One movie we did finish, but only because it was a simple topic that could be documented in one shot: How to Slice and Dice Onions… the SMART Way! Click on over to gnowfglins to see that one.

Today, we are going to take more movies of the topics I mentioned before. Even though I am worn out a bit  from all our showing and telling… I am thankful to be able to share — and very happy that now I have a clean kitchen to enjoy. I had to clean it and declutter it in order to share our view!

I’m looking at the latex mattresses from Soaring Heart Natural Bed Company. They’re in Seattle, Washington. I have a couple of friends who’ve chosen crib mattresses from this bed company. Here’s a bit about the latex, quoting from their website:

Nature’s answer to memory foam, latex is remarkably supportive and forgiving at the same time, so it conforms to your shape and cradles you as you sleep. But unlike memory foam mattresses, it doesn’t require your body heat to make it work. It contours to your body instantly, and it recovers instantly, so you never have to dig yourself out of your own body impression in order to roll over.

Plus, latex is non-offgassing (both natural latex and synthetic latex are inert), so you don’t have to worry about any toxic fumes overcoming you while you sleep. Even very sensitive people tend not to have reactions to our latex mattresses, but if you’re concerned about any potential allergy, please call or email us and request a free sample kit.

Latex lasts a surprisingly long time without any noticeable change in quality: 100% natural Dunlop latex lasts 10-15 years or more, blended Talalay latex (our favorite) lasts 20-25 years!

Latex is also mold resistant, fungus resistant, and dust mite resistant, so sleeping on latex is clean, hygienic, and can help reduce respiratory allergies.

The Dunlop process of making latex uses 100% natural rubber, while the Talalay process uses a blend of natural with synthetic rubber. The Talalay process produces a longer lasting mattress with a 20 year, non-prorated warranty. For more information, see Which Natural Fibers are Used and Why? at Soaring Heart Natural Bed Company.

I should also mention that Jeff hasn’t reviewed the particulars of this choice yet, even though he has listened to me go on and on about it. But anyway, here’s the mattress we’ve (I’ve) picked: 7″ latex and wool mattress. Our friend has offered to help us build a platform bed for it. Bring it on!

Our days are back to the normal chores and minimal summer schooling. Haniya is so excited about her One Year Novel curriculum and also Teaching Textbooks Math 6 that she’s begun those already. That doesn’t surprise me. With all I’ve told the kids, they’re all quite excited to begin the school year. Many of our new books aren’t here yet though (and I’m glad because I still need the time off).

The kids spend most of their time with the goats. What a reunion! There is happiness all around with both the peope-kids and the goat-kids.

Jeff is very, very, very overloaded at work now. He’s overloaded at home, too. It has been some weeks since he’s been able to relax from the workload. Tonight he had no option but to stay late at work to get caught up.

So the kids and I are about to choose a movie to watch while we wait for him. Well, I probably won’t watch. I’ll be catching up here.

There is also a thin film of red clay dust over everything in the house. But that isn’t my fault. It’s Jeff’s. With all the tractor work and the dry weather, you can imagine what is drifting through the open windows. When he’s working really close to the house, I have closed the windows, but the rest of the time I haven’t. Even dust from the road which is a couple hundred feet away finds its way in. That’s country living. I have never been, nor will I ever be, one of those country homemakers who vacuums everyday. Now if I had hardwood or laminate floors, I would probably sweep every day.

But I’m not going to deal with the dust today. I will wipe off the windowsills when I vacuum and also dust the living room, but that’s it. The rest of the time, I’m going to bake up some treats for snacking the next few days. Maybe I’ll even have time to read some before they arrive.

I’m jumping for joy inside. I can’t wait for my Treasures to come back to us!

By sensible, I mostly mean permanent kitchen solutions made from glass, stainless steel, wood, and bamboo. But also, in the case of paper products, that they be from recycled materials and any wax additions be from paraffin, not plastic, wax.

I appreciate your taking part in the poll!

I only went to one thrift store yesterday due to time. What do you think I got but two sheets. They are both smooth woven cottons — one a pretty soft shade of pink and another a spring green. They will make great summer nightgowns. Then Mikah found a tool belt. It is way too big for him but he loves it. I couldn’t resist.

Today will be busy. I will sew boxers and t-shirts for Mikah and hopefully tank tops for the girls. All three kids need haircuts. Mikah’s hair is staying long but needs to be evened up in the back. Naomi wants several inches off to lighten up for the summer. Haniya hasn’t decided if she wants just a trim or a few inches off.

I wish one of them could give me a haircut. I’m (almost) ready to cut off about 5 inches, too. I haven’t had a haircut since last summer. That’s about normal for me, to have one cut per year. On days that I wash my hair, I like its length. On the other days, I feel pretty matronly and think I could use an update. I don’t know where to go to get it cut. A friend is tracking down a recommendation of a hairdresser close by.

Saturday afternoon was overcast, perfect for burning a pile (and taking a break from fencing) so that is what Jeff and the other dad did. You’d think we’d be done with burning brush piles by now. We almost are.

While the men gathered brush to keep the fire burning, the kids played all over the place. There were our three children and our friends’ three older children (their two youngers in the house with the moms). They spent much time at the Big Tree, near the burning brush pile. Haniya, Naomi and our friends’ daughter climbed higher than any of them has ever climbed before. They only stopped going higher after the other dad said, “I don’t want to go to the hospital today.” The tree is about 90 feet tall and we figure they were up at about 60 feet (at the red X in the photo below). Haniya was in the tree when I took this photo, but you can’t see her for the branches. I am just shocked and somewhat scared by their adventuring. I’ll leave the adventuring up to them as I am quite happy here on land.

My previous post on the Big Tree (June 2006), shares how we measured its height and more about it.

Here’s another adventure. Perhaps we should call it an experiment. We have many trees that we don’t wish for goats to eat. Jeff read on the internet that they won’t come near trees that are rubbed with their own poop. Excuse my word choice. So Jeff and the kids got some goat poop from the neighbor (who is giving us our first goats) and mixed it in 5-gallon buckets with water. Mashed it all up. Actually, Jeff couldn’t do the mixing because of his hand injury, so he said I should go ahead. I’m not in the habit of refusing my husband, but I did refuse to mash that poop with water. I know I could have done it if it were a matter of life and death, but since my life wasn’t in any danger, I said no. No, no, no. Noami did the mashing, blessing her heart.

Then she and Mikah and Haniya went around our property brushing the poop-water on the trees with big paintbrushes. They finished “painting” 1/4 of the trees yesterday afternoon. Now that they have a week off school before we go to our reduced summer school schedule (of math and reading every day) they have plenty of time to finish that up! Poor kids. But… the sooner they finish, the sooner we get those goats. They are going to spend half the day today painting. Like I said, this is an experiment. We’ll see if it works to protect our trees.

Meanwhile, and before she joined Naomi and Mikah with the “painting”, Haniya went around cutting out bracken ferns. We have sword ferns and bracken ferns, the latter of which is poisonous to goats. The job of cutting out the ferns isn’t finished and might never be. We read that goats only eat the bracken ferns if they don’t have anything else to eat. Since our place has an abundance of the weeds goats love — poison oak, blackberries, strawberries, thistles — we hope they’ll be fed well enough to leave the bracken ferns alone. Another experiment.

Naomi, Mikah and Jeff all have bits of poison oak rashes on them. Not too bad. I wonder if we’re getting used to the poison oak? We’ve really been in it thick. Not only is it growing up like crazy right now, but we’re all over it with the fencing.

As it stands now, the fencing is just about done on the perimeter. What we’re finishing up are the front corners as they come up the driveway. Jeff and I finished one of those driveway corners yesterday afternoon (Sunday). The other we plan to finish tonight. We’ll put up a temporary gate with another of the cattle panels. Then we have to temporarily shield the barn, garage and house with panels. We won’t do a permanent fence around those areas and up the rest of the drive until we finish other projects that share the same space.

Here are some pretty views of our property and the fencing we completed on Friday and Saturday.

I will focus on how I made this for my family. Traci’s system looks a little different.

The general idea –> Cards have chores written on them. The cards get assigned to a certain child by being put in that child’s card-holder. When the chore is completed, the child moves the card to the “done” card-holder. That child’s chores are done when all their cards are moved out of their card-holder into their “done” card-holder.

For comparison, Traci’s system is to have ‘AM’ and ‘PM’ folders containing all her children’s chores; an equally intriguing and beneficial method.

I thought the chore-card method would be great for our family for these reasons:

1. It would make the chores a little more exciting and hands-on for the children, as opposed to our current chore chart which looks the same every day and week to week.
2. It would make the chores that need doing more flexible — so I can respond to needs of our household on a day to day basis.
3. It would be a great help to me, so I would NOT to have to write out a list each day of the chores-that-need-doing (the chore chart isn’t that flexible, see reason #2).

Here’s what I did.

The chore card system in our household.

1) Assign each child a color. Haniya got orange; Naomi got pink; Mikah got green. Additionally, purple became the color for the group of cards containing chores that will rotate among the children.

2) Create index card chores. Using a fat Crayola marker, I colored the long edge of each card with the appropriate color. I used the unlined side (prettier, that way). I wrote one chore on each card as follows, indicating AM or PM if that was important:

(green) Mikah:

• brush teeth (this is the only ‘hygiene’ issue that made the chore list)
• tidy bedroom AM
• tidy bedroom PM
• fold & put away own laundry

(pink) Naomi:

• brush teeth
• tidy bedroom AM
• tidy bedroom PM
• fold & put away own laundry

(orange) Haniya:

• brush teeth
• fold & put away own laundry
• (no tidying for her; she’s always tidy)

(purple) general, rotating chores (some done everyday, some on as-needed basis):

• unload dishwasher & dish drainer AM
• rinse sprouts AM
• rinse sprouts PM
• load dishwasher — breakfast
• load dishwasher — lunch
• (no loading dishwasher at dinner because the kids are having their science lesson with Dad then)
• set table — lunch
• set table — dinner
• make salads — dinner
• sort & wash laundry
• sweep front & back porch, and sidewalk PM
• tidy front & back porch PM
• sweep kitchen, laundry, and bathroom PM
• empty bathroom garbages
• take out kitchen garbage
• take recycling to the barn
• bag up recycling to take to the dump
• tidy living room PM
• tidy dining room PM
• wash bathroom sink PM
• vacuum
• declutter to help vacuumer
• dust

The chore card system in our household.

3) Create Card-Holder. Using 4 long sealed envelopes, I created 7 card-holders (as shown in the picture). I cut the sealed envelopes to 3-1/2 inches. Each envelope generates 2 card-holders; 1 card-holder is extra. The short end of the envelope become the bottom end of each card-holder. As I said before, most of these great and inexpensive ideas were passed on by Traci. I labeled one envelope per child as “_____ Chores” and the other as “______ Done”. The 7th envelope became the purple “Chores to Assign” card-holder.

4) Put Up Card-Holders and Fill with Chore Cards. I adhered the card-holders to the side of the refrigerator with scotch tape, as shown in the picture. Each morning or the evening before, I assign the chores to the children by putting the chore cards in their card-holder. Any of the purple chores that don’t need doing will remain in the purple “Chores to Assign” card-holder. As the kids complete their chores, they move the corresponding chore card to their “done” folder. The process begins again the next day.

5) Another application. I thought this was such a good idea, that I decided to use it for school!

Using the same idea, I made “_____ School” and “_____ School Done” color-coded card-holders and cards for each child. (See photo.) I hope this will eliminate our current reliance on my unreliable memory for what each child must accomplish each day. The cards each child has are similar to this: Read Bible & Pray Alone, Math, Flashmaster, Reading, Grammar, Phonics, Spelling, Wordly Wise/Keys to Good Language, Typing, Latin/Greek Roots, Science, Drawing Practice, Piano Practice, etc. I mounted this system on an opened-up file folder that I tacked to the wall of our dining room (/school room).

The school card system in our household.

So this was the first day. Of course it was a thrill. The kids loved moving their cards over to the “done” card-holder. Will it stick? I think this system is a good match for us.

A related question now: Can I use the hand wash cycle on my front loader washing machine? Does anyone have experience with wool and this cycle? The hand wash cycle is gentler than the wool cycle, according to my manual. But I want to know if I can trust it.

I found the answer to another question of mine. I wondered how I could clean our “dry clean only” wool sweaters at home — both to avoid the chemicals of dry cleaning and the expense. And the answer is Wet Cleaning. It can also be done professionally, but I will do as that article suggests to wet clean our wool at home.