The Year of Knowledge: How to Hang a Picture

Originally, Thursdays were going to be People, Places and Things Thursdays but as those things could easily fall into Wildcard Wednesdays, I decided I needed a day dedicated to learning how to do things. So, for my first How-To Thursday, I present: how to hang a picture.

Okay, you can stop laughing now.

I am the first to admit that my home skills are a little, well, rusty developing nonexistent. Let's just say they need improvement. However, I actually can hang a picture. On drywall.

However, I currently live in a house that was built in 1921, which means plaster and lath. Just try to put up a couple of pictures has led to several chunks of plaster on my floors instead of my walls. I actually have only three pictures up. Total. In an 1800 square foot house. Yeah.

From what I can find, there are several different ways to hang pictures when you are dealing with plaster walls.  I'll try a few and see which ones work the best.

According to This Old House, there is no good way to hang anything on plaster walls without causing chunks. (Gee, that was helpful!) Their recommendation is to use the 3M adhesive wall attachments to save those walls.

From a blog called Things Your Grandmother Knew, one great way to get those family pictures up is by heating the nail before hammering it in. It did not say how to heat the nail, though. Hair dryer? Matches? Lighter? The little blow torch I bought when I thought making creme brulee would be fun and was so, so wrong? Hey, at least I know not to toss a few in the microwave. They'd get way too hot. (She is kidding, right?)

Another blog, Home Remodeling 101, says masking tape will work.  Simply put a small piece of masking tape at the spot you'd like the nail to go, gently drive the nail in, then remove the masking tape.

The last idea, from a blog called Interior Decorating Tips, is the most creative. Heralding back to the day when plaster was the norm, they suggest using picture railing to hang pictures. There is a cute picture of how to do this in a bedroom that I love. They also suggested putting the nails into the picture rail and using wire to hang pictures from different lengths. I wonder if I can be that decoratively brave?

Hopefully, this has helped any of you who have ever dreaded the thought of hanging a picture on a plaster wall. During my next stretch of free time (ha!), I think I may give a few of these a try. Wish me luck!

The Year of Knowledge: Freezer Cooking

Today is Wildcard Wednesday! Anything goes! Wednesday will be the day that I randomly choose a topic that I have been interested in knowing more about. Today's topic is Freezer Cooking, AKA Once A Month Cooking.

Now wait, you say. Haven't you been freezer cooking for a while now? Not a while, but, technically, yes. I started freezer cooking in late November 2011. However, I mostly just downloaded a monthly menu, picked out about 10 meals (AJ and I are picky eaters, so I would be hard-pressed to find a 30-day menu that had 30 recipes we liked.), and downloaded all of the directions. I've decided to become brave and, gulp, create my own, Pantinas-family-friendly menus.  Which meant research.

First, let me explain exactly what freezer cooking is. For those of us who have long, crazy days during the week, cooking dinner can seem almost insurmountable. Enter delivery pizza. And Chinese. And drive-thru burgers. And... well, you see where I'm going. This habit is not good for the waist, the heart, or the wallet. When the hubby made a crack that we should just write a check to JJ's Pizza Shack as if it's a monthly bill, well, I knew it was time to change.

With some halfway-decent organizational skills, a clean kitchen (which I know may be the hardest part of this!), and one day a month (or two days, as we do a paycheck's worth of dinners instead of one month), you can cook all of your dinners AT ONCE for the rest of the month. Then, on a crazy school/work day, you pull a dinner out of the freezer, let it thaw, then toss it into the oven. A bag of veggies and a couple of glasses of milk, and boom, a healthy home-cooked family dinner every night. Even I can do that, and I hate cooking.

So, how do you go about creating this miracle? Listed below are the steps that I have found helps in the organization, creation, and success of freezer cooking.

1. Download Evernote. Evernote is a free program for your computer and/or smart phone that saves any information from the internet that you select. In other words, a web clipper! If you are on Pintrest, this would work, too, but I like the utility of Evernote so much more.

2. Next, you need to research once a month recipes or freezer cooking recipes. Not just any old recipe from a cookbook will necessarily do. Somethings just don't freeze and reheat well. If you enjoy cooking and want to experiment with some of your favorites, by all means, give it a whirl. Personally, I like it when others have done the work for me. Get more recipes than you think you'll need. I would recommend double the amount you plan to make.

3. So, why so many recipes? Specifically for this step: check your favorite grocery stores for sales. If you have carnivores in your house, you know a big part of your grocery budget goes towards meat. If you have a large variety of recipes, you can pick the ones that have meat on sale.

4. Create a master ingredient list. There is a FABULOUS site called onceamonthmom.com that has one of the best files for helping you combine all of the ingredients from all of these recipes to make grocery shopping less of a headache.

5. Go grocery shopping. Sorry, but nothing can make this any better.

6. DO NOT cook the same day you go grocery shopping. I did this the first time in November, and not only did I not want to look at food again, I was a bit, shall we say, snarly by the end.

7. For this next step, you need a place that you can spread some papers out. Print out all of the recipes you plan on making as well as this wonderful sheet from www.momsbudget.com, another FABULOUS site for freezer cooking advice. To me, this is truly the hardest part. I'm not one who can successfully get the main dish and the side dishes to all be done at the same time. Take some paper (I rip regular sheets in half to keep from wasting paper) and label at the top, one for each sheet: Chop, Dice, or Mince; Brown; Boil (Spaghetti or Rice); Pre-Heat Oven; Mix.

8. Personally, I number each recipe and just work with the numbers, but the hubby likes to know which recipe we are talking about, so we abbreviate the titles. Either way, go through each recipe and add to your paper lists any steps that go with the sheets. These are the majority of the early steps you will do. There should not be too many more steps on each of your recipes outside of these.

9. Take that wonderful sheet you got from www.momsbudget.com and start ordering your steps. At this point, the order is going to depend completely on your recipes and your cooking skills. I like to brown meat on medium, so I know I have time to do all of the chopping and mincing while that is going on.

10. Make sure to follow the freezing directions exactly as they have been printed! Sometimes you can combine meat and liquid, sometimes they need to be bagged separately. Know ahead of time!

11. Finally, create labels (or, as in our family, Post-Its that hang out on the freezer!) that have the directions for cooking on the day you want to eat the dinner. Some require fridge thawing, some require microwave thawing, some can be cooked straight from the freezer.

Following this method, I just organized the freezer cooking we plan on doing for tonight for the next two weeks. I'll let you know how it worked out for me. If you decide to give this a try, please leave me a comment and let me know how it worked for you!

Thanks to www.momsbudget.com and onceamonthmom.com for their fabulous advice, recipes, and printables that made my life so much easier!

The Year of Knowledge: SEO

So, today is Techie Tuesday. While I love almost all things technology-related (iPhones and iPads, blogs, tweets, and Facebook, and anything that makes my life more organized!), I often don't understand how it works or why it works. There are some things I may not be using at their optimum potential! So Tuesday is my day to learn about the wonderful world of technology. So let's start with something I've heard a lot about, but don't completely understand: SEO.

SEO, or Search Engine Optimization, is a hot-button word in today's online world. Those who know how to use SEO can pretty much write themselves a check, there is so much work out there. So what, exactly, is it?

Back in the day, we'll call it the 90s, when this little thing called the internet was just starting to take off, companies were working hard to find ways to keep track of all of these web pages that were being developed. If they could be categorized, it would make slogging through literally millions of web pages a little easier. Welcome into existence web crawlers. These programs were designed to "crawl" through the web pages, looking for specific words or phrases, and indexing them based on these search parameters. They would then list these pages in order of who used the words or phrases you were looking for the most. It's called a relevance search and involves incredibly complicated math that I will not go into here, but it made academic research (its original intent) much easier.

By the end of the 90s, some forward-thinking business people realized that, the higher up a page was ranked in this index, the more traffic it received. Think about it. How often have you Googled something and gone beyond the first or second page? So they created a marketing strategy called Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.

The way SEO works is by using common words and phrases within the text, and sometimes even within the HTML source code, to get the attention of the crawlers. The more often it is used and the "higher" up (title, first paragraph, pictures, etc.) on the page it is, the higher it will be ranked by the crawlers. So if, for example, you were selling a better mousetrap, you would use the word "mousetrap" everywhere - in your title, several times within the opening paragraphs as well as throughout the text, and have a picture (or 2 or 3) of a mousetrap that is labeled "mousetrap." Simple, right?

Well, not exactly. Like anything in marketing (or in life, really), SEO can be both good and bad. White hat SEO is when you use this technique smartly, fairly, and ethically. Black hat SEO is creating pages specifically to get a higher traffic count with no redeeming information. Often, these pages have their words heavily embedded into the HTML source code. It's unethical, and sites have been blocked from big search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, just for doing it.

Although many marketing companies, especially those who specialize in online marketing, know how to and often do use SEO, even they will say it should never be the only tool in your marketing tool box. SEO will help to get some traffic through the door, but most sites actually get MORE traffic from being linked from other sites. Plus, once they get there, you should probably have something worth seeing, or you won't have return viewers!

So the next time you read an article, or a job description, that mentions SEO, you will now know a little bit more about it. It's not as big and techie and as scary as it sounds.

Thanks to Yahoo! and Google for all of the information I found (after slugging through a gazillion ad sites!) on SEO.

The Year of Knowledge: George Washington

Today is the first Monday of the new year. Mondays for me are the Presidential Mondays as, I will admit, I never really much paid attention to politics in school, especially when it was about a bunch of old white dudes. My goal is to learn more about the men themselves who became President to try and figure out how we got to this place in our country. So, let's start at the beginning!

George Washington was an uneducated middle child who was good at mathematics. His rise to politics is fairly well-known and taught to children everywhere when President's Day in February rolls around. But there is more to good old George than just an Army General who later became our first President.

Washington was actually not a big fan of politics. He was interested in fairness and equality, and he felt that political factions would do more harm than good. After turning down the opportunity to become King (which, you've got to admit, is a big thing to turn down - I wouldn't have been able to do it!), he was dragged out of retirement to create this new-fangled kind of government called a democratic republic. Despite his desire to remain out of the political arena, he was voted our first President - unanimously.

The first thing he did was to assign Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton to his cabinet. Today, that would be the equivalent of placing Newt Gingrich next to Michael Moore and telling them to play nice. He truly believed, however, that these two men represented the best ideas of both sides of the political debate (at the time, the Federalists, who believed in a large Federal government and the Democratic Republicans, who believed in less Federal government and more States' rights), which, to Washington, was important for integrity and fairness.

He tried to leave the office after one term, but was unanimously elected again. He continued to tread carefully, balancing interests for all the people of this fledgling country. He did, however, utilize his power to act independently of Congress when it came to all things military, both foreign and domestic. His days as a general served to make him a force to be reckoned with when rebellions popped up. He also had the military sense to declare the United States neutral in a war between England and France - despite misgivings from some members of Congress who felt we owed France for their help in the Revolutionary War (and probably wanted one more dig at those damned British red coats!).

Washington left the office after two terms, exhausted from the political parties' constant battles and petty fights. He died three years later.

Washington was an honorable man who always strove for balance and fairness. He was the first, and probably only, President who could claim a desire for bi-partisan politics - and mean it! Our current President and future Presidential hopefuls would do well with brushing up on the tireless efforts and leadership of our first President.

Thanks to millercenter.org of the University of Virginia for my information in this blog!

Author's Note: Originally called our government a democracy, when, in actuallity, it is a republic, or, more specifically a democratic republic. I changed the original post to correct the mistake, but want to give a shout out to one of my favorite people and readers, Julia Wilson, for catching the error and keeping me on my toes!

What This Homeschool Professor Learned in 2011

So, August 2011 began our first year of homeschooling with our oldest son, AJ. It has been an ... interesting ... learning experience. So, what did I learn in 2011?

1. Homeschooling, is really, really, REALLY hard. Not the subject - it's first grade work, so I think I can handle the material. The discipline is hard. Starting and maintaining a routine. Sticking to the goals that have been set. Not turning over, sleeping in, and thinking, eh, we don't need to do school today. It's such an easy trap! While I'm glad that we don't have that crazy, hurried mornings we used to in order to get my slow poke of a boy up, dressed, fed, and on the bus, there's also no post-bus nap. I know that makes me sound like a weenie, but we do have a new baby that is still not sleeping through the night. I'm exhausted!

2. There is NOTHING linear about homeschooling. This is both a good and a bad. The bad part is that all of my careful planning went out the window within the first weeks of school. The good is how much we have learned about AJ - you know, the person we are doing this for? He has an incredible math brain. We're starting second grade math this week, and should be starting third grade math sometime in April. He LOVES science, especially about space. We were learning animals, which he liked, when something about space came up, and boom, we did space for the rest of the year. He has become an incredible reader (Thank you, Saxon Phonics!), but can't spell his way out of a paper bag. How many other parents get the opportunity to be this involved in their kids' brains?

3. Homeschooling is NOT about books. My kid is smart. Not bragging - he's not going to be some 14-year-old college graduate or anything - just stating a fact. Because of that, it is really easy to get caught up in all of the books to cram as much knowledge as that hungry little brain can absorb. But some days, homeschooling is about field trips where we get to teach our little brother what we learned about how a pumpkin grows. Sometimes it's about going to the store and watching Mama use a calculator as the number gets bigger and bigger the more stuff that goes in the cart. Sometimes it's about a beautiful fall day outside, being quiet, and counting the bugs found under the rock.

4. I would never, ever, EVER do it any other way. Despite the false starts and frustrations and worries, seeing him be proud of his accomplishments, hold conversations with adults about some pretty deep topics, and not be stressed about all of the other debris that goes along with public school makes it all worth it.

The Year of Knowledge: New Year's Day

An interesting fact - humans have only been celebrating "New Year's Day" on January 1 since 1582. 

The earliest records we have of celebrating a new year occurred over 4000 years ago in ancient Babylon. It was celebrated much later in the year than when we now celebrate - the first new moon after the vernal equinox, or the first day of spring, in March.

Later, the early Roman calendar was only about ten months - 304 days. Needless to say, this calendar didn't really line up with the stars, so good old Julius Caesar in 46 BCE decided to add Januarius and Februarius (January and February to us Americans) to the calendar year.

JC was also the first to decide on January 1st as the official New Year day in honor of the Roman god for which January is named - Janus. Janus was the god of beginnings with two faces - one looking forward to the future, one looking behind to the past. Seems like a perfect concept for a New Year. The Catholic church had different ideas, of course. In 1582, Pope Gregory XIII made the official decision to put it back to January 1st. Before that, in ACE, New Year's was celebrated on a religious holiday (sometimes Christmas, sometimes the Feast of Annunciation).

As an additional fact, making New Year's resolutions also started with the Babylonians. In order to curry favor with the gods and start the year off on the right foot, they would resolve to pay off their debts and return used farm equipment.

Guess I'll be needing to return that tractor this year, huh?

Thanks to History.com for the info!

If it looks like a duck . . .

I'll admit. I've been avoiding. it seems so big and scary and I don't want to deal with it. However, after almost four months of homeschooling, I can't keep my head in the sand any longer.

My kid has ADHD.

I've tried to pretend he's just "spirited" and "imaginative," but the reality is that he is unfocused and lacks impulse control. The hubby has it, there's a lot of it on my side of the family. Did I really think I was going to be able to get through three kids and not have one them afflicted with it?

Here's the thing, though. I don't care that AJ has ADHD. Hell, I self-diagnosed. I'm working through new ways of teaching him and am slowly finding some things that are working. So, why have I been avoiding it?

Two reasons: first off, I don't want to medicate, and that seems to be the knee-jerk reaction to most doctors and specialists. I'm not anti-meds overall, I mean, I do vaccinate and when the kiddos need antibiotics, I am right there with the pink medicine. I just know that, for now, I don't want to have to argue, with anyone, about why I don't want to put him on meds. It's why I've avoided talking to his doc about it. I'm afraid I'll be persuaded to Ritalin him up in wanting to do the right thing for him. We can always go to meds later if that's what it takes, but coming down from meds can be so hard.

The other reason is that I hate labeling kids. On the plus-side, since we are homeschooling, I don't have to worry about what the "ADHD" label will do to him in school. No teachers passing on horror stories about how my kid can't sit through an entire lesson on grammar, but then refuses to even acknowledge the teacher during science because he is so busy trying to blow something up. Still, I don't want people to look at him differently. He's still AJ. One part imp, one part cuddle bear, one part stubborn, and several parts genius. He just has a hard time sitting still and listening if what you have to say isn't interesting.

So, my homeschooling days with him are going to change. I continue to read, to research, to question, trying to find what is best for HIM. Homeschooling is not about me. I may teach better one way, but if it's not getting through to him, does it matter? Anyone out there who homeschools a kid with ADHD, your advice would be greatly appreciated!