Visiting a Shakertown

If you live in the Eastern part of the United States you have probably heard about "Shakers". I won't go into detail about the religious beliefs of this group, but you can read more about them here. To my knowledge, there is only one, tiny community of Shakers left in Maine, but the group did leave us a few of their villages, or "Shakertowns", that are incredibly interesting to visit. There are two such villages in Kentucky. I visited Pleasant Hill when I was much younger and really enjoyed it, so I was excited to find out when we moved to Kentucky last year that we now lived near the other Shakertown, South Union, in this state. This month we were finally able to take a "field trip" there and had a great time!

This is the Centre House where most of the daily living happened. It is segregated by two mirroring sides of the building: the women's side and the men's side. Today it has been restored to a beautiful condition and if full of fascinating Shaker artifacts and antiques.

table necessities

Shaker clothing

a Shaker bedroom (women's side)

a Shaker hymnal

exploring one of the many passageways

a Shaker classroom

poster of the final auction of this particular Shakertown

Shakers can certainly teach us a lot about orderliness and being industrious. Their buildings were immaculate and so creatively arranged. We also enjoyed walking around the grounds of this Shakertown. Originally there were over 200 structures in this community, now there are only about 9 left standing.

the smokehouse

the kiddos feeding clover to the friendly neighboring horses

a Shaker barn

exploring

the ministry shop (workshop)

enjoying our day

a punched-tin lantern

the Shaker Tavern (now a B & B)

It's fun to be a "tourist" in your own state, there is always so much to explore and learn about! While we may not be doing regular school lessons throughout the summer, we are definitely still learning. And since this has only been our "home" state for not-quite-a-year we still have much to explore! Can't wait!

The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...

my blessed life

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