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I can’t believe we’re at the end of May already. What a wild ride this year has been so far! Our intense spring hustle season is thankfully coming to a close and whew…I’m limping to the finish line. SO ready for a slower pace and the chance to fill up my empty tank with new ideas and restored creativity.
This was our first full week of summer break. For the first few days, I allow everyone to watch all the TV and have all the computer time. To them, it’s the ultimate “school’s out for summer” treat! Thankfully, after about three or four days, their brains are officially jello and they naturally rein in screen time back to more normal levels.
I ordered a few school things for next fall and they arrived this week. Our geography skills need some reinforcement, so I purchased something new for my elementary aged kids. The curriculum is called Legends & Leagues and it uses a story to introduce the skills. I purchased the original Legends & Leagues story (along with the workbook) but it’s really so simple that I think we’ll work through it quickly. Thankfully, I also bought the next in the series – “South” – and we should be able to complete both in one school year.
After a heavy thunderstorm, we had pieces of leaves from our tulip poplar everywhere. I thought this little piece was interesting.
Summer Project Challenge update: I finished the last cross-stitch pattern and now I’m ready to get these onto pillows.
Our first processing weekend of 2022! We had lots of prep work in the days prior: digging out all of the supplies from storage, setting up new crates, and getting bags and stickers ready. We split up the 140ish birds into two days and hired a few friends to help. Now we take a breather before 150 new chicks arrive on Wednesday and we start all over…
Week One of my frugal summer was really productive. My lemon balm is growing like crazy and since it’s part of the mint family, it may soon overtake my entire garden! I cut a large portion and dehydrated the leaves. I plan to use them for iced tea and lemonade. Other frugal accomplishments from this week:
+ I made a batch of sourdough waffles for the freezer.
+ I kept the AC off and the windows open.
+ I made banana bread with overripe bananas.
+ I reused old packaging to mail things I sold on ebay and Poshmark.
My book of choice this week has been The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You by Eli Pariser. Interesting so far. Here’s one quote: “Personalization is based on a bargain. In exchange for the service of filtering, you hand large companies an enormous amount of data about your daily life – much of which you might not trust friends with. These companies are getting better at drawing on this data to make decisions every day. But the trust we place in them to handle it with care is not always warranted, and when decisions are made on the basis of this data that affect you negatively, they’re usually not revealed.” (p.16) This was written in 2011, so I can only imagine what the algorithms look like today!
