Jennifer's Ramblings

My son attends an Academy with a one to one laptop program starting in 2nd grade. And as technology advances I am sure this will evolve into a one to one tablet program so I am please to see this upcoming change by Apple.

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 10 Mar 2015 14:20:00 +0000

http://ift.tt/1GnqEWJ

from LinkedIn

via IFTTT

Boys and Play

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 16:01:00 +0000

The aftermath of the assault on Dredd and his army of drones...boys and their imagination!

Shoes

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Wed, 16 Jul 2014 20:16:00 +0000

I am not a big shoe person. I normally get by with one pair of boots, one pair of tennis shoes and one pair of black heels. However, I saw these shoes at Target the other day and my estrogen must has been in high gear because I just had to have them. And they are comfortable too!

Homemade No Cook Kool Aid Play-Doh

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 15 Jul 2014 12:00:00 +0000

So I took the plunge last week and Hotrod and I made play-doh. Now I am not a crafty, homemade kind of mom, however, I search Pinterest high and low to find a simple, fun play-doh recipe for us to try on those days it was too hot or rainy to go outside. I found this neat recipe over at Suzis Crafts blog (click the link to find the reciepe) and knew it was the one, why, because I can't stand the smell of store bought play-doh!

This recipe used Kool Aid as the coloring agent and it was great. I will say we followed the recipe closely except after the first batch we decided to add 2 packages of Kool aid to make the colors brighter.

In the end we had a fun time making the doh! And I was happy because I was able to incorporate several lessons into one activity from money (buying the ingredients), reading the receipe, and measurements. Also I am not a professional photographer, the photos you see are taken from my iPhone from whatever angle I could get while helping out.

The Ingredients

Measuring

More measuring

Mixing up the dry ingredients

What it looked like after mom mixed in the boiling water

Kneading the doh (his favorite part)

Our second batch kneading

The finished product cooling

Lucky Monday

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Mon, 14 Jul 2014 22:30:00 +0000

I love it when I get an unexpected deal while shopping. Today I had a list of about 5 stores to hit while Hotrod was at Museum School and even though he has gotten better while we run errands, sometimes it is just quicker by myself. So I went to my first stop, Albertsons,

and when checking out I recieved a high value coupon for JoAnn's which was on my list 3 stores down!

I'll have a post about my JoAnn trip later and my next attempt at being crafty!

Local Produce

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Sat, 12 Jul 2014 21:57:00 +0000

I am blessed to have my Godparents still in my life and living close. And this week Hotrod and I went to their house, along with Nanny and Pa to have a fun time swimming. One of the fringe benefits was that I left with some glorious squash, zucchini, and potatoes. And tonight that is what's for supper!

3 crook neck squash

1 large zucchini

8-9 small -medium potatoes

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

Cut up the veggies, coat with desired amount of olive oil (I used garlic infused) salt and pepper to taste.

Bake at 400 for 1 hour and yum yum and delish!

New Perspective

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 22:09:00 +0000

When I started this blog I wasn't sure what I was doing. I had a friend who had a blog and I read blogs and thought it would be a fun thing to do. Plus, I was a new stay at home mom with a little one who took good naps and I was going a little stir crazy after 14 years of working outside the home.

But the more I got into it the more daunting it became. I put pressure on myself to write. I set unrealistic goals and expectations based on what I saw in others blogs (I do that in other areas too like Instagram). I thought I had to write paragraph upon paragraph and be witty or was poetically about my life and that's just not me. I like short, sweet to the point conversations and that is how I write. Also my brain works faster than my thumbs or fingers, which ever apparatus in typing on at the moment, and I quickly lost my train of thought and gave up. So slowly but surely I stopped posting. But as my son gets older and I have a little bit more time I want to start up again.

I know the "experts" say pick something you are passionate about and write about that topic but they are interested in money making on their blogs, I'm not (though I'm not opposed to it either in the future). This blog is about just whatever pops into my head, just like the title Jennifer's Ramblings. I might post often or I might not just depends on my life at the moment. It also depends in how accessible my laptop is because most of these post will be made on the go from my phone or tablet and the Blogger app is not that user friendly. Many things I post will be links to other interesting things I have found because I don't believe in reinventing the wheel or beating a dead horse by writing about something someone else has already done a good job on (better than me usually). I will also post things to my new Facebook page I created so I won't clog up my friends newsfeed with my ramblings, because let's be honest FB is more user friendly when sharing via mobile apps!

So look past the misspellings or other grammatical issues you will find, my proofreading is perfect after I hit publish. And for whom ever is reading this thanks!

These two images might give you perspective on my thought process!

Random thought

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Wed, 09 Jul 2014 16:09:00 +0000

Is there a correlation between the rise in identification/labeling of children with AD(H)D and the introduction of mandatory state educational assessments, and does that correlation increase as the grade levels that are mandated to take and pass the test becomes younger?

What's For Supper

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 23:39:00 +0000

So I wanted something quick and easy tonight with minimal prep and clean up, here is what I came up with.

I had wonderful local crooked neck squash and zucchini from my Aunt Vicki's garden, an onion left over from my last Jazbac Farm delivery, potatoes I purchased on sale at Aldi's and pork chops. I cut up the potatoes, onions, squash and zucchini into 1/2 in disc placed them on an individual sheet of foil. Then I drizzled each with flavored olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder. Then topped with a pork chop and a pat of butter for good measure wrapped them up and cooked on a cookie sheet at 400 for an hour.

Yum, yum plenty of flavor and easy clean up! Here is how one looked before I wrapped it up. And clean up was a breeze! I think I am going to try using the crock pot next time.

For 4 people I used:

3-medium russet potatoes

3-small crooked neck squash

1-large white onion

1-medium zucchini

4-pork chops

4-pats of butter

Seasoning to taste

Divided evenly onto 4 sheets of foil, wrap up the top then the sides and cook on a baking sheet at 400 degrees for 1 hour.

Getting Our Reading On

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 13:20:00 +0000

Reading is one of my 7 year old's least favorite summer activity, next to writing! He is good with doing math, science and music but getting him to read is not always the easiest thing to do. So I have had to come with creative ways to get our reading in most days.

Today I tapped into his love of being the center of attention. I pulled out his stuffed animals and made him the "teacher" to read and teach his "students" about his current favorite subject Star Wars.

It was amazing, what normally is a fight to read one chapter ended up being a two chapter and a 15 minute lesson on all of the Lego Star Wars characters.

Finding the Beauty

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 18:42:00 +0000

I was pulling weeds and sticker (grass burrs if you prefer) this morning and looked down and saw this pretty.

It was only about the size of a quarter. Luckily it didn't fly away till I took a picture. Sometimes it's finding beauty in the little things that make the day!

Summer Lunches

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 17:37:00 +0000

So typically a summer lunch for mom would be a PB&J sandwich, however, dad is home this week!!! Yay a real lunch for mom!

Cookie Dough Greek Yogurt

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 15 Jan 2013 21:54:00 +0000

Okay I found this on Pinterest and just had to try it out. I tweaked it a little to fit what I had at home. It was very, very good.

The original post here called for plain Yogurt, 1 Tbps peanut butter, 1 Tbps sweetener 1 Tbps mini chocolate chips and 1/2 tbs vanilla.

I had vanilla yogurt and regular chocolate chips so I omitted the vanilla and used honey as my sweetener. Now it is not light on calories, mine was 325 so not an everyday snack but maybe for breakfast every now and then!

Do you Pandora?

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 19:59:00 +0000

Do you know about Pandora? If so do you listen? Well let me tell you that I had known about Pandora for many years but it wasn't until the Christmas holiday that I truly came to appreciate the service.

I must say that I have to thank my husband for discovering it on our Roku player and for experimenting enough that we now play it (through our surround sound) almost more than we watch TV now. We listened to everything from Bluegrass to classic rock to Symphony and everything in between. Hotrod loves Bluegrass so of course that is what we listen to the most. But the variety is endless.

Now you can play Pandora on almost any mobile device (I don't because I am not paying for the data plan to cover it) through your computer and many other portals. So give it a try and see what you think after all it is FREE.

Write the Room

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 03 Jan 2013 21:02:00 +0000

Keeping a 5 year old boy entertained for 18 days during the Christmas break when it is too cold to go outside is interesting. I didn't want all of his time to be spent in front of the boob tube and there is only so much Candy Land, Lego's , and crafts you can do before we all go a little nuts.

Luckily we had Christmas as a break and there were new toys to play with but I also wanted to keep up with a little "school" type work as well. So I employed one of the "games" they play at school called write the room only I adapted it to write the house.

I took the sight words that we have from school and added my own Dolch word cards and some post it note sheets with words. I place 10 words around the house at a time. Then Hotrod went to go find the words and write them down. We not only got to work on reading but writing as well.

You will need word cards, a clip board, pencil, and paper. I created his worksheet at Amazing Handwriting Worksheets.com. You can customize the page on the left hand side of the screen. It is a great website for handwriting and of course I found it on Pinterest!

First is the note cards. I found the post it notes at Jo Ann's in the close out section several years ago. I just knew they would come in handy someday. And then the sight words from school.

Next I placed the words around the house and Hotrod went around an found them and wrote the word before moving on to find the next one.

An here he is in action!

Here is a example of what it would look like complete.

This was a great activity. This day we played for about and hour and a half. It was very engaging and I love that it includes lots of movement a must for my energizer bunny.

Getting Ready to Go Back

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:17:00 +0000

So today is the first day that dad went back to work after 11 wonderful days of having him home for the holidays. That also means that there is just 5 more days until Hotrod returns to school after an 18 day break. Sooooo that means I need to get him back in the school routine so that next week is not a total shock to his system.

Now of course we read every day and do little odds and ends in the way of education but today we started back working on "school" work. He wanted to do math today so I pulled out some craft sticks and made some math sentence sticks. We worked on not only math but hand writing as well, score!

First mom demonstrates

Then Hotrod gets to work

Hello 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 00:44:00 +0000

So I'm not much on resolutions but here are some of the things I hope to focus on in the up coming year.

Eat more vegetables and fruit
Eat less carbs
Make my screen time more efficient
Try and blog more
Continue with making meal plans for the week
Try new and different recipes
Be more available to play, house work can wait
Be more relaxed

Well see how it goes

That Almost Perfect Morning

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 11 Sep 2012 14:52:00 +0000

You know that morning as a mom, that morning where everything seems to go off without a hitch. That morning when you wake up before the alarm, get in your exercise and a load of laundry before you wake up your child, who gets up without a fuss. That morning when you have made the lunches the night before, breakfast goes smoothly and you even have enough time to do a quick vacuum before loading up into the car on time. That morning that as you pull out of the driveway down the street you realize...you forgot to brush your teeth...welcome to my morning!

Fun with Pipe Cleaners

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Tue, 14 Aug 2012 15:00:00 +0000

What do you do in Texas when it's too hot to go outside...have a campout inside!

We built our own campfire and monsters out of pipe cleaners Hotrod got yesterday at Nanny and Pa's.

All In One Meal Pinterest Recipe Success

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 09 Aug 2012 15:55:00 +0000

So I have been putting my Pinterest time to good use this week. I have tried 3 recipies and have had great success. First was the homemade low fat ranch dressing recipe. Next was a black bean casserole (post to come later) and now an all in one dish with meat, veggies and potatoes in a yummy (not low fat) sauce. I changed it up a little to fit our needs and taste. Also, here is the original pin link on Pinterest. You can do this with beef, pork or chicken and change up the veggies to suit your family's taste this is just what worked for us.

First the ingredients: (and sorry for the picture quality, I was trying a new app and it turns out it diminished the megapixels)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees

4-5 pieces of your choice of meat (I used chuck steak this time)

2 cans of green beans (1lb of fresh if you can find good ones)

4-5 medium red potatoes (depending on how many you are feeding)

1 stick of butter (told you it was not low fat)

1 package of Italian Seasoning mix (I used Garlic and Herb for extra flavors)

Place the meat in the middle of a 9x13 baking dish

Wash and cut up the potatoes into cubes and place beside the meat

Drain the 2 cans of green beans well (I poured mine in a colander before starting so they would be good and drained) then place them on the other side of the meat.

Next melt the butter and mix with the seasoning packet and pour over the whole dish.

Now cover it in foil and bake for and 1-1:15 hours. If you are using fresh green beans and want them mush the longer the better and also with the beef it needed longer to be nice and tender.

Then tada you have a whole meal in one pan. I served with some hot yeast rolls and apple pie.

Homemade Ranch Dressing

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 19:27:00 +0000

Here is my latest Pinterest find. Homemade Ranch Dressing. Now if you are like me you like a little salad with your dressing (stole that line from my friend Jodie) and are trying to lose weight this is a great alternative. And now that I am seriously trying to lose 10 lbs, you know counting calories and exercising, not just cutting out the Blue Bell. I had to find a good low calorie salad dressing.

The store bought dressings you find out there are either high in calories and fat or have no taste. So I scoured the Pinterest site and found this blog post and went from there.

Here are the ingredients, Dannon Oikos Plain Greek Yogurt, Hidden Valley Ranch DRESSING mix, and 1% milk.

I took (2) 5.3 oz containers Plain Greek yogurt, which is about a cup if you buy the larger size, (1) package of Ranch Dressing Mix, make sure you get the dressing mix NOT the dip mix. You see 2 packages in the picture because I bought the double package but only use one. And 1/2 cup of 1% milk. Mix it all together and pour into a container. I used some small 4 oz mason jars and it filled up 2. Let it rest in the frig for about an hour before use so it has time for the flavors to meld and get to the constancy you are use to from bottled dressing.

Now using the Lose It recipe builder for a 2 Tbs serving (30g if you weigh your servings) comes out to a whooping...30 calories! Yep you read right 30 calories. I ate it on my salad today for lunch and it was better than any store bought dressing I have had. And so easy to make!

Laws of Motherhood

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Thu, 02 Aug 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Just as soon as you buy new underwear to replace the ones with holes your child will grow just enough to need the next size!

Best Laid Plans

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 18:54:00 +0000

Okay, I had this great plan to post something everyday of what we did or learned or introduced that day. However, time got away from me, laundry piled up, I got sucked into the Sons of Anarchy series, and well just didn't get it done so here is a quick recap of our week.

On Monday we got to go for our first swim and boy was it cold, and fun.

Rainy day fun with a puzzle mixed with a little geography lesson

We got our hair cut on Wednesday and headed to get our weekly Wednesday Wacky Pack from Sonic. The only thing Hotrod cared about were the machines working on the lot next door.

Thursday I introduced Tanagrams. This is a great way to teach spacial reasoning, work on patterns and incorporate several other math related skills

It rained a couple of days here so another activity we did was a Pinterest inspired game with our Dolch words. I laid them down in a path and Hotrod jumped from word to word saying them as he went. If he missed one he had to start over. It was a great way to work out a little energy.

We continue to work on handwriting and he is enjoying it so much the now asked to practice, YEAH! This is a picture of a sailboat he drew after practicing his letters the other night.

So there is a snapshot of our week. Maybe I will get better at posting, maybe not. Next week will be a little different since we start summer Museum School and swimming lessons. There will be big fun at TheRowdyRands house!

Bubble Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Sun, 03 Jun 2012 23:39:00 +0000

Another Great Week

noreply@blogger.com (Jennifer's Ramblings) — Sat, 02 Jun 2012 11:00:00 +0000

The end of Mom Camp week 2 was a welcome sight. We had lots of fun and a few more outings. Nanny and Pa were back from their beach vacation so Hotrod got to catch up on some good grandparent time.

This week we worked in spacial awareness, built another sensory box, continued to work on hand writing and reading, measurements, memory recall, an capped it off with our first trip to the dentist.

All in all a great week! We are ready for the weekend!

Nanny and Pa's vacation

Got to play with a cousin

Spacial awareness with mazes

Practicing memory recall with Curious George

Fun with sensory box #2

Machine wars with mom! CAT v John Deere

Smile for the xray