Bear claw sweet bread ,,,, mmmmm mmmm mmmmm

So this is a very old school recipe I thought I would try out today to share with some awesome peeps at Bible study tonight. I tried 2 variations but the bread recipe remained the same ...you can chage up your filling any way you would like. Here goes...
 Yeast Coffee Cake braid dough

(I mixed the dough in my bread maker to speed things up a tad)

1/2 cup butter softened
1/2 cup milk
3/4 cup water
2 eggs
1/4-1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp lemon rind (grated)
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 cups flour ( or until dough is workable and not sticky)
2 Tbsp yeast

I put the ingrediesnts into my bread machine on the dough setting and an hour and a half later I had workable dough.I rolled out the dough onto a non stick cookie sheet. I filled one loaf with slivered almonds, cinnamon and sugar and almond paste and braided it. Maked it in the oven at 350 for 25-30 minutes and glazed with powdered sugar, milk and vanilla icing that I made
repeated the process again for a 2nd loaf and filled with everything you would put in your favorite peach cobbler.. braided it up and went about 30 minutes at 350. The 2nd bread was a bit moister ... I suspect from the canned peaches but tasty! glazed this one with the same topping as the 1st. 

Its not a super fancy recipe but yummy. You could fill with your fave ingredients. apples, peaches, bear claw, blueberry, cream cheese and raspberry jam... I suppose any of your favorite insides since the sweet bread recipe remains about the same. ENJOY!

unit study: snails

 so, homeschooling is in full swing around here and while I do encourage the kids to do some self directed learning we do like to get together and do family unit studies at least once a month.... so in August our topic was ......

SNAILS

 We spent some time making some places for our garden snails to hide from predators

 and some time making snail families.... out of clay

 and then we took on the garden science experiment to discover how many snails lived in  our garden.... 

we marked 50 snails with dark blue non toxic paint

 recorded data

 were very curious

 held a snail olympics (not really)

but we did study their behaviors and mannerisms

 found out each one had an individual personality

 and even got a little silly

 we discovered in our garden that we have about 650 snails. we went back a week later and collected as many as we could in the same amount of time it took us to find the 1st 50 at the same time of day. apparently when you divide that number (50) by the number you found you get the approximate number of snails in your garden.

I love doing unit studies with the kids. I think there is sometimes more that you can learn as a group from one another. We did some other stuff too. A snail lapbook from homeschoolshare.com as well as some water color paintings of snails. we read a few good online articles here & here and even wrote a few creative tales about them! My younger kids even did some fun phonics printables about them!

and this time anyway, we even remembered to take a few photos! and videos!!

Invisible

recently I went to a Women of Faith concert in Anaheim CA this past weekend and saw an incredible skit by Katherine Everett, an exceptionally talented young lady who led a skit called "Invisible"

Some days I think that is my life...

that no one sees me... or hears me..or even notices when I am not there.


And then I saw this invisible woman skit (except it was done by Catherine Everett)

and I realized, maybe...

I want to be invisible.

If you are a woman... a wife... a mom... and feeling a little less than visible please please GO & watch this.





Perhaps you too will start to want to feel invisible, like me.

our week at Family Camp

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