My favorite new appliance, the Instant Pot!!

We recently got an Instant Pot pressure cooker on Amazon Prime Day, and I love, love, love this thing!!!  Seriously, it is amazing!  I recently made stuffed bell peppers and it took a fraction of the time,  Actually, I cooked them a little too long and the peppers just fell apart.  I have cooked one pot spaghetti, pork chops, honey chicken, taco spiced chicken, apple pie oatmeal and of course, my favorite, lemon blueberry cheesecake!!

The Instant Pot has saved a lot of time for me and I have only had it a few weeks.  I have learned a lot in a Facebook group for it and there are several you can find, just search Instant Pot.  I like a group over community because you have the search function.  It is so much fun, daily I find my self saving links or posts for recipes or ideas that I want to try.

I am sure there are a lot of YouTube videos but I haven't really searched.  There is one gentleman I like watching and I found him through the group I am in.  Here is a link to one of his videos, it is actually his get to know the instant pot video. :)

One thing that is on my list to cook is ribs!  My dad has always slow-cooked and smoked ribs that are delicious so I have never tried cooking them myself.  With two toddlers, I don't have time to babysit a cooker.  Also, I want to try a roast.  It is actually high on my list.


Trust me, this thing is worth it!! I try to find things I can use it for because I know it will save time!  I really want to get the 8 quart one now.

The link above is an associate link, but honestly, the Instant Pot is the best thing since sliced bread!

Have a great evening and hope you enjoy it if you get it!  I know I have! God bless!

Lee Ann

We just started . . . homeschooling!!

My daughter will be four in October, so we started a K4 curriculum with her this month.  Of course, this means little brother will be participating with his own worksheets and crayons and whatever else.

I am using the curriculum from Confession's of a Homeschooler. (Her blog is HERE and the curriculum is HERE)  I will say that I have used a couple of components from 1+1+1=1, (and her site is HERE)  Specifically, I used the printables she has to go along with Songs for Saplings, ABC Bible verses.  There are full page printable for each verse, as well as flash cards and a puzzle page for your child to put together.  The link for those is HERE.

We are taking a very laid back approach to homeschooling this year.  It will be structured some days and others we will vary what we do.  I see no reason to take away play time at this young age because I feel it is just as important.  Well, actually more important.

I want "school" to be fun for my children and not something they dread each day.  I know there will be times they don't want to "do school," as my daughter says; but overall, I hope they enjoy learning.

We will have music class once a week this fall and a few other things to rotate in and out.  I am still deciding on what we will do.  A friend has "Poetry and Tea Tuesday," and I love that idea!  She has a great blog over at Book Review Mama, you should hop over and check it out!  She is a book lover like no other!  :)

So, we are "doing school," in our dining room.  This means we have to be able to put it up and eat dinner at the end of the day.  Not too long ago, we put in cabinets with countertops in my work area so I happened to have a sewing cabinet I wasn't using.  We moved it upstairs and put it in the corner.  It is perfect because I can put a cabinet lock and keep the little man out of it!  You can see in the picture below, we have a board with all of our main areas on it.  I love this thing!!  Thanks to my mother-in-love, we had a big piece of chloraplast (plastic cardboard used in sign making) and I put it on the wall with command strips so I can take it down whenever I need.  I used velcro to attach each item on the board.  My daughter actually loves to take down and put up each thing as we talk about it.

So I will periodically update our homeschool journey on here as we go, so keep an eye out for that.  Thanks for reading and come back soon!

God bless!
Lee Ann

Plan with Me Filming

So, I decided I wanted to try filming a plan with me video for youtube.  I thought it would be fun since it would be my first week in my Erin Condren hourly planner.  I learned a lot with my unboxing video.  First, I needed light and quiet.  The lighting I could do, but the quiet part was harder.  It is hard to find quiet time in my house and even if it is sleeping time, my little may wake up at any minute.

I also learned that I talk slow when I am nervous and trying to do something right.  I had to speed up a lot of my clips to make it a tolerable amount of time.  I know people don't want to listed to me for 30 minutes!!   I added some music to it also.
I had a lot of fun doing this and may do it in the future again, but I will not be doing weekly plan with me videos for sure.  I do want to do different videos though and so far have thought of a few topics.  Here is my list:  planning, homeschooling, meal planning, cleaning schedules and routines, goal planning, decluttering the house step by step, life with toddlers, Sephora play boxes, and working with my Silhouette Cameo.  Let me know if there is anything else you might want to see or read about.

So here is the link for my video, it is for the first week I did in my Erin Condren hourly, so it was a few weeks ago.  :)

Thank you for visiting and God bless!!
Lee Ann