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Holiday Planning Progress

Published on December 1, 2023November 29, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place BlogLeave a comment

How is everyone doing? I hope we all made it through Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday without any serious damage. I also hope everyone has a good plan to get through the next month… we have definitely had some unexpected challenges around here like my oven and some sickness but we will survive!

We’ve been enjoying our Advent Study by Amanda Bennett with the lap book and other Christmas activities that we have been doing. The kids have been reading ‘A Christmas Carol’** aloud and doing a unit study** that goes along with it and we plan to watch the movie when we finish the book. **You can find the unit study HERE.

So far this week we have been able to gather all of our notes, menus, and lists from Thanksgiving to add to our Holiday Planner. We have put away the Thanksgiving folder and have pulled out our Polar Express folder, St. Nicholas Day notes, and of course our Christmas. I also probably need to pull out the New Year’s folder too but I haven’t just yet.

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Easy Homemade Bread

Published on November 29, 2023November 29, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog16 Comments

I know I’ve mentioned in a few posts that we’ve been making our own bread again. We love sourdough bread but a few of the kids had mentioned that they really wanted something more like store-bought so I tried a few recipes and with a couple of tweaks we have found a combo that we really like… Mr. Awesome and I haven’t been eating much bread but we have tried a slice here and there as it smells so good! It is quite exceptional when it’s still a little warm and smeared with real butter and then drizzled with a bit of local honey… mmmmm!

This bread is great to use as rolls and as an alternative to English Muffins for breakfast. It also toasts up really nicely! We save all the breadcrumbs in a baggie in the freezer to use in our recipes where breadcrumbs are needed.

I recently converted my sourdough starter ‘Fran’ to a pasta madre/lievito madre/stiff dough and I like the results so far. You can learn more about this process HERE. I think I want to try to make some Panettone for Christmas this year so I wanted to get some starters going and get a little more familiar with the process.

I’ve also been researching about the Herman starter and Charlie starters so I may want to them out as well.

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Getting Ready for the Holidays Week 7 (The Week After Thanksgiving)

Published on November 27, 2023November 30, 2025 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog5 Comments

Thanksgiving is over but there’s no time to rest yet as the real preparations are beginning for the holidays! One of the biggest things we need to do is to take time to sit down and evaluate how our Thanksgiving was. What was everyone’s favorite part? Was there anything that didn’t work well? Do you need to set up a rotating schedule to have dinner at other family member’s homes? (Odd year here, Even year there, or every 3rd, 4th, year?) Would it be better to have a potluck-style meal where everyone brings something? Was there anything you would like to do differently? Start now for your planning for next year so you don’t forget these ‘little things’! We will also be getting all of our Fall decor ready to be put away next week so we can start pulling out the Christmas decor.

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Smoky Maple Walnuts

Published on November 22, 2023November 25, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog6 Comments

These were pretty simple to make and they almost didn’t last until Thanksgiving Day because they were so good!

Smoky Maple Walnuts

Ingredients:

2 c. walnuts
1/3 c. maple syrup
1 t. liquid smoke, optional
2-3 T. soy sauce or alternative
Kosher salt or salt flakes for sprinkling on top

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A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving and other Thanksgiving homeschool resources

Published on November 15, 2023November 17, 2023 by Susie @ Pollywog's Place Blog4 Comments

This week we have been focusing on Thanksgiving with our homeschool studies. I had purchased ‘A Christ-Centered Thanksgiving‘** several years ago but just never got around to using it. This season I am trying to be a bit more intentional and I have included different seasonal activity slots into our school schedule to help me remember to look through what I have.