished but it must be done. ;)

Well, it’s been a long busy day (yes, I’m doing this post on Thursday night at 9 pm) so, I’m going to go for now. Have a great weekend!

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

UPDATE:  The four MIA chickens survived last night’s massacre! Yay!!!

Nature Walks, Scavenger Hunts, and More

Thoughtful Thursday

Hunt: Mushroom ~ LifeOfJoy.meI’ve got some fun links for you today, some of which are a bit older but perfect for this time of year. I’ll start with Nature Walks. This first link has 19 different ideas for things to look for while on a nature walk. The ideas are good for a large span of ages . . . ok, they are good for any age. ;) 19 Nature Walk Ideas

Next up is a printable Outdoor Scavenger Hunt. It has boxes where the child can draw/sketch what they found. There are specific items to look for like a flower or cloud, sensory items to look for, like something rough or wet, and more. It’s really neat printable that you could use all at once or just do parts of it at a time, using the one printable for several different walks. Outdoor Scavenger Hunt

This one is a really neat one for the youngest ones. This one is a bit different because you are focusing on sounds rather than sights. I’m sure you could adapt it for older ones too. Sound Walk

This last link is the jackpot; It has 40+ links for different Nature Walk posts and printables. There are links to an I Spy with Wild Animal Clues, a Paper Bag Nature Journal, finding shapes in nature, more listening/sound walks, sensory hunts, writing prompts and much more!  N is For Nature Walks

Indoor Scavenger Hunts

Here’s a fun way to do some work with math facts. Math Post-It Note Scavenger Hunt Following the links in her post led me to other post-it note hunts she did with her son. One is this Scrambled Story that she created from online printables from DLTK, which then led her to make her Hidden Story Scramble. I like that she does all this with her child after he gets home from school. :)

The author of the math hunt got the idea from this hunt. Sentence Building Hunt  She took a sentence and wrote one word on each post-it note, hid them in a defined space and had her kids hunt for them When they found them they talked about what part of speech each word was and formed it into a sentence. It might be fun to see how many different sentences could be made with the same words.

Charts/Grids

On the same site with the math post-it note scavenger hunt, I found some activities for working with charts. Although I cannot access the site that she got the idea from, she said the originator used site words. She used the names of the Crayola crayons. Colors Word Roll

Then she made a treasure map chart and hid clues, making it another hunt. :) Treasure Map

Bonus Link and Article

If you can take the time to put in a little bit more effort, this site has some really good game ideas to make to help with review and drill work. Games For Learning

And I will leave you with an interesting article about the fidgety child and helping them focus on learning. One thing I found interesting that the author said was that the fidgety child has to focus so hard on being still that he/she cannot focus on leaning. Helping the Fidgety Child Focus and Learn

That’s all for today, so until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº

Diva Challenge #187 Blind String

Wonder Wednesday

iamthedivaczt

This week’s challenge, #187, is a blind string challenge. I cannot remember making a blind string before. I was surprised that my string ended up smaller than I anticipated.

Blind String #187 ~ LifeOfJoy.me

 

At first I thought I might just draw some ‘beads’ on the string but then I had more spaces to fill. I filled one with Hurry and then one with Nipa. That left a lot of white space and just didn’t seem finished. So I added more ‘rings’ around the bottom section to try and fill it out a bit.

 

 

Red String ~ LifeOfJoy.me

 

 

The red line is the string I drew. I was frustrated when I realized I didn’t scan my string first. I used a program and drew over the string with red, so it could be seen. As you can see, it was a bit compressed leaving a lot of white space, maybe the next time I try a blind string I’ll get it a little larger. What’s the worst thing that can happen? I could go off the tile but that could be interesting too. :)

Until next time, God bless,

Michele ºÜº