Yes, I agree. When I plan a meal, I definitely don't need to add tons of ingredients to my list, because I already have the basics. It depends what you like to cook, but my list of basic staples looks something like this: baking ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, yeast, cornstarch, white sugar, brown sugar, honey, etc.) grains and beans (white rice, brown rice, lentils, several kinds of beans, barley, oatmeal, etc.) canned (tomatoes, tomato sauce, tomato paste, pineapple, beans, soup sometimes, beans, chicken stock, tuna, etc.) condiments (soy sauce, olive oil, canola oil, curry paste, jam, peanut butter, mayo, mustard, etc.) frozen (peas, corn, sausages) All of these are things that I always have on hand. I try to stock up on the canned goods when they are on sale. For the condiments, I keep a back up of each one. When I open the backup jar, I put it on the list and buy it the next time I'm shopping, so that I never run out. I start my grocery list by making sure we have plenty of the following perishables: milk, eggs, butter, yogurt, cheese. If not, I add them to the list. Then I add any of the pantry items that need replenishing. Then finally I make a menu plan and add any individual ingredients that I will need for the meals.

We cook and bake, mainly. I made Christmas bread, eggnog, and sausage casserole. Dh made ambrosia. We also baked cut-out cookies, which we will decorate tonight after church. Dinner will be a simple soup in the crockpot.

In our house, Santa just does the stockings too. But we've never received anything from our pet. He is a cat, though, and just barely tolerates the holidays as it is.

Are these people friends of yours in addition to being clients? That's the only reason I can think that they would act so strangely! Can you think of some "policies" to whip out, like, "Thank you so much, but I have a policy not to eat while on the job" or "I have a policy not to socialize with my clients". It sounds like you work closely with your clients, so this may not work, but when I used to clean houses and clients tried to chat with me, I'd just cheerfully burst out with, "You just go right ahead with your plans. I'm going to get back to my cleaning now" and bustle right along. It was a little rude, but in such a cheerful, brisk way that nobody ever took offense. I didn't want to get involved in personal discussions! And nobody ever invited me out for lunch. How strange!

Yeah, that kind of thing can be a nightmare. When I have homeschool items to give away, I just take them to our homeschool group meetings and offer them up. Whatever doesn't go, I donate to the thrift store. I don't bother with email offers, because it just gets too complicated. A friend of mine recently had a large amount of material to give away. She set a time and invited people to come to her house at that time and take whatever they wanted. She got rid of quite a lot that way! But that would really only be successful if you had a lot to offer.

Uh oh. We did the same thing for dh's parents this year, only we got silicone-covered glass jars. They also are always filling up plastic bottles. I thought they would appreciate the glass as more hygienic and more pleasant to drink from. I guess we'll see!

I have occasionally fixed something that was obviously wrong, like a curtain snagged on itself instead of hanging straight or a vase tipped over. In the case of the curtain, I was in the bathroom and wanted the curtain fully closed! A few months ago, my ds was house-sitting for our neighbor for several weeks (taking in the mail, etc.). I went over with him a couple of times and noticed a full glass of milk sitting on the counter. It was already going sour and that would have been a nasty surprise when they came home. So I dumped the milk and washed the glass. I don't do anything that I would consider overstepping for someone else to do in my home.

You're probably right. I think I tend to cater too much to potentially picky eaters. And the puff pastry will probably draw some folks in who otherwise wouldn't eat artichokes and spinach. Is the Hungarian mushroom soup the one from Moosewood Cookbook? I love that soup.

Um, you are missing my invitation! Wow, that sounds delicious. The only thing I might suggest is something a little more kid-friendly. At least you can say it's for the kids, but even some adults are picky about things like salmon and artichokes and mushrooms. (Crazy people, I say.) Maybe crostini or chicken satay or meatballs. Or even pigs in a blanket, if that doesn't offend your sensibilities.

We have socks every year in our stockings. Doesn't seem weird to me! I've never heard of waterproof socks, though. What are they made of? I would love to get a toilet seat for Christmas! But neither dh nor I would ever think of getting something like that. Both of us lack the creative gift gene, unfortunately.

Chex Mix! I only make it at Christmas time, otherwise I'd eat my weight in it. I don't know that I'd take it to a potluck, but it's what I thought of immediately when I saw the thread title.

I plead the fifth on the going overboard question. But would you please tell me about this pillow? Where did you find it? Sounds like something our family could really use.

I have found the same. Too many "little" things add up. Lately I've been experimenting with focusing on just one aspect for a longer session rather than everything each day. So recently we did several days of JUST grammar during "literacy time", then we focused on a WWS lesson for a few days. Then we worked on some literary analysis for a couple of days. This seems to suit ds well. Short sessions of 15-20 minutes don't seem to work as well as 45-60 minutes. He's old enough that we can work hard on grammar for a week and then skip it for a week or two without him forgetting things.

Side dish? Christmas Eve? Duh! COOKIES.

Thanks! I missed that.

declenching :lol: Sometimes I do have to "declench" after doing Latin. :lol: But the terms you want are "conjugating verbs" and "declining nouns".

flashlight pen light book light (Illumination seems pretty popular among this age group. LOL) hex bug (a little higher than $5, but not much) marshmallow shooter thinking putty

Is the idea that they're supposed to do all that in one minute? Wow! My ds can't even pick up his pencil in less than a minute. Thanks for the page-level detail. It would be nice if amazon had Look Inside, so I could see other grade levels.

Have you told your friends how you feel? They may be thinking it's hard to plan extra activities around the holidays, but what would be wonderful is if they invited you to join in on what they already have planned. Would you enjoy that? Our family is small and our extended family is far away so we are always alone on Christmas. We enjoy our family times, but would love to invite others to join us, especially folks like you without any family at all. The problem is we don't know who those people are! A few times we've extended invitations but the other people had plans already. If I knew of someone without family or plans, I would invite them to join us in a heartbeat.

Dh and I love this movie! We watch it every year. Last year, we let ds watch it for the first time at age 11. We skipped over those two scenes, and felt fine about the rest of the movie.

I consider literature (reading, discussion, learning literary devices) as a separate core subject from the rest of language arts. So literature gets one "slot" and composition/grammar/etc. get one "slot" in my planning. Of course that doesn't solve the problem! But it helped me come to terms with how to apportion our time. Two slots -- that's the only way it makes sense to me.

Maybe they don't know what it is either, and they're holding the contest so someone else will figure it out for them. :smilielol5:

That seems like a good guess. Here's an image of a homemade book weight. Definitely some resemblance there. (Edited to delete image)

Am I the only one who finds the "under/over" terminology strange? My thought is how on earth clothing could go *under* one's belly button. ALL of my clothing stays over my skin, thank you very much! But I assume the question is about the height of the waistband -- above or below the navel. My pants usually come to just about at my belly button. I am short-waisted and have only about an inch between my belly button and my natural waist (unlike magazine models who seem to have 5-6 inches in between). Typical modern pants come about to my belly button but could be a little above or a little below. I

When we did "pronounce for spelling" it was in conjunction with the normal pronunciation of the word, so the student learned to think of them together. In those examples, I'd say "seven" first normally. Then I'd say, "This is a word we need to pronounce for spelling. Say, 'sev-EN'," emphasizing the difference in the end syllable. I'd make sure he could say it both ways correctly. Next time we needed to spell that word, I might prompt my child to see if he could remember on his own -- "Do you remember how to pronounce this one for spelling?" My son caught on to this idea very easily and found it easy to remember the "pronounce for spelling" pronunciations. I find it very intuitive myself and actually have used it for many years almost unconsciously to help me remember the spelling of some words.