Barn Sales, Testing, and African Elephants ...OH MY!

Last weekend we had a barn sale and thankfully we had beautiful weather for it. B had been working hard to have her own table with the things she has been making all winter. She makes soaps, beaded key chains, and waterbottle ID tags.

Sadly, I think because we have had so much rain around here, everyone was home mowing and getting things done in their yard, instead of going to garage sales! The first day she sold a few things but on the second day she was a little disappointed. Still, she learned a lot and is already thinking of other ways to sell her products.
At one point, we had a man looking around that asked her if school was off for the day. She answered, "Yes."
He was unsatisfied and looked at me and said, "Why are the schools off today?"
I said reluctantly, "She's homeschooled."
He made a "ohhhh" sound.
Then I decided... hey wait..and said, "She's taking today off to run her own business."
With that, he seemed more than satisfied.

We have been completing our end of the year testing over the last two weeks. It was J1's last test before graduating highschool and J3's first standardized test ever. We have been having a lot of milestones happen in our home this year (especially this month and next). J2 turned "16" yesterday and J1's graduation is next Saturday! B is heading to her first sleep over tonight. Help!!

I had to laugh when I realized I took a picture of J3 testing to remember his fist standardized testing ever. Only a homeschool mom....only a homeschool mom. :-)

We still found a some time to do a little project. We decided to paint some African Elephants. I can't remember where I first saw this project but I will try to find it and post a link.

First we drew in pencil lightly and then we went over the drawing with washable markers. You then paint with water just like one of those water color books that already have the color drawn in.

I'll show the finished paintings in our quarterly wrap up post. They turned out pretty good.

Wicker Furniture Redo

So after a long two days of having a garage sale I found some time to work on my porch redo. I have a set of wicker that consists of two chairs and an ottoman. I bought it last year for ten dollars at a garage sale. There was almost no finish left any of it and I was having a hard time deciding on a color.

It was so sunny out it's kind of hard to see how badly they needed a face lift!
I found a can of American Accents "Nutmeg" that I had pruchased over the winter because I liked it (but had no idea what I would do with it).

I went ahead and tried it out on the ottoman first. I loved it! Around here, you can only find it at Jo Ann Fabrics, so I had my husband run and pick up another 3 cans. I LOVE the way they turned out!!!

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chicks Spray Paint Party:

Our Day Off

So, we finally had a good weather day around here. We have had few and far between this spring! Since the next 7 day forcast showed rain, what's a homeschool family to do?? Take the day off!! We decided to swap out our Thursday for the rainy Saturday coming up. In other words, school on rainy Saturday instead of sunny Thursaday.
Here's a little photo show of the fun we had.
J1 had a driving lesson in the town we lived previously so the rest of us visited our old stomping grounds while we waited. They decided to run the bases just for the fun of it.

Then we ran home for lunch and it was off to play a little tennis and visit the lake.

Of course, J3, did a little bug hunting.

What a great day we had! As I write this, of course it's raining! I'm so glad we enjoyed that beautiful day the Lord gave us! :-)

Porch Coffee Table Tweaking

Happy Mother's Day!!
I had such a wonderful day! My family took such good care of me! I even got to finish a project I had started earlier in the week.
I am finally redoing my porch (more about that in a later post) and I had found a table from TJ Maxx that I thought I could tweak. It's made of reclaimed barn wood (which I loved) but it was 24" tall and I needed a coffee table. Also, it had no finish on it and I knew it would not last outside on the porch for long without something to protect it.
No problem! I can fix that! I brought it home and had my hubby cut it down to about 18".

It took some sanding with a palm sander after we cut it to get the weeble wobble out of it. Then my husband hammered the plastic doodads back into the bottom of the legs.

Here it is at its new height...

So far so good!
Then instead of staining it, I decided to water down some black paint I had on hand. It's about 1/3 paint and the rest is water.

I worked on small sections at a time painting the stain on with a brush and then wiping some off with a bunch of damp paper towels.

Thankfully, what I wanted to happen did! That barn wood was soaking up the paint like a sponge and a lot of the grain was still showing through.
After it dried in the sun for a bit I decided to try a polyurathane we had gotten from lowes awhile back but were never able to use. Notice the $1 price tag!

This is when I thought I ruined the whole thing. It was going on BLUE! Yes, I said blue! Thankfully, it dried clear and I think the blue was so you could see where you had already painted.

Once it dried, I could not have been happier with the results! Don't you love when that happens?
Here's a sneak peek of it in it's new home on my porch. Hopefully soon I will reveal the whole porch redo.

Homeschool Weekly Wrap Up

Happy Saturday!
Today we are finally enjoying some spring weather here. My neighbor tills my garden every year and it never feels like spring until he does it. This afternoon I ran to the window when I heard that familiar sound. Sure enough there he was tilling my garden! I had to laugh because I was acting like a child on Christmas morning, running to get my shoes on to see how the soil looked. By the way, It looked pretty good!
This week J1 spent a lot of time prepping for the SAT that he took this morning. His brother J2 who is fininshing 10th grade did a lot with him since he will be taking the PSAT this October. Things go so much better when they study and learn together. I thank God that they have each other. After we dropped J1 off at 7:30 am (GASP!) we got J2 a carmel latte for all the help he gave his brother.

I have to recommend these amazing DVD's we used. I so wished I had found them sooner!! They were so helpful! They had a lot of tips and tricks that I wished I had known when I was in highschool. Both boys said they got a lot out of them.

This was our first time with the SAT test since J1 is our firstborn.
Also during the week J1 got a special delivery.

When his diploma arrived it really started to sink in for my husband and I. My emotions have been up and down all week.
On a lighter note.....here are some pics of some random moments of the past school week.

We played hooky for a few hours and went to the lake.

J3 found a book on clay sculpting and tried his hand at it.

J1 and J2 were finally getting to try out their airsoft guns and J3 is into video taping everything they do lately. :-)

In World Geography we starting out mapping assignments for Africa.

Have a great week!