Middle Creek Mama

Homeschool Orginization in a Camper!

09/18/202309/18/2023 Middle Creek Mama

Does homeschool take a lot of room? It doesn’t HAVE to, but, let’s be honest, it makes things go more smoothly when you have room to spread out.

Do we have room to spread out? 🤣🤣🤣 absolutely not. We’re in a 40 ft 5th wheel camper, a sardine can, if you will. When we homeschooled in our house, there was supplies everywhere. Did we need all of it? I used to think so, but not all of it was a necessity. In our house, I took over the dining room, which was at the back of the house, furthest from our woodstove. So it wasn’t long before it was too cold to not enjoy school back there and we moved to the front room. We kept things tidy for a hot minute, but when I have the space, I tend to fill it up. It’s a design flaw in me!

So where did we put everything? I’m so glad you asked! 😏 I found some great baskets from Mardel. They were even on sale for only $5.99 when I ordered them!

We may not have a lot of room in this humble abode, but we do have a good amount of storage. In the back, above the couch, there’s a cabinet the entire width of the camper, which is 8 ft. It’s open all the way through, so there’s some serious space in it.

I got measurements and got to ordering. I even found the baskets in my favorite sage green color!

I have 5 baskets in here now and could fit another, however I’m keeping it open to store other random things. My reusable shopping bags are in the open space at the moment, but I’m sure that will change.

Each kid and I have our own basket. The kids’ are full of all their school books and supplies. Mine contains my planners, Bible studies, books I’m either currently reading or future reads, and all my pens, because I’m a sucker for a good pen and need all the colors. Each morning, I get the kids’ baskets out so they can easily get their books out. It’s just a great way to keep everyone’s things organized!

The other baskets contain boards games and playing cards, some art supplies, and just odds and ends items that are seriously totally random. Oh, and the kids want me to mention that we also store water balloons up there 🤣

I do have one other plastic tote/tub or whatever you want to call it, that holds most of our arts and crafts supplies. It stays in the floor, because it is fairly large, but we really don’t mind. It’s not in the way.

For loose paper products, we store under the table. The top lifts up and has a good amount of storage there. Another design flaw in me is if a paper gets bent, I think it’s completely ruined and I can’t take it. The table storage is perfect to keep things nice and flat!

**please note, I am in now way affiliated with Mardel, so I won’t get any kickbacks for your clicking on this link. I just love the company and this particular product has been a perfect organization solution for my family!

I pray you are having a terrific week and may Yah bless you and keep you!

Homeschool

Best Homeschool Planner!

08/31/202308/31/2023 Middle Creek Mama

*some links may be affiliate links. By clicking them, I may receive compensation.

Planners are hard! I’ve been through so many. I think at this point I’ve thrown away just as many as I’ve actually used all the way through!

I am a planner person. Or at least I want to be 🥴 but when they don’t meet my needs, I lose interest and just stop using them.

I found A Simple Plan Homeschool Planner at Mardel. I LOVE Mardel and am blessed to have one a couple hours away! I try to source asany homeschool supplies from them as I can. I even was able to snag these awesome baskets to help organize a very large cabinet in the camper! *none of the Mardel links are affiliate! I just love their stuff 💕

Last year, I used the dated planner. It was beautiful! It had earthy/deserty tones and just everything I wanted to look at.

This year, I went with the undated version. We’re homeschoolers, we don’t always keep a strict schedule, so it’s nice to be able write in our dates.

This planner has everything homeschool families need! I am so impressed with how well organized it is. It has spots to keep track of multiple students’ schedules, places for lists of supplies needed, even a place to track the costs of curricula and such! When I say it has everything, I mean it.

Each month starts with beautiful scripture, a prep page for the month, and then a full monthly calender.

Next, it has weekly homeschool scheduling. It is set up for a 5 day week, and each day has 6 subject places.

I organize our subjects by: Morning Basket, Reading/Language Arts, Math, History, Science, and Extras. Our morning basket isn’t really the traditional “basket” that homeschool moms have been posting about recently. It’s more just our family time. We have family prayer time, a devotion, and then we will be doing a family study on The Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder. The study is from Home and Haven and is from their Fall Bundle volume 3.

I like to color coordinate our days. Each kid gets their own color and then everything we do as a family gets another color. It seems small, but I let the kids pick their own color and it’s always a fun thing for then and gives them a bit of ownership in their work each day.

Now, one thing this planner does not have is weekend days. Every now and then I do wish it had weekends on them, because we do some activities I consider school. I just write them in the notes section on the side. This really is strictly a planner for just school. It works perfectly for us.

They do also have student planners. My kids aren’t quite old enough to utilize them, but I am looking forward to when they are.

If you like this planner and would like to purchase, I would be awesome if you used my Amazon link! Best Homeschool Planner! I do receive a kick back from it. However, if you would rather purchase through Mardel, that’s okay, too! Either way, I just wanted to tell everyone about this planner. It really is the best one out there for homeschool families!

Faith

My Faith

08/30/202308/30/2023 Middle Creek Mama

Faith is loaded deal, right? We say we’re one thing, but then disagree with so many who use the same label. Even when we’re sitting in a room or seemingly “like-minded” individuals, we always find something to disagree about.

So, just to get started out, I want to share with you what it is I believe.

I am a Bible believing, Yahuah (God) fearing woman. I believe He sent His Son Yeshuah (Jesus) to be the Messiah to die for ALL man’s sins (John 3:16). I believe that sin is defined in the Bible as lawlessness (1 John 3:4), which means doing anything that breaks anything God told us to do or not to do. This means that the Old Testament is STILL valid. We have to have a strong knowledge of what is in the Old Testament to understand what it is Jesus died for in the New Testament. I believe that should any man, woman, or child confess with their mouth and truly believe in their heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, they will be saved (Romans 10:9).

But I do not believe that one can continue in a life of lawlessness and be truly saved. I believe that once a person in indwelt by the Holy Spirit, he or she can’t just go on living a life of chasing the things of this world. I believe that a person should have the desire to live a life of obedience to God’s Teachings. I believe we should give up earthly/ manmade traditions. And I could go down all of the rabbit holes of why we are stepping away from manmade traditions and holidays, but in short, my husband and I simply no longer believe that they are honoring to The Creator. If you celebrate these manmade holidays, that is okay! I am not telling anyone to do what I do, we are just doing what we feel we are called to and what is best for our own family.

My family and I have been on a path to find the actual truth, Yah’s Truth. Man has taken away and added too much for me to be comfortable following any denomination’s doctrine. My goal for my relationship with Yeshuah Messiah is to only seek His Word and throw away all manmade doctrine. I want to ONLY follow what is taught in Yah’s Word (** side note for clarification- I do believe using proper names is important, however, I am still new to it and will probably continue using both. I am trying to be better about using the real names, but at the end of the day, those are hairs I’m not willing to split at this moment in my journey).

When we toss out what man has made of this, it is astonishing to realize just how much we believe that isn’t even in the Bible. There are a ton of deep topics that usually come up with this thought process. And my goal for this blog is not to get that deep, UNLESS someone reaches out to me on a more personal level.

With that said, because of this path we are on, I will mainly be discussing Yah’s Feasts and Sabbath and just good ol’ inspiration. We are still learning these things and what the mean. This year, we kept our first Spring Feasts, and they were so lovely. They truly were a beautiful experience.

Philippians 2:12 tells us that we must each work out our own salvation. It is up to each of us to study this out and find the path we are meant to be on. …and speaking of paths, “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because straight is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it. -Matthew 7:13-14 kjv It sounds to me like living a willy-nilly, “do whatever you want” type of life is the broad way, but that’s just me.

Yeshuah (Jesus), Himeself, told us in John 14:15, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

I do not believe our salvation is tied up in commandments and feasts. However, I do believe that Yah’s commandments and His Feasts are the best way to remain obedient and the Feasts are the best way to keep our hearts prepared for the things still yet to come.

May Yahuah keep you and bless you, may He make His face shine upon you!

RV Life

The RV

08/29/202308/30/2023 Middle Creek Mama

A few months ago, we did it. We had been talking about it for years. We knew we didn’t want to live in town, and we had the property, but we just weren’t sure how to make that transition work.

But we finally did it.

We decided that the easiest, quickest way to get out of town was to buy a camper/5th wheel/RV (whatever you want to call it). So we did.

We bought a 40 ft Coachman Chaparral from the sweetest family. We had done so much research on the style, make, and model we wanted. We knew exactly what we wanted. We could NOT find one in the entire state of Colorado 🙄

I found one in Oklahoma and had recruited a friend to deliver it to us, but something just didn’t feel quite right. Then, just like that, the perfect camper popped up on Facebook marketplace. We jumped on it. While driving to look at it, Brock asked me “are we buying it or not?” I said, “if it passes our own inspections, yes, we’re buying it.” And the rest is history

There’s still a ton of work to be done, mind you, but we’ve been happily living in this incredible thing for a couple months now. We are slowly making it work for us and learning how to do life in such a small space.

Now, we’re just trying to wrap our heads around keeping it warm this winter.

I would love to bring yall along with our journey of making this property home. We do have plans for building a house in the future, but we’ve not been able to settle on one idea yet.

Homeschool

Back to School!

08/29/202308/29/2023 Middle Creek Mama

Is it that time already?

It hardly seems possible that it’s time to get back in the swing of things. We have had a lovely summer break full of fun and a lot of work. We are in transition from our house in town to a camper at our mountain property! It’s been whirlwind of “what should we do?” and “oh boy, we’re really doing this!”

It’s been great though! We are settling in well in the camper and are learning how to organize and make life work in such a small space. We are loving it!

Having said all of that, I want to touch on curriculum for this year.

Brinley is 8 and going into 3rd grade. Kaston is 5 and will be working his way through Kindergarten (he started some Kindergarten work during last school year, so he’s starting where we left off). We have already started review work, just to ensure they remember things from last year and to make sure they’re where they need to be, as we are starting new curriculum for a few subjects. We have traditionally used all Masterbooks for all subjects, however, we are switching things up this year to meet the needs of each kid.

This year, we went with The Good and The Beautiful for Brinley’s Language Arts. We have discovered she is struggling with dyslexia of some sort. We have been having evaluations done to see exactly what we are dealing with. She has improved greatly in her reading skills over the summer, I just will feel better to have an exact diagnosis to know how to better help her. While tossing options for curricula back and forth, I ultimately decided to give TGTB a chance. We have been working through their Booster C card set to make sure she’s is on par to start Level 3.

For math, we are sticking with Masterbooks. Brinley really loves following along with Charlotte and Charlie and was adamant we stick with them! Following along with their story keeps her engaged and motivated to push through. I really appreciate that about Masterbooks’ math!

For Kaston, we are doing The Good and The Beautiful for both Language Arts and Math. He is a challenging kid. Nothing interests him more than guns, hunting, cowboys, and cattle. So, when we find, say, farm related curricula, but its filled with cutesy, cartoon critters, he will not engage. He wants nothing to do with “little kid” type stuff. When we received his Language Arts from TGTB in the mail, he groaned! But after looking through the books and seeing all the wildlife, he changed his attitude and can’t wait to get started.

I chose Masterbooks’ America’s Story 1 for both kiddos to participate in. Just flipping through the books, I can tell we are going to love it!

We will be doing God’s Design: Life for Beginners from Masterbooks for a science that is more on Kaston’s level, but both kids will participate. We also have a Mammals Science unit study from TGTB, again, both kids will do.

One other thing I’ve decided to add to our curricula, is this Fall Bundle from Home and Haven. Their Bundles are absolutely darling. This bundle includes an 8 week study on Laura Ingalls’ Little House in the Big Woods. We have been reading Laura Ingalls books all summer, so when I found a family study that went along with one, I jumped right on it. There are tons of great activity sheets for both kids’ development levels and even a cooking section that mirrors recipes Ma makes in the book! We (probably mostly me) are excited to get started on this one. I am in the process of having it professionally printed, as well. I will make another post about that!

Other things I want to include this semeseter are Fall Feast studies (Biblical Feasts) and an Exuma critter study. We are headed to the Bahamas in December! On the Exuma website, they have a “safari challenge” that challanged people to get photos of their top favorite critters around the islands. So, to keep things educational and exciting, we are going to be studying one Exuma critter per week in the weeks leading up to our departure for vacation!

*none of the links I posted are affiliate links. I get no compensation for your clicking on them! They are just products I believe in. If you do check these products out because of my suggestion, let me know! I want to hear if you love them as much as I do!

Recipes

Elk Backstrap

01/23/202301/23/2023 Middle Creek Mama

For the longest time we sliced up all of our backstraps for steaks. One year I just didn’t feel like putting that much effort into it and I cut them into decent sized chunks and froze them whole.

My laziness doesn’t always pay off, but it did this time! 😂

Leaving the backstraps “whole” has quickly become our favorite way to have elk steak.

First, what is a backstrap?

I know that not everyone is accustomed to having loads of fresh meat around, and even fewer of you will have processed your own critters, so let me back up a bit and explain. If you are familiar with what this is, please feel free to skip to the recipe.

The backstrap is the long piece of juicy, tender meat that runs along the spine -on the top side. They run parallel to the spine and sit on top of the rib cage. All critters have them…even you have them! For beef, they’re referred to as the loin. There is also what’s called the tender loin that runs along the spine, but underneath, in the abdominal cavity. On beef, this is where the filet mignon comes from. These get used the least amount and are just incredibly tender.

On an elk, the backstraps are pretty dang big! When we process a deer or elk, we pull the backstraps and tenderloins off first and leave them in the sink with cool water and a pinch of salt to draw out some of the blood.

Moving on!

Elk is by far our favorite thing to eat. We are blessed to be able to hunt. None of this is taken for granted.

Elk Backstrap-

You want to start with room temperature steak!

First thing is first, you need a cast iron skillet. If I’m being honest, it’s the only skillet you’ll ever really need.

Get your skillet nice and hot over medium heat.

Add 2-3 tablespoons of an oil of your choice. I usually go for Olive Oil.

Sprinkle salt, pepper, and rosemary on your backstrap, making sure to get all the sides.

Once the oil is hot, add the backstrap to the skillet and let it sear for about 4 minutes.

Flip it over and let it sear for another 4 minutes.

At this point I always check it with a thermometer, and typically need to cook it on a third side (I know that doesn’t make sense, but it does 🤣 the chunk of meat is big enough to have at east 3 sides)

Elk should be cook to 120-125°F – and then let it rest for 5 minutes or so.

In the last couple of minutes of cooking, I like to add minced garlic and a sprig of rosemary to the skillet.

Once it reaches temperature -120-125°F- remove from heat and let rest for about 5 minutes.

I like to slice it up and serve with rice or mashed potatoes, broccoli or corn, salad, fresh bread.. ..honestly the possibilities are endless.

Enjoy!

Recipes

Easy Elk Stroganoff

01/23/202301/23/2023 Middle Creek Mama

I’m not one to waste time talking about what inspired me to make this recipe, or how it makes me feel 😂 so let’s get to it.

1 pound steak (mine is elk steak) sliced thin-bite size
Garlic salt + pepper to taste
Little bit of oil in a hot pan
Cook steak with seasonings
Boil some egg noodles. How hungry are you? Make that much
Once steak is done, add in a packet of brown gravy mix and 1 cup of water and stir
Plop a couple spoonfuls of soyr cream in the gravy and give it a good stir
Add in noodles
Serve it up

This is really about as simple as it gets, folks. This is my go-to when I run out of time to make anything else. It’s hard to mess up! You can definitely make it all from scratch, too, but like I said,this is for when I just run out of time for anything else. I will update with this recipe made from scratch, too 😉

Enjoy!

Family

Hey Yall!

01/22/2023 Middle Creek Mama

Welcome to my blog! I am Katie, the middle creek mama. I am a stay at home mom of two kiddos. My husband is a project estimator for a construction company. He handles our shenanigans like a champ. We are a Jesus serving, homeschool loving, slightly feral family and we are so glad you stopped by our blog! We aren’t quite a homesteading family, but we hold a lot of the same values near to our hearts. We have critters all over the place and keep our family fed with elk and deer. We value food preservation and homemade meals. We believe in working hard. We try to live as healthy and clean as possible. But most importantly, we put God above all else and give Him all the glory.

So what is Middle Creek? Middle Creek is the creek which flows through our land on which we plan to build our future home. We have been kicking ideas around for a couple of years now and we think we are now in a position to start that transition.

As time goes on, I hope to fill this blog with homeschool advice and encouragement, cooking recipes, Bible encouragement and studies, backyard critter info, and I hope to share the process of building our place up at Middle Creek along the way.

Thanks for joining us!

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