Reading · Chantel Reads All Day

Dear Bookish Friend,

This week was a chillier one, I felt like we were getting a little taste of autumn, which I’m honestly always okay with come August. At the same time, there are only a few weeks of summer vacation left so I’m trying to enjoy each of them.

Heads up: there is only about 24 hours left in the HUGE Audible sale where tons of books are 80% off, I’ve been adding books to my list multiple times a day all week, check out the list of great deals here.

Now, here are seven things from this week . . .

Links shared in this post may be affiliate links, which means I make a small portion of the sale at no cost to you.

01 - our homeschool interviews

I sat down with each of my big kids one day this week and we went over a bit of a “homeschool interview” for this next year so I can get an idea of different things they want to do and learn about this year. I’ve done this for years and have a free homeschool vision planner that has the interview in it here.

I am more excited about this upcoming homeschool year than I have been in a long time! I think it’s partially because the end is in sight (especially for my oldest), and while I’m sad about that, it’s so fun to see my kids working towards adulthood.

02 - a good food week

This was a good food week! I love fresh food from the garden, especially potatoes (thanks to my in-laws for those). We had some great meals this week and the cooler temps had me doing more than just meals in the kitchen, things like:

making spicy oil (1 cup oil & 4 tbsp crushed red pepper flakes)
dehydrating Thai peppers for another spicy oil
making chicken noodle soup from leftover chicken bones (I froze it for the next time someone is sick)
making vegetable stock - I freeze onion ends and skins, carrot peels, celery bits, parsley stems, etc and then when my bag is full I make it all into vegetable stock that I usually use when making rice. I freeze the stock into one and two cups using these silicone molds. Nothing makes me feel more homemakery than this.

The frozen odds and ends that will become my vegetable stock.

03 - picture books on audio

My five-year-old has been loving books on audio this week. Her favorites include (they are all on sale!):

It’s great to have the physical book to look through while listening. Do you have any recommendations for her?

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04 - thrifting

I did some thrifting with my fifteen-year-old this week and wow, there were a lot of hilarious books that caught my eye that I didn’t buy! I had to apologize to my teenagers and tell them I will never really know how to love them because I did not get the book above. That cover just cracks me up, look how much that mom loves him!

05 - a sleep experiment success story

I am super happy to report that after my previous sleeping experiment was a fail, I have come across something that works for me! Melatonin has me sleeping like a baby (actually, much better). I have struggled for years to stay asleep (falling asleep is no problem) and I have never slept better than I have in the past two weeks. About 50% of the time I still wake up at 3am but I always fall back asleep within a few minutes. This is huge! My plan is to take them for a couple more weeks and then see my body will do this naturally on its own. I’ll keep you posted.

06 - teenagers are fun

I don’t know why people try to scare parents of young children by saying “just you wait till they are a teenager!”. Parenting teenagers has been so fun!

Also, this is the second time my label maker has been featured in this post, highly recommend! I love labeling things with it (so does my thirteen-year-old, apparently), I think the imperfections adds charm to items.

07 - around the internet

I have come across some cool things across the internet this week:

this article called A Theology of Birding (you know that caught my eye!)
Haley has lots of great (and free!) resources for homeschool families in the early years, including this free planner.
Sally Clarkson just turned 73 and I appreciated her birthday podcast episode. She is #goals for me.
I’ve been reading books by Karyne Norton for awhile but this week I finally listened to her podcast Finding Fantasy Reads, it’s really cool because you get to test out a new fantasy every other week!

in case you missed it

Here’s what I’ve shared lately:

a book haul - the last one for summer!
all the August deals - including tons of awesome audiobooks
family board games - the ones we’ve been gravitating to this summer
my August TBR - I’ve already DNFed one book from here!

What have you been enjoying or been inspired by lately?

homeschool prep & a successful sleep experiment

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