Donut Muffins!!!!!

One of our favorite baked snacks are donut muffins, they taste just like a donut but are not fried.  They are so yummy with some tea or coffee. The kids like them with milk.

Ingredients:
24 T unsalted butter (room temp)
1 3/4 C suger
4 lg eggs
6 C flour
1T and 2t baking powder
1/2 t baking soda
1 3/4 t salt
1 t ground nutmeg
1-2/3 C milk
1/4 C buttermilk

for the coating
16 T unsalted butter
2C suger
2T ground cinnamon

Preheat muffins to 350 F In a large bowl cream butter, and suger. Then beat in eggs one at a time. Sift together flour, baking powder baking soda salt and nutmeg. In a seperate bowl combine the milk and buttermilk. Using a wooden spoon mix a quarter of the dry ingredients into the butter mixture then a third of the milk continue mixing dry then wet, alternating and ending with the dry. Mix until smooth. Greese and flour muffin tins and fill to the rim of each cup. Bake until firm, 35 min.

While baking melt butter for topping and in seperate bowl mix cinnamon and suger.  When muffins are cool enough roll in butter then in suger/cinn mixture place on rack.  Sometimes I wait another 5 minutes and roll them in the suger/cinn again.  It gives an extra coating. The kids love this part...of course.

ENJOY

Frugal Homeschooling Life

My husband and I are raising our children in a way that we believe will help them to be happy with their financial choices. We want them to be smart with money and not wasteful.

We don't hide our finances. We explain where and how money is earned and where it is spent. CG and SA save 1/3 of the money they earn or are given. We of course have had to have conversations about why we don't have cable or cell phones. Over all I think they understand.


The grocery store is a big deal for our family. We go with a list, that we create by looking through store circulars. CG and SA help find the items in the store. We discovered couponing this year. All of us are surprised at how easy it is and how much we save.

CG cutting coupons

Homeschooling makes learning so fun, last year for Geography we did a post card swap across America. It was very inexpensive and twice a week when they got postcards in the mail their faces lit right up. 

Lessons can be fun and inexpensive. Gardening, composting, nature study, reading, all these are frugal homeschooling lessons. Shopping at thrift stores, using coupons and saving money are also great lessons for children to learn.

Pheasant and Opossum tracks, did they cross paths or were they hanging out together?

We are enjoying our frugal homeschool life.

IN THE WOOD.... nature study

I am a naturalist and I love learning as much as I can from what is around me. As a homeschooling family we learn lots from outside. Things present themselves and it becomes a learning moment. I will always stop to look at a bug, try to identify it and have the kids ask questions about it. If it is something we have never seen we will look in books and check online to find out more information. We enjoy walking in the woods, and exploring in the yard.

CG loves birds and bugs. She will put many worms on her arm and watch them slither around. She will attempt to let crawl on her any bug that I say is not going to bite.  

SA loves collecting anything from outside specifically rocks and leaves.  We have many rocks in our house. He likes insects as well, not as daring as CG but she is convincing him. 

I would like to hear about what others find in nature. Exploring, learning,  anything that is nature related.  What kind of bug, flower, animal, bird have you seen. What are you studying for weather etc.

Please join my link up so we all can learn more from nature.

Blog Buttons and link ups

I have been trying to create a blog button with a drop down window.  Boy am I having problems. One site said to put the picture in a post and save the address location.  I would really like to create a nature study link up. I have created a nice button.  I believe you can right click on it and save image location to link back to my blog. Here goes.....

Periscope

"Mom I want to make a periscope"   Okay!  Supplies.....tissue box, 2 mirrors, 2 toilet paper rolls, and tape. They were very happy and the periscopes worked.  NO Spying!

Wizard Wands

I for some reason have been wanting to make Wizard Wands for a while.  Today I again asked CG and SA if they wanted to make one and they replied....No.

So I decided to make myself one anyway.  I gathered all my supplies. I used beads, a pipe cleaner, a wooden dowel and a rock.  Of course I also needed my glue gun, paint and a paint brush. If I had been more prepared I would have gathered some items outside like little pebbles, acorns, wooden vines, sticks etc.

To make one simply pick out the size stick that you want, add your pebbles, rocks, wire, vines, whatever you are using for your design. Then cover it all with paint, I used acrylic. Place it on wax paper to dry, I think that it could use two or three coats of paint depending on what color you choose. 

Two little children changed their minds and decided they wanted to make one too. Wow, who knew that would happen? While they were making theirs I noticed that if you just cover the end with colored beads and paint the stick you will have a Fairy Wand.  I am sure I will be hearing spells this weekend.

Here is my Black one.

He was very happy with how it was beginning to look.

All three completed, and an afternoon of fun!

Baking Pumpkin Scones!

We really enjoy baking in our house. We love pumpkin and found a pumpkin scone recipe, it is good! We made some and made some more. Then we made some for friends and gave some away for Christmas.  They are fun to make and YUMMY to eat. C.G and S.A. can measure the length and width then cut the triangles. The best part is adding the glaze.  This is not my recipe but you can find it here.