The Creative Salad – Page 15 – Crafty fun and homeschool adventures in Sonoma County, California.

May Book List

This is what happens in a family of readers.

We have piles of books and magazines everywhere. Our bookshelves are stacked three rows of books deep.

We love to read ourselves to sleep and almost always stay up too late each night devouring our books:

We read absolutely everywhere:

Here’s what we’re reading right now.

Our daughter is plowing through the Boxcar Children Mysteries series. She’s read (and reread!) the first thirteen books and now is savoring “Tree House Mystery.” It will probably take her less than a day to read this one. She blows us away with her passion for books and dedication to reading.

The little guy is looking at “Can You See What I See?” (from the used book store), a gift from his big sister. For the most part, he just watches us when we read to him. When you’re eleven weeks old, pictures are blase. Moving mouths, on the other hand, are incredibly fascinating.

I just finished rereading the Twelve Houses series by Sharon Shinn and am toying with the idea of rereading the Artefacts of Power series by Maggie Furey. I have found that I cannot read new books at this stage of life, as I get sucked into these fascinating new worlds and then stay up WAY TOO LATE. New books = time suckage. SIGH. I hope to read new things again soon.

David reads many new books, lucky guy! His most recent read is the latest book in Robin Hobb’s Rain Wilds Chronicles series, Blood of Dragons.

We love our fantasy books. They make for the best escapism.

What are you enjoying reading right now?

Back Deck Redux

We moved into this rental four months ago and still so much of the house remains a work in progress. Now that the weather has warmed we’re turning our attention to the outside of the house. We began work on our front garden last month and now we’re turning our attention to the backyard space.

Our first step to make the backyard more usable was to clean the slick wooden deck that became a slippery mess any time it was wet:

David rented a power washer and completely transformed the deck:

What a huge difference!

Next we want to string lights across the space, setting them up to turn on/off with our indoor light switch (an easy fix). Then we need some planters to hide that ugly water storage container. We also have to tackle the rest of the yard. (The laundry list includes removing stray building materials, closing off the yard from the front, making it kid-safe, tackling the back garden…)

I would love to plant hydrangeas like these (they grow eight feet tall in either sun or part-shade):

along the back of the yard directly in front of the fence:

Maybe next summer?

Nevertheless I feel so excited to use this space! I foresee many summer meals spent outside on our back deck.

Color Choices

Thanks to my friend Daniela I have a (free!) metal two-drawer filing cabinet to spray paint. I asked for color suggestions on Facebook and friends immediately responded with robin’s egg blue or candy apple green.

You guys know me so well. (My favorite colors are blue and green.)

I love the idea of painting the file cabinet something bright and cheerful similar to these painted cabinets that I found online:

Shown above: 1. Use Stone To Top Off Your Old Filing Cabinets (pin) | 2. Repurpose a Filing Cabinet for the Kitchen | 3. CB2 TPS mint file cabinet | 4. Spray-painted yellow and topped with plywood, three Goodwill filing cabinets morph into a storage unit (pin)

David prefers a more neutral color, but I’m leaning towards turquoise, robin’s egg blue, apple green, mint, or, um, hot pink.

What do YOU think?

Homeschooling Room Progress Report

We’re making tremendous headway in the unpacking and organizing of the homeschooling room!

Not too long ago it looked like this:

halfway unpacked and completely unusable.

A few weeks ago we had made some more progress so I shared these photos on Instagram:

We’ve unpacked or moved most of those clear boxes, bags, and bins in to the garage. The stacks of art still need to be hung throughout the house. I only have several more boxes to unpack, and then we can really begin to use this space!

Here are some more snippets from around the room, with many more photos to be shared soon:

I feel giddy with excitement over the learning and fun we have ahead of us in this space.

Meal Planning Success and Failures

In our quest to economize we’ve been making an effort to meal plan. I like the idea of using everything in our fridge (sending less to the compost bin) and reducing the amount of time we spend each day trying to figure out what to cook. (Every minute counts in our busy lives!)

Week one was a resounding success. David and I made (and loved):

1. Grilled shrimp with cilantro, lime, and peanuts (pin)
2. Butternut Squash Soup with Coconut & Ginger (pin)
3. Yam, tofu, pea, and carrot coconut curry (aka use up whatever veggies are in the fridge)
4. Tuna fish and spinach salad with hard boiled eggs, apple, and dried cranberries
5. Make your own sushi with smoked salmon and avocado

Week two didn’t go so well. I made the mistake of picking a number of new recipes instead of sticking to old favorites with just one or two new recipes thrown in for the week. When push came to shove, I didn’t feel like even looking up the ingredient proportions yet alone tackle a new recipe. MAJOR MEAL PLAN FAIL.

Plus I really need to make one dish for everyone to eat. Our daughter tends to grab her own meal from the fridge or wants something super simple to prepare. (Bonus points if it’s white and room temperature.) The girl is trying to live off of cubed tofu and rice (with nutritional yeast), rice pasta (with butter and cheese), hard boiled eggs, and frozen bread. (Thank goodness she also eats frozen peas, edamame, miso soup, avocado, smoked salmon, (all-natural) hot dogs, beans, salmon, and fruits or I’d really start to worry.)

This week I hope to do better, although with a house full of guests I may have to cut myself some slack.

What sorts of things have you been cooking lately? Please remind me of easy and cheap recipes to share. I have over seven hundred (!!!) recipes pinned but now I’m only allowed to try one a week. ;)