Something's Cooking in the Classroom

Today the Drama Queen helped me make a fantastic homemade potato salad and bake hamburger buns. We worked out problems with fractions as we measured the flour and sugar. We talked about the parts of an egg and where eggs come from as I showed her the proper method to hard-boil an egg. She practiced her reading with the recipes we were following. As we rolled out the dough, she tried to think of as many adjectives as she could to describe the texture and appearance of the dough. "Squishy, sticky, smooth, tan, stretchy," she chanted as she used an empty tuna can to cut out the buns. We practiced important life skills, such as cleaning up the kitchen as we used various utensils and being aware of the dangers of hot stoves and sharp objects.

All of this was my attempt, in part, to rethink my homeschooling methods and make school "fun again" for my little girl. In the past few weeks, I have received a lot of resistance from the Drama Queen when it came down to getting schoolwork done. Math papers that should have taken minutes stretched out over hours, with tears and sighs and lots of distracted behavior. I would get frustrated and try everything I had in my arsenal to "hurry her along" and get the schooling done for the day.

But I came to realize that the success of homeschooling is not measured by how many worksheets a child does in a year, or how many books she has read, or how many painstaking sentences she has written. No, one of the main reasons we chose to homeschool our daughter this year was so that we could capitalize on her passions and help prepare her to live life armed with the skills that God has already put inside her. My daughter loves helping out in the kitchen - who knew it would be such an easy and natural "classroom" for us today? And with this new restrictive diet that our family has undertaken for the Beast's sake, I am spending more time in the kitchen anyway preparing the foods that we are able to eat.

Tonight, our entire family sat at the dinner table, savoring homemade ranch burgers and delicious potato salad, while the Drama Queen regaled us with all the details of just how she had made the buns and how Momma had let her use a knife to cut up the potatoes. I smiled at her eagerness and watched her little legs swing away under the table as she polished off all her food and asked for more. "Momma, I hope I get to go to cookery school again tomorrow," she announced. "It was so much fun!"

Stick a Fork In It - Making an Easy Kitchen Valance

When we first looked at this house as a possible rental, I remember staring at the kitchen counters and thinking, "Wow! those counters are pink!" Not just any pink - a Pepto Bismol sort of pink that had faded over the years. I tried and tried to make my current chili pepper kitchen theme work with those counters. It was a lost cause. I decided to embrace the pink and decorate my kitchen in a retro theme.

I remembered seeing an article in a home magazine somewhere (sorry, have no idea which one) that you could make hooks for your kitchen wall using old forks. That article was my inspiration for my new kitchen valance, along with some fabulous pink/red/white silverware fabric.

To make your own valance with fork hooks, you will need:

*fabric to match your kitchen ( I needed 2 yards for my long kitchen window)

*several old forks with pretty designs on the handles ( I bought mine at a local thrift shop for 20 cents a piece)

*thread to match the fabric

*iron

1. First, make your fork hooks. i thought I would need some kind of pliers for this task, but apparently pure arm strength was enough. I just bent the hooks in half until I liked the way they looked, making sure to keep the pretty handle design on the outside of the hook.

Here's another view of my fork hooks.

2. Then, make the valance. Measure the length of your kitchen window and add 2 inches. Decide how far down your window you want your valance to hang and then cut your piece of fabric, making sure to leave extra length for seams. Save the rest of your fabric for making ties.

Iron the seams flat on each side of the valance panel before stitching them.

3. Next, cut some of your fabric into strips. Fold them in half, ironing in place. Use a zig zag stitch to stitch all along each strip. Hand stitch each strip to the valance at the half-way point of each strip. Space the ties evenly along the top of your valance. (I used five).


4. Mount your fork hooks by placing a nail with a large head where each hook will go, hammering it in until only 1/4 inch of the nail sticks out. Simply slide the fork tines up on the nail until the hook is secure. Tie your valance to the the fork hooks, and voila! a unique and cheerful statement has been added to your kitchen!

I used more forks (even some serving forks) on my kitchen wall as towel hooks. Super easy and super cute!