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Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening – Big Yield in a Small Space
Spring is just around the corner here in North America, and the thoughts of many are turning to vegetable gardening. If you haven’t yet considered raised bed gardening, you are missing out on a lot of benefits! The Biggest Benefit of Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening One of the biggest advantages to growing in raised beds is that you can save a lot of space over the traditional row style of gardening. When planting in rows, remember that half of your available space can be taken up in walkways between the rows. That’s a lot of wasted space! Planting in raised beds allows you to plant more per square foot than…
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Easy Record Keeping for Your Homeschool
As a homeschooling mom for 18 years, I was never much at record keeping. Each year I vowed I would dutifully keep track of every remotely educational thing my sweeties did every day. Each year I failed miserably at this! Thankfully, I always made sure that my kids were working from a well laid-out curriculum. This ensured that however badly I had kept track of the daily activities, at the end of the year I could say we had completed such-and-such program and so covered all the necessary scholastic bases. I always advise that homeschoolers, especially those who are new, work from established curricula to ensure that their children don’t…
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Do You Have What It Takes to Work from Home?
The internet is full of wild claims of people getting rich working from home by building an online business of some sort. Are any of these claims true? What are the odds that an ordinary person like me or you could actually make an income from the internet? While it does seem true that some people have made fantastic amounts of money online,
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Make-a-Mix Cookery
When I was a new mom, I was thankful to have a very useful cookbook called Make-a-Mix Cookery. This gem contained recipes for such things as homemade pancake mix, muffin mixes, and seasoning mixes. In addition to these practical mixes, the ladies behind Make-a-Mix Cookery provided recipes for frozen meat and vegetable mixes, cooked in bulk and packaged in family sized servings. Just add pasta or rice for a quick and hearty family meal. These books helped make meal planning a breeze! Good time management, planning and cooking ahead can free you for more home teaching time, but don’t forget that all that food preparation is another great learning opportunity…
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What to Do With Giant Zucchini
Anyone in my part of the world who has grown zucchini knows how prolific they are. They grow faster than you can give them away! My super-gardener friend Sue had only one zucchini plant in her garden this year and still managed to feed her family plus her friends and neighbors throughout the summer. Thankfully, zucchini is an incredibly versatile vegetable. A mild-flavored member of the squash family, zucchini can be used raw in salads or sandwiches, added to stir-fries, made into tasty relish, or baked into a sweet, delicious bread. Knowledgeable gardeners soon come to appreciate zucchini for its many uses. Even better, plants keep producing throughout the summer,…
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Sarah’s Pumpkin Harvest
“It’s that time of year – the squash and pumpkin vines are starting to die back and reveal the hidden goodies underneath!” And if you are like me, you are already craving a delicious, spicy slice of pumpkin pie with a dollop of whipped cream, or for my lactose-intolerant self, non-dairy whipped topping. Sarah writes about her pumpkin harvest here at Sarah’s Kitchen Gardens. Do you have a favourite pumpkin recipe you’d like to share? Email me here at HomeFreeMedia.com.
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Good Manners Go Beyond the Surface
Before my grandson William was one year old, his mother was already training him to say please. When William wanted something, she reminded him, “Say please,” and he responded by making a circular motion on his chest in the manner of American Sign Language. What can be the advantage in teaching a child who is still working on “Mama,” “Dada,” and “Nana” how to say please when he can’t even really “say” it? All around the world parents devote much time and literally thousands of repetitions to teaching their children good manners. Politeness is the social grace and the slippery grease that lubricates our personal interactions. Without politeness the painful…
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Planning French Lessons With Your Dictionary
New Post from French4Homeschool: “When you have access to a good quality, comprehensive, French-English dictionary, you open up a world of possibilities to your French as a Second Language students. Vocabulary building is an important part of language learning, and having a good dictionary makes planning French lessons easy and fun. What dictionary should you buy?” Read more at French4Homeschool.
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Understanding and Overcoming Procrastination: 7 Steps to Stop Wasting Time
I will confess: I am not always as motivated as I would like to be. There are always more exciting things to do than work. As long as my bills are paid, money doesn’t necessarily motivate me. What’s a lazy person gotta do to get motivated around here? Procrastination tempts all of us at times. In order to know how to beat it, we need to look at what procrastination really is, and how we can overcome it to be productive and profitable.
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From The Healthy Honeybee: Escape With No Re-Entry
Going to check on the honeybees: “I went for a visit to the beeyard yesterday at sunset. It’s probably the most unromantic place you could think of, what with all the buzzing and stinging and such. The sunset was nice but not memorable. The bees, however, were cranky (in a memorable sort of way). Go figure – I’m there to separate them from the product of their summer labours, and they’re not happy about it. I opened the first hive to find a layer of bees under the top cover, sitting poised with their stingers in the air – straight up – and already angry at the intrusion…” Read more…
