If you aren’t familiar with Econobusters, it’s an awesome website designed to assist families to thrive in this challenging economy. You’ll find more frugal decorating ideas, easy, inexpensive meals, tips from readers, tutorials and special deal alerts. If you’re a frugal diva or simply someone who’d love to be you’ll enjoy visiting Econobusters.
OK, I was a wee bit too preoccupied to get around to listing these last week. It didn’t help matters that I didn’t have access to the internet either. Anyway, as usual there are some great blogs here so why not stop by and check them out?
Week #6
1. Deanna’s Corner
2. Light, Liberty, and Learning
3. Bunny Trails
4. Flowers N Plaid Homeschool
5. Gadow Ohana
6. His Wonderful Works
7. Expand
8. Confessions of a Homeschooler
9. The Sojourner
10. A Full Heart
Week #7
The blogs from #2 down on this list are all written by First Mates on the TOS Crew. To receive the rank of FM means that these bloggers have reviewed for the TOS Crew form the past 2-3 years. If you’re a homeschool parent gearing up for the upcoming school year you’re sure to have fun wading through these blogs.
1. Closing Time
2. One Blessed Mamma
3. El Cloud Homeschool: Busy Minds, Busy Hands, Busy Feet
4. Alive in Spirit
5. Ozark Rumblings
6. Army of 5
7. Fenced In Family
8. Debbie's Digest
9. Footprints in the Butter
10. Got Chai?
We don’t have many home furnishings and what we do have are locked in a storage unit hours away. I just don’t know when we’ll make the trek to Ohio to claim our things.
In the meantime, we’d invited friends to visit and we had to have a place for them to sit. I decided to visit a few thrift stores hoping to find a decent inexpensive couch that we could live with, but what I found amazed me!
At our first stop, my son discovered this:
An awesome Lazy Boy couch for only $75! I couldn’t believe our good fortune! The other couches were all priced more than double at $250! I didn’t waste anytime letting the attendant know that we’d be buying it.
I also found an adorable brown, green and pink pillow to match, thinking I’d grab a brown throw to tone down the color since my daughter was not a fan. So, when I walked into our home and saw the color of the walls, my first thought was that I’d be repainting, but on a return trip to the thrift store to actually pick up the couch, I found these pillows for $4 each. Could they be anymore perfect?
They match the couch and the wall and tie the two together perfectly!
I also found a few other items that I really adore, like this brand new chair for $75:
I plan to recover the cushions or purchase new ones.
I also found this brand new mirror for $20 and the wall stickies for $2, which I love since visiting the Statue of Liberty was one of our favorite trips.
Two sheer panels for the window- $4 each, new.
Rug for entry way- $6, new.
Rug placed in front of couch- $10, not sure if this one is going to stay in this room, but I love it and our puppy loves it. You’ll regularly catch him rolling all over it.
Second Mirror that is waiting for me to decide exactly where I want it to hang, only $25, new.
Unique wood shaving wreath- $5, new. I’m also not 100% sure this will remain in this room, but like the rug, I really loved it.
Final cost so far, $234 for the furniture and accessories. I’m really pleased with how it’s all coming together, what do you think?
Welcome to our new home. I know I’ve kept you waiting on the tour, but it’s finally here! I love the huge front porch that runs the length of the house and can’t wait to add some comfy wicker chairs to sit in when we want to enjoy the outdoors. We also plan to do a wee bit of landscaping, and I’m thinking in the sun a butterfly garden would be incredible.
Please step inside the front door into our LIVING ROOM which is also my favorite room in the house.
If you go through the door in the back of the room, you’ll enter my little KITCHEN. It may be small, but it’s much larger than the kitchen in the RV so you won’t hear me complain. It also has a full-sized stove and refrigerator which have been hard not to have in the camper. As a plus, I have a dishwasher that I thought I’d love but honestly, in the time it takes me to do a load of dishes, I could wash them myself so I probably won’t use it much. The kitchen also has a ton of storage!
It is also our dining room, though I’d never classify it as anything formal. I think I may buy a couple bar stools to sit at the pass through to the kitchen and a nice area rug to define the dining area.
More than likely, we’ll also be using this area as a family room too.
Down the hallway we come to the BATHROOM. It’s not that big, but once again, it’s huge compared to the camper and it has a tub! Woo hoo! Our water bill will probably be sky high this month with all the baths we’ve been taking.
Continuing down the hall we come to BEDROOM #1, my daughter’s room. 
On down the hall to BEDROOM #2, the boys’ room.
Finally, the MASTER BEDROOM.
I also have a MASTER BATHROOM which I’m really excited about, but didn’t get a picture of. It looks much like the other bathroom, except the tile is lavender and it’s laid out a bit different so it appears a wee bit bigger. It’s going to be really fun to decorate this combo. After living in the camper for a year, I’d forgotten how wonderful it is to have my own room.
Now I can’t wait to get busy decorating!
As a recovering curriculum junkie, I guess you could say that I’ve gone from one extreme to the other. When I first began homeschooling my three children, I thought I had to have every item on the market that was targeted for homeschoolers. Now, 12 years later, I have an aversion to packaged curriculum and instead prefer ‘various resources’ in the form of books, CD’s, DVD’s, online resources and field trips. Of course that doesn’t mean that I won’t ever use a curriculum or textbook, we do on occasion make use of workbooks, like Easy Grammar, Sequential Spelling, and Life of Fred math but I’ve grown more confident and don’t always feel it’s necessary to spend the extra money.
Tomorrow we will kick off our 12th First Day of School and for the first time ever, I’ve not spent a dime on curriculum this year. I do plan to make some purchases, like Teaching Textbooks for math and Rosetta Stone for foreign language, but right now we’re going to work our way through some of the resources that I already have laying around before I buy anything else.
As you can see from our assortment of books in the picture, the kids will be learning about anything from architecture, to logic, to the Mayan culture. Though it doesn’t look like it from the mix and match of books, I can assure you that I do have a plan and can’t wait to see how it unfolds throughout the year.
So, do you have an interesting subject that you’re excited to delve into this year? What resources do you plan to use to help you teach your children?
