Winners, Good Advice and Unrelated Stuff (as usual)

I lied. I said I only had THREE tickets to give away for the HOTM conference. I actually had FIVE. They gently corrected me on this matter AFTER I had posted about it. That's fine and dandy for me! The more people to hear me sounding goofy, the merrier.

I HATE the sound of my voice on tape. It's freakish to hear yourself talk. I'm SO glad I can't hear it until AFTER it's taped, or I promise you, I wouldn't do it.

But you won't make fun of me, right? Right?

Anyway... here are the wieners, I mean, winners:

1. Dawn of New Hope Boxes

Dawn's "How NOT to Homeschool" advice?

"Sit at the computer and expect your kids to just do their school work."

Really??? That doesn't work?

I chuckled at this one. I think 'some' of us homeschool mamas (the blogging ones) might know this first hand, but I'm certainly not namin' names (or kickin' butts).

2. Amber of Classic Housewife (her site wasn't coming up for me, so here's her twitter link)

3. Rose of Adventures in Savings

4. Lael (can't click on your profile, sweetie - so if you don't email me by tomorrow at noon, I'll have to pass your ticket on to another blogger)

5. Shannon of On This Glorious Homeschooling Journey

I have decided that Shannon will be giving the talk instead of Dawn or me... because she has some superb advice and it rather stepped on my toes a bit:

How NOT to Homeschool:

1. like you're in public school, and must mark off objectives so as to stay on track of the public school in your neighborhood

2. grumpily, irritated, frustrated, tired, etc. (we are human, and on occasion this is just going to happen...but we must shine the light of Jesus in our school!)

3. lazily--for example, starting school whenever it seems to happen in the duration of the day--if it happens it happens, if ot doesn't it doesn't (again, we will have those occasional days when we just need to let the school day go, but in fairness to our children, we need to be as consistent as possible)

4. without being spiritually fed by the Word of God--we must rise and spend time with the Father, then tend to everyone else

5. without lesson plans or a game plan for the week

Hope this helps, Heather and Dawn!

Shannon

Well, Shannon. Now we aren't needing to do a conference. I think you about covered it. No, just kidding, I'm sure there's even more great advice where that came from... I know I've been taking notes and listening to all the amazing collective of expertise Dawn and I have been fortunate enough to have available to us. Our local homeschool email groups, friends, HOTM readers, blog readers, and Facebook and Twitter friends who homeschool have been giving us more than we could ever cover in our short session. I can't wait to share it all with you, but feel as if I have done none of the work!

* WINNERS, PLEASE EMAIL ME FOR YOUR FREE TICKETS (Contact Button up top!).

Now you ladies behave yourselves, OK? No virtual vegetable throwing... or making fun of accents and such.

OH, yes! I almost forgot. The photo up there is my ArtsCow dog-tag necklace I got for my son with his original drawing (also used in my blog header) for his 13th birthday. Facebook had a free coupon, so I ordered it a month or so ago. It's pretty cute... and has absolutely nothing to do with this post - but I did mention it today at my food blog, too.

I talk about things that aren't related to my posts quite often. Which kind of makes me a tad bit surprised that some of you are here for reasons other than a misguided Google search. But that's neither here nor there.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go sit on the hall floor opposite my 'improved' laundry room and listen to my AMAZINGLY quiet new appliances whisper and whir... and watch the clothes inside go round and round until the baby is tired. We painted the walls in there steel blue today and Home Depot delivered our frontloaders this afternoon. I'm astounded by the amount of electricity, time, effort and AGONY that I'm going to save now that we don't have to WRING out our laundry piece by piece any longer (a torture method we've been enduring since September). My LGs are so quiet, fast, efficient, and interesting!

Until the novelty wears off, I'm going to be enjoying laundry time. Which is basically 24/7 in my house. So the novelty might be gone tomorrow.

I'll let you know.

If you didn't win a ticket to the HOTM Online Homeschool Refresher Conference, they are under 13$. It wouldn't hurt if you bought one and joined us - for laughs.

And now I am really going... my hypnotic humming, spinning garments await...