Out with the Seals,
            in with the Trumps

I don’t post NoteWorthy News, anymore (don’t have to – Extinction Protocol more than covers it all), but I want to take a really quick moment to point you in the direction of Tomer Devorah’s post this morning.  Because it’s been a while since anyone’s said anything about Fukushima or Deepwater Horizon, and she gives updates this morning on both.

The reason I find this ironic and interesting is that we are but ONE WEEK from 17Cheshvan (Flood Day/Ark Day).  Nothing has been reported for so very long, until now, and the two articles convince me that those two ‘set-up’ events were just the prologue to what comes next.  BOTH are pivotal to the next set of judgments, and I believe – because the scope of the next set of seven is so much greater than the last set – that it had to be all set in place/motion for the time coming.  These ill winds of change just been ‘held back’ until the time is ripe.  And with 17Cheshvan one Shabbat away…?

Autumn Leaf Dusting!

It’s Fall, Y’all!  Actually, this has been THE fastest fall I’ve ever seen.  We had gorgeous color *BOOM!*… and then everything fell *POOPF!*… and now what’s left on the trees is rusty.  Usually we have a week or two of reds and oranges and light yellows, but this year?  *BOOM!*  *POOPF!*

I have a confession:  during the fall feasts, everything normal pretty much goes out the window.  It does.  I don’t write normal blogs, I don’t school, we don’t go for walks at the lake, we don’t work on projects… it’s like life switches to a different track for a few weeks, and then we switch back, later.  Which is good – I believe that it’s exactly what He wants from us! – but it also means that pen-pals don’t get anything for about a month or so.

But now we’re back to schedule. School is in session for it’s second week.  And Friday was PayDay, which means Saturday was our day to do a project for the penpals. ((NoTe:  Often I count the penpal project as our handiwork for school.  This week, it was a bonus project, as handiwork has been to try to get our costumes going this past week.  Which will get even MORE intense this week!))

I got the idea from Pinterest.  Naturally.  ((giggles!))  You can find the link to my Pinterest board at the bottom of the left column on my Xanga, here.  Anyhow, I loved this picture (<<see that?!), and wanted to try it with the kids.  So I decided that the best way to do it was to make it into a postcard for the penpals!

First we went out and collected leaves.  And considering we live on the edge of the woods, we have a LOT of different leaves.  Even more in my yard – I landscaped this place like you wouldn’t BELIEVE when we moved in, and seven years later, it’s beautiful, FYI.  Seriously… when the UPS guy or the mail lady show up to drop stuff off, they always comment on how gorgeous our yard is.  Which is kinda funny… because I don’t weed.  ((Snakes.))  It just grows, and grows back every year.  And it’s beautiful.  And FULL of leaves for us!

Then – because I didn’t know what they were doing in this Pinterest photo (it looks like some sort of dusting powder they’re flicking at the leaves?) I thought we’d just use sponge squares and stamping ink over the leaves.  And my sponges were kind of old and fell apart at a touch, so we ended up using cotton balls. 

All of which… btw… wasn’t optimal, to coin an Obama phrase.  The leaves had to be held down, because we were patting them with the sponge, and they tended to move around.  It was rather a pain in the p’toot.  But first you sponge ALL of the leaves, then pull off the top one, and sponge the next group, then pull off another, then sponge the next… until they’re all gone.  Some of the leaves had a natural curl – maybe we should’ve pressed them with an iron first?  PROBABLY we should’ve pressed them with an iron, first.  This is WHY having the Pinterest link actually lead to instructions is always nice, by the way!

Anyhow…. here’s mine.  It didn’t turn out too badly at all… but it was rather plain with just the brown, so I sponged (cotton balled?) some orange and yellow around it to add a little *pop* to the finished effect.

Isaac’s won’t be posted, because he pretty much shoved the leaves all around and sponged blobs everywhere, instead.  The boy doesn’t really have much patience or precision, yet… so I gave him mine to send to his penpal.  It was the involvement that counted, anyhow.  ((wink!))

Didn’t they turn out nicely?  We really liked this – I’m tempted to try it again, another time.  Only in our next try, I plan to use a watercolor wash and splatter it over the leaves, so we don’t have to touch them.  And we’ll iron the leaves, first.  So we learned a few things, and had a great time!

Charcoal & Children
Lesson one: preparation!

This is the first of a new series!  We finished up chalk, and are ready to move on to something new… CHARCOAL!  Brian in particular is very excited, because he doesn’t get shading, dimension, and perspective, and really wants to do something better than ‘flat’ and ‘cartoonish’ when he draws.

My first challenge in the two month feast break that we had was to try to find a book that would be suitable to learn from.  Backing up, though, you know I tried to find ‘how-to’ lessons for children on the Internet, first.  With no luck, I might add.  Everything that was ‘for kids’ was only two or three lessons long, and anything bigger that I did find started off very advanced, and we needed to start with the very, very basics, working up from there.  And apparently nobody gives free lessons on the basics on-line.

After checking out nearly a dozen library books, we found one that starts with ‘drawing a straight line’ and moves from there, working in small lessons with activities to help us get the feel/eye for it.  EXACTLY what I was looking for.  The book is called ‘Fundamentals of Drawing’ (LINK), and it’s not a children’s book.  But I’m pretty excited about the lessons.  Now, of course we’ll have a lesson, and then do a free draw from our poetry, but as we go, we should get better results, each time, as we apply what we learn to our drawings.

I purchased charcoal sets for us, off e-Bay (LINK), as you see to the left, here. I couldn’t find a better deal locally (that had as many as I needed – it was the same price at HobbyLobby, but they only had two.)  So I got these, and the book, and sat down to read it over and see how charcoal drawing is accomplished. 

To my surprise, it’s VERY different than just grabbing the nearest #2 pencil and sitting down to sketch!  You don’t even hold charcoals the same way as you hold a pen or pencil.  Here’s a picture (sample from Amazon’s preview page of the book I’ve got) of the way to hold charcoal, and how to draw with it.  And you don’t work on a flat surface, either.  There’s a definitive technique to charcoals, apparently, that’s done on an easel, too. 

Oooh, easels?  Well… it would be nice for the kids, but… six easels, I can’t afford that!  So I found this easel made out of a pizza box (LINK) via Pinterest, and pinned it months ago.  Which I thought was a good idea, initially, but… it’s lightweight.  Would it take much pressure?  Would it hold up to a seven-year old boy?  When you went to draw, would it slide across the table? I had my doubts.  Even if I got no-slip shelf liner, it’s flimsy and I don’t know if it would work for us.  ((Most of what’s on Pinterest is stuff that looks good but does NOT work.  Word to the wise.  And NEVER make their Orange Chicken.))

Brian suggested those cheap picture holders that you can get at Meijer, but I was concerned that they would be too flimsy, too… plus you’d need something to act as the backboard, and then we were back to trying to brainstorm up something that would hold up, again, wouldn’t move, etc…

Then I found this homemade tabletop easel by Ninth-and-Mayne (LINK) and thought it was AMAZING and wonderful.  It’s basically plywood cut to squares and fixed together with hinges,  with a hinge for the prop.  Cheap, VERY sturdy, and easily folded down and/or taken along with us if we wanted to go out and do a nature art study.  Oh, yes, this is definitely the best idea I have seen!

Anyhow, we didn’t draw this weekend.  Instead, we gathered supplies and are making easels so that we can do our artwork from here.  And I’m taking the opportunity to write it up as a ‘prep’ blog, for people wondering ‘how’ we are going to pursue our lessons.  And to be honest?  I’m getting pretty excited about this!

Lego Quest 2!

I know I said I wasn’t going to do a separate post for this, but yesterday’s got long, and… I just feel like it.

So anyhow, as a recap, I thought it would be fun to take the fifty-two challenges from LEGO Quest and do one a week this year with the kids.  If you’re interested in the link to the list of LEGO quests, it’s here (LINK).  We had a wonderful time with it the first, week, so let’s continue!

Thursday Thoughts

• I honest-to-gosh can’t think of one good reason I blog, anymore.  Because of the need to talk?  Cuz that’s just about all I do over here, anymore… talk at the cellspacing.  Yaaaaaah-da yadda-yadda-yadda.  Nobody hears, even if they’re listening.  ((Breaks out in song)) But nobody ever hears him, or the sound he appears to ma-ee-ake, and he never seems to notice… BUT THE FOO-OOL ON THE HILL SEES THE SUN GOING DOWN AND THE EYES IN HIS HEAD SEE THE WORLD SPINNING ‘ROUND….!!!!!!    Did you know that was my favorite song my sophmore year of high school?  It was… everyone else was singing ‘Material Girl’ and wearing flourescent pink, and I’m all pig-braids and Pop’s shirts, staring at my classmates like they’re idiots, and them all staring back at me like I’m freak-girl (the piano playing one with the brains).
• Whatevs.
• The world never changes.  It’s the same now that it was back then.  And you’d think that I would’ve gotten less naive with age, but it doesn’t ever seem to happen.  I’m still way too easy to sucker.  The only difference is that I don’t like people BEFORE they sucker me, now… I don’t wait until I realize I’m suckered to dislike them.  Cynicism.  It’s made the world a much more jaded place.
• By the way, I don’t think I’m in a better mood than I was yesterday.  FYI.

Having said,
I promised a Thursday Thankful:

• I’m thankful for… 
• … 
• …
• Um… 
•   … 
• My Husband, who I am getting along marvellously with (now) considering Monday… 
• My kids.  My house.  My faith.  My KnOok.  Dark Chocolate.
• The book I’m reading that has lousy punctuation but deliciously big words and bigger thoughts and even has a reoccurring theme centering in Greek Mythology, which is our school sub-focus this fall.  This tickles my inner geek.
• Fresh nail polish.  I was still wearing the stuff from Lydia’s bat mitzvah (in August) on my toes, and… well, it’s nice to take the mostly gone stuff off and put on pretty, fresh color.  Just sayin’.
• FINALLY a disk came from Blockbuster that’s not cracked in two.  It’s been two weeks since we’ve joined.  It was getting ridiculous.  And we’ve been waiting ALL that time for our next episode of Alias.  ((Yes, we’re doing the series again.  SO good.))
• I’m grateful for stuff.  Lots of stuff.  There’s just other stuff I’m not terribly grateful for that gets in the way… and I’m not grateful for that.  So we’ll have to try this again another day.

And since it’s Thursday:
…it’s also supposed to be my weigh-in… although I don’t have to report it to my MFP group until tomorrow.  Still.  So here’s the skinny (haha) on that:

• If you must know, I used my last Dr. Appt weigh-in (in June) as my starting weight, since it was a nice round number (much like my tummy).  So I plugged in 200 pounds at MFP without weighing myself presently, because I don’t like scales and haven’t for quite some time, and I’ll be damned if I’m getting on one without some extreme peer pressure. 
• Imagine my surprise when – last Thursday, after three days of food logging and exercising – I was cajoled into weighing in and it read 195 pounds.  Now I know most of that was summer biking/gardening and only little (or none, who knows) was the three day effort, but… like I care. 
• ANYHOO, I weigh in on Mondays and Thursdays, and this Monday brought two more pounds off – I was at 193 – so maybe those first three days DID do something, too.  Who knows? 
• All I know is that I stepped on the scale this morning and another pound has gone away.  I’m at 192, and apparently dropping.  Which is a good thing. 
• My goal is 185 pounds by New Years.  And that’s just the SHORT term goal.  But let’s focus on the smaller steps. My doctor appt was back in June.  So from June to October (five months) I’ve lost eight pounds, with minimal effort.  I think I can manage eight more pounds in three months (by New Years) if I actually exert REAL effort.  It’s doable.
• I feel the need to add that – since having Owen – I’ve weighed about 200.  I’ve maintained, for two years, not doing anything.  So my goal is to drop the extra baby weight that’s just been sittin’ on me, and then go BACK to maintaining, just at a lower poundage.  I am not out to run a 25K, I’m not out to get a six-pack, I don’t want to be buff-mom.  I just want to be able to run 5K without collapsing…
• …and I want to fit in jeans that don’t say “Mommy and Me”.  Because Mommy IS me, and there ain’t nobody else in those jeans with Mommy, anymore.  And technically, Mommy don’t want to be in them, either.  I’d rather be in my pre-kid jeans.  Even my pre-Ethan jeans.  I’d settle for my pre-Aaron jeans.  But not the pre-Owen jeans because I bought them a size too big and they’re stretch jeans, so they fit me now, and kinda slop around, at that.  And the butt is cut unfavorably, so I have to cover the rear with a big, big shirt.  Let’s not go here, right now, k?

It is exactly THIRTEEN days to Ark Day (which is what I’m calling it, since 17Cheshvan is a mouthful, and ‘PotentialRaptureDateRedux’ is lame.).  It’s also Hallowe’en, but I’m not pagan like that.  But speaking of…

I need to address the costume thing:

• I have been really working on costumes, regardless.  This week’s handicraft for school was cooking gloves in RIT dye, and we got a great result.  I needed a blue/purple pair, and a beige pair, from white.  They look perfect.
• I also started on two of the masks, and got two more costume pieces in the mail from eBay.  I have a LONG way to go, but…
• I found a little periwinkle suit (how many of THOSE do you see everyday?!?!) on Craigslist in Aaron’s size, which was EXACTLY what I needed for his costume.  But when I got there, it looked WAY too small.  I was so bummed, but the woman gave it to me and said, “I’m never going to get rid of it, just take it and see what you can do.”  Happy to say, I can make it work!!  I have to add some lace to the cuffs, but it’ll do, after all!!
• We went shopping the same night to K-mart for bath towels.  I have to make a furry shirt, and I figured bath towels would give me the texture I need.  Then Brian had me looking at bath MATS, which are furrier still, but I’d need three, and I was looking at $25 for towels OR mats… and then I turned around and looked up, and there’s this FUR blanket – camel colored, light weight, and PERFECT for what I need… only it’s $36.  But the suit was supposed to have been $15… so it made up the difference!!!
• I had to spend $50 at the craft store for supplies to make more costume pieces.  And I found everything I needed (for now)… but wha, fi’ty dollah!!!  And next I had to go grocery shopping, which is usually $220.  Can you believe my food total was $173… and that made up for the craft store?!?!  WoW, He takes care of me!

In other totally unrelated news:

• I heart Brian Calley.  If it weren’t for his opinion article on Proposal 6 (the international bridge), I wouldn’t know WHAT to think.  These proposals are clear as mud, anymore.  But I really like/trust Brian Calley.  He’s the dude who stood up against the local gov’t when that woman in our county nearly got busted for watching a kid without a childcare license (she only let the girl over for the 10 minutes  between her mom leaving for work and the bus coming… HOW STUPID is the gov’t, for trying to bust a kindly neighbor NOT GETTING PAID who was seeing to the safety of a child?!)  Anyhow, Calley says “NO” to the proposal, and actually explained why in normal-person-speak.  So ‘NO’ it is.  Thank you, Mr. Calley, for making things clearer and skipping the legal-speak.
• School is going well… ish.  I’m happy with it, anyhow.  Lydia LOVES her new typing unit, and the boys are eating up the LEGO challenges we’ve added.  So fun.  Last night we did our first fairy tale – we started with ‘Snow White & the Seven Dwarves’, since we saw ‘Mirror, Mirror’ and ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ this summer.  They LOVED the Disney version.  I need to get the Faerie Tale Theatre version – you ain’t seen a dwarf ’til you see Bubba.  Although I must say… Disney’s ‘Sleepy’ looks EXACTLY like Brian’s Grandpa Wally.  Just sayin’.
• And of course tonight we start ‘Narnia’… which I’m really looking forward to, although my friend Cagey warns me that its theological stance will probably drive me nuts.  ((What doesn’t, anymore?))  But I’ve never read it [aversion to CSLewis], so this will be interesting.
  
• I found an amazing article at EarthSky.  I liked it so well, I printed it out for our nature notebooks.  In case you’re interested, it’s here (LINK).
• I was supposed to tack the LEGO challenge on here.  Not gonna – this got TOOOOO long.  I’ll post it separately tomorrow.  I’m about done talking at the walls, for now.

Free Ancient Greece Lapbook

So when we left off last year, we had done ‘Story of the World’ chapter 19, which is one of the chapters on the Greeks.  Of course that was quite a while ago – we took off for the nearly 2-month feast season, and our memories are just so short…!  (Or am I the only one with this problem?)  Anyhow, the good news is, we never put anything in our Book of Centuries about the Greeks.  So doing an Ancient Greek lapbook serves not only as an era marker in our BOC, but it’s a wonderful review of where we left off, last term!

I like it better when I can share something that’s easy to download – just a green button to one .pdf that gives you all the resources you need in one spot… but that only happens when I have to create the lapbook, myself.  Which means WAY more work for me.  And to be honest, it’s WAY easier when I can find resources for free elsewhere and just print them from here and there and put them together in one book. 

Which is the case, this time.  So I apologize for all of the different links, but it’s still pretty nice when the pieces are only a click away, and all compiled so you don’t have to go find them, yourself, no?  So having said, here are the materials I used for our Ancient Greek Lapbook (for our Book of Centuries):

Cover Art
http://www.trojanhorseantiques.com/TrojanHorseMythImage.jpg

Forty-nine page lapbook
http://www.homeschoolshare.com/ancient_greece.php

Clothing
http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/file/3954

Greek Alphabet
http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/file/3949

Greek Columns
http://www.hslaunch.com/mypage/file/3955
(I put these inside our Parthenon, btw)

Map of Ancient Greece
http://www.greeka.com/greece-maps/ancient-greece-map.jpg

Can you believe I forgot a day?  I did.  I’m such a Gomer sometimes.  ((The Pyle kind, not the Hosea kind.))  You’d think I’d keep track of these things, but every year, I seem to lose something along the way, and it looks like this particular day is an easy one to drop in my line up of ‘Important Things in the Fall’.  And no, it wasn’t Brian’s birthday – I got that one, I just put the picture of him and birthday thinger up on FaceBook instead of here, due to extreme blog feast-age activity.

Okay… I’m noting the blank stares.  Okay, so let’s back up.  Jewish months begin with the new moon, we’re all on the same page with that, right?  Well, the new moon is today.  It’s 1 Cheshvan, as of sunset, tonight, October 15th.  Look at my little moon app on the left there – I love looking at that thing on the new moon, when it’s… GONE!  Anyhow, last month began as 1 Tishrei, which is Rosh Ha’Shana, the birthday of the world, the first day of the Jewish New Year.   Still with me?

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.  And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights. In the selfsame day entered Noah, and Shem, and Ham, and Japheth, the sons of Noah, and Noah’s wife, and the three wives of his sons with them, into the ark;   — Genesis 7:11-13 KJV

And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man.  – Luke 17:26 KJV

But before we go any further, I have to address the people who are saying ‘Cheshvan is the eighth month, stupid’.  So here we go, from Wikipedia – the information on Cheshvan:

Marcheshvan (literally “eighth month“), sometimes shortened to Cheshvan, is the second month of the civil year (which starts on 1 Tishrei) and the eighth month of the ecclesiastical year (which starts on 1 Nisan) on the Hebrew calendar.  …Cheshvan is an autumn month which occurs in October–November in the Gregorian calendar.  …In Jewish History: 11 Marcheshvan – (2105 BCE)- Yartzeit of the righteous Methuselah Methuselah was one of the greatest tzaddikim and the longest-lived human being. He was the grandfather of Noah and died aged 969. The Holy One blessed be He, delayed the great Flood because of the 7 days of mourning for Methuselah. 17 Marcheshvan – (2105 BCE) – Great Flood began The rain started on the 17th of Marcheshvan of the Hebrew year, 1656 (2105 BCE), flooding the entire earth. Only Noah and his family is said to have survived, in the ark (Noah’s Ark) he built (by Divine command), and a pair of each animal species.

Hey, even Wikipedia doesn’t dispute with Cheshvan 17 being the Great Flood.  Personally, I’ve always considered this to be fact – even before I knew one Jewish month from another – because All Hallow’s E’en (precursor of the Day of the Dead across the globe) has always been Flood Day to my mind.  I don’t know why – even when I was still a church-attending Christian, I had the Flood pegged on Halloween.  It just made sense.  Of course, because the Jewish year and the Gregorian one don’t match up, rarely is it ACTUALLY on Hallowe’en.

But guess what?  It IS this year!

The suggestion being that – if Messiah said the end times will be ‘like the days of Noe’, then not only will the vague christian references regarding these times being ‘evil’ and ‘corrupt’ be true, but the more specific scriptural references about times and days could be true.  Meaning that the taking of the Lord’s own to shelter (aka rapture?) could happen on the same day.  We just don’t know, but it’s a distinct possibility.

Now there IS a ‘discrepancy’… Genesis 7:7-10 say that Noah and his family went into the ark, and then seven days later the rain fell.  Then in Genesis 7:13 it says that Noah and his family went into the ark the same day that the Flood started - not seven days earlier.  The fact of the matter is that seven days earlier, they went in and the Lord sent the animals to them.  They spent seven days inside, getting the critters situated, apparently, according to verses 7-10.  They were still on the ground, though, and gathering/prepping inside and out.  I think of it as packing my camper.  I’m in and out, both, working on getting stuff packed up to go.  But until those seven days, Noah wasn’t messing around inside of it, apparently.  Then, seven days later, they were loaded up and the door sealed on that ‘selfsame’ day of the Flood.  So I don’t personally see it as a discrepancy, just something to nit-pick.  ((PS: I love this picture, because it has WAY more than two sheep… and there weren’t JUST two of every animal, btw – there were extras of the clean beasts to eat/sacrifice.))

Now I used to (when I was ignorant and christian) hold that pre-Trib thang about how Noah went in the ark seven days before the Flood, and that meant that we’d be raptured before the 7-year Trib.  Obviously everything in those verses and the explanation thereof that I just gave you points to the contrary.  The seven days are prep-time.   And I can’t help but smile, because it was at the end of 2006 that I got the prompt to start prepping for ‘something’… and here we are, closing in on seven years later, and I’m looking for a rapture/start of the Wrath.  Ironic?  Not if it’s ‘as it was in the days of Noe’.  I don’t write about prepping, anymore, because that time is over.  And frankly, I’m not a wacko who spends all her time being all zombie-hunter survivalist super-rogue freak-out.  It takes a special kind of person for that, and I just won’t fit the bill, ever.  Mine is my own special brand of weird.  I’m more of a Noah… trying to explain to people who just are not interested… and taking care of my own spiritual needs, while trusting in Him to either take care of me or tell me what I need to know.

But to the point:  when I told you that the SMS is valid until December 31st, and I’m expecting Revelation 7: 9-end to be fulfilled in this six month period between June and the New Year?  17 Cheshvan fits, and it fits BETTER than the eight crazy nights of Hanukkah which I was eyeing as possible fulfillment days.  Not that they still aren’t BIG possibilities, but 17 Cheshvan is WAY more symbolic and likely.

And of COURSE it would be the day I forget!
Well… now we know, though.
And hey – it’s on Halloween!  ((grins))

PS:  Ironically, among my Jewish morning reads, there’s an article on Noah’s Ark… apparently it’s this weeks parsha (Torah reading).   I haven’t quite gotten to it yet, but if you’re interested, it’s here (LINK).

Lego Quest!

This summer, while in the throes of my Pinterest obsession, I stumbled across a fun and creative site.  It’s the 52-week work of a mom who wanted her LEGO-obsessed children to do something more with them.   So she devised a once-a-week challenge for her kids.  And I think that is one of the best ideas… because you can make SO MANY things out of LEGOs!!

My family?  We’ve got LEGOs.  No, I mean it, we’ve got LEGOs.  As in, we’ve got wheels, people, movie/game characters, ships, castles, dinghys, motorcycles, winches, animals, plants, umbrellas, weapons… we’ve got one of those 5-drawer plastic storage bin towers FULL, plus two more big plastic bins, plus two drawer-sized divider caddies.  And that’s not including the Transformer LEGO tubs.  All in my dining room.  And everywhere else.  I kid you not, there are LEGOs in our shower.  Mostly my mom got them at yard sales, and then kind of donated them to us, and I’ve had to try to cope ever since.

And LEGOs is a huge thing with the kids.  They play for hours with them.  Aaron (who’s decided he wants to own a car wash when he grows up) built a LEGO car wash for all the planes, tanks, boats, buses, and rockets everyone makes.  Like that.  Even Lydia is very much about LEGOs… and she’s a 12-year old girl.  You don’t mess with her set-up, man.  She gets testy.

So anyhow, I thought it would be fun to take those fifty-two challenges from LEGO Quest and do one a week this year with the kids.  If you’re interested in the link to the list of LEGO quests, it’s here (LINK).  And no, I’m not going to do an individual post for each of them but I plan to put pictures up at the bottom of my Thursday posts, so you’ll get to see our challenge results every week!  (You’ll see.)

NoTe:  I’ve drawn up a posting plan for this next school year.  On Sundays I’ll post our Charcoal n’ Cocoa art, on Mondays our SOTW project from the previous week… or an adventure post.   Tuesdays will be Patchworks or Bullets, Wednesdays are free days (I can fit what I want in them!), and my friend V inspired me to do Thursday Thankfuls, which will include my weigh-in AND our LEGO Quest pictures.  Fridays are free (again), and Saturdays will be ‘Shabbat Shalom’s… meaning no posts.  I reserve the right to ditch this and do whatever the heck I want at any time, though!  ((LoL!!))

HOWEVER, since I don’t have a Charcoal n’ Cocoa post for today (as school doesn’t start until tomorrow), I’m taking a moment to explain what I’m gonna do, and feature our first creations!