Molly wanted a Hamburger Cake for her birthday. We trolled around the Internet and looked at lots of photos and ideas. This is what we came up with. It might look like something difficult but let me be the first to tell you-I am not much of a baker and if I can put this together anyone can! I don’t have any photos of the cake in progress.

I bought 2 cake mixes-1 yellow and one chocolate. I made the chocolate in a 8×8 brownie pan-square patty like Wendy’s burgers!

I made 2— 8 inch rounds out of the yellow cake but filled one with more of the batter (bottom bun smaller-top bun larger.)

After they cooled I trimmed the patty to make it nice and flat as well as trimming the bottom bun. Then I took the extra chocolate cake and added it to the top of the top yellow cake bun to make it more dome like. Make sense?

I bought 3 cans of frosting 1 chocolate and 2 white

We took some frosting out  and divided it into 3 bowls for condiments and added food coloring –red for ketchup, green for lettuce and yellow for mustard. You don’t need much. After you reach the desired color put each into a plastic bag and squeeze down to one bottom corner. set aside.

Take more white frosting into a bowl and add color to look like American cheese—use this to frost graham crackers to look like cheese slices on the burger.

Take the other can of white frosting and make it bun colored-we added a bit of the chocolate frosting for some color plus some food coloring.

Now to put it together

bottom bun cake first with burger patty (chocolate cake) next. Frost the chocolate cake with the chocolate frosting-making the edges look burgery!

 To that we put the graham crackers already frosted on the edges of the burger cake-hanging over a bit. We didn’t go all the way into the middle of the burger with these I wanted it to stay stable and thought this might make it tippy and too sweet. We did use more of the cheese frosting between the graham crackers and on the edges to look like melting cheese.

Then top with top bun. Use the bun frosting to glue the dome shape together. Try to smooth the frosting out as much as possible. Now get your condiment frosting’s and cut a tiny bit off the corner (a little larger for lettuce) and pipe lettuce around the bottom edge and squeeze squiggly ketchup and mustard on the cheese frosting.

We added a few slivered almonds on the top for seseme seeds.

This really wasn’t too hard. And it was surprisingly good. I thought it was going to be way too sweet-but it wasn’t. It was a little hard to cut but no one seemed to mind!

It ended up being dinner for 2 tonight, so I made it extra special….because she ’s worth it!

Wednesday night on Discovery Health at 8:00PM there is going to be a Radical Unschooling piece as part of a Radical Parenting episode. Sarah Parent of Clan of Parents and her family were filmed to be part of the show. Her blog has more details on the filming process.

I am still floating around on my post conference high! I am re-reading Deschooling Our Lives and I just picked up Nurture Shock and Raising Our Children Raising Ourselves from the library tonight. I am also LOVING these podcasts called Whatever, Whatever Amen!!! Our local unschooling group is getting together so we can  watch this Astra Taylor lecture together and discuss it. I have already watched it once-it is long but well worth it. Very inspiring!!

Any body have any other recommendations for unschooling books, blogs, podcasts or websites I should be checking out?

The little something for your dryer as promised in my Natural Laundry Soap post

Homemade natural Fabric Softener Pouch

I try to always credit recipes and ideas when I post them here and these fabric softener pouches  came from a book on SouleMama’s side bar which I checked out of our local library.  MAKE YOUR PLACE by Raleigh Briggs

Also-let it be known, that I HATE the smell of dryer sheets. When they waft out of the dryer vent and scent the whole neighborhood or  especially when you pass someone while out running and the lingering smell of Downey or Snugglie fills my nose!!! Really that should be outlawed. These pouches are in no way overwhelming or offensive.

The directions say you will need to make pouches out of tightly woven fabric. I have never sewed before so I thought this would be a great little first project for me!!

These really don’t need to be very big at all-maybe 4 x 3.

Fold  a rectangle of fabric in half and sew up the sides. Add a couple of spoonfuls of this mixture:

1/2 cup baking soda

1 T arrowroot powder

1 T rice flour or cornstarch

1-3 drops essential oils of your choice

Tie up the pouch tightly and pop it in the dryer with your clothes. Refill the pouch when the scent fades. I made a couple with different scents…Lemon-Eucalyptus and the other Lemon-Orange.

The scent from these pouches is very subtle, really just fresh smelling, soft laundry.

After dinner we made  quick batch of Pumpkin Pie Playdough. This is not only a super easy recipe but it turns out great every time. Not too sticky and not too dry! And smells great too. The color and spice combo could be switched up as needed. Store in a plastic bag or covered container.

Mix together in  pan:

1 cup flour

1/2 cup salt

2 teaspoons cream of tarter

2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Then add:

1 Tablespoon oil

1 cup water with 6 drops red food coloring and 15 drops of yellow food coloring added

cook on medium heat, stirring constantly until playdough forms into a ball and pulls away from the sides.

Dump out on to table and let cool a bit before playing with it.

Yes-this is the same recipe we made last year!

Over the weekend we went for a walk and collected many treasures .

It doesn’t take long to fill a basket or a bag with pretty, little interesting things. I am worse than the kids!! I love little collections of this and that. If you just look around my house you can easily see my love of “stuff.” I also love to arrange these little collections, to set them out in interesting ways, like little still lifes. Molly also loves to arrange and rearrange and set up little scenes. Ginger on the other hand likes to investigate and touch everything. And sometimes break things in the process

I had just the thing to organize our finds…an old printers box. I set the box on top of a small table and perched a mirror on the back. Instant nature table.

Ginger sorted out the pinecones, rose petals, rocks, acorn tops and nuts and pretty red leaves into their own sections.

Until all the little pieces had a new home!

Ginger spent a long time this morning moving stuff around and taping the tops back on to the acorns (and taking them away from the bad, bad puppies that think they are treats!)

So between Ginger and the puppies, I give this pretty little set up a couple of days until things are smooshed, mixed together, tipped over and dumped. But that’s ok…I know where we can get lots more ’stuff!!”

Last week, my husband and I  were with our homeschool friends Amy and Brad. My husband has been on a kick lately of telling me to send Ginger to school. Partially because he believes it and mostly because he likes to annoy me. Amy and Brad know my husband likes to yank my chain (a lot!!)  so they mostly just laughed at him but also tried to set him straight!

I have sort of become anti-school. If my older kids decided to go to school I would support them but I would have a really hard time with all the rules and regulations that I guess need to be in place for crowd control reasons. The homework–what the heck do they do in school all day that they need to do more when they get home????    Grades?  You are “smart” if you get good grades  (know how to work the system) or your dumb and lazy (bored) if you don’t get good grades.   Arbitrary awards like pizza parties for being quiet and getting high test scores? Now that’s a true love of learning not just a love of pizza! The longer my kids are home, the more happy I am with the choices we (I) have made. I am pretty sure I  have become one of those homeschooling snobs. I’m sorry.  I don’t really look down on you, but I do feel my kids are lucky. They have it pretty good. Obviously, I don’t hold book smarts high on the list of proof of being “smart” or proof of getting a good education.  (Right here insert my super excitement to see John Taylor Gatto at our Annual Unschooling Conference in Feb!!!!!!!!!!)

I certainly wouldn’t tell someone that was thinking about homeschooling that it’s easy or the perfect choice. My kids don’t cooperate all the time or get along well even 50% of the time.But they are in command of their time,  their choices and their learning the majority of the day. And by learning I don’t mean workbooks or texts. I mean real life learning. Part of being an unschooler is living a rich life. Which is one of the not so easy parts of being an unschooling parent.

What does that mean, to live a rich life? For years I struggled with thinking we needed to move to a farm or my kids needed to have deep seeded interests that took them passionately to the library to research their interests or mentors and daily lessons in music or dance. But the reality is that most kids are not that driven or have a passion that will engulf their lives. It’s those driven kids that ruin unschooling for the rest of us mediocre chumps. The other 95 % (that’s a guess but I bet it’s high) of us  just live and play and learn in our day to day lives.  You hear about those driven kids and think your homeschool life needs to look like that or somehow you’re failing. When in reality…those are just the unschooled/homeschooled  kids you hear about. It makes for a boring read that your kids played a game or two, colored, made cookies, read books or played on the computer for hours before going to the playground with friends while the Moms discuss the following days field trip to a different park for some creeking and a picnic only to run to the rec center for break dancing class then scootering home to  stuff your papers that need to be delivered after dinner. See just day to day boring stuff.

No, we don’t live on a farm. That means I have to look for enriching things for us to do….catching and feeding monarchs before they migrate to Mexico for the winter: (Science, History, Geography, Math)

Watching the navy jump out of airplanes: (Physics, History)

Also, giving them lots of opportunities to cook, create, talk to professionals,  have pets to take care of, visit both local and different libraries, museums, local landmarks and traveling both near and far. (History, Math, English, Art, Science,Literature)

We are getting ready for a trip to Dog Island, off the coast of Florida. For us an event or a trip is the perfect reason to seek out information about things. We have gotten out maps to track our drive and globes to compare our little trip to the great big world. We have read countless  books on the ocean, coral reefs, tides and tidal pools, food chains and the gulf of Mexico. We have watched movies about sea turtles, dolphins and many magic school bus episodes on ocean life and water. We built our Galileoscopes and have our sky maps ready. This is all fun, enriching foot work that we often do before a trip to the apple orchard or camping at a local park. I learned that we don’t have to be boarding a plane or driving across the country to learn or experience something interesting, fun or real life.  But it certainly helps! This is real life learning. (For those that are looking for the learning, that’s-Science, Biology, Geography, Math, Astronomy, Literature)

Remember this post from about a year ago? (the part about all the buckeyes)   Well, a few weeks ago,  Molly shelled, drilled, purchased beads, created the necklaces, got change, biked to campus and sold $90 worth of those buckeye necklaces in less than two hours.  (For those that need to compartmentalize learning that’s-Art, Math, gym, shop)

Molly even gave her helper some money!

She  spent a good chunk of that money on an expensive Halloween costume. Yes, it made my stomach turn to see her dole out that much cash for a few hours of wear but it it is her money.  Of course I put my 2 cents in. But in the end it is her money and deciding when, where and how to spend it is also real life learning. She has a paper route so she has income coming in. She set aside money to spend on vacation and some more to purchase a hair straightener. Oh, and  don’t worry about her future because she puts half of her paper route check in a savings account!  I would say she is learning more than any text book could teach her. (Mucho Math)

Many schooled kids do these same things but homeschooling allows us more time for these learning  opportunities. We don’t have to cram them in when there is time. They are just part of our day to day lives.

Now, back to my husband. I sort of wear the educational pants in our family as my husband wears the financial pants. We may discuss things but the one with the knowledge makes the ultimate decision.  So Ginger going to school is completely out of the question! I may  halfheartedly support my older kids curiosity about school but not so much my early elementary grade kid. What could school possibly teach my wiggly 5 year old that she can’t learn by snuggling up with us reading books, playing games, painting, playing with friends, outside, inside and at parks and museums?   She is experiencing life first hand, with her family and friends. Not at a kindergarten level or in  a specific time frame. She is one lucky 5 year old!

Look–More science!!    See learning is everywhere!!!!!!!!!!

Remember I used to post recipes on Thursdays and invited readers to join in the fun and link to recipe on their blogs on Thursdays? Well let’s try again!! If you need the whole sorted explanation of why I chose to call them quarter recipes you can read about it here.

So here is my meager but tasty and healthy recipe for this week.

We enjoy smoothies many mornings. On this day we mixed up a couple of frozen bananas, about 3 large handfuls of spinach,  some orange juice, a couple of tablespoons of goji berries, a couple of tablespoons of chia seeds, and a whole lot of frozen blueberries in my VITA-MIX.

I keep my chia seeds in the freezer, that’s why they look sweaty.

This may be a green smoothie, but the blueberries really make it more purple.

If you have a favorite recipe to share (it doesn’t have to be raw) leave a link in the comments to your blog’s recipe post.

Or think about joining in next week. Because I have the world’s best salad recipe to share next Thursday! (I have been eating it for days)