Monday, April 13, 2026

Beautiful Table Settings

I have entered a few Meal Prep competitions in 4H when I was younger, and at BYU we had to do fancy table settings for a Meal Management class I took, but I didn't know about the hobby (craft? sport? haha) of "Tablescaping" before this. People do it at competitions at places like County Fairs. They create such elaborate table settings with beautiful themes and centerpieces. I would like to see some in person sometime!

Examples:

We didn't go that far, but I did have each of the kids create a formal place setting with a theme and a written menu, if desired, using things we already had around the house. It was really fun to see what they came up with!
Goldie's menu
Goldie's setting
Gus worked hard on making his place very fancy
And so did Clementine!
Teddy's place setting featured bunnies
Daisy's had a "summer garden party" theme
Ziggy's was police themed
Junie's had a beautiful Ocean theme
I loved all these pretty table settings and would be happy to eat at any of them!

Wednesday, April 1, 2026

Etiquette Unit

 
One of the kids requested doing another Etiquette Unit. It was really fun! I like being able to customize our topics to any that are, ahem, more relevant for certain individuals. There are lots of things I want the kids to be able to do in public or with other people that we just don't always think to practice! So this unit was a good chance to be intentional about that.
We did this scavenger hunt for Family Home Evening during the unit. It's always good to practice being grateful for the things around us!
One day we all chose people we might not usually appreciate and wrote thank-you notes to them. Gus chose to write his to the Garbage Truck man. I love the recycling sign he drew from memory on the back of the card. When garbage day came, Gus waited eagerly outside, and then Teddy helped him run out and give the note to the garbage truck driver. I wonder what he thought of it?
One fun thing we did was go out to several stores and let the kids practice buying things, ordering things, asking questions of the employees, etc. I would coach them before we went inside, and then withdraw and just let them do it all by themselves (with an older sibling hovering nearby if necessary). I reminded them to speak up, speak clearly, and use polite words like "excuse me" and "could you please." They all did so well! And I think they were very proud of themselves.

(The picture is just of our picnic afterward, where we ate some of the things the kids had ordered or bought. Then we played on a playground and the kids had a few things to say about the other kids' etiquette, or lack thereof! Ha!)
At Scheel's we practiced elevator and escalator etiquette
We also liked doing this "Compliment Board." Anyone in the family could write something nice about anyone else in the family, and we put those things up on the board and then took them off and read them aloud occasionally. It was fun to see the good things people noticed, and I think it helped people want to do good things, too!

A few videos about etiquette:

Wednesday, February 18, 2026

Selling chocolates

We decided at the last minute to make a bunch of Valentine's chocolates and sell them. It was a good chance to try out some of the things we'd learned about pricing, marketing, economies of scale, and so forth! Daisy made a flier and we just advertised them on our little neighborhood ladies GroupMe, and we thought we might get a pity order or two. We were okay with that, knowing we'd have no trouble eating them ourselves! But we ended up selling twenty-six boxes (four chocolates to a box)! We were surprised and pleased! Subtracting our costs and the amount of time it took, the earnings of the four kids who helped were…let's see…about $3.28 per hour. $13 each. Ha! Well, so it's not going to make us rich anytime soon. But we did use the money we made to do something fun together!
And it was fun making the chocolates, anyway. We pride ourselves on them being really good. As good as any we've had from professionals. We hope our customers were pleasantly surprised.
Our cost/pricing sheet…the girls did all these calculations to figure out our costs.
Caramels drying
Daisy made a tiny chocolate, of course
We made caramels (semi-sweet and milk, salted and unsalted) as well as orange cremes and raspberry cremes. The raspberries were particularly good this year (I think the freeze-dried raspberries we used were fresher than last year's). But really, they were all good. Caramels are always my favorite. We boxed them up in these cute little boxes, and put our homemade stickers on top. They looked really nice!
This was a fun project and I think we might do it again next year! We'll see!

Friday, January 23, 2026

Store Day

I was remembering way back when I was in first grade and we had a "store" day where everyone got to sell things to each other. I loved it SO much! I wasn't sure it could be as fun with just our family, but I presented the idea to the kids and they got excited about it. They spend a couple days preparing things to sell—things they made themselves and things they just wanted to get rid of. I was really impressed with how much work they put in! Then I also went to the dollar store and bought some things I thought the kids might like, and distributed those among the kids also, so that everyone would be able to sell at least something someone else wanted!

We used bunny money for the buying and selling, of course. It was good because I gave some out at the beginning so everyone would have some, but many of the kids already had a lot from other good things they'd done around the house, so they had more purchasing power.
Goldie had her own store, "Bendigo Antiques."
(Bendigo himself was not for sale)
She made peanut butter cupcakes to sell (with free samples to lure people over), but her very best thing was the adorable tiny crocheted elephant she made (on the right of the picture above). We were all wild to buy him. We would have paid four times the amount she charged. The only reason I didn't buy him myself is because Daisy sneakily beat me to it. 😡
Ted's Goods and Services
Daisy and Clementine did their store together. They had some really cute miniature items, and Daisy had made scotcheroos (they sold out quickly) and fortune-tellers in all sizes, plus many coveted items from her stash of random stuff.
My friend's daughter Harriet was staying with us for a few days, so she joined our store. She made some really cute personalized calligraphy name cards, and a few other things. Ziggy did his store with Harriet too. He made coloring pages and peanut butter graham crackers and an assortment of other things.
Junie's rainbow jello was vastly popular. I thought it was a bit expensive, so I bided my time until the end when I assumed she'd reduce her prices. Instead, when there was one jello bowl left, she raised her prices due to decreased supply! And someone else bought it even at that price, so I didn't get any. Hmmph. Cutthroat.
Gus carefully made the signs for his shop the day before, and advertised donuts, hot cocoa, and strawberry lemonade for sale! This was the first I'd heard of it, but he was so cute, and so diligent in his preparations, that I felt I had to go get a donut and some strawberry lemonade for him to actually sell!
Then I saw that he'd made the things out of paper.🥹 So he sold both!
He also made stickers on my sticker maker to sell
The tiny things (they made the rounds being bought and sold among the kids) were surprisingly detailed and cute. They were called "Mini Brands" and I don't know if they are supposed to go with dolls or what? They are in little "mystery packs" at Walmart. We couldn't believe how realistic they were!
You can open the boxes and the little foods are packaged inside just like real ones
Like this—the little individual cheese wedges! Wrapped in actual foil! With actual (fake) cheese inside!
The buying and selling took all morning (after quite a long set-up period where everyone arranged their goods and priced them, etc.). There was some bartering, some haggling, some price gouging, some clearance sales. At the end most people dropped their prices in an "everything must go" mentality, and everything did go!
Teddy's careful inventory sheet
Daisy, still gloating over her tiny Bendigo

It was such a fun day and a fun activity! We would definitely do it again!
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